Viper Wine (10 page)

His main calling was to save their souls at prayers, but he also made her laugh. He called Buckinghamshire The Void, and all those friends who would not come and visit he called Avoiders. She wondered if his sharp tongue turned against her in her absence.

‘We must finish the new Devotional Tract very soon,’ she said, reprovingly.

We? thought Chater. Pah. She means me. I write all her Devotions, every word, and then when they are circulated under her name, she forgets I had anything to do with them and believes the lie of her own authorship. My lady can persuade herself of anything. She is quite, quite magnificent.

Venetia continued listing her choices. ‘So, the sea-green, the farthingale in case the Queen still favours them, the fur hood . . .’

‘This blue silk would do you very well,’ said Chater, picking out one of her dresses and holding it up to his body.

‘The taffeta, the curling tongs . . .’

‘But this is the blue silk that corresponds with my lord’s blue silk.’

‘Yes, Chater, but I do not like it any more.’

‘It suits you so well,’ he said, putting his hand on his hip and stroking the full skirt.

‘I do not like to wear it any more.’

‘It was commended mightily at court when you first announced your marriage.’

‘It pleases me no longer.’

‘Soft, my lord’s horse comes, blue caparisoned, his trumpeter’s cordalls also, and his girdle, bridles and banners – then my lady following on wearing this correspondent colour—’

‘Stop ye,’ she said in a voice full of passion. ‘It does not fit me, Chater.’

He looked at his shoes.

‘It shows too much of me here, and here. It is immodest. There used to be less of my person, and now I can only wear it on its loosest girth and so the dress has none of its shape and purpose. I feel foolish in it. I am grown more like a woman, Chater. I like my new person. In some ways I believe, after all these years of compliments, I am only finally, now, become a beauty.’

Chater made a small intake of breath. Oh, he adored her. Such lies she told, with such conviction.

‘I used to look at myself in my glass, every hour – more. But I am grown in understanding of Venetia, and, yes, I say – I like her.’

His jaw twitched as if he suffered from keeping quiet.

‘I feel I walk solidly upon the ground now . . .’

She is right in that respect, at least, thought Chater, who could not suppress a smirk.

‘Perhaps because of the love of my boys and my husband. But to wit: stockings, one pair of white, one scarlet . . .’

Chater decided this was his opportunity. He had been waiting for it for some time. He took a deep breath, made his voice low and matter-of-fact: ‘My lady has not been keeping Fridays for fish.’

‘No, she has not.’

‘She has not fasted neither.’

‘I have been with child.’

‘John is almost suckled, my lady. The wet-nurse has been here a year. We are all corpulent beings in the eyes of God, and the purification of the flesh by fasting would be remarkably beneficial to my lady’s . . . spiritual progress.’

Venetia threw a fiery glance at him. Traitor. Kneeling, picking up her old slippers in her closet, she fancied they were a tiny person’s shoes that would never fit her again, and she felt a new thickness to her hands and wrists, and thought how typical, how characteristic it was of Chater to tell her the disquieting truth. He was very like a salamander who would tell no lies, even if he burned. He was a good friend, but oh, he had teeth for biting. She managed to speak quite naturally.

‘Black jet bead cross, a present from my lord. I think I will leave that here. My Dutch fan, yes; my old kirtle, no. Chater, please take the things down to Mistress Elizabeth. Tomorrow you must advise me on the fasting that my spirit so requires.’

‘I will look at the liturgical calendar. There are a few important saints’ days next month.’

‘I think a full day’s fasting sooner rather than later, no?’

‘I am, as ever, impressed by my lady’s commitment to her faith.’ Chater bowed.

‘Go on, sir, go on with you.’

With a little snort, Venetia pinned back her hair cruelly and screwed open the jar on her dressing table containing her summer night-time face cream, a bright turquoise preparation made of verdigris, boiled calf’s foot, myrrh, camphor, borax and finely ground seacockleshells, which she rubbed violently over her face.

