"Restoration" - читать интересную книгу автора (Tremain Rose)Chapter Eleven. The Unknown KnownMy birthday is approaching. I was born under the constellation of Aquarius, the eleventh sign of the Zodiac, the sign of the water-butler, that humble but indispensable slave who fetches from wells and rivers the element so vital to the structure of human tissue. I imagine this Aquarius as an old, stooped man, his spine warped by the weight of a wooden yoke from which hang a pair of brimming pails. On he staggers, day after day, year after year, with his precious burden, but his strength is waning, he totters and stumbles and, as he moves through time, more and more water is spilled, thereby engendering in the bellies of the ancient gods an irritation stronger even than thirst. They long to give the slave's skinny buttocks a vengeful kick. They would, if they dared, send a rod of lightning to pierce his ragged neck. And yet they must not. Hopeless as he is, they cannot do without him. Despite my birth date, the twenty-seventh of January, I have never, I think, held any notion of my own indispensability. As a child my mother looked at me lovingly and would no doubt have wept a while had I been eaten by a badger in the woods of Vauxhall. But this is all. She would not have died without my hand to hold. As a student of medicine, I prayed that my knowledge and skills might one day lie between a man and his death, but I cannot recall now that they ever did. In my brief delirious sojourn at Whitehall, I verily believed I was I am to become thirty-eight years old. I shall note the arrival, duration and waning of this day in the following manner. I shall sleep late, hoping to dream of tennis (a sport which used to make me strangely happy). I shall pass some hours of the morning with Musikmeister Hummel, pursuing my secret plan, the unfortunate venue of which appears to be the summer-house. In the afternoon, I shall paint Russians. In the evening I shall devise some merriment, pay some musicians, invite Mister James de Gourlay ("Monsieur Dégeulasse", with whom, in that society mocks him for his pretensions, I now feel some kindred affection) and his wife and daughters to supper and to dancing. I will give Celia a good quantity of champagne in the hope that it will make her kind. As the day approaches, the weather has turned very pretty, the fine frost of the mornings cut like diamonds by an unclouded sun. It is most pleasant to walk in my park with the Musikmeister and hear him agree to collude with my plan, which is that during the time when Celia is sitting for the portrait we shall retire together to some place where we shall not be overheard (I suggested the cellars, but Hummel is mortally afraid to set eyes on a rat there, so we have agreed upon the summer-house) and he will teach me, in secret, to master my instrument. I have impressed upon him that there is not much time, that before this spring comes I expect my wife to have returned to London. "But it is my dearest wish," I told him, "before I lose her and do not set eyes upon her again for months, or even years, to play for one of her songs – and just the one will satisfy me – a perfect accompaniment. If you will help me to do that, Herr Hummel, you will have my lasting gratitude." The Musikmeister looked me up and down, as if expecting to find somewhere on my unpromising person some infinitesimal piece of evidence of musicality. Finding none, he had the courtesy to smile (where the uncouth Finn would have sneered) and promised me that he would do all he could. I see now that my first opinion of him was accurate: he is an honest and agreeable man, as indeed one might expect any friend of Sir Joshua's to be. And so I fall to pondering the truth of my own words to Celia. This, then, is the night of the day of the twenty-seventh of January 1665, my thirty-eighth birthday, and I will tell you of certain disturbing things that came to pass upon it. (I note for you in parentheses how agreeable I find the phrase "came to pass" which I do not believe existed in the body of the language until King James's mighty scholars sat down and alchemised it from ancient sacred tongues and put it there.) The day did not begin as I had imagined. I did not lie under my turquoise canopy dreaming sportive dreams till mid-morning, but rose early to find myself wondering whether I could hope for any gifts. I am childishly excited by presents, however insignificant they may be and always feel most grateful to the giver. The notion that I might pass the day without receiving one gift whatsoever depressed me not a little. At such moments of despondency, I long not merely to Knowing such thoughts to be most silly, I rose and washed my eyes and face, put on a brocaded gown and descended to my kitchen, where it amuses me sometimes to concoct for myself the kind of unskilled meal that I once made upon my fire in my rooms at Ludgate. My breakfast, then, consisted of a dish of eggs coddled with cream, upon which I laid some salted anchovies – a rather excellent invention, which I ate by the kitchen range. Will Gates