Falstaff

by Robert Nye

  The drawback to your rat, as household pet, is its fecundity. Rats are deliciously prolific. A mere lick and the female conceives. Desdemona bears four or five times in the year – the fathers being rats of the castle, plausive adulterate beasts, villains, democrats, lacking her finesse, skulkers in the towers and oast houses. A usual litter is from four to ten. They come blind and bald and lecherous into the world, these wretched creatures, their tongues hanging out and with testicles like little green tomatoes. Left to their own devices they would be breeding among themselves at an age of about six months. I see to it that they are not left to their own devices.

  My Desdemona has a shrewish nose, her only blot. Otherwise she is a handsome royal rat. Her tail is scaly. It stings me as she runs, for she flicks it from side to side as she scampers down my one leg and up the other. Her teeth are white and smooth and narrow, her eyes and her ears large. I have seen clumsy rats, mere spiny mice, squat web-foot things. Desdemona is not like that.

  I feed her on cheeses and second-best wines.

  Wine is warming.

  Wine is the sun.

  Avoid all water. Twice in my life, I didn’t. Grr, Grr, Grrrrrrrr! I had occasion once to drink a cross section of the River Thames.

  My belly was as cold as if I’d swallowed snowballs for pills.

  Another time I drank a mouth of Dead Sea water. That was when I was on my pilgrimage in the Holy Land. It was the most bitter thing I ever tasted – like a mouthful of piss and myrrh. That water is foul because of the five cities sunk in it. Sodom. Gomorrah. Aldama. Seboym. Segor. All were submerged on account of sodomy. Segor lasted seven years longer than the others, thanks to Lot, and being set upon a hill. When the water is clear you can see the roofs and towers. They told me no man could drink of the Dead Sea, because it was so bitter. I have sipped of it. I live to tell the tale. How? There’s an essential honey in my nature, that’s how – my tongue can suffer warping and unnatural elements without harm. I have also eaten the fruit of the trees that grow beside the Dead Sea. There are red apples there, as red as any roses. Bite them or break them, cut them in two: their cores are cinders. The Dead Sea land is all miracles. I saw a man once cast an iron anchor in the water there. It floated. Another dropped a feather, and it sank. These things are against kind – like the sin of Sodom. The Dead Sea tastes perverse.

  O Desdemona. Desdemona.

  The Seven Sacraments are these:

  Matrimonium, Baptismus, Ordo, Sancta Eucharista, Penitencia, Confirmacio, Unccio summa.

  That is, to say, in plain English: Marriage, Baptism, Ordination, Holy Eucharist, Penitence, Confirmation, and Supreme Unction.

  The Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit are as follows:

  Sapiencie, Intelligencie, Consilii, Fortitudinis, Sciencie, Pietatis, Timoris Dei, collige dona!

  These gifts are not to be translated into English. The Devil take those who have not learnt by my age to translate them for themselves, and the young must go elsewhere for instruction than to an old man celebrating his belly by drowsing over a cup of hot wine beside the fire on a cold April night.

  Chapter Twelve

  About an indignity suffered by Sir John Fastolf at the hands of the Duchess of Norfolk

  11th April

  When I was a few farts more than twelve years old I went to be page to Thomas Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk. He was a tight-arsed, big-eared bastard, as slippery as they come. I could have told you some of this right then, although if you had been King Richard II you would not have believed me until the sod had smothered your uncle with a feather bed, and needed bloody banishing. A point to remember about King Richard is that he never realised anything about anyone until he had bloody banished them. Out of sight, into his mind. He lived at one remove from the throne, the world, himself. Until he had been to the shithouse, he couldn’t believe in his dinner. The royal shithouse.

  As for Mowbray, he died in Venice on Holy-rood Day the same year John of Gaunt got his – running upstairs to pack his bags for a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. He certainly needed it. At the time when I was in his service his thoughts never turned in such devout directions. He had been blessed with the title of Earl Marshal of England for arseholes rendered. He was a man on top of the bent world.

  The Devil goes nutting on Holy-rood Day.

  My life in Mowbray’s service was not hard. It consisted of a kind of fostering. Being made page in a great household was supposed to prepare you for entry to court circles later on. I daresay the preparation lay in listening to the conversation of one’s betters, and in learning what to lick and where to crawl.

