by Rose Tremain
The ship presses onwards, billowing in the westerly winds.
The sea-birds follow: a raucous, restless choir, grey-and-white against the white of the sky.
PART THREE
SILENT SPRING, 1630
KING CHARLES I OF ENGLAND MAKES A REQUEST
He enjoys standing still.
He likes to align himself at a certain window in Whitehall Palace, with the morning sun beginning to be warm upon the glass, and look down and watch the scurrying of the people in the courtyard below. Sometimes a man or woman will look up, because it has become known that this is how the King may be glimpsed, motionless as a shadow in the tall window.
Conversations about this begin all over the palace all the time: “Did you see him?”
“Once, I saw him.”
“What is he thinking?”
“How can one know?”
He did not master the art of walking until the age of seven. Though now, at thirty, he holds himself graciously, there is in his walk some memory of those labours and humiliations of his childhood, a kind of hesitancy that is not quite a limp but more a visible disinclination to put one foot in front of the other.
At the window, he does not move and he does not speak. The palace courtiers know better than to interrupt him when his back is so resolutely turned upon the room. They know that this condition of stillness and silence is consoling to his spirit. For just as walking remains uncomfortable to him, so expressing himself in plain words is very hard for him. It isn’t that he does not know, in his head, what he wishes to say; it is simply that what he wishes to say is not what he is able to utter. He can talk to himself with absolute clarity and eloquence. And as with himself, so with God, whom he imagines as a near relation, privy to all the quirks and habits of his mind. But to express himself to his subjects—this is arduous. Sometimes, he will even stammer.
As to the thoughts, the aspirations, the endeavours or even the genius of ordinary men, King Charles I of England prefers to be shown the fruit of these—the perfected mathematical equation, the sonnet whose beat is as steady as a pulse, the portrait that is finished and complete to its last thread of imaginary lace, the musical performance that is devoid of all hesitation or flaw—rather than to witness the struggles of composition. A man’s vision, before it has achieved its intended form, habitually expresses itself in confused strivings. And these the King does not wish to observe. He is able to admire only what has been distilled into art and set before him. Then, in silence, he will often marvel at what he sees or hears. His State rooms are filled with the works of the Renaissance masters. His love for the paintings of Caravaggio verges upon worship. He will sometimes point to an exquisitely rendered outstretched hand, the light upon a bowl of fruit, and, wordlessly, invite others to lower their eyes or bow their knee before this artist’s genius.
In the swirling, chaotic world of London’s streets and wharves, a world from which silence and stillness are almost entirely absent, copies of a Puritan pamphlet censoring Nonesuch Charles squandering millions of pounds on vanities and old rotten pictures and brokennosed marbles circulate from hand to hand, but most of them are dropped by design or accident, and trampled into the mud or picked up by the breeze and blown onto the water, and so no whisper of their contents has yet reached this diffident, fastidious man, alone with his own divinity.
And it must be said that were it one day to reach him, he would consider it of no account whatsoever. It is his belief that a sovereign and his subjects are “clean different things,” the one always unknowable to the many. He is King because he has been chosen by God and none can unsay this and none can criticise his actions. The actions of pamphleteers trouble him less—far less—than the few motes of dust he occasionally finds on the surface of his dressing glass. He dislikes dust. He tries to ensure that his fingers never touch it.
His gaze travels the length of his long nose and comes to rest on the courtyard, where a lime tree has been planted, where people pass and repass on errands of their own devising. He savours the moment. He wonders if he will not write an ode entitled “In Praise of Windows.”
The man waiting to see him, on a morning in March 1630, is his ambassador to Denmark, Sir Mark Langton Smythe.
When King Charles at last turns round and re-enters a world in which it is called upon him to move and speak, Ambassador Langton Smythe is smiling and bowing. (The smile, the bow, the continual stretching of the facial muscles, the frequent bending of the spine and awkward extending of the leg: the lot of the subject might possibly be perceived as an exhausting one, thinks the King, if such perceptions were ever required—which they are not.)
