The Illumination of Ursula Flight

by Anna-Marie Crowhurst

LADY: Knave.

  HANBURY: Exactly, the knave! I’ll kidnap you and carry you off! [Pause] I wish I had.

  LADY: You don’t.

  HANBURY: I do. But now I must away, alas, for there is a tennis tournament at noon and woe betide the man who misses his chance to bat at the King. I will have to lose of course, for I do not want my head spiked on London Bridge.

  LADY: He would never!

  HANBURY: He might. He’s a bad loser.

  LADY: Until tomorrow then, old friend.

  HANBURY: Until then. Wait by the window.

  Exit HANBURY. The LADY watches him go. She sighs. She smiles.

  Curtain

  XXI

  ADORATION

  In which I achieve an ambition

  The noise was the first thing I noticed – the rise and fall of a hundred voices: the din of chatter, the calls of the orange-sellers and the birdsong of women’s laughter; the drumming of feet as people filed into their seats or jostled for spots in the pit; the lilting strains struck up by the musicians who lolled against the boxes and dawdled at the front of the stage, a-playing all the while. I breathed in burning tallow and pomanders and perfumes and wine, and the mingling smells of bodies – so many bodies: I had never seen so many people in one place before – nor so many of the low sort, in truth – there were ordinary citizens as well as the ’prentices and plain-looking maids, and very proud and painted women too, with powdered faces and jewel-coloured gowns. My eyes were drawn upwards above the mêlée to the great swags of blue velvet in front of the stage, at the top of which glittered Prince James’s coat of arms, in gilt, which were flanked by maidens – the muses, gowned in white; hands and feet stretched out to one another in an endless, graceful ballet.

  ‘This way, Urse,’ said Samuel, leading me up the stairs, for he had paid a shilling each for our seats and a good view besides. It was hard to see my way, for I was not accustomed to my vizard, or my high wooden pattens, which I had worn only once before, and were tricky to walk in, for they would catch beneath my skirts.

  ‘’Tis a dark day today,’ said Lady Vyne, who had accompanied me out of Henry House, and all the way to the playhouse in her carriage, at Samuel’s request. ‘’Tis well they lit all the candles, for I confess my eyes are not good in the gloom.’ She flicked her white hands at the chandeliers that hung all about us.

  ‘’Tis your age, madame,’ said a young gallant from the row in front of us, who had red cheeks and a suit of yellow brocade.

  ‘Hold your tongue, buffoon,’ said Lady Vyne from behind her vizard.

  ‘Ah, Lady Arabelle,’ said the fop. ‘Always the wit. How the devil do you fare? I would not have known you behind that mask, save for your bosom, which cannot be missed. ’Tis not like you to hide your face. Too late for that, I fear, for everyone has seen it.’

  She made a noise with her teeth. ‘That is Mr Ruggle,’ she said, twirling a strand of her long black hair around her fingers. ‘Who cannot keep away from the actresses and so is a fly of the ’Tiring Room, always buzzing about, looking for young flesh to feast on.’

  ‘I heard that!’ cried he.

  ‘Ah ha,’ she said, turning her face this way and that. ‘There in the box is Lord Wintleton, with the tricorn. And the Marquess of Disbury is beside him.’ She unlaced her mask and dropped it into her lap, revealing a long, elegant face which was set off with white powder, and a sprinkling of heart-shaped patches. She tapped her fan against her nose and inclined her head. ‘And there – Samuel, do you see that? ’Tis Madame de K and the Duke of Buckingham. They are mighty bold to be seen together when ’tis known Charles has threatened hanging to any who sully his women. But I do like madame’s hat: there is something French about it, to my eye.’

  ‘Louise is in thrall to no man,’ said Samuel.

  ‘Is that so?’ said Lady Vyne, with a sidelong look at me. ‘And what think ye, Lady Tyringham,’ she said, ‘of your first visit to the playhouse. It is not like this in... Wiltshire, perhaps?’ She said ‘Wiltshire’ with a curling of her lips.

  I smiled. ‘No indeed,’ I said, fiddling with my sleeves, which I had looped up with taffeta ribbons for the occasion, after seeing a lady pass by my window with the same, and sending Jessamy down to the ribbon-seller. ‘I do not know yet, I am in such a pet to see the play – and the players – and the actresses. The Country Wife! A very good title, is it not? Do you think Mr Wycherley will make an appearance? For I would dearly like to see a real writer in the flesh.’

