Viper Wine (5 page)

She stretched open her arms wide and Venetia fell to be hugged to her bosom. ‘There, there.’ Burying her face in the rough flannel of her frontage, Venetia cried a brief burst of tears that came from nowhere like rain in April. ‘There, there,’ said Mother Nature, patting her back. ‘Begg will make all better. Is it my Lord Sir Kenelm?’

‘Yes, I fear his lack of love,’ said Venetia, sniffing.

‘Is it my Lord’s absence?’

‘No. He is so good to me and I only hope he means it.’

Venetia felt understanding radiating from Begg. She was even comforted by her purblindness because it meant she could not turn an assessing eye upon her face.

Afterwards, Venetia could not recall how Begg had seemed to know everything without being told. In fact, Venetia had spoken a great deal, and talked of many private matters, while Begg said again and again the word ‘yes’ in little audible gasps, seeming to inhale Venetia’s anxiety, her big body absorbing it like a bullfrog.

Sir Kenelm had done Venetia an injury she had been nursing like an ulcer. Now she could claim sympathy for it. He had brought her, as a present from the Continent, a pair of revolting snails, whorly and horned. ‘He said their slime might be taken as a cure for my complexion, “to hasten its recovery from childbirth” – those were his self-same words.’ As Venetia started to cry, very sorry for herself, her perfect nose growing quite pink, Begg’s eyes focused on a spot above her head, so intently they almost crossed.

‘And his books! He is a man possessed. If he can come by any book, in any language, he must buy it, though there is no shelf left at home, and he can never read them all. And yet he piles them about the house, and touches them fore and aft with his loving hands . . . Sometimes I wish I were a book, that he might make such love to me!’

Begg shook her head gravely, tutting, though Venetia was laughing and crying simultaneously. Thus unburdened, sniffing with satisfaction and dabbing her face, she followed Begg’s eyes up and flinched as, right above her head, she saw a tiny spider descending from the rafters.

‘Don’t mind him, my lady, that’s just my old spinner called Joe,’ said Begg. ‘Him’ll stop his weaving once we have an idea of how to help my Lady Diggy.’ As Begg spoke, her empty fingers twiddled forwards. ‘I think you would do well to receive help, my lady, and it doesn’t seem like many are there that can or will help you, except perhaps some little friends of mine.’ Begg reversed the direction of her twiddling fingers.

‘As it happens, a great dame called Lady Lily Trickle is staying with me today. Perhaps you knows her, as fine ladies do tends to knows one another.’

‘No,’ said Venetia.

‘Lady Lily Trickle,’ called Begg, ringing a bell, ‘wills you join us?’

There was a muffled noise of alarm behind the curtain to the adjoining room, as if Lady Trickle had forgotten to prepare herself in time.

Begg Gurley dropped her voice discreetly low, and said to Venetia: ‘My Lady Trickle is approaching eighty year old, but as you will see I have helped her stay a very dainty lady. She has been courted by a great prince in the past and she is very friendly with fairies.’

Her ladyship struggled out from behind the curtain. She was between three and four foot tall, and her head was covered in a downy blonde hair, rather scant, and her face was round and waxy, like a mooncalf. She was wearing a damask kirtle and mochado waistcoat, and Venetia wondered how she dared. The local sumptuary laws meant that only an alderman or sheriff’s wife could wear mochado. Still, she was the size of a child, and perhaps the rules were excepted for fairies’ friends. Her eyelids were heavy, which gave her a look of insolent pride. She did not speak.

‘Good afternoon, my lady,’ said Begg. ‘Pray, nod once to indicate you are a living person and not an happarition of conjurement!’

She nodded.

‘Pray nod to indicate the truth, and stamp to shew a lie. Do you have help maintaining your beauty, my Lady Trickle?’

She both stamped and nodded, being confused.

‘We shall try again, dear. Do you have help maintaining your beauty?’

She nodded.

‘First, for the protection of our souls, are you in league with the Luciferian?’

She stamped.

‘Good. Are you assisted in the care of your skin by right and proper tidy little people?’

She nodded.

‘How do you pay them – with silver?’

She stamped her foot.

‘With gold?’

She nodded.

‘Thank you, my Lady Trickle, I expect if we are so lucky we will summon some of the tidy folk now to see if they can help our friend Lady Diggy in her trouble.’

