“Cornflower blue.” Sybil had tears in her eyes.
“Yes. And you know what she loved more than anything in the world?” The family hung expectantly on Tedi’s next word. “Foxhunting!”
CHAPTER 12
The creamy coral of Crawford’s Paul Stuart polo shirt reflected warmth on his face. Crawford liked the best. Paul Stuart was an exclusive men’s shop on Madison Avenue. If he wasn’t shopping there or at Sulka up on Park, he thought nothing of picking up the phone and ordering a dozen shirts from Turnbull and Asser in London, shoes and boots from Lobb, luxurious cashmeres and silks from a dealer in Turin. To his credit, he always looked splendid.
The morning, hazy, promised a muggy day. This July 28, the anniversary of the day Elizabeth’s bold men dispersed the Spanish Armada in 1588 and Arthur Wellesley knocked the stuffing out of the French at Talavera in 1809. A student of history and business, he remembered odd dates.
He and Marty had attended early service at Saint Luke’s and now he puttered happily in the tack room of his sumptuous stable with its fittings of polished brass, PavSafe floors that cost a fortune, impeccable doors and stall fronts painted deep navy blue, all made by Lucas Equine in Cythiana, Kentucky. His stable colors were navy and red. Many in these parts painted their vehicles in stable colors, or painted a small symbol or name in those colors on the driver’s door. Crawford’s red Mercedes had BEASLEY HALL in one-inch script, navy blue, painted on the driver’s door, plus the car was pin-striped in navy blue.
His cell phone, perched on custom-made tack trunks also in his colors, jingled.
“Crawford here.”
“Haslip,” came the terse, mocking reply.
Crawford missed that Ronnie Haslip was making fun of him. “How are you?”
“Fine. Two things.” Ronnie knew that with Crawford you got the best result by being brief and direct, most emphatically not the Virginia Way. “The hunt club is sponsoring a class at the Fall Classic Horse Show, Thanksgiving weekend this year. We’d like a perpetual trophy— silver, I think. It will cost quite a bit.”
“How much?”
“Seven thousand.”
“My God, Ronnie, how big is this thing?”
“Well, it’s huge. Sterling silver. The kind of stuff they used to do in the 1800s.”
“Why is Sister being so grand? Not like her, really.”
“It’s a secret. She wants us to do it in honor of Nola. The Nola Bancroft Perpetual Trophy, Ladies Over Fences.”
“Oh.” Crawford thought a moment. “Put me down for three thousand five hundred. That ought to get the ball rolling.”
“That is exceedingly generous, Crawford. Not only will Sister be grateful, the Bancrofts will be thrilled, once they know, of course.”
“Awful thing.”
“Yes. Oh, I just heard that Tedi intends to bury her August tenth at the farm. The club will be attending en masse.”
“Naturally.” He found this news depressing even though he never knew Nola. Funerals were not Crawford’s preferred social activity, but one must play one’s part. And he was not an unfeeling man, simply an overreaching one. “Ronnie, you grew up with Nola. Was she what everyone says?”
“And more.” Ronnie laughed. “There was a capriciousness about Nola that was divine, really, unless you were in love with her. Then she’d run you crazy or break your heart.”
“Was she aware of what she was doing to people?”
“I always thought she was like those Indian warriors collecting scalps. She’d keep four, five, who knows how many, on a string.”
“Sleeping with them?”
“Well . . .” Ronnie didn’t want to cast aspersions on any lady, but how could he put this? “Let’s just say that Nola was a high-spirited animal with prodigious energy.”
“For Christ’s sake, Ronnie!”
“She’d have lunch with one fellow, go to a party with another, and home with a third. She was heartless.” Ronnie laughed.
“You weren’t in love with her?” Crawford couldn’t resist this little dig.
“I wasn’t rich enough for Nola,” came the even reply, as Ronnie refused to rise to the bait.
“Neither was Guy Ramy, from what I hear.”
“But he was as beautiful as Nola was. Jet-black curly hair, ice blue eyes, shoulders as wide as Atlas himself. Fearless on a horse. Not the best rider, but fearless.”
“That’s how he got the nickname Hotspur?”
“Yes and no. I’m assuming you know the life of Sir Henry Percy.”
“Of course I do, Ronnie.” A note of indignation darkened Crawford’s voice. “I graduated Phi Beta Kappa.”
Bold, impetuous, strong, Henry Percy was the eldest son of the 1st Earl of Northumberland. Henry was born on May 20, 1364. He was taught to fight like all noble-born boys, displaying a true gift for it. In his early twenties he harried the Scots, who gave him the name Hotspur for his vigorous border patrols.
When Richard II began to show clear signs that he wasn’t up to the demands of being king, unrest grew throughout England. Many giggled that Richard would make a better queen than king. Hotspur and his father helped put Henry Bolingbroke on the throne in 1399, who then called himself Henry IV.
Hotspur’s daring brought him fame and admiration that perhaps incited a certain jealousy in the king. But Henry IV was no fool. He rewarded Hotspur with lands and offices in northern England and Wales, two places where a strong military leader was necessary.
The Percys demolished the Scots at Humbleton Hill in Durham on September 14, 1402. Henry IV, who was vainly trying to suppress the Welsh, paled by comparison. Henry’s ego clouded his usually calculating judgment. He wouldn’t allow Hotspur to ransom the Scottish nobles he had captured, a common policy that would have fattened Hotspur’s pocketbook as well as the crown’s.
To add insult to injury, Henry wouldn’t pay the bill for Hotspur’s border warfare. Not only was the king jealous, he was cheap.
Furious, Hotspur and his father raised a rebellion to depose the king in 1403. Henry, more clever than the Percys realized, intercepted Hotspur near Shrewsbury before he could join up with his father. Though outnumbered, Hotspur fought like the lion he was but in the end he was beaten, hanged, drawn, and quartered. His violent end came on July 21, at the age of thirty-nine.
“There was always a sense,” Ronnie’s bass voice intoned, “that Guy would draw his sword against the wrong man.”
“Sword as in weapon or sword as in cock?”
“Both.”
“So he ran around on Nola?”
“Oh no. No, he was totally in love with her. But while she might have been in love with him, that didn’t prevent her from enjoying other men’s attentions.”
“But people say she would have married him.” Crawford began to understand how complex this was and how reluctant people were to tell what they knew. Let sleeping dogs lie and all that. Except the dogs were now wide awake.
“Some people. I think that opinion reveals more about the romantic nature of the speaker than it does about Nola.”
“Exactly what do you mean, Ronnie?” Crawford lacked the patience for linguistic subtlety as practiced in Virginia.
“Unearthly beauty, child of Midas, marries country boy. People love that sort of thing. She wouldn’t have married him. She saw what Sybil endured when she married Ken Fawkes.”
“He’s done quite well. With the old man’s help, of course.”
“Yes,” Ronnie inhaled, “but he’ll never be one of them. He was set up, then propped up by Edward, so everyone wonders about Ken’s abilities. And Sybil bears the Fawkes name, not Bancroft.”
“So?”
“Crawford. This is Virginia. No one forgets a goddamned thing. No way in green hell would Nola be Nola Ramy.”
“But Ken’s no slouch. In time, Guy may have proved he possessed business acumen.”
“At the time that Nola was flaming around with Guy, Ken was struggling not just to master the real estate business but to master the nuances of the life into which he had married. Scott Fitzgerald said the rich are different. And I know that you know they are. Old money, I mean. Really old money.”