A Court Affair. Emily Purdy

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СКАЧАТЬ looking down on its occupant from high upon the wall, to remind him that God is always watching us. Sometimes I fancy that I can still see their faint outlines, like the ghosts of those banished crosses haunting their former home. In spite of myself, I smile and blush a little at the thought that a monk’s cot might even have sat right here where I sit now, naked in my bath.

      No doubt to the simple country folk hereabouts it seems like the height of extravagant folly or absurdity—like the French king’s mistress bathing in a tub filled with crushed strawberries to preserve her famous beauty—my rising when it is still as black as tar outside to take my bath. Many already think me a woman of a strange mind. But it’s a soothing and peculiar kind of peace, to sit in a candlelit bath while most of the world still sleeps, and I like it, and even though I am naked, I feel less vulnerable somehow. I like the quiet solitude of sitting in my bath, luxuriating in its warmth undisturbed, before the sunrise and the busy bustle of the day begins, hours before there are voices downstairs and outside the windows, the clatter of cart wheels and horses’ hooves in the courtyard, the laughing, joyfully raised voices of children playing, servants calling to one another, and footsteps and chatter in the Long Gallery outside my room where I used to walk up and down before I became so weak, and below stairs the gossip of servants and the crash and clang of kitchen pots. Though Cumnor is in reality four separate households under a shared roof, and I keep to myself most of the time, the other ladies who lodge here are more social creatures than I, and each thinks that she is the queen bee here, and over this entire hive reigns. There is the ancient Mrs Owen, the mother of Cumnor’s owner, Dr George Owen, who, like the mouse who bravely pulled a thorn from the lion’s paw, received it as a reward for his attendance on King Henry’s sore and seeping leg; and the plainspoken, sometimes tart-tongued Mrs Forster, wife of Sir Anthony Forster, my husband’s treasurer, who holds the current lease on Cumnor; and his mistress, the widow Mrs Oddingsells, one of those rare women who seem to grow more attractive and alluring as they age. My servants dart about Cumnor like busy bees doing whatever they are told to do regardless of who gives the commands; sometimes they don’t even have time for me, they are so busy doing Mrs Owens’s, Mrs Oddingsells’s, or Mrs Forster’s bidding. But I let it go; I am too tired to complain, it would take more strength than it is worth, and I just don’t care any more. Besides, I like being here with only Pirto to attend me, free from the fear that some well-intentioned or curious maidservant will come knocking and catch a glimpse of my pain-racked body and ruined left breast when Pirto opens the door, or will even boldly cross the threshold and ogle me, while pretending not to, so she can tell the others what she has seen, as she delivers a stack of fresh linens or a package from my husband containing a pretty piece of apparel to lift my spirits, or the latest doctor’s or witch’s brew calculated to restore my health or more likely hasten me to my grave if I were fool enough to drink it. With rumours rife in London and spreading throughout the land, and even across the sea, that Robert and his royal paramour mean to poison me, I would be a fool to let any potion he sent cross my lips. But the colours are pretty, and I sometimes set the glass bottles on my windowsill so that when the sun strikes them just right, rays of amber, ruby, emerald, and lemon light shoot into my room like a rainbow to fight the clammy gloom of Cumnor’s grey stone walls and floors.

      Outside my windows the sky is as dark as black velvet, with not a star in sight to provide even a pinprick of diamond-white light, and the silver coin of the moon has been spent. It’s strange, but before the cancer burrowed into or erupted out of my breast, whichever description fits it best, I never realised how dark it is before the dawn. It frightens me yet at the same time makes me feel so grateful and glad to be safe and warm inside my room with numerous candles all about, beside a comforting fire that crackles with flames that move and sway and leap like dancers in red, yellow, and orange costumes, instead of wandering lost, stumbling and staggering blindly, out there in the dark, feeling likely to jump out of my skin at every noise, whether it be a rustle of branches in the breeze, the hoot of an owl, the trill of a night bird, or the howl of a beast. The thought of being enfolded by darkness terrifies me and makes me shiver despite the warmth of my fireside bath. I am so afraid that that is what death will be like. What if Heaven is only a comforting myth, a fairy story to reassure the faithful, to instil hope instead of horror, peace instead of panic, calm instead of a frenzy to cram full and make each moment count? What if death is really the permanent cessation of light and an eternal reign of darkness, like being wrapped round and round and suffocated in a bolt of heavy black velvet, unable to breathe or see or move, locked in stultifying black stillness forevermore?

