Samuel picked up my hand. ‘And now, may we kiss,’ he murmured, ‘a little more. Just a bit... more?’
His hand slid up my arm and around my back. He pressed me to him. We embraced again. I began to feel a trembling in my knees. My resolve to stay upright was weakening.
Something, a swishing, forest sound, disturbed us. The tell-tale snapping of boots on twigs. We jerked apart.
‘Ursula! Ursulaaaaa!’ came the twittering call. It was Mary.
‘She has come to bid me come for dinner,’ I said. ‘I must go now.’
‘Ah,’ he said. ‘Shame.’ His dark eyes were dancing. ‘I will miss you, Ursula, named for the stars,’ he said. ‘But I know that I will have the sweetest of dreams.’ Here he closed his eyes and let a stupid smile creep across his face.
‘Impertinence!’ I said, smacking at his arm. ‘But I will... think of you too.’
We said our goodbyes, he promising to send word to me of his next visit to Berkshire, and I went to find my Mary with a song in my heart.
‘Oddsfish, Ursula!’ she cried, upon seeing my mussed-up state. ‘Your hair’s all askew and your chin red enough to tell all what you’ve been doing.’
I put my hand to my mouth, which was admittedly sore. ‘He kissed me,’ I said.
‘I can see that,’ she said. ‘And by the look of it, more than once.’
For the next few days, I hid myself away from my mother as much as I could, and kept hard at my books, for I felt sure she would see the change in me, and know that I had been with a boy and been kissed and felt against a tree, but my father only exclaimed at my new application and praised me for my endeavours, little knowing that though I turned the pages of my book, I barely read the words printed there, for my mind was far away, in the shadows of the wood.
How I waited in hope for word from Samuel and how I began to grow disconsolate with every day that passed in silence. I dawdled in the hallway every morning for a sennight, for I hoped that Samuel might get another message to me as he had said he would, but it was not to be so. The weeks wore on, and spring had become early summer when a little cloth-bound bundle, with a brown paper tag addressed to me, appeared in the entrance hall, and no one could say how it had arrived. My luck held again, for it was only Lisbet who had come across it, and I tugged it out of her hands, and ran away with it, calling that it was from Mary and one of our games, lest she took it into her head to tattle on me.
Hastening into my chamber, I dragged the chair up against the door to hold it, and sat myself on my bed, the bundle before me. It was tied with a sky-blue ribbon in a strange, clumsy sort of knot, and I picked at it a while before it would loosen, then tugged the bundle apart. Inside was a little wooden box. I stroked it with my fingers at the novelty of such a gift. I hoped it was not one of Reggie’s tricks and I would find a great hairy spider inside. Holding my breath, I slid the lid open.
It was something, not a spider, an object, made of wood. A figure or creature of some sort I knew, for I could see the top of its rounded back, with little marks all over it, where the woodcarver had positioned his chisel. I picked it up and placed it in my palm.
It was a carved wooden bear, a little dancing bear, in miniature. I stroked my fingers along the hard planes of her long sweet muzzle and curving, upright ears, and turned her over to marvel at her paws, lifted up as if in motion with their chisel-nicked claws. The bear was unpainted, save for the grass-green collar she wore, as if at a fair, with a gold link of chain picked out in gold leaf. I peered at the collar. There, also picked out in gold, were initials painted on in a very neat hand:
S.S. ~ U.F.
A love token! I gave a little high-pitched yelp of excitement. The bear was dainty enough to hold in my fist. I closed my fingers over it and clutched it to me. I looked in the box again and spied a folded note that I had missed, pressed against its bottom side. The softness of the paper under my fingertips as I unfolded it to read:
For my sweetheart Ursula Flight
Until we meet again.
From your Samuel,
sic erit; haeserunt tenues in corde sagittae ANNO 1679
I grasped the little bear in my hand and held it aloft in my jubilance. ‘Yes!’ I cried.
My love-happiness was not to last, for though I kissed the bear and put it under my pillow every night, including with my prayers the secret wish that my sweetheart might come to me again, no more notes ever came for me from Samuel, and I heard no word of him in the district, though I sent Mary to tarry by the green as often as I dared; Jasper said he did not know where his cousin was, or when he would be visiting him again. My love cooled a little then, though I held onto the secret wish that all was not done with him.
