by Rose Tremain
When he had told her, in words particular to him, to his boisterous heart, to his fondness for drollery, that she was the dearest, sweetest, most marvellous creature he had ever known or ever would know, he gave her a task. He asked her, on the morrow, to go into his park and into his garden, and tell him what she saw there and how it appeared to her, and what light or dark was in the sky and what wintry shadows lay on the land. He added that he would love to lie there and think of her in the gardens of Cookham— “where you shall soon be the veritable mistress and command what flowers are to be sown and how many rows of peas are to be planted”—and that if she should find anything in the park or garden that especially pleased her or amused her, she should bring it to him and he would be sure to smell in it the scent of the waiting spring.
Charlotte did not particularly want to walk alone in the cold outdoors while George lay in his room. She had very frequently imagined herself wandering in this green landscape where the sky was vast and the horizon low and dark with forests of oak, but George was always with her. Indeed, she belonged to George in her reveries; she was Mrs. George Middleton, and could not be anywhere but by his side.
Yet she agreed to go. She would ask her mother to accompany her and they would visit George’s horse, Soldier, and the pig houses and the kennels, and skirt by the woods where winter feed was laid down for the game.
As they set out, each wrapped in a woollen cloak, Anne Claire remarked that the cold of December was “unforgiving in Norfolk,” but Charlotte made no comment, only privately noted the hardness of the ground under her little brown boots and the stillness in the air.
When they arrived at the paddock where the horses still grazed, with woollen cloths on their backs, she called to Soldier. He was a large horse, black as the dark spaces under the trees of the forest, with a high neck and a haughty look, and no one but George Middleton liked to ride him, because of his strength and his hard mouth that never seemed to feel the pulling of the bit. “When you are married,” said Anne gently, “perhaps you may insist that George ride one of the others . . .”
Charlotte stroked the horse’s nose. “If I am married,” she said sadly, “I do not think I will insist on anything except—privately to myself—that George continue to love me.”
She found a jay’s feather in the grass and picked it up, wondering if this was what he might like her to take him, but the feather was merely pretty and did not delight or amuse her, so she let it fall.
They looked at the pigs, huddled together in their barn for warmth, and Charlotte thought, The tail of a pig is a thing foolish enough to make a wounded man laugh, and wondered whether she might ask that a leash be tied to one of the sows and she would lead her up the polished stairs and along the landing to George’s bedroom. But it seemed to her that pigs were too fleshy, their lives too brief, their behaviour too ugly, to be of consolation to George at this hour. And she did not want him to think her quite mad, only a little unique, only containing within her just that measure of the unexpected sufficient to make her irreplaceable.
She had no idea what she was searching for. She knew that in the shrubbery there stood a winter-flowering cherry that came into bud in December and that a branch broken from this tree might be the thing to lay on George’s counterpane, but when she arrived at the tree it looked grey. The tiny buds were there, but they had not opened. There was nothing entertaining about it.
Then they arrived at the kitchen garden, laid out behind low hedges of box, and Charlotte saw rows of celery roots earthed up, onions dug out and laid to dry, apples fallen and discolouring to a mulch, leeks like low green fountains.
They were passing a bed of cabbages when Anne stopped. “I didn’t know George grew these at Cookham,” she said.
“What? Cabbages? I suppose that they grow in every garden, Mother.”
“No,” said Anne. And she stopped and peeled back the outer leaves of the cabbage and Charlotte saw at its centre, not the expected interleaving of the cabbage head, but a firm cream-coloured growth like a posy of daisies tightly packed and bound.
She stared at the strange vegetable. She had always loved nature’s trick of concealing one thing within another, a thing you could not imagine until you had seen it, like a polished horse-chestnut inside its husk.
“Brought from France,” said Anne. “They call them choux-fleurs: cabbage-flowers, and I hear that they are very delicate and good.”
So this is what Charlotte took back to George Middleton.
