Conceit Read online

  “Are you ready, Pegge?”

  Several carp were splashing on the surface, mirroring the sun so brightly that it blinded her. It was clear now what was happening. There was only one female, and she had attracted six or seven large mirrors to her spawn. They were in the very act of spawning, the melters bearing up the spawner who was rubbing herself against Pegge’s hand.

  It seemed a shame to take her, but Walton had never balked at catching spawning fish. It was too late to dull his appetite. If she argued for the mirrors’ progeny, he was likely to contend that the sun and fertile weeds had generated them and treat her like an ignorant child again.

  Walton lowered the scarlet trap downstream, careful not to splash or cast a shadow. “I must lean out as far as I can. Hold me fast so I do not fall in.” His head swivelled around towards her. “You have the look of a trout fresh from the river. Are you ill, or sickening for something? Open your eyes. This is no time to fail me, Pegge.”

  “It is just the mulberries staining my face.” She gripped his breeches with her free hand. With the blood pooling in her head from hanging over the edge, the last thing she was thinking about was sliding the fat-bellied carp into a hot pan with oysters.

  Now Walton was urgent, and in command. “Just tease them into the bag,” he ordered. “Do not squeeze or push, just tickle them towards it—tickle them sweetly, and let them go.”

  5. MIRRORS

  Pegge was in the Deanery frying bread in dripping when Constance swept past with a plate full of lather and whiskers. She threw the soapy water into the courtyard, splashing Sadie, who had dug herself out of the flower bed to see what Con was bringing her.

  Pegge had returned from Sevenoaks with her father the previous night, for he had grown tired of cucumbers and rural conversation before the week was over. As soon as he had woken, he had blown his trumpet for his eldest daughter and asked her to untangle his hair and shave around his beard.

  When Con came back in, smoothing her dark gown, Pegge speared the hot crust and blew on it. “Will you teach me how to shave him, Con?”

  Con wiped the inside of the shaving plate and laid the razor across it. “There’s no need now that I am home.” She took a looking-glass out of her pocket and propped it on the shelf.

  “But you might marry again,” Pegge said, eating her fried bread.

  Con licked her finger and curled a strand of hair around it. The black curl stayed obediently in place as she stood back to consider the effect. Pegge had her father’s hair—thick reckless handfuls of auburn down to her waist. Up to now, she had thought it childish, twisting it into ropes to tame it, but this morning it held the fragrance of mulberries and Izaak Walton’s fingers. By the end of the day, it would reek of kitchen fat and coal-smoke once again.

  “Will you teach me, Bess?” Pegge squinted at her reflection in the grimy window, judging her hair too long to fasten up like Con’s.

  “Now the kitchenmaid has run off, I need you here.” Bess was ferrying goods from the larder to the kitchen table. “A load of cucumbers came from Sevenoaks this morning. This was on top of it, for the Dean’s daughter.” She pushed the bulky object towards Con.

  Con pressed another curl in place, then unwrapped the bright cloth around the parcel. Underneath was a thick layer of leaves. As she peeled them off, a clump of moss appeared with a puddle forming around it. When the moss expanded then contracted, Con took a quick step back.

  At the end of the moss, Pegge could see a large golden mouth opening and closing with a quiet sucking noise. She pulled out some green tufts to reveal a pair of eyes that bulged like a monk’s awakened from a long sleep. Then she stripped off the rest of the moss and saw a row of tiny longhaired Pegges reflected in the giant scales.

  Bess came around to look. “It’s a good enough fish,” she admitted, probing under the gills with a finger. “And it could not be fresher.”

  Pegge filled a deep pot, then slipped her hands under the fish and plunged it into the water. When the fish came up to the surface, she fed it a cube of bread soaked in milk.

  “Why does Mr Walton do such things?” Con asked, perplexed. “I have done nothing to merit this … this … flounder!” She wiped her hands on the cloth, realized it was wet, and threw it back onto the table.

  “A mirror carp,” Pegge corrected, “a love-poem from an angler.” She was already weighing and discarding inferior phrases, rehearsing her thank you to the fisherman, for she was sure the gift was meant for her, not Con.