He seats himself on one of his many brocaded thrones and invites the Ambassador to sit down opposite him. He remembers all at once that he likes this man, who was a favourite of his mother’s, and so he feels his throat and his tongue relax and ventures a question, over which he does not stammer at all: “How is our uncle, the King of Denmark?”
Langton Smythe replies that King Christian is away from court, on his annual tour of the nobility’s estates, and that he is still waiting for the merchants of Hamburg to pay him for Iceland. At which King Charles (who imagines Iceland as a desert of glass upon which snow falls perpetually, like dust) nods gravely and wonders aloud: “May this place be worth enough to pay all our uncle’s heavy debt?”
Ambassador Langton Smythe shakes his head, saying that he doubts whether this money will ever arrive in King Christian’s treasury, and he informs the King of England that this is why he is returned from Copenhagen: to plead for a little loan. “One hundred thousand pounds, perhaps?” he suggests. “To give your uncle some respite, Sir. To let him begin to put everything in order.” Langton Smythe understands how well loved, in King Charles’s vocabulary, is the word “order” and that it might even have quasimagical properties when carefully placed within a sentence. But now he sees the King arrange his long white hands into a thoughtful steeple in front of his face, and he does not know what this gesture signifies.
He dare say nothing more. Silence arrives in the room. The only sound is the crackling and spitting of the fire.
This waiting for the King to speak or waiting to know His Majesty’s mind is a phenomenon well recognised by all who have dealings with him. Certain young courtiers are known to practise in secret, sitting for moments of long duration without moving, yawning, fidgeting, sneezing or letting escape from them the least sign of impatience. But all find it painful. “His dogs move about freely,” the youthful Lord Wetlock-Blundall has remarked crossly, “but we are expected to turn into sphinxes!”
And it is perhaps three or four minutes now before the King makes a reply to Langton Smythe. In such a time a carriage might travel a mile, a musketeer fire and reload his weapon twenty-five times, a laundress lather several shirt collars and the moon change by a fraction its position in the sky. But of course, the Ambassador does not appear to fret. He merely waits and the waiting becomes his whole existence.
At last, the King says: “We are sympathetic. The fondness we have for the King of Denmark makes us so. But we are not, on this occasion, inclined to make any gift without asking for something in return. What do you think our uncle might be willing to offer?” Langton Smythe had not anticipated such a question. Now it is his turn to plunge the room back into silence, while he searches hastily for an answer. For no reason that he can determine, his thoughts fly to the summer long gone and the concert in the garden at Rosenborg, the beauty of the music played there and King
Christian’s pride in his orchestra, and so he seizes upon this. “It might be . . .” he stammers, “it might be that your uncle would lend you ... or even give to you one or other of his musicians.”
“His musicians? Are they renowned?”
“Yes, Sir. The sound they make has an excellent perfection which Your Majesty would instantly recognise.”
King Charles fixes the Ambassador with a cold eye. “Such perfection must necessarily depend upon
the entire ensemble. Are you telling us that our uncle would give me all of them?”
Langton Smythe looks helpless for a moment. “No . . .” he ventures at last. “I do not think he would, Sir. Yet there is one, a lute player, an Englishman, who makes a sound very pure in the solo . . . and he . . .”
“An English lutenist? Not kin to Dowland, we hope?”
“No, Your Majesty. His name is Mr. Claire.”
At the word “Claire,” something rare happens to the King’s features: they compose themselves into a smile. Just as the word “Caravaggio” (in suggesting to him caravans and voyages under southern suns) seems perfect for the ultimate master of light, so, he thinks, does the word “Claire” (by its association with clarity, brightness and moonshine) fit a lute player admirably. “Very good,” he says. “This is of interest to us. Shall you return to Denmark and ask our uncle if he will send us Mr. Claire, or shall we write to him ourself?”
Ambassador Langton Smythe feels suddenly uncomfortable in his chair. He is aware that perhaps he has suggested something foolish, something delicate that should never have been mentioned and which might even cause a rift in the friendship between the two kings. And in any quarrel of this kind he, the Ambassador, would be sure to be blamed and, if blamed, then sent away from office and be stripped of his annual stipend, his house and his allowance for claret.
