Conceit (8 page)

Nothing else? Not love?
she wanted to ask.

“Did you know that whales once swam up the Thames as far as Richmond?”

This was a story she had not heard. “Have you seen one?”

His head shook slowly. “The great river is now so troubled with silt and weirs that a haddock can barely squeeze through.” He quickened his steps towards the row of trees ahead. “This new stretch of river, you say that it is warm?”

“Reedy and turbid, and even more sluggish through the grassy shallows.”

His sigh was appreciative. “You did not say which bait to bring. What are our chances of a bream?”

“A fearsome pike patrolled the shallows when I was last here.”

“You say there are weeds? Pikes are bred by pickerel weeds. The pike is a gentleman, continent and chaste, that breeds but once a year, and always with his mate.”

“Izzy, if he has a mate what need has he of weeds? You forget how you used to show me the males beating upstream with their hooked jaws and gaudy jackets. If
generation required melt and spawn when I was ten, how can it now require only weeds? I hope you do not think me simple-minded at fifteen. And as for fish being continent, why every she-loach and minnow we have ever caught has been big-bellied with roe.”

He seemed confused. “Why I do not know, for it must be when the pickerel-weed is ripe. And some eels are bred this way as well,” he added, his neck colouring.

Why this new delicacy towards her? The rivers had not changed, nor had the fish. She fell a little behind, playing with the drawstring on her scarlet bodice and feeling her nipples rubbing underneath. That must be the reason. It was she who had changed, and Walton who had noticed. He now considered the spawning of fish unsuited to her ears. At this new thought, she hummed a tuneless song.

“Now Pegge, do not argue,” he said, misunderstanding her cheerfulness, “for here is the river before us, with the shallows as slow-moving and grassy as promised in your letter.”

Walton laid his pouch on the bank and walked into the river with his shoes on. Before Pegge had draped her skirt over a mulberry branch and pulled off her boots and stockings, he was up to his hips in the reeds. He was crossing well downstream, heading towards the still water past the swift on the far side.

An eel shot out of the riverbank as she waded in. Although her father was fond of eels, she could not take him one, for he would guess at once where she had got it.
She was still in the shallows when she saw Walton climbing the other bank with his rod on his shoulder.

The swirling current was twisting her under-skirt, pulling her off balance. She dug in her feet, determined to spot the marauding pike before he did. Tipping her head, Pegge listened for the fish as he had taught her. A clump of green-life floated past with a damselfly laying her eggs in the glinting sun, and something was stirring up the mud on the bottom, sucking in the ooze and spitting it back out.

Then a scatter of maple leaves fell on the water. Looking up, she saw Walton bending a sapling and letting it fly to get her attention. Behind her, under an overhanging rock, there was a great splashing and roiling as if several eels were fighting to get into the same hole. Walton waved her back and was soon lurching up the bank beside her with water surging out of his breeches. Unbuttoning his new doublet, he dropped it, then thought better and folded it neatly on top of a rock. Now even his shoes and hose came off, something she had never seen him do. He was rolling his sleeves up above the elbow. Above his walnut-brown hands, his arms were startling white, and as muscular as a water-carrier’s from hoisting his rod and throwing his line.

He pointed under the spreading mulberry branches. “Slide out as far as you can on that rock and tell me what is beneath it.”

Pegge got down on her hands and knees, first crawling, then sliding, leaving a glistening trail from her wet clothing. Walton was snapping open the bait-boxes and the warblers were quarrelling over the ripe fruit in the tree above her. When she reached the narrow outcropping,
her hands were as purple as the fallen mulberries. She lay on her stomach and wriggled the last few feet to peer over the edge. Beneath the rock, dark ovals swayed gently in the weeds.

Soon Walton was standing at the foot of the rock, almost hopping from one leg to the other, his face daubed with clay to blend in with the riverbank. “Can you see below?”

“Just shapes.”

“Is it a trout? Lean out further, I must know what bait to use.” He was back rummaging through his boxes, inspecting the cow-turd and tossing it away. “The beetle has escaped. Why did I not bring red worms or paste? But I do not think it will be a trout,” he consoled himself, “for the water is not swift enough.”

“You hardly need bait,” she said. “I have one in my hand.”

Now he was in a fever, creeping along the wet rock towards her. He crouched over her ankles at the neck of the rock, for there was no room beside Pegge on the narrow overhang. “What fish is it?”

“I cannot tell.” It was hard to concentrate when water was dripping all over her legs from his heavy breeches. “But it is not long enough to be the pike.”

“And its bigness? Is it only a gudgeon?” He tugged at her petticoat to make her answer.

“As big as a bream, but not so round.”

He let out his breath and pushed up closer. “Then it is too big for a roach, which is well, for it is a foolish, simple fish. What sort of fins does it have? The tench has large fins and smooth scales,” he prompted.

She ran her fingers along the spine of the fish, which seemed drugged by the warm sleepy water. “Only one fin on top.”

“Then it cannot be a perch, for it has bristles like a hog.”

“Here is another brushing past,” she said, as it rubbed against her palm.

All morning the rock had been gathering heat, and now she melted into it, a new and not-unpleasant feeling, her breasts tender against the hardness. The rock was talking to her body, and her body to the rock, but what they were saying could never be written down, not in the King’s English as taught to gentlewomen. Steam was rising from her petticoat, causing an uncommon moistness all about her.

“I hope it is not a pair of ruff-fish.” He sounded deflated.

“There are more than two, Izzy, there must be half a dozen, and they are not ruffs. They are slipping in and out of my hand as if they are tame. Come, lie next to me and touch them. I cannot tell you how it makes me feel—you must stroke them for yourself.”

“We must call this only
the river
, Pegge, never by name. We will take them straight to the Frog & Pike. How shall we have them cooked, on the coal-fire or in a pan with oysters?”

“First help me catch them,” she said, laughing. “Then you must eat them howsoever you choose while I run back to Sevenoaks before my father discovers I am missing.”

Above her, the warblers were fighting again, dropping as many mulberries on top of her as they were eating. Without warning, a red fin rose out of the rippling water. As a huge, protruding mouth scooped up the floating berries, Pegge saw her face reflected in a single row of giant
scales. The belly was fat and quivering, the best eating. A female, bursting-full of spawn. Now Pegge knew what they were, a shoal of them, scarcely a foot beneath the overhang. She turned to Walton and mouthed the word
mirrors.
Then she mimed the belly of the female.

“The queen of the river,” he whispered. “The big she-carp. Some call her the water-fox, for her cunning. I once tried for a week to catch one using cherries. She also comes for a sweet bread paste, or for a ringing bell. Oh, say you have brought a bell, Pegge Donne, and I will love you better than your sister Con, for I have no white bread and honey!”

“If you help me, I’ll get you something better.” She slid towards him, her petticoat riding up above her knees, then sat on her heels, shifting her heavy rope of hair out of his way. “Loosen the ties that fasten my bodice up the back.” His fingers fumbled—the same large fingers that were quick and deft when working tackle. “Lower, there is a loop at the bottom.”

Taking his hands, she placed them on her waist. His knees straddled her hips as he tugged and eased the bodice up and over her head. Now only a lawn chemise clung damply to her skin. She let him feed his eyes, to see how the sun had kissed and swollen her young nipples.

He was holding up the bright cloth like soiled laundry. “But how are we to catch them?”

She pulled the drawstrings tight around the neck and arms. “Do you see?” she said. “It is a bag. And scarlet—for look how they come to mulberries! It will be as easy as snigling for eels.”

She rolled onto her stomach and slid back along the narrow overhang, then tipped on her side to make room for him. As he inched forward, first her leg, then her arm, crossed over him to hold him steady. His hair brushed her face, and his lips curved an inch away from hers, as if to ask
what next?
Then he turned away, dropping his beautiful white arm over the edge towards the moving shapes beneath.

“The fish are throbbing! Do you feel that, Pegge?”

The raw heat of the sun and rock, the blows of her heart, the prickling of her skin, which did he mean? She could feel everything, and nothing would ever be the same. Her belly was trembling, as it had done when she was little and her father blew on it to tease her. She wondered whether a brace of carp would buy a night’s lodging at the Frog & Pike. While she was waiting outside the inn, a young couple had passed by boldly. Calling for the landlord, they took a room for the night. They would not wait for nightfall to taste their first embraces. Even now, at the noon of day—with the warblers carolling, with the mulberries raining from above, with Izaak Walton’s buckle pressing hard against Pegge’s belly—the young couple would be consummating their love in the Frog & Pike.

“Are you ready, Pegge?”

Several carp were splashing on the surface, mirroring the sun so brightly that it blinded her. It was clear now what was happening. There was only one female, and she had attracted six or seven large mirrors to her spawn. They were in the very act of spawning, the melters bearing up the spawner who was rubbing herself against Pegge’s hand.

It seemed a shame to take her, but Walton had never balked at catching spawning fish. It was too late to dull his appetite. If she argued for the mirrors’ progeny, he was likely to contend that the sun and fertile weeds had generated them and treat her like an ignorant child again.

Walton lowered the scarlet trap downstream, careful not to splash or cast a shadow. “I must lean out as far as I can. Hold me fast so I do not fall in.” His head swivelled around towards her. “You have the look of a trout fresh from the river. Are you ill, or sickening for something? Open your eyes. This is no time to fail me, Pegge.”

“It is just the mulberries staining my face.” She gripped his breeches with her free hand. With the blood pooling in her head from hanging over the edge, the last thing she was thinking about was sliding the fat-bellied carp into a hot pan with oysters.

Now Walton was urgent, and in command. “Just tease them into the bag,” he ordered. “Do not squeeze or push, just tickle them towards it—tickle them sweetly, and let them go.”

5. MIRRORS

Pegge was in the Deanery frying bread in dripping when Constance swept past with a plate full of lather and whiskers. She threw the soapy water into the courtyard, splashing Sadie, who had dug herself out of the flower bed to see what Con was bringing her.

Pegge had returned from Sevenoaks with her father the previous night, for he had grown tired of cucumbers and rural conversation before the week was over. As soon as he had woken, he had blown his trumpet for his eldest daughter and asked her to untangle his hair and shave around his beard.

When Con came back in, smoothing her dark gown, Pegge speared the hot crust and blew on it. “Will you teach me how to shave him, Con?”

Con wiped the inside of the shaving plate and laid the razor across it. “There’s no need now that I am home.” She took a looking-glass out of her pocket and propped it on the shelf.

“But you might marry again,” Pegge said, eating her fried bread.

Con licked her finger and curled a strand of hair around it. The black curl stayed obediently in place as she stood back to consider the effect. Pegge had her father’s hair—thick reckless handfuls of auburn down to her waist. Up to now, she had thought it childish, twisting it into ropes to tame it, but this morning it held the fragrance of mulberries and Izaak Walton’s fingers. By the end of the day, it would reek of kitchen fat and coal-smoke once again.

“Will
you
teach me, Bess?” Pegge squinted at her reflection in the grimy window, judging her hair too long to fasten up like Con’s.

“Now the kitchenmaid has run off, I need you here.” Bess was ferrying goods from the larder to the kitchen table. “A load of cucumbers came from Sevenoaks this morning. This was on top of it, for the Dean’s daughter.” She pushed the bulky object towards Con.

Con pressed another curl in place, then unwrapped the bright cloth around the parcel. Underneath was a thick layer of leaves. As she peeled them off, a clump of moss appeared with a puddle forming around it. When the moss expanded then contracted, Con took a quick step back.

At the end of the moss, Pegge could see a large golden mouth opening and closing with a quiet sucking noise. She pulled out some green tufts to reveal a pair of eyes that bulged like a monk’s awakened from a long sleep. Then she stripped off the rest of the moss and saw a row of tiny longhaired Pegges reflected in the giant scales.

Bess came around to look. “It’s a good enough fish,” she admitted, probing under the gills with a finger. “And it could not be fresher.”

Pegge filled a deep pot, then slipped her hands under the fish and plunged it into the water. When the fish came up to the surface, she fed it a cube of bread soaked in milk.

“Why does Mr Walton do such things?” Con asked, perplexed. “I have done nothing to merit this … this …
flounder!
” She wiped her hands on the cloth, realized it was wet, and threw it back onto the table.