  Con was taking a closer look at the scarlet cloth it had arrived in. “How did he get my bodice?”

  “You can’t wear that colour,” Bess said. “You’re in mourning.”

  Pegge crossed to the bucket, lifting the dipper to hide her face. It was good water from the conduit, not the muddy Thames. She took a long sip, then let the rest fountain off the dipper onto the carp. The mirror, she thought, feeding it another morsel.

  “So you took it, Pegge, and gave it to him,” Con said. “Is that why your face is red?”

  Bess slapped a bunch of leeks on the table and pushed a knife towards Con. Ignoring the chore, Con went back to the looking-glass, stretching the neck of her bodice this way and that to judge which would expose the most pale flesh.

  Pegge bent her ear to the carp. For a minute there was nothing, then a soft puk puk puk came out of the golden lips. The mirror had been sent to Dr Donne’s daughter, but Dr Donne had four daughters, not just Con, who seemed to think she ran the household. It was Pegge who had shown Walton the secret river. The fish had gone quiet again, and was listing to one side. Pegge held it under the water. When the carp surfaced, it made a quiet puk.

  “That’d be better off dead.” Bess heaved a foot onto the stool, then a second foot, and reached up to the ceiling to untie a string of garlic. Con was showered with dust as the bulbs fell onto the table. The stool wobbled and Bess stepped down, cursing the absent kitchenmaid. “Peel those,” she said to Con. “I’ve got a fish to cook on top of everything.”

  “Not everyone cares for garlic with fish,” Con said. “You can’t taste, Bess, because you can’t smell.” She kept on talking, though Bess was banging about the pantry. “There is plenty for you to do in the house without doing the cooking too. The bishop has offered us his second cook and I don’t see why—” A stack of pots fell over in the pantry and Con left the kitchen swiftly.

  Bess carried a joint of beef to the table. “I’ll need that dripping-pan,” she told Pegge crossly.

  Before Pegge could stop her, Bess was pulling the pan off the fire with her bare hand. She dropped it on the hearth, and smoke from the burning grease began to swirl out of the fireplace.

  Pegge sat her down and examined the red welt. “You should be more careful, Bess.” Pegge put some butter on the burn, then wound a strip of linen across and around the smarting hand, tying the ends snugly at the wrist.

  “That’ll need cleaning. Bring over some of your father’s malmsey.”

  Pegge splashed the bandage, then handed the jug to Bess who took a long pull and planted it at her elbow, not bothering to replace the stopper. Lately, there had been more of these accidents—burns and lesions, cuts in her large, roughened hands. Alarming nicks and bruises were appearing all over Bess’s arms and legs. She was now chopping the roots off the leeks and scoring the ends deeply, the knife flying dangerously high and fast.

  When had Bess got so old and stiff? Perhaps she would be safer out of the kitchen, though Pegge knew there was no point saying so. She stood the scored leeks in a pot of water to clean themselves. It was curious how the vegetable captured the grains of earth inside it as it grew. Pegge extracted a leek and scrutinized it. “What is it like to be in love?”

  Bess roused herself, looking in an exaggerated way from left to right, and Pegge dropped the leek back into the pot. As she suspected, Bess knew less than she did. Picking up the razor, Pegge scraped it across her arm, watching the hairs fly off one by one.

  Bess took the straight
-blade from Pegge’s hand, then reached for a slab of fat. “Why don’t you ask your father? He was the one who addled your mother’s brain with poetry.” She shaved off thin slices of fat, shifting her fingers a fraction with each stroke, then butted them over the joint, so that none of the meat showed. When the joint was larded, Bess took another gulp of malmsey and splashed a thimbleful on the bandage. “I hope this is nothing to do with giving your bodice to that fisherman. What were you doing all that time at Sevenoaks?”

  Pegge reached up to the mantel where Bess kept her ball of bits and pieces of string. Unravelling a long piece, Pegge looped it crossways around the meat. Bess pressed her finger on it while Pegge turned the string and knotted, turning and knotting until the fat was secured against the flesh. Then Pegge lifted down the spit and drove it through the beef. She fitted the spit into the grooves above the fire, sliding the dripping-pan underneath.