It was coming on for harvest when I had it from Grisella that Samuel’s aunt was gone away back to Gloucestershire for good, and Samuel not like to visit Bynfield again, and I wept a few hot tears for the loss of him, and all that might have been, all the while the little wooden bear clasped tightly in my fist.
XI
CONVERSATION
In which I have dinner and am mischievous
The Blacklocks and the Ditchbornes were coming to sup with Mother and Father and as a great treat I was being allowed to sit up with them for the evening. Since I had turned fourteen, my mother had begun to let me do this now and then – dining in company would help my manners, she said, for she was keen that I learn the skills I would need when one day I played hostess myself. Father said at my stage of learning Italian, it would do me good to converse in that language with Lord Ditchborne, who had used it in his days as a travelling merchant, before he was risen up by the King. We rehearsed a few little phrases together, that I might politely insert into my conversation.
It had been a dull sort of day, and to distract myself from thoughts of romance I had roamed restlessly about the fields – Mary had been confined to her cottage, made prisoner by her mother amongst the hurly burly of her many small brothers and sisters, and I had no luck getting any sort of cake from Eliza, who was in a fluster at the coming of the guests and much given to smoothing down her apron.
I banged the gate as loud as I dared and stamped about, looking for the countryside treasures I liked to collect: bright coloured pebbles, speckled feathers, the dried skulls of dead birds (I had found one of a crow, turned it upside down and used it as an ink pot). I stood by the pig-pen and watched the sows sleeping all in a row. Their bristled bellies rose and fell, their snouts hanging open and issuing sonorous snores: they were very sweet indeed. I went inside and tried to write a sonnet about them (Father and I had been reading Petrarch and I had been experiencing poetic urges), but I could not get the sound of their grunting, nor the look of their soft little snouts into the rhyme, which was restrictive in its rhythm and form.
By the time I had emerged from my hiding place in the scullery, and allowed myself to be found drifting about near the parlour, Mother was in a great pet at my disappearance, her hair escaping from its combs. Her voice was a taut shrill thing as she bade Joan chaperone my washing, before hurrying me into a better gown that did not have mud on the hem and ink blotches at the sleeves.
ACT I, SCENE III
Late afternoon, the dining room. The low sunlight slants in the window, picking out the ears of a suckling pig, the glistening tip of a great blancmange, the handle of a silver spoon. A grey-blue-eyed maiden with the sort of hair that was the admiration of five counties stands by the window with her arms folded. Enter: LORD and LADY DITCHBORNE, MR and MRS BLACKLOCK (she leaning heavily on his arm, with gout); FATHER and MOTHER.
MRS BLACKLOCK: Ah what a fine spread indeed. [To MOTHER] You compliment us greatly, Cecily, indeed you do.
MOTHER: ’Tis nothing, Winifred.
URSULA: Lisbet and Eliza have slaved for many days in the kitchen to make this for us and are themselves this moment making do with lumpy potage.
FATHER: Hush, Ursula.
MOTHER: Shall we be seated?
FATHER: It is so very good
to see you, Henry, Godfrey, Ebbaline, Winifred.
LADY DITCHBORNE: [Her eyes swivelling around the room and alighting on me] Ah, Ursula. I did not know you would be joining us. How grown-up you are. A new gown? I did not know green was the mode, but as my dear little Lettice says, I am quite behind the times. We are all getting older, are we not? Well now.
MR BLACKLOCK: Is that a black pudding? How charming.
MOTHER: Thank you, Henry. Clifford, will you call for the girl to fill the glasses? Winifred, dear, will you have wine or a dish of tea?
MRS BLACKLOCK: Tea!
