Conceit Read online

  “There is some tobacco left,” he protested, gripping the air a moment too late.

  “You must stop smoking, Father, for tobacco is a cure and you say you wish to die. Of course,” she offered, turning back towards him with the box of pipes, “if you prefer to be cured and serve your King and God as Dean of Paul’s—”

  His hand was still feeling the air, hoping for the pipe to reappear. “Your argument has surpassing merit,” he conceded. “Ergo, I shall continue to smoke tobacco as a cure. I will not fast. I will cheerfully await God’s leisure till he calls, but not,” he pointed his finger at George, who was smiling openly now, “so overcheerfully as to be loath to go when he commands me.”

  Wooden clogs pounded up the stairs towards the bedchamber and Bess entered, carrying a cloth in a large basin.

  The Dean quickly uncrossed his legs as Bess thrust the steaming basin at him. “My sickbed is a rack and my spots malignant and pestilential.” His voice was muffled by the hot wet cloth, which Bess was swathing around his face.

  “I’ll sweat this nonsense out of him. Throw some coals on that fire, one of you,” Bess called to the children, who were fleeing from the room. Plucking the ornate nightcap from his head, she fished a knife out of her pocket that looked like the one she used for paring turnips. “You haven’t been shaved since Constance left. I’m here to scrape every blessed hair off you myself. Pegge, take away that box of pipes and fetch my boiling kettle from the kitchen.”

  4. ANGLING

  Pegge’s father produced twenty-three devotions—one sheet a day for twenty-three days. Then he rose from his mattress as slickly as Lazarus, cleanly shaved and brimming with new sermons. Out of his illness came a poem written in a code to God. To celebrate the Dean’s recovery, the choristers of Paul’s set the new hymn to music and sang it with gusto. Pegge knelt on aching legs, enduring the puns on her parents’ names and wishing her father back in his sickbed. Why did his love for her mother—the love he had wallowed in a score—require such public penance?

  From Mr Margrave, who kept an angling shop in Paul’s churchyard, Pegge learned that Walton had not been acting rashly because of Constance after all. Instead, Mr Margrave suspected Walton was after a new fish that had come into England at the same time as the turkey. The monks had kept these carp to eat during Lent, but when the monasteries were destroyed, they escaped from the fishponds and bred wild.

  Pegge began to follow Walton again, singing Mr Margrave’s tune.

  Hops and turkeys, carps and beer,

  Came into England all in one year.

  Walton did no useful work that she could see and was happiest setting one foot ahead of the other, preferably along a river path. On the bank of the River Lea, Pegge watched him lose himself in conversation with other anglers, casting his line and recasting. When he was alone, he let Pegge help him with his bait and tackle, finding more and more uses for her clever fingers.

  He showed her how to put moss into a bottle, then tend bait for him in this little garden. Once she found a bright caterpillar beside the river. They knelt down to take stock of his excellent features: yellow lips, purple forehead, grassy underparts, red spots in an X across his shoulders, and fourteen handsome feet. She gave him a twig of privet to gnaw at like a bone, and took him out to show Walton every hour.

  Walton’s rod kept growing, for the longer the rod, the further he could get across the river. It grew to fifteen, sixteen, seventeen feet, then broke into two for easier carrying. Pegge plucked strands from horses’ tails along the path and twisted them into supple lines while Walton fished, skeins of love-language taking shape within her head. Soon her own hair would be as long as a horsetail, and he would beg to use it for his rods.

  Before long, Pegge calculated, she would be old enough to marry, for at fourteen women sprouted hairs and yearned for a male. Perhaps her father could be made to change his mind about having an ironmonger for a son-in-law. Though of a watery slow humour, Walton had an inquiring mind and gentle character. Pegge hinted to her father that Walton might do for one of his other daughters.

