Viper Wine

by Hermione Eyre

  ‘We hold you and your husband in our heart,’ he said to her, stressing the ‘h’ in husband as if to remedy his wife’s French accent, and laying his hand briefly upon her head, to let her know her audience was over.

  Leaving the palace, Venetia went straight home to Charterhouse, where she crawled into bed, although it was afternoon, and pulled its curtains close as a burrow.

  ‘If the ceiling was falling down in your living room, would you not go and have it repaired?’

  Eighty-one-year-old model Carmen Dell’Orefice, 2012

  It was like a love-ache, an unbearable absence. Venetia lay in her curtained bed all the afternoon. Sleep was impossible and so was waking: she felt heart-sick, as if for the loss of someone dear to her. But who?

  This new character she had was unacceptable. This plainness. It was not suitable to her. She was not like other women. She was famous for what was called her ‘fatal beauty’. Edward Sackville had lost a finger for her in a duel. He bought a spit of land for the purpose in the Low Countries, and the land was still known by the name of the man killed there – Lord Bruce. She had barely even spoken to Lord Bruce. The business was more between the men than anything to do with her, she knew now, and yet when she was sixteen, she took it very much to heart, sickened and enthralled by the news. A dead man, a severed finger and a ruptured lung – these were her tributes, laid across her dressing table with her favours and garlands.

  She moaned into her pillow, missing her youth drink, though she had not yet drunk a drop of it. She hoped that when Kenelm came home he could not see the spider-ish look about her. She had to pretend to him she was still Helen, else how could he be Paris? How could she be anything less without disappointing him and the boys? She did not want to be a hag-mother, web-wound and scuttling. She felt the bitterness of it thinning her bones.

  She managed to rise and repair some of the sadness that besmirched her face, and to leaden a little, and to paint a rosy lip, so that by the time Kenelm returned, she was ready to smile at him like he was the new sun rising. He went down on one knee before her, and buried his lion head in her lap and she suffered herself to put her arms around him like the unicorn of old, and she hugged him tightly against the spinning of the world.

  He said he was likely to make naval comptroller to the King, as his exploits at Scanderoon were finally come to the King’s notice, and the King was interested in using The Magus as a possible model for a navy that ruled beneath the waves as well as above. ‘Ah, my nonesuch,’ she said, stroking his mane. ‘My none but one love.’

  There was one obstacle.

  ‘My darling . . .’ said Kenelm, and she knew it was important, by the way he was holding her hands, as if testing their weight. ‘Please you take this in a good and loving spirit and be not afrit?’ She nodded; she knew this tone of voice. Although he seemed to be telling her something, he was asking, looking for approval.

  ‘I am of the wrong faith. I will be received into the Protestant communion on the feast of All Souls at Westminster.’

  ‘Moved by ambition, [Sir Kenelm Digby] has recently abandoned his Catholic faith and become Protestant.’

  The Venetian Ambassador to London, Calendar of State Papers (Venice) 1629–32

  Of course, Venetia had perceived two years previously that this might happen, and she had already managed Mary Mulsho’s will so that it would be harder for her to disinherit Kenelm. She had played a close hand with her Queen and the court ladies-in-waiting, never wholly renouncing or embracing either faith but keeping a subtle counsel with both, just as she collected hearts as well as spades when she played at Glecko. But then a presentiment like a chill settled upon her, a feeling of a long, cold separation from her Kenelm, who, as a Protestant, could not be buried beside her.

  ‘We are of the wrong faith,’ she contradicted him.

  ‘No, my love, you will keep the Old Faith and the Queen’s good counsel. I will take the new faith, and so support the King, and obtain promotion. I have to do it, Venice.’

  He was thinking of the worldly benefits. ‘This will settle the question that hangs over me and my loyalty, once and for all. My father’s crime would be finally forgot . . .’ Venetia thought this unlikely, but said nothing. ‘And can you imagine, my darling, what we could also do if we were preferred at court? We could put up a new wing in this house, my Experiments would be preferred . . . It is,’ he kissed her hand, to comfort himself, ‘all to the best, I do believe. I nearly converted when I was in Laud’s care, but he said I should wait till my majority.’