LADY DITCHBORNE: You look bright today, Ursula, and I am pleased to see it. Your blessed mother worries about you growing pale with your studies. And as well she might, for ’tis well known that book-learning can bring on the ague. Why, I heard of one poor learned lady who lived at Oxford who was in the habit of attending lectures (not, I hasten to add, with the sanction of the college for they would not have allowed it if they’d known. She got in with the help of her brother, who must regret his actions to this day – foolish man!). This lady was prone to fainting fits – the great strain, I believe, of study was too much for her female mind. After a full day of reading some very large tomes, she went into a stupor and died in the very library where she had got the books. They opened up her body after she was dead and were amazed to discover that her very brain was shrivelled and wrinkled as a walnut – for it had soured in her head from too much reading and that was the thing that carried her off.
MRS BLACKLOCK: Pickled!
LADY DITCHBORNE: Do you feel quite well, Ursula? For I know I should worry if Lettice were at the same thing, but she takes little notice of study and is instead much given to Court tattle and her drawing, which I believe is coming on very fine. Yesterday she finished a sketch of the donkey, and it was, I believe, very like the life, except that it had not enough legs, but that is easily remedied. We are minded to get her a drawing master, are we not, husband?
LORD DITCHBORNE: [Spooning at his pie] What?
URSULA: I am very well, ma’am. Father and I have been translating Utopia and I am learning of the many wondrous things in the world.
LORD DITCHBORNE: Excellent! I have never set any store by the talk that women have inferior sorts of heads which are not adapted to the rigours of academia. Indeed I would say it suits you very well, young lady. Though whether it suits me own children, I’ll never know, as they’re very stupid, every one.
FATHER: Ursula is making great progress, though, like all children, she is oft to get distracted and end up staring at the window-pane. Do you not, Mrs Ursula?
URSULA: It can be most diverting, watching the clouds floating on. [Aside] And thinking about plays and books and boys!
FATHER: Her Italian, especially, is improving, I think, which will interest you, Ditchborne, with your linguistic talents! Pray, Ursula. Tell Lord Ditchborne the phrases we have learnt together.
URSULA: [Coughs] Piacere di conoscerti, Ditchborne, amico mio.*
LORD DITCHBORNE: Salve, Ursula.
MRS BLACKLOCK: [Clapping] There now!
URSULA: Mi chiama Ursula. Ho fame. Chi non risica, non rosica. Ho un cane di nome Muff assomiglia un po a sua moglie, forse.†
LORD DITCHBORNE: Mi scusi?
MRS BLACKLOCK: What a magical sound that language has. It’s wonderful to hear it. Wonderful.
URSULA: Grazie.
LADY DITCHBORNE: I’m not certain I favour this course you are taking with Ursula, Clifford, and believe you may come to regret it. For what can an education do for a young woman but give dissatisfaction when she is married? The natural concerns of a girl should be hearth, home and husband, and nothing more, for as I always say, women get spoiled by wandering. ’Tis my belief that those misses who have Latin and Greek, and stride about declaiming in all manner of outlandish tongues, are not the ones that get the husbands.
MRS BLACKLOCK: Spinsters!
MR BLACKLOCK: [Chuckling] Just so, Lady D. My Winnie came to me with not a single mite of book-learning in her head and God has seen fit to bless us with many happy years together. [Pats her arm] I daresay I’m quite harebrained myself. Only yesterday I put two feet in one breech-leg and toppled right over. There’s a bump on my noggin as big as an artichoke and I had a mustard plaster for it, which made me sneeze seven times in a row, which augurs very ill indeed, and I expect I will drop down dead tomorrow.
MRS BLACKLOCK: Oh!
URSULA: Mother can read and write, and speak French too.
MR BLACKLOCK: She has other wifely skills too, I’ll warrant. Is that not right, Clifford? Is it not right? [Pinches at his arm] There. What a good fellow.
MOTHER: Ursula is also working very hard at her needle and music and her drawing is improving most steadily. She can write a receipt and order a meal from Cook and take stock of the linen, and make out the household accounts besides.
URSULA: And I have been writing a play-script.
LORD DITCHBORNE: Excellent!
LADY DITCHBORNE: What did she say?
LORD DITCHBORNE: I propose somebody passes me the trifle.
