The Illumination of Ursula Flight

by Anna-Marie Crowhurst

  ‘Oh my pretty boy,’ I said, to the bird. ‘Perhaps you are lonely, and that is why you do not sing. Mayhap I shall get you a sweetheart, and then you may sing together as happy as the day is long.’

  His head disappeared into his breast and twitched there a while.

  ‘But mayhap you don’t want a wife at all.’

  I sighed. The clock chimed the hour. I was weary; my thoughts moved slowly around my head as if in a mire. I had not read a book for twelve days. I had not put my pen to paper for seventeen. I suffered from head-pains. I did not know myself. I did not know this Lady Tyringham, a dull, insipid girl who sat and meekly worked at a tapestry. I did not have the energy to write many letters, and I did not get many, now.

  Feeling very warm about the neck, I cast off my wrapper. There was an ache in my ears that had started up and my throat was tight and dry, and when I touched my forehead it was warm underneath my fingertips. Heaving myself off the chaise, I made sure my door was tight fastened and then got out the little box I had stowed under my petticoats, which contained my writing book and my almanac and my little wooden bear, for she was becoming dirty with frequent handling, and so I had stowed her here all the better to preserve her. Here too were my secret pouches of dried herbs – and I rooted through them, for I had decided to doctor myself with a posset – I was greatly afeard of taking ill, for now I knew where that led.

  I tipped a few good glugs of sack into a flask and dropped in pinches of each ingredient, as Goodsoule had taught me, remembering to chant over the mixture as I stirred them together.

  Remember wormwood, angelica, nutmeg, nettle,

  And you, scurvy grass, horseradish and juniper.

  Against the fever, against the ague,

  Against the dropsy, against the plague.

  Seven herbs picked in a waxing moon,

  Seven days apart,

  I speak this charm but seven times

  To cast the poison out!

  I drank off a cupful of the potion with a flourish, which went down mighty bitter, but comforted me withal, for it seemed to draw me back to the happiness of my childhood, with Goodsoule and Mary. I had made a flagon of the stuff and saw that I had better finish the whole, or else be discovered in the ways of a wise woman, which I knew would anger my husband, for all cunning ways did. So I drank the whole thing down in great gulps, hiccoughing several times after it.

  ‘I beg your pardon,’ I said to my linnet.

  Feeling somewhat revived, but still a trifle warm, I resolved to go out of doors to cool myself and set off downstairs. I stepped out in my slippers, feeling the damp of the rain-sluiced grass soak into my stockings as I hastened quickly across the lawn, fearing that someone might see me and call me back. The breeze lifted up, and I sighed to feel its coolness blowing across my burning cheeks.

  Swinging my arms, I followed the way past the maze to the orchard. Here I had a favourite low-boughed apple tree, which when surmounted had a pleasant view of the surrounding county. Not feeling vigorous in my spirits, I instead leant against its familiar knobbled trunk and, after gazing about at the rolling hills before me, felt in my skirts for my long-neglected book, drew it out and kissed it.

  ‘I am sorry for forsaking you, book,’ I said, laying it against the branch as my writing desk, and took out my pencil.

  ’Tis arduous to be a new bride and married to your husband, & if you are young, you may rue your union. But I say listen to me who is a wife & I shall tell you how to go about the thing with these four rules for happiness in wiving:

  Article the first: Submit unto your husband and master in all things even if he be not learned and is strange and cold in his ways, for the fault lieth with ye, and ye must strive to correct thyself!

  Article the second: Be quiet and meek in your discourse, confining yourself to idle chatter on the following suitable topics for women:

  The weather

  The King’s health

  The Queen’s health

  The fashions (to other women)

  Music – excepting street ballads

  Health – excepting childbearing

  Weddings – excepting marriage portions

  Article the third: Your husband’s happiness is above all things, so put ye aside your wants and needs, be tender and coo to him in the gentle voice of a dove, though he scold you and beat you and be rough with you in his wooing, and you shall not see heaven, however many times you say you crave to look upon it and beg him in the name of Jesu to love you kindly!