found me there and informed me that a carter had arrived from London, bringing "a quantity of furs", these of course being the tabards made of badger pelts by old Trench. There were ten of them, each very adroitly sewn, with a badger's snout rearing up on either shoulder and a row of tails forming a black fringe around the hem. Having examined them (Trench, as instructed, had used a good woollen cloth for the linings), I persuaded Will to put his on. He protested at first, saying that he would not feel nimble nor ready for work in such a garment. "Will," I said, "do not be pettish. They have been designed to leave the limbs free and agile." Alas, Will did look somewhat awkward and hampered by his tabard. He is a very short, thin man and the garment appeared both too wide for him and too long, so that the badger tails trailed upon the floor and the badger snouts hung off his shoulders somewhat dejectedly. I could not suppress a little attack of mirth. "Alas, Will," I said, "I think your particular tabard will have to be altered." "It's not worth the expense, Sir," said Will, heaving the thing over his hard little head, "for I shall not wear it." "You "Forgive me, Sir Robert," said Will, "but I shall not." "You will, Will," I said feebly, but though I am master of my house and Will is an excellent servant, I could plainly see that upon this subject there is going to be some conflict between us. Having dressed myself and put my own tabard on, I went in search of the Musikmeister, to whom I would offer to lend one during our chilly hours in the summer-house. Though my tabard feels, I admit, somewhat heavy, it imparts to the body an immediate and agreeable warmth. Furthermore, I look outlandish in it and require only some bizarre hat or headdress of fur to resemble very nicely the Russians of my dreams. And then a teasing thought entered my mind: Would the King not be amused by such a garment? Should I dare, on this my birthday that promised to be empty of gifts, to despatch one to Whitehall? Was it possible that my imagination could be father to a new Royal fashion? How excellent it would be if, when Celia returned to Court, she found all the fops and gallants hung with badger fur and the words " Determining to give the matter some deep thought (the King had sent me his gift of surgical instruments; would he be offended by some return gift from me?), I got my oboe and went to the room of Herr Hummel and from there we made our way, unseen by any, to the summer-house. The place was indeed cold and not a little triste, the windows latticed over with cobwebs and the floor strewn with downy feathers, as if a dove chick had flown into the humble habitation and exploded in mid-air. I apologised to Herr Hummel, who had wisely put on his tabard, informing him that in summer the place was very pleasant and expressing my hope that he would return to visit me during that kinder season. He thanked me and suggested we begin upon the lesson straight away, before our fingers became too numb. He requested that I play a few scales for him, followed by "some short piece of your choice". This could only be He listened. His face betrayed no scorn or dismay. When I had finished, he did allow himself the ghost of a sigh. "Very well," he said. "I think we must begin again. You are self-tutored, perhaps?" "Yes, entirely." "And, alas, the fingering is awkward, Sir Robert, and the position of the lips upon the reed too forward. You must whisper to your reed, you see. Not kiss or suck it." "Ah." "But you will learn quickly, I think. You have the zeal to learn." "Yes. Zeal I have." "So." Here, Herr Hummel gently took my instrument from me, blew away my spittle and raised it to his own mouth, making some strange contortions with his lips before allowing them to settle in a hesitant-seeming posture around the reed. He then bid me watch carefully the fingering he employed for the scale of C, his hands seeming hardly to move at all. I noticed that his fingers are white and slender, as if the bone had coloured the flesh, whereas mine are somewhat red and plump. Clearly, I have not been fashioned to be an oboe player. I determined, however, that this would not make me lose heart. Music – that plaintive song at my wedding – had made me turn my face from medicine. For all those lost years of work, it owed me some recompense. This first lesson lasted for the best part of an hour, during which time our breath clouded the glass panels of the summer-house and my feet seemed clamped into iron shoes, so achingly chill did they become. Did I make a little progress? I do not really know. And so cold was I by the end of the hour that I did not care. Such is the burden of our human clay: our spirits soar to some icy heaven while our bodies creep back to the tame hearth. My invitation to Dégeulasse and his family had been accepted with alacrity and (still giftless towards two o'clock, no one at all having made any reference to my birthday) I was comforting myself by planning my soirée when a village boy rode up my drive on a donkey bringing a message from the vicar of Bidnold, the