  This was the time that Pegge liked best, when the smells began to fill the kitchen. For the next half-hour, Bess would sit in her old chair and put up her feet, listening to the meat brown and sizzle. Often Pegge’s father would be drawn in from the library to inspect the joint. If things were behindhand, he would bluster about, saying he had half a mind to hire a proper cook, but one scowl from Bess would silence him and he would go off with a slice in his hand to tide him over until the meal was ready.

  Pegge knelt beside Bess and snugged up the damp bandage for her. “What was my mother like when she was my age?”

  “More womanly than you.” Bess snorted. “More like Constance and just as useless in the kitchen. At least peel that garlic while you’re talking. Not with that,” she said, as Pegge reached for the straight-blade. “Just crack it with your hands or it’ll take all day. Put some muscle behind it.”

  Sadie came to the doorway, settling down on her paws to watch the joint turning on the spit.

  “You’re an outside dog,” Bess warned, as Sadie crept forward. “You’ll get no food from this kitchen.” Bess snapped her apron to drive the dog back over the threshold, then heaved her feet off the stool. Lifting the carp by its tail, she looked it up and down. “Your mother once saw the Queen in a gown sewn all with mirrors. But she wasn’t full of eggs like this, for she never had a man.” The carp dripped all the way to the table.

  The row of mirrors was now flying off the fish towards Pegge. It was too late to explain how well the scales would have looked on a platter in front of her father. Bess cut off one red fin, then flipped the fish and cut off another, flipping and cutting from belly to back, back to belly until, pinning the head and cutting towards her injured hand in one final, brutal whack, she took off the last fin and the head together, barely missing her thumb. With a chop, the tail flew off, the trimmings fell onto the floor, and the carp lay mirrored in a pool of its own blood.

  The next Pegge knew, Bess was spooning out the roe and the head was trotting out the door in Sadie’s jaws. Sensing something amiss, the dog dropped it in the courtyard and backed away, trying to stare down the bulging eyes. The mouth made a plaintive puk, then the head tipped over and Sadie ran whining to the flower bed.

  Bess stabbed her knife into the table. “I was just a servant, and before I knew a thing, your mother had thrown away her dowry and was no better than a servant herself. That’s love for you, better left to dogs.” She wiped her forehead with a rag. “Stay away from it, Pegge. Let your father find you a husband, like he did for Constance. But first you have to get your monthlies. If you don’t hop to it, little Betty will get them before you.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t talk about it, Bess.” The kitchen was far too hot. The rope of hair was heavy on Pegge’s neck and the smell of the joint was turning her stomach. She shoved the heap of peeled garlic towards Bess and stood up.

  “That’ll never do,” Bess said, pushing her back down. “I’ll need four times that.”

  Pegge went over to the shaving mirror to remove the fish scales that had landed on her face, but one of them began to bleed. “The scales won’t come off.”

  “Come into the light.” Bess pulled Pegge over to the door and tugged her hair to tilt her head back.

  “What is it, Bess?”

  “As if I didn’t have enough trouble. Now you’ve come all over with a blistering rash.” Bess rubbed at Pegge’s cheek with her finger. “It’s your skin itself that’s scaling. Bless you, Pegge Donne, you’ve got the pox. I hope you didn’t catch this from that fisherman of yours.”

  Pegge smelt the carp all through the house, but tasted none of it, for Doctor Foxe forbade strong foods and salt foods and sugary foods and solid foods, confining Pegge to her room so her sisters would not risk disfigurement. Allowed only bread soaked in milk, she concluded that his treatment for every illness was to deprive his patients of all comforts.

  On his way back from a sermon, her father was intercepted by a letter from Con warning him about the smallpox. He wrote to Pegge, saying, I am in fear for your life. In the next sentence, he announced that he would detour to Uncle Grymes’s house at Peckham rather than risk contagion at the Deanery.

  In the daytime, Pegge dreamt of lying with Izaak Walton beside the curves of a sinewy green river, but at night, when she could not control her thoughts, she dreamt of eating. In a small book, Pegge made a list of fishes she would devour when Doctor Foxe allowed it. She drew a river that rambled across the pages from a cold, clear winterbourne, through slow middle reaches, and finally into the broad flat-marshes of an estuary. Adding pictures of fish to be found along the way, she wrote meticulous notes on their bait and habitat to show to Walton. But though she waited day after day, he did not come.

