Viper Wine

by Hermione Eyre

  A spring morning dawned, shared by all those who happened to be alive at the same time as one another, that unwitting complicity that means everything and nothing, and goes unnoticed, or glimpsed by historians or curious novelists. In Italy, Kenelm woke with a start on the side of his mountain. In Rome, Athanasius Kircher was up early, working on his Polygraphia Nova, a universal artificial language that was not yet a failure. In Amsterdam, Rembrandt felt the heavy coin of his first princely commission, and knew it would be enough for him to offer marriage. In Fleet Street, Samuel Pepys was kissed and held aloft in his swaddling by his father, for he was one month old that day, according to his wet-nurse Goody Lawrence. In Cambridgeshire, Oliver Cromwell, newly married, taking his morning contemplation in the Fens, heard God’s voice in the croaking of a bullfrog: ‘Repent, repent.’

  In the Whitehall Palace gardens, Venetia was tiptoeing along the Avenue of Limes, playing hide-and-seek with Queen Henrietta-Maria. The early golden sunshine and the shadows of the trees striated the path, and in the deep shadow, she noticed a gardener was hiding with a rake and a wheelbarrow behind a tree, not as part of the game but out of deference to it. She could not bestow a smile on him, or her face might break from its tightness.

  Before her, up the path, she heard a giggle from behind a tree and saw a flash of the Queen’s holy body darting away, towards the parterre. Venetia gave chase, tripping daintily in her cork-soled platform shoes over the gravel, elated to have been chosen by the Queen to join her after mass as a sportful companion for her recreations. She only chose pretty companions.

  Today Venetia had shown herself unveiled in the Great Hall for the first time since her Infusions. Lucy Bright kept away, on the other side of the hall, even though she must have seen her. Venetia tried not to think about what this meant. Ben Jonson was another one whose gaze she feared; his Discriminating Eye. He made it his business to know about all the minutiae of life, alchemists’ receipts, and shopkeepers’ books, and soldiers’ slang, and he took a particular interest in great ladies’ Improvements, and she was half expecting him to re-work one of his old satiric poems for her –

  ‘Ah, Venetia, here she is, busy distilling her husband’s land / Into decoctions, and in her chamber manned / By ten Physicians, lying about the spirit of amber, oyle of talc . . .’

  But instead of teasing her, he fell quiet and stared at her, taking in the new uneven, puffery of her face and eyes, the stiffness of it. ‘The ambitious faces of the time . . .’ he muttered, quoting himself as usual. ‘The more they paint, are the less themselves.’ The beauty he had so long ago desired – loved without hope – had now destroyed itself. He always thought her so royally assured of her own perfections, but he saw in her wounded face how vulnerable she had become.

  It would be kind to flatter her, and more than that, it was expedient. The venality in his soul stirred as he saw an opportunity. Sir Kenelm was master of three thousand a year.

  ‘I shall write a poem celebrating your new blooming beauty, lady, which has a turn of the Orient about it, I believe. “Matchless, Unusual, Oriental Shee . . .”’

  So pleased by this was Venetia, so keen to take it as her due, she forgot to consider the fact that, since the fire that consumed his house, Ben was almost destitute, with a dwindling list of patrons. Before they parted, he lowered his black-clad bulk towards her, whispered ‘Matchless’ in her ear, and puckered his slack lips, depositing upon her cheek a Judas kiss.

  As she tiptoed along the gravel of the Queen’s garden, in and out of the sunshine, she cried out with surprise as a warlike tot ambushed her from the laurel bushes, growling, ‘Avast!’

  It was Jeffery Hudson, Lord Minimus so-called, his toy rapier glinting in the sunshine.

  ‘Pass ye not this way, Her Majesty goes!’

  He was out of breath and his voice was penetratingly pitched, low and high at once. The feathers of his hat, perched on his head, were about level with Venetia’s waist. He pretended to regret his fierce approach, and mimed sheathing his sword with decorous chivalry.

  ‘I do not mean to alarm you with my swordplay, lady,’ he said, bowing. ‘I have but lately been released from the clutches of Pirates in the Channel, so my manners are grown rough, rough, hee hee!’

