Margaret the First

by Danielle Dutton

  In bed that night, she won’t be sure what she said next. She’ll remember how the cloud of birds rose up over the trees. It begins as in a dream, she might have said. Then the cloud broke up and found itself again. But thing must follow thing. She must put her thoughts in order. I pray, she might have said, that if any professors of learning and art should humble themselves to read it, or even any part of it, I pray they will consider my sex and breeding, and will fully excuse those faults which must unavoidably be found . . .

  “It starts as in a dream,” she likely said, “with the abduction of a lady, stolen by a merchant seaman, taken to his ship and into a mighty storm. Next comes the death of the merchant and his men. For after that storm, the ship drifts not only to the pole of the world, but even to the pole of another, which joins close to the first, so that this cold, having a double strength at the conjunction of two poles, is insupportable. Too weak to throw their bodies over, the lady lives for days amid blueing flesh, kept alive by the light of her beauty and the heat of her youth as the ship floats across the fish-bright sea. Eventually, she and the vessel pass—mysteriously, unavoidably—into the other world, a world called the Blazing World, where cometlike stars make nights as bright as days. When at last the lady spies land, it glitters with fallen snow, and talking bears, up on two legs, are coming to her rescue. But she is unable to eat what the gentle bears offer, so the bears take her to Fox-men, who take her to Geese-men, who take her to Satyrs, who take her to meet the emperor of the land. They travel for days on a golden ship in a river of liquid crystal.”

  Then darkness fell, and John and Mary rose, but Margaret wasn’t tired. John and Mary curtsied, bowed. Margaret stayed and watched the moon wheel across the sky; she climbed the stairs; she lay upon the sheets.

  Might it have been more prudent, she thinks, lying there in the room, to have better explained the book’s more serious philosophical contemplation, for without it the other half no doubt sounds pure fancy and could be easily misunderstood? The night is hot and close. An owl calls in the woods. Margaret sleeps. And she dreams of that room without a mirror on Bow Street, and Robert Boyle asleep in the bed with her Blazing World on his lap, open to a passage about a golden hollow rock, which produces a medicinal gum, which causes a body to scab, which scab will open along the back and come off like a suit of armor.

  “Some believe I act as if drunk,” Margaret reports one night in early autumn, “as I stammer out words, or only pieces of the letters of words.” “You’re not so bad as that,” William replies, dipping bread in soup. A letter has come from London with most distressing news. It seems Mary Evelyn—“Was Deptford near to the fire?” he asks, but how should Margaret know—that Mary Evelyn has reported to her vast London acquaintance how Margaret’s “mien surpasses the imagination of the poets; her gracious bows, seasonable nods, courteous stretching out of her hands, twinkling of her eyes, and various gestures of approbation, show what may be expected from her discourse, which is as airy, empty, whimsical, and rambling as her books!” Evelyn himself, the letter writer maintains, came to Margaret’s defense, arguing that in the duchess’s body are housed together all the learned ladies of the age. “Never did I see a woman so full of herself,” countered Mary, “so amazingly vain and ambitious.” “Not that I should care what Mary Evelyn thinks,” Margaret says, pushing away her plate. I have made a world, she thinks, for which nobody should blame me.

  “Yet it’s true I am so often out of countenance,” she says, walking with William in the garden before bed, “as I not only pity myself, but others pity me, which is a condition I would not be in.” Despite her radished curls and pleasant curtsies, Mary Evelyn has called her masculine and vain!

  “My tongue runs fast and foolish,” she despairs the next day at tea, “so much, and fast, as none can understand.” In the sweet-smelling room, a pendulum clock: ping, ping, ping, ping. And looking across the table, she finds her husband grown old. No, only weary, she thinks, reaching for some toast. There have been so many disputes, and tenants unable to pay, and the draining of the marshes . . . “The truth is,” William suddenly says, “women should never speak more than to ask rational questions, or to give a discreet answer to a question asked of them. They ought,” he wipes his mouth, “to be sparing of speech, especially in company of men.” To which surprising rejoinder Margaret sits in silence, her throat blocked up with bread.

