‘Oh Mother, how I love you.’
‘Rest now, my Lady.’
XIV
CONVALESCENCE
In which I am much surprised
Someone was dabbing my forehead. I opened my eyes. The room was all aglow; the sun was streaming through the mullioned panes. A figure, in a grey gown, red hair spilling out of her bonnet. Red hair. Red hair. I knew red hair.
‘Mary!’ I croaked. ‘Is it really you? Am I dreaming still?’
‘Nay, ’tis I, in the flesh, here and coarse and common as ever. Feel.’ She pinched my arm, but she did it very gently. ‘I have come to nurse you, for you was took so bad they didn’t know what to do and you would not have the doctor and screamed the house down when he came, and fought against him, and blackened his eye.’ She chuckled.
‘I did not!’ I said. ‘I do not remember it.’
‘You did, and he has gone away again in a pet and says he will not come back, even if ’tis French pox.’
‘How long have I been ill?’
‘Why, three weeks or more, I think. They were worried when you kept on breaking out of doors in your shift and mumbling all the while of goats and stars and wishing you could fly.’
‘Oh Mary, I am so glad you are here. I’ve had such terrible dreams.’
I pulled her to me, and wept a little, and she did too, though she turned her face from me to do it.
‘And you have made me better and nursed me with your mother’s remedies?’
‘Aye and she has been here too, though she has gone away now, and your mother too, for they thought you would not live.’
‘Mother came!’ I said, struggling to sit up, though it was hard to do it and my limbs felt weak. ‘Oh, but I do not remember it!’
‘She came, and sat with you and whispered things into your ear, I know not what, but you smiled at them, and mumbled and seemed to sleep the better for it.’
‘Ah,’ I said.
‘Now,’ she said, going over to the dresser and getting a pot of something from it, ‘you must have some medicine now you are astir, for it has been difficult to get you to drink it, and I have resorted to pinching your nose and pouring it down your throat.’
‘You did not!’
‘I did, Mrs. Drink.’
I took a sip. ‘Jesu, what’s in it?’ I sputtered. ‘It tastes worse than that toadskin concoction you had me drink for womb-pain.’
‘Catgut, and feverfew and tansy... boiled with the tail of a drowned lamb... and honey and chamomile to sweeten it.’
‘It’s hardly sweet,’ I said, but I pinched my nose and drank it off.
‘Chew on this to take away the taste,’ she said, pushing a little posy of parsley and mint in my hand. I chewed it.
‘Mary,’ I said, after I had swallowed. ‘Why am I rustling?’
‘You are bound in brown paper, against a chest-rheum, for you was coughing enough to wake the Devil, and so much choler came up, in lumps as big as my fist. That was when your husband went away and left us to our work, and you much the better for it, for we had not liked to chant over you while he was here.’
‘Oh yes, my husband.’ In my weakened state I had forgot that I was married. ‘Where is he?’
‘Gone to Court at the command of Old Rowley,’ she said, straightening the row of bottles and jars which now stood on my side table, a pharmacopeia in miniature. ‘And weren’t the servants prating on it, thinking him gone off to find a new wife, with you being likely carried off with the next shower.’
‘Huh,’ I said.
‘I do not like your Beck,’ said she, her voice a whisper. ‘She stamped on my foot on purpose and looks at me with evil in her eye.’
I sighed. ‘I do not like her either.’
‘Hmm,’ she said, taking hold of my bedcoverings and smoothing them down, and tucking them tightly under me.
‘Do not fuss!’ I said, but I did not mean it, and fatigue began to seize hold of me again, and I drifted, slowly, lightly, happily, this time, to sleep.
Such a joyous time we had in the weeks that followed, my Mary and I. The snow was too deep for her to be sent home, and for my husband to return neither, and so we had the house to ourselves, with only the Dowager and Sibeliah to spoil it, and they would not come near me, for fear of catching what I had. Mary and I spent the mornings closeted in my chamber, talking and dreaming and combing our hair. She told me of Malcolm Longfoot, who was no longer her sweetheart, and Jep Collins, who was courting her, and played the pipe under her window. She told me of Catherine, who could not read still, but was a hale and hearty child, and as happy as she could be, without me there. We thumbed through pamphlets and memorized ballads and said verses to one another aloud. We made up a new hairstyle that was ribbon bows tied all over the head, and went about like two peas in a pod, she trimmed with pansy-pink and me with sea-green.