  Everything about Jeffrey Hudson’s manner was contrived, as if he were constantly acting. He made his anger and his griefs or longings especially funny, and he knew it; he played his passions for his public. His mode of address was always mock heroic. When he spoke of Pirates, he was not lying. When the Queen was first with child he was sent, along with others of her retinue, to fetch her favourite nurse and midwife; the party was detained on its way home by Corsairs, and the Queen had all her retinue wear black until their safe return. Jeffrey Hudson was the Queen’s favourite curiosity, and his archness was the making of him, and yet, since he lost so much of his soul withal, it was also his undoing.

  ‘Shall we onwards together, my lady, and I protect ye along the way?’

  Trotting over the lawn in pursuit of the Queen, the pair of them came upon a stone pilaster, topped with a curious beast. Sitting on its haunches cleaning its tail, shivering gently and chattering to itself, was Pug, the Queen’s monkey. Venetia had heard of this creature but never seen it. She noticed it was balding in places, and as it looked at her with comprehending wet black eyes, she thought it was the loneliest-looking creature she had ever seen.

  ‘There, there,’ she said, reaching to stroke its pink and sable head.

  Pug tried to bite her but all his teeth had been filed, so he only clamped her hand pathetically.

  ‘Naughty ape! You spiteful singe!’ Jeffrey Hudson tried to discipline him, but Pug was just above his reach, and he made a show of swiping vainly.

  Pug scratched his head and then climbed into Venetia’s arms and buried himself under her throw, trembling.

  The three of them moved on towards the Orangery, their shadows exaggerated over the grass. The vast baroque fountain, which the Queen had lately had shipped from France, gurgled merrily, calling them across the garden, and feeling the compulsion, the necessity to be playful, Venetia, the monkey and the dwarf darted around opposite sides of it, the better to surprise the Queen. The low sun caressed the curves of the Nereids in the fountain, and turned the grotesque sea-monsters around them into even more frightful creatures; the rough-sculpted rocks rose out of the waters, pitted and misshapen, while the Nereids posed upon them, waxy-smooth and wave-tressed.

  Gargoyled by the cruel sunlight, Venetia peeped out from her hiding spot beside the fountain, looking for the Queen, whom she thought must be behind the box-tree hedge. Setting Pug free to dance around her in circles, she tottered forward in her platforms. Jeffrey Hudson followed, roaring and waving his cutlass. Their shadows stretched like caricatures across the grass. A giant man, the Welsh porter new to the Queen’s retinue, stood up to join them from behind a box hedge, and stepped right over it, as easily as if it had been a doorstop.

  ‘What merry company,’ laughed the Queen, when she and her pale blonde lady-in-waiting Lily Hutchinson had finally been caught, squealing, at the centre of the box-hedge maze. ‘I wish the King could see us.’

  ‘I was quite afraid!’ said Lily.

  Just then, a court deputation appeared in the middle distance, coming out of a little door in the wall by the Orangery. English Chancellors in black, stockinged and spider-like, bearing papers and writing boxes, contended with a delegation of French Seneschals also moving along the narrow path. The Queen was trying to arrange Pug in the arms of Jeffrey Hudson, and Jeffrey Hudson in the arms of the giant, so they might make a teasing tableau, before she was interrupted by Sir Francis Knollys.

  ‘Your Majesty’s name has been bestowed upon a territory in the New World – it is to be known as –’ he referred to his parchment ‘– That is to say, the King has decreed that territory is to be known as “Maryland”.’

  The Queen clasped her hands together with delight, and made a gracious curtsey.
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  She is a Medici princess, and one of Anjou too, and yet she is pleased that a portion of lawless wild-scrub far away is named for her? Venetia was unimpressed. She saw a familiar figure lingering at the back of Sir Francis’s deputation: Penelope Knollys, wearing a neat white cap and collar, squinting in the sunshine, ill-at-ease in the Queen’s private gardens. Penelope would rather be at the gaming table, though no one knew it but Venetia. She made a curt sign to Venetia that indicated, with the eloquence of a well-used face, that she had seen her, that they would speak when they were able, and that relations between them were good enough, although they might have been better.

  A child with a posy for the Queen looked at Venetia too, but looking did not lead to liking. Crumpling its face, the child hid in Penelope’s skirts. It peeped out again with a fearful expression, to see if Venetia was still there. Its rosebud face bore the honest dismay everyone else concealed. Venetia only thought: What a badly brought-up little tenderling.

