The Memory Palace

by Christie Dickason

  ‘We can see now why the Parliamentary army let it through,’ said Rachel.

  At the centre, like the stone of a very large plum, sat a curious contrivance of wood and metal, painted to resemble a small cathedral, with a crank at one end. There was a letter attached.

  ‘It’s from Doctor Bowler!’ Zeal waved the letter over her head. ‘He has sent us a gift to sing for us until he returns!’ She returned to the letter, then cried, ‘Wait! Take care! Let me read the doctor’s instructions before you leap upon it!’

  She elected the smith, as the largest and steadiest, to carry the box-shaped instrument on a strap hung around his neck.

  ‘You first, madam!’ cried several children. ‘Then us.’

  Tentatively, Zeal turned the crank. Three musical notes sprang into the air, like startled water drops.

  The smith braced his feet. She turned the crank with greater force. More liquid notes were plucked somewhere inside the instrument, this time blending into the first implication of a tune. With conviction, she began to crank away steadily, and unrolled across the forecourt a canzonetta by Signor Monteverdi, or so Bowler’s letter said.

  She looked around at the open mouths and wide, disbelieving grins. ‘Doctor Bowler says that Jamie has learned to sing this tune.’

  ‘Shall I go fetch my drum?’ asked the smith.

  When everyone had taken a turn at cranking, and they had tried to sing the tune, and had discovered how, by shifting a little lever, to make the organ sing two other tunes, Zeal locked it into her new secure store cupboard.

  She knew that this delightful new arrival would need guarding. The Antichrist had returned to Hawkridge.

  75

  The best gift of that Christmas and the New Year of 1644, however, was the return of Arthur, limping from his long walk from Southampton and much thinner. ‘I never knew it,’ he said happily, when Rachel had at last released him. ‘I’m blind as a bat after sundown. And don’t hear too well neither.’ He took Rachel’s hand. ‘Amazing what you learn in the army!’

  ‘I could have told them you only hear what you want to.’ Rachel’s tone was dry, but her voice shook very slightly.

  ‘Welcome back,’ said Zeal. ‘You must learn to read if you’re turned too deaf to hear instructions. We badly need another useful man about the place.’

  Arthur cupped a hand behind his ear and grinned. He later told Zeal in private that he had not been able to stomach the idea of fighting fellow Englishmen.

  ‘Foreigners, yes. And I might stretch to the Scots. And I’m not alone,’ he said. ‘The colonels have their work cut out. Most men are refusing to fight except to defend their homes.’

  They celebrated that Christmas in the new house. Master Cobb came back twice to check measurements for the sinking trap, which he had almost finished in his London workshop. The saddler was still seeking hides large enough for Zeal’s purpose. The mason who had replaced Jonas Stubbs still chipped away in the secret Underworld, and Francis Quoynt had yet to make a final test of his extended hydraulic systems that would power Master Cobb’s counter-weighted machines.

  However, the east wing of the Memory Palace with the domestic offices and most of the sleeping quarters was now roofed, glazed, and had working fireplaces. Light filled the rooms, as Zeal had planned. From her own chamber window, she could look down as she and John had looked down, although the scene was somewhat changed. On good days, she could sometimes still remember the exact weight and warmth of his arm around her shoulders as they sat side-by-side in the grass. Arthur’s return sometimes made her dare to hope that John’s angel letter was finally coming true and that all had at last begun to go well.

  She rejoiced for Rachel and Arthur, while fending off her own loneliness in deciding the exact curve of the soffit under a final arch and whether or not to apply a sixth coat of paint. She even felt flashes of joy and wonder when she wandered about her new house touching the wooden flowerages and fruitages that Lamb’s Italians had found lurking inside clumsy blocks of timber and set free with their chisels and saws.

  Every evening, she set off from Hampshire on the map on the hall floor and walked across the seas to stand first on Hispaniola, then on Nevis, the red oxide, terre verte and gold island in its lapis lazuli sea. So few steps to make such an immense journey. She closed her eyes and tried to think how he might have been changed by experiences she did not yet know of.

