Viper Wine (61 page)

E
PILOGUE:
M
ARY
T
REE

I could not leave you without telling you of the final mystery of my Mark.

Sir Kenelm having noticed my endeavours to find the Cause of Venetia’s Ill-health (and so clear his name) said he would do one thing to thank me. On the full moon he bade me lie with my eyes bandaged – which must have looked a strange matter to any witness – while he brushed a medicament across my stained cheek. He used a feather, I think, and a lily-water paste, which he said was often used for the hot gout. As we waited for the paste to dry, he told me that Venetia was ever like a lily to him.

He bid me go to bed, and in the morning when I came in to lay his fire, he was waiting for me with a mirror ready. I was concerned he had painted my cheek with fucus, as a shallow disguise of my Mark, and I knew that my Respect for him would not endure if he had sought to practise that trick upon me. Unwillingly I took the mirror to my face, and to my sight I was almost entirely free from blemish – only a light smattering of pink, where the strawberry botch was once thickly ranged across my whole cheek. I cried out with fear and delight at what he had effected, and I looked at him like he was a Magus, or practitioner of Angelic arts, to have so changed my countenance overnight.

He said he was of a great mind to let me think it was all his Art, but that Reason must trump wild imaginings. He explained I had been born with a strawberry wine mark which was called with good reason a ‘birthmark’ because it had faded a little every year since I was come to my majority, and he had only finished it off with a dab of lily-water. He said he saw with great clarity how constrained I was by my understanding of myself as Marked, that all these years I had been oppressed by an idea, no more.

‘We must all look in the mirror sometimes, Mary,’ he said. ‘So we can see ourselves directly and say, like Apollo, “You must change your life”.’

FINIS

A
CKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I saw Eternity the other night, see
here
– from the poem by Henry Vaughan

Whenas in silks my Julia goes, see
here
– extracts from the poem by Robert Herrick

Bourse Boy’s words taken from Ben Jonson’s, see
here
,
Entertainment on the Opening of the New Exchange
, 1609

Tom Lubbock, writing in the
Independent
, see
here
, was the first to compare the painting
Venetia
,
Lady Digby on her Deathbed
with ‘Edge’ by Sylvia Plath

Heartfelt thanks to:

Dan Franklin and Beth Coates at Jonathan Cape, and Victoria Murray-Browne amd Julia Connelly at Vintage. To Laura Hassan, Charlie Campbell and Ed Victor, to Anna Webber and Georgina Gordon-Smith at United Agents, Dr Emma Smith of Hertford College, Oxford, Dr B. C. Barker-Benfield of the Bodleian library, Dr Andrew Gregory of UCL, David Cameron of the Institute of Physics, Sheila Knox, Sophie Melzack Robins, Carol Savage, Harry Mount, Theo and Flora Rycroft, Gavanndra Hodge, Ian Irvine, Hannah Mackay, Marianne Blamire, David Emmerson and Eddie, Lord Digby. My biggest thanks go to my parents Sir Reginald and Lady Anne Clements Eyre, and my husband Dr Alex Burghart for aiding, abetting and inspiring.

S
ELECT
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