Feud (5 page)

“Now,” said Nick, “see how you get on with the yellow ground here. Just lay it on in the shape I have done in charcoal. Have no fear if you make a mistake, for I can take it off again with my palette knife.”

I squinted my eyes a little and started dabbing
carefully. Sarah came back from changing into her own clothes and I never even noticed. I barely saw her leave, but I heard her saying something about needing to take the air in the courtyard, where the players are at practise again, and Olwen replied, “Yes, my lady,” very cynically. Lady Horsley went with them, I think, but she moves quietly so sometimes you don't realise she's there at all.

After a short time I thought I had finished. Nick looked at what I had done and announced that it was “passing excellent for a novice!” So I was very pleased.

I noticed Sarah had left a little pile of broken sugar ribbons by the high stool she had been using. All the concentrating had made me hungry, so I wandered over to the pile of sugar ribbons and picked one up to nibble on it.…

Suddenly someone swooped up behind me and knocked it out of my hand. I swung round to see who it was and found it was Mrs. Teerlinc. I was so surprised I just stared.

“Really, Lady Grace, do you not like your life?” she asked, and she was almost shouting, which is most unlike the way she usually is—so friendly and kind. So I stood there, staring, with my mouth open.

She took my wrist gingerly. “Look at you!” she
said, more gently. “Your hands are covered with paint.”

Well, it was true, they were—unlike Mrs. Teerlinc and Nick and the other limners, I had somehow managed to get my fingers as covered with yellow paint as I normally do with ink.

“I—I'm sorry, mistress,” I stammered. “I'll wash them at once, but I really don't think I got my gown dirty—”

“No, no,” she said, smiling a little. “It is not your kirtle I worry about, my dear, it is you. Did you not know some paints are poisonous? Above all others, the yellow paint made with orpiment. If you eat it at all you could become ill or even die. Never, ever eat or drink while you are painting.”

I was amazed and then thought I'd better curtsey in case she wouldn't let me paint any more. “I'm sorry; I didn't realise. I won't do it again,” I said.

“Good. Now go to Nick and he will show you how to clean your hands properly.”

I went to the corner of the Workroom where Nick was busy pounding ceruse white again.

“Is it true?” I asked him. “Are paints poisonous?”

“Most of them are,” he replied. “Some of them are quite deadly. It depends what kind. It would amaze you to know the strange things they make
paint from. There is a yellow colour I have heard tell of that is made from the urine of cows fed on a special kind of leaf in the Indies.”

That didn't surprise me, knowing Ellie as I do. They sometimes use ten-day-old urine to clean clothes in the laundry. It makes you think twice about wearing your shirts, really it does.

“But that's not poisonous,” I pointed out, “only nasty.”

“True, but white paint, made with mercury, sends alchemists mad,” said Nick, looking very serious. He waved the pestle to show me the white fragments on the end that he was grinding fine. “It is so poisonous, the grinding must be done perfectly. And the yellow colour you were using is made with orpiment, which comes from volcanoes and is deadly. It is sometimes used to poison rats, for it has no taste or smell.”

Then Nick made his voice sound deep and ghoulish. “Why, if you accidentally swallowed some of it, you would become sleepy, sick, and dizzy. Soon you would be vomiting with a taste of metal in your mouth and terrible pains in your belly, so you would feel as if you had eaten a rat alive, that was gnawing its way out of your stomach.…”

“Ugh,” I said, and shuddered.

“… and then you would fall into a deathlike sleep and die,” Nick finished, looking triumphant.

After that, I paid attention when he showed me how to clean my hands carefully with a rag, and then rinse my fingers with nasty-smelling turpentine, and then wash with lye and water until my hands were pink.

It sounds horrible to die of orpiment. It's a good thing Mrs. Teerlinc was so quick.

Hell's teeth! I have just realised it will soon be dinnertime and I must go. The players are still in the courtyard. Now Richard Fitzgrey is practising standing on his hands—only he isn't at all good at it, and keeps falling over. You'd think all the ladies watching would think less of him for not being able to do something Masou does every day. But no, there they are gasping every time he crashes to the ground, as if he were in danger.