  Mowbray himself was a little slit-lipped twat, with a spiky beard like a thrush’s, which he was forever tugging into a twist while he sat trying to think of something to say. As he never could, or did, I hardly picked up the art of conversation from him. I daresay his tongue wagged hard enough behind the arras when he was doing his plotting with his brother-in-law, the Earl of Arundel, and other conspirators. In the end his tongue was his undoing when he rode up to London from Brentford in company with Bolingbroke (later King Henry IV) and chatted treason all the way, according to the written account of the conversation which Bolingbroke duly gave to Richard. Chaps with nothing to say generally are prone to say too much in particular. And Mowbray’s particular was treason – he had no other hobbies.

  You don’t talk treason to boy pages. Whenever I saw Mowbray he seemed to be suffering from verbal constipation. He’d sit with his eyes screwed shut and furrows in his forehead, muttering ifs and buts and noes, now and again opening his eyes and his gob to spit in the fire and polish his Earl Marshal of England badge.

  His wife Elizabeth, the Duchess, was another matter. After I fried the Duke’s goldfish by mistake, she made something of a favourite of me, and had me wait upon her in her rosy bower. She taught me to play upon the lute, and how to dance. She taught me the usage of courts, which is to say courtesy. Courtesy came from heaven, in the first place, when the angel Gabriel greeted our Lady, Ave Maria gratia plena. All other virtues are contained in it.

  My lady Elizabeth taught me much else. Her husband, the Duke, being so preoccupied about his plots and treasons, kidnapping someone here, putting pressure there on some rival lordling of King Richard’s, she had fallen into a state of marital neglect by the time I came to serve her. I was a dreamy boy, only half-aware of a difference between the inside of my head and the world outside. Absence from the green fields of Caister, the Hundred River, and my mother and my father, made me unhappy for a while.

  ‘Look, girls, how deliciously melancholy the droop of this mannikin’s lower lip,’ the Lady Elizabeth would say, turning me about by the shoulders for the benefit of her attendants. ‘Regard also his left eyelid, with that creamy fold of flesh, and the lash that is, I swear it, longer and softer than mine.’

  Then she used to twirl me about on my heels, spinning me like a top, while they all giggled and I felt dizzy.

  There is nothing in this world as dangerous as the bored young wife of a rich and powerful man. While Mowbray gnawed his tongue and twisted his beard, plotting and counter-plotting, most certainly unconscious of the existence of one small Fastolf among the chapter of pages in his household, his wife the Lady Elizabeth took it into her head to have sport with me. At first this desire was shown only in teasings in her talk, or by sometimes pinching my cheek or my bottom as I stood by her, or by the playing of her long hand in my hair.

  But these were mere pricking preludes.

  One night in summer, the Duke away in Ireland on the King’s business and his own advancement, I was brought abruptly to face with the great heat of her imagination. At that tender age, I daresay I was surprised. I cannot now swear for certain one way or the other. Life has taught me never to be surprised at what men do on the battlefield or women in the bedroom.

  ‘His nose is wet. The truth, boy. Isn’t it the prospect of my ladies in waiting which makes you hot?’

  We were in her bed chamber. There were si
x of her ladies with us. She sat by the glass where two of them brushed her hair. I was at her feet, picking out a new tune on the lute. Two of the maids were turning down the covers on her bed.

  ‘Cat got your tongue?’ She prodded my side with her slippered foot.

  I muttered something. About the evening being close. About the fact that there was thunder in the air.

  The Duchess stared at me. Her eyes were green and hot. Her face was a pale and perfect oval, with high cheekbones. ‘The night makes him throb,’ she said. ‘Girls, I think he needs a good wash to cool him down …’

  Judging from the swiftness with which a bowl of water was produced, this conversation had already been planned by my mistress and her maids. The Duchess of Norfolk was showing that she had picked up a thing or two about plotting from her husband.

  I struggled and kicked. But it was no use. Two of the girls held my arms while another pulled off my tunic and a fourth splashed water in my face. They were merry girls, and they tickled me under the arms and down my neck. I was always susceptible to tickling.

