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Letter from Sir George Tupper to Mistress Zeal Parsley, 12 October 1642.
My Dear, I send this with a loyal fellow whose discretion I can trust. We must take care now how we expose ourselves in the written word. This is a temporary farewell. As I am too old to fight, and like neither side better than the other, I shall leave England for Italy in a very few days. The barbarians have broken down the gates. That is to say that a little more than a week ago, by Parliamentary Ordinance, all plays have been banned. The playhouses are closed. Poor, poor Melpomene, Thalia and Polymnia! I fear, too, for their sister muses.
I confess that I also fear for my household, as my poor old cook was badly beaten in the streets for the sin of feeding me, a declared and notorious sybarite, and some of my windows have been broken. I mean to send my people, with what little they can carry by way of pictures and other effects to the relative safety of my house in Kent – if they can escape the barricades which now enclose London. I pray that you will be kept safe and do not lose heart nor faith in the spirit of man. We are but flies to the gods, but I mean to die in my own time as a fly of discrimination and taste. I remain your faithful friend, George Tupper.
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‘I’ve decided. I must go to London again.’ Lamb squared the edges of his papers.
‘But you read what Sir George wrote,’ Zeal protested. ‘Remember Sir Richard’s warnings.’
‘I shall wear my soberest Protestant face.’
‘Will you try to see Ben again?’
‘Again?’ He looked at her in challenge. ‘I’m forbidden to see him. Had you forgot?’ He had not answered her question. ‘And his father’s charges against me were dismissed. There’s no reason why I shouldn’t go.’
And what if his father is doubly aggrieved by his defeat in law? Zeal thought. And suspects that you are still meeting his son. What if he still seeks release for his rage, like Roger Wentworth?
‘What if you are enrolled as a soldier?’ she asked.
‘Then I could please my father at last by dying a valiant death.’ Lamb stared from the window. ‘In fact, Sir George’s letter decided me. This may be my last chance. I can bring back any finished work from Master Cobb. And I must buy more ochre and turpentine, and new brushes for Signor Paroli. And I shall tell my father how well married life in the country is suiting me.’
‘We can survive without ochre and turpentine.’
‘You might be able to,’ he said. ‘Paroli and I will die.’
‘Be careful!’ she begged him when he prepared to ride away two days later. ‘I could not bear it if anything happened to you.’
He’s what I have left, she thought as she watched the beech avenue swallow him. Then she remembered saying exactly that to Philip, and went to the office to lean her forehead against John’s coat for luck.
1643
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My Dearest Doctor Bowler (Zeal wrote) In reply to your joyful report of your operatic adventures in Venice, I wish I were not forced to send the sad news that our darling Lamb has been killed. Whilst in London – against all advice…I can hardly bear to write it…he was beaten to death. Although one of the constables swears that it was no more than a common brawl, his father insists that he was murdered by hired ruffians, to settle a personal score. The guilty villains have been neither named nor arrested and seem likely to escape.
The estate seems unbearably quiet without him, or Philip. Sometimes I feel that most of all I miss your music. We all miss the music, and both your voices. After you left for Venice, Doctor Gifford might have been tempted to claim a successful rout of the Antichrist from Hawkridge, had he not been distracted by the iniquity of the king. He is more sour than ever since the death of his wife – with a canker, I believe, though I do not enquire of the man and he no longer essays correspondence with me since that last visit after Philip died.
The new house and its theatre now stand almost finished as a monument to Lamb’s genius, and to the generosity with which he applied it. I will say no more but that the plan is somewhat changed since you last saw the model. When you return to us at last, dear friend, I think you will understand very well the new antic face that now hides behind the original Olympian posturing. And you will wish to help me fill the terrible silence that is now its only shortcoming as a true reflection and microcosm of the world.
There is still no word of John, though I now dare hope that, with our new disorders of war, he might dare return to England if he is still alive. Please give my warmest greetings to Jamie, and my congratulations on his elevation to chorister at San Marco. Lest you find yourselves in need, or Jamie requires a new gown or livery, I enclose a bond written in your name and the address of a Venetian goldsmith who will honour it. Your most loving friend – Zeal Parsley.
It has happened again, she thought as she read the letter over before sending it. Another man I loved has died.
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First, she gathered together Lamb’s paints and brushes, his stacks of papers, his Italian pencils of piombino wrapped in string, his pens and inks. She began the pile of what she would keep with a portfolio of engravings and drawings from Italy.
Doing the easy part first.
She opened his clothing press. Yet again, she inhaled the scent of a man who no longer existed. His true odour, faint under the insistence of orange blossom and musk, curled out of the press, a miasma trying to assume a shape that no longer lived on the earth.
She stacked his shirts on the bed to give to any males still employed on the estate, to wear or to sell as they pleased. His manservant would have the green silk suit and perhaps the workaday woollen breeches as well. She touched his hats, his razors, scent bottles, gloves, collars, sashes, belts, stockings and boots. She had told his father’s messenger that she did not want the clothes in which he had been killed. Captain Parsley had insisted, however, that all the pictures and statues collected by Lamb in Italy but stored in London, were also now hers, as well as his large collection of books, his annuity, three horses, and share of an investment in an East Indian trading voyage.