Poor Chater. She supposed it was not very fulfilling for him, living here in The Void, so far from his Popish friends and brothers. Letters from Chater’s mentor Father Dell’Mascere had arrived so frequently at first, each one putting him into a radiant good temper, but then the Father’s letters came more scantly, and now not at all; Chater was losing his friends and taking the pain of it out on her.

It was darkening, and she had the sense of losing another day. Down on the east lawn she could hear Kenelm huff-puffing as he ran about the garden, skidding and back-tracking on himself, chasing the over-sized snails that raced away, leaving silver skids. Time was slippery for Sir Kenelm, who surfed its eddies and slip-tides. His snails moved super-fast.

Wheeling and diving after them, he called out to young Kenelm, who although he was only six years old, understood that his father was highly unusual. And yet he panted back and forth obediently in the half-light. ‘They are fast as Mercury tonight!’ Kenelm shouted, as a great whorled murex disappeared out of his grasp across the lawn, skidding towards the dark undergrowth.

‘Let us creep up on them!’ Kenelm whispered to his son, who joined him, tiptoeing, in silent ambush of the bolting snails.

Venetia, sitting on her bed, re-re-read (for the third time) her latest letters, which served for company. One from Penelope was full of detail about her dogs, so boring it became quite amusing. There were two pages of an effusive letter in a smooth French script from Henrietta-Maria’s lady-in-waiting Angelique, saying goodbye as she had been sent away from court. There had been a rout of the Queen’s Oratorian priests and Catholic retinue, who were summarily exiled from the English court when a letter intercepted showed plans for a Counter-Reformation in England. Buckingham himself sent them home. Venetia burned the third page of that letter, where Angelique had written, with dangerous complicity, ‘you and I know this country is not kind to us’. There was no need for that to linger in her closet. There was also a letter in the intense, effortful hand of Lettice Stanley, her little cousin. Had she replied? She could not recall.

She met Lettice at Tonge castle, ten years ago, when Lettice was a young girl who was in love with her, following her everywhere like a spaniel, gazing at her, sending billets-doux and leaving presents of rosebuds and sweetmeats under her pillow. Lettice must be twenty-two now, and she had not married, and yet she had not taken orders either. Lettice was ambitious and full of life, and stayed most of the time in Shropshire with her mother, who was frail, and when she came to court with her father, she would not stop talking, telling hugely long stories about people no one knew, and holding forth on her opinions on the estate of matrimony, of the conditions of the poor, and habits and customs practised in France, all topics about which she knew very little, and soon everyone at court was most fatigued by her. Thomas Killigrew nicknamed her ‘Mistress Furtherto-Moreover’, which was picked up in many quarters, so she was also sometimes ‘Mistress However-Because’ or just plain ‘little Nonsuch-Nevertheless’.

But to Venetia she was still devoted, and what could Venetia do but accept her devotion? Besides, Venetia believed that beneath her anxious, unformed exterior, she was a dear person with a pure and thoughtful heart, and Venetia felt sorry when people avoided her at court, and she encouraged her fashionable friends to think better of Lettice; Venetia cherished Lettice, particularly because no one else did. She was her little Shropshire pony. Venetia had effected various introductions for her, well aware they would come to nothing, but trying, nonetheless; organising for Emilia Lanier to teach Lettice music, so that she might make friends with some of the Queen’s ladies. And because Venetia hoped she might speak less if she knew how to sing.

The fourth letter in Venetia’s closet was a legal missive – the last Will and Testament of Kenelm’s mother. Venetia had it drawn up by their lawyers in London as a precaution against the future. Although Gayhurst and most of the family money had passed to Kenelm at his majority, Mary Mulsho, to call her by her maiden name, still owned land in Ireland, as well as the dower house. Venetia had a secret presentiment that her husband might convert to the Protestant faith, since Catholicism was now his only obstacle to high office. But if he did convert, Mary Mulsho might seek to disinherit him again, as she had tried to once before, when they were first married. So her Will was a sensitive matter that ought to be resolved. Venetia would arrange for Kenelm to visit the dower house, taking with him some other letters, and the Will to be signed, and some tasty present, a game pie or pudding, and Mary would be so pleased to see her son, her golden boy, that she would, most likely, sign.

