Viper Wine (25 page)

M
ARY
T
REE: 41
MILES TRAVELLED

I FEEL SURE
I am closer on the trail of the Keeper of the Powder of Sympathy now, and all thanks to Mungo Stump who is the most free-hearted gentleman imaginable, though somewhat given to flummery. He is tall and flax-haired and wears a Saxony doublet and boots with lacy tops that match his collar’s falling bands. He is a great patron of tailors and horse-dealers, and so forth, which is why he has so many tradesmen coming to call on him, sometimes in the middle of the night. The whole inn was woken up by their hammering last night, and he explained to me today that this is because of his famous knee-turning deportment, which makes tailors so keen to have his custom.

He bid me welcome to his table, where were already one or two other women, maids or married women I knew not, but their presence encouraged me to accept his invitation to sit down. He listened courteously to me as I told him everything. Worry not – I did not tell him of my mother, or my name ‘Only By Marriage’, or John Tupper. I only told him of Richard Pickett’s plight and my search for Sir Keyholme Digbin, which provoked in him first explosive laughter, which I did not understand, and then a thousand recollections.

Sir Keyholme, he said to the table, was a great personage at court. ‘Why, a nobler gent, with a finer leg, and a prettier wife, I have never seen!’

‘Are they now married?’ said one of his companions, Humphrey de Habington.

‘With two brats, I hear,’ said Mungo Stump.

To me, he added, ‘Her name is Phonecia, and she dresses in heavenly blue.’

Phonecia! So I had her name off wrongly. I kept this embarrassment to myself. Before I could ask any more about Sir Keyholme, Mungo Stump had started off on a story about how the Queen was surprised on her birthday with a great pie.

‘The pastry of the pie was broken from within by a tiny halberd fighting its way out. And there he was, a little person,’ said Sir Mungo, ‘a dwarf-kin, a fraction of a man, positively jumping out from the pie!’

‘Aye,’ muttered Humphrey de Habington, ‘I would not doubt it if the pie was hot.’

‘The manikin is now a great favourite at court and goes by the nickname “Lord Minimus”.’

I tried to steer the conversation back to Sir Keyholme.

‘He is a great unmasker of the recondite mysteries of nature,’ said Humphrey.

‘He knows how to raise spirits,’ said Mungo, topping up my ale.

‘But the Powder of Sympathy works?’ I asked.

‘Oh, undoubtedly,’ said Mungo. ‘Naturally and without Magick to ease a patient’s wounds, though the patient were not present, and never seen by the physician.’

A log collapsed on the fire, and I almost rose to stir it, before I realised I was not at home.

‘This Powder saved the life of one Mr James Howell.’

‘Never heard of him,’ said Humphrey de Habington.

‘He was injured trying to separate two of his friends in a duel. Both were greatly upset when they saw his wound, put their weapons off and Sir Kenelm – I mean, Sir Keyholme – bound up his hand with one of his garters.’

‘Not a new garter, I do hope,’ said Humphrey, wit-like. ‘They might have used one of their own.’

‘The staunched wound turned to gangrene, and the garter was bathed in the basin wherein was dissolved the Powder of Sympathy, and Mr Howell’s wound felt refreshed; when he put the garter before a great fire, Mr Howell felt burning. Within four or five days the wounds were cicatrised and entirely healed, and the choicest wits stood astonished.’

‘Indeed,’ said Humphrey, ‘it could give a gent some courage in duelling . . .’

‘You know how when a wet-nurse’s milk is thrown on the fire her dugs ache? Is it a cure after that fashion?’ said one of the women at the table, whose rouge, now I saw her at closer hand, made me uneasy.

‘The principle is the same . . .’

‘Explain the workings of it,’ said Humphrey de Habington. ‘The wounded party stays at home, while the bloodied bandage goes forth?’

‘Yes, because the cure is effected through the air. It is for this reason that Sir Keyholme says it must not be enacted in a cave, nor hiding hole. Nor priest hole, I expect he means, for he is one of
them.
He says the Aire is full of Atomes, fine and feathery motes that are not perceptible to our eyes, except in bright sunbeam of course, when we may see them charging about like cavaliers. These tiny messengers flow in formation through the air, carrying the healing particles with them. Thus the Cure is effected.’

I had many questions, such as – why we do not breathe the wingèd cavaliers into our noses? But I found myself asking: What colour is Lady Phonecia’s hair?

Mungo told me, ‘Somewhere between a chestnut just sprung open, or a mahogany bay mare in sunlight, and very fine, and curled just-so. Her born name was Phonecia Anastasia Stanley, but now she is Lady Digby. She is altogether’ – he whistled silently and drew womanly curves in the air with his fingers – ‘
bona roba.
’

I tried not to blush, especially when the other women at the table made whistling noises too.

And her face? ‘Oh, sweet as milk,’ said Mungo, and Humphrey de Habington said, ‘Aye, it is,’ gravely, not to humour me but as a word of truth.

‘Phonecia Anastasia Stanley,’ I said to myself, like a charm.

Although I wanted to know a good deal more, I did not care to impose too much upon the conversation of the table, and I fell silent, resolving to ask more tomorrow, and the company’s talk moved on to trade and treatise, and like Asparagus when he is lying by the fire I felt my eyelids growing heavy. The next I knew, I was stirring from sleep. Luckily one of the other women at the table had my purse in her hands when I woke up, or else, as she told me, I might have lost it as it fell out of my pack.

Mungo Stump offered to see me upstairs, which was kind of him, but I had my own candle’s sufficiency. When I refused his help, he called after me that I had the Keeper’s name wrong: Sir Kennel Dippy was the man I sought.

I was not so foolish as to believe that. Nor did I listen to him when he shouted up the stairs to tell me he was called Sir Kenelm Digby. Mungo Stump was in his cups, and I shall not be so easily put off my search for Sir Keyholme Digbin.

Sir Kenelm’s bilious moment passed, and he and William Cavendish took a restorative pipe of tobacco under the stars.

‘Have you heard of the cure-all “Venice Treacle”?’ asked Cavendish. ‘Our women drink it, you know.’

Kenelm thought of the backstreets of Venice, where he had seen the apothecaries of the guild flip their wooden rattles and display cages of live snakes outside their shops, showing off their writhing ingredients, as a sign they would soon be producing, for sale, the one, the only, the authentic Theriaca: a thick tarry still with a purple sheen to it that looked and smelled to Kenelm as noisome a slobber as he had ever seen. The vulgar called it Venice Treacle.

‘Theriaca, sir; it is called Theriaca by me. I stayed in Venice a short time in the brewing season. Theriaca is a long-known cure-all. I believe Trajan’s doctor dreamed it up. It has treated poison bites since before the birth of Our Lord. Made of powdered vipers, rare balsams and other salves. Because, of course, the poisonous snake is not poisonous to itself, therefore it contains within its body the antidote to its own gall. And thus they claim it gives the life eternal.’

‘Have you any with you?’

‘No, sir, I see no snakes in London.’

‘But death, sir.’

‘Oh, this is always and never with us.’

‘Oxford has a plague again, they say.’

‘God save it. I prefer my own methods – my metheglins and life liquors. My plague water. I can give you my receipts. I have a book of ’em. I don’t take the Theriaca myself. I heard that a batch from the monastery San Giorgio Maggiore, adulterated with tar or wormwood, killed a fresh young girl who drank a pottle of it for her health.’

‘Bad,’ said Cavendish, striving for a profundity he did not achieve. ‘Bad and sad.’ He shook his head. ‘They drink it here, you know, our women. The Venice Tipple.’

‘I would not drink it without giving it first to a dog.’

‘I mark you, sir, I mark you.’ Cavendish was swaying again, looking at the middle distance, since upon the stars, his eyes would not focus. He nodded: ‘’Tis a dog’s drink!’

‘Though any dog who tastes it might outlive his master,’ said Kenelm.

‘Then like the Ægyptian, mummify the dog and put him in a pyramis,’ said Cavendish, full of mirth.

‘Cup us till the world go round, the world go round,’ interrupted Davenant, singing and twirling.

‘A piss on your pyramis,’ said Suckling, lurching at Kenelm, who turned to him with his fists up.

