Viper Wine

by Hermione Eyre

  Venetia by Peter Oliver, circa 1619

  No wonder women would not let her near their husbands. When the nobles referred to her between themselves, they whistled and drew curves in the air with their fingers. They called her ‘bona roba’, which sounded like a compliment, but implied she was light. Her name was often abbreviated familiarly to ‘Venice’ – especially by knaves seeking to play up a small acquaintance. Kenelm’s mother would rather send her son to Madrid than suffer him to marry her – and it became fashionable to remark, saucily, that though Mary Digby sought to send her son to Spain, he had as lief stay at home in Venice.

  The bloods of the English court were then in Madrid kicking their heels pretending to hasten ‘The Match’ between Charles of England and the King of Spain’s daughter. Elaborate Habsburg protocol had clouded the matter, but the English were beginning to recognise that the Infanta was not to be wooed. They never saw the Infanta, except behind a screen. Charles wanted an opportunity to appeal to her, face-to-face, and he discovered that every morning she walked with her ladies barefoot through the dew of her private garden.

  Kenelm was the boy in the tree who gave the signal to John Suckling that the Infanta was come out walking; Suckling leaped over the wall, and broke Charles’s fall after him. And so England’s heir jumped, rolled through the rose bushes, and accosted the Infanta he would make his bride, who ran away screaming.

  While Kenelm was in Madrid, Venetia became celebrated at court. Both Sackville brothers pursued her, and songs were made up about her, and women copied her hair, and her clothes. She always favoured intense blues, and as she grew more scandalous, receiving Richard Sackville’s kisses, and his younger brother’s favours, the shades of blue she wore grew stronger. She was seen in a shocking new draper’s hue that flashed like a kingfisher’s wing, a very Papistical blue, unreliable, continental, the ne plus ultra of blues. It was made from a pigment of lapis lazuli – it would have been cheaper to buy a dress of beaten gold – and when she wore it in the sun she seethed like one of Kenelm’s alchemical mithridates. The new blue was called ‘Ultramarine’, a word that rolled about country folks’ mouths too much, so they called it ‘Venetia’s Blue’ instead.

  In Wiltshire once she stayed upstairs above an inn, as John Aubrey recorded, with high-born gents attending – Sackville, and some of his roaring rakells – with only her cousin George Stanley as keeper of her modesty. The landlord was delighted and put a sign outside the tavern (in capital letters), which pretended to warn people off, but only served to advertise her presence. Crowds assembled. It was on the feast of St Philip, close after St George’s day, and there was mischief abroad and summer dust in the air. St Philip’s day used to be the old feast of Floralia, and women were decked in flowers, coronets of daisies and scabious and viper’s bugloss, and they gathered outside the tavern, for women were always as wont to see Venetia as the men. Before nightfall the innkeeper was drunk dry. Men from villages as far as seven miles away – strangers, never seen before – were drumming on the empty kegs.

  Venetia peeped out of the upstairs window wearing a borrowed servant’s cap and shaking out a dishclout, so those below, certain it was not she, shouted up clamouring for news of Lady Venetia and she, quite sullen, shouted back, ‘There’s no such fine lady here, only wenches and strumplings tonight!’, then disappeared inside and slammed the window.

  Eventually the magistrate’s men came and dispersed the crowd for public affray. Her roaring friends adored it, but the innkeeper wanted compensation.

  Her beauty made her almost wild. And her wildness made her beautiful. She could do as she pleased. Sometimes she wore her hair loose and half-tangled, sometimes she slouched and sucked her cheeks. Sometimes she danced when there was no music. She was never sluttish, and to kiss someone she did not love was an abhorrence to her, except when she felt like it.

  Men had a passion then for the paintings of Titian, which they would keep hidden in their closets, showing them to one another as favours, by candlelight – and there was something of the Titian about Venetia, whose pomegranate smile’s red and whiteness was a splitting fruit. Her black fur cape was always about to slip to show her shoulders, like the girlie in the painting Stradling brought back from Madrid and carried always with him in his travelling trunk. Other times she was all froth and fancy, Fragonard’s slipper already flying off its swing, a hundred years too soon.

  She was no great reader or writer, but that can make a person’s foxy instincts sharper. She could feel when she was being looked at, even in the dark, and she had a sense for secrets. She was impatient, and restless, and most men found nothing wifely in her. Neither Sackville brother wanted her for marriage, though once she let the elder walk with her alone in public, which gave the gossips much to munch on.