Venetia was quietly mindful of these matters; she practised daily vital diplomacies which her husband never noticed, writing letters of thanks and love, remembering saints’ days and confinements, negotiating tenancies on the estate, creating friendships and alliances. She hated mundane tasks, which she was expected to perform in order to leave Kenelm free to dream, and she did them impatiently, dropping them at any moment to follow her diversions. She was more likely to drape the room in yellow taffeta than she was to make sure it was swept and ordered. The household was comfortable because she had good servants who loved her. People were what she lived for, company, wit and friendship, whether it be playing with her baby John, or seeking out Chater to show him a new tiffany sleeve or dispute with him about a biblical commentary.

Venetia was wise as Solomon, except when she was foolish. In company she was often silly, laughing as if her head were full of nothing more than pretty bubbles, and she was beloved for it. But the better you knew her, the more you saw her methods, which were often deep.

She heaved herself out of bed, and took her letter box down to join the rest of her luggage, so it would not be forgotten in the rush tomorrow. By the main door she noticed a huge and ominous collection of books, at least fifteen or twenty large bundles tied together with string. For a second she could not understand what they were doing there, and then she was shocked when she realised that Kenelm wanted to take them – all of them – to London, though Kenelm’s bibliomania should not have surprised her any more. She knew what he would say.

‘My darling, if I am without my private library I am less of a man. It is the apparatus that keeps my mind revolving, like the planets that girdle Saturn. I must take all these, as I cannot tell which books I may need next for my Great Work, for my poetry, my travels, my experiments in Hydrogogie, the study of water-works . . .’

La, la, la, thought Venetia, as she climbed the stairs back to bed. Well, this makes my great trunk of beauty seem a little less. I should have packed my second-best cape and some kirtles had I known the coach would need an extra pair.

Although her task of packing for court was done, she felt less prepared than ever, less able to face those inquisitive eyes and assessing tongues. Chater had made her feel no better this evening. She wanted some new project to consume her, as her love for Kenelm and then her babies had consumed her. Perhaps she should become devout – a hairshirter with a scourge always in her hand. She could minister to the poor, and catch the plague for her pains. Or perhaps she should turn bibulous, a mead-swiller or ale-sot. It would blunt her boredom, and lift her thoughts, but she had not the taste for it.

As the sky condensed to indigo, and Kenelm skidded after his giant snails in the last of the light, Venetia remembered there was a plate of stale quince comfits in her bedside cabinet, and with bored, then relishing bites, she munched them one by one till they were gone.

‘Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination encircles the world.’

Albert Einstein, 1931

Kenelm lay sweating, victorious from his snail-chase. His snails were in their snail-urn, a huge pot he kept for their containment, until he cooked them up with rosewater as a stew. A nice hot bowl would be a cheering surprise for Venetia. Young Kenelm had been rewarded for his endeavours by being invited into his father’s study, and father and son were lying in the hammock that hung from its rafters. Sir Kenelm, during his time at sea, had come to prefer a hammock to a bed.

He had decided to attempt to lay a foundation of alchemy in the boy’s mind. It was early to start, but . . . ‘All imaginations are mirrors. Yours, mine, Chater’s. But the alchemist’s imagination is more like a mirror than anyone’s. We see how every thing has its opposite twin, to which it is attracted and repulsed. “As above, so below” is one of our rules. D’you see?’

Inconveniently, a young maid came in to lay the fire for them, and he had to wait until she had gone before continuing with his dangerously simple exposition, which any maid might overhear. ‘Vulgar secrets to vulgar friends, but higher secrets to higher and secret friends only.’