Conceit (14 page)

In the grave, there is time to think. Snatches of conversation in the church above tell me of the world of men. Months and years mean nothing here, but it is false to think there is no busyness in graves. There is cold to ward off, memories to refresh, children’s names to recite for fear of forgetting even one—and there is passion, so fierce and sharp that it can never be locked up in cabinets of sense. When limbs uncoil in memory, the lust echoes on cold bone. My hair now reaches a tangled glory around my knees, and my soul has grown exceedingly amorous from all this waiting. Even a spirit craves a bit of flesh to burrow into now and then.

You promised to lie beside me in this tomb, hip bone to hip bone and mouth to mouth, for love dwells in the lips of the beloved. And other parts should kiss in graves as well, so that the blood commingles in a rush. You told me that this was how the joint soul was conceived, in little deaths of ecstasy. To
die
, you taught me, was a pun. When such memories possess me, my cries rise sharply into the church, like a courtesan’s gasp at the moment of her lover’s plunge, and the old man in the pew above me recalls with sudden clarity his first attempt upon his young wife’s body.

Now you have taken to your deathbed. When I sneaked past the vigilant dog, which has appointed itself a sentinel
against me, I heard you muttering that death is a divorce and that
two graves must hide thine and my corpse.
This effigy of yours is not intended for St Clement’s—I do not need men gossiping overhead to tell me that. Only you could have thought up something so flamboyant as a grinning fool standing upright in a shroud. Such a monument would be out of temper with the modest tributes above me. No, this colossus is intended for the cathedral of St Paul’s. You have decided that my soul must await your pleasure—that you will come to collect me when you choose, or not at all—that death will obey you as lust did—that I, who beggared myself for love, will be content to rot in a solitary tomb.

To spend a thousand years apart is too long even for ordinary lovers, and we are far from ordinary. I do not plan to spend the millennium alone. No, I shall not rest so peacefully, my love. I shall use such mirrors and such spies that you shall never be rid of me.

You will find my anger has not eased with time, but has bloated and heated like manured straw that feeds and mulches roots. When I burst out, you will see a vision less than beatific. I will flower brilliantly into the light, my mouth a violent blue, my petals feathered and flamed with ire, and our embrace will be far from the quiet reunion you have dreamt of. Out of my putrefaction, I shall produce a carrion-flower so foetid that it will out-carrion decaying offal. The most delicate of flowers, the lady’s slipper, stinks of rotting fruit to draw flies to it. And so I shall set a sugar trap for you. Drawn by my perfume, you will slide into my labyrinth like a bee into an
orchid. Even the most ambitious bee can be trapped at the right time of day by the right scent and colour of flower.

I first met you in York House, where I had been sent by my father to be schooled for marriage by his sister, who had just taken a second husband, Sir Thomas Egerton, the Lord Keeper.

I arrived in time to see my cousin Francis wed. Too young to consummate the match, he was sent back to Oxford while my aunt taught his wife, Mary, the useful arts. I was to keep Mary company, but my visit only made her regret the freedom she had lost by marrying.

Instead of dancing the courante at court, as I had hoped, I found myself breathing the stale air of the withdrawing-room with my aunt and her daughter-in-law. It was worse than the matronly pavane, a step I could do just as well in the country. According to Aunt Beth, I had much to learn before she could present me to the Queen. Most of it my aunt was teaching me herself, but Sir Thomas’s secretary, John Donne, had agreed to teach me Spanish.

I was embroidering a jasmine bush on a green background, a sad imitation of the garden I had left behind at Loseley park, when I observed Mr Donne striding along the passage in a fashionable hat and doublet. I punched my needle through the backing-cloth and stabbed my finger. After a few more painful stitches, I saw my aunt’s eyelids close. Mary stopped tugging on her silk and leaned towards me.

“Francis says he is a great visitor of ladies, a great frequenter of plays, and a great writer of conceited verses, but you know that already, Ann, for I heard you asking Francis about him.”

As my cousin was leaving for Oxford, he had given me some verses by a Jack Donne, telling me that the bishops were burning obscene poems and begging me to hide them for him. They were in my chest, under a stack of folded garments, and I had spent several hours trying to make out what the poet meant by them.

“Francis is a little boy with his erotica,” Mary whispered. “I do not think my husband knows a thing about love.”

At this, Aunt Beth propped herself upright and retrieved her stitching-hoop. “Only people of the meaner sort marry for love, Mary. You must not sour Ann on matrimony. I have found it an agreeable state myself.”

At this Mary made a low, unpleasant noise. When my aunt frowned, Mary said, “I have just seen the most foolish hat go down the passage. I am not sure such brash feathers are lawful for commoners. And velvet certainly is not.” Mary winked at me, for we both knew my aunt would be drawn in.

“A man’s station in life may be read from his clothing,” Aunt Beth said. “Beware of a comely man. His breeding, not his looks, should recommend him.” A twist, a pull, and a new thread was knotted in her needle. Then she looked up. “What sort of feather, Mary?”

“Ostrich, I believe, most likely Andalusian.”

If Mary kept this up, my aunt would soon guess who had walked past. While Aunt Beth checked her pattern,
Mary rubbed the nap of her sleeve suggestively, then flapped her hands, our signal for a jumped-up tradesman. I would not be able to get a closer look at John Donne’s doublet until our needlework was finished. If it was really velvet, the man had truly lost his wits.

“Do you think it wise for Ann to learn Spanish, Lady Egerton? I am not sure it will endear her to the Queen, for it is the language of the Jesuits. Was it Mr Donne’s idea to teach her, or your own?”

I bent my head so close to my work that I could see just how poor my last hour’s stitches were. And why were there so few of them? I decided I had better count them to keep my eyes away from Mary’s.