  ‘Bring him here!’ said the Duchess.

  I was brought to stand before her. The two prettiest girls were still engaged in the brushing of her hair. They stopped and their eyes went wide when my mistress put her fingers in my doublet.

  ‘Now then,’ she whispered, ‘let’s see if our little man needs our attentions anywhere else.’

  It still seemed like a game. Deftly, she unpicked my doublet. Her fingers touched my cock. I kicked out.

  ‘Strip him!’ hissed the Duchess.

  Two of the girls held my arms, another two pushed me down on my back. One of them then sat astride my head – my face buried in her clothes – while half a dozen eager hands vied with each other in pulling down my hose. When I was quite naked I was allowed to stand again. The girls were flushed from their exertions. The Duchess sat quiet in her chair, fingering a fan. Her green eyes flickered up and down my person. I was on the edge of tears. I clenched my fists, determined not to cry.

  A fly was in the basin. Bzzzzzz. Interminable music. Bzzzzzz. At last the Duchess spoke: ‘Portia, Rosalind – wash him properly!’

  The two girls of the hairdressing went down on their knees and addressed themselves to my private parts. They used sponges and cold water. They scrubbed me with extreme thoroughness, front and back. Their hands were gentle, but very efficient. They said nothing while they worked, but their breath came faster and faster. For my part, I gave up struggling and let them have their way. It is sweet to have your most intimate toilet performed by two lovely girls, while four others crowd round you, and your mistress sits looking on. I could not see what the Duchess thought of the reaction of my prick to the ministrations of her handmaidens, because she kept her fan across the lower half of her face. But I noticed that her eyes never strayed or swerved from the area of the washing. She spoke again just once. ‘Warm rose-water,’ she ordered, and the girls sprinkled me with it on the instant. Delicious.

  It may be heretical, but sometimes when I have tried to picture what Paradise will be like, I have remembered that washing. The comparison is imperfect, for the washing had to come to an end, whereas we know that the joys of eternity will not. I was certainly unprepared for the manner in which the washing was to end, although I should have been able to foretell it.

  ‘Bring him to me,’ said the Duchess.

  I was taken and held before her, my arms twisted behind my back.

  ‘Such a pretty little page,’ said the Duchess. ‘Such a pretty little, dainty little, lovely little page. What do you think we should do with him, girls?’

  The ladies of the bedchamber offered various suggestions. Two of them wanted to milk me – they reckoned it was good for the complexion. One of them proposed that for sport I should be made to perform the Duke’s office with his wife, while they watched. Others said I was too young for that, but not too young to be used in bed by all of them as a warmer. I didn’t understand a half of the proposals – but the bits which I did understand brought a blush to my cheeks.

  ‘See how she blushes,’ said the Duchess. ‘She really is an innocent.’

  Portia who had washed me gave my bottom a stinging slap with the flat of her hand. ‘Hardly a she, my lady,’ she laughed.

  ‘Not with that!’ said her friend Rosalind, pointing.

  ‘What?’ said a third.

  ‘This!’ said Rosalind, grabbing at what she had lately washed. The stirring of my sappy little member evidently fascinated the girl. Her grip was hard. I squealed. They crowded round –

  ‘Let go!’ the Duchess ordered.

  They all fell back.

  The Duchess did not touch me. She was so close, though, that I felt her breath hot on my quivering flesh.

  ‘Far too pretty to be a boy,’ she whispered. ‘Tell me, little Fastolf, how would you like to be a girl?’

  I shook my head. I could think of no reply.

  ‘As dumb as my lord the Duke,’ observed the lady Elizabeth. ‘Never mind. Perhaps she’s shy? Perhaps she’ll feel better with her clothes on?’

  I must have nodded my head at that.

  ‘Very well, then,’ said the Duchess. ‘Portia, Rosalind, Celia – dress our new lady of the bedchamber!’

  At last I realised what my mistress wanted. A dozen hands seized me and dragged me kicking and swearing and spitting to the closet. A scarlet gown, a collar of minever, various silken undergarments were applied to my person. I know no other verb for it. I fought to reject them – but there is no rejecting six determined young ladies with their minds set on one end. When they had finished dressing me my skin must have been covered in scratches under the scarlet dress.

