Fallen Angels. Bernard Cornwell

claimed that enough rum should be added to make a man drunk with the fumes, at which point the amount of rum should be doubled. The frumenty was cooled. At the last moment, before serving, it was heated again, mixed with egg yolks, and brought to the hall before it could boil. It was drunk only on Christmas Eve, it was too strong for any other day. The Reverend Horne Mounter, who allowed himself some sips of the Castle sherry on this night, secretly believed that the frumenty was a fermentation of the devil, but to say so was to risk the Earl’s displeasure.

      In the Great Hall Lord Culloden watched in amazement as the liquid was served. He had taken a cup himself and drunk it slowly, but the tenants and townspeople were drinking it like water. He smiled at Campion. ‘How long do they stand up?’

      ‘Long enough. They deserve it.’ She smiled up at him. ‘You’re not bored?’

      ‘Good Lord, no! Why should I be bored?’

      ‘It’s hardly London, my Lord.’

      He looked at the noisy, shouting, drinking throng. ‘I always enjoy birthdays.’ He laughed.

      The local gentry had come, and Campion saw how they kept themselves at one end of the hall while the common folk kept to the other. She walked through both ends, greeting old friends and neighbours, introducing the tall, golden haired cavalry Major at her side. Already, she thought, we behave as though we were married. She looked constantly for a tall, black haired figure, but the Gypsy could not be seen. The dances were hardly the dances of London. They were country dances that all the guests knew, dances as old as Lazen itself. The Whirligig was followed by Hit and Miss and then Lady Lie Near Me. The church orchestra played fast and merrily and the dancers slowly mixed the two ends of the hall together. Once in a while, in a gesture towards the gentry, Simon Stepper, the bookseller and flautist of the church orchestra, would order his players to provide a minuet.

      There was applause again when Campion and Lord Culloden danced to one such tune. The floor seemed to clear for them.

      He danced well, better than she would have expected. He smiled at her. ‘Your father spoke to me today.’

      ‘He did, my Lord?’ The room turned about her in a blur of happy faces, candles, and firelight on old panelling. Lord Culloden made the formal, slow gestures with elegance. The month’s easy living in Lazen, she saw, had thickened his neckline so that the flesh bulged slightly at his tight, gold-encrusted collar. He smiled.

      ‘He wanted my advice.’

      Campion smiled at Sir George Perrott who, bless him, had led Mrs Hutchinson onto the floor. For that, she thought, she would give Sir George a kiss under the mistletoe. She could not see the Gypsy. ‘About what, my Lord?’

      ‘Your cousin.’

      ‘Oh Lord!’ Campion said rudely. She smiled at the miller who, with pretensions to gentility, had insisted on dancing this minuet with his wife and had bumped heavily into Campion’s back. ‘About Julius? What about him?’

      Lord Culloden frowned as the tempo of the orchestra underwent a frumenty-induced change. He adjusted his steps. ‘It seems he has written asking for money.’ He had to speak loudly to be heard over the riot of conversation and laughter from the lower end of the hall. ‘He’s in bad debt!’

      ‘Again?’

      ‘That was your father’s word.’

      Uncle Achilles, with grave courtesy, was leading Lady Courthrop’s nine year old daughter about the floor. The townspeople, she could see, were laughing at the odd looking Frenchman. She planned another kiss under the mistletoe.

      Lord Culloden turned at the upper end of the hall, his feet pointing elegantly in the small steps and glides. ‘It seems that he’s spent his allowance for the next ten years. Can you believe that? Ten years! I mean a fellow has to live, but hardly ten years at a time.’ He smiled. Campion supposed that all tonight’s guests were waiting to see if she kissed Lord Culloden under the mistletoe. She thought she would not like to kiss a man who wore a moustache.