‘Oh, I have never been so happy as this,’ said I, one bright morning, as I sat hunched on the window-seat and gazed out at the soft white garden below me. ‘I hope the snow will never melt, for I would have my bosom friend beside me always. You shall stay, I hope, if my mother will let you.’
‘I hope so,’ she said.
A tap at the door; the rustling of skirts. A sickly fug I knew well.
‘’Tis I, Sister,’ said Sibeliah, sliding into the room with her hands before her. ‘I have come – or rather I am sent to tell you that it is coming on for dinner-time. Mama worries that you are up here chattering again, and shall be late down.’
‘O thank ye, Sibeliah,’ I said, while behind her Mary rolled her eyes about in her head and made me giggle. ‘We will come down very soon, I should think.’
She hesitated in the doorway. Clank, clank. She felt for her sweet-pouch.
‘Would you like a marzipanned nut, Mary?’ she said, holding it out. ‘They are good for the teeth and sweeten the breath withal.’
‘No thank ye, my Lady,’ said Mary primly. ‘For it will ruin my dinner.’
‘Oh aye,’ said Sibeliah. ‘I suppose it will.’
As she drifted away we exploded into a fit of giggles almost before her back was out the door.
‘They must never find out,’ I said, with a heaving back, ‘that we have a sugar-cake inside the wardrobe!’
We wept.
XV
DISCOVERY
In which I find something out
ACT III, SCENE IV
Early evening. A darkened house. Outside the sky is streaked with pink.
URSULA, a girl in a cornflower-blue gown, walks briskly down a dim gallery. Her skirts swing from side to side. Her hair is primped with curls and tied all over with bright ribbons. In her hand, a book.
URSULA: Maryyyyyy! Maaaaaaaa-ry!
Silence.
Mary! I give up! You win! You are Queen of the Castle and I’m the Dirty Rascal!
She pauses by an overstuffed chair. Behind her, the soft sound of slippered feet. She sniffs the air. She whirls around.
URSULA: Got you!
SIBELIAH: Good evening to ye, Sister.
URSULA: Oh, Sibeliah, where did you spring from? I am looking for Mary, for we are playing hide-and-seek, but I fear she has bested me and won again.
SIBELIAH: I – nowhere, I am hurrying back to Mama, for ’tis getting on for nightfall and she does not like me to be alone about the house after the sun has gone down. [Dropping her voice to a whisper] When ghosts walk.
URSULA: But they do not... ah yes, of course. The ghosts. [Waggling her fingers] Wooooooh! I’m famous frightened of ’em.
SIBELIAH: You do not sound it.
URSULA: [In mock fright] WHAT WAS THAT!
SIBELIAH: [Clutching at her] What?
URSULA: Oh nothing, I thought I heard...
They both strain their ears.
[Swinging around] WHAT WAS THAT!
SIBELIAH: [Crying] Oh Lord Jesu in heav’n, save us!
URSULA: No, no. On second thoughts it was probably just rats.
SIBELIAH: Rats
!
URSULA: [Lolling against the window-sill] Or the ghosts of rats, which are much, much worse, for they cannot be trapped, or poisoned, or seen. And when all the candles are snuffed out, then ye will hear them: prowling about the corridors and scrabbling against the wainscot with their wispy, ghostly claws. I believe they like to feast on human flesh at suppertime, for ’tis like nectar, to a ghost rat.
SIBELIAH: Holy Mother, I shall have the vapours on the spot!
URSULA: No you shall not, for they do not exist. Forget your fears of spirits and look out of the window now, for Gad, ’tis a glorious sunset, which means the snowstorm is over and perhaps we may go out of doors, presently.
SIBELIAH: I cannot look at the sunset!
