The Illumination of Ursula Flight

by Anna-Marie Crowhurst

  He opened his mouth, making an ‘O’ shape, like a pike-fish.

  ‘You would have me go before the King and play the part of the dutiful wife while you are casting your eyes about the place for courtesans, for I have no doubt now that it has been your long habit to cuckold me, and that greasy jade just another in your cast of strumpets.’

  He sighed and pushed at his periwig. ‘Well, what do you want me to do?’ he said at last, in a sharp voice. ‘For I am a man and must get what I need – though, faith, I do beg your pardon that you caught me at it, but it is done now, and we must get over it.’

  ‘Get over it!’ I cried. ‘Ha! Aye, for you got over it enough – many times – I’ll warrant. Now I shall get over it too. I shall cast my eye about and find a likely personage. No doubt there are many that would have me get over them.’

  At this he scowled. ‘Enough with your silliness, Ursula. I have begged your pardon and could do no more. Will you come with me to Court as the King commands it?’

  ‘I do not know,’ I said haughtily, quite amazed at his lack of chagrin or shame. ‘I will think on it a while.’

  He paid little heed to this and said he would attend to business, and went out with a black look upon his face.

  Though I held my chin up to show his behaviour had not affected me, against my will my mind quickly began to crowd with images: me riding on Rotten Row in a great plumed hat, being admired by gallants. Me at Court, bedecked all over in jewels, with a dozen gentlemen clamouring for the next dance. Me carrying my writing to a printer, and publishing a pamphlet, and becoming famous as a wit. I would go to London, I decided. For I saw now that harmony in marriage, like London, had a price. I got out my notebook and began to write.

  XVII

  EXPEDITION

  In which I set off for the capital

  I had never travelled so far in a coach before – London was above three days’ journey, and the roads famous bad. The carriage thumped over tree roots and potholes, throwing us about in our seats. A bitter wind blew in at the windows and all around our ears, and the window covers flapped, and the carriage shook and squeaked enough to make us both sick. Whenever I spoke, the rocking made my very voice tremor in my head, while the slightest impediment in the road shook the vehicle from the wheels to the roof and made it judder so violently that our conversations went like this:

  ME: ’Tis beautiful c-o-u-n-t-r-y-s-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-d-e h-e-r-e i-s it not?

  TYRINGHAM: I had m-y-y-y-y-y-y-y e-y-e-e-e-e-s closed.

  My husband drifted off to sleep and stayed that way for a good long while, for he said there was something about the motion and the clop of horses’ hooves which sent him off to dreamland. I risked stealing my hands to my pocket and getting out my book and starting a few verses, but that too was useless for my pen would not keep still and

  so I

  write at any length. I gave it up and stared out of the window, letting happy thoughts of London and the people and the Court and His Majesty run riot through my head.

  The crow of the coachman, the slapping sound of the whip on horse flesh, the skid of the wheels on earth, and we pulled up halt at The Halfway Inn, a large house of yellow Bath-stone with a great many chimneys spooling smoke into the sky, and people bustling all around – grooms leading horses, low-looking men with tankards, rosy-faced wives with travel-stained caps and baskets of provisions.

  ‘What place is this?’ I asked, craning my neck out of the window, for the newness of it all had begun to infect me.

  ‘’Tis New Bury,’ said my husband. ‘Here we will change horses and put up for the night.’

  The next day, being not much rested – the bed at the inn was lumpy and squeaked every time my husband turned over, while the roasted veal we’d had for supper lay heavily on my belly – I drowsed in the coach, waking up with a start every time we hit a pothole. I jerked awake again as we rounded a bend at speed, and branches crashed across the roof of the carriage.

  ‘Huh!’

  ‘We are soon to enter the Maidenhead Thicket,’ said Tyringham, ‘and must be on our guard for highwaymen who lurk in the trees, for the woods grow close and dark in these parts and so are overrun with vagabonds.’

  ‘Gad!’ I said, sitting up, and forming the wild hope that we might be set upon and I kidnapped by a handsome rogue. ‘I have heard that highwaymen are very gallant gentlemen,’ I said. ‘For my Aunt Phyllis was once waylaid by one, and she said he had his way with her heart, as well as her jewel-box.’

