His smell still hung in the air like a physical presence. Polished leather, lemon balm and the mustard he had applied to his stiff joints. She pressed her face against his pillow. The not unpleasant smell of his sweat still lingered, underpinned by a deep elusive maleness that made her think of warm earth in the spring. She opened his press, but his presence here among his clothing was too strong to permit prying.
She closed the press again and eyed various small boxes and chests. She picked one up and tried to turn the key. Suddenly, she felt the lash of his rage, as she had never felt it in life.
She dropped the box and fled.
You will have to permit me such liberties, she told him when she was safely outside his door in the lodge parlour. It will take more than that to stop my curiosity now, my dear husband. You may have eluded me in life, but now you suffer the disadvantage of being dead.
But for that day, she had had enough.
Shortly after midnight, she sat up straight from sleep with a further thought.
What of Philip’s stories? Had he created a true world for her or were his tales all lies too? Where did his false shaping of her world end? Did she sail on imaginary seas and plant her feet on sands as insubstantial as fog? Had John vanished into a limbo of mists and fable?
The room around her seemed no more than a hallucination. The quilt crushed in her fist might be merely a feverish dream. Her teeth began to chatter. For a flash of time, she knew with absolute conviction that the world outside her chamber had disappeared.
I lie here and vanish as well, she thought, or I learn the worst. Whatever it may be, I must hold on to something solid.
She first unrolled his map, his Christmas gift to her, which she would have painted on the floor of the hall. She had to hold the candle close to see in the dim light.
She touched Nevis, which John had not yet described to her. Then moved her finger to Nombre de Dios, Maracaibo, La Conceptión. Vera Cruz. San Juan de Ulúa. Cartagena.
How do the courts ever discover the truth? How do those wise men learn to weigh evidence?
She heard Philip’s voice again, singing ‘Duerme no llores…’ But then, any London ballad seller could learn a Spanish song.
This time, back in his chamber, when she unlocked the first box, she felt nothing from him. Not even a draught of cold air.
You can stay, she told him. Earlier, I didn’t mean for you to leave. It’s just that I must know.
The first box held business papers. Receipts, for that first load of Portland stone, among other items. Letters of tender. Copies of her lists of required building stuffs, on which he had made notes in a heavy-lined, impatient hand. All were to do with Hawkridge and the new house.
She slammed the box shut.
The next box was empty and gave no hint as to its former contents.
The next held his collection of unguents and salves.
A small chest held all his fishing gear.
Another box was filled with small notebooks, each labelled with a year, in which he had kept meticulous record of his catches, the numbers of fish seen at the time, the effects of flood water and drouth. Good spawning years, bad spawning years, recipes for bait. At the bottom of this box, she found six golden fish hooks.
She picked one up. She had seen steel hooks, bone hooks, hooks made of thorns. She had never seen a golden one.
If I were a magistrate or lawyer…She imagined herself to be Sir Richard seated behind his table examining this extraordinary object as a piece of evidence.
The golden hook did not prove the truth of a golden city in the jungle, but it did suggest the possibility.
She looked at the boxes around her on the floor.
Have I misjudged you again? she asked him.
Otherwise, she had so far added nothing to what the day had already taught her. In truth, she did not think that he had obligingly written down what she most wanted to learn.
Nevertheless, the least detail would feed her hunger to know. There was also the illicit pleasure of prying into someone else’s belongings, with the full right to do so. She thrust her arm into his press and found a ring in a casket at the back of his linen undershirts and drawers.
The poisoned ring bought in Italy, perhaps. Its heavy intricacy supported that likelihood. He had shown her the broadsword and buckler. She had used his dagger, now hers.
More corroboration. Mere detail to be sure, but cheering nonetheless.
Folded into his old frayed black coat, she found his personal account books. She pulled these out and set them on the bed to take to her own room. A quick glance at one page showed reference to the income from the London lodging houses. Among his debits, she saw the regular presence of his son’s name, each time set against the same generous sum. With the account books was a small bundle of letters.
She opened the first of these with a surge of excitement. But it was from his agent. He seemed to have left his business affairs in other hands and merely recorded the results. Among these letters, however, was one written in John’s hand.
Dear Philip…
Confused, she read the salutation again. John had written to Philip. Philip had not told her.
…I beg your help. I believe my life here to be at risk. I will say no more than that M. Baulk considers the lash to be the mildest punishment his labourers deserve, followed most often by a bath of lemon juice applied to the bleeding stripes and standing under the noonday sun. I beg you, do not tell Zeal, for I would not have her fear for me. But none escapes his impatience. A man died only four days ago after a second helping of such improvement. I mean to bolt before I am too weakened by hard labour in this unspeakable heat to take any action at all. I am ignorant of all places in the Indies but this plantation, and lack opportunity to learn more. I need only a name, one man or place, which might still endure since your experience here. A church, a minister, a hospital, a merchant – anyone or anywhere I might throw my first grappling hook to begin to save myself. I pray God this reaches you. I hardly need say that M. Baulk has our letters read before he gives them to us. I am trusting this to a woman among his house slaves who has treated me kindly. Your grateful servant – John Nightingale.
