To staunch the flow of my bright blood, which now seemed to be dripping from my body, and made me feel quite faint (I swooned), Goodsoule helped me to make a napkin out of cloth and tie it onto myself, with the help of a waistband, which did not feel comfortable, but Goodsoule said it was one of the many crosses we women had to bear. Then she got me into a fresh shift and took away the other, before bringing me a cup of steaming posset.
I drank the potion off, which was fragrant with flowers and delicious, though I could not enjoy it for I felt famous bad and said so. I wept a little then, and Goodsoule stroked at my back, but I could not stop my weeping, and so she went away. Mary came up then, and tried to soothe me and pet my head, but I was angry that she had not warned me properly of this affliction, and I would not speak to her, and she, too, went away. I crept back into bed, where I stayed deep under the coverlet, in a clammy sort of doze, while the beating and pulsing of my womb kept on, the pain dragging at my innards like nothing I had ever known. I lay there, twisting about, until the windows glowed purple and the scent of meat-broth seeped up through the floorboards.
When I went down to supper – for I had realized I was monstrous hungry – it was Mary who asked me how I did, and sat down next to me, and took my hand and stroked at it, under the table. My mother only stared at the pinkish rims of my swollen eyes. She stirred her dish of oysters and bade me pass the pepper.
I did it.
It was a waning moon that night.
The ending of my childhood seemed to harden my mother’s heart towards me, for from that day hence, she never glanced on me with smiles, or clasped me to her side, but gave me such strange looks I could not fathom. She would not comb my hair, nor read to me aloud, as once she had. Instead, she peered at me with sharp and narrowed eyes, as I bound nosegays in the garden with Catherine, or danced about the house and teased the dog, or embroidered the cover for a jewel-box, a tangle of threads and beads upon my lap, humming ‘The Lunatick Lover’ half under my breath, innocent of the forbearance which must come to women; the things which must be borne with a smile and a ‘Yes, husband, dear.’
Perhaps the recent birth of her ninth child (and only fourth living, poor mother mine), my brother Percival, took me from her thoughts, for he was – oh miracle – the second breathing boy. A whey-coloured, sickly thing at first, he howled into the house on St Swithin’s Day: they rang the bells. He grew to be most lovable, a fat-legged and bonny babe, who easily usurped my warm place on her lap and later was always at my father’s side, trailing a dolly in his wake.
He died, at twenty-three, of typhus, contracted at a low tavern in Hounds-ditch that had bear-fights, brawls and pox-addled whores.
MY MOTHER AND I, A CONVERSATION
Late December 1679, night, upon the staircase.
MOTHER: Ursula! You have dropped your bead box. Do you have eyes in your head? They are scattered on the floor.
URSULA: I am sorry, Mother. I was called in to dinner and forgot.
MOTHER: Pick them up at once and get yourself to bed.
URSULA: Yes, Mother. I was going up now, I—
MOTHER turns her back.
URSULA: Mother, tomorrow can I see the kittens in the barn? Grisella has been and says they are so sweet. There is one with a black face, she says, and—
MOTHER: Have you learnt your scriptures?
URSULA: Yes, Mother.
MOTHER: Have you tidied your shoes?
URSULA: Yes, Mother.
MOTHER: Have you mended your collar?
URSULA: Not yet, Mother. But the kittens are to be drowned and Johnny said if I were quick I might—
MOTHER: You can see the cats when you have mended your collar and not before.
Ending: Ursula, A fit of sulks. Mother, Forbids me fish at dinner.
The kittens, Drowned every one, in a sack, at noon.
Perhaps my mother was cruel to me against her secret will, to better ease the wrench of our future parting, but at my tender age my senses were keen, and I fretted, daily, to myself, that I had done her some unknown, awful wrong.
I put her in my night-time prayers, and was obedient and docile at table, and played with the little ones when she had an ague, and said ‘Yes, Mother’ in the gayest voice I knew. But she would not catch my eye and her voice to me was brittle; thin. I tried one day to take her hand; she shook it off. I could not make her love me.
