The Illumination of Ursula Flight

by Anna-Marie Crowhurst

  VI

  CORRESPONDENCE

  In which I write my letters home

  TURVEY HALL

  Wiltshire

  The 5th day of December in the Year of our Lord 1680

  Dearest Mother,

  Did you get my last letter? I sent it with the coachman, but I wonder if he mislaid it, for I have had no word from you and it has been twelve days since.

  How is your health? (I wrote this in the letter that I now believe mislaid, so I shall do so again.) I do so hope you are keeping well, and are not too lonely there without me – and Father. I think of him often: whenever there is a clear night, I open the windows wide and search for the Great Bear, the constellation that he named me for, and now reminds me of him. I know he watches over us.

  It is strange to be here without you and Muffy and the little ones. I ache to see you all – it tears at my heart that I cannot talk with you and hold you close to me! I would tell you about my new life as a married woman – it is not quite as I expected it – and I have some things to ask you, so do write, sweet Mother, I beg you.

  The Dowager likes me to talk to her in her room, though she does not often agree with what I say (imagine!). She is a commanding sort of person and seems to manage the house and all the servants – I often wonder if my husband (and I!) are in charge at all, or if ’tis she, in fact, who rules all.

  I do not know what to make of Sibeliah yet. But it is nice to have a sister – though she cannot replace my Catherine – tell me, has she grown? Is she reading her Bible? And how is Percy? Do you speak of me often? When I am sitting here in the parlour, watching the low flames flicker in the hearth, I often think I would walk a mile in the rain, just to feel one of Reggie’s sharp pinches.

  Will you come and visit me, with Mary? Not now, for Tyringham says it is too soon for friends to come a-visiting. But perhaps in the spring, when it will be warm for your journey. I could send a coach for you – it should not take above two days, and you can stay at The Swan, as I did on my way here – the innkeeper is a good fellow, and there is a chamber for the quality.

  Kiss the children for me. And Mary. And Muff. Kiss them all and tell them I am always their affectionate

  TURVEY HALL

  Wiltshire

  The 7th day of December in the Year of our Lord 1680

  My dearest merry Mary,

  I know Grisella will be reading this to you – I salute you both, dear friends!

  Oh, it has been such a time since I saw you. I think of you often and long to see your face. Do write how you and your mother and your father and the children do. Do you go to Bear Wood often? How I long to be back in its shade, and have all of you about me, and clamouring for a new play. I fear they are not so keen on playing here...

  You will want to know about the Hall, I think (and you, Grisella: listen well). ’Tis a great, grand house, of ten chambers, and a dozen or more downstairs rooms, and servants’ quarters, and stables, oh there are so many rooms that I have not yet been into them all. There is a large hallway, and a carved wooden staircase which sweeps upwards in two directions, hung about with portraits of my husband’s relations, all of them sour-faced with the same thin lips and beak-nose as the Dowager.

  The whole place is crammed full with decorations and furniture and objects: my eyes are ever darting about to take in the painted card tables, the carved chess set, the china puzzle jugs. The walls are mostly decorated with scenes from the Bible (for they are famous devout here – do not snigger, Grisella!). My chamber is prettier though, for Tyringham had it painted as the Garden of Eden as a marriage gift to me, and the walls are green and wild and beautiful – daubed with wild grasses and climbing plants which snake about its corners, with painted flowers of every hue blooming about the windows (how strange then that the Tyringhams would have me rot away indoors all day – fie!). In this painted paradise, Tyringham is Adam and I, dear friends, am Eve. The Adam-him is rendered tall and proud (Grisella, pray do not let your mind wander! I speak of his face, which is haughty). The Eve-me has flowers in her fair hair which falls to her waist in pretty curls, and a gown of acanthus leaves and ivy. (How I wish for such a costume as that in real life, for I would look well, I think, with flowers in my hair – think you not? I am reminded of the May dancers – shall you be one of them this year, Mary?) The screens that hide the pissing pots are painted too, but these are black and brought from China, and so they are covered over with strange Chinese houses on sticks, and flying storks and nightingales and ladies with puffed hairstyles and great blocked pattens.

