Lamb shrugged. ‘I didn’t have to leave London to find trouble.’ He tore a piece of bread in two as if breaking a neck.
Zeal found him later on the wooden scaffolding that bristled around the new east wing. She remembered Philip standing at the bottom of the ladder, pretending not to care.
The warm April had led to a cool summer. A heavy dew had fallen. Even up here, the air held a chilly damp. She tucked up her skirts and climbed to stand beside him in the thickening dusk. ‘I’m happy that you’re back,’ she said.
‘Are you?’
‘Stop that, Lamb. I’m your sister, remember?’
He nodded wordlessly and leaned forward to look down into the valley.
‘Will you come down and drink a posset?’
‘I won’t jump.’
The masons had passed the second floor. The ground fell away beneath the walls. This scaffolding was high enough. She tried to think what to say next.
‘I wasn’t lying about staying to speak with my father.’
‘How did you get those bruises?’ she asked again.
‘After you left father and I quarrelled ferociously. You can guess the topic. Then, in my distress, I decided to go for a walk, to purge my feelings. Walked all the way to St Katharine’s Dock.’ He spoke too quickly. ‘Where I was set upon by footpads, just as Mistress Margaret said. My own fault, for paying no attention to where my feet led me.’
She nodded as if she believed his story.
‘They’re nothing to do with Ben!’ he said angrily, answering her silence. ‘And he would have met me if he could. I have his letter swearing as much.’
‘Shall I bathe your bruises with mallow?’ she asked after a moment.
He shook his head and seemed to pull farther inside himself. He tucked his hands into his armpits, but not before she saw the dark circles of raw skin on his wrists. He turned his head away, looking across the shadowy water meadows. She felt a small cold lead weight settle in her stomach. She had seen marks like that on his skin once before, when he first arrived at Hawkridge.
‘My darling Lamb,’ she said. ‘Will you come down and talk somewhere warmer? Whilst we were in London, I thought how you can outshine Master Inigo Jones at all of his own games.’
‘You’re not usually so transparent.’
‘I’m not trying to hide my concern for you. But that doesn’t mean I’m not also telling the truth. I need you to design a theatre. I decided in London. Any perfect house must have a theatre.’
He sighed in the near-darkness. ‘We have already moved some distance from my first perfect house…Take care climbing down. Let me go first.’
When they were safely on the ground, he said, ‘You can’t afford Purbeck stone for the portico columns or wages for Dauzat. How can you pay for a theatre?’
‘Where is your faith in Providence?’ Just in time, she avoided a dark puddle of discarded mortar. ‘The west wing is still no more than cellars. If we put our theatre there, we will have months to plan and try to find the money. All labour will be bent on finishing the east wing for living in by Christmas next.’
‘You’re mad,’ he said, but a speculative tone had reanimated his voice.
‘Then so is Sir George Tupper.’ After a few more steps, she added, ‘He’s one of the wisest men I know, to have both a kitchen and a theatre…is that a silence of disapproval?’
‘Merely struck dumb.’
‘Until that night at Sir George’s house, I had forgotten the wonder I felt when I first came here. But that wonder was as real as the gloom that seems stuck to my feet now. I must revive it.’
‘Sir George is a wealthy man. Putting on plays is a rich man’s pleasure.’
‘But we have Doctor Bowler. And Master Lambert Parsley. What other riches do we need to create wonder and delight?’
39
She was soon to lose Doctor Bowler, however. Her first warning came in the shape of the parson’s anxious face at the door of the lodge one evening after supper.
‘I’m sorry to trouble you, but…’ He looked around as if he expected to be set upon at any moment.
‘It’s Jamie,’ he explained, once safely inside. ‘Came to find me just now. He has run away from home!’
‘Where is he?’
‘Hiding from his father.’
Bowler directed her to a derelict grain store on the High House estate, then followed by a different route.
‘Jamie?’ he whispered. ‘I’ve brought Mistress Wentworth to help you.’
The barred door opened just enough for them to enter.