XIII
CONTRACT
In which I am informed my life is to change
My woman-pains were gone, when two weeks after the curse first came to me, my father bade me, before dinner, to see him in his library.
The weather had reached the stubborn phase of deep midwinter when everything is white and still. Snow lay in great banks against the house and ice-shards dropped from the rafters; the windows were all but frosted over. Father always had a merry fire spitting in his grate – he had no taste for saving firewood – and I was glad to go to him and be warmed. I would sit on the footstool that perched beside his desk and smell the linseed, ale and ink. Though it was not Tuesday or Wednesday, I thought he might bid me read my lessons, and I had my hornbook in my hand, in which I had translated the Venerable Bede into Greek, painstakingly scratched out on winter nights, to please him.
He was working at his papers, his familiar hands with their long fingers moving across the parchment, a dish of his precious tea at his elbow (he had got it, in the autumn, from a sailor). I drew up my stool, to lean on my arm and watch him as he worked. We had the same fair-coloured hair – our ancestors were Danish – same teeth, woven close together on one side of the mouth, and the same half-twisted little toes. I felt sure I was the one of his children who in character was most like him: spirited, stubborn, strange.
‘May I try the China drink, Father?’ I said. The tea was growing cold, it seemed a famous waste. ‘It’s said they live off it at Court and the Queen has naught else – and she has never had the plague – and has dark and lovely hair.’
He laughed and let me drink it; it was cool and bitter in my mouth. I swilled it round my gums and swallowed it with a sigh.
‘Child,’ he said, putting down his pen and twirling its feather in his knuckles. ‘What think you of Lord Tyringham?’
I was, I think, quite taken aback to be asked for my thoughts on any subject, and, shifting on my seat, floundered a while.
I knew I should try to speak most honestly, as would please my father. Et cognoscetis veritatem et veritas liberabit vos, said my mind – that phrase graven deeply on my memory since I was six years old, after a long and thorough thrashing because of a stolen sugar-cake.
(Confession: I ate it.)
I breathed in. The fire snapped.
‘He is the pale-skinned man who helps you in your work, and comes oft to dinner and is kind to me,’ I falteringly began. ‘A nobleman of rank... Mother says he owns half the county and is rich and we must be most civil to him, to help you build your ships.’
My father’s eyes were merry now.
‘He knows the Duke of York, I think, and can get favours and commissions.’
‘Well, child, I am glad you think him kind,’ said my father. ‘For he has made our family the godliest of compliments. Far beyond, I think, the ones he makes to me on business matters.’
He talked then at length about the politenesses which were due from our kind to his, and the need for money to carry on our estate, and the hardness of the age, and the war against the Dutch, and the boats that must be built to see them off, and those that held the choice of shipbuilder in their fist.
Then, picking at his cuffs – a little lace had come undone – he spoke of the great unbroken line of our family name, and whence we came, and of filial duty and (here he fell somewhat to coughing) the great rituals of life and the mysteries of nature, which we were all bound to follow, though sometimes we knew not why.
The snow had begun again: it was falling thickly, the world a blur of white behind it. I watched it slide slowly down the w
indow glass and pool, oh so softly, on the sill. Outside, there unfolded a spread of purest white that rippled down the hill and to the lake. There were light shapes on my father’s table. I hugged thoughts of snow sculptures and hill-sledding to myself: I might creep out, to the village, when it stopped and tell my mother I went holly-picking.
‘He has asked for you and we have answered joyfully in your place, for though you are young...’ (he looked upon me with something quite like fondness) ‘... your mother thinks your strong will and melancholic temper well suited for the disciplines a wifehood will require, and he has sworn to be patient and to take over our teachings. You will learn to be a helpmeet, wife, and, in good time, and if the Lord wishes it, mother.’