She read the letter again.
John was going to die. He was dead already. That was why he had never written from Nevis. He was living among wild beasts, hiding from pursuers. She saw him bound to a post, his back cut open by a whip, bleeding to death under a hot sun. She saw snakes in the tobacco fields. She saw swinging machetes. She saw monster perroquetos swooping like the eagle that tore out the liver of Prometheus. He had left all worlds she knew. She could not even see his dangers clearly.
She had by chance laid her hand on an adder. Here was a truth, at last, and she wanted only to fling it from her.
She was too distracted to deal with Doctor Gifford as she might otherwise have done, when he came to call the following day.
‘Mistress Wentworth, my deepest sympathy,’ he said at once and with great force, as if to forestall her attack. He was standing at the door of the lodge, while a groom held his horse outside the gate.
What does that man imagine he is doing here? she wondered.
‘The devil often offers solace to those in distress. I wish to offer the true consolation of the Lord’s…’
‘Thank you,’ she said absently, cutting him off. ‘I have an excess of truth just now.’ She stared at him and did not invite him to enter.
Gifford’s left foot beat a small tattoo on the stone step. ‘Satan will tempt you with the promise to relieve your grief…’
Zeal closed the door in his face.
48
Zeal’s Work Book – November 1640
Dig new beds outside walls and clear of stones (for sowing in March with extra cabbages)
Sprinkle lettuces with chimney soot against snails
Set strawberries, leeks and garlick cloves
Harvest saffron
Slaughter lame bullock and four killing rams
> Grind pig oats
Hang woollen curtains against winter draughts in Lodge and stable loft
Fill lye dripper with new ash…
Lamb – Order from Italy, engravings of statues for possible setting about fish ponds
Make Christmas gifts to all master craftsmen on my behalf
Send for lawyer to draw up deeds, for Jake Grindley, to give him his farm outright, to console him for loss of Jamie’s labour (and in hope of diminishing his bile)
Send for Francis Quoynt to enlarge cellars of west wing for theatre Order a clockwork nightingale that sings
49
Although the estate was in the full panic of late autumn tasks, Zeal had to leave them all to it. The final settlement of Philip’s estate waited for the inventories to be proved. The new owner had to make a progress around her properties.
Before she set off on this progress, however, she sent for Jake Grindley.
He replied with the message that he would never set foot in her house, so she sent the lawyer to him. Grindley did not refuse the farm.
Accompanied by Rachel, Arthur and a lawyer’s clerk, Zeal began with the lavender farm in Norfolk. As the early November rains had eased, she chose to ride on horseback whenever they could not go by water. From Ufton, they went by shallow draught boats down the Thames to London, then up the coast to Yarmouth, Breydon Water and the Yare. Near Norwich, she hired horses, still astonished that such costs, like that of their lodgings, need no longer trouble her.
The lavender farm, now so improbably hers, seemed muddy and drab in early December but promised fragrance and profit in July and August. The tenant assured her that the London market for the herb could never be satisfied.
She moved on to the equally unlikely warehouse and quays back at the coast, with customs farming rights over various goods imported from the continent. Next came the Suffolk estate, and its twelve tenanted farms. Then more quays, the lodging house, two tenanted houses, a shop, and a slaughterhouse in London, all bringing large rents and licence fees. She accepted an agent’s sworn statement on two tracts of forest, north of London, which, she now knew, must have provided most of those beams. Though they told her how wealthy she now was, none of these properties told her anything further about Philip, the man.
She dined with Sir George Tupper in London on Christmas Day, watched a masque in his private theatre, and engaged Master Cobb to help construct her own theatre.
The next day, she visited a Hebrew gold merchant in Clerkenwell with whom Philip had lodged two large money chests. In these she found sacks of golden angels, quarter angels and pound coins, all carefully accounted. A peck of golden unites worth twenty shillings each. An Arab dagger with an emerald set into the hilt, gold rings, a small coffer of loose pearls. Numerous silver candlesticks and pieces of plate. A golden mask.
Though she was by now numb to any further astonishment, Zeal lifted this last from the chest and studied it closely. Wide lips parted to show sharp teeth. Short rods had been thrust through the golden earlobes.
She set it as evidence beside the golden fish hooks.
After London, she at last turned south to Guildford, where Philip had once lived with his first wife and where his son now lived on her terms.
A man’s house must tell tales on him.
Though she dreaded meeting Roger Wentworth again, she was eager to see Hunden Hall.
Half an hour’s ride from the town, feeling a little breathless, she drew up her horse at Philip’s former gate. Once a large half-timbered farm house, Hunden Hall had grown wings to enclose a courtyard and acquired the dignity of an ornate twin-towered gatehouse built of local sandstone. It might once have had a cheerful workaday aspect but now its roof timbers sagged, and weeds clogged the remains of an old moat.
I don’t know what I expected to learn, she thought. Philip has not lived here for more than nineteen years. Even so, her heart speeded again as she knocked on the door. What she saw within told her much, but nothing that she wished to know.