Jamie was a blurred shape in the darkness. Only his pale hair showed where he stood.
‘Tell her,’ said Bowler.
‘I don’t want to be a farmer,’ said the boy. ‘I’ll kill myself first.’
‘What do you want to do?’ Zeal asked.
‘Sing. I want to be an opera singer.’
‘I fear it’s my fault,’ began Bowler.
‘I want to go to London or Venice and study.’
‘I should never have told…But a voice like his can’t be…’ Bowler’s words trailed off. Then they suddenly surged back out of the dark. ‘It’s a crime against both God and Nature to waste such an instrument!’ He subsided just as suddenly, as if startled by his own passion.
‘My father forces me to go to Bedgebury church!’ said Jamie, as if offering an incontrovertible argument. ‘He agrees with Doctor Gifford about music.’
Zeal took a deep breath. ‘I will see what I can do. Meanwhile, go back home and behave like an angel.’
‘Is the boy truly so gifted?’ she asked Bowler, back at the lodge.
‘You have heard him.’ Bowler looked away. ‘His father is trying to beat all musical nonsense out of him. To please Gifford.’ His voice trembled. ‘The boy is going to run, with or without our help. Master Grindley has threatened to cut off half Jamie’s tongue to prevent him from singing.’
Zeal heard suppressed violence in the parson’s voice. ‘I will try to think what we can do,’ she said. ‘It’s no small thing to remove a child. I wish only that I had more money!’
After Bowler left, she went to Lamb’s barn studio, where he was squinting in the candlelight, painting a woodland scene in grisaille on a pair of miniature theatre shutters cut from stiffened card. Since his return from London, he had taken to working late into the night.
‘Of course, Jamie must go to Venice!’ Lamb said at once. ‘There’s no finer place on earth for music! If I weren’t so busy here, I would take him myself.’
‘Bowler must take him,’ said Philip. ‘I wouldn’t mind putting him out of Gifford’s reach for a time.’
She had found her husband upstream near the higher weir with his rod beside him, not fishing but smoking a Dutch pipe and studying the start of the new cut that would carry water to the Memory Palace. She sat beside him on the bank.
‘Many boys run away for worse reasons,’ said Philip.
‘And without such a sweet-tempered chaperon.’
‘Legal guardian would be better.’ Philip peered into the pale clay bowl of his pipe. ‘But I don’t see Jake Grindley giving his consent.’
‘Bowler will be as eager to see Venice as Jamie,’ said Zeal, shying away from the thought of Jamie’s father.
‘I shall send a letter with Bowler to a sea captain friend.’ Philip put away his pipe. ‘I’m sure he can manage free passage for our two runaways.’ He levered himself to his feet and stamped to loosen his legs. ‘Shouldn’t sit on damp ground! As for living, young Lamb has a comfortable income, which he isn’t spending down here. Let’s ask him if he would make Bowler a loan.’
Lamb would. He also gave Doctor Bowler the name of an acquaintance in Venice who might offer cheap lodgings.
Once they had all agreed, Zeal began to wonder if the plan were madness. She did not want to lose Doctor Bowler. But if Jamie ran away alone, as he had vowed to do, his father would surely blame Bowler all the same and bring the wrath of Bedgebury d
own on the parson once again. Zeal knew that the next time, Bowler would not get off with merely a broken hand.
‘We might meet Signor Monteverdi!’ cried Bowler, suffused with a delight Zeal had not seen since before his hand was broken. ‘Did you hear that, Jamie? Signor Monteverdi, himself!’
‘Draw them both before they leave,’ she begged Lamb. ‘Capture them now!’
Two days later, Jamie finished digging early potatoes, washed, ate supper with his family, said he was going to set rabbit snares, and slipped away to Hawkridge. Lamb and Arthur rode with Bowler and the boy to Ufton Wharf, where they left them on a barge bound for London at dawn.
‘Where’s Bowler?’ Jake Grindley arrived at the lodge after morning milking, having by then searched every place where he thought his son might be hiding. ‘What has he done with my son?’