He experiences a sudden flush of heat to his face and neck at the thought of these calamities. He wants to unsay what he has said. But it is too late. King Charles has risen, thus ending the audience, and is already crossing the room to return to his favoured position at the window. He informs the Ambassador that he himself will write to his uncle “requesting the pawning of Mr. Claire to us, for as handsome a sum of money as our purse can afford,” and then wishes him good-day.
FROM COUNTESS O’FINGAL'S NOTEBOOK: LA DOLOROSA
We have arrived in a land of forests.
I did not know so many trees could grow together so thickly for so many deep, impenetrable miles. And the perfume of these firs as the snow melts away from them and the darkness of them and the blacker darkness underneath them makes me think them an extraordinary phenomenon, such as I have never before witnessed.
I tell my father that I am sure the air of these forests is the sweetest air a man could breathe, but he is not interested in air. What he sees when he looks at these dark woods is the most marvellous paper he has ever manufactured. He thinks only of his new mill and how it may be the most productive mill in all of Europe and how his Pond Numero Uno will soon be the only paper used in every salon from Copenhagen to London, from Paris to Rome, et cetera.
The site where the Ponti mill will be established is so excellent a place that it seems almost a pity that the mill is to become a real entity there and not remain a vision in my father’s mind. For I know only too well that the vision of a thing is almost always superior to the thing itself because, in the vision, the thing is laid effortlessly upon what is already there and all the messy interim of its making is conveniently put by.
The site borders a swiftly flowing river, going from the north to the south, and the felled trees will be floated down to the mill on the current of the water. I ask my father how they will float in winter, when the river may be frozen, but he has already considered this matter and replies that all the felling will be done in summer and the tree trunks put into barns to be stored for the day when the
Ponti machinery grinds them to pulp and reconstitutes them as sheets of matchless paper. He speaks about this as though it were all to be quite soundless and easy, as though the fir trunks would slip into the river of their own volition and rise up again, like soldiers who sleep soundly in their barn billet, until called upon to sacrifice themselves for the great glory of the name Ponti.
But I do not make this observation to my dear papa. We stand together on the bank of this river, where patches of snow lie in wondrous separated crystals here and there on the grass, and I see a heron on the far bank, watching us. And when my father catches sight of this heron, he suddenly says: “The lutenist is charming, Francesca, but do not dream of marriage to him. Marry Sir Lawrence de Vere and you and the children shall be warm and safe all your days.” And the heron flies away with a fish in its yellow beak.
We put up at a poor inn, where the wind comes through the walls and the beds are damp.
I cannot sleep for the cold and melancholy of the place, and think of my children, far away in Ireland with Lady Liscarroll and her falcons. And then I think of Johnnie O’Fingal lying in his grave and the sorrow and strangeness of his sufferings, which were more than a good man should have had to bear. And fear for the unknowable condition of life spreads through me like a fever in the darkness.
My thoughts return to what my father said to me on the river-bank and I confess that, in this cold and mournful place, I do find myself longing for some certainty, for some future that will not be snatched away from me.
Into my mind comes an image of Sir Lawrence de Vere, with his fields and woods at Ballyclough and his fine collection of Dutch clocks. Still handsome at forty-nine, he smells lightly of pepper and his hands are strong and warm, and I know that he yearns to be my protector. I confess I do not yet love him, but surely love may sometimes exist in the future tense?
I get out of my damp bed and light a lamp, and take up a sample of the Numero Uno. On this, in a careful hand, yet proceeding quickly lest I am tempted to change my mind, I write the following letter:
To Sir Lawrence de Vere Ballyclough in the South of Ireland
My dear Sir Lawrence,
I am writing to you from the northerly part of Denmark, which they call Jutland.
