Viper Wine (23 page)

Richard Pickett it was, My Lady’s nephew, and a gentleman, come to claim her estate. He was bluff and pink-faced and with two thick grey whiskers, in the manner of a cavalier. His woolly dog, grey whiskered also, asked me with his eyes for a drink so I fetched him one. ‘What is his name?’ I asked Richard Pickett, but he ignored me. He was dressed all in black, but when I told him he had missed My Lady’s funeral he did not care and swaggered past me as if I had not spoke. I was afraid he was a strange man, possibly contemnable, to be so heard-hearted, until I discovered he was slightly deaf due to ‘service in the cannon’s mouth’, as he termed it, and he motioned to the right side of his head, by which do I mean the dexter? Yes, and on tiptoe, into this hair-sprouting ear, I shouted that My Lady was already buried, at which he looked most contrite and asked to visit her grave.

The loss of My Lady must have brought out a new boldness in me, for next I spoke quickly, into the same ear, that our vicar, one Dr Jonas, wished to transport me hence to the New World this evening. ‘And do you want to go?’ he asked, directly, which made me silent, unfamiliar as I was with questions concerning my wants. All I could do was shake my head. ‘Ye shall not go then, miss; ye shall not go,’ he said, and continued directing his boy with carrying in his books and properties.

And so I remained at Endcote Early, with Richard Pickett and Asparagus his dog, and though I was perplexed by them, and maddened too, they were the finest friends I ever had. As I journey now to Dawlish, the sword in the bag at my shoulder, I pray that Richard Pickett is in no pain. He is a man full of theorems and Ingeniose strategies, learning and deep thoughts. But aye me, he is a bodger. He could not milk a cow without receiving a kick, nor catch a fish without drowning himself. In London once at his friend’s house called ‘Tradescant’ they let him hold in his palm a Phoenix’s egg, from Araby-land, and as he told me the story I was full-fearing he drop’t it.

His gait is rolling, like one who has been too long i’the saddle, his hand is constantly cupped behind his ear to hear better. He is an antiquarian, and can see far into the past – he could converse with the Caesars, were they to visit Endcote Early – but he cannot see his own porridge without peering. He is followed everywhere by Asparagus, who pretends to be lame also out of sympathy with his master, but is able to run well enough on his own. Sir Richard is fanatical of naval history and soon after he arrived at Endcote Early he was out, striding about the lower paddock, prodding a stick in the turf and measuring distance with it as if he were prospecting for gold, or planning to sow the growing gold of wheat when, in fact, he was planning how he would dam the River Stickle and flood the lower paddock, the better to re-enact a naval engagement there. All it would take, he said, was six weeks of rain together, and I was thankful for the dry spell and his forgetting of the plan meanwhile.

Once an officer, always an officer, he says – and in the forecourt at Endcote Early he raised a standard. His greatest pleasure on a sunny day was to whistle through his teeth and mark upon his tabor a rhythm, while me and the little boy called William from the village would march up and down the garden with Sir Richard Pickett leading us and commanding – ‘Leftwards, HO!’ and ‘Eyes RIGHT!’ and sometimes, tapping me on the neck with his drumstick, shouting, ‘Shoulders back, sir! Should I take you for a scobberlotcher?’, by which he meant a dreamy jakes.

Supper he cared for not so much as the tobacco afterwards – a pipe and conversation were his favourite dishes. In the evenings sometimes he would read aloud passages of sulphurick philosophy, which reminded me of Mrs Able’s receipts, but for a devil’s larder, stocked with possets of mercury, pies of flux and fiery matter and cordials of moonbeams. I liked to listen, though I knew my questions were poor, and that Sir Richard wished for company.

Master Richard and me and Asparagus living in that former great house together must have made a strange picture to the village, but it suited us. After I stopped asking John Tupper to cut the elder-bush and the bindweed, a green-tangle grew up all around the house and the windows were hard to open. Tradesmen ceased to visit. Sir Richard noticed no difference, while I felt safe behind the overgrowth.