URSULA: Plainly you must open your eyes first, or you will not see it. [She takes the girl gently by the elbow and pulls her to the window] Come, Sibeliah, there are no spectres here. Just I, your wayward sister, who teases you.
SIBELIAH: You’re a sprite and a pixie, Mama said, and are not quite as you should be.
URSULA: And how should I be, pray?
SIBELIAH: Good and not wicked and always hidden away, keeping secrets.
URSULA: Do you not have any secrets, Sibeliah?
SIBELIAH: Nay, for Christ Jesu watches and knows everything we do, even when we are in our beds and private with ourselves – which we must never be for he sees it. Do not look at me with your eyes boring into me, for I do not have a secret. None that are mine. Not mine.
URSULA: Then whose secrets, Sibeliah? Your mother’s? Faith, I do not want to know hers.
SIBELIAH: No. I must – I must find Mama.
She runs off in a flurry of skirts. Turns over her shoulder.
SIBELIAH: She-goblin!
URSULA stands at the window a while, watching the sky turn to violet, then to purple. At last she turns away and continues down the length of the room.
URSULA: Mary!
She passes down a staircase. Turns back on herself to the corridor below. The lamps have been lit – it is comforting. She smiles. Stops. Another sound in the empty corridor. Not feet this time.
[Whispering] Mary?
She moves towards a room. The door is half open. Light blazes from the gap. A tapping sound. A cry. The mumble of voices. Another cry. The knocking of furniture. URSULA steps towards the door. Puts her palm to it. It creaks open, though she has barely touched it. The room is shadowy; a fire hisses in the grate. Against the wall, a woman’s head, her hair tied all over with sea-green ribbons. A man’s back, a man’s legs, his breeches half down. The man’s body pumps and thrusts. The woman moans. Lifts her head up. Opens her eyes.
BECK: Oh!
BECK clutches at the man’s shoulders. He swivels his head, slowly, ever so slightly. He turns it back again. He is still.
URSULA: Husband! I am... for once, quite lost for words.
She turns on her heels and flees, her hand pressed to her mouth. She disappears into the darkness of the house.
Curtain
XVI
CONSEQUENCES
In which I am consoled
Over my husband’s betrayal, I was at first most astonished, so that I could not take it in, and after I had fled back to my chamber, I began to walk to and fro about the room, not knowing what to think or what to do. Should I go back to them and scream? Slap Beck about the face and box her ears? Rail at my husband for breaking his marriage vows with this wench, of all of them? Though I knew that there was little sweetheart-love in my marriage so far, I had not thought it would come to this – I had not thought of this at all.
The sorrow of my lonely situation washed over me and, against my will, tears began to form in my eyes, for now I knew the very slender hope I had harboured that my married life would improve, perhaps, in time, was all ground to dust. I stamped my feet and gnashed my teeth and then dived face-forward onto the bed. I screamed into the pillow so that no one might hear, and kicked my legs, and screamed some more, whereupon I sat up, quite out of breath. Mary came to me then, and I told her the whole, and she pressed me to her.
‘I’d thought as much by the way she’d acted so superior,’ she said, stroking my hair, ‘but I did not like to trouble you with it in case I was mistaken, though I am sorry for it now. ’Pon my soul, I should like to pound the slut, and murder him; I am ready to swing for the pair of ’em.’
I patted her and said it was not worth that. She talked to me of old times to console me, and that night we slept contentedly in each other’s arms.
I did not have to face my husband, and I could not chastise him, for, perhaps in expectation of hot words between us, he went back to London at first light, waking me at dawn with the crunch of his horse’s hooves on the drive, the cry of Jack wishing him ‘Godspeed’ on the treacherous roads, for the weather was still icy, though the snow had all but thawed. Beck, too, did not come to dress me, and so Mary did it, and we laughed to feel like children again.
Later I discovered Beck had been put out, and in her absence too, I found the things that had gone with her, for it could only have been she who had lifted my fine filigree necklace from its red velvet case, and torn my mauve silk gown from its hanger, and whisked, from under my pillow, the fine linen night-shift that I had worn on my wedding night. And it can only have been she, too, who wrenched my box of secrets out from its hiding place, and scattered its contents all over the floor, including my little wooden bear, who had fallen hard on the flagstones (or, as I suspected, been ground under an angry heel) and her tail quite broken off.