The high, vaulted entrance hall was as bare of furnishings as a barn. Eyelets still in place showed where tapestries had once hung. Where Zeal would have expected to see a brace or two of hospitable, carved and padded chairs, stood a single rough stool. Rectangles on the wall panelling outlined newly-vanished picture frames. Only a single portrait of a pale, dark-haired young woman remained.
Zeal was eyeing it greedily when Mistress Roger Wentworth appeared and greeted her in confusion.
‘My husband is, alas, forced away on matters of urgency.’
Not in the least surprised by this news, Zeal gave the woman a slightly vulpine smile. She glanced at a window ledge where a clear circle in the dust gave away the recent removal of a pot or jug. Her first disappointment at finding so few clues to Philip’s past was giving way to the astonished realization that his son was selling off the house contents and pocketing the proceeds.
She followed Roger’s wife to the small parlour off the hall, which still held a pair of chairs and a small table. She accepted a glass of elder flower cordial and a plate of almond biscuits, produced by Mistress Wentworth in a fluttering of feathers but with watchful eyes.
‘I’m sorry about the child,’ the woman said. She was sincere, but there was also a pleading note in her voice.
Zeal saw for the first time in her life that she held true power. She glanced back through the parlour door at the ghostly rectangles where pictures had hung before Roger Wentworth sold them.
‘Thank you for the kind thought,’ she said. ‘Do you have children?’
Mistress Wentworth pinched her lips. ‘Alas, no.’
After a moment of silence, Zeal asked, ‘Do you have so few pictures from religious conviction?’
The woman touched her lace collar uneasily. ‘We do have some pictures. You saw the one of my husband’s mother in the hall.’ She sat hunched as if braced against a blow.
‘The one,’ Zeal agreed. There was another silence.
‘Please, madam! I beg your understanding!’ the woman burst out desperately. ‘Roger has…moments. He feels lacks. He was mistreated terribly as a boy.’
‘By whom?’
‘Left alone in England when his father took his mother away. Without a thought for the dangers to a fine gentlewoman. Or of what it might mean to the boy when she never came back.’
‘That is indeed terrible for a child.’ Zeal put down her glass a little harder than she intended and went back into the hall to look at the portrait again.
‘She was always delicate,’ said Mistress Wentworth behind her. ‘Roger made himself her page as soon as he could walk. So she would never grow too tired. Then his father carted her off on a sea voyage, for his own male purposes, Roger is certain. Can you conceive it?’
She was far more beautiful than I, thought Zeal. A nymph or dryad. Not as commonly imagined in stone or marble, but as such creatures must truly be, wisps of mist or flashes of movement seen in the corner of your eye. Both Philip and Roger must have loved her very much.
She felt a rush of compassion for Roger Wentworth. His beautiful mother had chosen his father over him.
I would never have left my son.
Then Zeal could think only of her own child, who had left her behind. Like its father. And its stepfather. She rose to flee.
The clerk who had accompanied her returned to the hall from his room-by-room audit of the house wearing a grim expression. ‘Madam, I think you should know that I am finding great discrepancies between the inventory lists and…’
‘I am satisfied.’
He looked at her, astonished. Opened his mouth, closed it.
‘We need stay no longer. I wish to leave at once.’ She did not want this unhappy house nor anything in it.
‘Thank you, madam!’ Mistress Wentworth’s right hand leapt to her own mouth, her cheek, settled at her throat. ‘Thank you.’ She unclenched her left only to raise it in farewell.
Zeal had been away from Hawkridge for seven weeks. By the
time she returned in the new year, winter rains had made lakes in the new cellars. She wrapped up against the wind and shoved her feet into iron pattens to keep her shoes above the mud. Breathing hard from the climb, she stood on the top of Hawk Ridge with Lamb. Together, they looked down at the new house with the wind whipping their hair into their mouths and eyes.
‘Thank the Lord, you’re back,’ he said. His mood fit the grim weather. ‘No Philip, no you! Not even Bowler struggling with his second fiddle. Sir Richard in London helping to sort out the Scots and who knows what else. And Mistress Margaret runs away at the sight of me lest I infect her with a fatal Italianate fancy for art. At Christmas I almost expired from tedium.’ He hesitated as if about to say something more, then seemed to decide against it. ‘I do wish we had managed to enclose the house so that work could continue under cover.’ He looked at her silent face. ‘I suppose we can always hold skating parties in the cellars.’
‘I have had long hours in boats and in the saddle,’ she said. ‘To think.’
‘And?’ he asked cautiously.
‘I must reconsider everything.’
‘Your life?’ asked Lamb. He pulled his cloak tighter. ‘Ah, yes, sister mine, so must I.’
‘The house.’
He looked away, down the valley, as if he had not heard.
1641
50
After leaving Lamb on the hill, Zeal went to look at Philip’s nest in the tack room. Someone had folded the blankets and rolled up his straw mattress but left them there for another sleeper to use. She went to the office and touched John’s coat.
Later, Zeal tossed in the empty bed in the lodge and cried out in her sleep.
She ran her fingers over the letters carved into the stone wall of the vault. In the foetid darkness, they shone with their own light. She smelled cold brass, polished leather and something like a sweating horse.
The Memory Palace Page 30