  ‘They are scoundrels and beggars, all,’ said he. ‘But ye need not be afeard, for I have armed the coachman with a blunderbuss.’

  As we entered the forest, a dank loamy smell rose up and I thought of Bear Wood. Leaning as far out of the window as I dared, I strained to make out shadowy figures in every thicket, and pricked my ears for the forest sounds above the rattle of the wheels. I pushed my hair back into place, lest I should catch the attention of a handsome scoundrel.

  ‘I think that was a nightjar,’ I said, twisting my head. ‘Did you hear it?’

  ‘Stay back, madame,’ said Tyringham, and I thought there was something like fear in his face, though his jaw was set and his moustache an immovable black stripe across his upper lip.

  The snap of the whip, and I felt the horses pick up their pace. One of them neighed in fright, for the branches were thickly woven overhead and the path had steadily been narrowing.

  ‘Woah,’ called the coachman, and our carriage began to keen from side to side so that I had to put my hands on the sides of it or else be hurled forward onto the floor. I knocked against my husband’s shoulder and he caught hold of my arm and slid his hand down to my wrist, then moved it towards his lips, though with the lurching motion of the coach it flew up towards his face and against my will I boxed him on the nose.

  ‘Gah!’ he exclaimed, shaking his head like a dog. ‘Hoo,’ he said, feeling around his face. ‘’Tis not broken.’

  A few moments later, his hand slid out again, and crept along my lap.

  ‘Your travelling dress is very plain,’ he said, and I saw that a steeple was forming in his breeches. ‘And your cloak very sober. Your outdoor boots too,’ his eyes slid down my body, ‘are very sturdy looking. It is well you are wearing them, for it might get – ha – muddy.’

  He pushed his hand down the shin of my leg to my boot tops and pushed my skirts away so that he might look at them more closely. ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘sturdy.’ The word came out like a groan.

  ‘God’s bones, is that a highwayman behind that tree?’ I cried, but he paid me no mind; he crouched down on the floor of the carriage and began pushing his hands upwards to my garters. He slid my skirts up. I tried to hold them down.

  ‘Pray, husband, the coachman can see us surely – or anyone outside,’ I said.

  ‘Nay,’ he said, smoothing his hands over my calves, so that I felt like a horse that was being appraised for sale. ‘Woollen hose... yes... very plain, yes... almost like the stockings of a... servant.’

  With that he shook about the shoulders, and I felt his body shudder against mine. He collapsed forward into my lap, spent.

  ‘I beg your pardon,’ he said.

  XVIII

  METROPOLIS

  In which I set down my first impressions of the city

  APRIL

  12th

  I shall write in this book every day, for I must remember every single thing that happens now I am here in the glorious capital! We arrived last night, and the house, which is very tall and made of brick with beams all across it, was in darkness. An old woman came to the door with a lamp and lighted us up to our chambers, mine with red bed curtains and a damp, dusty smell. I could scarce get a wink for the excitement of it!

  13th

  Awakened by the trundling of wheels across the cobbles in the street below, and then the sing-song cries of ‘Who will have milk? Sweet asses’ milk for babbies!’ and ‘Quills, sharp and light for a penny!’ I ran to the window and threw back the s
hutter, my heart thudding at the sight below: so many citizens toing and froing, a maid leading a cow on a rope, and beggars on crutches, and children playing hoops in the gutter, and two fine young gallants in tricorns, all of this in the few moments I stood, my forehead pressed against the glass in thrall to the sights and sounds of London, such a sweet cacophony after a lifetime in the country!

  14th

  This house stands on Bedford Street, in Covent Garden, which is convenient for Whitehall Palace, and so my husband goes there every day. I have not stepp’d out of doors overmuch, for I do not like to ask the servant Jessamy to go with me. But from my window I see ’tis the habit of fine ladies to walk the streets with one another and I am impatient to explore.