‘Oh my poor little bear,’ I said to it in a wobbly voice, as I wrapped it carefully in a stocking and tucked it away amongst my underthings. ‘We are both not what we once were. But we shall be avenged, and that is my vow.’
To my sorrow, Mary was called back by my mother by letter the very next day, and went away from me but three days later, with wet cheeks and a watery smile, saying she would come back soon. I promised that I would send for her as soon as I could, and kissed her face, not daring to think of my life without her. We swore our old friendship oath as she climbed into the carriage, and I waved her down the drive with my kerchief, and watched her ’til she was but a dark speck, and then had disappeared from sight.
Now I knew that my husband did not care to make our marriage a happy one, I felt released from my charade as the dutiful daughter-in-law, and so, ignoring the calls of the Dowager and Sibeliah to sit with them and sew, I went out of doors every day it was fine, though the frost bit at my face. I climbed over stiles and tramped through fields, sometimes breaking into little runs for warmth, holding my face up to the watery winter sunshine, chanting my troubles aloud to Faustina Caterina Luchia di Piazza San Marco, and stopping to scribble feverishly in my book, for now I needed the comfort of writing more than ever. I sat in my chamber, and wrote long into the night as the moon blazed in at the windows, before falling asleep over my papers, waking late with a stiff back and clenched hand.
Two weeks passed. My anger and my confusion had faded, for I had soothed myself by writing, always writing, and it had brought me a serenity of spirit. I wrote at last to Grisella, confessing the whole. Her reply came but two days later and I stole away from the parlour to read it in the privacy of my closet.
I believe it is quite usual for men to take lovers, though Mumsy says good husbands do it discreetly. A servant, however, is considered terribly ungallant and a deed not befitting a gentleman. But Frederick says there’s something about servant girls that he can’t describe, and men get amours for them in boyhood, them being the only young females about in some cases. They are tempting bits of petticoat he says – and some of them quite pretty and not low-looking in the slightest. Oh and Mumsy also says one way of looking at it is if he’s up to no good, he isn’t bothering you, but I’m not sure that’s a comfort (a new way of looking at Papa has crept into my mind; how I shudder!).
I was digesting this information when my husband came back.
To my wonder he came straig
ht away to find me in my sitting-room, and bade me hello. He kissed my hand with the delicacy of a man a-courting and had a fine new shirt with long lace cuffs that fell out of his jacket sleeve to his hairy knuckles.
‘Good day, madame,’ he said, drawing up a stool, and perching on it, and I saw that he had decided to pretend that all was as it should be between us, though he was very stiff in his manners, as if it was I who, if anyone, was at fault.
I turned my head away from him.
‘I have been with the King all this while,’ he said, to the back of my head. ‘For the French are growing evermore treacherous, and the navy must have their vittles. I am much fatigued, for Rex still likes to sport at piquet and carouse into the night. He has naughty friends who encourage him in it, and will not see that he tires.’
I did not answer him. I clenched my fists.
‘And so I must stay up, and be as merry as the day is long.’
I could not imagine my husband making merry, or carousing, though I had begun to suspect that his time at Whitehall might not be entirely devoted to business, and so I did not answer this, but held my fan up to cover the curling of my mouth at the side.
The wind moaned around the turrets.
‘But,’ he began suddenly, ‘the King has asked to meet my wife, for he grows tired of seeing the same faces of his friends, and would be entertained by a fair young lady.’ He paused. ‘Such as you are. I said that you would come, for I know that you have long yearned to see London and be at Court and lay eyes on His Majesty.’
I inclined my head slightly towards him.
‘Will you then?’
‘You would show me kindness now, sir, though it has been your recent habit to dishonour me most foully and show such little care of me, though I have been ill and almost carried off with it?’ I said in a loud voice, never caring if the servants heard it.
The Illumination of Ursula Flight Page 20