  ‘Calm yourself, child, for you won’t think that when you’ve seen him,’ said Lady Vyne. ‘But mayhap he will show himself, for there is nothing he likes better than applause.’

  ‘Do not mind my friend Arabelle,’ said Samuel, taking my arm. ‘For she only comes to the theatre for the gossip, and could not tell a Molière from a Maundy masque.’

  ‘I cannot deny it,’ said that lady. ‘And so you will excuse me if I leave you now, for my friend the Earl of Netherwick is signalling to me, and he has a box.’ She got up.

  ‘I want to thank you, my Lady,’ said I, ‘for your assistance today. My husband is greatly reassured that I have made the acquaintance of a respectable married lady such as yourself, who may accompany me to church, and on other seemly outings, while he is on the King’s business.’ I looked her plain in the face to see that she had understood.

  ‘’Tis no trouble,’ she said, gazing down at me. ‘For Hanbury put it to me in such a way that I could not refuse. Besides, who am I to stand in the way of true love?’ She whisked her skirts away and made to leave our row. ‘You are a slyer thing than you look,’ she said. ‘Good luck, Lady Tyringham.’

  ‘Do not mind her,’ said Samuel quickly. ‘For ’tis only her way. She loves to tease.’

  ‘Egad!’ I said, clutching at him. ‘That was a trumpet. And the curtain is rising! I have never been so happy in all my days. I feel as if I might burst or cry and fall into an attack of the vapours. I hope people will stop their prating, for I am keen to hear every word.’

  ‘Oh they will never do that,’ said Samuel. ‘Not when there are so many things to talk about. And you must not get the vapours, for you will miss the play.’

  The musicians then, who had all the while been playing as they strolled about the pit, came together in a knot and struck up a merry tune, and the players came onto the stage, and began a stately dance. I held my breath, my eyes fixed on the wonder before me: the first actors I had ever seen. Despite the faint murmur of the crowd, there was a pitch of fever in the air, like the vibrations of a just-struck tuning fork that could be felt in the body, rather than heard.

  I turned my head about me. Though it was broad day outside, in here it was night. The sconce candles made soft light flare on the faces of those in the gallery, who hung their heads and arms over the balustrade. Circles of orange pooled onto the stage from the footlights, towards which the dancers moved, like moths, and lingered there. The light, and the shadows around it, made the painted scenery seem almost real, for the stage floor swept into a pretty country landscape that stretched back into the distance to hills and the lilac peaks of mountains, above which clouds drifted across a pale blue sky. I marvelled at the painter’s art, for I felt I could walk into the backdrop and disappear, and be carried off to fairyland, as I had wanted to as a child.

  The hubbub of the crowd quelled a little as the ballet ended and the first actor began to speak the prologue, and I soon forgot where I was entirely, abject in my seat to the sound of his voice. I found myself ooohing and ahhhing and clutching myself with mirth as the dashing Harry Horner, in a bright pink hose and all bedecked in lace, cuckolded husbands by the dozen, and Margery Pinchwife, played by a handsome actress with a white skin that I later knew as Mrs Boutell, was disguised in breeches as a youth (this causing a great uproar from the gallants in the audience, for she had a very pretty leg). I began to see that despite my childhood games, I had never known the true spellbinding power that was the craft of acting, until now. These men and
women who spoke and moved and struck poses before me had me entranced; suspended in time. It was only they and I that mattered now, and all of life’s troubles seemed faint and unreal.

  Being part of an audience was a new thing to me too, this laughing and weeping and sighing in a body. A kinship with those around me began to build in me, that we were all come together in this wish to see a spectacle, and were part of it, for I saw it would be a different thing for those that saw it tomorrow, or the day after. I felt inextricably bound up with Samuel too, that he was here beside me, and seeing what I saw, and in bringing me here had given me the thing I wanted most in my entire life. I had a sudden rush of affection for him, and turned my face towards his smiling one.

  ‘I have never been so happy in all my days,’ I said into his ear, at which he felt for my hand and squeezed it, and we two sat like that for the whole first act; though my palm became moist and hot, he did not let go.