He was sleeping, but she woke him and put the cabbage-flower on his rib-cage, where it balanced unsteadily, like a baby’s head.
“Mama says,” said Charlotte, “I should make soup from it for you, but I prefer it as it is.”
George Middleton sat up. It seemed to him, unless he was quite mistaken, that since this last sleep of his, his pain had eased a little and his mind felt light.
He held the cabbage-flower in his broad hands, then lifted it to his nostrils and smiled at Charlotte. “Daisy,” he said, “the scent of this thing is infernal!” And they both began to laugh.
TWO LETTERS
As Peter Claire sits down at last to compose an answer to Francesca O’Fingal’s letter, he reflects that a year has now passed since he left Ireland. He tries to imagine the changes that will have occurred at Cloyne: the quietly altered appearances of the children; the visits to the grave of their father; Francesca’s assumption of all the duties of the estate; her wearing of mourning; her knowledge that life has played her a perplexing trick and that her future is unknown.
He wants to say to her that he can have no part in that future, but, as he takes up the pen, he hesitates. He cannot write what is in fact a reproach, a disparagement of her feelings, when what he feels for Francesca—for her daring as much as her beauty—is only admiration. He begins thus and hopes that, as the letter progresses, he will come by some formulation that will—without anything being explained—make known to her that their love affair is over.
My dear Francesca,
You cannot imagine how greatly I was surprised by the disclosure that you and your father are to come to Denmark.
It is as if I cannot envisage the means by which you will both be transported here, so vividly do I picture you in Ireland— or else in the elegant Bologna of my imagination.
Let me prepare you a little for your voyage. Being once more in winter, we are held again by a great cold that is, in its intensity, more fierce than any I have known, whether in Harwich or at Cloyne, and you and Signor Ponti should not think light of it but come wrapped in furs and wool, and know that this is a cold one might die of.
The King winters at Frederiksborg Castle (some few miles from Copenhagen, at Hillerød) and I shall endeavour to ensure that you are lodged here, for this is a very mighty castle with numberless rooms. Indeed, it is so vast that, as I walk about it, I do sometimes think that there may be souls lodged in the attics of the copper roofs of whose existence I am quite ignorant . . .
Here he pauses. His evocation of these small high rooms has brought into his mind the image of Emilia’s chamber at Rosenborg, with her grey dress hanging on the armoire and the speckled hen roosting on her coverlet. This reverie fills him with such a wave of tenderness for her, such a yearning to put his arms round her, to become the proud provider of grey dresses or squawking hens or whatever it might be that she has set her heart on, that he lays down the pen and sits there, gazing vacantly at the wall.
It is night and he can hear the wind sighing and he feels his new loneliness within the silence Emilia is imposing, this absence
which seems to have no end. It is a slow torture. Within it, his playing is suffering and it is he, not the Italians, whom Jens Inge-mann rightly berates for his lack of concentration. Every day, day after day after day, he prays for it to be ended. He has imagined innumerable times the arrival of the letter-bearer and the words from Emilia that will, in the little space it takes to read them, lift all the weight from his heart.
&
nbsp; How is it, he asks himself, that the human soul is prey to such absolute attachments and is so quickly made glad or filled with misery? Does the partridge mourn his lost mate? Does the wolf cast out from the pack feel sorrow of the kind that a man would recognise?
Peter Claire sets aside his letter to Francesca and begins to write:
Oh, Emilia, there is nothing good in your silence! Strive as I may to find a kind of grace in it, I cannot. It works in me nothing but discord and disorder, so that now in this night, I feel such agitation that I almost wonder if I am not beginning to lose my reason.
I beg you to write to me. There is no need of a long letter. Only tell me that I may continue to think of you as my beloved. Only say to me that we shall both work to find a way—within the great shadow of the King’s separation from his wife—to forge a future together. For surely you shall not stay for ever with Kirsten, nor I with the King? But how am I to hope for any such future if my letters are not answered?