We marched to the tabor’s beat on the parade ground, for so Sir R called the paddock, although the little boy William did not join us any more, perhaps forbidden. In the evenings Richard would read aloud, mostly tales about matters very big or very small. It is either the heavens this or a grain of sand that. Sir Keyholme says the air is full of flying prawns that fit one hundred to a needle’s eye. He only told me of the flying prawns late at night when he was in his cups.

I asked him to tell me tales about the great personages of the day, the fine lords and ladies, and he would begin with the histories of their titles, lands, estates and tithes, slowly moving on to the detail of their heraldic arms, while I yawned greatly, but tried to make it look as if I only exercised my face. Once he told me of Sir Keyholme Digbin, the Keeper of the Powder of Sympathy, which could heal wounds at a distance, by means of acorns passing through the air. At least, I think she said acorns.

I sat up when he told me of Sir Digbin’s lovely wife, Lady Venetia, who he said was very fair, but more than that, all he could recall was that her grandfather was a so-called Wizard Earl, which sounded promising but soon moved back to Logick. Richard could remember nothing of Venetia’s shoes, nor whether her hair was curled or no, nor even whether she was an orphan.

He would only shake his head, and say she was a Beauty. I have seen many sights of beauty in my life – a hazel with every leaf frosted, a bowl of gravy with steam rising off it, and a sticky chick newborn, but I have never seen a Beauty, except the old carved Virgin at Snittlefield, who looks very kind but – I know I shouldn’t say so – she is squink-eyed with a long nose, God forgive me! I have seen how a loud and comely woman can work on a man – there is Moll from the village, chased by all the boys – and I saw a townswoman with a great forehead which they said she kept high by plucking, but I have never seen a Beauty, or a Fine Lady. And I wished then that I might behold such a lady, that she might walk close past me, if only once in my life.

Richard told me that Sir Keyholme’s mother disapproved of Venetia as a ‘libertine’, but when I asked Richard what it meant, he said we had talked the fire almost out and the man in the moon was wondering at us.

How could this dear man be done such harm? Some boys wanted to come to the house for naval training and drill, which pleased Sir Richard. He loved nothing more than to call commands, which made his voice quavery with passionate remembrance. ‘Stiffen your sinews,’ he would growl at the boys in their smocks. ‘Summon up the blood . . . Are ye not Englishmen born?’ They would try to stand taller than each other till they were fit to burst with holding breath. Sometimes their older brothers would come to visit also, and sit on our gatepost like jackanapes. I heard them calling Sir Richard ‘Ricketty Picketty’ and ‘R-r-r-r-r-ick – A-Pick-A’, and such like. None of them dared look me in the face, being afraid of my Mark, or so I guess.

But Richard wanted to school the bigger boys in musket practice, so that those who wished to might know a little of it, before the press master came to town. And so one afternoon we dried his powder carefully and the next day in the morning, some lads came by, three skinny pips and one big butcher’s boy, all very meek and none of them daring to look us in the eye or say aught but ‘Yis’ and ‘Nay’.

When the musket fired first, all four boys went leaping in different directions, made witless by the noise, if they had any wits to start with. The big one sat down panting. But little by little as the sun grew powerful and Sir R told tales of his expeditions, their fear gave way to boredom and thus to high spirits, and they began to whisper and snuckle among themselves, which Richard busy with his musketry could not see, and certainly could not hear. Richard went indoors, I think to visit the heads as he calls the privy after the naval fashion. While he was gone the naughty boys made a war-horse out of the butcher’s boy, who was romping on all fours with one of the skinny boys clung to his back. ‘Ride the elephans, ride, ride!’ shouted the other boys, and the skinny boy scrambled and waved the musket.

