Kenelm spat into the quicksilver, fancying he tasted its vapour, which was tart like blood. As he sat waiting for the milk to warm in the pan, he gazed into the shew-stone of the quicksilver and saw the distorted visage of his old tutor, Thomas Allen. He was wearing his gown and cap, and struggling to carry a great pile of papers, books and the wax discs that recorded his talks with angels, as well as a big heavy contraption with buttons marked with every letter in the alphabet, and slim mirrors, round in shape, marked Digital Versatile Disc. There was too much for Allen to carry and the pile was tumbling from his hands. Kenelm blinked and realised that he was only dozing and had been wakened by his own recipe slipping to the floor. He must go and see the old man in Oxford, before it was too late. Thomas Allen was eighty-nine.
Kenelm washed, and washed again the skittish silver liquid, then let it plop into a hornspoon. He could still see the face of Allen in the mercury, grimacing and distorting as the mercury spooled downwards and splashed into distinct globules, so there was a tiny Thomas Allen visible in each blob, and all of them were pulling different expressions.
Kenelm had proposed Allen as a member of the Invisible College, but the younger members rejected him because they feared the slur of sorcery. ‘We want no magi, no conjurations here,’ said young Pritchett. ‘He has the finest collection of mathematical books I have ever seen,’ said Sir Kenelm. ‘Do you believe the tittle-tattle that spirits thronged behind him on the college stairs like bees? Would you be like the maids of Sir John Scudamore’s household, afrit of a ticking box?’
Thomas Allen was a guest of Scudamore when the maids there threw away his watch, which they judged a mechanical familiar. As they were cleaning his room they heard a ticking, emanating from a little black box that must be the devil, and so, without touching it with their hands but using their pinnies or dishclouts, they threw it out of the window to drown the devil in the moat below. Luckily it caught by its string upon an elder bush and so Thomas Allen’s watch was rescued.
Sir Kenelm feared that the quick young Invisibles, with their hydraulics and botanical studies, were not schooled in Hermetic wisdom, so he filled in the basics airily for them: ‘Everything which is made is numbered in the mind of God. If the numbers that describe a toad were to be forgotten and fall from the mind of God then no toads should exist. Thomas Allen knows this mystical dimension of numbers, their mathesis . . .’
Kenelm said this speech, or something like it, to the company. But they stuck firm and would not have Thomas Allen, ‘nor the ghost of John Dee neither’, said Sir Cheney Culpeper, and the Invisibles tapped their quills on the table in agreement.
‘It is not that we believe Master Allen to be a conjuror,’ said another of the beardless wonders to him privately afterwards. ‘We do not. But the public tongue says he is, and therefore we put ourselves at risk if we take him into our ranks. We could be persecuted by the mob and our laboratories destroyed, as Dr Dee’s were at Mortlake. Or our patrons could withdraw their monies, or our designs could lose their warrants. It is because we are Prudent that we do not welcome him, not because we are Superstitious.’
Against everything, Digby took some pertinent volumes the Invisibles had in circulation, and sent them to Allen at Oxford. They returned two months later, pages somewhat dirtied and stuck together with soup, spindly incy-wee writing covering the margins. The old man’s scrawl seemed to wheeze, rising and falling, illegible even to Digby’s eye, once so familiar with his hand. The words he could read were indifferent to the purpose.
He was seized with an urge to go to Oxford almost at once to visit Allen, but he also knew that now was his time to be in London, his brief chance to shine while his naval exploits were news. He knew, from astrology, rhetoric and every noble discipline, that nothing could be achieved except if its timing were propitious. The stars must be in alignment before any new undertaking.
For example, the space-probes Voyager 1 and 2 could not depart before the planets were in perfect order. Once every 175 years they fell into such orbits that their gravitational pull eased the flight of those great data-gathering insects so they glided effortlessly through the heliosphere. The Voyagers could have been launched in 1627, but no, Sir Kenelm was dozy; he was unprepared. In 1977 when the alignment came again, the Voyagers would surf the sky-tide.
An oak clawed at the laboratory window, and Kenelm rose and looked out over the blue expanse of grass, down to his obelisk, which was emitting a flashing halo of pale light. Circular rays were given off by every object, as the Alchemists knew. Time itself was circular, which was why Sir Kenelm was gifted with so many strange understandings.
