For a dagger like this one has a special feature: On impact the skilled user simply twists the hilt so that it snaps off. The glass blade then sets sail through the nearest organs and nothing can stop it: no victim can reach in through the wound to clutch the blade, for on contact it slices his probing fingers. Slippery with blood and the slime of punctured organs, it tunnels deeper into the flesh. The more the victim thrashes in agony, the deeper voyages the little dagger. If the victim lies still, then so does the dagger, but even an intake of breath will send the knife on its way again, like a breeze lifting the sails of a lake-bound boat. No surgeon can reach the victim in time to stop the onset of gangrene. Even an unconscious patient starts to melt within a few hours of ingesting the glass through his skin.
All these images pass through his mind even as he spins on his left foot. His eyes must have snapped shut a moment, for now he opens them. He is astonished to see that his supposed attacker—still in translucent white and faintly haloed with dust from the stage curtains—is none other than Mimosina Dolcezza herself, who has stolen up on him from behind on her tiny slippered feet.
And it’s out of his mouth before he can stop it, an ignominious piece of Irish: “Holy Jesus, it’s herself. I nearly had a canary!”
Instantly, he blushes hotly, hating himself, every Cork corpuscle.
But her face is expressionless, allowing him to paint upon it the sentiments that best suit himself. She stands still. Her only movement, and that propelled by the hot breath of his exclamation, is the jitter of the bird-trembler ornament worked into the silver-gilt of her feathered hair clip.
She didn’t understand a syllable of it, he tells himself. And of course the poor creature is a-tickle with the nerves herself.
“Don’t be afraid, my dear,” he says gently, barely suppressing his breathless palpitations. “I have only come to take you to have supper.”
She smiles and fixes her eyes on his. She does not visibly notice the stains of “Quietness” on his rising and falling shirt.
Then she half curtsies, half bows, humbly indicating not only her agreement to his proposal but also her gratitude for it. The bird-trembler in her hair nods vigorously. As she rises she fixes upon him a look that could break more marriages than a war.
Thus shall all be as it should be, he tells himself. There’s been no one else at her; I can see it at a glance.
His breathing judders to a slower rate. He is even pleased that she shows no desire to change her costume, the same persuasive item low-cut in white, or clean away her paint. Her hair is still dressed as for the performance, fanned out in a graceful puff around her face and trailing in long curls down her back. She opens the door to her room, and without looking in the mirror simply draws on a ruffled cap and throws a cloak, also evidently from the theater’s wardrobe, over her dress. This shows a becoming degree of compliancy and eagerness. She walks quietly beside him down the corridors to the door where his carriage is waiting. Neither her footsteps nor her breath make any sound and he is forced to steal many glances to his side to make sure she still accompanies him. Each time he is more captivated by her sweet profile. It is but lightly swathed in stage paint, and he chooses to find it all the more modest for not being naked to his inspection.
As the carriage moves away a white face appears under a lamp: an Italian face, subtle and attractive. It watches the actress settling back under the furs provided by her new companion, and it registers a look of intense, though refined, displeasure.
Valentine Greatrakes sees nothing but the woman gazing up at him. Even without touching, she has a caressing way with her. He is already becalmed in her soft, wet eye.
• 5 •
Consummate Broth
Take a Capon (pick’d, drawn, and cut into pieces); Sheeps Trotters and Calves Feet, each 4; Shavings of Hartshorn and Ivory, each half an ounce; yellow Sanders 3 drams; Dates 20; Raisins of the Sun stoned 4 ounces; Pearl Barley 1 ounce; boil these in Spring-Water 1 gallon to 2 quarts, adding when it’s almost boil’d enough, Ox-Eye Flowers dried. Herbs of Colts Foot, Maiden Hair, Sage of Jerusalem, each 1 handful; Mace 2 Blades; 1 Nutmeg; Malaga Sack 1 pint; strain it out.