Reverend Timothy Sackpole. I was requested to come at once to the church. "Why?" I enquired of the boy. "I do not know, Sir." "How like a clergyman, not to give a reason!" "Except that it be dire and urgent." "That is not a reason, lad. That is a tick of the ecclesiastical mind." As my horse was being saddled, this thought assailed me: had the conceited Sackpole somehow found out that this day saw the dawn of my thirty-ninth year? Did he foresee some divine punishment for this stumbling Aquarian if he were not brought before an altar before the sun set? Being only a little past the shortest day of the year, the sun was indeed going down already – hence the supposed urgency of the message? Though it amuses me to go now and again to hear a sermon from Sackpole, I am not seen at church as often as I should be, preferring to send my prayers to God in the quiet of my room or (as already described) in the company of a lardy cake. It was thus quite possible that this clergyman, who strikes me as a petulant person, should wish to deliver himself of some reprimand, the tone and substance of which I could already hear in my mind. He would begin by asking me to what I had given any thought on this the anniversary of my birth. I would reply that my mind had circled vainly about an empty table on which I had imagined Celia placing the gift of an embossed music case or a handsome picture frame. He would answer that such preoccupations will bar me from the Kingdom of Heaven… But it was not to be thus. When I arrived at the churchyard, I saw in the light of the declining sun a small throng of people grouped about the gate and heard the sound of voices and weeping. "Whatever is it?" I enquired of the boy on the donkey, but he did not reply; he was staring at the scene with some alarm. I dismounted. As I did so, the Reverend Sackpole came towards me. "Ah," I said, "what have we here, Vicar?" "Thank you for coming, Sir Robert," Sackpole said courteously, thus putting from my mind the suspicion that he was about to lecture me upon my lack of faith. "It seems we have need of a medical man and Doctor Murdoch is not to be found." "Sackpole," I said, "I was once a student of medicine, but my studies were never completed. I am not equipped – " "No great skill is being asked of you. Let us step aside a little from these good people – the boy will hold your horse -and I will explain what has happened." "Assure me first that you do not expect me to start saving lives." "What is requested of you, Sir, is your judgement." "My judgement? Well, let me tell you, Vicar, that that is not perhaps as sound as it once was. I am most prone to error." "Not one of us is infallible, Sir Robert, but this may prove to be a simple matter for you. Come." I followed Sackpole and we passed through a small door into the vestry of the church. The place was dark and smelled of hayseed. Sackpole closed the door and laid his hand upon my arm. "There is," he now whispered, "a most horrible suspicion come among the village people: the suspicion of witchcraft." "Witchcraft? In Bidnold?" "Yes. I shall tell you the tale as briefly as I may. The people outside, many of them weeping, as you heard, were mourners at a burial I performed at noon. The deceased was a young girl, Sarah Hodge, not seventeen years old and died in a sudden and terrible manner." "What manner was it?" "I shall come there, Sir Robert. The matter before us is this: Was there some Devil's work done on Sarah Hodge – as now some of those parishioners outside maintain – or was there none at all?" I looked at Sackpole. I saw that the clergyman was uneasy and would not hold my glance. Clearly, he was preparing himself to ask of me something mortally not to my liking, in all probability the examination of the corpse of the dead girl. I opened my mouth to pre-empt this request by telling Sackpole that the last I held up my hand at this point and requested that the Vicar go no further with his tale until he had contradicted my assumption that I was being asked to make a medical judgement upon a corpse. Somewhat to my surprise, he informed me that the body of Sarah Hodge would remain undisturbed in the ground. He then, in a manner altogether nervous and afraid (somewhat confounding my view of him as a man of impenetrable conceit) told me the following story. An old widow woman, known to all as Wise Nell, had for many years acted as midwife to the parish. She was also a healer and primitive apothecary, cultivating her own physic garden and said to have some power of healing in her hands, this power coming to her through her faith in God, or so she claimed. For some months now, Wise Nell had not been seen at church. She protested that a rheumatism in her knees prevented her from walking there. But the people of Bidnold began to notice a change in her demeanour (where, before she had been quiet and calm, she now seemed agitated) and in her hands, particularly in the feel of her hands! The skin had become hardened and calloused; the pressure of her palms now brought to the head or limbs of the sufferers a moment's icy chill. And