  But I must tell you of the lights – oh the lights! There are more candles here than I have seen in any abode, and there are polished chandeliers in all the downstairs rooms, burning merrily away all evening long, for there is no need to scrimp on wax. Every room is so bright that at first I would blink as I walked about – it is strange to be lit up so (I am certain your mother, Griss, would find it ‘vulgar’ – I can just hear her saying so and sniffing in the way she does). In this light, everything glitters – and there is so much silver all about me: the candelabras, and the spoons, and the spittoons, one in every room; all are shining and glinting in the light. The looking glasses are carved and gilted, and I have never seen so many of them – Grisella, when you come to stay you shall go from room to room and revel in them. ’Tis a strange sensation to be walking about and ever catching a glimpse of yourself. At first I thought it was another girl with golden hair following me about, but it was not, ’twas only your

  My dearest Grisella,

  I am now sixteen years old and I bless our Lord Jesu for delivering me from the pox for another year (for I have heard it has come in on a ship and rages at Bristol)!

  I gobbled your sweet letter down all in one delicious read, tucked away in a dark and dusty room draped all about with bedsheets – Lor’ knows what they use it for. I am glad your mother is well and that you have a new gown: it sounds famous fine and I yearn to see it.

  You ask what it is like to be wed – well, it is still so new, I don’t know what to tell you, in faith. It is good to have the pretty things I have, and to walk about the Hall and know that I am the Lady of it, though I am learning slowly to command the servants – especially my own woman, who is a slovenly wench such as I have never seen – you would pinch her.

  My husband’s mother (and now mine, for as you foretold she has taken charge of me most thoroughly!) is, as you foretold, a TYRANT. The lady has her own suite of rooms in the east wing of the house, and ’tis well she is not near mine, for she is always in her chamber, crouched on her chaise, or hunched in her bed, sucking on her strange little pipe (I have never seen a lady smoke tobacco before, you would die laughing to see her blowing out clouds of lilac smoke, scrabbling at the coverlet and calling for her lady in her screeching voice).

  You would think her very plain in the face, for she has a Puritan hatred of beautifying, and so she does not primp, and she cannot abide the use of rouge, and scolds me for hair-dressing! But (these bruits I got from Sibeliah) after a rare visit to Court, in which she laid her eyes on the Duchess of Disbury, whose visage, I am told, was fashionably decorated with black velvet patches, she took to wearing them herself, but her eyesight is failing, so there are tiny crinkled spots which move freely about her face and land in peculiar places: her earlobe; her nose; her waxen, wrinkled brow.

  There is always the pipe-smoke floating in the air; the rasp-rasp of her dry, scratching fingers; and the high whine of her voice calling for people to come to her, come, come and see me, for I need you, and I cannot be alone. But I can be alone, for I am your own true

  TURVEY HALL

  Wiltshire

  The 17th day of December in the Year of our Lord 1680

  Dear Mother,

  Did you get my letters? I am much afeard that you are took ill or one of the little ones has and I beg and implore you to send some word of how you do to your loving daughter,

  TURVEY HALL

  Wiltshire
<
br />   The 21st day of December in the Year of our Lord 1680

  My dear Griss,

  I am honoured at the quickness of your reply – the man must have galloped all night through to deliver it, poor beast, for there was a famous bad storm.

  Aye, your mother is a canny woman to guess that the servants here are inert, or if they are not that, insolent, compared to ours or yours. But I have been practising, at your suggestion, ‘queenly, commanding’ phrases in the looking glass, though I feel mighty foolish to do it, and am always afeard I might be disturbed. These I have tried:

  ‘I’ll thank ye to hold your tongue.’

  ‘Do not cross me!’

  ‘Do as I say, Beck.’

  ‘I shall not repeat myself.’

  Say you are proud of me?