It’s a commodious Prescription… Digested with little trouble, assimilated without effervescence, easily distributed, soon agglutinated, and not presently dissipated by the Heat of the Body. Moreover it yields such a soft, kindly and glutinous Juice, that it qualifies the saline, hard, pricking Particles of the Blood…
Her rooms are luxuriously appointed and the maid discreet in a way that can only be expensive. The girl curtsies once, lowering a head clad in a round-eared cap, and disappears instantly.
Valentine is gratified to see that arrangements have already been made for the supper. So he shall have no need to send out to a cookshop for food of which neither is likely to enjoy the consuming. Not that he begrudges the expense. No, he’ll not be stinting on the hundred thousand ways he’ll show he’s grateful. But he would have mourned the hemorrhage of time spent negotiating over her delicate appetite and the wait while the servant was instructed, the dishes procured, portered, laid out and served, taken away. Valentine Greatrakes is not a man who likes to bury his nose in the ceremonial trough. He prefers to eat a little, here and there, and that something simple that may be dispatched without ceremony in order to proceed swiftly to more interesting matters.
A table is decked out in the Continental style. Pure spermaceti candle flame hovers over crystal and porcelain arranged like the board of a complicated, risky game. The wine has been decanted and the rosy tints of two glasses tell him that it has been aired as well. He is impressed, and a little apprehensive.
Mimosina Dolcezza speaks for the first time.
“Please,” she says, smiling toward the more elaborate chair at the table, and forever after Valentine will remember that this is the first word she said to him, and that she offered him the better place.
In his pocket, his fingers push the disgraced “Quietness” aside and close round the other little phials he has brought as a precaution. For the fish course: a little Black Drop, opium dissolved in wild crab juice; for the dessert course, a tranquilizing elixir of paregoric, alcohol, opium, benzoic acid, oil of aniseed, and camphor: strangely the very same concoction his quacks sell to mollify scrotal tumors in chimney-sweeps, a very frequent hazard of their occupation, but also known to be a great soother of tense ladies. He has discreetly taken a drop while she was moving her shawl, not that he’s tense himself, of course, just properly tensed for pleasure.
It’s lovely here. In the whole of my natural-born life I’ve not seen a room as sweet as this. She has a way with the hanging of a curtain, and the choosing of a flower.
But his belly soon seizes up when he sees the feast her servant lays before him. In succession, he is forced to frame his lips to a thick and glistening soup of unknowable provision, to strange protuberant vegetables dressed in piquant oils. The fish lies glaring on the plate with three slender eels plaited around it. And for the meat, no pie but mysterious yielding nuggets soaked in some kind of perfumed cream.
And the drinks—everything but honest ale! Everything infused with swarthy flavors of something else. And finally a glass of brandy with an egg yolk beaten into it.
She says almost nothing while they eat. Just “Please” again, and again, pointing to the new dishes arriving and then again to make sure he takes a second helping. She smiles at his evident amazement, taking it, no doubt, as pleasure.
The sight of his hostess is more appetizing than the dinner. And clearly the fascination’s mutual. She notifies him of the fact in bodily language. From the way she looks at the food travelling into his mouth, he can tell that she longs to kiss him. From the fluttering of her eyelashes as he takes a long swig of the flavored water he divines her desire to have him do the same with her. And from the luster of her eyes he realizes with a flush that she desires not merely the deed of kind with him, but that she already feels something else for him: a tenderness, a
welling affection.
He is not even sure if she is painted, after all. Her coral lips have left no imprint on any of the glasses at dinner. The delicate shadows that enlarge her eyes are naturalistic in color. If she is painted, then it is as if her paint has united with her skin instead of merely lying atop it.
With soft gestures, she mimes a question. Would he like her to sing? A private performance, in the intimacy of her own room?
Why not? It can only delay things a little, and give him time to digest the difficult food before the main part of the evening’s entertainment. He smiles and mimes the applause that she will soon merit, holding his large hands up to his face.
And so she sings. Her voice, without accompaniment, tinkles in volleys of delicate notes. It is an Italian love song. That is, it can only be a love song, the way her face glows and her eyes fill with dew. Even her tiny ears are translucent with love in the candlelight.