She suddenly felt too weary to continue. She picked up the small bronze figure of David, set it down. She gazed at the painting by Buontalenti, which was now hers. Then she touched the model of the ideal house, which he had given her with such pride.
His big oak cupboard held the tiny working models of her machinery. The gifts of a generous spirit, eager to forgive and to give again. She lifted out the first version of the singing nightingale, whose grandchild adorned the entrance hall. This one now looked ungainly, and its wings refused to open. She pulled the pin of the small scale sand trap, one fifth its final size and watched the flow begin, that would finally tilt the mechanism into delayed action.
Next she took out a model of Cobb’s sinking trap, felt the wooden flap fall away beneath her fingertip. Watched the opening close again as the counterweight fell.
Lamb, if you weren’t dead, I’d kill you myself for being so careless with your life.
I think I saw it coming.
She had known her husband better than anyone imagined.
You had too much that you thought you did not deserve, and not enough of what you truly wanted, which I could never give to you, no matter how hard I tried.
That look in his eyes, reserved, amused and dark. Even with her, his sister-wife, he was still lonely.
Now there’s a truth for me to chew on.
She shook her head and gave a quick ‘hhnh!’ of unhappy laughter, so that a passer-by might have taken her for one of those mad wandering souls who argue aloud with themselves. Now she saw the models, like all of his last feverish work, as Lamb’s apology to her for making her not enough.
She set his boots on the floor beside the bed so his manservant could take his pick. His rapier and dagger she kept for herself.
His money chest was locked. When he was killed, Lamb’s pockets had been picked and his keys taken from his belt to make the attack look like simple robbery. After a few moments o
f pulling at the iron straps, she sent for the smith to remove the hinges.
The chest held only a small purse containing some gold angels, an ivory fan, a box carved from a soapy black stone, and a long pewter box which held two dozen Italian matches. Under those lay a small watercolour portrait of Benjamin Neame. There was also a sheaf of letters with a pressed rose, not yet fully dry, inserted carefully under the blue ribbon.
Her hand went to the letters at once. She turned them over. Sniffed. Civet and rose with an undertone of cinnamon. The writing on the top letter looked fresh. The paper had not yellowed.
What he had hidden from her now sat in her hands. Things she did not understand.
‘Merde!’ she said.
After another moment, she took one of the matches and burnt the letters in his fireplace.
The black stone box held a small lumpy linen-wrapped packet and another letter, addressed in Philip’s hand, to her. On the back, lightly written with one of Lamb’s Italian pencils but in Philip’s hand was the note: I leave it to your discretion, PW.
For a moment, she was angry again at their conspiracy to keep her in ignorance. Her anger included John’s terrible letter to Philip. Then she began to read.
My Dearest Zeal, My Wife, My sweet Friend, I must tell you all. Yet if I myself cannot live with the truth, how can I ask you to show more courage than I?
Her eyes raced ahead, skipped, stumbled. She folded the letter and tucked it into her sleeve. With eyes down and face set to tell anyone she met that she was not to be stopped, she left the house and climbed the hanger to the Lady Tree. She had no further expectations of the estate oracle, but knew that the tree was sure to be deserted in daylight. She wanted perfect solitude for what she already knew was to come.
…I fear you will hate me…no, I fear that you will feel such profound revulsion that all your tender memories of me (which are my best monument on earth) will turn to horror. The worst – that you will wipe all traces of me from your mappa mundi.
She had delayed by deciding just where to sit. At last she chose a coppiced stump from which the young sprouting poles had been harvested on one side only so that it grew like a chair of grace, half-surrounding her with delicate walls of green just turning to copper. From her throne, she could see the bones of the bird still white against the grey bark of the Lady Tree. Even then, she delayed, convinced for a time that she had been followed.
…In the end, I choose the truth, because I know that you will hate me more if you should ever discover that I deceived you further. Also, you seem to have released in me a secular urge to confess. I have asked Lamb to hold this letter back until the heat of your first response to my death and its aftermath has passed.
Some of what I told you was true, in those delicious evenings with your head on my shoulder and the scent of your hair in my nose. What I told you of my first wife was true. Thereafter, in the manner of all travellers, I both embroidered to make a good story better and borrowed from other men’s experience. But the bones of my story still stand. We were driven aground, however, not anchored, and took to our pinnace. We found a native city very near where I showed you on the map, and we took away gold. Only in one matter did I…
Here, he had written and crossed out so many attempts to capture the exact word so that the paper had turned black with ink.
Only in one matter did I lie. There. ‘Tis said. I shall pause here and write empty words while you decide whether or not to continue with my confession. If you would keep whatever good opinion you might still have of me, stop reading now, I beg you.