  The lady floats for days across a fish-bright sea. At least it isn’t putrid; the cold contains the smell. In the galley she finds a crate of pears and eats one right after another, on the floor beside a frozen boy, listening to bits of ice bump against the hull. She is strangely unafraid. Hadn’t she always longed for adventure, back at her father’s home?

  On the fifth night of this solitude, she falls asleep with a candle burning and dreams herself a mermaid with a thick and golden tail, a crown of shimmering conch shells, then awakens with a start. Whether the ship hit something or something hit the ship, another change has come. The ship is dying; she can feel it slipping away. She waits beneath the blanket for icy water to greet her. But instead of the sea, it’s a bear that opens the door.

  A great white bear up on its hind legs steps across the threshold.

  “Good morning,” he says, and reaches out a paw.

  “Is it morning?” she says, and stands, though this belies her shock. For here is a talking bear! And she clicks through stories she’s read or heard: seizing children in the night, yes, and claws and hunger. But, too, constellations. And in “East of the Sun and West of the Moon” the bear is a prince all along.

  “We must hurry,” says the bear.

  “Certainly,” she says. “Yes,” she covers herself with her arms, “the ship is sinking,” as though she’s only just realized, the floor of the cabin now swirling with water and small silver fish that bump against her toes. Still, she does not move.

  “Miss,” he says, more urgently now. But she only stands and stares. So he takes her in his enormous arms and rushes to the deck. The water rises around them, and from her perch she sees the sun has also risen—or rises, still—and at last breaks through the clouds that have surrounded the ship for days. The ice, too, is breaking up in all directions. The sea is itself again. She sees bodies stiffly bobbing. But the water and sunlight have raised the bear’s fur to a gleam. He is blinding: bright as snow in springtime. She shuts her eyes.

  “Where are we going?” she shouts above the waves and another noise—a shrieking. Is it the ship itself that cries?

  “There,” he says. He pants.

  She opens her eyes again to a rocky spit of beach, just beyond the prow. A dozen bears wave their paws at them and frown as if to say: Hurry, or We don’t think you’re going to make it, or All this trouble for a girl? A hole is opening, a sea-mouth fit to swallow them up. Is it the water, she wonders, that makes the terrible noise?

  “Hold on tight,” he shouts, so she holds him.

  She rides him to the shore, where he lumbers up on all fours, then sets her down and shakes. Seawater rains over her (the bear is nine feet tall, at least), and several of the silver fish slide out of his fur and gasp. The other bears surround them. They seem impressed, or else amused. One of them helps her to her feet. They sniff her, not impolitely. She can hardly think to stand with all the shrieking. She glances up at the sky and sees massive circling parrots—it is they who make the noise! The beach is sharply pebbled. The lady wears no shoes. The bears give off a musky, fishy smell. One of them offers a blanket made of fur, but not of bear. Sailors’ bodies dot the bay. She smells salt. She smells the musky bears, hears them softly discussing whether to pull the sailors to shore, whether or not to eat them. Yet, she is unafraid. If she shakes, she shakes now from the day, which she feels at last, her skin growing pale and blue in the insupportable cold.

  “Come,” says her rescuer, a warm paw on her back.

  Behind her, the ship has disappeared.

  “Silver, silver, silver!” a
maid shouts in the hall, and Margaret can hardly believe it, for when was the last time she went anywhere at all? Now the whole house prepares for departure, and the servants are talking of spoons. One room swirls with feather dusters and motes of dust in light—they must be alive, she thinks, for see how they are nourished by the presence of the sun—and maids are throwing linen over chairs.

  It’s off to London now, for Newcastle House in Clerkenwall has finally been regained. Or has it been repurchased? In any case, it’s William’s. He is anxious to see it, be in it again. It was built, he tells her, on the ruins of a nunnery, in the Palladian style, with thirty-five chimneys and views in all directions. He asks her what she hopes to do in the city. It’s been so long since she was there. The carriage bounces south. Toward Robert Hooke and Robert Boyle. Gresham College and public lectures. And that modest house Sir Charles rented in Covent Garden, where—so many years ago—she wrote her first book in a trance. “Shall you sit for a portrait?” William asks, but she hadn’t thought of that.

