Conceit (30 page)

Margaret
rolled softly off his tongue, an exquisite sound. Pegge lay her cheek against Sadie to hide her face. “She has eaten too much on an empty belly.”

“I know dogs and this one is ill. See how she salivates? A dog should not burp. I will need a tube or a needle to deflate her stomach.” He called to the torch-boy, who was waiting at the gate, “Find a barrow for us and you shall have another farthing!”

As Mr Bowles worked his hands along the dog again, his hair gleamed, as sleek as Parrot’s tail after Pegge had groomed it, and she saw herself in the row of ornate buttons bisecting his chest. How must she seem to such a man, covered in the filth of her late wanderings? Even her face was coated in grime. And yet, the wonder was, he had not spoken of it.

“I have been much in my grief of late,” she confessed.

“Such great love becomes you,” he said simply. “Perhaps your dog is pining for the late Dean also.”

At this, a sad, grieving belch came out of Sadie and the burps took on a more contented tone.

Mr Bowles patted the dog on the head. “The old maidservant is waiting for you at the Deanery. I will buy you the best funeral-cloth, tinged with purple, and will cut it for you myself. When your mourning is over and you are Mrs Bowles—”

“I shall still be John Donne’s daughter. My father became a priest on the very day that I was born.”

Mr Bowles considered this. “A priest is melancholy by trade,” he agreed, “but his dog and daughter have no need to be.”

All day long, her insides had been cramping and her thighs aching deep into the bone. Now, between her legs, she felt the first drops of moisture, like water skimming off a petal in the rain. At last the promised blood began to flow, bringing the release she had long craved. Everything from crown to toe was itching and prickling. She was finally fertile, like her sisters. Now she could sour the wine and make the meat go off as well as Con, even tarnish Mr Bowles’s hereditary silver.

The boy came back along the passageway, balancing a small cart and his torch adeptly. Mr Bowles laid his cloak on top of the conveyance and bent with the utmost gentleness to lift the convalescent dog.

T
ONGUES

1631-1667

20. KINGDOM

William, Pegge discovered on their wedding night on Lucy’s eve, had wiry black hairs on his chest that matched the beard he was growing in imitation of his sovereign, Charles. Though he was often at the King’s Wardrobe in London, he agreed that Pegge could stay at Clewer.

Arriving at the estate for the first time, she announced happily, “I shall want to keep pigs if I am to live in the country.”

He replied, “You may keep
horses
if you will, and certainly there is no harm in dogs, though they are healthiest if kept in kennels.”

Bess came to Clewer with Pegge, but kept herself apart from the other servants, making much of the fact that she was from the City. Spurning the livery that William gave her, she wore her threadbare skirts from the Deanery instead. She liked nothing better than to sit outside with a horsehair blanket over her knees, watching Pegge come and go. Though Bess complained about Sadie’s fleas, she let the dog lie across her feet when she thought no one was watching.

On Lady Day in their second year at Clewer, Pegge was alarmed to find Bess still in bed at noon. Something had happened in the night, blinding her but restoring her sense of smell. She asked to be carried outside each day so she could smell the earth, and died in her old chair, a week later, holding Pegge’s hand underneath the branches of the ancient
yew.

Sadie sank at once into a dreadful gloom. Hiding under Bess’s bed, she refused to come out to eat or drink and was dead within three days. Pegge buried Sadie herself, then sat in Bess’s old chair beneath the
yew
with the soil clinging to her hands. Even with dusk falling, Pegge could not bring herself to go inside. William brought her a young dog from his kennel, wrapped in the horsehair blanket, but Pegge told him angrily to take it back. When he returned without the dog, placing the blanket across her shoulders, she threw her arms around his neck and begged him to forgive her.

With Bess gone, Pegge could not bear to order the servants about, so she let them run things as they chose. Before long, she had discovered the extent of their labyrinth behind the hidden doors. Estimating where they were by their footsteps, she travelled between two points unseen, annoying William by springing without warning out of walls.

Now she was lying belly-up on the bed, admiring the play of sunlight on the coffered ceiling and twisting her hair between her fingers, for it had grown down around her shoulders.

She had taken a liking to this chamber because it got the morning sun, and claimed it as her own. If they must occupy separate bedchambers, as William’s parents had done, and his grandparents before them, then at least her room had a servants’ door connecting it to William’s.

Even at ten o’clock she felt no urge to rise. Half-dressed, she fell back in the lazy stretch of light spilling through the window. If she stayed in bed long enough, William might come to collect her, for she had heard him arriving late the night before.

She pressed her thumb into her navel, detecting a tremor well beneath the flesh. No lover had yet protested his undying love to
her
in verse, no man had called
her
bed the world’s umbilicus, its very centre. She inspected her thumb—were there really twenty minuscule lines, one for each year? She longed for her womb to swell so that her navel would shrink and disappear entirely.