URSULA: Mary and I act it out in the barn, away from prying eyes. It is about a very dashing girl with a large fortune and hundreds of jewels who gets kidnapped by a poor but handsome duke with a very fine calf and is taken off to London, but when she gets there he takes all her fortune to the gaming tables and decides not to marry her after all, and so she goes off in a great pet, but then decides not to bother too much, and goes to see the King, and he likes her, and she becomes quite infamous at Court, because she is quite the prettiest woman there, quite a lot more than Mrs de Keroualle, even though she is not French in the slightest, and she goes out wearing a picture hat and the gauziest veil which sets off her waist, which is very trim, to ride most days on Rotten Row, where she is admired greatly by all the young blades, who ask for her hand, but she turns all of ’em down and buys a tame monkey and lives happily ever after, in a grand mansion with red-and-yellow-striped window silks and a faithful manservant who turns away all of her unwanted callers and entertains her with rollicking tales of faraway lands in the evening while she never eats boiled fish, but instead feasts on macaroons and ginger-bread and raspberry wine all of her days and the manservant becomes her lover and it turns out that he is a marquis who had been in ignorance of his noble birth.
MRS BLACKLOCK: Ooh!
LADY DITCHBORNE is observed to be fanning herself.
MOTHER: Ursula, enough.
FATHER: Ebbaline, are you quite well?
LORD DITCHBORNE: ’Tis the mention of lovers, she can’t abide to hear of them at her age.
LADY DITCHBORNE, whose skin has turned the colour of cold gruel, goes limp, and with a roll of the eyes, suddenly lurches forward. A clatter of silver.
MR BLACKLOCK: Allow me, Lady D. [He supports her] Ho, too late, she has put her hair in the pudding.
MRS BLACKLOCK: Dear me.
MOTHER goes to her, with a handkerchief.
LORD DITCHBORNE: As I always say, there’s nothing quite like a trifle.
MR BLACKLOCK: She’s opening her eyes!
MRS BLACKLOCK: There’s pudding on her face.
URSULA: But pray, I did not tell you what befell her sister!
MOTHER: Not another word.
Curtain
* Pleased to meet you, Ditchborne, my friend.
† My name is Ursula. I am hungry. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. I have a dog called Muff who looks a bit like your wife, perhaps.
XII
CURSE
In which I become a woman
My mother liked me well enough, I think until I attained my fifteenth year, when a quite commonplace event occurred that seemed to change me in her eyes.
The curse began.
It was early morning on a bright cold day, and most happily and toastily abed was I, still drowsing in the deep, untroubled sleep of childhood, when an onerous sort of twisting in the foot of my belly broke me from the haze of a d
ream. As I lay there, groaning a little to myself, I felt a strange sensation; the result of investigations under my night-shift was that my fingers came away bright crimson.
‘Lord help me!’ I cried, my mind tumbling over with thoughts of dark magic, ill humours and quickly-fatal plagues – I could be dead within the hour, there was no time to waste. I pounded, bare-footed, into the corridor, screaming for Goodsoule, who came upstairs tripping on her skirts, worry creased across her face.
On hearing my complaint – I stammered it out through tears; I trembled, unready for the hour of my death – she took me gently by my now-perspiring hands and drew me back into my chamber. As we sat together, gazing out of the window – it was snowing – she told me that it was just the woman’s curse that had come to me at last, petting my hair as she spoke and sometimes breaking off to hum the lullaby of my cradle.
‘There now, sweetheart,’ she said. ‘It must come to us all, alas.’
A film of sweat broke across my back – I was not gravely ill with a lethal bleeding; I would not burst out in pulsing buboes and end the day consigned, by my elbow, to a plague-cart. Nay, it was much, much worse: I was become a woman and could now bear children!
Salva me Domine!
I felt as afraid then as I did foolish – for I had heard snatches of Mary and her mother talk of a woman’s courses, and vaguely knew what the coming of them meant, but I had thought it a thing for full-grown women, and had not realized that it would pain me so and make me feel so strange or that there would be so much blood. I felt a surge of anger at my mother then, for she had said not a word to me of what was to come and had only talked vaguely of my ‘growing up’, thinking perhaps that I knew it all already. I wondered if the time I had spent with my nose pressed in a book was partly to blame for my ignorance, and cursed myself for not paying more attention to the chatter of others, and the workings of the world about me.
The Illumination of Ursula Flight Page 7