      Sometimes I dream that I awake in black-velvet darkness to feel a pair of strong hands about my throat intent on squeezing the life out of me. It’s funny in a way, I used to be so afraid of the city, the country used to seem such a safe haven to me, and London with all its crime, bustle, and brawls the epitome of danger, yet now I realise, secluded here in the country, that if anyone came meaning harm to me, if they chose their moment well, no one would hear me scream. I know now that I was wrong to insist on solitude. If anyone should come to me with murder in mind, I have colluded in my own demise, I have made it easier; all a killer has to do is wait and choose his moment well, and Justice will turn a blind eye.

      Hot tears fill my eyes and threaten to spill over as I gasp and shiver. Gazing at me with deep concern, Pirto starts to speak, but I shake my head and reassuringly murmur, “It’s all right, Pirto. Come.” I force a smile. “Let’s wash my hair now. I want to look my best today!”

      I mustn’t spoil dear Pirto’s day; up until the last moment she must think this is one of my good days, and I am excited about going to the fair.

      I close my eyes and lean back as she ladles warm water onto my head and begins to massage my scalp and, from root to tip, to work in a special chamomile and lemon blend to make my hip-length yellow hair shine like straw miraculously spun into curls of living gold, as though King Midas himself had touched my head. “Harvest gold”—years ago my husband dubbed its colour as he lay upon me in a bed of buttercups by the river, our favourite trysting spot, playing with my sun-streaked hair, stroking and fanning it out above and about my head like rays of the sun, likening it to a bountiful wheat harvest flourishing proudly beneath the sun that daily bestowed a thousand kisses upon it. “Hair with a lustre that puts gold to shame,” he said, then kissed my face and declared that my cheeks were “as pink as the sweet roses of May”. He has such a way with words, my husband; his letters used to make me melt like butter left out under the hot summer sun. Does he lie by the fire with Elizabeth and fan her red hair out around her head whilst in poetic words comparing it to the dancing, crackling flames, I wonder? Does he make her melt too? And is she fool enough like I was to love, trust, and believe him?

      I sigh and breathe deeply of the lemons’ tart tang and the fresh, clean smell of the chamomile, a combination at once soothing and invigorating. I wonder if this was made from chamomile I helped gather before I became too ill. I can’t help but smile at the memory of my former self standing young and strong amongst the sun-kissed flowers with a straw hat crowning my wild, wayward hair to keep my fair skin from freckling or worse—Robert would be horrified if he came riding up for a visit and found his wife burned as red as a boiled crayfish or looking like “The Nut-Brown Maid” stepped out of her song—with a basket slung over the crook of my arm, and my skirts tucked up to my knees, and the grass tickling my bare ankles and toes.

      I was never sick a day in my life before this disease! I used to be a strong, happy, country lass, pretty, pink-cheeked, and smiling, brimming over with health and vigour. Not rawboned, big, and brawny like a blacksmith in petticoats, but hale and hearty, round and rosy, not like a fashionable, porcelain-skinned lady of the court who would like the world to think that she is as delicate and fragile as an eggshell, a treasure to be handled with the utmost care lest it shatter beneath the slightest pressure. I sometimes think that the real tragedy of my marriage is that for Robert the novelty of what I was paled against the reality of what I wasn’t.

      As soon as it is light enough outside to see, everyone will be stirring, alive with excitement and anticipation, fidgeting through their chores and the church service at St СКАЧАТЬ