  By now, Walton would have hunted down the monstrous pike and tamed it to feed from bread-paste in his hand. Even now, he might be carrying the prize towards the Deanery to share with her. First, open your pike at the gills, she wrote in the sextodecimo,

  and if need be, cut also a little slit towards the belly. Out of these, take his guts; and keep his liver, which you are to shred very small with thyme, sweet marjoram, and a little winter-savoury; to these put some pickled oysters, and some anchovies, two or three; both these last whole, for the anchovies will melt, and the oysters should not; to these, you must add also a pound of sweet butter, which you are to mix with the herbs that are shred, and let them all be well salted. If the pike be more than a yard long, then you may put into these herbs more than a pound, or if he be less, then less butter will suffice.

  If fat slathered around beef heightened its flavour, surely butter would sweeten a bony pike? But if it melted straight out of the pike’s belly more would be needed in the sauce. She filled yet another page in the tiny book.

  Let him be roasted very leisurely; and often basted with claret wine, and anchovies, and butter, mixed together; and also with what moisture falls from him into the pan. When you have roasted him sufficiently, to the sauce you are to add a fit quantity of the best butter, and to squeeze the juice of three or four oranges. Lastly, you may either put it into the pike, with the oysters, two cloves of garlic, and take it whole out, when the pike is cut off the spit; or, to give the sauce a haut goût, let the dish into which you let the pike fall be rubbed with it: The using or not using of this garlic is left to your discretion.

  Pegge was certain this dish would be most tasty, for she had put everything she fancied into it. On the cover, she drew a handsome pike lying in the pickerel weeds with his loyal mate beside him. Then she wrapped up the sextodecimo and addressed it to Mr Izaak Walton of Fleet street, near Chancery lane.

  Not even a minnow arrived from Fleet street in response. She began to think that something had befallen him. Perhaps he too was laid up with the pox. It seemed to attack the furthest points of flesh—the hands, the feet, and the complexion. She thought of his sweet bruised ankles and his smile, and wondered who would care for him.

  Each night, Bess stripped Pegge to the waist and rubbed her with cream to stop the itching. Pegge’s eyes were bathed with a cotton ball
dipped in saltwort-water, the relief immediate and exquisite. Each morning, Pegge woke to the scent of almonds clinging to her skin, her breasts like tender, aching buds.

  Giving her a sponge bath after a week, Bess pointed out the straight sparse hairs between Pegge’s legs. Only so much as a brown mallard, thought Pegge, blushing, or a speckled fowl. But at least they were not falling out like the hairs on her head, which were coming out by handfuls. Nothing could slow the ravage of the pox, not even the gentian violet painted on her scalp. First the scales on her cheeks turned into pustules, then they plumped up like mulberries and burst with a running pus. Even Con was moved to compassion, begging Pegge through the door not to scratch the sores and blight her hopes of marriage.

  Fearless of contagion, Bess lay beside Pegge through the hot nights, telling her stories to drive off the persecuting dreams of food. Ill with hunger, Pegge cried out for radishes, but the doctor still insisted that the disease be starved, else it would get a foothold in her stomach. When Pegge could not eat another spoonful of bread-in-milk, Bess brought up an apron-load of the Dean’s cucumbers, cold and smelling of the country. She pared the largest, dropping the narrow green peels right on the bed, as Pegge’s eyes hungered after each long, rivering pull of the knife.

  “Nothing in it but water, in case that doctor asks,” Bess said, handing the white fruit to Pegge, and reaching for another one to peel.

  At last the pox retreated, taking Pegge’s hair with it. Her head felt lightly bulbous, an angelica flower bobbing on a reedy stalk. The boils scabbed over, tightening the skin across her cheekbones. When Doctor Foxe declared the danger past, her father brought in some codlings from his tree and knelt at her bedside, thanking God that it had not much disfigured her who had it. Little Betty was more honest. You look like a six-spotted moth, she said, counting the scabs on Pegge’s cheek.