It was lucky that neither of them were wearing swords, out of respect for the
Leges Conviviales
– the convivial rules of their club – which held there were to be no rough words, no breaking of windows.

‘No swordplay between Brothers,’ said Cavendish. ‘No digladiation. But simple fisticuffs, now there’s the spirit! Have at thee, sir!’

While Cavendish cheered them on, Davenant tried to pull them apart, crying, ‘
Eruditi
,
urbani
,
hilares
,
honesti
!’, as if these words from the
Leges Conviviales
would bring them to their senses.

Suckling swung his left arm at Kenelm, missing wildly and grabbing his hair instead. Kenelm’s hat, unnoticed, fell into the gutter. Kenelm retained Suckling’s arms behind his back in a wrestling lock, and roared. Thus the erudite, urbane, happy gallivants began their evening.

Venetia, dozing in bed with her book open, knew that Kenelm was come home because she heard him singing at the house gate, then a great jangle as he dropped his keys. She heard a hollow thud as he walked into the water butt, said ‘My pardon, madam’, and finally unlocked the front door, muttering.

She came downstairs in her nightdress and nightcap, to check he was well, and to witness what a state he was in, so she could enjoy censuring him and maybe laugh at him. He had lost his hat and there was a little mud around his face. She saw by his dear eyes, which had a haunted look, that he was wild with sack.

‘My love, how are you?’

‘Darling, did I ever tell you about the Malaga wine I have hidden under the old boxes in the cellar? It’s very important that it is not put out to the household. It’s a fine, fine beast of a wine. Which is to ask why? First it roars, no, first it purrs, sweet as a cat . . .’

‘Kenelm, what have you about your person, under your doublet?’ Her face, shiny with borage-oil night-cream, loomed over him; Venetia could see that he was unshapely, his doublet distended by a sideways angularity that was nothing like her husband’s body.

‘Then the wine begins to growl, which is like the bigger animal. Then—’

‘Kenelm, tell me what you have hidden in your midriffs.’

Kenelm looked up to heaven, and said, ‘Nothing particular.’

‘Well then, my darling, the Malaga sack – should I pour it away tomorrow?’

‘Ay, ay, ay – no, madam! Be not so hasty. It is the wrong time of day to pour away perfect cordialls.’

He had seen off Suckling, neither of them sustaining much more injury than a sore lip (Suckling) and popped fastening (Digby). Suckling was reduced to trembling, roaring in pain when Kenelm pulled his hair. Both enjoyed the panting, coursing elation of the unexpected fight, although Suckling had to savour the bitter taste of his own bloody lip. They ended their brawl by embracing one another, pushing their heads hard together like bullocks, while Davenant and Cavendish reconciled themselves to an end of sport.

Then Suckling and Davenant retired together to a house of ill-repute, and Kenelm celebrated by going with Cavendish to the bookbinder at the Blue Bible, and hammering hard at his door, and calling out that, if you please, Digby was come for his books.

Kenelm stood up, put his hands round Venetia’s waist and puckered his lips to kiss her. At that moment, a whoosh and a clatter surprised them both, and they looked down to see that his doublet had disgorged four volumes, which lay tumbled on the floor – Roger Bacon’s
Opus Majus
, a pharmacopaeia,
Piers Plowman
– and another book, which fell open so as to reveal pages that were written in a script that, as they both looked down, neither of them could read. It was covered in stars, slashes and disjointed sentences of Java Source Code, ready to run on any standard-linked computer. Kenelm looked wonderingly at it, forgetting his surroundings as he hunched over the book on the floor:

response.setContentType(‘text/html’);

   
final
PrintWriter pw = response.getWriter();

   
try
{

      pw.println(‘Hello, world!’);

      }
finally
{

         pw.close();

         }

   }

}

The letters seemed to him like a spell or symbolism more than a story: hieroglyphs, in a word. There was a bare beauty in them. Perhaps these were corrupted, or an ill-copy. They might be inscriptions from an obelisk, too faithfully translated. If he followed each of these directions, Great Work might be done. Perhaps it was a Mayan calendar. It was hard to keep up with all these discoveries of the New World – no wonder his library overflowed.