When they were first married, William’s fingers traversed her body, bringing the nerves to the skin, the skin to his lips, but of late when he arrived at Clewer he was tired and incurious, his curiosity spent on pinking, vizards, Flanders lace, and collars.

Now voices became louder in the corridor, the door opened, bolts of cloth were stacked on top of one another, steps receded. Pegge stayed motionless while William’s heels clicked across the floorboards towards her. She could feel his eyes upon her naked arms and throat.

“What are you pretending, Pegge? Are you melancholy? Your cheeks are hardly sallow. You must tell me at once if you are melancholy.”

“I am not
melancholy
, William. I am warming myself in the sun.”

“You must go downstairs and make something of our servants, or go out-of-doors, you have a horse to ride.”

“And suck on country pleasures childishly?”

Now he was hurt, for he had recognized her father’s words. “You cannot live inside a poem, Pegge. Am I too dull a husband? You knew I was no poet when you married me. If you must sleep in this old bed, you will need new bed-hangings, for these are mildewed.” He pulled out some lengths of cloth. “Which do you like best? This has just come from the Indies.” He smoothed out the nap, then rubbed it with his fingers. “It would be deeper if over-dyed with indigo.”

Rolling onto her belly, she tugged out a muslin so thin she could scarcely feel the weight. She draped it over her body for the sun to catch and toy with.

“That will not do for bed curtains. You will want something heavier, like velvet.” He unwound some yardage from a bolt, then from another. “What colour will you have? An umber or brown ochre? There are some fine reds and Turkey browns to be got from madder. This shade is almost as rich as your hair. That is only from Essex,” he said as she picked up a yellow swatch. “At least choose a saffron from Arabia.”

“Will you dye this muslin for me, William? I want it butter-yellow like the sun. Come and lie under it and see how light it feels.”

“It is full day. The servants may come in, even the cat is here. The steward will soon be back to carry out the bolts.”

“There will be time enough for caution when we are
old. Some lovers spend whole days inside their bedchambers. Push my cabinet against the door.” She pulled at his laces teasingly. “This jacket is so dreary. Madder, is it, saddened with black? What colours shall we have in the nursery? All dark satins and brocades?”

He did not answer, but ran his fingers along her pale stocking as if working out how the silken thread was spun. She took shallow breaths until he drew his hand away.

“You were in the City a fortnight this time, William. How am I to conceive at such a rate? My belly cannot grow fat on such a diet.”

One side of his face had gone completely red, right down the sinews of his throat. “I fear I am not well.”

“Come, you are well enough for this.” She took his hand and drew it higher up her leg.

He had never undressed her or begged to be undressed himself, never slipped his hands under the back of her skirt, nor sent the maid out when she assisted Pegge at night. He had never even come to her bed with his hair mussed and his breeches already off.

William removed his hand and turned his face away. “I do not know what is ailing me. I am blue and swollen with pain.”

“With
love
, William. A man should swell with impatience for his wife.”

William sat down to undo his breeches. He had invented a new catch for the waist, since a gentleman, he said, was only as secure as his front-fastener. To release it, he should only have to flick his thumb. But this one was not working as designed, for William’s thumb was bleeding.

“Let me help,” Pegge said, reaching over to squeeze the clasp. “I do not think a man’s breeches need to be quite so hard to open in his wife’s bedchamber.”

William stepped out of his breeches and shoes, then stripped off his hose, but when he got himself upon the bed, he simply lay on his back and looked up at the ceiling.

“William, this will not do. You have been in London more often than at Clewer. I know my horse better than I do my husband. And my mare, at least, has foaled.”

Mr Harvey had already given Con three sons. Pegge’s sister had brought the little boys to Clewer and displayed them on an upholstered bench. It was the baby, with his long lashes and tiny clever fingers, who had won Pegge’s heart. When she blew on his stomach, he trilled with laughter, making her ache with longing for a child.

She ran her toe along William’s leg, from heel to thigh, but still he did not curve his arm to pull her closer. Soon he was out of bed, doubled over to inspect his pain.

“Must you worry so, William? Is it worry for the King? Are his shirts the wrong colour? Are his tapestries still on the loom, his tents behindhand in the making?”

His face was lopsided in misery at this teasing. She sat beside him and tidied his hair with her fingers, but nothing came of it and soon they were obliged to rise and dress and take their dinner.

She saw that William could not enjoy his food. It stuck in a throat made drier by Pegge’s attempt to show a sympathy she did not feel. How could their love survive such dieting? All of her father’s poetry had now flown from her head, and nothing but brown meats adorned her plate. William’s
complaints were not endearing, everything too tart to be endured, too rough to swallow. She filled his glass with sweet wine, but when he took a gulp to wash down the dry beef, he spat it out, proclaiming it too sour to drink, the worst he had ever tasted.