A royal licence, in the London Gazette for the fifteenth of January, permitted Robin Rendle, a minor, to take and use the surname of Stanier, in compliance with the wish of his uncle. Two weeks after that the old King died at Windsor, blind and mad and very old, and all England went into black again, and nobody had any attention to spare for a little boy's surname, which Frances thought was very likely the best thing that could have happened to it.
On the first Sunday in March, in the year 1820, the Duke of Halvergate came into the church of St. Peter and St. Paul a few minutes before the bell stopped, alone, in the black that the whole country was wearing for the King. The hatchment was gone from over the fireplace in the ducal pew. In its place, on the north wall of the chancel beside it, there was a new tablet of white marble, very plain, with no urns or weeping cherubs, and the letters on it were cut deep and black.
TO THE MEMORY OF BERTRAM STANIER, CALLED RENDLE, ELDEST SON OF MONTAGUE, FOURTH DUKE OF HALVERGATE, AND PHOEBE HIS WIFE. BY RIGHT FIFTH DUKE. SERJEANT OF DRAGOONS. AT WATERLOO HE SAVED HIS BROTHER'S LIFE, AND ASKED NOTHING. NOT TWO BUT ONE.
There were two people sitting in the ducal pew under it. One was a woman in grey, with a black ribbon on her bonnet for the King, and a parcel of proof-sheets on her knee, tied with tape, which she had brought from Norwich on the coach and had not been able to leave behind. The other was a boy of seven in a black jacket that had been made for him and fitted.
The Duke opened the door, came in, shut it, and sat down at the other end of the bench, with the boy between them.
"Madam," he said, looking straight ahead at the altar, "I must ask who you are."
"You may ask," said Frances.
"I am asking."
"Frances Blakeney. Spinster. Guardian of the person of Robin Stanier, by order of nobody at all, since it turns out nobody needs to give one. Lately of St. Giles in Norwich, where my landlord has given me notice because he says the carriage at the door is lowering the tone of the street." She touched the parcel on her knee. "Compiler, with the late Reverend Dr. Wendover, of A History of the Hundred of Blofield, in two volumes quarto, printed at Norwich for the subscribers, her name on the title page in letters the same size as his. Sheets one to forty. They came on Thursday."