  When Venetia came close to them, after the Queen was taken in to sign papers, the child would not stop staring. Her little chin began to wobble, and when Venetia blew her a kiss, she panicked, and tried to run away. Penelope needed to send the child off with a nursemaid, for everyone’s sake.

  ‘Art well-tempered, dear?’ said Penelope, when the child was gone. She did not meet Venetia’s eyes, quite, but preferred to drop her gaze beyond her, avoiding looking her full in the face. Venetia put her unease down to the fact that they had not spoken for months – since their meeting in the Bourse.

  ‘I am full of delight, darling – I have been playing with the Queen and her intimates.’

  Penelope gave a little grimace. ‘Indeed.’

  As they talked of that and this and the other, the morning light reflected off the honey stone showed Venetia that Penelope’s complexion, though waffled by pox, was not bad at all. Penelope had not even attempted to hide it with paint; her self was its own sufficiency. Attracted to this solid quality that she so lacked, Venetia remembered, on the instant, that she still loved Penelope. Venetia offered her arm, and Penelope took it.

  ‘So you know that dear dog Standon who belongs to Edward Sackville – the piebald terrier.’

  Here we go, thought Venetia – Penelope’s confidences begin again. ‘Yes,’ she said wearily, and yet pleased to see her, and to talk inconsequentially. Besides, she remembered Standon, from the days when the Sackville brothers courted her – Standon with his rough pink tongue, constantly panting at her, flirting with her every bit as much as his master. He must be an old dog now.

  ‘To preserve his inheritance, he’s lately pupped with a bitch of good breeding. And do you know who was sent the best whelp of the litter? Only little Lettice.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Well, he’s a black-and-white brave boy with a good stern on him.’

  ‘And why should Dorset send such a one to Lettice?’

  ‘He’s courting her for marriage, I believe. Ever since the Queen’s masque where he was taken with her dancing.’

  ‘She did no dancing! Not on stage.’

  ‘Ever since then he comes to walk and talk with her daily. I’ve played the part of matron with them.’

  ‘He does not mind her prattle? He’s noticed she’s a bagpipe and a gabbler?’

  ‘He says her fresh ways have given him new life. He loves to hear her prating on, and laughs all the while, and strokes his beard. He says Lettice is the wittiest She in London. Talk of their marriage is not generally heard yet, but – I tell you in confidence – Lettice’s father has had word from Dorset.’

  The tightness in Venetia’s cheeks stung like lemon. She became aware, abruptly, of a sourness brewing in her mouth. The day’s bright light, and the crispness of the palace gardens, seemed to take on a hurtful edge. Venetia spoke in a low, jocund voice that did not become her: ‘It’s a sinful match, and sure to be barren, for Lettice’s mother was well-acquainted once with Dorset,’ she said.

  Penelope stopped where she stood, and disengaged her arm from Venetia’s.

  ‘Venice, that is vile gossip, and slander, and it is beneath you to repeat it.’

  Venetia knew that what she intimated was not true, and she also knew that there was enough reason in it to make it dangerous gossip: Lettice’s mother, Arabella, had been admired by Dorset. That was the end of the matter. But if it became the thing on everyone’s lips, it might be enough to stop the marriage, or at least put it in doubt. She looked at Pen with a naughty expression, trying to charm her out of being too cross.

  ‘I know I am bad, Pen, but you love me when I am bad.’

  ‘D’you know, I am dismayed by you, Venetia. A change has come upon you that I did not like to speak of, but since you begin this muckworm talk, I will tell it to you plainly, so I shall.’ Penelope was more angry than Venetia had expected. She was not given to shouting, and her speech had a quavering, pent-up quality, which Venetia had never seen in her before, except once, at the table, when Penelope was called for passing off a Tom and two Tibs as a Gleek, and she was indignantly innocent.

  ‘First, you have meddled with your face. I know not with what nor how, but you are now so far from the beauty you were born with, you are become one of the Queen’s menagerie of freaks – a grotesque. Yes. I saw you there today: the dwarf, the giant, the blackamoor, the monkey – and yourself, skipping for the Queen, as tame frights to set her beauty off—’

  ‘There was no blackamoor.’