He finishes neither letter. He stares at the two beginnings, side by side. And then he sleeps. So wild and confused are his dreams that, when morning comes, he washes his face and flees his room as quickly as he can, for he cannot bear to think about them.
Later the following day, as the sky is once again darkening and yet more hours have gone by without any word from Emilia, he signs his name under the few lines he has written to her and seals this letter just as it is, knowing it to be petulant and boyish, but not caring, and pressing the seal into the hot wax with a fervour that is close to anger.
He lays it aside and after a while takes up his pen again.
Francesca [he writes], I must warn you and your father of another thing besides the cold. And this thing is His Majesty’s troubles, that have come upon him in the year since I have been with him. His wife is gone away and this alone would cause him great heaviness of heart. Added to this, however, is another woe. And this is the King’s want of money. When I talked to him of your visit, extolling the great virtues of the parchment and vellum produced by the Ponti manufactory in Bologna, he impressed upon me the impossibility of buying paper from Italy, and I am sure he has no dalers with which to build any paper mill where Signor Ponti might oversee the production of the fine paper to be made out of Danish firs.
Thus you will see that your proposed journey here might be all in vain and that your father might return empty-handed to Bologna and you would have had all the expense of it for nothing.
Naturally, I would be glad to see you at Frederiksborg, but I do not wish you to leave your children nor your father his work for any voyage that would not bring you what your heart desires.
From your affectionate friend,
Peter Claire
Peter Claire reads this second letter several times before closing it. He notes what versatile things words may be and how, contained within them, can reside other words, nowhere set down and for ever invisible to the eye, but having an existence just the same.
My baby has been christened Dorothea.
Her head is covered with a blond down and her eyes are bright, and I shall always remember that, in the midst of pain, there was a kind of ecstasy in her delivery that I did not experience with any of my other Children. All that they gave me was pain unmitigated, and each one of them has caused me a grand quantity of Irritation ever since.
I am now endeavouring to love Dorothea. Each day, I pray that I shall not find her Irritating. But I observe that of their nature babies are bound to cause torment to all around them. They are worse than Emilia’s hen, Gerda. The noise they make is infernal. The stench of them is scarcely to be endured, for they are ever spewing out strands of pearly vomit or straining till their eyes start from their heads to produce farmyard motions. Their talk is plain nonsense. At the least thing, they wail and scream. They have no teeth in their heads, nor any understanding of anything. In short, there is little in them to engender in me any feeling of Love whatsoever, and my affection, such as it is, for Dorothea rests only on the plain fact that she is Otto’s child and therefore a Memento of my Lover.
I cannot bear to suckle an infant, so I have engaged a Wet-nurse. When she is fed and clean and not puking, I undertake to rock her in my arms and walk about with her, that I may be seen to love her, and my Mother says to me: “Why, Kirsten, I did not know you would ever show such tenderness towards any Baby of yours”; and I reply: “Why, Mother, if I have lacked tenderness towards my Children, then surely it derives from your example!”
And at this, she goes into a venomous mood, muttering all manner of accusations against me and insults to my character. But I tell her that I am perfectly Impervious to Any Thing that she can hurl at me. “I have,” I remind her, “the habit of submitting to abuse. Nobody at Court was ever so snubbed and slandered as I was—and much of that in the open and to my face—so whatever you can dredge up against me is as a flea trying to bite the hide of an elephant and shall never bother me in the least.”
And at this, she is quiet and skulks away.
And the longing grows in me hourly to turn her out of this house and send her and Vibeke to be eaten by Wolves in the forests.
Other matters conspire to vex me. Indeed, the number of Things designed to annoy me, upset me and frighten me as Christmastide approaches is miserably large and I declare that I scarcely know any hour when I am at Peace with the World or with myself.
First, and most gravely, I have no word from the English Lutenist.