  Article the fourth: If all other courses fail you, and you are brought down by worries or woe or other encumbrances suffered by the dutiful wife and feel fit to burst with ill-feeling and frustration and love-lack, steal yourself out of doors away from prying eyes and running as fast and as furious as you can, scream every oath you know in English, and other languages, or if this be not possible, and you are an educated woman, set down your strongest feelings in a secret book, and hide it, and think upon it, and get much private satisfaction from it withal!

  I put down my pencil, and, feeling now quite bold from all the wine that I had taken, I thought I would take my own advice.

  ‘Ahhh,’ I tried. Two blackbirds lighted on the grass, quite unperturbed. ‘Arrrrrggggghhhh!’ I cried, and rushed at the blackbirds, who rose up in a great flapping of wings. I turned and ran into the wind, and back again, capering like a fiend. ‘The Devil rot those addle-pates who would lock me up!’ I cried, my mouth now feeling as loose as my limbs. ‘I... I curse their blood and I spit in their eyes!’ I staggered a little, for my head was light. ‘I am bored witless! God damn me body and soul!’ I called out to the sky above.

  I stopped, panting at my efforts, and looked around me, slightly fearful that someone was near. The cursing had brought my colour up even higher. I could feel the wine churning in my belly. Perhaps I had taken too much on an empty stomach. I bent forward, and took a few steady breaths, noticing that my slippers were now wet through entirely. This made me laugh, which in turn revived me, and I set off around the side of the house to the stables, for it had come into my mind that I would go there and see about a horse.

  I leaned against the doorway of the stable, breathing in the old familiar smell of horse and hay and leather. It was a bigger stable than we had had at Bynfield, and had a tack room, and a hay store, and a great many stalls of polished wood. Stepping into it, my feet creaking on the floor, I called out a greeting, but perceiving the stable hand was not there, I lifted a bridle from a hook, and went from stall to stall, peering into each one. The fifth one along had a pretty nutmeg-coloured mare, who tossed her head up at me as I unlatched the door.

  ‘Good day, madame,’ I said. ‘I would put this on you.’

  I held my palm beneath the horse’s muzzle and she snorted into it, all velvet and whiskers, but made no protest as I pushed my thumb and then the bit into her mouth, slid the bridle over her head and led her out to the mounting block. I had heaved myself halfway onto her back when I perceived I had forgot the saddle, and chuckled a little to myself at this.

  ‘Forgive me, friend,’ I said to the horse. ‘I have had too much of my posset and am somewhat dishcombobulated.’

  Swinging my legs over, I sat myself astride the mare with a man’s seat, as I had many times at home when my mother was out, my skirts bunched up above my knees. I took up the reins and bade the horse walk on, gripping her sides with my thighs, and feeling the familiar rolling motion of her body under mine.

  ‘Huzzah!’ I cried as we began moving off down the drive. ‘I am liberated!’

  I had not been much into the village and thought to look upon the old ducking pond, and so I twitched the reins towards the green sunken lane that led there. How wondrous it felt to be moving, and out in the air! The sun had come out and now toasted my face and the scent of wildflowers drifted up to where I sat.

  ‘Ah!’ I breathed in. ‘Ah!’

  There were birds chittering in the great holly bushes that sprang up from the
roadside in black-green tangles – I held my hands out to feel their prickles under my palm and picked off a blossom, and put it in my hair. Presently, we passed a brown-skinned farmhand crunching on an apple, and he touched his cap in reply to my ‘Good morrow,’ and some time after that a gentleman on horseback in hunting dress came by, who gave me an appraising look as he trotted past.

  We had nearly come upon the green, for I could see it in the distance, when I heard the call of a deep voice behind me. I pressed my heels into the horse’s belly, once, twice, thrice. She sped up to a trot, but then, flicking her ears back to the voice she recognized, slowed again to a plodding walk.

  ‘Ho!’ I called. ‘Let us move off now, I beg you.’

  But my husband (for it was he) was upon us (a little out of breath) and had caught up the reins and halted the mare, who consented to this with a great snorting.

  ‘Ursula, what in Jesu’s name do you do... whoa there!’ (This to the horse.)

  ‘Good morrow, husband,’ I said, blinking at him. ‘I thought to take a ride.’