  But you did not tell me about your troubles, any more than I’ve told you mine.

  She gazed up at the paintings of Philip’s Staircase and the saga of Hawkridge Estate at the top of the stairs. Then she looked across the world to the mouth of hell, near the Indian coast.

  I fear we’ve done each other, and ourselves, a false kindness, she thought. Our trials reshape us more severely than our joys.

  She had laid a trail for him, but it might lead to places where he would not care to follow.

  Please come back! she would beg him. Before it’s too late for both of us.

  She had tried throughout the autumn to reassure herself that the growing disorder she felt merely reflected the more general uneasiness of war. The small thefts of building stuffs, the more frequent brawls between English workmen and Dauzat’s Huguenots or Lamb’s Italians.

  On her way to bed each night, she passed the blank panels of her own story that she had asked Lamb and Paroli to leave unfinished, to be completed in seven years, however the story might end.

  But Lamb was dead, and now so was Paroli. At Twelfth Night, four staunchly Puritan carpenters, outraged by the invasion of French and Italian craftsmen, had set upon the Italian painter as a treasonous Catholic enemy of England and a spy. As none of them would admit delivering the fatal kick to his head, Zeal had been forced to charge all four with his murder. The four men had spent Christmas awaiting trial in the Basingstoke gaol. The family of one, a Bedgebury man, had asked Gifford to challenge her charges.

  1644

  76

  Zeal’s Work Book – April 1644

  Send to Florence to Mistress Paroli, sixty pounds, being her husband’s last wages of 6 pounds, and some relief against her losses by her husband’s death. Also his brushes, tools, sword and boots

  Send deposition in reply to magistrate at Basingstoke with details of Sr Paroli’s murder

  Set locking bars on inside of all doors

  Locking gate for kitchen yard, of a sort not to be climbed

  M Dauzat, sign off his contract. Wages, (three weeks) and cost of his passage home

  Also 2 pounds and a pair of silk stockings for loyal service

  When last man is gone, fill cess pits and set fruit trees above

  Visit High House daily to see that Sir Richard’s people keep him clean and well-fed

  Harvest asparagus shoots and marigolds

  Sow whatever spinach seeds, radishes and carrots remain

  Beg garlic cloves from Mistress Wilde to replace stolen stock. If she has any

  Hide all food as fighting is now very near, at Alton before Christmas. Both armies now reported at Arlesford

  77

  At the end of April, the king was reported to have removed his queen to Exeter for safety and gathered his armies around Oxford. Parliament now controlled London. When Zeal, cresting Hawkridge on her mare, saw a single horseman crossing Lamb’s bridge, she knew without doubt that it had to be John. She turned her horse straight down the hill and kicked so fiercely that they nearly fell. By the time both had regained balance, she could see that the rider was Doctor Gifford.

  She reined her mare away again, towards the back of the house and the entrance through the new kitchens.

  ‘I tried to turn him away!’ Mistress Margaret said vehemently. ‘He just smiled in that superior way of his and refused to listen! What was I supposed to do? Send for a constable to arrest the parish minister for making a call?’ She added with a triumphant smile, ‘But I did leave him standing in the hall staring about him like a looby. And without refreshment!’


  Zeal took off the wide-brimmed black hat in which she rode. ‘I wonder how he dares come here uninvited. Let him stand!’ She went up the back stairs to her new chamber to change from her riding boots and skirt into a black silk mourning dress.

  ‘Mistress, did you know that Doctor Gifford is in the hall?’ asked Rachel, when she answered Zeal’s call for assistance.

  ‘I thought The Sword of the Lord had given us up,’ said Zeal. ‘Go tell him that I refuse to see him.

  ‘He won’t go,’ reported Rachel a few moments later. ‘Says he must hear his dismissal from your own lips.’