  For three years Pegge waited for Izaak Walton, for three years Walton waited for Constance Alleyn, and for three years Edward Alleyn’s heart beat on. Lucy died while visiting Con in some mysterious way that Con could not bear to relate, King James died and King Charles took the throne, the City was brought low by plague and recovered health again. Then, just as Pegge became fourteen, the news arrived that Mr Alleyn’s heart had given out, freeing Constance to seek the embrace of a younger, more virile suitor.

  Con was once more at the Deanery, sleeping in her old bedchamber. She served their father his meat at table, and Pegge was shuffled back along the row. Pegge perched on the wooden bench like a nun in a brothel, listening to her sisters’ idle talk of marriage. At night, in the narrow bed Pegge shared with her, Betty was expressing an annoying curiosity about the subject.

  Pegge was waiting at the Frog & Pike when she saw Izaak Walton coming towards her, his newest rod balanced on his shoulder and his lips sweetly curved in welcome. Pegge had sent a letter asking him to meet her near her father’s parish of Sevenoaks. This summer her father had taken her to assist him with his writing for the week because he had strained his wrist.

  Walton must have started out at daybreak to walk the twenty-five miles south from London, unable to resist the new stream she had described flowing into the River Darent. As they walked along the path clinging to the river, he told her how the inn came by its name. A tremendous pike had been floating sleepily when a frog leapt from the riverbank onto its head. The frog held fast in malice, biting and tormenting the fish until it sank to the bottom. And that was why, Walton said, there were so few pike left in the Darent.

  It was an artless tale, and Pegge did not bother to correct it. When he had told her the same story along the River Lea, the frog had stuck fast to the head of a salmon and so killed that noble fish and all its unborn progeny.

  The August heat had sucked the Darent dangerously low. Walton pointed out dry patches of riverbed and the obstructions, built by ignorant men, that slowed the trout on their journey upstream.

  “The river rises in the pure springs of the Greensand,” he said, “but the mills have broken its back—” A bird’s cry interrupted him.

  “A bittern, over there in the snipe bog.”

  “By the grace of God there are some marshes left. Where is our stream?”

  Pegge gestured to the row of trees, just visible in the summer haze, which grew along the healthy tributary she had found.

  Walton made a good figure in a new mossy-green doublet and breeches the colour of the woodcock scrambling past. Although he had cast off his old leather jerkin, he had still taken care to blend in with the undergrowth. She could not say that of herself for she was wearing Con’s scarlet bodice. On the morning Pegge left for Sevenoaks, she found her sister sprawled asleep in bed, wantonly uncovered, and took the bodice without asking. In any case, Con was supposed to be in mourning. Now Pegge tugged the bodice lower in the front and let her dark rope of hair swing back and forth across her breastbone as she walked.

  Walton took a sideways look. “How old are you, Pegge?”

  “Almost fifteen.” She lifted her bare throat to the sun’s heat.

  “I am twice your age.” He turned his head back. “Are you sure there are no gates and mill-dams on your stream?”

  “Not twice. You are ten years older, the same as Constance.”

  His eyes were fixed on the row of trees ahead. “How she has suffered at the death of Mr Alleyn.”

  Pegge wished she had not mentioned Con. Soon he would be pressing her for details with a preposterous eagerness on his face. Why did men always pity Con? Pegge pitied Mr Alleyn, sure that Con had hastened his death with sweet syllabubs and jugs of sack. What else had been done to the poor man in the privacy of his marriage-bed?

  Pegge stopped to examine a lump the size of a pudding-stone that was buzzing on the path, then broke off
a corner of the cow-turd and gave it to Walton.

  “A dung-beetle,” he said, merry once more, “and one that sings in better tune than you.”

  As they walked, they ate radishes from her pocket, enjoying the coolness in their mouths. Pegge left the biggest one to last. Taking a bite, she gave the other half to Walton. A fine, philosophical look came over his face as he contemplated the half-eaten radish.

  “What do you most wish for, Izzy?”

  “Herbs and salads, and fish straight from the river. A man needs no more than such pleasures.”

  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 usin
g 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.