She really means it. The thought cuts through him.
She’s singing about me.
It can only be that famed phenomenon, thinks Valentine, his belly swilling alarmingly and a multitude of bats beating their wings in his chest, love at first sight.
Love at first sight, that the women sigh for and the poets find such good meat for their productions. He knows he is a handsome man, and that his height and figure are worthy of admiring attention, but he feels in his heart that even after such a short time this discriminating woman has fallen for something more visceral, that she has divined the pure animating soul of Valentine Greatrakes and that she alone of all the women he has known has found just the right things about him to love. He does not know if her extraordinary perceptiveness comes from a kind of native intelligence of her own, or if he has suddenly, perhaps as a result of Tom’s death, become transparent, and the coincidence of their meeting so soon after—why, he saw her first the same day he heard of the murder—has rendered him permeable to the sudden adoration of an unknown woman.
He has been in Venice many times, known not a few Venetian women, and her repertoire of subtly beckoning gestures is familiar to him. But there is something quite different! There is no doubting the genuine passion that is being enacted in front of him, albeit softened by a becoming modesty. Valentine thinks of Massimo Tosi and his description of the actress as a kind of nun. He understands now what the inarticulate fellow was stumbling at.
Suddenly he is anxious to lead her to her predestined altar: the bedroom. He is afire to unwrap and suckle her breasts, slide over her belly, and to heave himself into her peach-fish, her warm place, and not stop, not for a very, very long time.
He’s known lust before, but nothing like this. All previous desires seem by comparison mere bridesmaids of feelings, bystanders to a main event, palavering about trivialities, nothing but dust to this.
It seems she feels the same way, for as he shifts in his chair, she too is wriggling and frowning slightly, and they rise as one and turn to the archway which must only lead to the bedroom. They have not yet touched but the air between them hangs slackly It seems they both feel weakened by their passion for they too sag on their feet and walk limply toward the open door of the chamber.
Valentine feels a great commotion in his trews and a terror at the thought of hurting her, for the desire he feels is fierce enough to tear the woman in half. A dizzying parade of images passes swiftly in front of him, in which he mounts her in every position, from the nun’s habit to the dog’s marriage, in swift and unrelenting succession, and yet he cannot be satisfied and keeps turning her over and over and over, juggling with her on his fifth limb, aching to spend himself and yet unable to forgo another variation.
And I’ve not even put a finger on her yet.
The bedroom is dramatic, hung with heavy purple curtains at both bed and window. But it feels troublingly insubstantial, like a stage set. An anxiety befalls him that the walls are false, concealing giggling boys with ropes, and he takes another swig from the cloudy brandy glass still clenched in his hand.
She makes gestures to indicate that she must leave him a moment, no doubt to make some intimate preparations to welcome him. She disappears along a curtained passageway. He hears a noise that tells him no expense has been spared in her equipage—the latest Bramah water closet has been fitted here.
He wonders if he should undress himself completely, or if she has reserved that pleasure for herself. He imagines her fingers plucking at his buttons and feels as if they might burst beforehand.
When she returns to the room, still in her gown, there’s no time left. He doesn’t even want to undress her. It would be too intimate. He’s unwilling to be naked in front of her. He doesn’t want to touch her hair.
He picks her up around the waist and carries her to the bed, slides his fingers through the minimum number of his own buttonholes with the speed of a laundress and mounts her, finding what he wants instantly and embedding himself there. And it’s archery, it’s racetrack, it’s falling down a well, but at the last moment it is more like a slow smile, utterly complicit.
It is over in a few minutes and he is too shy to kiss her flushed, grateful face. He waits, poised above her, for a second wave of desire to hoist his rig again. But after several moments it has not come, and he can no longer look down on her face, lest he meet her eyes.
His mind still reels and he remembers that she called out “Signore!” at the last moment. As far as he knows, this means “my lord!” and he is most gratified by it, for it signifies that Mimosina Dolcezza sees him as a nobleman, and not as he is, a parentless snipe of the gutter, risen in his fortunes but not in his blood.
