Viper Wine (40 page)

T
WO
G
UESSING
G
AMES

Prosopagnosia
– commonly, face-blindness. A term first used in 1947 by Joachim Bodamer, a German neurologist, describing a young man who after sustaining a gun-shot wound to a particular region of the head, failed to recognise friends, family and even his own face.

IT WAS AN
ignoble situation in which to find himself. But Kenelm could not recognise his wife. He thought he saw Venetia in a painting, or at the window of a sedan chair, or a balcony; as soon as he looked back, he knew he was mistaken. Sometimes the women looked nothing like her, and his stupidity sent a tremor through him. He had heard about a man struck by a palsy that robbed him of his ability to read playing cards, but affected him in no other wise.

Sir Kenelm considered his wife’s face was no less beautiful than it had been, nor older, nor sadder, nor different in any ways that he could discover. It had only lost a certain ‘this-ness’ or
haecceitas
that made it her own. She looked most fair, admirably fair, only she did not look like herself. But where would the subtle Dr Duns Scotus, author of the concept of self-sameness, have located her
haecceitas
? In which element of her features did it reside?

Kenelm always thought he knew her face so well – until he saw Venetia again after an absence, and her face surpassed all his imaginings. She was the master copy; all other versions of her were clumsy approximations. But now, he felt as if his memory was more accurate than what he saw. What defines a face from any other? A jot, a drop, a tare, a whit, a corn – how to measure the tiny gradations that define a nose, which give an eye character, which make your lover’s well-turned cheek their own?

Kenelm beheld the Queen’s ladies preparing for the masque, assembled in the great hall with three dancing masters in attendance. He watched through the wide lattice of the upper chamber, searching for his wife. He could not distinguish her. He felt his brain at work as he scanned the ladies’ faces, and the fusiform gyrus of the bilateral extrastriate area of his brain, later identified as the area responsible for face recognition, started to throb, deep behind his ears. It grew warm, and ticked within the pulpy wetness of his
pia mater.
Still he could not see her. The women turned back and forth. He noticed Olive, Lady Vavasour, Lady Finch and little Anne Ogilvy. His fusiform gyrus glowed as he saw them. He recognised them spontaneously, as if they were printed words. He did not read each of their letters in turn – the shape of their nose, the bridge of their brow, the distance between their eyes, the a, e, i, o, u. Instead, he read the whole face. And yet his loved one’s face was lost to him. The fusiform gyrus of his bilateral extrastriate area pulsed and whirred with effort.

Perhaps, dreamed Sir Kenelm, he could recognise his wife by means of the application of an Instrument of Measurement, a Theodolitus, a Pantometer, Alhibab, or othersuch Ingeniose Device, which he might use to search and define the contours of her lips and nose, like Archimedes’ Burning-Glasses, from a distance. But were his compasses sharp enough? Could he divide her face into 80, 120 vectors? This would be the standard measurement for facial recognition software.

Face-catchers in alleys, byways and palace balconies ought to be equipped with night-vision capability and pre-programed to recognise, for instance, a wife. They would depend upon measurements on a sub-millimetre or ‘microwave’ scale, in order that a face might be rendered as a precise mathematical space. Useful to any husband, he reasoned.

Sir Kenelm wanted to track the changes to her face, to map and model it with callipers every day so he could learn to recognise it again. He would have his own astrolabe for keeping sight of her beauty, and have it always in his pocket—

Venetia interrupted his reverie by waving. Of course, when she blew a kiss to him, or when he heard her voice, or felt her animating spirit, all his doubts fell away, and the ranks of alternative Venetias crowding his brain shrank to nothing. Problems begot problems, but certainty was its own reward.

‘Inigo Jones greatly approved of the paintings, and in order to be able to study them better, threw off his coat, put on his eyeglasses and together with the King began to study them very closely . . . As the King had removed the names of the painters, which I had [affixed] to each picture . . . Inigo Jones boasts of having attributed almost all the paintings correctly.’

From a letter by Papal envoy Gregorio Panzani, 1630s

Although it was late at night when the paintings arrived at Whitehall, the King came directly, insisting the cases were opened at once, even without calling the Lord Keeper of the Paintings. The King took a candle by which to study them closely, pulling off their wrappings like other men remove women’s girdles. After a time alone with the paintings, he sent for Inigo Jones, whom he guessed to be up late working, as usual.

Inigo came hastily, abandoning his half-inked designs for the masque, dressing quickly in his best furs, but shuffling in his slippered feet, as his boy had taken his boots for polishing. The King led Inigo through the long gallery up a winding stair to a small, warm chamber where the new paintings were propped up against the panelling, their wrappers strewn across the floor. ‘What have we here?’ said the King. ‘Let us play a guessing game.’

When Charles dismissed his servants and grooms they stood on the other side of the door, or congregated in corridors, waiting to see if they could be of service. But there was deep silence now, and Inigo sensed they were actually alone. Charles held a candle to the crackle glaze varnish of a black masterwork, which reflected the candle in its gleaming fissures. As he trawled the surface, and Jones wondered what Gorgon or beauty the candle would find, until out of the darkness came a hand – long-fingered, accusatory, pale, attached to a smooth blue cape and furred cuff.

‘Whose
hand
-iwork is this?’ said Charles, smiling.