‘I saw Eternity the other night,’ he muttered to himself.
‘Like a great Ring of pure and endless light . . .’
The radio mast bleeped intermittently, alerting Kenelm to Immortality, Eternal Youth and Perfect Health – all within his scope, if he would only turn his mind to his loved ones’ advantage. He must think of his wife, but first, holding a candle and feeling happily paternal, Kenelm crept up the stairs with the hornspoon of night-bright silver medicine for his boy.
‘Animula vagula blandula/ Hospes comeseque corporis.’
The Emperor Hadrian’s purported deathbed address to his departing spirit – ‘My little wandering sportful soul/ Guest and companion of my body.’
‘Poor intricated soul! Riddling, perplexed, labyrinthical soul!’
John Donne’s sermon on the day of St Paul’s Conversion, 1629
IT WAS TWILIGHT, and stray dogs and chained mastiffs were barking to one another across Whitehall; at Somerset House, cherubs with grotesque red cheeks were striking a French mechanical clock, calling Queen Henrietta-Maria’s friends and household to a Catholic evensong. The laying of the foundation stone of the Queen’s new chapel was to be celebrated, and it was the Digbys’ first public engagement since they arrived in town. It was a difficult invitation, dangerous to accept, foolish to decline.
Kenelm paced the rose garden of their manor at Charterhouse, wondering whether they should go. Young Kenelm was cured of his indisposition, and the surly blots on his cheeks should not hold them back from attending. If they went, they would find further favour with their Catholic Queen and her Catholic friends; they would know everyone there, and it would be a good beginning for Venetia’s return to public life. And yet Kenelm wanted to be more than the Queen’s cavaliero. He wanted to make comptroller of the King’s navy, but this would never come to pass while he played his Old Faith in public.
He and Venetia were usually discreet in their Catholicism; Chater ministered the mass to them in the chapel at Gayhurst in private, and they paid the fine for recusancy. That was that. To their neighbours they were ‘Catholics, yes, but not bad people’. Kenelm was careful to be an irreproachable landlord because every slip he made, every stag disputed or grain sack overpriced, was considered a Catholic vice; the local people always looked at him sideways, and every long word he used in conversation was taken as a foreign secret or a spell.
Protestantism had his respect, and Catholicism his heart, but Hermetical philosophy, the Great Work, engaged his Imaginative soul, his deepest self. To be Catholic, to be Protestant – both seemed so limited when there was a Third Way. The real devotions he practised were in his laboratory, in the sublimations and transubstantiations, when the red sulphur died and the white peacock rose.
The Queen had been generous to them, though sometimes Kenelm wished she would be less so. Her talk of undertaking a barefoot pilgrimage in honour of Kenelm’s ‘martyred’ father grieved and embarrassed Kenelm. It could only open old wounds. He found himself snapping at her, Let it lie, madame – laisse tomber, madame, je vous en prie. After this outburst, he expected to fall out of favour with her, but he found she was fonder, warmer with him, and she began to call him her Chevalier d’Igby.
The fact that it was not a mass, only vespers, held outdoors, convinced Kenelm finally that they ought to attend, and Venetia threw herself into preparation, but their ambivale
nce showed itself in multiple mis-starts and delays to their journey – a lost pair of shoes, a carriage boy unbidden. The house was still in chaos with only half their things unpacked, but the business of the move seemed to have taken Venetia out of herself. She had found new strength, albeit superficial, glib and smiling, and in the coach she was full of chat and speculation about how changed their friends would be.
Young drabs and dolls and tuppenny-boys were gathered on the Strand watching the traffic of carriages arriving at Somerset House, and as the Digbys’ escutcheoned coach turned the corner, many surged forward in unison to greet their goddess. Venetia, recognising this crowd-frenzy that always attended her, clutched Kenelm’s hand, saying ‘No, no!’ excitedly, and shielding her face. But the crowd’s movement had been motivated only by the opening of a beer-hatch on the lower Drury Tavern, and as they ran and queued it was clear they had no interest in the Digbys’ coach at all. Kenelm, preoccupied by the royal halberdiers, barely noticed Venetia’s mistake; Chater, whom they had invited to ride with them, bit his lip and looked out of the window.