He dismounts with tender care. They lie side by side on the bed. He realizes that he still does not know if she speaks English. But he wants to tell her things about his childhood, to be kissed sweet and comforting for them, about how it smothered the heart in his breast the night he saw her in the theater, only yesterday. He wants to compliment her face and figure (though the latter he has not yet unwrapped, and in the brief congress there was not time even to find a nipple or a buttock to squeeze). He wants to tell her about Tom, and to have her console him.
For the first time in his life, he doesn’t want to leave the bed he has just enjoyed. His fingertips flitter at his sides but he dares not reach out to touch her. He wants to stay and hold her; just to feel her breathing in his arms.
But he does not know how to tell her this. Like a dog with a docked tail he strains ineffectually to demonstrate his delight in her. The unaccustomed words fail to rise in his throat. He does not even know the gestures for them. Instead he stares and smiles in the dark, nodding like a madman.
He dozes briefly, wakes to find her looking at him, and he rouses himself to a second mounting, slower and sweeter this time, but still he is too shy to remove either his clothes or hers. In the early hours he rises and kisses her, dresses and slips out to his carriage, waking the coachman with a smart tap on his cap, and together in companionable silence they drive back to Bankside.
• 6 •
An Electuary of Satyrion
Take candy’d Satyrion root 2 ounces; candy’d Eryngo root 1 ounce; candy’d Nutmeg half an ounce; Juice of ground Kermes, Spirit of Clary, each 2 drams; long Pepper powder’d 16 grains, mix.
It’s an Aphrodisiac, and after a singular manner, restores People that are Consumptive and Emaciated. The Dose 2 or 3 drams. Evening and Morning with a glass of old Malaga or Tent Wine.
He awakes with a single thought in mind: a diamond brooch for Mimosina Dolcezza.
He sends for Dizzom and relates his requirements in as calm a voice as he can conjure. He wants one hundred diamond brooches so that the actress may have a choice of all the most scintillating sparklers London has to offer. By early afternoon the news has saturated the light-fingered fraternity: All the thieves of the manor know that they would be well advised to supply one not-paltry diamond brooch to the Bankside depository inside the week if they wish to stay on cordial terms with Valentine Greatrakes
.
Even within a day, diamonds from Golconda to Brazil are raining on Bankside like a fall of stars. They arrive concealed in sleeves, handkerchiefs, under caps and in one case inside a wooden leg, which is also left as if integral to the jewel’s setting. So many diamonds arrive that Valentine draws pleasing comparisons between his own fortunate mistress and the Queen of France, who has recently convulsed all Europe with the purchase of a necklace of a mere six hundred and forty-seven dazzlers.
Dizzom labels the brooches carefully with enigmatic signs and pins them in pleasing sequences to boards padded with velvet. A carpenter skilled in the false linings of coffins is commissioned to build a display case and it is made known that the final date for delivery of jewels will be the following Friday morning, promptly at noon.
Looking on the glittering contents, Valentine is suddenly reminded of Tom, who always loved diamonds, the hard glitter of them, and their easy disposability It was Tom’s old list of favored jewelers they had worked through: every one of the local thieves knows that a true connoisseur of diamonds is employed by Valentine Greatrakes, though few would guess it had been Tom.
On a table in the apartments of Mimosina Dolcezza, that Friday night, he sees the papers bewailing the raids on noble jewelers all over the city. He wonders why she takes the Daily Universal Register and its strident ilk: her English is probably so poor that she must struggle with their inflated prose. But she must understand something, for he sees that she has cut out some of the advertisements for female products and that she studies them with an enlarging glass. And she has acted on the publicity, and sent out for what it offers. Godfrey’s Cordial, Hooper’s Female Pills, Dr James’s Fever Powders all bestrew her table and there is evidence that the packaging has been broached.
The Remedy: A Novel of London & Venice Page 8