  Higher delights and sweeter fancies she always sought, till, surfeiting of joy, she held an Evening of Melancholy, to which all the guests wore black. From the astrologer-physician Richard Napier she bought candles that were mixed with puck’s fog, so they flamed with silver light, and she set smoked mirrors round her black-draped room, and in the brittle black-and-white light, she glowed like a siren of the silver screen, whose every film is lost.

  She was named for the opulent, liquid State whence dark impassioned canvases came. Once in a court masque of the Great Rivers called Tethys Festival, she played Venice. Her Grace Lady Elizabeth Stuart was the nymph of the Thames, and the Countess of Essex the nymph of the Lee, and the Viscountess Haddington the nymph of the Rother, and Venetia, just fourteen, was the nymph of the Grand Canal. She was meant to be part of the set dressing, playing a cloud, but James’s Queen, Anna of Denmark, picked her out and promoted her so that she might walk solo across the stage wearing a Doge’s cap, very still and solemn, pulling a long, heavy green train behind her. Before she left the stage, she cast one deeply knowing smile back at the audience.

  ‘F’neesha! F’neesha!’ the women waiting to see her chanted as they waited to kiss her hand. She was excessively, undeservedly venerated, which is a form of oppression.

  She would not have understood why it should be considered that. She loved attention, sought it out. Great ladies, stars and princesses often believe that public adoration confers on them an influence or power, which it is their destiny to put to use. But Venetia did not have this do-gooding impulse. She went through the motions of charity only. She had the heart of a pagan pleasure-goddess, and her instincts told her to look after her own, and to hell with the rest. The adulation made her run faster and stronger, gathering power as she lost control.

  But within Venetia ran a crack, which fame had covered, and now her fame was gone the crack showed again, deeper and wider. The attention she received curdled to scrutiny, the envious admiration to calumny, or pity. And that was only the beginning, only the first turning of the tide that would roll against her, now her name was two broken promises. In the year of her birth, only maggot-brained philosophers would repeat the heresy that the earth moved round the sun. But the printing presses shifted heaven and earth, so that our sublunary pit was re-imagined as a magnetic ball or ‘terrella’, which rotated around the sky, and by the time she was thirty this was the new orthodoxy, and there was a new king.

  No wonder she wore a mask and veil these days, now she had tired eyes, and even the new king was no longer new, and the earth moved round the sun.

  Dapper: I long to see her Grace.

  Subtle: You must be bath’d and fumigated first:

  Besides, the Queen of Fairy does not rise

  Till it be noon.

  Ben Jonson, The Alchemist, 1610

  Bidding her coachman wait behind a brake of trees, Venetia climbed out at a spot near the Dingles, the bank of cottages beyond the loam pits at the far side of the village of Clophill, six miles from Gayhurst. Hooded, and wearing her tall wooden chopine platforms, she picked her way around a chicken-foot lying on the verge at the crossroads. She was undertaking to visit one Begg Gurley. Most tradespeople – hatte
rs, seamstresses, apothecaries – visited Lady Digby at home, but Begg Gurley was not exactly a tradesperson. She did not pay calls, as she might be apprehended in the street for soliciting her devious trade; she left no footsteps for fear they would be filled with wax by her enemies and thus her feet turned lame. If Venetia was discovered at her cottage, at least it would be clear she had come of her own accord. Blind Begg Gurley was a wise-woman, and some called her Dame Kind, or Mother Nature, while others called her Witch.

  As she approached the cottages, with their flags of chimney smoke flying, a mongrel licking its flank eyed her from one doorstep, and a dirty child ran away shrieking. She had been here once before, seeking advice on how to make friends with Kenelm’s mother Mary Mulsho, and together they had wrapped Mary Mulsho’s dirty kerchief up in string and buried it in the garden, and although Venetia had found the whole process a little embarrassing, still, who was to prove it had not worked?

  ‘Is that my friend Lady Diggy?’ she heard a voice call within. ‘Will she not pull back the curtain?’

  Venetia did so, and as her eyes grew accustomed to the smoky room, she recognised the huge motherly figure of Begg Gurley sitting in her wicker chair, her head back, her eyes closed, her hands poised apart on her knees. As she felt Venetia’s shadow her eyes flipped open.

  ‘Oh my lady,’ she said quietly, looking straight through Venetia with cloudy white eyes. ‘You poor lady.’

  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.