Viper Wine (13 page)

‘Venetia gave large sums to the poor, earning the money through gambling, in which pursuit she was both lucky and skillful.’

The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
, 2012

‘CLUBS,’ CALLED VENETIA.

‘Oh, contagion,’ muttered Penelope.

‘La, la, la,’ said Olive, thinking.

The three ladies had been playing Glecko all afternoon, first for almonds, and then for shillings and gossip; renewing, by this vicious game, their love and trust of one other. Venetia was their Queen. Penelope was blunt, decisive, plain. Olive was a graceful tree that bent any way in a wind.

‘Did you ever see three knaves?’ said Penelope, throwing them down.

‘No indeed,’ said Venetia. ‘Now tell me their names.’

‘Ha,’ said Penelope. ‘They are Basket, Grey and Pippin.’

‘Those are dogs,’ said Venetia, ‘not knaves. But knavish dogs, I grant. Show us your gleeks and mournivals, Olive.’

Olive, her strange new face glowing, surprised them by splaying a flush of four low hearts.

‘What a fox she is,’ said Venetia.

Penelope swallowed her sweet sack quickly, so she might interject: ‘No, on my troth, I heard it said that Lady Anne Clifford is the fox, because as the proverb goes, the hedgehog knows many things, but the fox knows only one thing, and that is that she must have her estates.

‘Her husband says to her, “I love you and hold you sober in all things, except your land, which transports you beyond yourself and makes you devoid of all reason.”’

Lady Anne Clifford was known to be obsessed by her right to sue for to her father’s lands, of which she was sole heir. She petitioned endlessly to the king, and had fallen out with her family and her husband over it. She had married the elder Sackville brother, who once courted Venetia, and since his death she had remarried and carried on her legal quarrel.

‘Well,’ said Venetia, laying down another card, ‘I hear that it is better to be a prickler than a prancer.’

Olive thought: They have the proverb the wrong way about. The hedgehog knows one thing deeply and the fox knows many things in passing. But Olive would rather be pleasant than clever, and did not speak this.

The cards spread flat, and mingled; they rose up into a church tower and were tapped down into a box.

‘You are eldest,’ said Venetia to Olive, motioning that she should begin.

‘I am not!’ It was a little joke they liked to rehearse. The player on the left of the dealer was correctly termed ‘eldest’.

‘So tell me,’ said Venetia, ‘how is my poor Shropshire coz, young Lettice?’

‘Little Miss Furtherto-Moreover? The great philosopher!’ said Olive, pulling a face.

‘Lettice and I are driving to Blackfriars to see the sheep shorn tomorrow,’ said Penelope coolly.

Thank goodness – she has made at least one new friend, thought Venetia, tapping her cards to change the subject.

‘And what do we think of Lucy Bright, that is going to be Lucy Lennox?’

‘Delightful,’ said Olive.

‘So talented in so many ways,’ said Penelope.

‘So many talents,’ sighed Olive, ‘you cannot count them.’

‘So fine it hurts my eyes to look at her,’ said Penelope.

‘She sounds unbearable,’ said Venetia.

Venetia’s shillings had run out, so she produced an Angel from her purse, at which the ladies made clicking, whirring noises with their tongues, which was a cock-fighting noise. None of them, being ladies, had ever been to a cock-fight, yet they knew the King was mad for them. Olive told her to put the coin away, but then took it out of her hand, to examine the archangel Michael and his dragon. Olive was a godly woman and she kissed the Angel quickly before placing him in the middle of the table.

Venetia took out her spectacle-glass, ostensibly to look at the Angel too, but mainly because she wanted to inspect Olive’s face more closely. She saw with a quick glance that her skin was smooth, over-painted with egg-white and pearl dust no doubt, but wonderfully smooth. The problem was the pink, crusted rupture under her eyes where the treatment had stopped. ‘The Angel is at stake,’ said Venetia, and rolled the dice.

Spades, sweet Malaga sack; more hearts and more mournivals. The cards were flipped and spread into endless variations, like stars being shaken out.

‘You ladies at court look so divine these days,’ said Venetia. ‘I feel very much a country mouse.’

There was a little pause.

‘Harbottle Grimston’s wife has a special tooth resin come from France. I will give you some,’ said Olive, colouring slightly.

‘Yes, I have some of that,’ said Penelope. ‘The gum of Tragamantha? It stings like Christ.’

‘Penelope, kiss the Angel,’ reproved Olive.

Penelope did so, and as she leaned forward they saw the hair below her cap was turned quite grey. She did not care about such things, being a practical and unaffected type of person, almost mannish.

The ladies nibbled almonds and studied their cards.

‘What is the sweet thing all the ladies at court are taking’, asked Venetia, her head on an angle, ‘to cure this new and mortal tiredness? To smooth the frown that lingers for no reason but habit. To make themselves visible again to men.’

‘Darling, you are almost as beautiful now as you ever were,’ said Penelope.

‘There is nothing that can really be done,’ said Olive obscurely, tapping her cards. ‘Nothing, tra la.’

‘Which wise-woman ministers you your nothing? Which quack gives you nothing to put on your face at night? Not that I want your nothing, for I do not, I want none of it,’ said Venetia. ‘I feel I am only just now become a beauty, because of the love of my sons and my husband.’

Silence.

Penelope chewed a candied fruit, slowly.

‘I hear Lady Grimston drinks Viper Wine for her face,’ said Penelope, dropping a high card.

‘I hear many birds sing in the trees,’ said Olive, discarding low.

‘I hear the naming of secrets, and I raise you a Queen,’ said Venetia.

‘There is to be a nautical display tomorrow,’ said Olive, folding.