  ‘I have not finished. She does not have you with her for love, but for sport. I tell you this as a friend: you do not look well. You are like a spiny fish before it squirts its poison, all puff’d up. And you are not sound.’ Penelope tapped her forehead. ‘Some quack has robbed you of yourself. Some youth-salve or unguent has filled you with bitter gall or malice, and it has begun to seep out of you, so the look of it is upon your face. I’ll say no more, for I do not wish to be merciless, but I tell you, you must mend yourself.’

  Penelope turned her back, and walked off down the cloister, towards the north of the palace. Venetia was too surprised to do anything else but watch her all the way she went, the stiff grey twill of her gown, the slight hobble in her walk. She gazed still, as she receded, and a group of court minstrels and musicians got in the way of her, playing a vulgar jig, and Venetia strained so she might see the last of her dear old Pen, and even as she turned the corridor, Venetia still hoped she might turn around and wave, or show some sign of forgiveness or retraction, before she was lost to her sight, and Venetia was left alone, cold and naked with self-knowledge.

  On the slope of the beast, Sir Kenelm took advantage of a slight sea-breeze to begin his ascent. It was early afternoon, and yet the sky was already growing dark, thickening with dust. A beetle ran to him over the shale and waved its pincers, begging for help, or raising alarm. Perhaps in consequence of solitude, Kenelm had taken to talking to himself of late, as he climbed: ‘Here’s a rooftile. There’s another. There were habitations here once, in the fertile valley below this mountain, but they are long gone, consumed by some violent force – the Magneticall Effluvium of Time itself, perhaps . . . There’s a flip-flop. A canister called “Kodak”. Here’s an ice-cream wrapper.’ He studied its faded writing nostalgically, reverentially. ‘Detritus from another age becomes precious. Displaced matter is dirt, but it is also treasure . . .’ He looked at the Cornetto wrapper, which after serving such a short and melting purpose had endured so many years in rewind.

  ‘Calypso Ice Cream – they have named it for the witch who trapped Odysseus and ravished him in a cave on Ogygia for seven years . . .’

  Beneath him, under centuries of ash, the private libraries, the faun-fountains, the frescoed villas – all were safely packed beneath the sod; unknown, but not undreamed of. The graffiti howled, the asphyxiated dogs rattled their chains, the people ran for their lives; the buried silence of the past deafened Sir Kenelm.

  He sighed and continued climbing the spine of this incalcitrant, growling mo
untain. As he rose higher, he seemed to provoke an even greater lowing in the belly of the ground beneath him. He had never climbed a mountain before – to do so was not yet fashionable – but one thing he had not expected was that it would be so loud.

  Venetia wrote a brief note to Choice saying that she renounced his services, and thanking him for his Compleat Discretion. She paused, breathed, ripped the letter up and rewrote it. She said she renounced his services for a time. Then she sent the note.

  Chater’s eyes stretched when Venetia told him she would need his help. He placed his hand faithfully across his chest, delighted to serve her. Since Sir Kenelm was gone abroad again, and Father Dell’Mascere had become so devoted to the choir, he was hers entirely, and he was inwardly agog to know what new barbarity or self-punishment she was planning, and what role he could possibly play in it.

  And yet all she seemed to want was the promise of his company. She told him she was taking to bed for thirty days and thirty nights, and she wanted him to read to her every day, and to have charge of the boys at their meal-times. He was to let no visitors nor correspondence pass into her chamber, and to see that thin potage and manchet bread were sent up, as they were all she would sup.

  ‘And a little brandy posset, I may have need of that.’

  At first Sir Kenelm thought it was another Expedition ahead of him, lighting fires. He called out ‘Hallooo’ and then remembered he was in Naples. ‘Buon giornooooo . . .’

  There was no reply but a hot and salty gust of sulphur, which hit him like a whip, and he realised the fires were globules of burning matter, spontaneously generated by the wind and rocks. No wonder the heat was growing more intense. This was a journey of some fascination. He felt as if he were observing a vast alchemical Work performed by God – the moment when the dragon’s sister puts forth her flux. He had drunk the last of his flasks, but what of it – onwards was the only way. He felt the mountain grumble its assent.