Viper Wine (41 page)

The river was smooth and silty-white as they went by wherry to Whitehall Stairs, joining a queue of water taxis at the palace jetty, bobbing as they waited to disembark in the last of the winter-afternoon light. All through December, Venetia had been staying at the palace much of the day and sometimes overnight, preparing for the masque, and now she returned as a guest and player. In truth, there had been little rehearsing, but frequent rising and descending in mechanical chariots, in order that the ladies could endure it without too much fear. The actor from the Globe was used to working with male players only, but he was impressed to see that women could project their voices ‘almost as well as men’. He did not wish to tire the ladies out unduly, though, so much time passed with his demonstration of the art of splitting a chestnut in the air with a rapier.

‘Enough chain and jewel in my boat tonight to sink her,’ said a wherryman called Plank.

‘I had that Spanish ambassador in my boat once,’ said his friend John Duckett. ‘Gondomar. The one they mocked senseless at the Globe. ‘Signior-ee-ee’, that one. Not a tipper.’

‘I had that courtesan in my boat tonight,’ said Plank. ‘Mistress Lively. When I cries Oars, Oars, I don’t expect ’em to come running. Maybe I’ll try crying Rollocks instead.’

Across the city, in Fenchurch Street, the Twelfth Night festivities stopped the constant traffic of customers through Choice’s premises. With the servants and apprentices off, the place had an unaccustomed silence.

Lancelot Choice leaned back with his hands behind his head. ‘Ah, my dear,’ he said to Margaret. ‘Is this not peace indeed?’

Margaret looked up from the sweaty keel of her cooking pot. ‘Oh, mightily so,’ she said pleasantly, out of habit, while wiping down her apron, which was dirty from dismembering rodents, and pushing a foot-pedal, which turned the vipers on their spit.

Her method of preparing the Wine had become more efficient lately, allowing larger batches to be produced quickly, and if a little golden eye or skein of skin fell into the pot, it was unlikely to be removed.

Margaret’s illness had not killed her, but it had left her weaker. The skin around the viper’s bite was still engorged, shiny-smooth and new, and she limped, and felt the pain of it during thunderstorms. Choice, conversely, had gained a new sleekness and authority as their enterprise prospered.

‘Now would be a very good time for us to twist the lancet,’ he said. ‘To set our vipers wiggling in a new direction. I conceived of the idea three weeks ago, and yet we have not tried it out.’

Margaret sucked her teeth.

‘What a nice piece of work you are, waiting till our Twelfth Night holiday to spring this on me—’

‘Margaret, we must offer our ladies something more than Viper Wine, before they lose their appetites.’

Margaret said they could not try the Experiment tonight, because wax was too low.

‘Another candle needs be fetched, then.’

With an unforgiving glance at him, she went. Lancelot Choice considered the serum, splattered about the vial, which he had milked yesterday from the fattest adder, holding its head fast and enraging it until it spat its bile with impotent spite into his beaker. Choice was not a sentimental man but he felt a certain male kinship for this lethal beast, shackled from birth, deploying its ultimate defence, which turned into a dribble in his captor’s beaker. Still, here was enough poison to kill a man; the immature viper’s bite that Margaret had suffered was enough to paralyse her limb for two weeks; thus one tiny tear, one globule – a little bead to sit upon his finger’s end – that was plenty for his purpose tonight.

While he was waiting, checking his face in the glass, he thought of his new client, the girl who would not stop talking. She was full of thoughts and questions, and the better part of his nature thought he ought not to treat her, as she was too young. But then he considered what he was for. He was no conjuror, no cunning-man. He could not make a girl beautiful, no more than he could roll back the years. But he could lightly tweak a woman’s blood, so she was more luxuriant in all her parts, and woozy with confidence. Thus he found himself helping this Child, making another Customer of her by telling her ‘
Non semper erit aestas
’ – ‘it will not always be summer’. Take precautions while you may.

She carried her vials away, beaming. He considered it a prescription for anxiety.

Margaret’s tread was slower than usual on the stairs, and when she came in she sighed heavily at him.

‘Be not so, Margaret,’ he said sternly, sharpening the lancet with a frisking noise.

She grimaced.

‘’Tis only a smally-wee incision.’

‘Will sutures be made?’

‘Only if the wound gapes incontinently.’