Daily, I expect some reply to my Proposal, but he does not deign to answer it. Either he is already weary of Emilia and so does not care whether his letter reaches her or no. Or else, disdaining me quite and refusing to collude with my Plan, he has shown my letter to the King, thus putting me in the most grave and terrifying Jeopardy.
I curse him! I curse his lute! May his yellow hair fall out with the last leaves of winter and all his beauty be lost!
I dare not write to him again, for if my letter has been taken to the King, then perchance in his fondness for me and in memory of his “heart’s dearest Mouse” His Majesty will set aside this one unwise communication or bum it and take no Proceedings against me. But if I should beg a second time for Documents with which I can barter with King Gustav, and this second letter should be shown to the King, so that he knows I am plotting against him in order to come to my Lover, why then I do believe he would send Soldiers to arrest me and I should be locked away in some Dungeon for the rest of my years, or else be burned as a Witch and a Spy.
What can I do?
When I reflect that I have no means (or none that I can perceive) by which I can be reunited with Otto, I find myself tearing at my hair and at my flesh, as though I would break myself in pieces and send me to him bit by bit. And only Emilia, who tries to hold me and calm me, does prevent me from ripping out my nails and scarring my cheeks, and, if it were not for her, I do not know in what state of Injury I would now find myself. In my Dreams, I am dead and laid in a cold grave in Finland. The snow and ice cover the place until it is invisible. And the seasons turn and no one comes near it, summer or winter.
Yesterday, to ease my fears, I decided to write to the King.
If his Reply be sweet, then I shall know that I am safe and there are no soldiers to be sent to take me away. If it be not sweet, or if no Reply comes, then I must consider whether I should fee with Emilia into hiding where I cannot be found.
I told my Husband of the birth of Dorothea—“your sweet child”—and asked him what other Names he would like to give her. I pretended her hair was dark. I said she had the cry of “a dear dove” and that she would grow up to resemble him.
All in among these lies, I begged him to send me some Money for Dorothea’s care (for perhaps with Money I can find some means to come to an arrangement with King Gustav?) and also to despatch to me, as before requested, my two Slaves, Samuel and Emmanuel.
In some sport with these Black Boys lies the only hope of holding fast to my Sanity. I am still most horribly Fat after the
birth of Dorothea and this fatness does disgust me and is a Stubborn thing that refuses to leave me, but clings to my waist and to my stomach, so that all my once-beautiful flesh now begins to fall in folds towards the earth. But on this matter, I reflect that Slaves are not supposed to utter any Criticism of their Mistress’s body, or even to notice such things as Pendulousness. They must do my bidding and that is that. And so I shall have some Pleasure with them and then perhaps matters in general may go on a little better.
But in the case that they do not go on better, and I am to be Impeached or accused of Treason and thrown into a Prison for the rest of time, I have purchased from my Mother’s Apothecary—at great and horrible expense—a little pot of Poison.
It is a white dust.
I show it to Emilia. I tell her it is my Vial of Death.
She stares at it, then at me and then at it again. “Madam,” she says, “shall we die?”
I stroke her hair. “Emilia,” I say, “I am not Cleopatra in her Monument with all her Women commanded to put the asp to their own breasts. If ever I should use this, it would be for me alone, so do not be so foolish as to think otherwise.”
And then I see a solitary tear fall from Emilia’s eye. And I know that this is falling not only at the thought of my death, but also because she feels herself to be betrayed by Peter Claire and, for a moment, I repent that I stole her letter, for I see that she is suffering and indeed that she is growing thin and that her hair, which was glossy, has become dull and her cheeks have no colour in them.
But I cannot give her the letter. Indeed, if any other letter should come, then I shall have to intercept this also. I am sorry for the hurt she is feeling, but I am certain her Anguish is as nothing compared with mine, and really I can only do as I have planned and not yield to any Sentimental Feeling. Because Emilia is my one and only Consolation and if she should leave me I know not what I should do.