‘Hush, my sweet,’ I whispered. Muff made only a little whine in answer, and followed close on my heels as I stealthily trod my way to the backstairs, my arms stretched out for obstacles before me as in a game of blind man’s buff. Upon reaching the backstairs Muff moaned a little, knowing she was forbidden to descend them after an episode in which Eliza’s joint had gone missing from the sideboard, and Muff was suspected but never proved (her lack of interest in supper being held in very great suspicion). I scratched the soft tufted place around Muff ’s ears and went downstairs, leaving her whimpering behind me. I stopped to listen to the night-time sounds of the house. The brief peal of the grandfather in the hall above, and then, closer by, the screeching of a mouse. The flagstones of the kitchen were cool beneath my stockinged feet, so I put my shoes down and stepped into them. I pushed open the scullery door.
It was a blustery night with a high wind that tweaked the leaves off the trees and threw my hair about my face, for in my sleepiness, I had come out without my nightcap. I stood in the doorway squinting to make out my father. Though the moon was waxing full, the blackness was fuzzy and strange about me: there were violet shapes that shifted and moved the more I peered at them and all around me rolled the hills that in daylight were friendly green things and now were dark places where I was afraid to go. Slowly, the lumpen outline of the privet hedge merged into focus. I wrapped my cloak tighter about my neck.
‘Ursula! Come here!’
My father held a lantern up, above his head; he was beyond the hedge, in one of our nearby fields. I went towards him slowly, my arms outstretched, pushing through the gap in the bush he had gone through, stumbling a little in the mud, which was dry and soft with recent ploughing and rose up over my shoe with every step. My father put out his arm and drew me to him. He had on his old long leather coat that Mother said made him look like a highwayman, and breeches under his nightshirt. I felt down his sleeve for his hand and pressed my soft hand into his rough one.
‘Cold paws,’ he said, and chafed them a little. We stood like that, a little while, and then he suddenly snuffed out the lantern and set it down, plunging us both into darkness. I caught my breath. ‘Now,’ he said. ‘Look up.’
I twisted my head upwards. The ink-black sky was speckled all over with tiny silver dots and flashes, stretching out in spools of broken light as far as I could move my neck. I swivelled my head this way and that, all the better to take it all in.
‘Why, I’ve never seen them like this afore, Father,’ I said. ‘Are they always this bright?’
‘Aye. But I have been waiting for a clear night, so that we might see them well enough. We shall make out what we can from here, and on the morrow we will make a star map. Look, what see you up there?’
He held his finger aloft and traced it along the shape.
‘That bright star there, where my finger points, is the beginning of the Lynx. See where his head meets his body, and then along his back leg?’
‘I see him, Father. But he does not much look like a lynx. More like a snake.’
‘True, child.’
‘What is that below him, over yonder?’
‘That is Pollux and that is Castor, the bright stars which are the heads of the twins – see how they hold hands and dance across the skies.’
My head was twisting about on my neck, following my father’s pointing.
‘That burning orange dot is the planet Jupiter, discovered afore you were born by an Italian and his telescope instrument, which is a sort of spy glass for the heavens.’
‘Oh!’ I said. ‘I am ruled by Jupiter. ’Tis in my horoscope. But I did not know you could see it from Earth, nor any planets neither.’
‘There are six planets in the universe,’ my father said, in his lesson-voice. ‘We all of us revolve around the sun, so that we might be warmed by his rays, in turn. But we cannot see them all, from here.’
I gazed at Jupiter in wonder. ‘And do other people live, on all the planets, as we do on Earth? Do men live on Jupiter?’
‘Very likely, child, for God made the universe, and he gave us curious minds. Now Ursula,’ he said. ‘Look up, straight up.’ He crooked his finger.
I craned my neck back so far that it started to ache.
‘What see you there?’
‘White sparks, Father. Is it another creature?’