The snowflakes were settling in thick triangles against the leaded glass. We might be snowed in again. Had we enough food to last us out? Last winter we were heartsick of potage by January.
‘He will raise you up, my child, and, we hope, bring you great happiness. And we will be happy too, for Tyringham will have you well provided for – and you are to have a very handsome jointure.’
He asked then that we kneel together. Afterwards, he dropped a kiss upon my brow and bade me run off and tell Mary and Goodsoule and my brother and sister that I would soon be wed.
‘Wed?’ I said, half into my chest.
There was a blister on my finger that fascinated me. I would ask Goodsoule for a tincture.
‘At the end of summer,’ he said. ‘And first Tyringham will come to court you and dine with us as often as he can – he will not be a stranger, by then. It is our dearest wish, my Ursula, that your love for him will grow and when the time is come for you to go to the church door, you will do so with a great and godly joy.’
‘Does Mother know?’ I said, and my voice had begun to tremble.
‘Why of course, child,’ he said. ‘Did I not say she thought marriage would be suited to your temper? It is she who has encouraged it in faith, though at first I confess I thought you too young. But as she has said, you are wise beyond your years. And I think you will like Tyringham; for what I know of him, he seems a good sort of man and will likely make a strong husband, and will love you, I think, as I have loved your mother.’
He kissed my head and, with a press of my hand, sent me off out of the room. I walked slowly, dragging my feet across the hall, to the parlour, a sick feeling pulling at my insides. My mother was not there. She was not upstairs.
‘Mother!’ I called. She did not come.
I leant against the oaken panels of the wall, breathing slowly in and out, in and out. Marriage, I said inside my head, I was to be married, and have a husband, and it was not to be my long-lost sweetheart Samuel, or any other young man neither, but an old man, I thought, as old as my father. I felt in my pocket for my little wooden bear, for I was hot all over and could not cool, and against my will my hands and my arms were shaking and would not stop. I gripped the little bear and tried to slow my breathing, though my thoughts were all in a whirl. I had not thought to marry yet, at fifteen years, and had thought even my betrothal a good way off, if I had thought of it at all. Mother was sixteen when she was contracted, but one-and-twenty when she married; my Aunt Phyllis three-and-twenty or more, I knew. Kitty Goodsoule was seventeen and betrothed but that was altogether a different thing, for the village folk were lusty and married young to save themselves from sin.
I had not thought of Lord Tyringham at all in truth, for I had met him but once, and then we had exchanged barely two words together. I could not think why he had asked for me – it seemed a famous liberty, or at the very least, strange. I tried my very hardest to recall him, but had only an indistinct impression floating in my mind, of a dark man with a deep voice, and could not, for the life of me, remember his face.
The thought of Samuel’s face came at once then into my mind: his merry brown eyes and his twisted smile, the feel of his soft lips against my own, the brush of his fingers against my skin... I held up my little bear and, crossing my fingers, silently wished upon her that Samuel might somehow come back to me, and rescue me from matrimony with a stranger. I kissed the bear to seal the wish and slipped it back into my pocket.
My brother and sister were in the nursery playing tipcats, chanting ‘Jack Be Nimble’ and giggling all the while, but Goodsoule was not there, and Mary neither. I ran back downstairs, climbing the stone stairs down to the kitchen and called for them, but there was just Eliza’s old dog, scratching its shoulders by the fire, and the red-knuckled woman who swept the scullery, snoring gently in a chair.
I breathed in and out, in and out, wiping the tears from my face.
I ran outside.
The snow burned my feet.
XIV
PUNISHMENT
In which I am disobedient and must suffer for it
Try as I might I could not and would not adjust to the idea that I was to be married. I had attempted to reason with my mother, but she said only that I must be obedient, and she knew I would be a happier wife than I was a daughter. I spent many sad hours in my chamber weeping on Mary’s shoulder at the injustice of it all, and the fact that despite my wish, Samuel had not come to save me, for I still thought of him tenderly in my secret heart and had hoped that we should one day come together again. The fear that I must be parted from Mary and her mother and Catherine and my father loomed up and frightened me, and at this I sobbed too, until at last my companion grew bored with me, and said she must go home when I knew she must not. I begged Goodsoule to speak to my mother on my behalf, but she only said it was not her place, and marriage was a thing that all women must bear and I would soon come round to the thing and look forward to it.