Carriages rammed the street, and pikemen were checking every guest. The church chimes had already stopped when the Digbys finally entered the courtyard. The evening sky was like a stage-cloth, marbled pink and blue, and the air was Popish with incense, sweet clouds that hastened night and judgement on them all, as swallows turned tricks in the air, fast and faster till they became bats. Outdoors pews were packed with the congregation, whom Venetia ate up with her eyes, at least a hundred friends, or something like friends – so many massed and half-forgotten faces that Venetia had not seen for several years’ exile at Gayhurst during her childbearing and Kenelm’s absence. As they processed up the aisle of courtyard flagstones, Chater trotting in behind them, Venetia’s eyes roved over everyone:
Master Stump’s brow has become heavy since he lost his property. My Lady Cecil’s face still has a lovely trusting turn, white as a legume, which never felt a moment’s sin or pleasure. Dame Peterkin’s jaw will not be trifled with. If those dark curls piled on top of her head are her own, then dogs can sing syllogisms. They’re wired horse hair, I warrant. That fine lady, whoever she is, has an ale-sot’s puffed and broken veins; this man eats too much meat and his eyes bulge. God forgive us all, for our souls are written in our faces.
There is my coz Lettice – red is not a becoming colour to her – let me reach to hold her hand briefly. Bless her, for she cannot have found any friends yet – there she is sitting next to two old matrons twice her age. Lady Vavasour has drunk the silver tincture cure for the French pox, and her skin has turned grey-blue.
Old Dame Overall has plaisters under her wig that draw the sagging skin tighter off her face. Dame Overall’s friend, her sister perhaps, has not used any plaisters and looks softer, looser, older. Hard to judge who looks worse between them. One has fought, the other submitted. Both are tragic.
Venetia nodded respectfully at Aletheia Howard, the Countess of Arundel, thinking: She has filled her paps out with paper and her eyebrows are made from mink-hair and egg white, but she looks good on’t.
Is that Olivia Porter? I do believe it is. Greetings, my dear. No sign of Endymion – he is more careful than to show himself here but he sends his wife alone. Olive looks unnaturally radiant. Like a fifteen-year-old girl who knows too much of life. And yet she is a mother of four living and more dead. I swear nature alone never made her cheek so flushed and peachy. I shall know more of this.
‘Praise the Father, Son and Holy Ghost,’ said Venetia, bobbing to the altarpiece set up where the new chapel would rise. Yes, she believed in the reading of faces, which was why she was wearing a veil to church: I would rather they thought me modest than knew me blown.
In front of the altar stone, beside the candles, glowed bowls of new roses, fresh red. A blown rose had more grace and pathos than a crisp new rose, but no one wanted a blown rose. You wouldn’t give so much as a penny for their soft, wide-open faces, and their petals, which dropped at the lightest finger-touch; their pale evening scent carried further than new roses, but was touched with tiredness and putrefaction. The saying jingled in her head like coin – Against the blown rose they will stop their nose, that kneeled unto the buds.
Venetia preceded Kenelm into their reserved pew. Oh Lord, thank you for giving us a good pew, near the front. Here we are again, foremost at the Queen’s court. It is the very smartest place to be this evening, like a little piece of France. Forbidden Vespers practised en plein air, the very nerve. Oh Lord, forgive me for taking mass only at home, in private. Oh Lord, keep Kenelm safe and let him not fall out of standing in the eyes of men. Oh Lord, let him be made a lord. We can see almost everyone here from this pew. Oh Lord, who suffered for our sins, thank you. Oh Lord, let them not think my beauty gone. Oh Lord, protect my children. Oh Lord, forgive me always.
Their thoughts high and low interwove until the congregation’s mind seemed to condense and take shape into clouds of incense hanging above them.
First came the Dismal Dozen, the Capuchin friars sent over by Cardinal Richelieu, hooded, and flat-footed, their censers swinging, ropes of tiny skulls knotted at their waists. Next, the Queen, looking as excited as a girl on her saint’s day, accompanied by her favourite, the Scots Franciscan, Father Conn. Venetia stood facing the altarpiece solemnly, refusing to look gawpishly at the congregation. She felt their eyes, hot with scrutiny: has Venetia had the pox? Is she with child again, or is she merely fat? Well, she supposed, some heads here must be at prayer.
