Viper Wine (29 page)

When Mungo Stump was upstairs imploring his lady love to marry him, Anna Trapper’s conversation went beyond its usual bounds.

‘What’s a cony-catcher, then?’

I blushed and shook my head.

‘What’s a marigold-picker, eh?’

She poked me in the ribs.

‘A young wench not yet broken by the Upright man is a dell. When they have been lain withal by the Upright man, they be doxies and no dells.’

I did not like this talk, but I tried to be civil.

‘Oh yes,’ I said, without interest.

‘A kitchen-mort is a young girl, soon ripe, soon rotten . . .’

I can barely think how long this talk continued, while I endured it, sorrowing all the while for the girls – my new friends – whom I realised had already been broken by an Upright man. And I realised that I should also have been upstairs with a gentleman, had I not been Mark’d across my face, and not for the first time I was wholly thankful for my affliction.

But Mungo Stump came downstairs quickly, as if he had thought again on all his doings. He told me that my aunt Lucy wanted me to stay with her this very night. I am not so innocent as some, and I knew after only a moment or two that a lie was required here, and so crossing my fingers behind my back, I said, oh yes, I must go to my aunt.

My leave-taking began, and with some coin, and the laying on of more Rome-booze for Anna Trapper, it was accomplished quickly, as I knew it must be, before Bess Bottomly was back. In my haste, I was frantic to think I had lost the shard that wounded Richard Pickett, but then I found it under my pillow.

Mungo Stump took me to stay with his old housekeeper. He told me, somewhat shamefaced, that I had the name of the Keeper of the Powder of Sympathy wrong, and that I would have better luck in my endeavour after I enquired for Sir Kenelm Digby. I suppose he thought it was good sport to mislead me all those weeks ago at the tavern in Dawlish. But perhaps there is a special providence in his doing so, and thus feeling guilty enough to rescue me from Bess Bottomly’s.

Sometimes I feel a cold hand at my shoulder that tells me I am running out of time. Richard Pickett’s groans are often in my head, and yet I feel further than ever from Sir Kenelm and his lovely Lady. Her life must be full of such gaiety and ease. When I feel like giving up, I dream of becoming her lady’s maid, and it keeps me walking. I went to the Great Cross on Cheapside again today, and tied a little piece of Richard Pickett’s bandage around its railings, to see its whiteness flutter hopefully beside the Cross.

The Great Cross on Cheapside had been well-beloved some four hundred years, and it had grown tatty with love. Pilgrims had tied devotions and ribbons to it, and stuck holly berries in its niches and bread and wine at its foot, and in turn these attracted birds and rats, and the saints’ niches had grown soiled, while the city’s soot turned their emblems black. The Lord Mayor usually maintained the Cross, but he was Puritan in his sympathies this year, and he preferred not to polish the gay old shrine, but let it fester. Venetia had no ribbon but she tied some thoughts of hope around its railings, making a quick prayer, and picked her way onward through the puddles on Cheapside.

She passed a horse and a stunted child, working the barrels. She saw a prostitute with a false nose, and a gang of rakes from the Sponging-House on Wood Street, stamping in puddles at people for fun. She longed to watch it all, but for fear of being recognised, Venetia put her vizarded head down, making quickly towards Fenchurch Street.

She knew she must look like an adulteress – thankfully, she had more originality than that – but she felt monitored by the eyes of God and her husband. God and Kenelm were often conflated in her mind into a living He. He was her better part, her salvation and her eternal hope. Despite Chater’s good work, she struggled with God – but her love for Kenelm came so easily to her, so naturally, that it helped her to understand all the other loves in the world, the divine love called Agape and Christian Caritas, and so forth. To love Him was obvious. It was there in every breath. But to obey Him as well – now that was impossible. The reason being that He was so often wrong. At the moment, He imagined that He preferred her not to drink Viper Wine, but she would get round Him. He would soon see that she had been right all along.

Margaret Choice was not in evidence, and Venetia went straight up. Lancelot Choice rose to meet her when she came in.