  A curious thing – I have found that I can ‘command’ all the better if I imagine myself to be somebody else – a haughty duchess, or the Dowager (Ho!), or the blessed Queen herself, and say the words in character, as if I were speaking a part. (I can hear you cry, ‘Aye, the part of a woman who can properly manage her servants.’) But I cannot be she, I can only be your

  TURVEY HALL

  Wiltshire

  The 3rd day of January in the Year of our Lord 1680/81

  My darling Father,

  Last night I dreamt again that you had come to take me home. In the dream, your dying was all a mistake made by that scurvy physician, and you had been living secretly in the under-stair cupboard, nibbling the cheese from the mousetraps, and chuckling that you had tricked us in your clever way.

  When I broke through the dream and awoke – oh, the terrible lurch in my belly; the knife-twist in my heart as it dawned that I had dreamt it all... I wish I could learn how to linger a little longer with you in that hazy place betwixt sleep and waking, for the dream-you is always smiling, and reaching out to press me to your side; to stroke my cheek...

  I know in my right mind you are gone and silent still, and under the earth in the churchyard, where bright green moss grows over you, and there are no books to read or children to scold...

  Oh my Father, how I rue all the cruel things I said to you and Mother. If only you knew how I sob my heart out over it when my husband is asleep.

  I open the window every night and look up at the stars – for I know you are floating up there with the angels. I send you kisses up to heaven until my husband scolds me, but I pay no mind for I am not his, but instead forever your loving

  VII

  REGIMEN

  In which I describe our daily life, such as it is

  A DAY IN THE LIFE OF

  MY HUSBAND & I

  by Lady Ursula Tyringham,

  17th April Anno Domini 1681

  DAWN

  At the first chirping of the birds on the tree outside our chamber window, with a loud yawning my husband rises. He yanks the bed curtains open, which wakes me, but I drift back off to sleep with the sun slanting on my face. He dresses, and goes out on his rounds of the estate, and visits with his manager, or the groom, or exercises his horse.

  SEVEN OF THE CLOCK OR THERE ABOUTS

  I open my eyes. I close them. I groan. I push my head under the pillow.

  A SHORT WHILE LATER

  I am awakened by Beck with a pinching. I slap her away and shout ‘No NO NO.’ The click of her wooden shoes on the floor.

  A LITTLE AFTER THAT

  My linnet has begun his morning trill and flits about his cage. Beck swipes at the bedclothes, and I open my eyes to see her greasy face below her bonnet and the gown which does not fit her plump figure. The waft of onions. She says: ‘Good morrow, my Lady,’ with the leer she has. ‘The Dowager was wondering if you were breakfasting this morning or nay.’

  COMING ON FOR EIGHT OF THE CLOCK

  I am tugged into my gown and have my hair wrenched out by insolent Beck. At first, while she laced me into my buskin or helped me tie up my garters, I tried to speak of gay things – the fashion for plumed hats in Paris, or the new-born foal that had come out unexpectedly skewbald, but she made such short answers, or grunts, that I gave it all up for lost. Now we go through my dressing in a silence that is not quite comfortable.

  EIGHT OF THE CLOCK

  I break my fast alone at the long table in the dining room, served by Tizzy. Most likely ’tis kippers, and bread and ale and a cheese or a capon, and a pickle, or a fruit. The servants clear the table while I am still eating – ’tis plain they disapprove of the quality breaking bread any time after dawn, but I care not, and go on chewing as slow as I may with a smile upon my face, and a firepit of mirth bubbling up in my belly.

  BROAD MORNING

  I walk out of doors if ’tis fine, breathing in the rosemary and sage of the kitchen garden or else I try to get myself lost in the maze, but ’tis always too easy and I end up back at the bench. There is a pretty part of the walled garden that is concealed from view, and there I whip out my book from the secret pocket in my skirts I have sewn for the purpose. I pace briskly up and down the gallery if it rains, thumbing my nose at each one of the Tyringham portraits in turn.

  PAST ELEVEN OF THE CLOCK

  The sound of footsteps. Someone is calling my name. I stow my book and get out a bit of lacework. Fie!