‘Yes, child. That is the star Muscida, which is the creature’s nose, and over there is the tip of his tail which is Alkaid. And his feet are there and there – Alula and Tania Borealis.’
‘They have strangely beautiful names.’
‘But see, trace the shape, child. Do you see it? The head, the feet, the tail…’Tis a bear. A great big she-bear that prances through the galaxy for all to admire her. Ursa Major is her name. For it is your constellation, Ursula.’
I clapped my hands at this. My own constellation!
‘And bend back further, or better still turn around completely, before you snap your neck in two…above it, the biggest brightest star of all – that is Polaris – the North Star.’
‘I see it. That is how we can always find our way home.’
‘Aye,’ said my father. ‘The night you were born, on the night of the great comet, I walked out here, as we are doing now. I cast my eyes up and aloud thanked God in heaven for your safe delivery and your mother’s great fortitude and strength. And there above me was the Great Bear herself as brilliant and dazzling as ever I’d seen her, and I knew her come out to greet my child and make her welcome. And so I named you for the stars, Ursula.’
Here he reached down and ruffled my hair.
‘I did not know that,’ I said. ‘I had thought myself named after the saint, who did good deeds and was killed and so became a virgin martyr, for Mother said…But this story is much the better one! My own star bear in the heavens! Mary will be green, I think.’
My father chuckled at this.
‘How long have they been there, Father? The stars?’
‘Oh hundreds of years, perhaps thousands. Perhaps since the Earth began. Ptolemy saw them, and Aristotle too, and that was before our Lord Jesu was born.’
‘It’s a famous long time ago,’ I said.
‘Oh famous,’ he agreed. ‘And we may learn more of them ’ere long, now the King has said we are to have our Royal Observatory at Greenwich, where scholars shall study the stars and the planets, so that the knowledge may benefit the navy – the seas are controlled by the heavens, you know.’
‘And people too,’ said I. ‘For I am unlucky, being born under a comet, and choleric, being born under Sagittarius, which rules the ninth house, and so I have good, broad hips, and so shall be much given to childbearing, but a weak liver, and must not drink ale,’ I recited. I had been recently at the Goodsoules’.
‘’Tis true,’ said he, taking my small hand in his large one. ‘Many believe that the wellness of the body is written in the skies. They say the moon has many powers over us mortals, too. Choleric children’ (here he prodded me in fun) ‘must ware the eclipse for it greatly distempers their bodies.’
I held his hand tighter.
‘Each body part is governed by the zodiac, and each illness augured by the positions of the stars. Ah yes, it is all writ above us,’ he said. ‘My earth-sign means I will walk always on the ground. Your mother is governed by the crab, and so she feels things deeply, though she may not speak them. Your centaur governs you and he is the archer. You shoot for far-off purpose, child. And one day you will strike home and true.’
The stars speckled the sky in all their mystery. I was born under a comet and was destined for greatness. I was ruled by Jupiter and would have good fortune all my days.
My father clasped me to him. ‘Let us go in, child, for you are chill, and must get your sleep. Tomorrow we shall make our star map – and a model of the planets.’
VII
FACE
In which I become aware of my appearance
I was not a particularly vain child, but
once I had grown into consciousness of it, the slow changing of my appearance from childish to something approaching womanly began to fascinate me. I was a sallow-skinned little thing with the sort of complexion called ‘bloodless’ by some: as I came to know what it meant to be a beauty, and hear snatches of conversation about women who were considered so, I spent a great deal of time at cheek-pinching, and later became a slave to rouge, for I could not blush and looked wan and ill in the winter months.
In my thirteenth year I spent every spare chance I had gazing at myself in the looking glass in the parlour (the only useful one in the house besides that in my mother’s chamber, which I could not often get at without arousing her attention). When I could slip away from my sewing or steal a moment between my lessons and dinner, I liked to get my face close to the glass, and slowly turn my head this way and that, observing the sharp planes of my cheek-bones, the slow spread of freckles on my cheeks, and the small pink birthmark on my chin which, once I learnt how, I tried to lighten with a paste made from crushed chamomile flowers which I wore in the sunlight. On bright days, I liked the way my cheek and throat and ears caught the light; slowly batting my eyelashes I marvelled at how the sun went through them and turned them colourless.