  Venetia wanted to ask Kenelm what the Synod ruled for couples who died in different faiths: would they be reunited hereafter?

  But then the dogs barked, and a bell at the back gate jangled.

  ‘A late hour for deliveries,’ said Kenelm.

  ‘No, no,’ replied Venetia, leaping up. ‘Just a parcel from my Lettice, I think. Who will receive you into the new faith? Will it be Laud?’

  ‘He has been waiting these twenty years for the occasion,’ smiled Kenelm. ‘I must write to him now.’

  Sip sip, she thought, sip sip, as she rustled upstairs carrying her delivery, a small crate marked STRAWBERRIES and sealed with the fat worm-like viper seal of Lancelot Choice. The crate was neither light nor heavy, but just so. Sip sip. We raise the transforming wine-cup to our lip. She locked her closet door and used her paperknife to split the seal. Inside, under straw, seethed seven vials of purplish red liquor that had separated into bands, vermillion at the top, clotted black below. So every day would be a serpent’s Sunday: seven days’ supply of pagan sacrament. Should she drink it?

  It was easier for Doktor Faustus, she thought, because he knew the price of his pleasure. No woman would complain about a bargain she had struck herself, with her eyes open, but Faustus had raved regretfully about it for three hours. If we, like Faustus, knew the price of our desire, life would be easy. Desire is dangerous because one never knows its price, nor its cost. Thus Chater preaches against desire.

  She stowed the crate in her closet, and closed the door. She caught sight of herself in her spotted glass. She smiled. It was like watching a piece of parchment folded, creasing. She smiled again. The crease was deeper. Each time it took a little more, like a wave claiming a cliff – such a harmless action, repeated to death.

  Downstairs, her husband traced again the astrological chart of their nativities using an Aztec divining scalpel, which bent and danced from point-to-point.

  She had smiled so many times. Smiles at nursemaids, smiles at wet-nurses, smiles to be fed and smiles to be wiped, smiles to make them pick you up and smiles to make them put you down.

  He traced the house of Scorpio under Mars; the Ram in Venus rising on the day of his birth when she was already three years old.

  Smiles to be noticed, and not to be sent away, and to be not such a bad little poppet to have around, and to be a good grateful girl, and smiles to show she would not bite. Smiles to say, I am yours.

  The broken tower and the seventh moon; her strength was for a long time unchannelled even as her star rose.

  Smiling was like paying again and again from a purse that seemed endlessly full. And only now she realised she had squandered. It was the insincerity that cost so much. The real smiles, the ones she could not help, they came for free and took no toll. They were traceless, silent. The other smiles, the fake ones, sounded like a peach being ripped open. They cost. They were female currency.

  The celestial prophesy, made under a martial sign. They were both fighters.

  And her smiles at court, liberally distributed like alms, smiles that said, notice me, beware, come hither, go away; smiles that flashed with power, that took and gave at the same time, that disarmed and bristled like a set of knives. Smiles even when her eyes were hidden by a mask – smiles that could have come from anyone, smiles that no one needed; wasted, extravagant smiles, like wine thrown onto grass. Why do it? It was what she did now.

  She was finally come to join him in Gemi
ni, bless her. But she would not stay there long, being destined for the eclipse of Cancer.

  In the great hall at St John’s she caught sight of a woman reflected in the casement and wondered who the old dame was.

  The full moon in Venetia Anastasia’s ascending house landed on Jupiter. Kenelm’s compass traced it again to check. Yes, Jove, signifying strength of spirit, determination, desire beyond reason.

  She realised the old dame was her, of course. Soon she would spy a hag.

  Kenelm’s compass told him he would receive a blow, a bereavement perhaps. He thought of Thomas Allen, and crossed himself.

  Venetia twisted a curl around her finger and pulled on it too hard. When she was low, all she had was self-hatred, and she could charm no one, do nothing, be nowhere. She heard the music slowing, and only an act of will could speed it up again.

  To stay ourselves, we need to change.

  Face-down, she buried her head in the silken pillow, faintly mildewed from being shut up so long while Kenelm was away. She pledged this to herself: she was resolved.

  In the forest at Gayhurst, an owl hooted. Out in the middle of the wine-dark ocean, the tide turned.