  16th

  As soon as T was gone to Court I had my chance to survey the house. It rises four floors high, with a chamber for me and a closet a-piece, and the servants are in the attics. There is a knot garden behind, which looks very pretty from the back chamber. I clicked downstairs in my slippers to the entrance hall, and, making sure there were no servants lurking in the shadows, skipped across the smooth floor of black and white tiles. Jessamy appeared and said, ‘I hope you will find it as you wish it to be,’ and I’ll warrant she seems kinder than any Turvey servant, but still I only made my reply ‘Hmm,’ in the hope that she would go away, for I was seeking out a hiding place for all my writings, which I have brought away with me, for fear they should be discovered in my absence. I knew Tyringham would not think to search my trunk, and so I sewed them all into a bundle of cloth and waited until Tizzy and Sarah had gone away, and stuffed it at the bottom betwixt all my linens, and hoped that the servants here would not make much of it, and they did not. And now I have taken it out and slipped it under a loose board in my closet onto which I have slid a box and so I do not think it will be disturbed.

  19th

  I am beading a needle case with peacocks that I shall send as a gift to Mary. ’Tis dull work when I can feel the whole of London about me, and the playhouses and bookbinders so close by! I have asked Tyringham when I might go to the Court, and he always says tomorrow, but it never comes, and I am most vexed with him, for if I thought he would be different in London, he is not.

  20th

  Jeremiah Malloborne came to supper; he was got up in a yellow waistcoat and told a long story at table, of how he was made an orphan, after his parents, having eaten oranges that had come off the cart of a wandering fruit-seller who afterwards was rumoured to be Spanish, and a gypsy, both took ill of the plague and died, hunched and swollen purple with buboes, in the very same week.

  21st

  Tyringham did not go to Court today and so I asked him to take me on a turn about the town, and we walked around the piazza, which is edged with grand white houses and pavements all about. There is a great house with many scented plants tumbling down its garden wall, and I later found it was the Duke of Bedford’s, and St Paul’s – a modern church with great columns rising up like a temple, and a huge stucco portico, and a garden behind it. There are columns all about Covent Garden, like the etchings of the Parthenon shown to me by Father. I would have walked further, but as we reached Drury Lane, Tyringham said we must go back, and though I was curious to see all the people that thronged about – for surely they came for the playhouse nearby – he marched me home, whereupon he disappeared again.

  30th

  I have been further about the city, for I could not tarry indoors any longer, and Jessamy is a kind servant after all, and said she would go with me so I might see some of the town. I believe she pities me my husband – she does not say it, but looks at me very long. The streets are narrow, and dark, for the dwellings lean forward at the top until they are touching – Jessamy has seen rats jumping from one straw roof to another, in search of better quarters! ’Tis famous easy to get stepped on, for all the people jostling for the wall, whether there be a cry of ‘Gardy Loo’ or nay, for these city dwellers are ever throwing stuff out of windows.

  MAY

  5th

  There is a hay market at Piquadillo which throngs with farmers, and piles of bricks and carts of stones all about, for they are still rebuilding after the Fire, which was worse than I had thought it. Maypoles are very popular here, and there is a great striped one near Somerset House, erected by the Duke of York for the merriment of the people. Everywhere I look there are coffeehouses and taverns and shops with swinging signs – faith, my head is in a whirl at the number of ’em.

  8th

  Out with Jessamy again and we saw two gallants Jessamy says are quack doctors called Rock & Bossy and they have already killed seven people with their quackery. Jessamy reminds me of my Mary a little, for she has red-gold hair, though hers does not curl, and her eyes are not green, but hazel. She laughs a little at me, too.

  14th

  London has its own smell, especially on a hot day, such as today – soot mixed with the damp stench of the Thames and the manure-stink of burden-beasts, which lies on the streets in steaming heaps, but no one heeds it: for they all go about with pomanders press’d to their noses. The almanac says we are in for a long hot June, which is godly for the harvest, but I do not think it must be so for the citizens here, for there is so much filth everywhere, ’tis a wonder they do not take ill of it.

  21st

  Jeremiah came again to dinner and the men were talking in low tones that they hoped I could not hear, but I made out snatches which enthralled me, though I kept my face unmoved.