  MID-MORNING

  I am summoned to sit with the Dowager to assist her in some dreary task such as winding her thread, or finding her thimble. She will engage me in prattle and, with a slyness that I took for vagueness at the first, attempts to pry into my thoughts with trickery. ‘Brignall is blunt in his manners, think ye not?’ she will say, with her eyes wide and innocent as a new-born babe. Or ‘Do ye not find having a husband a trifle... toilsome?’ And then if I say something mild such as ‘I suppose so,’ she will seize it and say: ‘Indeed – and why do ye think that, how astonishing,’ with a hungry look on her face and I will have to fashion a reply that comes out all a-babbling. I do not know why she teases me so. P’raps she is as bored here as I.

  MIDDAY

  Dinner. My husband kisses his mama, then me. We all sit at table. The servants stare while we chew, and I know they are hanging on every word we say. On Thursdays we have company, which means the rector, or the Widow Rampshaw, who lives in a spindly house on the village green and is afflicted with a goitre.

  EARLY AFTERNOON

  My husband returns to his business. The Dowager and Sibeliah go to rest on couches, for they stuff themselves so full of food, ’tis all they can do to digest it. I read and write my letters now, knowing I will not be disturbed for above an hour. ’Tis my habit to stow my letters in my bosom and I take them out often, to comfort me.

  LATE AFTERNOON

  My husband comes in. Often he will hold forth about some topic – godliness, or his observations on the depravity of human nature. He seems content if I nod a little and offer the occasional ‘Egad, how enthralling!’ though this can be a trial. He once talked of the Royal Society and I asked why they did not admit women, to which he laughed and patted my hand and said I was a sweet little maid.

  FIVE OF THE CLOCK

  After supper, we all convene in the parlour, the women at instruments or tapestry screens. My husband strides about the room, or pokes the fire, or snores fitfully in a chair, or prates with his mama about relations I do not know. I tried once to lead a conversation on the discovery of a new moon in Saturn that I had had from a pamphlet, but the Dowager eyed me as if I were a Bedlamite, and Sibeliah giggled behind her plump white hands and so I gave the business up.

  DUSK

  Lamp-lighting. Jack comes round with a taper and talks jovially with my husband. Tyringham enjoys their badinage; his shoulders drop, and he throws his head back and laughs heartily. We do not laugh together, my husband and I. I wonder if any married couples do? I miss the merry times I had with Mary and Grisella, rolling around the floor, weak with mirth, tears springing out of our eyes, stuffing our petticoats into our mouths to stifle our howling. I have not laughed like that for a long time, though there is p
lenty to find risible here.

  A LITTLE AFTER EIGHT

  We all retire. The candles are snuffed out behind us as we tap up the stairs in a troupe and part on the landing. If he is in good temper, my husband sends the servants away and unlaces my buskin himself. Oftentimes he barely speaks, or makes idle chatter with Beck as she undresses me. I turn my face to the window and think of other things.

  PAST NINE OF THE CLOCK

  We lay abed. The hall clock ticks. The wind around the gables. My husband’s sigh. A while ago, I asked him to comfort me, for I had a homesick ache and missed my mother. I brushed my fingers along the sheet, feeling for his hand. A cold, clammy thing it was, and I tried to pull it towards me, but he only sighed, and turned himself over, and snored.

  TEN OF THE CLOCK OR THEREABOUTS

  My husband drifts into sleep. If he has had me, I creep into my closet, and do what I must behind the screen. Oftentimes I creep in front of the curtains to sit in the window, lean my head against the glass and gaze up at the night sky. I have stopped weeping at night for the most part, but if I cannot contain myself, I tiptoe into my closet and stuff my shift into my mouth. And then, God willing, I may sleep.

  VIII

  BEDDING

  In which I muse on the duties of wifehood

  Though the first few times it had pained me and made me bleed, after several months of matrimony, I was growing used to lovemaking. I had learnt that the redness of my husband’s neck and the bulging of his eyes were signs that his ardour was inflamed. I discovered, too, that I could hasten our joining by being pliable in his grasp and answering his kissing with a soft and moving mouth. When he bade me lie down, I did so quickly, throwing my legs apart with abandon, turning my head while he lapped at my neck, and sighing only when he rooted under my shift.