Inigo did not play for time. ‘Lorenzo Lotto,’ he said briskly, accenting the name with brio. ‘Oft mistook for Titian.’

‘Hmm.’ Charles pretended to consider the hand. He moved the candle upwards, catching an almond-shaped eye, and a full Florentine cheek.

‘I know so much less than you, but I think this is the work of Andrea del Sarto,’ said the King.

Inigo was a great draughtsman and scholar, but he could not countenance the idea that the King might be cheating. It would require a leap of cynicism impossible for such a one as Inigo, whose loyalty to the crown was a cornerstone of his faith. Inigo’s King was God’s representative on earth. When Inigo’s King laid his hands on the scrofulous, they were healed.

Looking at the flickering paintings, barely visible by the firelight except as coloured howls in tarry blackness, Inigo began to sweat. As the King’s architect, famous for his Italian learning, his knowledge of Palladio, his connoisseurship – he had much at stake. He needed to recognise the next painting illuminated by the King’s candle. He would mortgage his soul to get this one right. Out of the darkness came a thick green stalk and a twisted yellow head, densely petalled, against a sun-baked background. The candle revealed a whole cluster of spiky, astonished flowers – twelve apostles blazing in an earthenware pot. Thanks be to God, this was an easy one.

‘Van . . . ,’ said Inigo.

‘I agree,’ exclaimed the King. ‘The other Van . . .’

‘Van Gogh,’ they said simultaneously.

Inigo Jones had the will to rise in the world; the King was gifted with the opposite quality. But tonight, the King was in control. He moved the candle around, enjoying his power, revealing the backwards curve of a bowed head, painted with great gusto, and a shadowy face beneath it, worried and cracked.

‘An old man,’ said Inigo. ‘By, by, by . . .’

‘Well, sir, I know whom I believe it to be by . . .’

‘Your choice, Your Majesty?’

‘Andrea del Sarto, again,’ said the King.

‘I disagree,’ exclaimed Inigo, all his pomposity gathering itself up like a little stormcloud about to be released as a sneeze. ‘I say this old man’s head is painted by Leonardo.’

The King was delighted to have beaten Inigo, even though he had contrived to do so. The King loved to be clever, more than almost anything else. In their boyhood, his brother Prince Henry was popular, sportive, playful, strong – but Charles was clever.

When he checked the paintings against the scroll of descriptive inventory, reading them aloud, he was able to disguise his joy completely until he came to the final entry. ‘Oh dear, Inigo,’ he said, laughing. ‘This one you reckoned to be an old man by da Vinci is in truth an old woman by del Sarto. Oh dear me.’

T
HE
M
ASQUE OF
‘L
UMINALIA
’

I
N
W
HICH
Q
UEEN
H
ENRIETTA
-M
ARIA
R
ESTORES
D
AWN TO THE
B
ENIGHTED
K
INGDOM

EXPECTING TO HEAR
the sound of the sea, Sir Kenelm lifted to his ear a shell. Instead he heard battle, Englishman fighting Englishman, bloody outcry, rapine and regicide. Peculiar. This shell gave him a queer feeling, and looking at it as if it had a bad smell, he put it down on his dressing table, and decided not to include it in his costume.

The masque was on tonight. The masque was where they went to dream, communally. It was glamour, enchantment. It made Icons of women and Heroes of men. It was a mirage, which rose and was then extinguished, never recreated. It was the aery, playful sport of the Higher Imagination. It was castles perched upon clouds of air, princesses and darling fauns, and naughty comic dwarves. The masque was Disney. It was the very opposite of the brawling ultra-violence that the public theatre had become, all bloodshed and confusion, incest and people running about with hearts on sticks.

Sir Kenelm wondered if this rift between court and town entertainments, between the country’s head and its belly, indicated the kingdom’s physiognomy was a healthy one, or no.

Perhaps he should wear the family ruby. It was a twisted heart, asymmetric, and set in a fine enamel representing the Pelican in her Piety, the white bird pecking her breast to feed blood to her family, or rather, the whole nation. It was an old design, fashionable in Elizabeth’s day. That evening’s masque had the ingenious theme of Light and Darkness, and during the moments of Darkness, his ruby would glint and glimmer, burning with its own light, the light that all true jewels held within them, be it ever so elusive. The ruby had refused to shine in the dark ever since his father’s execution, but Kenelm had seen its rays growing stronger lately. He held it up to the light, breathing on it, polishing and turning its golden setting, trying it out upon his breast, his cap, his collar.

Because it was Mistress Elizabeth’s Twelfth Night holiday, Venetia was pacing round the house playing the part of housekeeper for the night, checking no candles were left burning in the upper rooms, that the dogs had been fed, that the boys’ breakfast was ready for the morrow: that the bills had been paid, and that the cook had the keys on the Malaga sack barrel, which was no more than half-full, so that the household could get pleasantly yet not injuriously drunk.

Venetia did all this wearing her watchet-silk masqueing gown, hung with wing-like capes upon her shoulders and tied at her wrists, so as she darted into the nursery and kissed the boys as they ate their supper, they thought she was the most exquisite mother-nymph. They were proud of her small waist and her expensive scent, and young Kenelm got up and bowed to her, as he had been taught, and she kissed him, and held him close, but not too close, because he had honey down his shirt-front and she was in her costume.