  The Duchess of Norfolk clapped her hands.

  ‘A woman’s face,’ she said, ‘with nature’s own hand painted!’

  My face, I know, was red as my apparel. The girls laughed.

  ‘No more laughing!’ said the Duchess. She took three strides across the room and spun me round in her hands. ‘Now, girls, I want you to meet your new companion. This is Joan Fastolf. Joan is my new maid. She has come to wait upon me. Joan will be dealing with my most intimate requirements.’

  And then the six ladies in waiting had to take it in turns to curtsey to me, and I to them, awkwardly, all under the direction of the hot and not-to-be-resisted imagination of this same Elizabeth, Duchess of Norfolk. Nor did the masquerade end with that. It was my lady Norfolk’s pleasure to keep me thus captive and caparisoned as a girl for three whole years. My boy’s clothes were removed and I was not allowed access to them. Instead, I had to wear a gown at all times, and women’s shoes and stockings. And I had to dance attendance on the Duchess every minute, day and night, behaving without fail in a manner that befitted my changed gender and condition. If I once threatened to betray my sex by catching up my skirts and striding, or in any lesser manner, I was given a poke in the balls or a wicked sharp pinch by one or other of that unholy six who knew who I was and what had been forced upon me. As for the other members of the household – no doubt those who turned their minds to it wondered where little Jack Fastolf had gone, but in the vast household of an ambitious political animal there cannot have been many who bothered to turn their minds in any such direction. My worst moments came when queer gentlemen of the court came visiting, favouring me with beastly interested looks as I passed, tripping along untidily in my skirts and slippers. But for the most part I was ignored save by the six ladies in waiting, and by the Duchess herself.

  She came eventually to profess herself pleased with me in my new role. She let me eat from her table, and brush her hair in company with either Portia or Rosalind, and assist her in her dressing and undressing. So you see I discovered compensations in being a girl, although truth to tell my proximity to the person of my mistress never exceeded that of her other ladies in waiting. She seemed satisfied by my transformation or transmutation, and did not touch or fondle me more than she would any of her truly female retainers. My pleasu
re was in being admitted to intimacies which most men only dream of. I attended my mistress in the bedroom, in her dressing chamber, and at her toilet. I slept in a dormitory with the other girls, and had innumerable opportunities for observing them half-dressed, half-undressed, or the latter entirely, for they quickly came to forget who or rather what I really was, though I believe some took a cruel delight in provoking me.

  At first, at night, lying close between two girlish bodies softer and bigger than my own, half-fearful of falling asleep lest one or the other of them should take it into her head to toss me off, I’d comfort myself towards sleep with the thought that the great Achilles had suffered such a fate as this. I remembered his story from the lips of my tutor Ravenstone – how as a boy he had been compelled to live among women, where he assumed a name which no one knew, and where he remained for seven years in bondage. But after a while I accepted my own condition without heroic comparison, and then grew reconciled to it, and to feeling either Rosalind or Portia or both of them together groping for me in their sleep. It was my first education in the ways of women.

  Of course I lived in a state of half-arousal all the time, from the nearness to so many female bodies, and especially from my intimacy with the lady Elizabeth, who had me nearly always to hand. Yet she never suffered to touch me other than she touched Portia and Celia and the others, as I have explained, and looking back on that curious time now – it is like a long, sugary summer dream! – from the wisdom of age, I hazard the guess that having trapped and contained me in female garb and reduced the burgeoning and inadequate threat of my tiny manhood, she was well content to leave things at that. Her pleasure was in seeing me so daintily emasculate, and having me stand by impotent at moments when it was most piquant to her to feel my impotency there. Thus, once I was in womanish apparel there was no longer any of the horseplay which she had allowed her ladies to inflict upon me in the evening of my change. You hardened lovers who read this will find my reaction difficult to understand, but I advise you only to remember your own fear and confusion when you were boys and inexperienced – anyway, I was glad of my lady Elizabeth’s cool, established temper towards me, and found that I could better enjoy the strange and silken dream of my being a girl in her service because I was now aware that she did not intend to press me into odder intimacies.