As Father Conn prayed for the purification of the soul of the new chapel’s architect, Master Inigo Jones, she heard a deep voice call ‘Amen’ too loudly. It was Ben Jonson. Jonson and Jones were still at odds, then. The one could not make a masque without the other, for every setting needs a theme, and yet they loved to quarrel. She could see Jonson’s great bulk in a pew also near the front. How that man swells! He must be close to 20 stones. Venetia could not resist leaning forward, to catch another look at his eyes, one of which seemed to have grown larger and lower than the other, perhaps because of a palsy. He winked at her – or was it a twitch? He was gross, distended, and yet the odour of the person he used to be clung to him.
They loved each other well, when they were both beginners, she a beauty and he a Coming Man of Letters, poor and hasty and a little self-glorious, but the quickest wit she ever knew. He could mimic a voice, or pick up a person’s mode of speaking, as quick as walk in mud. They used to talk in their own language together, laughing in corners. Now, though they were both changed, her heart rose to meet him as ever before, and she knew that human love was stronger than decay. The platitude was true: love endured. Love overcame. Not in an empty, courtly, sonneteering way, but manifestly. She knew this – and yet she could not forgive herself for growing older.
While her lips said the catechism, Venetia thought of Olive, and her bright, peeled complexion, and yearned to know what change had overtaken Olive. Was she in love? Was she ill? There was something feverish in her eye, which showed unusually dark. She thought of asking Kenelm if he noticed anything different about Olive, but she knew the answer would be no. Seeing her standing glowing and pert at the corner of her pew, he might have remembered how much he liked her, or been struck how pretty she was. But he would never have questioned why, or how – or even observed his own observation. Half of us, she thought, are surface creatures; half of us have deeper understanding.
Veiled, Venetia was a riveting spectacle to the congregation. It was as if an arrow were pointing to and obscuring her face. People longed to see what had become of her. Those who could not help themselves craned their necks as she went past, longing to see her ravaged, no matter that they prayed for her beauty’s preservation. There was even something compelling about the veil itself, the sheerest pale grey Cyprus that seemed to breathe with her. The veil was the perfect costume – demure, disguised. Reformed, perhaps. She knew she ought to pay lip-service to the idea that she was reformed now she wa
s married and no longer infamous, and so forth, but she had always been impervious to the idea that she was scandalous in the first place. She had never been kept, never a courtesan. Her private wealth had given her outrageous freedom, that was all. There was nothing in her that knew how to apologise. She was so sure, so completely certain, as she entered any room, of her power, of her contribution to the sum of beauty in the world. And yet she had always been vulnerable too, wounded by the smallest slight, and turned into a pathetic self-doubting creature by such a nothing as a kind word left unsaid, or a sum she could not add.
Her unpredictability was like a drug to Kenelm. He was elated by her approval and fearful of her sadness. To hide these passions of his, he had developed a steady, watchful exterior which did not betray how much he regarded her opinion in everything, how very much he wanted her to have her own way. For her to be denied was agony to him. He believed she was always right, even when she was unreasonable. She was deft and sure in all her instincts when he was blundering and over-educated and obscure. Because she was excessive, he had always to play at being reasonable; because she was volatile, he needed to pretend to be steadfast. Thus he was become a man. He reached for her hand after the paternoster.
Kenelm’s mind moved on to his Hermetic studies, as he looked at the bright green stones mounted on the High Cross ahead of them and thought of the mounted, valiant troops of winged horsemen, invisible to the eye, which stream forth in purposive armies out of precious stones, in order to heal, improve and refine – unseen and unseeing, and yet the air is full of them, as thick as motes of dust in sunshine. This put him in mind of the missing emerald tablet of Hermes Trismegistus, which had so much goodness emanating from it, and he considered – with the small inhalation that attends a new thought – if it might be discovered buried at the spot on earth where food is most plentiful, health most abundant and people live as long as Enoch who had 350 years . . .
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