  A new feeling began to wash over me: that now I had been here and had this new world open up before me, somehow things would be utterly changed. I did not know quite how this would be, only that within myself, I knew that I should no longer be so lonely, or so dull. Not when I had the playhouse to hug to me, and to escape to in my mind – if not in life, perhaps, with the help of my new friends. This place was not my mother’s or the Dowager’s or my husband’s. This place was mine.

  Afterwards, it being still light, we went to dine at a tavern, and I thought Lady Vyne would join us, but she did not appear, and so Samuel said we had best be away, so that he may have me back before my husband came home at dusk. The spell of the theatre still hung about me and worked away at my insides as we stepped along the street and through the doors of The Seven Stars, where we had a private room, and Samuel ordered a barrel of oysters and a bottle of hock.

  ‘My!’ I said, throwing back my hood and snatching off my mask. ‘I am still half there, for I was quite caught up with the magic of it and do not know quite what I am about.’

  ‘It happens like that, sometimes,’ said Samuel, his eyes dancing.

  ‘I judge Mr Wycherley’s story to be a very fine tale indeed, for it had as many knots and twists as anyone could want, and a great many witty words besides. Ooh, the part where the whole company danced in a great parade of cuckolds!’ I said, my voice rising up in my excitement. ‘How I clapped. And roared! ’Pon my soul, I am quite worn out with all the emotions I have felt.’ I lolled against the wooden back of the seat. ‘And, Samuel, wasn’t Mrs Boutell triumphant? The way she laughed and threw her head back at the audience’s applause... And how they adored her! I wanted to be her, and I think every woman there did, for all their faces were rapt in wonder... oh to be an actress!’ I made a tragic face. ‘For my own sake fain I would all believe. Cuckolds, like loves, should themselves deceive.’ I bowed my head.

  ‘Brava!’ said Samuel, draining an oyster and flicking the shell onto the floor with a practised movement. ‘But I think your scripts just as merry. And you would not really like to be an actress, I think.’

  ‘But it was marvellous!’ I said. ‘Everyone there thought so... Why, and so many different people go to the playhouse. I saw all types of person together, from apprentices to—’

  ‘Strumpets!’ said Samuel.

  ‘I did not know what they were, but I thought it might be so, the way they were painted.’

  ‘What gave it away, the abundance of rouge or the fact they had their bubbies out?’ said Samuel, prodding me with his finger.

  I blushed. ‘I have not seen one before.’

  ‘No indeed,’ he said. ‘Not many strumpets at Turvey Hall.’

  ‘Nay,’ I said, sipping my hock, the flushed, greasy face of Beck floating into my mind.

  We sat there in companionable silence a little while, and then something sprang into my mind.

  ‘Samuel, I was too much in a daze to remember it when you called on me before, but I have brought something to show you.’

  Here I got out a little pouch, and plucked from it my little wooden bear, its tail tied on with a string.

  ‘She is quite dirty now,’ I said, brushing lovingly at the bear. ‘For I have kept her with me all these years.’ I held the creature up for Samuel to see. ‘And she has been a great comfort to me in the lonely first days of my marriage.’

  He seemed a trifle bashful then.

  ‘Ah yes,’ he said. ‘What a gallant boy I was. Always with the sweetheart trinkets.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘You had many sweethearts then. I did not think—’

  ‘Nay, nay,’ he said. ‘None but you. I only meant it as a turn of phrase. And I bought that little bear from a table at a fair; how well I remember my father teasing me about it, for I had to borrow the coin from him to buy it. And how I yearned for you when I was sent away to school and could not get you a message.’

  ‘For a long time I wondered why you did not come,’ I said.

  ‘It is so fortuitous then, that fate has brought us back together.’

  ‘Oh aye,’ I said. ‘It truly is.’

  The excitement that had carried me out of the house and into Lady Vyne’s carriage and to the playhouse was subsiding now, and it had occurred to me that I was dining alone with a man, and did not quite know where I was or how I would get home. It was growing dark. I felt a little fizz dart up in my belly.

  ‘I’m afraid I must be getting home now, Samuel,’ I said, ‘for I would not want Tyringham to come after me and discover me here with you.’