  Outside the carriage, England unrolls in reverse: first forest, then farmland, then softly rising downs. They stop at an inn. They stop beside a brook that’s fast with spring. It all looks the same, she thinks, if a brighter shade of green, since the last time she traveled this road it had been the end of summer. Or was it early fall? The following day, the traffic begins to grow. She sees carts of flowers and cabbages trundle toward the city. The farms turn to villages, the villages to town. There are even crowds along the roadside, trying to get a glimpse—of him? of her? she isn’t sure. William declares it right, pulls her back from the window: “You seem to forget we are now among the highest aristocrats in England. Let them watch the grandees pass.”

  At last the carriage stops.

  All she can see is a wall.

  She hears the horses panting, brushes a fly from her lap. As they sit together in the carriage warmth, her eyes begin to close. Scraps of vision from the past two days pass beneath her lids: the scattered trees and bluebells; the sun upon a hill; a small white house with a thick thatched roof and a dog who appeared above her head atop a garden wall. Her eyes are shut. She smiles. Is it happiness she feels? She is back in London, her Blazing World a triumph. It was just as William said. She had only to give it time. There was first that letter praising the sharpness of her wit. Then one about divine fury, enthusiasm, raptures. And in a single afternoon two letters came from Cambridge. The vice-chancellor called her an oracle. The Master of Fellows of Trinity College called her “Minerva and an Athens to herself.” Yes, there were others who never responded to the gift of a copy she sent. Still, she thinks. The horses shuffle. She sleeps.

  Then, with a clatter of gears, a gate is pulled open in the windowless façade, and they pass through to a courtyard, which leads to a reception hall, which leads to gardens behind. The walls enclose two acres, complete with an orchard ready to blossom and the ivied relics of the ancient cloister that formerly stood on the grounds. Margaret steps outside. She breathes the London air. But William calls to her, eager to lead the tour. Thus Margaret learns “Palladian” means “balance.” There are two symmetrical wings of the house, one built for the husband, one for the husband’s wife. Though when he had it built, of course, his wife was someone else. It’s this lady’s portrait, blue-eyed and yellow-haired, that hangs in Margaret’s rooms.

  Yet she is happy—is it happiness she feels?—as she places her things in the cupboards and drawers. Her quills, stockings, shoes. The room is dotted by porcelain figures. Punctuated, she thinks. She picks one up, puts it down. The former wife’s collection? Then opens a window to London bells and that green-silk scent of spring. And she sees now, here in this room, how badly she’d needed to leave. Impossible to perceive at Welbeck what one perceives in town. Or to perceive in London what one perceives anywhere else in the world. The rain in Paris, for example. Or the color of the cobblestones that run along the Scheldt. Of course, she thinks, a body cannot be in two places at one time. Might a mind? But no, she thinks. For when a body changes location, it changes its mind as well. She looks to the mirror. Her hair is graying, but her eyes are wide and green. On how many millions of occasions has she observed her own reflection? Tonight she sees that girl in the carriage so many years ago, en route to join the queen. Yet how hard it is to point to a moment. To say: There, in that moment, I changed. That night on the road to Oxford she felt she was plunging into life. The horses ran through the starry dark. And today, too. She closes the window. Everything comes together. The air is wet and sweet, and tiny star-shaped flowers creep across the lawn. She almost laughs as she unpacks a pair of gloves. I will call on dear Catherine in the morning, she thinks, and moves to sit on the canopied bed as Lucy hangs her gowns.