I had also become interested in the transformative power of a hairstyle, and so it was also my habit to push at my hair and admire the effect an arrangement had on my broad forehead, and to see what it might look like piled up from a sideways view. To counteract the strange scowl I realized I put on when scrutinizing my features, I also liked to see what I might look like animated by conversation. I tried a few ‘How do ye do’s and ‘You compliment me greatly, kind sir’s and, on one dull afternoon a long while from supper, acted the part of a fine lady embroiled in a scintillating flirtation, which involved much fluttering of an imaginary lace fan, but as ill luck would have it my father came in in search of the dog and caught me in the middle of throwing my head back in a particularly trilling laugh, and I blushed to the roots of my hair; he then with very twinkling eyes bade ‘My Lady’ to go to my mother, who was calling for me to wind her thread.
As Mary and I began to appreciate girlish sorts of things, we played at being fine ladies. Patient Mary was mostly happy to be hair-dresser and we spent many rainy days teasing my hair into puffs and sticking it into kiss curls on my forehead with sugar-water, which had the unfortunate advantage of attracting wasps. These endeavours were never wholly successful and I often went off in a temper to drag my comb through it before I could be teased by Reginald, who was fond of bursting into my chamber, and trying to catch me at some sort of disadvantage.
The difficulty with all our endeavours soon became apparent: it was plain fact that my looks were not of a fashionable type, for then a ‘beauty’ was as black-haired as the sovereign – and my hair was that fairish colour that I have heard described as like the fur of a field shrew. In the summer it was dark gold, but in the winter it was dull-looking and did me few favours. It was unlucky, my Aunt Phyllis was fond of saying, that I didn’t turn out dark, white-skinned and apple-cheeked like my mother and Catherine, for then I could grow up to be as admired as Barbara Castlemaine, who was ample of figure and fair of skin with a rippling lake down her back of raven-coloured curls.
Mother had been such a beauty in her day and, though she now had retired to married life and the country, was still quite striking in her middle age (she was then one-and-thirty years or thereabouts), her large brown eyes and dark lashes and plump hands and arms giving her an elegant look that had made rakes write verses and my father ask for her hand at their very first meeting. My arms were thin, my eyelashes were the sparse kind that could not be batted, and my eyes were the unfashionable light grey-blue of my father’s.
I was a sharp little thing when I was small; my mother was relieved when my face softened out and grew round and almost heart-shaped. That sort of face, she said, was much admired by ladies and gentlemen of fashion. The birthmark I could do nothing about (the chamomile proved unsuccessful), but later I covered it with patches, and as to my hair, after much trial and error, I worked up a system of overnight curling that gave it a more pleasing and, I hoped, voluptuous wave. I ran away from Mother’s scissors and grew it down past my waist and wore it with curls crimped on top to give the illusion of height – for I never did get particularly tall.
By the time I was almost fourteen I had got the figure that would last me most of my life, for though I would spend some years trying to fatten it up with puddings and sugar-flowers, in those days I liked to romp about the countryside, and could not easily get plump. My hollow child’s body slowly bloomed out into a thing with soft curves, but I kept my narrow shoulders and ordinary sort of neck. My breasts and belly had a few scattered beauty marks but were of a tolerable sort, and I thought my waist a good one, the span of which would eventually be further reduced by tight-lacing. I have not much to say about my legs, but my mother was oft to remark on the daintiness of my feet and so I supposed that a good thing. Though most feet looked the same in slippers, I supposed it was prettier to have a little shoe rather than a great one.