This is in ink because I have somehow mislaid my graphite pens, Jove blast it. By the way, that's not swearing, I got it from the play we had. I came especially to see how Carmina was faring and perhaps
start to divine the mystery of what ails her. As the Queen's most privy Lady Pursuivant, I had best keep in practice, and besides, I hate to see Carmina so sad and tired and weak.

Only I know not how I can investigate anything with such a rabble of girls around! I don't know how they do it; I really don't. We are all here—all six Maids of Honour, that is—and the noise would put a flock of starlings to shame. Nobody has been saying anything with much sense in it at all, and Carmina is presently fast asleep—which is probably just as well because the din would give anyone a relapse.

But perhaps I am being unfair, for that was interesting. Just as I was writing of the starlings, Mary Shelton started talking to Penelope about diseases.

“It isn't a gaol fever,” she said, “because there's no fever. And it's not smallpox, because she had that when she was a little girl, and—”

“I do hope she gets better soon,” said Lady Sarah solicitously. “Her family have had a lot of bad luck recently. Look at what happened to her father at the New Year.…”

“What was that?” asked Lady Jane, who isn't good at remembering gossip that doesn't directly involve her.

“He was hurt in the jousting tournament,” said
Mary Shelton patiently. “Don't you remember? The horse slipped just at the moment when the two were going to meet and—”

“Fell right through the barrier onto the other horse and knocked it down,” put in Penelope, excitedly.

“And poor Carmina's father had his leg broken!” finished Lady Sarah.

“It was lucky the bone didn't go through the flesh, for then it would have had to be cut off,” Mary added ghoulishly. “Once any air touches the bone it rots and you can die.”

“But it didn't,” said Sarah. “He's at home getting better now.”

“The other one was killed, though,” Penelope pointed out. “It was terribly tragic, because he was in his first ever proper joust, and he just fell off awkwardly and broke his neck. By the time they took his helmet off, he was dead!”

“Poor Sir John Willoughby was devastated when he was recovered enough to be told,” Sarah remarked, sounding thrilled. “He said he had rather it was the other way about, him dead and the boy with his leg broken. He swears he will never joust again, even when his leg is mended.”

“It sounds like something that happened to me when I was in France,” put in Lady Jane. “There was
a young nobleman who was desperately in love with me, and I gave him my kerchief as a favour because he was quite handsome and rich. Then he was just showing me how his horse could stand on its back legs, when it fell right over onto the nobleman. He broke his leg, too. I was devastated.”

Lady Sarah rolled her eyes. “Served him right for showing off,” she said. “Did you laugh?”

“No, of course I didn't!” snapped Lady Jane. “I was terribly concerned, and I visited his bedside in my best new damask kirtle embroidered with
fleurs de lys.
…”

One of the reasons why Lady Jane is so elegant, and gives herself such airs and graces, is because she spent two years at the French Court while her father was an Ambassador there. The French Court is the most fashionable in Europe, so of course Lady Jane thinks she knows much more than any of us about Court fashions, which really annoys Lady Sarah, who hasn't been anywhere except England. The Queen herself, of course, has never been anywhere else— and doesn't give a fig for the French or any other foreigners.

I am glad poor Carmina is sleeping now, for she has had hardly any peace. I've been here all afternoon keeping her company, and it has been like
Cheapside on market day what with all the coming and going. After I dined in the parlour with the other Maids and Ladies-in-Waiting—but not the Queen, for she was closeted with her papers—Mrs. Champernowne made up a tray for Carmina. When she asked if any of us would carry it for her, I offered, as I thought it would give me reason to sit with Carmina and perhaps learn more about her mysterious malady.

When we came in, we found Carmina had dribbled a little on the pillowcase in her sleep. So while she was sitting up to try and eat, I got her another one from the chest and put the old one in the pile of laundry by the door.

Just then, Carmina got a cramp in her belly and had to rush to the little garderobe in the corner where the close-stool is. While she was behind the curtain, being sick, Ellie came in to collect the dirty laundry. She peered round the bedpost at the garderobe and dropped a curtsey to Carmina as she came out slowly and climbed back into bed.

“She's pale, i'n't she?” Ellie hissed at me. “It's not the plague, is it?” She made horns with her fingers to ward off bad luck. “It's too early in the year for that, surely?”

