Viper Wine (36 page)

Annie comes through holding very carefully a feathered hat from Lady Venetia’s wardrobe, that I might see the blue crewel work and the oily beauty of the dyed feather in the light, shining blue-purple. It must suit a lady such as her so well. And yet she has not taken it with her. Perhaps it is too good to take, I whisper, but Annie says it is more likely forgotten. When your life is full of splendour and love as hers must be, you take these things lightly, I suppose. I reach to stroke the feather but Annie pulls it away, for fear it spoils to my touch.

For all my imaginings of Venetia’s life, I never expected she would have so many tools and instruments for her beauty – nippers, lotions, rose-and-sage-waters . . . Those globes that look like suet, Annie says, are Bologna balls, for the softening of her hands. I little thought her hands would be harsh! At the back of her bed where I am dusting I find a hidey-hole containing a little hidden looking glass – which I run the duster over carefully, holding its face down, so it does not bite me – and a thick-lidded pot, sticky with dribbles. I wipe it clean, then twist off the lid. Inside, the oil has pooled as from a marrow bone, but the pot is full of feathery-looking mineral twists, and the smell of vinegar and sulphur and metal – tin? – is harsh as a slap. My nose stings with the whiff of it.

‘Plume-alum, it is,’ whispers Annie. ‘Takes the skin almost off the back of your hand and makes your eyes leak. She wipes it all about her face, though, fancy.’

We are sitting on my lady’s bed, and in the rich green and yellow light of the leaded casement, it is almost like being underwater, or in a shady dell. Annie looks at me, and for a second, I think that she is going to take a scoop on her finger and rub it into my cheek. Instead, I dash the lid on and screw it safely down. Better to keep the mischief in the pot than let it out to turn my head with hopefulness.

I get up directly and fetch the clout bag. There is so much else for Annie and me to do, for chambermaids must be washermaids and waiting maids when the house is shut up, and if they are to tolerate me here awhile as I wait for the London coach next week, I must be helpful to the household, as I well know.

NEWS from the Serraglio

A discourse on the Foul Foreign habit, now affecting our Fine Ladies

‘Turn away mine eyes from beholding vanity, and quicken thou me in thy way.’

Psalms 119:37

‘They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.’

Mark 16:18, King James Bible

Eve was the first to be tempted, and Shee was not the last. It is common for Womenkind ever to be practising Washings, Annointings, Fomentations, Tinctures and Frictions upon their faces. Even a Godly Woman washes her Person. But some Women be now Painting, Colouring, Nipping and Applying False staining of Spanish Paper, viz. Beetle Paint, to Mislead Menfolk and affect a Modest Blush. Save yr. Opprobrious Cries, for there is WORSE.

It is the Duty of this Author to report that many Ladies of a great age, often of almost thirty years, with Crump-shoulders, Crack’d Cheeks and Gobble-teeth, have lately appeared in a new form, as: Virtuous Young Maidens. Their Frontages unseemly Smooth, they Glide like Dancers from a Turk’s Harem. The Cause of this Scandal is none other than a Libation or Tonic dispensed by a Physician in Fenchurch Street, where his premises beneath the sign of the Star are discernible by the sight of many Fine Ladies going in and out of his door leading many to wonder what is the cause of his Popularity. Alas, perversions as, the Iron Bodice, the Bumbost that gives Shape to Withered Haunches, the Spliced Cuttings of Other Women’s Hair and all such False Representations – these dissatisfy our Finest Ladies who ought to be Serving their King and Husbands in Humble Duty, but are compell’d by Vanity to Please their Lords another Way and seek out a Drink which some say is made of the Entrails of Vipers, cook’d. Be warned, good people. So like the Creeping Adder the Ladies make themselves Unnaturally Anew. The Wine is feared to be a dangerous Intoxicant of the Male Spirit. Mark ye, all those who read, what is Here Expressed.

– The Author –

Lancelot Choice turned over the handbill, shaking lightly. He daubed his eyes, which had put forth a crocodile tear.

‘My dear,’ he said to Margaret, ‘you are a mighty cunning woman, but this, this . . .’

He was beside himself, convulsed.

‘How much did the writing and printing of this cost you?’

‘Nowt,’ she said. ‘The cover charge for readers is one penny, so the cost is eaten up outright.’

‘Ach,’ he said. ‘Such craft she has!’

He put his hand over his belly, which ached from laughing. ‘We shall never want for custom now. “The ladies make themselves unnaturally anew,” indeed. The prosperity of our endeavour is guaranteed.’

S
YRINGES AND
L
EMONS

When will you pay me?

Say the Bells of Old Bailey

A
s
FOUR O’CLOCK
struck, Venetia was leaning gracefully over the prie-dieu, thinking of all the combinations that made twenty-two when the ruff was at stake: two tens plus ace plus one; a Tom and two Queens; a Tom, a Tib and a Queen . . . It made her mouth water, yes actually water, to think of holding the cards.

I do not know

Says the great bell of Bow

The bells made her conscious time was passing, and the day darkening, and yet Kenelm had not noticed how perfectly her pale bosom curved over the neckline of her dress, contrasting with the tightness of her waist. She sneaked a hopeful look at him, and even touched his foot with hers, but his eyes were so sweetly closed, and she knew this was his one moment of peace in a busy day, so she desisted, and said a little prayer for him, asking that he might be blessed with a better appreciation of her beauty, as Chater droned on, speaking so inwardly that she fancied the Holy Spirit lodged somewhere inside his nose.