VIII
KISS
In which I put on a play and meet a handsome fellow
Bear Wood was a pretty place in summer. The weather that year had been fair and hot since Whitsun and our splashing romps around the stream and hide-and-seek in the tumbledown barn left us children scarlet-faced and panting in our aprons and jackets. When the sun reached its zenith, we retreated to the shady bower of the wood and crept deep into its heart where the tree branches grew thick and tangled together. The grown-ups, we knew, would not trouble to follow the meandering tracks to find us there, and so we had respite from lessons and chores and unwanted meals, though we might suffer for it afterwards, with a birching.
We each had a favourite path that led to one of our special places. Mary liked a sunlight-dappled dell that was found by scrambling along the hollow of an old and dried-up brook. Nicholas had a way which wound around a mound to a dark and boggy place with a knot of broken trees, caught, we supposed, in a lightning-storm. Upon arrival at this spot he was inclined to make strange gnomish faces and begin throaty chantings that we did not much like. Grisella preferred an open clearing quite close to the main path; a bare sort of place with a large fallen log and not much else to recommend it, save that her mother was likely to come for her if she stayed out past dinner-time, and from there she could hear the shrieking.
I thought my chosen way the best of them all. It was found by passing through a bank of holly, to arrive at the lip of a great ditch, which was at least thirty feet across and had walls at least a man and a half high – my father said this was part of a hill fort put there by the Atrebates, then used by the Romans as a camping ground. Slithering down into this ditch was to discover my little glade: carpeted with bluebells in spring and foxgloves in summer, it was slightly risen at one end; the higher side topped with bracken. Sheltered from intruders by want of the earthen walls around it, and from the vagaries of the weather too, I thought it the perfect spot in which to act out plays.
On that particular day, we stopped at the edge of the wood, near a great oak which was the marker for the beginning of the path to Billingbear. After joining hands and renewing our continued oath to keep the forest secrets, we pulled straws from a clutch brought by Mary, to decide whose path would be chosen. For once it was I who was the victor.
‘Fie!’ I said, waving my straw stalk aloft. ‘You all lose and we shall go to Bluebell Glade.’
‘Baw,’ said Nicholas, throwing his straw to the ground. ‘I had thought to make a mud pie in Goblin Hole, for it has rained these last two nights and the conditions are favourable.’
‘Nobody likes your mud feasts, Nicholas,’ said Grisella. ‘We are pretty maids who care not for dirtying ourselves up to the elbows in filth.’
‘Pretty, my eye. But that is why I invited two fellows to join us,’ he said, brushing his hands. ‘Jasper and Samuel will be al
ong soon, and they may well have a real pie with them, for Jasper has a fine cook, who is forgetful about leaving things about, and it might very well be pork, for they have a dozen swine with speckled backs.’
‘Boys!’ cried Mary. ‘But they are not in our band, and have not sworn our secret oath.’
‘I’ll make ’em do it and spit on the stump,’ said Nicholas. ‘And you’ve no need to fear ’em. Jasper and I have the same tutor, so I know he’s the finest sort a fellow can be, though I hope he’s better than me at arithmetic. When it comes to counting I’ve a wet sort of lump where my brain should be.’
‘We know it,’ said Grisella.
‘I’ll warrant his Cousin Samuel is a fine fellow too,’ he continued. ‘He has come to stay with Jasper because his mother has died and he is too much trouble for his father, who is a great man of business and very lusty, so my pater says.’
‘I know I shall not like them, despite their pies,’ said Mary, a great scowl screwing up her freckled face.
‘Well I do not mind,’ said I. ‘I have written out a play for us to act, and the more actors we have, the better, though I have made only four copies and so we will have to share.’ I got the folded roll of papers out of my pocket and waved it.
Mary clapped her hands saying, ‘Egad I do like a play,’ just as Nicholas scuffed at the ground with his feet and muttered: ‘Not again.’
Grisella said: ‘If you think to get a sweetheart, Mrs Mary, ware you well, for you have not seen them yet.’
The Illumination of Ursula Flight Page 4