the whispers began to be heard: Wise Nell is wise no longer, her love of God has been replaced by love of the Devil, the power in her hard, cold hands is the power of Satan… "You must know," said Sackpole at this point, "what infinite terror is felt by a God-fearing people at the idea of witchcraft. And it is to the clergy that men come with all the tales of devilry, saying so-and-so is a veritable witch and such-and-such is the proof and now there must be a burning or a drowning or I know not what terrible persecution to be played out. And yet the entire matter, to my mind, is one of great difficulty and complexity for proof of innocence and proof of guilt may both be manufactured, and I have come to believe that in most of these cases only God sees to the heart of the thing. For this reason, I hoped never to hear the word 'witchcraft' uttered against any in Bidnold. And I will not deny it, I am afraid of what may follow." Sackpole took from his sleeve a somewhat grimy handkerchief and blew his nose. Still ignorant of what my own part was to be in this story, I waited for him to prise from his nostrils two small fillets of hardened mucus, and then asked him to continue. "Well," he said, "we come now to the matter of Sarah Hodge. She was, as I have told you, a young girl with all her life before her and yet, it seems, had fallen into a dull melancholy, occasioned, some say, by that she had cut off her hair – of a rich chestnut brown colour – to sell for a few shillings to a wig-maker. I cannot say, Sir Robert, whether a young woman might so mourn the loss of her hair that she could weep for it for two months or more, but weep she did and would not eat and grew thin and weak and declared a loathing for all things." "Her parents are poor cottars and ignorant and had no knowledge of how to help her, but yet in the end sent her to Wise Nell, begging the old woman to do anything she could to revive in her some joy." "I am told Sarah Hodge was three hours with Nell. She was given a potion to drink which, she was told, contained the blood of swallows, birds of summer and symbols of man's ease." "When she came out from Nell's cottage, her cheeks were flushed, I understand, and her body most hot all over. She felt well, she said, with the blood of the birds inside her and wanted to dance. So her brothers, glad to see her happy again in spite of her shorn head, took up some tambourines and a pipe and played a tune for Sarah and she lifted up her skirts and began to hop about and kick her feet and would not stop for half an hour or more, her face growing more and more hot until the cheeks were a dark wine-red and still she danced on, tearing open her bodice and showing her breasts that were flushed like her face, on and on until suddenly she bent over and out of her mouth came a fountain of black vomit and she fell down and began to rave that she had drunk poison from a nipple in the Devil's own neck, and within some twenty minutes she was dead." There was a hard bench in the vestry. I sat down upon it. I had not expected to be listening to talk of black vomit and Devil's nipples on my birthday. "It now seems," Sackpole said, "that, among the other changes in the person of Wise Nell, the village folk have noticed the appearance, on her neck, of a brownish spot she claimed to be a wart, but which has grown in size, the skin around it becoming puckered and discoloured, so that it now resembles in every way a dug or teat. And you know, Sir Robert, that such an outrage to nature is commonly held to be sure and certain sign of the presence of Satan within the soul. And this is why – to calm the people's anger and gain for myself both time and knowledge in the matter – I sent for you. What I am asking of you is that you go with me to the cottage of Wise Nell and there conduct an examination of this thing upon her neck and tell me, to the best of your knowledge, which I hear from Mistress Storey and indeed from Lady Bathurst is considerable, whether it be a proper nipple or merely some other growth such as a wart or a cyst." I paused a moment before replying. Then I said: "And if I find this thing to be what you believe it to be, what will happen to Wise Nell?" "As I informed you, we do not expect you to be the sole arbiter in the case, but only to give one medical opinion, after which the woman will be examined by others." "Such as Doctor Murdoch?" "Except that he has not been seen since the death of Sarah Hodge." "By whom, then?" "We shall send to other villages for their medical men." "And if they find 'proof of the Devil?" Sackpole drew his fingers across his lips. "I do not favour persecutions. Yet I cannot be seen to harbour the Devil in my parish." "She will be killed." "Or driven away. I shall try to see to it that she is driven away." It is now the twenty-eighth of January. A cold, sunless morning. I grew too tired last night to finish the story of what happened upon my birthday, but I shall continue here. I am older by one day and wiser, I fear, by a good deal. For I have had a glimpse into my future. Though I would have preferred