The Memory Palace

by Christie Dickason

  A stream of notes followed. Zeal breathed out and felt her muscles soften with gratitude and relief. Bowler and Jamie were safe. They could not go wrong now. Like birds that wheeled in vast patterns in the sky, each knew exactly when the others would turn, exactly together, never colliding. She thought of the Gunpowder Treason dancing, then crossed her fingers to protect this dance from evil outcome.

  Bowler and Jamie reached the end of the first verse of the melody. Then Jamie, while continuing to bow a simpler rhythm, also began to sing.

  ‘O, sing unto the Lord a new song

  Sing praise unto Him with courage.

  Make a joyful noise unto the Lord

  All the earth, sing praise.

  Sing unto the Lord with the harp; with the harp

  And the voice of a psalm

  With a trumpet and sound of cornet

  Make a joyful noise.

  Let the sea roar, the world

  And they that dwell therein.

  Let the floods clap their hands;

  Let the hills be joyful together.’

  When they finished, there was a total hush in Sir Richard’s great hall.

  ‘Now you must all sing,’ said Bowler uncertainly.

  ‘I wish you had heard us!’ she told Philip when she visited him later at Hawkridge, in spite of his orders to the contrary.

  ‘I swear I might have done.’

  ‘We rattled the panelling with our cheers. Jamie grew at least five inches from pride and Doctor Bowler blushed the colour of beetroot. I thought he might weep…I know that I did.’

  Philip smiled at her. He was sitting up in his bed, weak but cool again. He looked suddenly older and thinner.

  ‘Then he taught us the tune and we all sang and clapped our hands. Jamie put down the bow and played the tabor while Doctor Bowler led us all. We were indeed joyful together! And then we danced…’

  They looked at each other.

  ‘I would like to dance with you again,’ said Wentworth. ‘After the child is born.’

  ‘…without the fiddle, of course,’ she hurried on. ‘But the others all came and played. And Lamb was splendid. He taught us all the latest London steps…’

  She did not tell Philip of the chill that had touched her unexpectedly at the sight of Lamb’s golden head bent close to Jamie’s silver one. Or of her unease at the over-excited abandon with which Jamie threw himself into the dance.

  After Zeal left, Philip Wentworth took a tiny silk-wrapped parcel from where he had hidden it under the quilt. With fingers still a little unsteady from the fever, he opened the parcel. He frowned as he studied the six golden fishhooks lying on the silk.

  He had meant to give them to her, as her New Year’s gift. He knew, from searching her room while she was out, that she had bought him three reels of silk for tying flies. These hooks were proportionate to her gift and would not hurt her pride. At the same time, they were beautiful. And unique. He would not follow common practice and give her spices or a lace collar. He could not give her a string of pearls or a brooch.

  Now the gift troubled him. She might read meaning into the hooks themselves.

  And perhaps rightly, now that I consider it, he thought. How little we understand our own minds. Or bodies.

  What had stopped him, however, was the certainty that she would not rest until she had forced him to relate how he came by them.

  He picked one tiny hook up carefully, by its gleaming golden shank.

  Is that what I want?

  He had told himself she might have two of the hooks made into earrings. He now turned the hook so that it caught the light. The tiny flash illuminated a world hidden in his memory.

  Quickly, he put the golden hook back with the others and wrapped them up again. When he had caught his breath, he climbed from the bed and replaced the parcel in his locked iron money chest.

  I will give her one of my maps, he decided. Though even that is bound to provoke more of her questions.

  Before going to bed, Zeal walked down the drive to the office. She put on John’s coat over her own coat and scarf.

  Where are you this Christmas time?

  She watched her breath make faint clouds in the dark still air.

  Where are you? she asked again. Please!

  She buried her face in the collar. His scent was fading, along with the tang of smoke.

  I must not put this on so much, she thought. I’m rubbing him away.

  She hung the coat back on its peg and stood with her face pressed against the rough brown wool. The deck dropped away beneath her feet.

  Only six and a half more years.

  The child, who is both of us, will hold me steady.

  The next morning, a banging on the lodge door interrupted Zeal’s breakfast. ‘Gifts! Gifts!’

  Zeal got out of bed, where she had stayed for warmth, pulled her jacket around her and went out to the door.

  ‘We’re the Magi!’ cried a muffled voice. ‘Where are we?’

  ‘Lamb, you fool! Have you elected yourself Lord of Misrule?’

  ‘Help me, Rachel!’ He beckoned to the maid, who had appeared at the opening of the loft, still tying the front of her gown. Together, they carried a shrouded, door-sized burden into the lodge parlour. It brought with it the smell of glue. Zeal stirred the coals in the parlour fireplace and fed kindling into the red quivering heat.

  ‘Keep your back turned! Don’t look yet!’ Lamb ordered her. ‘It’s a surprise!’

  ‘Why is everyone always bent on surprising me?’ Zeal whacked a half-burned log with the poker. ‘I’d prefer the delight of informed anticipation.’ Surprises made her anxious.

  ‘Surprises are a form of benign torment. And power. I have you at my mercy, just for a moment…You may look now.’