So there was I, shouting, and Asparagus, barking for the first time in years, and then a great bang comes, and a shatter of glass as the musket ball hits the upstairs casement. And I heard a high whine of horror, and there was Sir Richard still upright and walking from the house into the green garden, except as in a dream, out of his side protrudes a great dagger of glass. And as the wound’s blood spread, the colour drained from his face, till it was blanched and looking down I can see each pore on his white cheek as he lay in my arms. Two boys were running as fast as they could for the road while the other two were still climbing over the gate. At first I thought they were running for help but when no help came I realised they were only saving their skins.

‘Gus?’ said Sir Richard, calling his dog, who dragged him a marrowbone. While Richard gazed at Asparagus, I tugged the glass out of his side, which left a wound very long but not so deep, though I saw some of his yellow guts revealed. I staunched the bleeding with the nearest cloth to hand – Sir Richard’s garter. Then I wrapped Sir Richard like a dolly in a blanket and lit a fire for him, although it was a hot summer’s day.

He bid me go to London, and make my way in life. I told him it was only the wound talking, and hushed him. But he insisted, more strongly as he grew weaklier, that I should go and find Sir Keyholme Digbin, and prevail upon him to save him, by exercising the Powder of Sympathy upon the glass shard that stabbed him. He said I should know Sir Keyholme when I saw him because he looked very like the Angel on the Rood screen at West Wycherley, except his feet were not on fire. He could give me no other directions for finding Sir Keyholme, and told me the world would help me there.

I could not leave without making arrangements to keep him safe, in case the Powder of Sympathy was not immediately effective. John Tupper’s mother promised me she would take care of his victuals, and Midwife Barker I paid well to go and tend his wounds, so his healing might begin before I was home.

And so you understand a little more of my journey. Sometimes I fancy I can hear Asparagus keening at me to be quick, and yet I have many miles to go, and there could be no slower beast than this poor carthorse, bless its withers. My next task is to find the lodgings of Mungo Stump in Dawlish. I hope it will not prove too great and busy a town, and that he will receive me without displeasure. In Totnes I came close to seeing my reflection in a drinking-glass, but looked away at the last moment, having no need of that.

S
IR
K
ENELM’S
I
NFINITE
L
IBRARY

SIR KENELM HAD
the builders in.

This meant a great deal of coming-and-going in boots, which offended the floors and therefore Mistress Elizabeth, and cold drafts, which offended the baby, and noise of hammering, which offended everyone. What was worse was when there was no coming-and-going, and only the ominous silence of unfinished work, and deserted workbenches and dust sheets in the hall.

Kenelm had commissioned the finest private library he could design, with thematic shelving, harmonious proportions and a black-and-white chequered floor. Here, Universall Knowledge might come at last within the Grasp of Man. ‘You have my word of honour, I’ll not pay you another penny until you have completed the World, Americas and France,’ said Kenelm, when the builders’ foreman finally appeared.

The foreman, Thomas Clack, considered pointing out that Sir Kenelm had not yet paid him any pence at all, since he was working on credit as usual. Sir Kenelm had provided his material, forty good oaks from Gayhurst. ‘My forest – a fine crowd of old trees – has been cut down for our purpose, and I must have my library, or where will my poor books winter, in stacks on the frosty floor?’

Together they toured what was already accomplished, going in through the new double doors to the long library, with new ceiling supports, of wood, painted as marbled columns in the Doric style. The room was cold, paint-smelling and echoey, but its new casements gave onto the garden, and there was also a little door, so that in summer Sir Kenelm might wander, book in hand, out of the library and through the scented Path of Contemplation, to join his wife where she sat eating cherries in the breezy Roman Pergola, their summer reading house (as yet unconstructed).

Across the walls of his library-in-progress were marks in red chalk betokening where his pantheon of Poets would sit – Horace, Seneca, Spenser and the rest. Their busts were in commission. The Emblematicall paintings of Actium and Tiphys, sea-battles to reference Kenelm’s own at Scanderoon, were already sketched into their porticoes by the scenery-painter, and the master letter-writer had been tasked with rendering Epigrams in a clear hand across the upper parts of the walls, thus: