Conceit (32 page)

Pegge stared at the custard coating the back of the spoon.

“My boots!” Emma demanded, pointing at her stockinged feet.

“William, surely this story-” Hearing Cook’s voice in the larder, Pegge pulled the basin off the grate and covered it. “Margaret, do not stand idly, help Emma find her boots.”

Now they were on their way, all but William and the baby, who was sleeping in the nursery. Pegge was carrying the pudding, with Will by her side. Behind her trailed Emma and Plum, who had shamelessly deserted her puppies for the fête, her swollen nipples almost dragging on the earth. Ahead, Margaret lifted Isabel over the ditch that kept the deer from Pegge’s garden.

“A pudding cannot be a spotted-dog if it has no spots,” Will complained, still smarting because they had not been able to get into Cook’s store of raisins.

“Then you must pick some fruit to put in it,” said Pegge. “If there are berries this early in the year, Plum will find them.”

Last year, she had seen the dog eating berries the way a clever horse ate thistles, drawing her lips back to avoid the thorns in a way that reminded Pegge of her father.

Pegge assessed the clouds obscuring the sun, then Margaret’s determined back. Margaret’s scissors were
hanging proudly from an eastern girdle, which her father had brought her from the City. She was trampling a path through the wet grass so that little Isabel, who was in charge of the wooden spoon, could get through on her short legs.

“I see a raven,” Will said, then more doubtfully, as he neared the bird digging a hole in the earth, “or a crow.”

“A rook,” Margaret corrected, pointing to the old elm, “from that rookery. A rook has a skirt like Mother’s, not hose like a man.”

“Cracking eggs, cracking eggs,” Emma sang out, imitating a raven.

Will plodded behind Margaret, waving his stick and glaring at her worsted stockings as if he wanted to poke a hole in them. “Women wear hose, too.”

Pegge saw him take a practice thrust at his sister’s leg. “Would you carry the basin for a while, Will? Hold the handles carefully, it is very heavy. It came from your grandfather’s church plate.”

A hush followed, the same hush that fell whenever she invoked her father, as if William had cautioned his children never to be drawn into this particular web. Pegge thought she saw a kindred glance pass between Will and Margaret.

Will took the basin gravely and quickened his steps, veering towards the Lebanon cedar where the servants were setting up a table. He stumbled, then righted himself without mishap, glancing apprehensively at Pegge. Now he gripped more tightly, fixing his eyes on the ground ahead, his legs moving like springs to keep the basin steady.

Pegge could not remember whether her own mother had ever been annoyed with her. As she grew up, Pegge fed hungrily on her brothers’ memories of Drury cottage, where they lived before the Deanery. Their father was mostly gone, and whenever he returned, he ushered in a strange quiet.
Doctor Theologo
, George liked to call him, running quickly out of range.

Once, as Jo and George told the story, there had been angry words in the cottage and their father strode outside, dangling their mother in his arms as lightly as if her bones were hollow. The boys said a torpor had poisoned her body, making her pull out her hair. The little that was left was stringy and unpinned. As their father propped her in a chair and put a stool under her swollen legs, the word
dropsy
fell out of the air, moist and ripe like a windfall from the pippin-tree.

The boys stopped running with their pointed sticks, wary of the lesson their father was setting up for them. In the garden, it was unlikely to be Greek or Latin. A lesson in deportment, possibly, or grooming? Perhaps he would call their new servant to pin up Ann’s hair. They knew they were to make something of themselves now that he was Dr Donne.

“You must stop this wasting away,” he said to their mother, trying to fasten her hair himself.

“You cannot pretend I am of any use to you. You do not even come to my bed anymore.”

The boys knew what this meant, or so they said.

“And what man would? It is more of a sickbed than a marriage-bed.”

“I am always with child, and you always came before. You are tired of me.”

“We had not one another at so cheap a rate that we should ever be weary of one another.”

This witticism was chiselled in her brothers’ memory. Pegge heard them recite it again and again when their father was out of hearing.

“You forget I am a priest now and must come only when you can conceive. Why not admire how healthily your children grow? Surely they are as worthy of your attention as those misbegotten tulips. Here they are, bearing weapons like half-clothed Indians in the heat. Look at them, Ann—open your eyes, your mouth—speak to them—tell them to dress like citizens of Europe!”

The children stared at their mother’s blancmange face. She looked much paler next to the flowers than she did inside. Only the centres of her eyes were dark, like mulberries.

“Play!” he shouted at the children. “Let her see you playing! Why are you lining up silently in a row? Can you never run about and enjoy yourselves when I tell you to?”

Will was now quite far ahead, resting the basin on the ground and peeling back the cloth to inspect the pudding. Little Isabel had stopped in the marsh orchids with her spoon, looking so intensely at the sky that she wobbled
backwards. Telling her to hurry, Pegge caught up to the older children.

“It is still runny,” Margaret declared, crouching next to Will. “You should have cooked it longer, Mother.”

Pegge carried the basin into the muddy reeds, tying some of the stalks together to anchor it. “There-it will thicken in no time.”

As the pudding floated in the cool water, they sat under an elm to wait. The moorhens pecked at the basin, but it was too solid for them to tip and they paddled off to poke their red beaks under the bloodwort. Dark shapes mustered in the elm, peering down at the children.

“Now
those
are crows,” Pegge said to Will. “You will need to chase them away or they will have their beaks in our pudding.”