  WHAT I HEARD:

  ‘’Tis true that Buckhurst and Sedley spent a night locked up in Newgate, for they were both in their cups...’

  ‘... robbed at a Newmarket cathouse and Rex only got out of the scrape when he showed them his privy seal... rumour put about by Nelly for she cannot hold her tongue and thinks everything a great jest.’

  ‘Castlemaine... and Frances will still not let him have her, though he has put her on the coin... gave Mrs Newbridge a locket and a bracelet set with seed-pearls big as plover’s eggs. He is a fool in love.’

  Oh, I do so long to go to Court!

  XIX

  PALACE

  In which I first lay my eyes on Whitehall

  Leaning on my husband’s arm, I stepped into the ballroom, my heart pulsing in my chest. Outside the sky was as grey as the river that lapped at the mud-banks, but here everything glittered, even more than at Turvey: the great mirrors in their twisted golden frames, the bright eyes of the ladies, and the jewels they wore about their throats, wrists, fingers. Along the walls, dripping candles in their golden sconces made pools of amber light and sent sharp little shadows up, up towards the painted ceiling.

  The room was a-hum with chatter and a few curious heads turned our way, painted and curled and tied all over with ribbons. The ladies shook out their fans with plump, white wrists; the men struck gallant poses with stout calves and buckled shoes. The crowd parted to let us through; the smell of sweat and lavender and wine; the hush-hush of silken slippers.

  ‘She is with child, but Rex says he did not get it,’ someone said, to much tittering, as we passed by, and I felt my husband stiffen at this slur upon his prince. He guided me to the room’s side, where hung great wall tapestries embroidered with acanthus leaves and fanciful birds. At his suggestion I sat on a tall chair wrought with wooden figs and oranges which my fingers found and caressed.

  I surveyed the scene, my mind fizzing with the thrill of it. At first I watched my husband as he crossed the room to get me my cup of punch, bowing here and there as he went. Then I spied on the gallant young blades in their frizzed and flowing periwigs, and the ladies who sat on tassel-trimmed settees in shimmering gowns of saffron and azure. The sight of their brilliance made my spirits sink: my own gown of the palest blue I knew now to be most provincial in hue. I coloured a little, thinking how fine I had thought myself as I stepped into our carriage that evening and with how much care I had dressed myself for this, my first visit to the Court. I shook my head to feel the pearl
drops at my ears and the garnets on my fingers, both of these giving me great satisfaction, but, alas, the sum of all my jewels: my husband said that at my tender age I did not need many. I consoled myself that I, at least, like many of the ladies here, had great slashed French sleeves, whipped into folds. My hair, too, I knew looked well, twirled into fat ringlets at the front and around my ears and at the back caught up with the tortoiseshell combs that had once been my mother’s. My mother had never been to Court.

  My eye caught on a man with a grass-green coat, and I watched him move about the ballroom, his body held up, erect and soldierly. His clothes were vivid in colour, but compared to the other courtiers bedecked in adornments, he had little lace and few bows save for the violet rosettes on his boots. His periwig was long and brown and curled: he looked well in it, and handsome.

  I flicked my eyes to my husband, stooping by the punch bowl, with his paunch before him. The ratty, black thing that sat lopsidedly on his head did little to conceal the pox scars on his brow. The other man was tall, and though he was broad and sturdy-looking about the shoulders, his cheek was as smooth as my own; I thought he could not be above one-and-twenty. He came upon a knot of women and stopped their conversation. I watched them all lean towards him, their fingers fluttering at their patches, their laughter very bright and high as he made mock bows to them all. Suddenly, he threw his head up and looked in my direction. I dipped my face downwards, for my cheeks were hot, but when I looked up again, I saw that he still looked my way, and then, as I gazed back at him, he mouthed something that I could not make out. I looked about me, to see if he spoke to some other lady he knew, but there was none.

  He laughed, then opened his mouth again and made a deliberate O shape of it, with a tilt of his head. ‘You,’ he seemed to be saying. He made a gesture with his hand. He mouthed something again. I did not know what to do.