She watched like a slaughter-lamb as he laid out the cloth upon their dinner table carefully, with the pillow at the head’s end.

He smiled, and his beauty, the symmetry of his steady gaze, comforted and inspired her.

They prayed, kneeling side by side, and then, according to their plans, he got onto the table and lay down. Margaret covered his neck and shoulders with a dirty, stained towel, so that a new one might not be spoiled with bleeding. She breathed upon the lancet, and wiped it on her apron, before beginning.

He had marked his forehead for incision with a small chalk line.

‘Be not too slow, Margaret, but slice with conviction,’ he said.

‘Quiet!’

The blood did not shed much, but pooled thickly under the cut. She fed the serum of adder poison, diluted down with three parts witch hazel, into the wound using the tip of the lancet and pressed it shut. She wiped her finger on the towel before starting on the other side.

When he raised his eyebrows, his skin creased upwards, giving him the two curved wrinkles across his forehead that they called ‘the Lawyer’s Moons’ or ‘Moon-tides’. They had planned that Margaret should erase both Moons today, but as she moved around him, with the lancet flashing, he sat up, sharply.

‘Enough – ’tis well done. I had rather put the risk upon my next patient, for women take their medicines differently to men, and it is Saturn in my stars, so I should not have the full treatment. I shall see how that takes. I must not jeopardise the practice; our business is maintained by my beauty.’

The immobility took hold after a few hours. He barely needed a bandage, and as night fell, he began reproaching Margaret for not making him take the treatment on both sides of his face, because at present his brow showed only a Half Moon. One side was stretched and taut, the other traced with care. To be sure, the wounded side had lost something of its animation, but it had gained an uncanny smoothness, very like a side of bacon.

‘It is a good rule of my art, which I should remember, that everything must be done with symmetry.’

‘Should the hiss-pissers have my other ankle too, then?’

‘I have a mind to ask for the second dose this instant,’ replied Choice, looking in the glass. ‘This is the very thing a Lady needs to finish what the Wine has started. I will take one or two of the Ladies into my confidence, and show them how the example works upon my own skin. This will inspire their admiration, nay their jealousy.’

Choice was pacing around.

‘It is good commerce, Margaret, to always offer customers more . . .’

‘Lie thee down, then,’ she said, and took up the blade again, so their Twelfth Night revelry might be completed.

In the Palace courtyard the plaster spaniels in the fountain had stopped chasing the mallard around the mechanical clock, their movement stilled by ice, their ears and noses white with frost. The gravel looked sugar-glazed and the sky full of goose-down, as the revellers arrived in their furs and over-mantels, nervous and excited; even the oldest councillors of state, who had been coming to masques for thirty years, had a quickness in their air-hanging breath, wishing well on the occasion. Sir Francis Knollys, Penelope’s husband, muttered prayers for the masque’s success when he awoke that morning, because this game, this play, this ceremony held the symbolic power of the nation’s dignity, and as his thin old black-stocking’d legs stepped into the hall, he felt that if this evening’s entertainment fell apart or failed, the state would falter too. The threat of Popish plot or powder made the masque more precious.

They were seated according to precedence – a complex operation overseen by the Earl Marshall. With ambassadors and bishops, the audience had swelled close to four hundred, but the whole show was meant to feel as small and intimate as possible, a private entertainment for the King and his favourites. Thus the set was designed for Him alone, so only His seat, beneath the canopy of State, saw the vanishing point of all perspectives: to Him, each optical illusion was perfectly maintained. Those whom politics had consigned to side-seats could see string-pullers, sea-tossers, lantern carriers. They saw the man who made the moon rise, climbing his rope-ladder into the starry black-clothed heavens. When Venus – Henrietta-Maria, of course – rose like a (fully-clothed) goddess from the waves in a huge scallop shell in Neptune’s Triumph, they saw the stagehands cranking the waves about her; the King saw only sea. They saw the workings of the clock; he saw only the time.

Kenelm was waiting in the audience, bantering with his fellow gentlemen of the Bedchamber, but he was nervous for Venetia, playing with his gloves, turning them back and forth. He wanted her to perform well, of course, but more than anything, he wanted her to be happy with how it had all gone; he felt so powerless as he sat there in the eternal predicament of the watching spouse.