Lady Trickle stamped anxiously, twice.

‘What is it pray? Oh, yes. You are concerned that the tidy folk will not come if Lady Diggy can see them. If you will, my lady?’

Venetia had neither given consent nor protested before Begg Gurley and Lady Lily Trickle tied a piece of cloth around her eyes, and she was put to lie back in the wicker chair.

‘One to summon the lords!’ Begg said, and a tiny tinkle-bell rang.

‘Two to call the ladies!

‘Three to bid them dance!’

Venetia felt feathery tickle-steps dancing across her cheeks, and the asthmatic wheeze of Begg Gurley, whose breath smelled of hazelnuts. Venetia felt a laugh rising in her chest, like a fart that will out, and she had to try hard not to explode with laughter. She thought of crows and cold water.

‘My Lady Diggy smiles to feel the little lords and ladies gavotte upon her cheek,’ said Begg.

‘Aaaaye,’ squeaked Lady Trickle. There was the small sound of skin on skin, and Venetia intuited that Lady Trickle had been reprimanded with a slap for interrupting.

‘Now they lay their habilements upon your forehead, their gowns and ruffs,’ said Begg in a syrupy-sweet voice, as if Venetia was a child at bedtime. She felt a light pitter-pat upon her face, as if fresh rose petals with a hint of mildew to them were being dropped upon her forehead from above. ‘La, la, la,’ sighed Begg, as the petals dropped.

‘And now the little folks’ chariots made of vegetables await.’

Venetia could not resist. ‘Are they drawn by mice?’

‘Oh no,’ said Begg indulgently. ‘My dizzy lady! You don’t know much about the fairy ways. ’Tis a fine conker coach set with turnip wheels. Mr Harry Long Legs draws this carriage, and he is bound with a bridle one hair thick. Now the fairies bow and leave you for the other world. They go to drink from a dew drop, one between eight of them. And so, farewell, addy-oo!’ The tiny bell chimed again. ‘Addy-oo.’

Blinking, breathing in the fresh air, Venetia returned to her waiting carriage. She had an armful of Begg’s mulberry leaves, gathered as a decoy for her journey. She did not begrudge the ladies the piece of gold for their show, as long as it bought their silence too. She did not feel compelled to visit Begg Gurley again. Her invention was too crude, too much of countryside. She could not believe in it.

Venetia had sceptical Percy blood in her. Her grandfather was Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland, whom they called the Wizard Earl because his doors were open to mathematicians and astronomers, and in his castle study he had drawn a new empyrean with compasses and formulae and reams of parchment. She remembered sitting on his lap as he told her a trinity is three, and a quaternity is four, and so forth. She was told never to say silly things or speak of fairies to him, for he would be angered by such talk. But her intuition told her that she could never make him angry, for they were good friends, and she would sit on his shoulder combing his hair, while he read aloud to her. He had a soft tongue, cut when he was a boy, which could not pronounce all the words correctly, but it made her love to listen to his voice the more.

She felt ashamed to have visited Begg Gurley. Venetia was not one of those refined London ladies who found the old village ways enchanting, a ‘natural’ alternative to pills and modern Physick. And she was certainly not a villager who took it on trust. She did not desire to feel better – she desired to look better. She needed Physick. This visit had helped her decide that, at least. As she left the Dingles, Begg tied around her wrist a bracelet of valerian, a green root silvered with tiny hairs, which was to remind her, when it fell off her wrist by rotting, that it was time to visit Begg Gurley again.

Venetia cut it off directly using her sewing scissors. But she also checked in her looking glass, against her graver judgement, to see if her skin was any better.

S
IR
K
ENELM
H
OLDS
A
P
RESS
C
ONFERENCE

‘Sir Kenelm Digby was such a goodly handsome person, gigantique and great voic’d, and he had so gracefull elocution, and noble addresse, that had he been dropped out of the Clowdes in any part of the World, he would have made himself respected. But the Jesuites spake spitefully, and said ’twas true, but then he must not stay there above six weekes.’

