Newton’s Niece. Derek Beaven

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СКАЧАТЬ beyond the herb garden when the sun shines. Pet is very taken with the life in the country and the Landscapes that are to be seen; she is wide-eyed at having so much of an horizon, and thanks you very much for the gift of the coat. She wishes me to send her love and duty to Tony and Mary and that she is quite well, and so I would beg you to pass this on. Please also pass my love and best wishes to Etta; I believe her vomitings are usual and will pass. I hope you are recovered from your cold in the head and that the temporary setbacks you mentioned are now resolved. It would please me to know when you would have me home.

       Your obedient Niece and Humble Servant

       C. Barton

      The moon had shone into my bedroom where a last drench of fever was flushing through me. I’d opened the window to get the freeze of the air on to my skin, and then I’d seen my moonlit self in the mirror. I’d sat with my shift off my shoulders poking, scratching and squeezing at the pock scabs on my face. I don’t know whether I’d wanted to rid myself of them or to scar myself, my dangerous beauty, for life.

      But now it was Spring. I was recovered. My uncle had insisted that I stay out of the city until I could be reckoned safe. It was strange to have been ill and to have been, in a sense, mothered by the people around me. Women’s arms embraced me as if I belonged. The old house was relaxed and safe in a way that I’d never known before. The place had no hooks, no sense of dark memories. The look of the timbers didn’t make me feel unaccountably tense or churned up in the stomach. They were just the timbers, and it was just a country home; for which the mistress cut flowers as soon as there were any to be had, and the com figures and drying herbs hung up comfortingly in the big kitchen, where unless there were visitors we mostly took our meals informally, all together. I say ‘all’ since there was an assortment of children and a couple of aunts of indeterminate ages, together with an old servant and a sort of housekeeper woman. Of course, I reasoned to myself at other times, it could well be that Charles was paying them to be good to me, as perhaps he was, since someone must have arranged all this. Nevertheless, overpaid or not, I couldn’t help sensing a genuineness in their treatment of me, that both pleased and threatened – I had no practice in receiving it.

      

      My separate bedroom looked out over the wooded April scene I came to love; there, lambs and kids had begun appearing in the paddock. Yes, I still had the bad dreams, the twisted nights and violent preoccupations, but they receded into what you might call proportion; they didn’t matter so much.

      

      Pawnee said: ‘Mrs Gyre has a gardener who has a niece.’

      I said: ‘Yes, Pawnee.’

      ‘She is a niece you should see.’

      ‘Why?’

      ‘You’ll see when you see her. Come on.’

      I followed her down into the old hall, and then out via the kitchen halfdoors. A week of warm weather had dried the mud and muck of the yard. We went beyond the new brick and timber sheds where the carts and wagons were now kept.

      ‘There;’ she said. ‘Good morning, Tempest. That is what he’s called. I told you I’d bring Mistress Catherine Barton. He thinks I’m a gypsy, Kit, pretending to be resident and probably up to no good.’

      ‘I beg yours, Ma’am,’ said the gardener, seeing that I was English-looking, and dressed as well as Pawnee.

      ‘I’d suspect him of blushing if his cheeks weren’t more tanned than mine anyway,’ said Pawnee. He grinned and started to spit. Then thought better of it. This wide-jawed grin held my attention. He had no overbite – his teeth met edge to edge all round. The girl with him looked up from the weeding where she was kneeling. I turned away from the curious teeth and found myself staring at her instead – with a peculiar sense of recognition. Where …?

      ‘Well?’ Pawnee said with a certain air of triumph. The face was the face I saw every morning in my mirror. She was my double.

      ‘Heavens!’ I said. And like a mirror image her eyes widened at the same time as mine – I guess as the impulse of recognition affected her too. She was, at a hazard, about seventeen. She straightened up and then reached out at a head of the rose-bush, as if to smudge away a parcel of aphids. ‘Can you tell me your name?’

      ‘Lucy’lizabeth, Miss.’

      

      ‘I have a confession, Kit.’

      ‘A confession?’

      ‘Now that you’re better I can tell you.’ Pawnee sat with me on my bed, holding my arm through hers, while morning sunshine flooded in from the outside world. With my free arm I put down the crust which was all that remained of my bread. ‘It’s this.’ She held out a little twist of paper. ‘This was sent by your uncle.’ She released my arm.

      I unscrewed the twist. It contained a powder, blue-purplish in colour, with a few grains or crystals of white. I smelt it as if to gather something of its significance. ‘Am I supposed to eat it?’ She passed me a letter.

      

       Madam Virginian

      I believe I am at the end of my wits with distraction concerning my niece’s illness. I am relapsed into a state of mind I thought never to see again. I despair for her and would come to the country myself to doctor her condition did I not suspect my powers are subject to an alteration at present. I write to you alone with the paper herewith and must trust you, though I know little enough of you indeed, to be my niece’s true friend in this, and to keep utmost confidence regarding this letter and the powder. All the world now knows the vile accusations that have been levelled against me of late, regarding my niece, my friend, and – I hardly know how I shall write this – her position in my household. I cannot get out of the house. There is a throng of spies and intelligencers in the street. They conceal themselves but I have smoked them. The powder is the only thing that might save her, and in saving her, save also her beauty. Give him the half as a decoction and have the remnant made up with a kindly oil for his face. Leave on over the pocks. It must not be washed off. Let it fall off rather or grow away. Do as I say. It is the Stone. It is some of the fruit of the damned miracle, which I recovered at the time. Tell no one, as He may have spies that have followed her even to Woodstock to see her nakedness while he is engaged in it. As to the charges they are false. I never engaged myself with the women. These are damned lies put about by a spaniel of Hooke’s. I fear I am not well, Madam, yet she must have the powder. She must not die now. Burn this. They must not know.

       Is. Newton

      I re-read the letter in amazement. I’d never had the chance to see into his illness before.

      ‘I didn’t apply the remedy’ Pawnee said. ‘You’ve mended miraculously enough. Your skin is unblemished.’ As she smoothed my hair back from my forehead she pressed on the little painful bump so that I felt the sharpness of it.

      

      ‘Lucy Elizabeth. You see I’m convalescing, but I’m not infectious, so you won’t be in danger of the smallpox yourself. We can talk while you put these linens away for me.’

      ‘Yes, Miss.’

      ‘You’ve made me think, Lizzy. I need you to tell СКАЧАТЬ