  She sat up, and she went to her closet, and she took out the cork-stoppered bottle filled with wet rubies, black-red coagulate that glowed as she held it up to the candle. Her throat pulsed as she shut her eyes and drank.

  ‘For thine is the kingdom,’ said Kenelm, practising the unaccustomed Protestant version of the prayer for the first time. ‘For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory. For ever, and ever . . .’

  ‘Amen,’ gasped Venetia, putting down the empty vial.

  From that instant, time galloped on apace.

  ‘Everything flows, and nothing stands still.’

  Heraclitus, 535BC–475BC

  They began, as we all do, as tiny seedlings. Naught but little weedy shrubs. When the Digbys took up residence in Charterhouse Precinct that summer, Kenelm drew up a new design for a parterre in the garden, pegged out with string and planted with sixty tender seedlings.

  Kenelm obtained letters recommending himself and sent them to the new lord high admiral, the rear admiral, the captain of the fleet, the naval high commissioner and the chief petty officer. He petitioned the lord high admiral in person at Westminster. He wore out three nibs with letters of enquiry.

  The seedlings were soon a foot tall, green and shrub-like, apart from two of them, which had been dug up by dogs.

  At Rotherhithe the embroiderers’ needles flew, stitching flowers and insects into a counterpane for Venetia’s bed.

  Father Dell’Mascere and Chater enjoyed many conversations on the subject of Purgatory. A bridlepath from Charterhouse Precinct led to St Giles Cripplegate, green grass all the way, and Chater and his friend idled there often. They walked close, and each time their shoulders brushed, Chater burned with happiness.

  The seedlings thickened and their trunks grew silvery.

  One week Lancelot Choice sent a small case to the house marked MULBERRIES, the next ABRICOTS. Their hidden fruit: seven glowing vials.

  Baby John tottered about the garden, reaching up to tug the leaves off the shrubs, and trying to eat them.

  Venetia published a pamphlet edition of her Thoughts and Notions (composed by Chater). While staying away from religion by necessity, it offered pious advice on fasting, household management and marital love. She distributed copies amongst her friends, at their church, and at Powles churchyard, where they were sold for a penny each, as alms for the sick of the Capuchin monastery at St Malo. The title was A Mirrour for a Modest Wife.

  Kenelm still heard nothing from the admiralty.

  Half the shrubs began to be tinged with autumn colours.

  A scrawled letter arrived for Venetia, calling her a Catholic whore who spake the Bible with an unclean tongue. Kenelm took it from her trembling hand, and threw it on the fire.

  A black sheep was shorn, out of season, giving its dark thread to finish Venetia’s bed hangings, and butchered the next day.

  Kenelm noticed Venetia’s teeth were staining red. She said something about beet-root. Young Kenelm was wrapped up and taken out to ride his own pony for the first time. Street-boys hawked hods of stenchful manure, which the gardener bought to thickly fertilise the shrubs.

  Kenelm took his first Protestant communion at Whitehall, while Chater and Venetia observed mass at home. They spent a quiet day together play-gardening, re-potting the mulberry bushes before the frosts came.

  Outside, the shrubs were well-established, knee-high and healthy.

  That night, when their bedcurtains were drawn, Venetia’s lips were cold when they touched Kenelm’s ear, his new Protestant ear, and his cheek. ‘What if . . .?’ she said. ‘What if one of us should sterve?’

  She used the old word, out of superstition.

  ‘Would we be separated?’

  ‘Never,’ whispered Kenelm. ‘We both have our health, pray God, and this is a peaceful country. We shall be reconciled in our faiths one way or the other soon enough. Either you will join me, or I you. It is’ – he shut his eyes – ‘all to the best, I do believe.’

  She wanted to know which was the True Faith, and which Expedient, but he would only repeat that Mercury had their souls in his keeping.

  In the morning, standing at their window overlooking the flowerbeds, you could finally see the purpose of Digby’s design. The shrubs had grown and been trimmed enough so that from above, they looked like a fleet of ships. Tawny copper beech leaves were the ships’ boughs, and dark winter grass their sails, and they sailed upon a sea of hyssop. There were three of them, in reference to the fleet Kenelm had guided home, and they were flanked by an Arch of Destiny, fashioned from quickset bound in willow, from whence the garden path led either to the compost heap or to the Terrace of Honour.