  Zeal frowned at a letter from the London saddler explaining the unforeseen additional cost of obtaining hides of the size she had required. She still could not believe her new freedom to create as she pleased and not fret over the money. She went down the back stairs to the new estate office to write telling him to proceed.

  ‘He’s still there,’ said Mistress Margaret as Zeal passed.

  In the office, Zeal looked down from the window towards the fishponds and the looking-glass view of the old stables beyond. Then she watched two masons building the first pier for a gate at the entrance to the forecourt. Her mind could not settle with the enemy still inside the walls.

  Call Arthur and have him removed, she decided. But curiosity got the better of her. In any case, it is always better to know what your enemy intends.

  ‘Mistress Parsley!’ When she appeared in the hall doorway, Gifford bared his teeth in what Zeal took to be a smile.

  ‘Have you ever before smiled at me?’ she demanded.

  Gifford missed only a single beat. ‘If not, it is not for the lack of good will.’

  ‘I’m sure you have not smiled. Why begin now?’ She advanced a little into the hall.

  ‘Enmity rusts the soul, madam. I have been praying and reflecting since my last visit. I would like to end the needless enmity that seems to have arisen between us. Set aside our differences…’ He took a step closer and wiped his palms on the skirts of his coat.

  ‘You call what lies between us “differences”?’ she demanded icily. ‘I call it vile and despicable.’

  Arthur passed through the hall, eyes straight ahead. He paused fractionally at the door, to give her a last chance to call him.

  Gifford reddened. He did not try to smile again. Nevertheless, she felt him digging in. ‘Madam, I will overlook such hyperbole in view of your loss. But do not fault me for wishing to act as any Christian might and offering consolation to one who is now alone in the world.’

  ‘I have Sir Richard’s parson for that…in the absence of Doctor Bowler.’

  ‘I don’t make myself clear…could we withdraw to somewhere we could speak more privately?’ Gifford glanced at the door through which Arthur had disappeared, then upward at the painted sky full of wheeling birds. The final version of the clockwork nightingale sat on a carved plaster bough above his head.

  ‘Say what you have come to say right here, or else leave still carrying the full burden of your words,’ said Zeal.

  Gifford cleared his throat and smoothed his rusty terrier hair. ‘Mistress Parsley, it won’t have escaped your notice that we are both now returned to the single state. You will know that I lost my dear wife more than a year ago. And as marriage is God’s prescription against sin, it occurred to me that…you wanting the guidance of a man, and I lacking the solace of a wife…’ He looked at her with raised brows.

  She was startled by her lack of surprise. Even so, his blind effrontery left her unable to speak.

  ‘It’s true that you are rich in earthly estates, but I offer you far more – the Kingdom of God.’

  She shook her head in disbelief. ‘I should have known it would come to this. Philip was wrong. Those love letters came from you, after all!’

  Gifford looked dumbfounded. ‘Love letters, madam? I never wrote you love letters!’

  ‘Poisonous love letters! Foetid oozings of an obscene imagination!’

  ‘Are you raving?’

  ‘The vile rantings of a diseased madman!’

  ‘How dare you suggest that I…?’

  ‘And how dare you come near me? How dare you presume? Haven’t you drooled enough over my imagined sins?’

  Gifford’s face turned as dark as a fresh bruise. ‘Madam, remember who I am in the parish!’

  ‘A toad! A viper! Hypocrite! Your God will pitch you down from Heaven before you can even knock!’

  Gifford dropped to his knees and raised his arms to Heaven. ‘Dear Lord! Aid me in this my final battle in Thy…’

  ‘Get out!’ she screamed. ‘Now!’ She grabbed a Delftware jug and threw it at his head. It struck his shoulder and smashed on the floor.

  ‘You’re a vicious, dangerous woman! Not worth saving, after all!’ He scrambled to his feet and began to back towards the door, the rims of his lips white with rage. ‘I had hoped to be strong enough to lead you out of the darkness. Even offering my own flesh as Our Lord…’

  ‘Go!’