“Nobody thinks it is plague!” I scolded Ellie.
“Don't be wood. If there were
any
chance of it, the Privy Council would have made the Queen leave immediately and we'd all be locked up in here to die!”

“Not me,” said Ellie. “Or anyway, I wouldn't die. I've had it. Got it the last time it came and you never get it twice. That was what did for my ma and pa, you know. Look, see? I've still got scars on me neck and me armpits.”

She showed me the ones on her neck, which are about the size of ha'pennies and are where the buboes burst.

“The ones in my armpits are really big,” she said. “The buboes hurt something terrible until they burst, and then the pus was all stinking and oozing down, but I felt much better.…”

I didn't really want to hear any more, because I haven't had plague and it's always frightening to know that there's a sickness you can catch in the morning which could kill you by nightfall.

“My ma and pa didn't get buboes,” Ellie went on, looking sad. “They might 'ave lived if they did. They just went black all over and died.”

I touched her arm. I didn't really know what to say, because it made me think of my own parents and how sad it was that I couldn't see my mother ever
again until Judgement Day. Ellie and I are both orphans, even though we have such different lives. Masou is, too—his mother died when he was born, and after they came to England, his father took sick with the cold and the damp and got consumption and died.

“So anyway,” said Ellie, forcing herself to perk up, “it ain't plague. So what is it?”

Just then Carmina sighed and put down the chicken tartlet she was nibbling. “It doesn't even taste good any more,” she said fretfully. “There's this nasty taste in my mouth all the time. Will you pass me a sweetmeat, Grace? At least they're still nice.”

I passed her some apple leather and she managed to eat a little before lying back again. She looked tired and sad and a moment later she dozed off.

“Well, nobody else is sickening,” said Ellie with authority. The laundry always knows first when there's an illness going round. “So maybe it's something she ate.”

“I suppose it could be, though she's hardly eating anything at all,” I replied thoughtfully.

“Well, if it's not that, it's got to be a curse or a spell then,” said Ellie, hefting up the laundry basket
and putting it on her head, where it balanced. “See you later, hope she don't die.”

No sooner had Ellie left than my uncle, Dr. Cavendish, arrived in his furred cramoisie and black brocade gown, followed by Mr. Durdon, who is his barber-surgeon. I like Mr. Durdon. He is a small, bald man, quiet, with stubby fingers, and he always dresses in black cloth so as the blood won't show. He carries his instruments in a leather roll.

Luckily, even though it was after dinner, my Uncle Cavendish was not very drunk and only smelled a little of wine. “Now, Carmina,” he said kindly, “I hear you are a little unwell. And as my dear coz is here, we need not wait for Mrs. Champernowne.”

Uncle Cavendish sometimes calls me his coz because although he knows perfectly well I am his niece, he doesn't like to think about my mother, whom he misses very much. He never used to drink so much before she died.

He sat down next to Carmina upon the bed, and laid his long hands on her forehead and temples and then her throat and wrists.

“Why do you do that?” I asked curiously, eager to learn all I could in hopes of discovering the cause of Carmina's sickness.

“It is part of the physician's art,” he replied, with his eyes shut and his fingers still on Carmina's wrists. “There are twelve pulses in the body that teach us of the four humours, and so each must be felt.”

I stayed silent so he could feel them.

“Hmm,” he said at last. “As Mrs. Champernowne says, there is no fever, but your pulses are a little disarranged. Perhaps there is an overplus of melancholy, which would account for the megrim and the vomitus. Have you voided at all?”

This is a physician's way of asking if she had been to the close-stool.

“Yes,” said Carmina. “It was nasty-smelling.”

“Has it been cleaned? No? Oh, very good.” He went to the garderobe and lifted the curtain to peer into the close-stool. “Hmm,” he said again, as if it were a very interesting book. “Well, well.”

He came back and sat next to Carmina once more. “Now,” he said, “Mr. Durdon?”

Mr. Durdon came forward and put a small glass pot on the little table beside Carmina's bed. She looked at it nervously.

“Next time you must answer the call of nature, I desire you to pee into this pot and send it to me immediately,” Uncle Cavendish said, and Carmina nodded. Physicians always scry people's water if they
are sick. Sometimes they even taste it! I am so glad women are not allowed to be proper physicians.