  ‘I see that,’ he said, his voice a low tight thing that frightened me. ‘And so do all the servants who were gathered at the windows to watch their mistress go down the drive on a pony with her legs and petticoats on display like a bawdy-show.’ He led the horse around and jerked me off it roughly, twisting my arm and pressing his fingers so hard into my flesh that I yelped, against my will, for I hated him to know that he had hurt me.

  ‘Have you coddled your wits?’ he said loudly, straightening me up and shaking me, for I had fallen against him and twisted my ankle in the dismount. ‘Your face is scarlet and your shoes are in tatters.’

  ‘Mayhap,’ I said.

  Taking my arm then, he marched me back to the house in such a pet I had to skip to keep up with him, and then he said I must go to bed while he thought what he must do with me. For once I did not argue, for a weariness had slid back over my limbs and I dozed all the afternoon through, waking a little after dusk with the gong calling me to dinner.

  At table I chewed mournfully at my bread and stirred my pudding round and round in a whirlpool. My husband would not meet my eyes. I picked up my spoon, and put it back down again, for everything tasted sharp on my tongue.

  ‘Why,’ said Sibeliah, forking her way through a great hash of hare. ‘What ails thee, Sister? I have never seen you forfeit your pudding, even if you have shunned the potatoes. I had thought your adventure would give you an appetite.’

  I waved my spoon at this, ignoring her barb. ‘I am a little fatigued,’ I said. My voice sounded strange in my ears. I shook my head.

  Tyringham frowned and picked up my hand and put it next to his cheek.

  ‘You’re hot as an oven,’ he said, looking at his mother with something in his face that I could not decipher. ‘Feel her, Mama.’

  The Dowager rose creakily from her chair and rustled over to where I sat. Her thin hand on my damp forehead was cool and dry and she pressed it there. I lolled back against her. She smelt of pipe-smoke and camphor and wine.

  ‘’Tis a fever,’ she said, and then, bending over me, in a louder voice, said: ‘You must lie down again now, child, for you are took ill.’

  Was that concern in her eyes? I scrabbled about for her hand, but could only find her wrist, and squeezed it anyway, the lace of her cuffs crackling under my palms. I felt her moving away from me.

  ‘Aye, I am come over famous bad,’ I said to the ceiling. ‘For I cannot see the stars, and ye know what that means.’

  I laid my heavy head down on the table, feeling the sweat pricking my top lip.

  ‘I hope I do not die,’ I said.

  XIII

  AGUE

  In which I am unwell

  I woke in the night. The coverlet was stuck to my skin; at my neck my hair was wet. A dull ache crept up my throat and there were two pincers of pain at my temples. I heaved myself about, twisting my face into the bolster. I slackened my limbs, willing sleep, but the room was light; it would not come. My blood boiled in my ears and my head throbbed and I knew the yellow bile was rising from my belly and coursing around my body and all of its humours. I pushed off the covers.

  There was moonlight in my eyes. A sliver of white had slanted through the curtains and fallen across the bed, the wall. I stretched my fingers out, the line of my arm blurred in the darkness, and touched the bright shape that crossed the bed post. I wiggled my fingertips, all aglow with silver.

  ‘Oh Mother moon, oh bright star, oh heaven-light which I hold in my hand,’ I chanted, a vision of Mary swimming before me.

  ‘Mary!’ I called, raising my body up towards the door. ‘I have a sickness.’

  There was silence in the house, not even the creak of servants on the stair, just the whisper of leaves, in the branches outside.

  I sank back on my pillows, a rhythmic wah, wah, wah sounding in my head. Perhaps it was the groan of a branch in the garden, or the lute playing of my mother at dinner. Wah wah wah: her fingers strummed the strings and the tangle in my head pulsed in time with her hands. The strings, her hands, the strings. Wah. Wah. Wah. But that was not today but long ago, for I was now married, and my husband was gone, and Mary was gone, and nobody would come.