When Will shouted, the crows flew to the next tree, then the next, and the next, hopping further and further along the branches until they were craning their necks out over the bobbing pudding.

Taking his stick from Emma, Will brandished it at the marauders. “Let us be barbarous savages!”

“I will be an ingenious Chinese,” announced Margaret, taking her shears to a reed. “Do you want one, Emma? Do not try to come, the ground is too soft. I will find a small one for you.”

The shears will never cut a straight line again
, Pegge thought, but said nothing.

Seeing Will and Margaret approaching with their weapons, the crows flapped indifferently over to the other side of the marsh. Now Pegge saw why. The basin had
worked itself loose from its moorings and was floating into the marsh water. Will and Margaret tried to stop it with their sticks, but they sank into the mud. When they stepped back, the water rushed in to fill their footprints with a frightful sucking noise. The basin was now too far out, heading at a goodly pace across the pond in the direction of the crows. As Pegge and the children looked on helplessly, the cawing became unbearable. Emma stuck a finger in an eye and began to whimper.

“We must make a boat out of reeds,” said Will, but his voice quavered.

“Or wade in,” said Margaret, taking off her shoes. She stripped down her stockings and tied up her skirts with the oriental girdle.

“You will sink into the bog,” Pegge said. “Make waves quickly, both of you. Come and help, Emma. Like this.”

It was no good. The waves refused to echo as far as the basin, which mocked them by spinning in a circle. More crows flew in to join the raiding party and the chorus rose and fell as scouts made forays over the prize. One landed on the rim of the basin, getting a taste before losing its balance.

“Margaret,” Pegge said, “hand me your stick and stay with Emma.”

Pegge circled around and approached the marsh from the east, using the stick to flush the mudhens out of their nests and into the water. As they launched themselves, the outraged cries, the splashing wings, the legs running on the surface drove the basin back to the other side where Will, observing the pudding’s change of course, had prudently stationed himself. The hens sank back on
the water, pumping their heads and clucking. In another moment, they were pecking stupidly under the bloodwort again.

Will landed the copper bowl with his pole. “I have it, I have it, look how thick it has become!”

As they escorted the pudding over to the Lebanon cedar, William came up the path from the house calling out
Margaret
as loudly as good manners permitted. Both Pegge and Margaret turned at once towards him.

“This is what comes of naming a child after yourself,” he said tersely. “Neither of you knows which one is being called. This must stop, Pegge. Stop. Do you hear me? I found little Isabel asleep in the tall grass just before the marsh. I would not have gone that way except for Plum, who was standing on top of a tussock, wagging her tail to catch my eye. Anything might have come of it, Pegge. Anything. If not for Plum.”

Having frightened Plum into trembles and Isabel into sobs, he was almost in tears himself. Pegge held out her arms to Isabel and drew her close, kissing her damp nose. The little girl finally let go of the spoon, winding her arms around Pegge’s neck. Will was making his way back to them with the pudding held rigidly horizontal.

“Is that the vessel from the Deanery?” William demanded, his face as coppery as the old basin. His arm rose almost to the perpendicular and began to wave about. “It is dangerous to keep such a thing. The soldiers have already sacked my study once, looking for your fathers writings sympathetic to the King.”

“It is only a bowl, William,” Pegge said.

“They wanted to search your chamber as well, but I told them—You have not kept any of your father’s books, have you, Pegge?”

“I don’t like the name Margaret. It sounds too English,” Margaret said abruptly.

The girl’s face was a study. Either artless or full of art, Pegge pondered which. It was not William’s face, to be sure. His arm fell as he considered his eldest child.

“If you dislike it,” he said peaceably, “why not go by Maggie or Meg?”

“Meg,” Margaret tongued the word. “It sounds very Chinese, does it not?”

Reminded, William felt in his pocket. “I brought these for your pudding. Berries from the New World. Not so many,” he cautioned, as Will sprinkled them over the top. The berries began to bleed into the pudding, turning it a festive colour.

“But what are they really, Father?” asked Meg, moistening one in her mouth. “They taste like raspberries, only sharper.” She held it out on her palm for Will and Emma to peer at. “It looks like a tiny beetle.”

“Well done, Meg,” said William. “It is cochineal, for dyeing wool scarlet. Mordanted with aqua fortis. Remember that, Will. You must learn the mordants. Your mother once rubbed cochineal on her lips to colour them. And scarlet has other, less familiar, uses.” He looked sideways at Pegge, a blushing reference to the dye-bath that had led to Meg’s conception. “Scarlet was once permitted only to gentlemen. Now Cromwell’s redcoats wear it, while we must make do with Puritan black.”

Meg and Will crushed the insects in their palms, spat, then rubbed the paste on one another’s cheeks. They put bog violets into Emma’s cap and reddened her lips, bowing and saying
Lady Emma
this and
Lady Emma
that.

Pegge burrowed her nose into Isabel’s neck and nibbled at her moist flaxen curls to make her laugh. Soon the little girl was wriggling out of Pegge’s arms to dip a finger in the pudding. It was now the colour of bruised flesh and emitted a peculiar odour. Unable to bear the smell, Pegge bolted into the horsetails. After a while, two white hands swam through the shoulder-high grasses towards her.

Meg fidgeted, playing with her bright girdle. “I will be called Margaret if it makes you well,” she said at last.

Pegge longed to erase her daughter’s forehead creases, but could not yet think how to reassure her.