  Venetia entertained three wives of Naval commanders, who came to sit with her and eat an Autumn salat. The garden was festival-bright, the leaves scalded yellow and pink. Venetia wished that women’s hair could turn scarlet and orange with the seasons instead of fading into discolour.

  Kenelm took his oath of allegiance at Trinity House, and received a royal warrant commanding him to become a Commissioner of the Navy, and he started going to Greenwich every day.

  PEAPODS and SWEET PIPPINS and NUTMEG – every week Lancelot Choice sent the vials under a new name, and they were taken up to Venetia’s room by habit.

  Ben Jonson’s latest poems were circulating the court, and Venetia was lent a copy by Penelope, who liked it no more than a shrug. Venetia took it upstairs and read it with growing dismay. It was a paean of praise to the Countess of Bedford, which was not in itself a crime, except that it was so badly written.

  ‘My Muse bad Bedford write, and that was She!’

  Venetia read and reread, trying to find a subtle game or satire. Nothing. His style was cloying and glib. It was flattery, shameless and venal. He was writing for money – even the rhymes were terrible. It was as if he wanted people to know he was not trying. There was a word for this – yes, doggerel. Here was Poet turned Poetaster.

  ‘The Humble Petition of Poore Ben, To Th’ Best of Monarchs’ – she was not even going to read that one. She wanted to slap him into sense, and she raised her arm to hurl the book across the room, but did not throw it. The book did not belong to her. She growled with fury instead. This deathless poet, this immortal bard. He should drink a potion for the rejuvenation of his wits.

  The meadow and bridleway between Charterhouse and Cripplegate was now full of half-built houses, donkeys and shouting builders, and Father Dell’Mascere and Chater could linger there no more.

  At night, Chater slapped himself in the face until he bled, scratched by his finger ring. He had been advised in his youth that this was the best way to subdue the devil in his thoughts. He dared to hope that Father Dell’Mascere was hurting himself in the same fashion, while thinking of Chater.

  Venetia slept soundly under the deep white s
nowdrift of her new winter coverlet, sewn in black embroidery with flies, and bees, and flowers. She slept a great deal, and dreamed that she was sleeping.

  After drinking her Viper Wine one evening, she forgot to put away the empty vial, but Kenelm did not notice it.

  One morning she awoke feeling as bright and quick as when she was a girl. She touched her skin and found it plump. She looked down at her hands, and saw the liver spots had blanched away. The veins were flat and smooth, the fingertips plump again. She hurried like a child to the window in her nightshirt, and looking down upon her winter garden, she saw that the flotilla of shrubs, and the Arches of Destiny and Honour, had become nothing but bare blackened sticks.

  MY NAME IS MARY TREE

  MY NAME IS Mary Tree, and I am on my way to the biggest city I can think of, which is Totnes. I have been walking these two days and I have not yet eaten my cheese, though I have oft been tempted. It is beautiful marching weather and I have seen a great flock of starlings moving like a blanket being shook. I have also seen a dead crow, but I will tell you no more of that. Starting with ‘Green Grow the Rushes, O!’ I have been singing all the songs I know by heart, except in the early evening when mites of the air fly in my mouth, so I keep it closed. Sometimes I skip contrariwards, so I can see the sun as it sets at my back. I have seen no goblins.

  And then I remember my strange and mortal purpose and the thing I am carrying, strung from my shoulder in its purse. It is the dagger-shaped shard of glass that cut Master Richard, bound in the bloodied linen of his garter. And when I think of poor Master Richard, and how his lips turned quite white, I tread faster, my skirts draggled dark with grass-juice, and the shard bounces off my shoulder, like someone chiding me to be quick.

  My mother being called to Heaven when I was eight years old, I was sent to live with her kinswoman by marriage, my late uncle’s wife, Lady Pickett, at her family’s estate named Endcote Early. There I learned all manner of useful habits, how to darn and pluck and bake and carry and how to not be seen while doing any of these things, since the seeing of me put My Lady on her nerves. At first she would hold her fan before her eyes rather than look at me, possibly on account of my Mark.