  ‘Then I will carry you there,’ he said, ‘for ’tis just a step around the corner. I shall call for a linkboy to light us, and you may dart in through your front door and say that you came with Lady Vyne, but the horse had lost a shoe, or some such.’

  ‘Thank you, Samuel. It has been joyous, and beautiful, beyond measure.’

  ‘You need not thank me,’ he said, ‘but you might...’

  He leaned his head towards mine and, with a deliberate movement, tipped his head to the side, and cupped my chin in his and opened his beautiful mouth, his eyes on mine all the while, a smile crinkling lines at their corners. I could do nothing but watch his face coming close, and then I shivered as he pressed his lips on mine, and his hand was in my hair, and on my neck, and he was kissing me... Oh, such a kiss, I felt my mind take flight and float away over the rooftops, and we were nothing but two bodies, and lips and tongues, as we had been before, but now it was different, stronger, knowing. His hand caressed my back, the bare flesh of my shoulder, it slid down the front of my bodice. I felt a shiver creeping up my back, and a heat on my chest and in my face. He laid kisses on my cheeks and my chin and my neck. I tipped my head back, but kept my eyes closed fast all the while.

  ‘I must stop now,’ he said into my neck. ‘For if I do not I do not know what will happen.’

  ‘I do not know either,’ I murmured, for in truth I did not.

  XXII

  ADAPTATION

  In which I become accustomed to fashionable life

  My playhouse visit and renewed acquaintance with Samuel had enlivened me, for I began to see that life in London could be very fine indeed, with regular plays (viewed in utmost secrecy), and visits to Court, with all the grand balls, and fine banquets that the courtiers had there to entertain them. I wondered when my husband would take me back to W hitehall. I wondered, too, how long it would be until I made a few more acquaintances – for having had so many people all about me of late, I began to be conscious that I was as in need of companions in London as I had been at Turvey. I had Jessamy, but she was only a servant, and could not know my secrets. I supposed with Samuel to introduce me, it could surely not be long before I began to fall in with some other young ladies and gentlemen, and at this my heart began to lift.

  Of Samuel, I thought often, for my mind was all in tumult after his sweet kiss; too sweet it was, for I felt it on my lips for days after he had given it, and felt I must be marked with it for all to see. I wondered if my husband might notice the merry mood
that had come over me, and to this end I worked to keep my face as sober as it ever was. I ran over in my mind all that Samuel had said, and pondered what he meant by it, and what I should do.

  Lady Vyne came to my aid in this, for true to her word – and, I hoped, at Samuel’s encouragement – she began to pay calls on me, and sit with me in the parlour, and my husband too if he was home, though I could see by the narrowing of her eyes when she spoke to him that she took little joy in his company. It was Lady Vyne too, who had seen my thin stockings and country shoes, and insisted, in front of my husband, that she help me with the ordering of a new wardrobe. With her guidance, I had two fine new gowns made up, one of lutestring, the other moiré, and a smart taffeta jacket and a great cockade hat with feathers, like a man’s, for ’twas the fashion for ladies to go about in them. In anticipation of the winter, I ordered too a new velvet surtout trimmed with sable, and mittens to match. Whispering that the gentlemen liked them, Lady Vyne had coaxed me into a new corset which was stiffer than I was used to – I had been admiring the effect on my bosom. All of this my husband had sniffed at, but he seemed in thrall to Lady Vyne, and while she prated on about my beauty in my new finery, he could hardly disagree.

  These slight changes in my life had an improving effect upon my confidence. With Lady Vyne’s friendship, I began to feel a little more grown-up, and with the roaming eye of the Dowager seeming ever further away, that I now lived in a house that was mine. I accidentally pleased my husband by asking if I might see about the moving of furniture, for he took it as an interest in the things that were his – I did not tell him that I sought to expunge the traces of my mother-in-law I saw in the dark fabrics and plain furniture, both of which Lady Vyne had tutted at.

  ‘I think the card table will look well here, close to the cane chairs,’ I said one idle afternoon after dinner while my husband read his Bible, his lips moving all the while. ‘And we might have the chaise re-upholstered, for ’tis riddled with moth and needs re-stuffing. Arabelle says that orange damask is quite à la mode.’