  They eat, undress, dress again, drive out into the city. The city is half black from the fire. Still, there is birdsong and laughter. Swine root in fishy water. Towers strain, bells peal. Someone cries for a girl called Doll Lane. The carriage takes a left. Then Charing Cross, then Wallingford House, then Royal Park and the new canal. At last they disembark and enter the Banqueting Hall together, William greeting familiar faces, Margaret in diamond earrings and a hat like a fox that froze. They’ve come to pay their respects to the king and his new queen—new, at least, to Margaret—and pass beneath enormous chandeliers, Margaret in a gown designed to look like the forest floor, like glittering yellow wood moss and starry wood anemone and deep-red Jew’s-ear bloom. It has a train like a river—so long it must be carried by a maid—yet hitches up in front, so she might walk with ease. Gone are the golden shoes with gold shoe-roses, just flat boots laced to her knees. Into the king’s reception chamber—dizzying carpets and glasses of wine half-drunk—where Margaret grandly bows, but there’s little chance to speak. Someone takes her arm. While William is left to speak with the king, Margaret is stewarded to the queen’s reception rooms, where Queen Catherine sits surrounded by her Spanish ladies and several snoring hounds. How unlike Henrietta Maria and the old court this new one is: this queen is pious, unpretty, and has miscarried four times. Margaret’s curtsey is solemn. Solemnly, she offers the queen a copy of her book. The queen is cold. Her ladies cold. “Are those Spanish dogs?” Margaret asks. She is not invited to cards.

  “I hate it here,” she says, climbing back into the carriage.

  “You’re far too easily flustered,” William says.

  In heavy rain they pass Arundel House, where the Royal Society—he’s just learned from Lord Brouncker—has been meeting since the streets near Gresham College were damaged in the fire.

  “Are you listening?” he asks.

  The city is black and glistens.

  A simple rule, which she should have remembered. “The most preposterous sort of ceremony,” she says. For only the woman of highest rank is allowed a female train-bearer, yet Margaret has just presented herself to the queen in a train so long her train-bearer still stood out in the hall.

  “An error,” William says. “I’ll apologize to His Majesty myself. You are simply out of practice. It’s been nearly seven years. No need to make a fuss. There’s no need to be always getting so upset.”

  They turn up Chancery Lane.

  “Take Brouncker’s wife,” he offers. “A very amiable girl. One always finds—”

  “At dinner tomorrow,” Margaret says, “I will be entirely pleasant, you will see. I will limit my conversation to three topics: rain, Chinese silks, and the stage.”

  But the following afternoon, William hears her telling their guests that if the schools do not retire Aristotle and read Margaret, Duchess of Newcastle, they do her wrong and deserve to be abolished.

  She sits with Flecknoe amid the porcelain figures and sips her cooling tea. It’s true she’s being spoken of. “The general air,” he fears, “is sympathy for the queen. For they say your slight was intended, and you must have seen her pitiful face, and surely you’ve heard . . .”

  But Margaret’s mind is like a ball of st
ring. It’s just the same, she thinks. Nothing ever changes. And outside, it is spring. The orchard is in blossom. She rises to the window, sees the blooms on trees like constellations, the bees like tiny voyagers between the orchard’s many worlds.

  “. . . her miscarriages,” he whispers.

  “But I cannot be sweet Lady Brouncker!” she blurts.

  Now Flecknoe is quiet, and Margaret is sorry, for he only means to help.

  “I should not have come to London.”

  “Nonsense!” he cries. “We must simply present you anew. Give them something else to rattle about. Une petite soirée, perhaps? Here in Newcastle House?” He unfolds into the room. “Surely the duke will agree,” he says. “Is the duke at home?”

  But no, the duke is out.

  At suppertime, he comes. “Where have you been?” Margaret asks. But William only suggests they take their supper outside. After a plate of beef and two glasses of beer, he finally smiles and speaks. “I have written a play,” he says. She nearly drops her fork. “The Humorous Lovers,” he tells her. But they always share their work. “Opening night is in nine days. At Lincoln’s Inn Fields. At eight.” It’s to be staged anonymously, since now he is a duke. “You may order a new gown,” he says. He is eager, she can see. He kisses her on the forehead and tells her, “Everyone will come.”

  She is worried there’s something she left behind. She has her mask, her gown. The femme forte, she’d explained to the seamstress. And so the dress, like an Amazon’s, is all simple drapes and folds. Now she crosses Fleet River, her head held very straight. The water flashes in ropes, in shapes. Under the shadow of chestnut trees she stops to adjust her mask. There are others also dressed and moving toward the theater. A black glass bead in the back of her mouth holds the mask in place. She has never worn a mask before. She tries not to gag on the bead.