John Aubrey’s
Brief Lives
, 1669–96

WORD WAS SPREADING
of his voyage, and Kenelm received letters from men requesting to visit him, some wishing to see his treasures, others to discourse with him about his exploits, so that news of his discoveries might be spread abroad. Well, thought Kenelm, since Venetia keeps me at Gayhurst still, so let the world come to me.

And here they were, men with a strange thirsty curiosity that tipped so quickly between sycophancy and impertinence. Young scholars, who wrote everything he said down in tiny handwriting; older men, whose fighting days were over and made a living from telling tales as gleemen or pamphleteers. Some were genuinely interested in Kenelm’s voyage, others merely keen to win his favour, or take from him something that they could use, for their weekly corantoes, digests, news packets, or their own prestige. They crowded round him, asking him to pose and to show off his treasures, and he happily acceded to their requests, for he never needed much encouragement, and soon he was standing upon the table in the great hall, demonstrating how he defeated the French and Venetians with thrusts and parries.

Yet he felt his visitors did not look upon him as a man like themselves, but saw him as if through an eyepiece or a view-finder: their interest fell upon him like white light, lightning fast and interrogative. And so, entranced and blinded by the imaginary flashbulbs and the glaring light of attention, Sir Kenelm gave his first press conference.

‘Is it true you seized more than a year’s revenues in your escapade?’

‘How many French cutlasses brought you hither?’

‘On what day fell this sea-battle at Scanderoon?’

‘But how many French men died?’

‘So, gentlemen,’ said Sir Kenelm, answering the question he liked best, ‘the great battle fell upon my birthday, the eleventh of June. I dare say some errant wit and companion of Ben Jonson – one of the Tribe of Ben – will make a pretty verse of that. Luckily “June” goes well with “Scanderoon”, as you see.’

Digby did not mention that he had commanded his ships to sail around the Gulf of Iskenderun for two days, treading water and polishing their muskets, in order that they might attack on the auspicious day of his birth.

‘Your crew were set about by pestilence?’ asked one man, a Polack with a long nose called Samuel Hartlib.

‘Yes, a swinish fever brought aboard from Spanish ships. We had not reached Gibraltar but three score of my men were already dead . . .’

This had them all scribbling in their wastebooks. Samuel Hartlib, who was compiling a grand Encyclopaedia, wanted to know about quarantine and the prevention of infection, and so forth, but most of the other visitors had no interest in long and complicated truth. They wanted him to say something quick and epigrammatic, preferably exciting or bloody or moralising – any of these would do.

‘You’re not the kind of man who turns back, though, are you?’ said Michael Parkinson, ingratiatingly.

‘Are you an authoritarian below decks? Do you swing the cat-o’-nine-tails?’ said Jonathan Ross, a fool with weak ‘Rs’.

‘Ask my crew,’ said Kenelm.

‘We did,’ said Ross. ‘Some of them liked it a lot.’

Ignoring the hubbub, Kenelm told them how he picked up hands at Tangiers, poor Scots and English sailors whose liberty he bought at some expense. ‘I will be repaid by the Crown very shortly,’ he told the assembly.

There was a small communal sigh, as if the company did not believe the Crown honoured its dues, but none knew the worst of it, which was that the debt would remain unpaid until the reign of Charles II, thirty years later.

‘And did you divide your profits amongst your crew?’ asked Paxman, wincing with his own pertinence.

‘Yes,’ said Kenelm. ‘On modest terms, their liberty being their main reward.’

A soft Irish man called Wogan said: ‘I’d be frightened beyond my wits if this happened to me, but tell us, is it true your crew fell to mutiny?’

‘Mutiny is over-putting it. It was a small act of lower-deck rebellion amongst my new crew, bold fellows, worn down by their privations. A skipper hurled his trencher at the galley cook because he would give him no more biscuit. Some other men rose and started shouting also. I resolved this by means of diplomacy and pickled beef. First I put this malcontent in irons, but then since I could not send him home, the English packet being days away, I resolved to break his will, so I had him ducked and towed behind the ship, after which he confessed to his secret guilt of having previously raided the purser’s store, which was a great mercy since it made him only a thief, not a hero. To the honest men, I made a speech, praising them, letting them know they would all be fairly dealt with, and that our mission would bring us gold, and more than that, gold with the King’s blessing, and all the men cheered, and I rolled out the kegs of salt beef I had been saving for just such an occasion.’