to return home to do a little painting and supervise the arrangements for my supper party, I had no choice but to accompany the Reverend Sackpole to the low, thatched dwelling where this unfortunate Wise Nell leads a most strange crepuscular life, so dark is her house, so low its ceilings and small its windows. I am not tall, but I could barely stand up straight in her little parlour. So this, I thought, is one among many persecutions endured by the poor: they are persecuted by their own rooms. Though Sackpole announced our arrival in a voice of good cheer (does an executioner employ such a jovial tone when he asks a condemned person to lay his head upon the block?) I could see by the glimmer of a single rushlight that Nell, seated upon a rocking chair with her arms folded round her body, was most horribly afraid of what was about to happen. Her eyes, which appeared to me vast and bulging, like the eyes of a bulldog, stared pleadingly at the Vicar and she began to mumble that she was servant to no one but God and the King and that she knew of no reason why Sarah Hodge should have died. There was a foul smell in the room, as of a rich fart. I was considering what this might be – whether the smell of swallow corpses and the like to be used in Nell's medical remedies, the smell of a poor meal of tripe left in the air too long, or the smell of fear itself which I know to be an actual phenomenon occasioned by the malfunction or over-function of certain glands. Most profoundly did I long to be out of this hovel, but knew that I would not be allowed to leave until I had performed my examination, for at the door to Nell's cottage were pressed the parents and brothers of the dead Sarah, their mouths full of accusation and cries for justice, and accompanied by others of the village, all having an unmistakable air of poverty and wretchedness upon them and thus causing me to wonder if they – who looked to me today for a judgement – would look to me tomorrow for sixpences. Hoping to get the matter done with as speedily as I could, I approached Nell and told her, as gently as I was able, that I accused her of nothing, but, as sometime physician at Whitehall (I did not tell her my patients had been dogs), I was there "to look at this small thing upon your neck and see what manner of fleshy matter it truly is." Nell turned upon me, then, her dog's eyes, pulling her shawl up round her chin, as if to bandage a wound. "Succuba… Devil's Woman… what words they lay upon me! Words from the very hell of their own skulls. But God knows my heart and I have done no evil spell in all my days…" Nell ranted on thus, her eyes staring the while at my badger tabard, in which, slightly to my surprise, I found myself still attired. Sackpole repeatedly tried to interrupt Nell's protestations of innocence, but what I now began to perceive was that Nell was so fascinated by my furs that thoughts about them (and indeed their wearer) were distracting her so that her speech was slowing and the words of her defence gradually being forgotten and I guessed – correctly – that she would soon enough lapse into silence. I understood then that, if I applied a small amount of cunning, I would be able to calm Nell sufficiently for me to look at her neck without having to restrain or frighten her, the idea of which repelled me. I thus whispered to Sackpole that he should withdraw a little, to observe the proceedings from a corner of the dank room, but talk no more to Nell until the examination was over. Sensing, no doubt, that Nell was less afraid now, he did as I requested. I approached Nell and knelt down by her chair, forcing myself not to gag, for the smell from her body was indeed very odious. Fumblingly, from her shawl, she reached out a bony hand and laid it very tenderly on the badger's snout at my left shoulder then began stroking the head. I watched her closely. Her head was nodding, as if in recognition of something. For a long while, I said nothing and did not move. Nell's hand now moved to my right shoulder and touched the badger's nose there. When I looked again at her eyes, I saw that much of the fear had left them. Now, I thought, I will move the rushlight nearer and ask her to unbind her shawl and lay her head back, so that I may see the growth. But just as I was about to reach out to move the light, Nell began to speak again. "I dreamed of this," she whispered. "A man wearing an animal. He was not my accuser, but I his." I said nothing. "I his," Nell repeated. "Of what did you accuse him?" I asked quietly. "Gone from me," she said. "Forgotten." "But he had done some wrong?" Nell nodded. "Some wrong. And a long fall would be the way of it." "In your dreams, he fell?" "Yes." "From the Lord's grace?" "From all grace. And into confusion." I was silent. My hand was out, about to take hold of the rushlight and yet I could not complete this simple action, so perturbed did I now feel. I could no longer look at Nell's face. My heartbeat had quickened. My hands were clammy. I tasted bile in my mouth. If she can see into my future, I began to tell myself, then it is