  What day was it? It was Wednesday. I had been here three days. Or was it five? Yesterday, my husband went to London, to see the King about a grant to supply the ships to fight the Dutch and I had dined alone in my chamber, the rattle of my cup and bowl in the empty room, Clara slouching against the wooden wall. They brought me only cold soup, hard bread and a jug of warm ale, for I was a girl and would not scold them. I was a haughty duchess but I could not command my servants. I had tried to swallow to keep up my strength, the whisper of the ague dragging at the back of my head, the gloss of a fever on my brow, but I knocked my wine onto the floor with a careless arm; Clara watched from her dark corner as it spread in a puddle by my feet, but did not move.

  ‘The rats will drink it later,’ I had said, before taking myself back to bed.

  Sleep, where was sleep? My eyes watered. They would not close. I needed pennies to weight them. I closed my eyes. I drifted.

  The night before my wedding we had dined on pickled samphire and a nutmeg hash and ginger-bread (I did not have ginger-bread now; Mrs Jickell did not like biscuits) and I had felt so full and contented as I leafed through Foxe’s Martyrs by the fire, and Reginald had teased me and said I might go into a convent, and I pinched him ’til he squeaked. I could go there now, to that memory. I was warm and full and sleepy. I was hot and Reggie was pinching me. I was by the fire and falling in, I was in the eye of the flames, calling and crying, but no one came.

  I sat up, feeling the world move about me. How long had I slept? Out of bed, the floor cold under my feet, puppeting my legs, standing. I dragged on the coverlet as a cloak and walked the few steps to the window, and, leaning against the wall, pressed my fiery cheek against the stone. ‘Ahhhhh.’ My breath misted on the window. I rubbed it away with my sleeve.

  The garden was shrouded in night: black leaves, dark trunks, pale lawn. I was aching, my bones were creaking and the bile and blood swirled within me, getting hotter, always hotter. The wind was up; the clouds scudded across the moon.

  A noise from outside: a whine, a cry, something high that flew on the wind. I looked down at the garden. Standing there, on the grass, was a goat. The curve of horns, white body, legs lost in shadow. It turned its head and listened, bent its neck, tugged up a few blades of grass and chewed them slowly. The moon was in Capricorn and the ram had come to save me. The creature flicked its ears up and down and opened its mouth and called out to me with its goat-song.

  My head began to swim and so I stepped back to the bed, flopped onto my back. The ceiling was dancing with shadows. I watched them, spellbound; a child with a bobbin. I coughed and turned over, the nightgown stuck to my skin. I would never get it off.

  In the garden, the goat kicked its heels.

  A LIST, HIDDEN UNDER THE FLOO
RBOARDS:

  THESE ARE THE THINGS HE HAS CUFFED ME FOR:

  Speaking a charm against warts (the one on his thumb).

  Talking too much of the playhouse, and of literature.

  Overuse of my almanac. (Sibeliah must have been spying again.)

  Crying too much and too long and in hearing of the servants.

  Saying I hated him and would run off as soon as I could and take a horse and live as a wandering woman, or failing that a harlot, and would die in the streets, bedraggled and pitiful and covered with rotten cabbage soon as be his meek and dutiful wife.

  ‘My Lady! What do you do on the lawn in your night-shift? My Lady, you will catch a chill. You must come to bed. Can you hear me, my Lady?’

  ‘Do you see the goat, Sarah? He is dancing with joy. He has come to carry me off and I will ride on his back to the stars and beyond to the heavens, where my father waits in his library.’

  ‘I can’t see no goat, my Lady, but you are dreaming in your fever, and have wandered outdoors. Come with me now and I shall lay ye down.’

  ‘I want to go home.’

  ‘That ye shall do, my Lady.’

  ‘Look, the goat comes with us. He trots along beside us like my faithful dog, my Muffy.’

  ‘Yes, my Lady.’

  ‘Mary – where are we? I am took ill, I think.’

  ‘We are in your chamber now, my Lady, where ye must lay down and be quiet. The doctor is coming tomorrow and will make ye all better.’

  ‘No! He killed my father with his bleeding! I will not be cut! I will keep my blood boiling in my own veins, I thank ye.’

  ‘I will tell him, my Lady. Goodnight and bless ye.’

  ‘Mother? Hold my hand, Mother.’

  ‘Here you are, my Lady.’