  ‘…but you won’t have it! Not you! For years, you have resisted righteousness. You insist on your own damnation! You spurn your last chance to save yourself, through me. When retribution comes, madam – from both God and man, as it must…accusations are being made and you will have to answer them – just remember, I tried to give you a way out. Whatever happens now, you bring it on yourself! You and your obscene house!’

  For two days after Gifford’s visit, Zeal could not work. She could not even think.

  I wish I could have made the earth open and swallow him! That would have sobered him!

  But such vengeance still attended on the London saddler, on Master Cobb and on Francis Quoynt’s theatrical artificer, who had promised to finish his part within the week.

  Again and again she tried to unpick the meaning of Gifford’s parting words. Clearly, he was threatening her with a retribution more immediate than damnation. She knew that the showing had not stilled the mutterings in the parish about the house, but they came chiefly from men she had dismissed for one reason or another. Their reasons for complaint must be clear to any reasonable man. The families of Paroli’s murderers, too, were understandably upset, but surely no one else blamed her or the house for the men’s arrest when the killers themselves had boasted of their guilt. And people had seen for themselves the circumstances of the boy’s drowning.

  The arrival from London of Cobb with his sinking trap finally distracted her. The saddle-maker followed a few days later with his large and costly hides, from which he constructed a giant curving tube of leather, large enough for Zeal to sit in up-right, wearing all her skirts. Then Cobb and the saddler tackled the marriage of their two creations. Quoynt tested his water-powered engines and showed her how to set a slow fuse. Cobb pronounced that his counter-weighted system, driven by Quoynt’s engines rather than men, now worked perfectly. The new mason finished his work in the Grotto and returned his key. For most of May, Zeal secretly tested and re-tested the workings of her theatrical Underworld, which no one but she could now enter unless she arranged otherwise. Her mappa mundi, for the journey so far, was now complete.

  For a sixth time she arrived in her theatre as John would arrive, if he ever should return and still wanted her. Though she was prepared for it, the new descent into her theatre still took her breath away. She shook her head to clear it and opened her eyes.

  The word ‘GOMORRAH’ had been painted across half of a woodland scene.

  She felt sick. Her blood pounded in her head. She recognized those slashes, their madness as clear in brush strokes as in the dashes of a pen.

  The writer has not grown weary after all nor decided to leave her alone. Was no longer satisfied with mere letters.

  She had sealed off the public entrance before the showing. No one had known how all the parts fitted and worked together, she was certain. The masons knew the shape of the foundations. The smiths knew the contrivances of iron. The joiners knew the sweet intricacies of boxes and corners and stai
rcases. Quoynt knew the footprint. He and Cobb understood the machines and devices. But surely only she and Lamb had understood the purpose and workings of the whole.

  The word had not been there last time she visited, and she now had the only key to the workmen’s door.

  Could it be one of my own house family?

  But she had kept everyone except Cobb and the saddler away from the final work.

  Has someone been spying on me when I enter?

  But she had been careful. Arthur might know, and Rachel and Mistress Margaret. No one else.

  And yet, that word testified that there had been an invader in her secret part of the Memory Palace. One who had examined her most private thoughts without her leave or knowledge. This trespass was worse than the accusation it made, worse than burglary. It boasted of the secret power to violate her privacy at will.

  You should not have come here, she thought. Now I will discover you and grind you into powder and feed you to my pigs.

  Thinking of false appearances, she crossed to the walled-up arch of the former public entrance and pushed against the stones. Solidly in place, of course.

  Then she suddenly thought, Paroli’s key!

  She had given the Italian a second key, to lessen his need for contact with Jonas Stubbs. In the furore over his murder, and because nothing else of his had been stolen, she had forgotten his key.

  I must set a guard over the workmen’s door and send at once for a new lock.

  But she was not given time to change the lock. Before her letter could even have reached her London locksmith, Rachel discovered the first shape of Gifford’s threatened retribution.