I began practising my aunt’s teaching on Mr Donne in our first lesson. His pose had something of the lawyer in it, and something of the brooding lover. His doublet was not exactly velvet, I learned when I got near enough to inspect it, but had a dangerous resemblance to that fabric. His sword was too long, but its insolent hang told me its purpose was not wholly ornamental.

He began by reciting the numbers in Spanish, holding up his fingers as if I were a child. Soon we moved on to the days of the week, and outdoors into the garden alongside the Thames, where he could make a better show when he strode up and down.

Before long, I suspected that my tutor was leaving me secret gifts. I walked past the first one several times without noticing it. And then, studying my reflection in the passage windows, with some idea of contriving my hair differently
now that I was in London, I saw that something had been scrawled in the grime. I twisted my head and brought it against the pane:
temptatious.

It was a made-up word, a play on
temptation
, no doubt an unflattering reference to Eve. I knew where it had come from, for who else cared about words in that house? And it would have taken a Jack Donne to get into the east wing, where the women of the household lay. He seemed to go everywhere, even to court with Sir Thomas, although when I asked him to describe the dancing he shrugged as if it meant nothing to him. Instead, he used it as an excuse to teach me body parts, pointing to his ankles and mouthing the Spanish word in a mocking fashion.

Lips, legs, and arms, he taught me. And then the word for blushing.

Fair good his plumage would do him at court. I knew enough about gamebirds from my father’s covey to know that it was the females, in spite of their dull livery, who did the choosing, not the males in their stiff ruffs, and certainly not lawyers of doubtful breeding. Mr Donne was indeed an upstart crow, beautifying himself with our feathers.

One day when we were walking outdoors, Mr Donne’s usual interrogation in Spanish strayed off course into the familiar—how old I was, and how long my father proposed to let me stay at York House.

“These are not a tutor’s questions,” I said, “but I am not surprised, since your collar is not a tutor’s either.”

“That is slight evidence on which to condemn a man.”

Why were there sumptuary laws when every man of the meaner sort was allowed to flout them? “Gilt spurs are not allowed under the rank of knight,” I said. “Those breeches have more than two yards of wool, and that sword is six inches longer than the Queen permits.”

“It is true I am no idle gentleman,” he said, dismissing the whole of idle Westminster with a jerk of his thumb upriver. “But since my sword did the Queen good service under Essex in Cadiz, I doubt she will cavil at its length. You would be better listing off your verbs, Mistress More.”

It was clear he earned his living by his cleverness, whereas I had not yet mastered the regular verbs of Spanish. I had no doubt he was the author of the poems in Francis’s collection, for I had heard his wit in every manicured line. But why lewd poems had to be so full of difficulties, I did not know—I was still trying to work them out.

He made a low, deliberate bow. “I thought I had the right to more than common intimacy,” he said, “for I have also descended from Sir Thomas More. Would you care for one of the martyr’s blackened teeth? My mother gave me the skull to encourage me in the old religion.”

“I am not of the Catholic Mores,” I said quickly.

He nodded, catching my meaning. “Though I came from a people hungry for martyrdom, I have not such a sickly inclination myself. It is unwise in this Queen’s reign. You are a girl of some sense. Why have you left the safety of the country?”

Some sense
, indeed—did he suppose me ignorant of the threat the Catholics presented to the realm? “To find a
worthy husband,” I replied. There was a small buzzing noise, from an insect in the dog-rose or from the man beside me. Perhaps it was a Spanish expletive. “It is time for me to return to the house.”

“I’m sure you cannot tell,” he protested, “for I have observed you do not wear a clock.”

“I need only look about me. The pimpernel has closed, but the dandelion is still open, so it is between two and three o’clock. Mr Donne, I believe you have walked here all summer, but have never seen the garden at your feet. It tells perfect time.”

“I have been looking at you, Mistress More.”

He had been coming closer by bits as he spoke and was now near enough for me to smell a kind of perfume about him. “You would do better to reflect upon the garden,” I said. “Now I shall teach
you
something. Each of these flowers opens and closes at the same time each day. This pink opened at nine and closed at one o’clock.”

There was a glimmer of interest in his eyes. “Are all flowers so unbearably dull in their habits? Do none stay open at night to keep lovers company?”

His scent, mingling with the river behind us, was not unwelcome to one who had been confined inside York House with women. “The evening primrose,” I offered tentatively, “and the Nottingham catchfly.”

“That is not a name to inspire love. But I could grow to like the tardy primrose. I admit I have been inattentive to gardens, but if you care for them, I shall as well. Why, there are more shades of green than of any other colour. You see, I am interested already. Here is a whole alphabet of flowers
that might with mute secrecy deliver messages between a man and a woman.”

“You must not say such things.”

“Why mustn’t I?” he said loudly.

This was too public, and certainly far from mute. As I looked away, feigning a sudden curiosity in roses, a bee landed and embraced a bloom so like a lover that the bloom began to quiver, spraying the bee in yellow dust. I snatched my hand away and felt the graze of flesh. It seemed we had both left off our gloves this day, and perhaps for the same reason.

At the touch of our fingers, something stirred, so fragrant and full of colour that to live henceforth without it would be an impoverishment I could not endure. His mouth was bearing down towards me with excruciating slowness. And for once it was not speaking. With a little movement, as darting as a frog’s tongue collecting a fly, his tongue would collect mine and I would taste him, sweet and salty, inside my mouth.

But all at once he withdrew, looking over his shoulder as if hearing the busy world behind him. I had removed myself from it like an expiration from a lung, but now my breath came surging painfully back.

His eyes alive with warning, he gestured at the reflecting panes of York House. Anybody could be watching. Even my maid Bess could not be trusted, for it would be like her to report to my father in exchange for a goose pie or a roast pigeon. We resumed walking a distance apart, neither of us speaking.