‘Did you receive my letter?’

‘Madam, do come in.’

She stood in the centre of the clean-smelling salon, which seemed to have been freshly painted, and lit with more candles than before, giving an impression of increasing prosperity, even luxury. Master Choice came to her. He lifted her vizard tenderly, first loosening the strings from around her ears. His finger touched her neck and she felt an involuntary shudder.

He guided her to the window, flinging back the drapes to provide better light. He searched her face with his eyes. ‘Superb,’ he breathed. ‘But I cannot comment until I have seen your water.’

‘I will send it hereafter,’ said Venetia, flinching as his thumb lifted her chin, and he inspected her cheek. Her pupils were large, which he was beginning to see was a consequence of the Wine. It gave the body all the outward signs of pleasure. It made the lips redder, the eyes engorged, the nipples pert. So some of his bolder ladies reported. He suspected it put something up their skirts, too. He also prepared it as a venerous drug, to sweeten the bed, but it was as a Rejuvenation Tonic that it was selling best. Desire, being plentiful, is cheap. But men and women will pay a higher price to quell their fears.

‘Your eyes are very black. Have you been taking Belladonna?’

‘No, a few years back I used the droppers, but not since then,’ she said.

‘Good, because you are my patient,’ he said, holding her by the chin, ‘so you take only what I prescribe, of course. You must never taste Belladonna, by the way, because it is Deadly Nightshade.’

‘I am familiar with Belladonna.’

‘Very good. Now, my lady: what a change. Your skin is remarkably improved. Do you know that?’

Venetia nodded at the praise she was due, and smiled.

‘Have you not been using the dentifrice?’

Venetia covered her mouth with her hand; she had been famous for showing her pretty teeth, and she found it hard to change that habit.

‘Did you read my letter?’ she asked.

He returned to his desk and looked through his papers, trying to find the sheaf that was hers.

She remembered:
He is my only, but I am one of his many.
This made her feel sad, for a moment, but it also reminded her that she was a paying customer, which held its own power. As he continued to search for her letter, she interrupted: ‘Your vipers – do they multiply?’

‘They thrive. They would breed faster if they were mindful of my lady’s beauty,’ he laughed.

‘Would they breed faster if they were mindful of my lady’s money?’

‘You would like a higher dose. This is a step we cannot take without due analysis, and it calls for . . .’

Voices outside on Fenchurch Street broke the silence of the consulting room; an everyday, street-bustling sound, but it pricked Venetia’s ear.

Venetia knew that voice better than she knew her own; its notes, its rhythm. It went to the heart of her and in a spasm she followed her strong, quick reflex to save herself, and she ducked out of the view of the window, hiding behind the curtains.

Oh hell
, thought Lancelot,
another Bedlam-ite.

But Venetia had reason. One of the voices floating up from the street was her husband’s. She peeped around the curtain and through the light deformation of the glass she saw his golden hair, tawny by candlelight but blond by daylight, and his cornflower-blue corderalls, his well-made shape. He was standing talking loudly in the street, looking up towards the house. There was a note of choler in his voice.

Please to Jesus he had not followed her.

‘My lady—’ said Choice.

‘Shh!’ said Venetia urgently, but smiling, trying to make light of it. ‘Pray ssssh!’

She ducked down again and whispered savagely: ‘If he calls, tell him I am here for dentifrice. Dentifrice – yes, Choice?’

But Lancelot Choice could not keep up. ‘Tell who, my lady?’

Venetia fell upon her knees. ‘Oh Mary mother of God. He has discovered your trade and my deceit and we will both be undone.’

She felt as if she had been caught selling the family silver. Her beauty was his as much as hers, was it not? And now here she was planning to melt it down, to trade it in for something new.
I was forced to come here
, she silently rehearsed –
you would not give me any remedy yourself. You made me do it. I did it for you.

To Venetia’s guilty eyes, Kenelm appeared to be looking straight up at the house of Lancelot Choice, but in fact he was calling up to the window of the physician Robert Fludd, whose rooms were next door.