I am encircled by forests. The great extent of these woods I cannot fathom, but they go on from horizon to horizon and the sun has a deal of trouble to rise above the tops of the trees in the mornings and, as the afternoons go on, seems to think always and only of descending into them again, as though the forests and not the sky were its preferred habitation, or else a cage where it understands it must for ever live.
In such a place, a man could lose himself and walk all his life and never be found. And it is this thought of how I myself might remain for ever encircled by these dark thickets if I do not follow the path laid out for me that prompts me now to write to you.
You did me the greatest honour in asking me to become your wife. That I requested a little time in which to consider my answer you will not think ill-mannered of me nor reflecting in any wise fears that I could not love you nor make you happy. I asked for time that I might savour your proposal in sweet secrecy while embarked upon my wanderings in Denmark, that I might wake with it at first light and hold it to me when my candle is blown out and I lie alone in the darkness.
And so it has been. Your proposal has been my dearest companion all the days of my travels. Indeed, were it now to be withdrawn, I would find myself returned to that state of solitary unhappiness it is so difficult for the human heart to bear. And so I ask you, dear Sir Lawrence, do not withdraw it! Rather, repeat it to me, that I may hear the pretty syllables of it a second time, and you shall have my answer and my answer shall be yes.
From your admiring friend,
Francesca O’Fingal
After the letter is written, I feel a marvellous drowsiness coming upon me and, in spite of the wind howling, I fall into a sleep so deep that it is late before I can be roused from it. And I dream of Ireland. I dream of the pink shells, like babies’ toes, you find on the beaches at Cloyne.
PICTURES OF THE NEW WORLD
No sooner is baby Ulla weaned than Magdalena Tilsen discovers that she is expecting another child. She does not know whether its father is Johann or his son Wilhelm.
She knows that she is at the very summit of her daring. With Emilia and Marcus returned to the household, she can no longer let Wilhelm come to her in her attic or anywhere else in the house, not even the linen closet. But when she tells him this, he says that if he cannot continue
to fornicate with her he will kill her. He owns a knife. He will plunge his knife into her breast.
He finds an old bam, beyond the fruit fields, where nothing is stored any more and no one comes, and where rats screech from under the walls. It is neither comfortable nor warm, but it is dark and secret, and smells of the earth and the secretions of the rats, and what occurs there with Magdalena is as thrilling to Wilhelm as anything he has ever known or believes he will know. Yet afterwards he feels ill, a casualty of some external event in which his will played no part. And it is true that he is growing thin. Johann notices this and tries to make sure his plate is piled high at mealtimes.
As to Magdalena, she keeps the fact of her pregnancy to herself for the time being, fearing how Wilhelm might react to it. Johann no longer locks her in the attic and is grown kinder towards her than in the time immediately following Ingmar’s departure. Yet she begins to sense that something else is occurring: Johann’s passion for her is diminishing in ways which suggest not merely a period of diminution followed, as before, by a resurgence, but a cooling which will be final and permanent.
The signs are unmistakable. Where she could once call her husband to her with the merest word or glance or twitch of her skirt, now she watches him turn away from these overtures. His desire for solitude and separateness—always part of his nature—seems, every day, to be increasing. And when he is not engaged in some solitary task, where is he to be found but with Emilia and Marcus? The ghost of Karen has returned. With Wilhelm, Magdalena defies Karen. But Magdalena understands that her own ascendancy in this household has risen as far as it will ever rise and that now it has begun to fall.
In the night, while Johann snores beside her, she asks herself whether she should play one last card and let her husband discover her with Wilhelm—to inflict on him the final delirious torment that might (as he foresees his two remaining sons, Boris and Matti, going the way of their brothers in due time) put him in thrall to her for ever. But something holds her back. She thinks that to do this would be to open the door of a cage, not knowing what lay inside it, what venomous snakes, what vultures with heavy wings and vicious claws, what scorpions. And so she keeps silent. She walks to and from the rat-infested barn at least once a week. She goes on with her cake making, letting Boris and Matti help her and lick her fingers, just as they always did. She prays that Marcus will sicken and die. She listens to her body’s alterations as it begins to nurture her unborn child.