‘I don’t know where either of them is,’ Zeal said truthfully.
But by dinnertime, she knew she had to tell at least some of what she did know, to console Jamie’s distraught mother who wanted the millpond dragged. In the early afternoon, Zeal took the track past the Far to the farm Jake Grindley occupied as her tenant.
Mistress Grindley stared at her with wet eyes, trying to understand what she was being told. ‘To Italy? Among foreign Catholics?’ She moaned and pressed her apron to her eyes. ‘But he was well? Unhurt? You swear he went of his own will?’
‘He meant to run away alone,’ said Zeal. ‘I merely did what I could to keep him safe and well looked after.’
To her dismay, Mistress Grindley seized her hand and kissed it. ‘Thank you, mistress!’ Then she began to cry again. ‘It’s his father! I never saw the harm in a song, myself, neither.’ As Zeal was leaving, Mistress Grindley said, ‘If you don’t mind, mistress, I think I won’t tell Master Grindley what you just told me. You never know with Jake.’
‘Grindley’s telling all the workmen that Bowler has abducted his son,’ reported Lamb at supper that night. ‘And sold him to the Catholics to be gelded, to make him sing like a woman even when he’s a grown man.’
‘We must tell them the truth, then. That the boy feared his father and ran away of his own free will. Truth will kill the rumours.’
And I will try to think how to deal with Jake Grindley.
40
Letter from Doctor Praise-God Gifford to Mistress Zeal Wentworth. June, 1640.
Dear Madam, I write from deep concern to ask your denial of certain reports reaching me. The first is that you, as well as the man who calls himself your parson, are responsible for the disappearance of the son of one of my parishioners. I pray that there is some more innocent explanation for Doctor Bowler’s absence and for Master Grindley’s charge.
The second report is that you have put your youth and virtue in terrible jeopardy by viewing ungodly spectacles in pernicious company. I beg you to tell me that you have not been tempted to enter a theatre. If this latter report is true, you have exposed yourself to corruption by incontinence and lewdness, indeed, by the very pomps of the Devil. I hold you guilty by your nature of no more than arrogance and wicked pride. There is no sophistication that is not allowed by His Will to test us. But none is too great for His Mercy to forgive. I am willing to set aside all differences between us if only I can keep one of my sheep safe from the Eternal flames. You have accused me of wickedness, but like a shepherd, I must sometimes apply physic against the Great Worm.
I remain yours faithfully, P.G. Gifford.
41
Zeal replied at once. That man is the enemy of all joy, she thought. Just wait till he learns what I mean to do! Doctor Bowler shall have his own battlefield when he returns from Venice. And armies of gods and heroes and Amazon queens. And machines.
Sir: (she wrote) Firstly, to my knowledge, Jamie Grindley ran away of his own will. On the second matter, thank you for your counsel. I did attend a theatre and now mean to build one. Yours faithfully…
Then she threw Gifford’s letter into the fire and smashed the ashes with the poker. Only when the letter had turned to floating dust did she suddenly wish she had kept it to read more calmly a second time.
I should have kept it to show to Philip, she thought. To ask whether this letter more closely approached the ‘orotund profundity’ he expects from the minister or the poisonous flailing of the two anonymous letters.
But if Gifford had not written the other two, who had?
On impulse, she sat down and picked up her pen again.
John, I miss you beyond describing. She wrote quickly, without letting herself think what she said.
When you left, my life began to grow crooked. I fear so many things now. I fear that you are lost to me, either dead, or in love with a new life. Or even a new woman. Sometimes I cannot bear to think of you because it gives me such pain. So I set you at a little distance, within sight but too far away to touch me. What will happen when you return? Will you still be too far away to touch me? Will you still want to? I am no longer the girl you kissed goodbye. The air is twisting around my head.
She stopped and crossed out that last line. ‘Please…’
She dropped her head onto her hands. How could she say, ‘Please come back,’ when his life would be forfeit? And how could she say, ‘Please send for me, no matter what your circumstances are,’ when she was married to someone else? After a time she burnt this letter as well.