In the open air, the wind catching his voice, Kenelm was saying loudly: ‘The very same came to me this morning.’ Or something like it, Venetia could not catch every word. ‘So let me come up,’ said Kenelm, his hand on his sword. ‘Are you not with any customer? Aye, so I shall.’

And so Kenelm was gone from Venetia’s sight, stepping into the house of Fludd.

Inside Fludd’s hallway there was one of his famous automata: the dragon and St George, its metalwork very fine if now a little dull with age. Kenelm wondered if it was still in working order. He looked about the hallway, but there was no one watching him, and he tipped with his finger very gently the lance of St George, which made the snakeskin-bound dragon rear up and backwards – his articulated wings spreading with a smooth and subtle motion – and then after a click let the counterpoise within the dragon spring, its mouth shot forth a long red fabric tongue. Kenelm was disappointed; this creature did not appear to be ensouled, only clockwork. The best Thaumaturgic models surprised you, since you could not see their workings . . .

Then, poof!

A tiny flare of flaming gas issued from the creature’s nose, burning up all the dust in the air with a bang, and startling Kenelm so he flinched. A thin thread of satisfied smoke issued from the dragon’s warty nostrils.

‘Ha!’ said Fludd, who was watching from a mirror positioned at the top of the stair.

Fludd was a dragon-tamer, and a bull-keeper (he had also made a Minotaur that bellowed and ground its hoof) and he was master of a lyre that played itself. He was the esteemed author of the
Catholica Medicorum
, which ran to five volumes already and was not finished, and though he lacked the personable, solicitous nature that some require in a physician, he had built up a considerable practice.

No doubt that dragon trick is played several times each day, thought Kenelm. He suspected that during the evening hours Fludd was also a Philosopher, practising the Great Work, but by day he was a physician who cured by means of metallurgy, healing plants, natural amulets and, yes, weapon-salves. He was Kenelm’s foremost fellow practitioner in this, though the two of them preferred to be unique than to be allied, and they maintained a watchful, distant cordiality, preserved by the fact that they did not often meet.

They sat in front of Fludd’s fire upstairs, under a dozen bladders that were hanging up to dry, and Fludd fetched them a small tot of plague water – ‘Keepeth me, keepeth thee,’ he said, knocking it back.

‘Is this the receipt of de la Porta?’ asked Kenelm, after he had taken a sip.

‘No,’ said Fludd. ‘It is my own, of rue, agrimony, wormwood, celandine and sage; of mugwort, dragon’s-eye, pimpernel and marigold, clarified with featherfew, burnet, sorrel, scabius and wood-bellony. After it is steeped in avence, tormentil, cardus benedictus and rosemary, with angelica, burdock and green walnuts.’ Fludd had such punctiliousness in his personality, he was himself rather like an automaton.

‘Delicious,’ said Kenelm. ‘Let me have the recipe? But to the matter of the moment. May I see your letter?’

Fludd, glowering, pulled the Hoplocrisma-Spongus out from under a cushion, and Kenelm saw as he scanned it that they had received documents that were very like.

‘The Parson Foster, hungry for fame, it seems, has already published this at Powles.’

Published the Hoplocrisma-Spongus? Kenelm smote with his fist the chimney breast that abutted the room in which Venetia sat. She did not hear it, though in Lancelot Choice’s grate, an ember collapsed.

‘I intend to respond with a pamphlet vindicating my method,’ said Fludd. ‘Or else my practice will fail by it. I must write a Spongus-Sacerdotus – a sponge to wipe away the parson.’

‘You must, Fludd. If I may, I will pay for the printing. We ought to stand together in this bad business. He says – look, here – that in the process of our weapon-salve, we anoint th’offensive weapon with moss grown on a human skull.’

‘Now did I tell you, he’s a jake’s-head.’

‘He also has it that we apply the flesh of a hanged man.’

‘He’s an imbecilic syphilite.’

‘And he says that we require the sacrifice of a cockerel.’