‘The Viper Wine is prepared by a city apothecary,’ said Penelope, playing two tens. ‘To an old receipt. I do not know which, mind. I think there is too much to lose to play at that quack’s game.’

‘There is much to win also,’ said Venetia.

‘Winning does not come into it, dearheart. It is merely a brief and dangerous postponement, that puts off losing for a little while.’

‘For the display on the Thames tomorrow, Endymion has got himself a new cape cut. In horrid yellow,’ said Olive.

Penelope, as she eyed the cards she had been dealt, had more to say: ‘If you have an ague or a dropsy or a gripper-the-chest, then get you to a doctor. As you have none, thank the Lord for your luck and Amen. That is what I say.’ And she folded.

‘Thank you, dear ladies,’ said Venetia, collecting. ‘Thank you.’ She dropped the Angel back into her purse, and in the half-dark of that silken privacy St Michael remained, forever on the point of spearing the dragon beneath him, which writhed in perpetuity.

When Penelope had gone, Olive and Venetia sat down together in front of the fire, and Olive with her raw, smooth face looked guiltily at Venetia with huge impulsive eyes. ‘I never told you lies! I hate to do it, Venice. But I do not wish Penelope should know the business of my face. I mean, my dealings with the apothecary. It would travel round the court faster than Orion and set all the teeth clacking so my Endymion will come to hear of it.’

‘You keep it a secret from him?’ said Venetia, thinking:
He has not noticed?

‘Of course I do! I have to pay for it from the housekeeping money. He thinks I am visiting orphans in the stews of Greyfriars.’ She winked, and the tight skin around her eye rippled unnaturally. ‘Endymion has rejoiced in my good humour lately and –’ her voice became softer, more confidential ‘– ‘we have been better friends than ever.’ Venetia tried to put from her mind the image of jowly Endymion in amorous mood. Olive had once confided that he hurt her whenever he came to her bedroom.

‘He is kinder to you now? Or does he still practice the unpleasantness upon you?’

Olive looked darkly at Venetia. ‘He cannot find release without it. It is something he learned from a courtesan, when he was a boy, I think. But the treatments of my face make me so much more willing. I feel myself more as he would wish me. It is a marriage cure, darling. But it is very sad – my apothecary has died.’ She giggled nervously. ‘By his own hand – I mean, by his own medicaments. So I would lief come with you to find another.’

They embraced, and drank more sack, and Olive held up her glass and said, ‘To us!’ and Venetia could not bring herself to drink before she asked, ‘But dear, what treatments have you been practising?’

‘I have been peeled weekly with sulphur mithridate, and then every night I apply butter of antimony. It is said to counteract all the lead that has embedded in my cheeks from too much painting, which is the reason for my runckles . . .’

She started to cry a little, at the unfairness of it. No one warned her that painting with lead would be so injurious – it was what every beauty used. ‘The mithridate burns, to be sure, and sometimes welts a little, but I have grown to love its whip upon my cheek. I miss it dreadfully now I have run out. But my poor apothecary tried to cure his hot gout with drinking lily-water, and it did not work, and now his shop is shut up and he is quite dead.’ She giggled again, while wiping a tear.

‘Who shall we go to, then?’ said Venetia, ignoring her waterworks. ‘Who is the Queen’s apothecary?’

‘Theodore de Mayerne is a fart-britches. We will not go to him. He would put a cockerel on your feet and sing hallelujah. And for Sir William Paddy, we cannot trust him, as he will tell the Queen and she will tell Father Conn and he will tell Endymion. Besides, they are old men who follow Galen to the letter. They would bleed you for black bile or choler and send you home. No, no. We shall go to one of the new Physicians on Fenchurch Street who makes Viper Wine. I have been trying to find an excuse to leave my babes and visit him these past two weeks.’

‘Does Lady Grimston go to him?’

‘I think so. And Lady Grimston has had the run of the Medici doctors. She knows all the cures. Her sister was first to recommend me frog’s jelly for burning cheeks, and I have used it ever since.’

‘Shall we go, then? To the Fenchurch Street physician?’

‘Yes, without delay.’

‘Oh, thank God. I am to be healed.’ Venetia crossed herself with relief. She would pay for this with the Angel in her purse; her pot of profit would thus be put to good purpose. The apothecary sounded expensive, and she would not wish him any other way.

The two of them embraced again, and close to her ear, Olive whispered ‘Secret!’ and gripped Venetia’s arm so loving-tight that her nails dug little half-moons in her flesh, the ghosts of which were still there half an hour later when Venetia went to bed.

Night covered the sleeping faces of London, blackened with pox, flowered with scurvy, or twitching as their muscles relaxed. Some mouths were sawdust-rough with scabs, some heaving with slack snores, others pinched like carp-fish in tight oblivion. Venetia slept sitting up against her pillows, with one eye half-open. Olive’s face, larded in lavender-scented butter, had disobeyed her will again and crumpled itself into the pillow, although each night she tried to sleep on her back, which was held to be better for the complexion.

Under darkness, the faithful turned, sighed, snuffled, sagged, creased, smiled – without gaslight or sodium streetlights or camera surveillance, without digital winking comforters or tiny breathing phones glowing next to them all night like mechanical familiars. Instead they were kept safe by their consciences, which censored and guided their dreams, and put them to sleep with a routine prayer, and sleeping they drew, suckling, on communal reserves of power and goodness, which would in time be replaced with literal circuits of cable, recharging their mechanical familiars. But even without navigation maps, they were not lost because they felt that God, looking down, knew where each of them slept, and saw their hearts pulsing evenly, radiating their presence on the map of His kingdom.