She wanted him to tell her that there was nothing to fear. And how could he possibly do that?
Philip gave her a sharp look when he came to the lodge a little later that night.
She saw his glance and pushed aside her attempt to draw the system of ropes and pulleys that had moved the scenic shutters along their grooves in Sir George’s theatre. ‘I’m ready to learn to fight, as you promised.’
‘What has happened?’
She shrugged. ‘Nothing more than before.’
‘Are you strong enough yet?’
‘If I can survive travelling to London with Lamb, I think I can manage to lift a sword.’
He nodded. ‘As it happens, the parish council have asked me to help tutor our local Trained Band in swords as well as guns, for fear they might have to go to war.’ He was studying her with a cool assessing eye. ‘I could use some practice myself. Are you ready now?’ He put his coat over a chair and stood in his shirt and trousers.
He began to push all the furniture in the lodge parlour against the walls. ‘I hope I can still remember a few tricks.’
‘No tricks,’ she said. ‘Teach me to fight properly, like a man!’
His open amusement enraged her.
‘Do you think I can’t learn more than women’s tricks?’ she demanded.
‘I’m certain you could learn anything you set your mind to. I wasn’t thinking of women’s tricks but the reality of brawling. Or an ambush. Both of which you are more likely to meet than you are to go to war. We will begin with a cloak and short dagger.’
‘I would like to learn to handle a sword, nevertheless.’
The set of his square jaw and the detached working of his thoughts reminded her of the man who had overseen the removal of the statues. He looked like her Philip, but he was also someone else.
‘If you insist,’ he said at last. ‘In that case, however, I insist on a rapier as a better choice of blade.’
‘Because I’m too puny to handle a sword?’
‘Because the finest swordsman in England once said that the short sword against the rapier is little better than a tobacco pipe.’
It seemed that he already had just the blade, three and a half feet long, with a sharp unguarded point.
‘For thrusting with the point only,’ he told her. ‘Lighter and more mobile than a blade which can also cut.’ His blade wore a padded button on its tip.
But before he would let her even touch her rapier, he put her through a series of exercises with her legs and arms, lunging, springing back, stretching, reaching, leaning.
Within a few moments, she was breathing hard
.
‘My skirt keeps getting in my way!’ She stopped to untangle herself. ‘Should I put it off?’
‘Any true fight will most likely catch you unawares. Learn first to fight in spite of your clothes. Later, I will show you how to rid yourself of encumbrances whilst still engaged in battle. Now, take up your blade.’
He made her hold it straight out, then practise thrusting. ‘Now, beat aside my blade as if you wished to strike past it at my heart.’
She moved her blade. His dipped beneath it and knocked hers aside instead. He then showed her this quick circular movement of the tip of the blade and made her practise it.
He showed her how to assume the contra postura, a position echoing his. He showed her again how to thrust. To parry. Above all, to watch.
By now, she was panting for breath.
‘Watch me like a lover,’ he said. ‘Feel where I am in space. Where is my right hand? My left hand? Have I shifted my weight? Why? Am I about to attack? Yes? No? Do something!’
She lunged.
‘Attack!’ he ordered her. ‘Don’t tickle. A new-hatched duckling would terrify me more.’
‘But I might hurt you,’ she said.
He shouted with laughter. ‘I fear that’s the point.’ He flicked his blade at her sleeve. ‘But you won’t.’
She lunged again, ferociously. Found herself suddenly thrown against the wall with his point at her throat.
‘And that is the reality you face, unless you can practise rapier play daily, and with a tutor far more expert than I.’
‘Does it please you to humiliate me?’
‘No, puss. But to keep you alive, it’s worth bruising your pride. Now will you let me also show you how to use a short dagger?’
They practised throughout the rest of the summer, in the evenings after the builders had left the house site for their homes, if local men, or the encampment if they had been hired from out of the parish.
The Memory Palace Page 25