The week immediately following the interview with my father was a hard one. On Monday I relapsed into a fit of sulks and would not speak nor eat nor pass a dish at table and was sullen and drooping the whole day long. On Tuesday I had sworn I would not marry Lord Tyringham, or marry ever, if I had to die to stop it, by jumping from the clock tower of St Ninian’s. On Wednesday I did not rise from my bed, and instead lay in it from morning ’til dark, sweating in the sheets, and moaning a little now and then, and was only saved from starving by Mary bringing up a bowl of pigeon broth when Mother had gone out. On Thursday I screamed long and loud that my mother and my father both could go to the Devil, and be hanged, and be hanged by the Devil, and stayed the whole day in my room; and on Friday I had whipped myself into such a frenzy of misery and anger and fear I had a great paroxysm at dinner. At Mother’s sharp request that I help Catherine with cutting her pie, I threw my cup onto the floor and ran around the room, slapping myself about the face and pulling at my hair, howling all the curse words I knew until my voice was raw in my throat and my face burning hot and the children frightened and crying themselves.
My mother, who had borne the week’s calamities with strange blank looks and scowls at my father, began to get red about the face herself, and rose up from her seat, her meat half uneaten.
‘Enough,’ was all she said.
My father got up, too.
‘What, husband,’ she said. ‘Will you bid me sit another day, while our child dishonours us in such a way?’
‘She has been very naughty,’ said my father. His voice was low and he did not look at me, though I tried to catch his eye.
Mother called for Mary and, in a calm voice which belied the trembling of her hands, bade her take me to the nursery. I went up dragging my feet, Mary fretting that she did not want to do it, but must. I slapped her away. She took it as she always did, with one of her looks and the sucking-in sound that came from her cheeks, a trick she had learnt from Eliza when we were children. But still she held me firm, her old familiar smell that was cotton and straw and her own sweet-ish sweat making my limbs go slack, even as I turned my face away from her. I was a half-mad, wild thing. Flux was running down my chin and my hair had come down at the back from my rages. I did not care. I twisted out of her grasp and stood there, wet and furious, and ready t
o strike. Mother came in and shut the door, in her hand a birch rod.
‘Stop!’ I cried, seeing the plan. Mother came towards me. I ran for the door, but she and Mary caught me by the arms and between them took me to the flogging frame and put me onto it, Mother taking my shoulder and pushing against my back. I struggled against her grasp, but she struck my face, and I stopped still and lay against the frame, panting.
‘You can go, Mary, for all the help you are,’ said Mother.
‘Mistress,’ said Mary.
I heard the door close.
It was quiet and cold up in the nursery: Mother did not believe children needed fires – they would get warm with their jumping and games. There was the hobby horse that had once been mine, carved out of wood, his lips curled back and his teeth bared, as if in the midst of a great and noisy whicker. I had called him Peterkin. He likely had another name now: Catherine was very careful about the naming of toys.
I stared at the wavy lines of his wooden mane and the small points of his ears. His painted red and yellow saddle was flaking where shoes had scuffed at it, one of the stirrup-pegs was snapped off at the end, and his reins, which were of leather, had gone slack and crumbly with handling. We had ridden far and wide on his back. Sometimes I was a comely, low-born maid who helped look after animals, and rode about a farm, tending to poorly lambs and ducklings with bad legs. Sometimes I was a dashing adventuress who rode alone, apart from her companion dog, who would trot alongside (if we could make Muff stay and play the part – and she never would).
The Illumination of Ursula Flight Page 8