  She turned and gasped. On the big table stood a miniature house, almost the length of her bed.

  ‘I know that it’s not exactly as you described,’ Lamb said quickly. ‘But you also said that you wish to build a perfect house. I have endeavoured to design one for you. More perfect even than the house designed by Master Inigo Jones for the Queen at Greenwich.’

  Zeal bent close in wonder. ‘I described only what I knew. I couldn’t have imagined a house like this one.’

  Shaped like a squared, rectangular letter ‘O’, it was perfect in every detail, made of oiled cloth on a wooden frame surmounted by a carved wooden parapet, with doors and roof leads of finely shaved wood like a lute-maker’s leaves, and oiled parchment windows through which a golden light glowed. Lamb had painted one half in meticulous detail, from the gods and goddesses on the pilasters between the windows down to the single bricks. The other half, though shaped and modelled like the first, remained unadorned. Nevertheless, the two halves of the front reflected each other in perfect symmetry, whereas her imagination had clung to the collection of architectural accidents that had made up the old Hawkridge House.

  Though this house was not in the H-shape she had imagined, Lamb had listened to her desires all the same. The house had a front wall of tall windows, just as she had asked, to let in the light. It had tiny iron window frames and lead water pipes as fine as wire. The windows had minute catches in the shape of dolphins. Her modest porch, which she now saw to have been very like the old Hawkridge House porch, still sat at the front but had grown here to a wide portico with four columns, each complete with dainty painted fluting and tiny wooden acanthus scrolls.

  ‘Does it please you?’ The uncertain child hovered behind his eyes.

  ‘My wishes and far beyond. It resembles an ancient temple,’ she said.

  Lamb looked gratified. ‘Because it follows the ancient rules for Perfect Proportion. And because a goddess shall live in it. Look!’ Delicately he inserted a paint-stained hand between the columns and opened the miniature main door. ‘The hinges are strips of my old riding gloves.’

  She touched a tiny carved mask set above one of the first floor windows. It was flat. Its shape and shadows were illusions created by
his brush.

  ‘The masons and carpenters can take this model for their pattern, at one half inch to the foot,’ said Lamb. ‘I learned from experience in Italy that most men can’t understand drawings and plans. I have even shown the exact number of bricks. The masons need only count them.

  ‘And wait…!’ He left and returned with a bundle of wooden rods marked with lines and numbers. ‘Here! I have already made calibrated rods for builders. This one is for the main doors. This, for the upper windows. If you hold these against the model, they will translate it to the true dimensions. See, here on this rod? Where it says “two inches”? The “four” just above tells you to measure four feet on the ground. Now, come around to admire the back!’

  She bent to peer through the open front door, and saw a painted hall and staircase. Up the wall of the staircase, so small that she could barely interpret them, Lamb had limned scenes from Olympus.

  ‘I speak in figures, like the gods,’ he said. ‘Parlar figurato. All is in perfect proportion, to reflect the perfect proportions of the universe. Shaped to the Platonic ideals. True beauty is mathematical.’ He bent to see where she looked. ‘For the joiners, I shall also make larger scale models of the staircases and fireplaces, an inch to the foot or more,’ he assured her. He lifted off a section of the roof and re-lit one of the candle stubs behind the façade windows. ‘I will be more than your surveyor. I will be your architect.’

  She was a giantess, wondering what secret lives were being lived behind those glowing windows. She imagined she could hear the faint sound of a tiny fiddle. She bent again to look through the little door, as if she might be able to see the future life of Hawkridge revealed inside.

  Lamb’s perfect house felt like a talisman. His beautiful ordered mathematics, given earthly shape in brick and stone, would charm a similar order back into her life. She could not speak. Instead, she kissed him warmly on the cheek.

  ‘And now for your more modest gift.’ She gave him a pair of gloves, which she had embroidered with Greek-looking owls.

  He said nothing when he first saw them. Still silent, he put them on, studied his hands, turned them over to examine the finely-worked gauntlets.

  ‘Do you like them?’ Or had he forgotten what he said when he gave her Athena’s owl on the day they first met. She suddenly feared that she had misjudged, and had merely dwindled.

  ‘You made them for me yourself?’

  She nodded.

  ‘I’ve never had such a perfect gift. To make me laugh and weep at the same time.’ He threw his arms around her. ‘Sweetest Zeal, I do love you so!’

  ‘Lamb!’

  He smelled of orange blossom, musk and fresh air.

  ‘Philip and I both love you. You must know that. Agape, caritas, eros, any way you like. More of the brotherly agape in my case and not so much eros, but I’m sure Philip makes up for any lack. Lustful old goat!’

  Zeal pushed away his sweet-smelling warmth. ‘You’re trying to provoke me or you’re prying. And either will earn you a sisterly clap on the ear if you don’t take care.’

  Five days later, the steward from Far Beeches brought her a second surprise. He had overheard the messenger asking in Bedgebury for directions to Hawkridge Estate.

  Feeling quite unhinged by hope, she put out her hand. The writing on the letter looked like John’s. Gripping the paper as if it might dissolve from between her fingers, she just managed to thank the steward and send him to the bake house for a mug of ale.