Inigo Jones had presented two masques every year for the last eighteen years, but his blind mother had never attended. Tonight, instead of standing in the wings, watching anxiously and pacing like a revenant, Inigo was sitting with his mother in the audience, holding her hand, and describing to her the masque.

‘There is a rich curtain, overlaid with the word “Luminalia”, the title of our piece. In front of the curtain is a tableau of naughty cherubim – sons and daughters of the court – in antic postures. Little Lord Maltravers is riding a model snail. Another boy is shooting toy arrows, another blowing a writhen trumpet, making that confused sound. Lady Hutchinson’s daughter is asleep inside a pumpkin flower. Another is drawing with a vast pencil, quite as big as she is. Another is hardening darts in a candle. Oh, it is excellently done. And – now we stand, Mother.’

The cornets proclaimed the arrival of His Majesty, unconstitutional king, who would not deign to deal with parliament, but preferred to sit with nymphs and zephyrs. When he was in his seat – or rather, upon his throne – Inigo’s commentary began again. ‘Every candle in the place has been extinguished, abruptly.’ The half-alarmed gasp of the audience led him to reassure his mother – ‘It is done by direction thus. Now the curtain rises, discovering a scene of darkness. Countryside and woods, and further off, a calm river, lit by nothing but a Harvest moon. It is reflected in the river below, this being achieved by a concealed mirror.’

The Hall was left in darkness and silent contemplation, admiring this night-time vista, until a barn owl’s long, low call came, gently upon a flute.

‘Ah,’ admired Inigo’s mother, and clasped his hand tighter.

Then a long-eared owl’s shriek startled the audience, and the night seemed to take on depth and breadth, as if mice were being hunted in the forest, and the trees rustled on cue.

A nightingale’s liquid song poured out of the darkness, and then a frisson passed through the audience. ‘A bat has flown across the moon,’ whispered Inigo, ‘by means of wire.’

‘And now from the hollow cavern under the stage, a chariot rises, drawn by two great owls. They are the sons of the Lord Devereux. Their feathers are given by the King’s kestrels. In the chariot sits a matron dressed in purple, stars of gold upon her dark hair, over her face a veil of russet cyprus. She is a singer from the Queen’s company called Mistress Streisand. Her lips are purple coloured. She rises—’

‘Night!’ said Mrs Jones.

‘Aye, she is Night, and she wears two black wings, which are pigeon feathers dyed. Her chariot rests in the air a moment, so all may see it. She is lit with a very blue flame only, a compound of chymistry given me by Kenelm Digby; all else is darkness yet.’

‘Why dreadful queen dost thou appear/ So early in this hemisphere?’ asked the chorus.

Mistress Streisand’s reply filled the hall with vibrations of Night. Venetia watched from the wings, rapt with delight as darkness spiralled out of Night’s mouth, rising up from her lungs. The singer was so certain of her art, it came as naturally as if she were talking. When the aria paused, she closed her lips momentarily, as if tasting the music, before soaring into a new, more anxious key, like a sky turning from blue to indigo. The King pointed his staff at her, and she paused.

Pause.

Her mouth stayed open as if gargling one enormously long note; her purple cyprus veil was suspended mid-air.

The King revolved his staff of state.

Rewind!

Her lips closed momentarily, as if tasting the music, before soaring into a new, more anxious key, like a sky turning from blue to indigo. The King watched, smiling dispassionately. He considered rewinding that moment again, but did not. The song and the singer raced each other on towards their apogee, and as she reached the highest note, the great curtain covering one of the windows in the hall was rent down, as if by her singing, and the darkness she had brought with her across the world outside was revealed, to fulsome applause.

‘Now Night’s attendants appear,’ whispered Inigo. ‘The first Vigil is in blue with a bat upon her head. The second is in black, and wears a screech owl. The third wears a dormouse, and she is laced in silver dew. Now they dance with the figures of Sleep.’

Sweet music crept across the audience, and the Vigils of Sleep danced a stately saraband, while Inigo spoke quietly in his mother’s ear.

‘There’s Oblivion, a knave who always missed his rehearsals. There’s Silence, an old pantaloon with a garland of peach-tree upon his head. And there’s Sleep himself, a fat man in black. Sleep looks very like Ben Jonson, but I do not think Ben Jonson moves fast enough to represent Sleep.’