certain she possesses some kind of devilish power. But then I reined in my thought, knowing it to be a judgement born only of fear and reminding myself that there are many kinds and species of bewitchment in mortal existence, of which fear may be the most terrible and love the most everlasting. That she had made this pronouncement about my life troubled me awesomely, the more so because it was my birthday. Part of me wished to question Nell further, to "Know the worst" as the saying has it, yet the other, cowardly, part wished to know no more whatsoever, being in no way equipped to conduct itself courageously should "the worst" turn out to be very bad indeed. The notion of a "fall into confusion" was quite frightening enough. I heard, at this moment, a knocking on Nell's door and some shouting from the crowd, and Sackpole, whose presence in the room I had all but forgotten, whispered urgently to me that I should proceed with the examination "now, at once, Sir Robert." Thus, with my hand still shaking, I moved the light towards Nell and asked her to show me her mark and tell me what she thought it to be. "For it is But Nell did not speak or move. With the light upon her face now, I could see on her cheek a number of large moles or warts, of the disfiguring kind that so distressed poor Oliver Cromwell, our sometime leader and chief of the Commonwealth. It is common medical knowledge that a body, once afflicted by these things, is very often host to terrible flowerings and crops of them, as if they grew from spores of themselves like mushrooms, and I fully expected, as Nell at last unwound her shawl, to see another such a one upon her neck. Revealed eventually, however, the growth, seated below the ear and on the pathway of the jugular vein, did not resemble a wart. It was the size of a small coin and of a liverish brown colour, the skin being most raised towards its centre. I had seen nothing like it during all my anatomical years. Had the skin not been discoloured, I would have pronounced it to be the puckered vestigial scar of some boil or fistula, but the pigmenting of the skin was most pronounced, whereas scar tissue becomes white over time. The thing that it most brought to mind was indeed a small nipple, such as one might see upon the half-grown breasts of a child of twelve years. Most crucial in my inspection of the thing would be my touching of it – to see what reaction this could cause in the old woman and to determine whether any issue came forth from it. Nell stayed still, one hand always caressing my fur, but I now felt her body wracked by a violent trembling. At my back, the thumping on the door and the shouts from the village people became more impatient. "Well?" hissed Sackpole. "What do you find?" And I faltered. A moment ago, I had felt disgust, then fear. I had bid myself to be calm and go about my task with the alert yet passive mind of the physician. But now as I tried to take the nipple (or whatever the thing might prove to be) between my finger and thumb and I felt the intensity of the fear in Nell's being, I was prey to a most sudden and profound feeling of sorrow and despair. For one last moment, I remained kneeling, regarding the hard, cold, knotted hand of Wise Nell on the badger snout. Then I stood up. I turned to the shadows where Sackpole waited. "To the best of my knowledge, there is no matter out of the ordinary here," I said. "The thing is a simple cyst." And I fled from the place, pushing my way out through the throng of people who snatched at me – with hands and words – and then breaking into a run. I have no recollection of what I did next. Presumably, I found my horse and mounted and rode home, but I do not remember doing this. The next memory that I have is of lying in a hot bath and being stared at by Will who had noticed several welts upon the skin of my shoulders, as if something or someone had scratched me there. "Badly, Sir," he says. "Very badly." Then I am readying myself for my soirée. My shoulders are bandaged. I feel, in my stomach and in my mind a deep unease. I go downstairs and I hear myself tell the musicians, who have just arrived, that my party has been cancelled. I give them money and bid them go home. I then call Will and instruct him to ride to de Gourlay's house and tell the family that I am ill and that there will be no musical evening. At this moment, Celia descends the stairs. She is wearing a dress of dove grey taffeta, its bodice laced with apricot ribbons. In her hair, newly curled into ringlets, are more ribbons of this same bewitching colour. I cannot move. Down she comes, down towards me, and for once she is smiling and I know that this smile is for me, and I feel the beauty of it, right to my bowel. And so at last, at the end of this most troubling day on which I have been told that my life is edging towards a great fall, I admit to myself what I have known since the night of the Bathurst's party, that I have done the one thing of which the King believed me to be incapable: I have fallen in love with my wife. |
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