  She sat down on a stool and held the letter before her on the table, waiting for the letters of her name to stop jumping in front of her eyes and for her hands to steady enough to break the seal.

  She felt the terror of those finally given what they most want, who must then look it directly in the face.

  She stood and paced around the little parlour. Philip’s heaviest pole was missing from beside the door. She looked from the window. No one was coming up the track to the lodge. She took the letter into her chamber and barred the door.

  27

  Dearest Heart, Darling Girl, My Own Sweetest Zeal…

  Zeal began to weep. He was still alive. He still loved her. Or still did, when he wrote this letter. She wiped her eyes with the heel of her palm and read his opening words again before continuing.

  …I reach for you in my sleep, in all my waking thoughts. I ache to be this letter, headed back to England and to you. Improbably, I find myself instead anchored in a creek on Hispaniola not an hour’s sail from the Spanish capital of Santo Domingo. Don’t fear for me at the hands of old enemies. Though the Spaniards rule this island, they have no battery guns and seem happy enough to trade with us in exchange for fresh water and provisions.

  On a brief visit ashore today, I found the earth rather unyielding beneath my feet, which are grown used to a more fluid base. Birds must feel much the same when they leave their natural airy element and alight on a rock…Do you remember how we so often knew where the other was on the estate? Like birds linked in flight by an invisible cord, long before we dreamed we might be free to love. A pair of swifts flying together out over the valley.

  I am building a house where we sat together in that imagining.

  …I cannot wait to show you the birds here – flocks of perroquetos exploding from the trees like red, gold and green fireworks. You would also marvel to see pineapples growing wild. I fall asleep each night planning how we will make a life here together…

  She faltered, then read on.

  …I am assured that the ten pounds owed to me at the end of my indenture will buy us thirty acres of good growing land in Barbados, an island held by the English, with safer society for you than elsewhere.

  Meanwhile, I face the future with confidence. I am told that true equality rules among all indentured labour, such as I will be. The planters are as content to employ their fellow English or Frenchmen in the fields, as they are the captive Caribs – who were the first inhabitants of these islands – along with black slaves imported in most devilish conditions from Guinea, and those called mulattos, who are born of whites and blacks, the mesticos born of Indians and whites, and the alcatraces who come from the slaves and Indians. The Spanish, English and French alone own the land and govern all the others. I shall tell you in time whether I take pride in being one of their number. Meanwhile, I am grateful for whatever protection that kinship may offer me.

  So do not fear. Dream instead of the strange and wonderful creatures I will show you when you come. Giant lizards you might almost take for dragons, monkeys, agoutis…

  She dropped the letter into her lap. I should have jumped, she thought. It would have been easier after all.

  1640

  28

  Zeal’s Work Book – 2nd January 1640

  From Lamb, his list for the New House, delivered with model:

  Purbeck stone, to make four columns, with plinths, and capitals. Also cornice. (Nota bene. Purbeck stone is too costly. Ask Jonas Stubbs to make assay of our own stone, to see if it will hold. Or use moulded bricks and plaster in place of stone?)

  Lead for all roofs – (I do not expect enough to be salvaged. We must use Portsmouth slates instead)

  Bricks – 200,000. From our own oven (And 43,000 from old house)

  Burgundy glass from France for window lights. (Too costly. Settle for Norwich glass?)

  Gypsum plaster from Dorset, being of the best sort. 7s. the load

  Candles for heating solder, 200

  Oil, three gallons 30s

  White lead 29s iid

  Four buckets of gold 5s ivd

  Hire of Master Carpenter at 16d per day

  Hire of Master Mason at 18d per day. (Persuade Lamb to agree to Jonas Stubbs)

  Clerk of works, to be determined

  (Set wattle fences around workings lest a child fall in.)

  29

  Zeal sat in her high-backed chair by the parlour fire in Hawkridge Lodge and set a hand on either arm, like a portrait she had seen of the old queen. It was
the second week of January, not yet Twelfth Night.

  I felt this coming on Christmas Day, she thought.

  Jake Grindley ignored her offer of a stool. ‘I’m taking my son home.’

  The boy stood rigidly, his eyes on the floor, thumbs clamped inside white-knuckled fists.

  ‘For how long?’ asked Zeal, though she knew she was only delaying the bad news.

  ‘He needs to get used to a plain life again. And to learn to work.’

  ‘Surely you don’t mean to keep him there?’

  Grindley nodded. ‘Yes, madam, I do.’

  ‘I wish to keep him at Hawkridge,’ she said. ‘As a page.’

  Jamie’s eyes lifted to hers with a flash of hope.

  ‘He’s not for hire.’ Grindley cast an eloquently dismissive glance around the little parlour. Not in a place like this, his look said.

  ‘But did Doctor Bowler not tell you that Jamie has an unusual gift for music? And might make a good living at it?’

  ‘All the more reason for taking him home before it’s too late!’

  ‘Too late?’

  Grindley was a rent-paying tenant and she needed every penny that was coming in. She dare not threaten to turn him out. Wouldn’t do it in any case, because of his wife and four other children.