What did he imagine I would make of that first great lie about his very life?
Or did he imagine that vast wealth would serve as a draught of the River Styx and make her, like the newly dead, forget all that had gone before? However benign his intentions, and however grateful she might be, the fact remained that he had injured her faith in her own ability to judge the truth.
Rather than lose what I have left of him as a man, I shall take him at his word and stop reading.
She tore the letter in half. Then she smoothed the two halves on her knee. She lifted her head. Something had moved in the corner of her eye.
A bird dropping from a branch, she decided. She set the two pieces of paper side by side again.
Our capture was much as I told you. The golden pageant beside the lake could well have been as I said, for I saw the several parts of it played out in different places on earlier ventures – through which I also made my fortune. El Dorado lived. His minions wore golden breastplates and greaves, just as I told you. I saw such head-dresses. The rest, I was told by reliable witnesses. Only the final sacrifice took a different shape.
It was common knowledge throughout the New World that these Indians offered human blood to their gods, but I never saw it. An innocent feast was planned for the night of our capture, as I told you. We took advantage of the confusion of the preparations and the amounts of liquor drunk by the revellers, to snatch some booty and escape. Twelve of us achieved freedom, including young Master Dunne, Sir John Whitfield’s nephew, whom I said falsely had his heart cut out to feed the god.
I don’t know how to proceed…
Our ship had broken up on the rocks. However, the pinnace remained on the beach. We took to the sea in it.
We were desperate men, fleeing north along an unknown coast, in a craft too small for our number, hoping to reach the Floridas, and then to follow that coast north until we reached a French or English settlement. We had no guns, no means of hunting. We tried to catch fish with our bare hands, sucked the shells of sand crabs, made ourselves ill by eating strange leaves and roots. Four men died and were left in shallow graves where we could find sand to dig. Then two more died. In all our minds were the tales of other expeditions, when men walked the same sharp edge of desperation. We accepted that none of us would survive without some great change in our luck. When the next of our number died, we cast a vote. There was no dissent as to how we might use this chance to bend our fate. We cooked and ate him.
But what comes next will at last answer your question as to why I hid myself from the world and cut myself off from the man I had once been. We ate him and with renewed strength, made good progress. With the wind at our backs, our pinnace cleared the rocks and whirlpools of the Florida Straits and set us on the last leg of our journey. A long leg, to be sure, bedevilled by storms and equally devastating doldrums. We lost our sails, most of our oars and depended utterly on the current to carry us. As I told you, two of us survived. I have killed men in the course of duty, but none of them troubles me so much as young Master Dunne. You may surmise the rest, for even in my confessional humour I cannot write it.
Forgive me for making you my confessor (in the non-Catholic sense of the word, I hasten to say, in case any other eyes than yours should read this. I fear that the time may have come when a man can burn for his vocabulary.) You gave me a gift at the end of my life that I neither expected nor deserved. I have learned that the best of life can be as ferocious as the worst. And that healing is not a slow, gentle process, as many would have it, but a leap into belief of both body and soul. I came to Hawkridge in search of the slow healing. You were my leap.
Your loving and grateful husband – Piscator.
She left her green throne and climbed higher to sit on the ground with her back against the Lady Tree, where she had thought to take root the night she accepted his proposal of marriage.
I always knew, she thought. Or something of this magnitude. Now she saw all the evidence that she had wilfully ignored. His refusal to come to table. That he ate no flesh, but only fish. His flight from the wedding meats. His troubled study of Jamie before accepting the wedding crown.
An executioner, a murderer. He had claimed both roles for an adventurer.
She had known that no trivial transgression would drive a man of Philip’s force and keen wits into self-imposed exile in his own country.
I’m so sorry, she told him. I suspecte
d, yet was still merciless. In my ignorance, I was excited by the sense of dangerous mystery.
How he must have suffered, knowing that in trying to satisfy her hunger for truth, he committed the one sin she would not forgive.
How clever you were, my love, to show me just enough indignity and guilt to make me trust the rest.
Looking back, she saw how often he himself had questioned the reality of what he told her, and how fervently she had explained why it must be true.
Suffering or not, you did worse than deceive me. You induced me to collude in my own deception.
She wiped her eyes. Then she sat staring into space, thinking of the blank panels on the staircase. She had Philip’s truth and did not know what to do with it. She felt it already re-shaping something in her, as it must also reshape the Memory Palace.
I know already that I will have an inscription set over the entrance to the new forecourt: Homo vult decipi, ergo decipiatur.
Man wishes to be deceived, and so he will be.
She had still one more piece of evidence to examine.
She returned to the lodge and opened the lumpy little parcel. It was a tiny golden jaguar.
A slip of paper fell from the wrappings. The people who made this, wrote Philip,…believe that their healers, whom they call in Spanish, curanderos, assume this form to consult the gods. It has always belonged to you.
She gave a little moan and held the creature against her heart.
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Zeal’s Work Book – March 1643
The Memory Palace Page 34