‘Yea, though I walk in the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil . . .’

Chater watched Sir Kenelm’s lips moving with the psalm. He was triumphant they still prayed together as a family, despite Kenelm’s conversion. As he spoke, Chater imagined leading Sir Kenelm, by the hand, through the vaporous vale, and then showing him where they might lie safely together upon green rushes, in the care of the Lord.

Kettles and Pans

Say the Bells of St Ann’s

One by one, the churches of the city agreed the time, each saying their piece, like voices in a conversation. Only the Puritan bells sounded the hour plainly, without any pealing. Kenelm loved this multiplicity of bell-ringing in the city – the peaceful capital of the only peaceful country in the Old World. The bells spoke to him of religious toleration, not yet achieved, but not far off, he prayed. Let a thousand different birds sing God’s name.

Brick-bats and Tiles

Say the Bells of St Giles

The peals reached Fenchurch Street, scattering the birds of the air, and telling the vipers in their pits that their prey was soon to be delivered. As the bolt of the cellar rammed home, disturbing their warm solitude, they readied themselves silently, flicking their mouse-decoying tails by atavistic instinct, as if they were still in the fields, while Margaret Choice trod unsteadily down the cellar stairs, bearing her tray of chopped rat-meat.

Fillers and Needles

Say the Bells of St Stephen’s

Four o’clock arrived at Westminster, and anyone looking into the lamplit lower window of Tart Hall, as they were passing through St James’s, would have seen Aletheia Howard, sitting in her high-backed chair smoking her pipe with an inscrutable expression, and Olive next to her on the divan, rosy-cheeked and enraptured to the point of seeming idiocy, and both of them watching the figure of a gentleman, or at least a well-dressed man, who stood before them with his back to the window, gesticulating roundly, and holding up, for demonstration, first the delicate tubular slough of a snake’s skin, and then a vial that looked like burnt rubies.

Olive was not given to betrayals, as such, but she was liable to forget old agreements that did not fit her new passions. Her intelligence, which was considerable, was firmly in the service of her feelings, which made her more dangerous than a less intelligent person. She was highly persuasive, utterly convinced by her version of events, and considered herself one of the most scrupulous people she knew.

She was unashamed, therefore, by her decision to introduce Lancelot Choice to Aletheia Howard. Yes, she had been encouraged to keep him secret, but she could not resist the double boon of pleasing Aletheia, while spending more time with Mr Choice. He was so personable and his cure so efficacious – what harm could it do to extend their circle of confidence to include Aletheia? Besides, Aletheia had worn her down, prodding Olive for her beauty secrets with the force that her character and degree conferred, until Olive gave way. Aletheia had not yet thanked her as such, only given a long snort of satisfaction, and called her ‘good girl’; Lancelot Choice, moreover, merely treated this engagement as another job of work, rather than a special favour, but it was, she felt sure, a matter of time, before he saw her differently.

Syringes and Lemons

Say the Bells of St Clement’s

By the darkening river, at Blackfriars, in the studio of Van Dyck, a paid model wearing Venetia’s clothes had been sitting with her left arm suspended in a graceful arc across her belly since noon. She gratefully heard St Clement Danes strike a third hour, and hoped a fourth was coming. The Digby double portrait must be nearly done. Her arm’s posture was intended to express marital fertility, but it was arse-work to maintain. She would be glad to get out of this horse-piss-stinking gown before dark. She was chosen for the elegance of her wrists, not her mind – that much was certain. Her long tapering fingers were seen on almost every Van Dyck beauty, and she slept in kid-leather gloves lined with suet.

The painter, who was not Van Dyck, but his hired fabric master, hummed as he worked; Van Dyck was next door with a new client, always too busy to paint anything but the preliminary under-sketches, the faces and the final flourishes. Margaret Lemon, Van Dyck’s mistress, was pacing about the private side of the studio with her gown unlaced, chomping from a pot of pickled cherries. She ignored the paid model but stopped to watch the sleeves and kirtle of Venetia’s dress fill out.

‘Dainty work,’ she said, looking at Venetia’s likeness closely, chewing, her head on one side. Feeling as if Venetia was watching her in return, Margaret Lemon ceased to chomp so noisily, and straightened her back, although she did not feel the need to fasten up her bodice, because in Venetia’s example there was grace, but not correctness.

Absorbed in his work, the fabric master built upon Van Dyck’s under-sketch with washes of azurite and smalt-blue, creating with utmost care the effect of casually falling fabric, glowing cloth which appeared to pour in random folds from Venetia’s waist. It was the master fabric painter’s job to ensure the viewer’s eye was never drawn to the fabric, never questioned it, but only looked beyond it to the subject’s face; he knew he was little better than a skilled scenery painter. And yet, breathing slowly, holding four paintbrushes in one fist, he was deep in the bliss of creation as he romped across soft peaks of sateen and wallowed in deep, blue-shaded valleys . . . Van Dyck would never know this suspended world, this peace, this playfulness, for he worked always on a knife’s-edge.

Here comes the candle to light you to bed.

Dang!

The last bell in the city struck four.

Here comes the chopper to chop off your head.

At Tart Hall, Lancelot Choice prepared a soupçon of Viper Wine for Lady Howard.

Venetia crossed herself and prayed to win at cards that night.

The rat-meat fell into the adder pens, and the pouncing jaws began.