'I most humbly thank you, mother, and truly it is fair.'
Mistress Anne turned to me, still caressing the bodice. 'The sweetest and most pleasant name that they can give me is to call me mother. Does it not do your heart good to hear it, sir? And to see such faithful children? Would you care to speak to one privately?'
At that John Overbury came between us, and whispered something to her. So now she rose from the close-stool (which I thought she was about to use) and came simpering towards me. 'Wild grapes make pleasant wine,' she said. 'If I should not drink, I should be as dry as a gammon of bacon hung on a chimney. And as for you, sir, is it not the same? I had rather you go without hose than that you should forbear drinking in my poor house. What does it please you to have, sir?'
'Well, mistress,' I replied, looking upon Marion as I spoke, 'it is said that Roscius was always drunk when he dined with Cato.'
'I do not know the gentlemen, sir, but if ever I see them here I will remember you to them.'
At that I laughed out loud. 'Bring me wine mixed with nutmeg. The more spiced the better it will be.'
She returned with a steaming bowl, which I finished instantly. 'Good God,' she said. 'This paper drinks the ink. Go, daughter, and bring the gentleman more.'
'No,' I cried. 'No, no. I shall have the dropsy before the day's end.'
'It is good to drink, sir.' She glanced down at Marion, who was now kneeling beside the fire and holding out a pair of tongs. 'No man can live upon salt butter and Holland cheese.'
'If you say so, mistress, if you say so.'
'Of course I say so. You cannot be too bold here, sir. I pray you command as if you were in your own house, and you shall do me pleasure.' So I drank more, and still more, until my blood beat high in my veins. 'Does it please you,' the old bawd said, 'to have your chamber? Does Jack want his Joan?' At that she nodded towards Marion. 'You shall find sweet meat and sweeter sauce served by her hand than by any other.' She led us into an adjacent chamber, parted by a wainscot door.
'Have you a bolt to this door?' I asked her.
'It is not a necessary thing,' she replied. 'Here are we all thoroughly at ease one with another.'
'But she must be washed,' I went on, rambling in my drunkenness. 'She must be washed before she can partake.' Then, as Marion began to undress herself, I recited the grace before meat. 'All that is and shall be set on this board, be the same sanctified by the Lord's word. He that is king and lord over all, bring us to the table of life eternal. Amen. Fetch me a pitcher and basin, and a cloth, that I may wipe away her filthiness.'
The old bawd hurried off, and Marion made a small motion with her hand as if to plead with me. 'As for me, sir, I have washed. And I have handled nothing since I have washed.'
But I said not a word until Mistress Anne returned with an old cracked ewer and pot, filled with the most brackish water that seemed to have come from some ditch or pond. 'Lie her down upon the floor and wash her face. Lift her hairs and wash.' The old harlot did as she was bid, while the young one seemed to look piteously upon me. 'It is a common shore,' I said, 'that still receives all the town's filth. So wipe her mouth and lips. See, it is like wiping a post. Show me the tongue. Let me see the pallet of her mouth.'
The bawd performed her ministrations with a very bad grace. 'Why do you treat her so?' she asked me. 'She is a fair wench, not a foul one.'
'The causes that move me to this are not now to be expressed,' I told her, 'lest an irrevocable deed be committed.' At that she held her peace. 'What a fair neck,' I continued. 'You are pretty and fat, my little darling. Wash her armpits. Oh, what an arm you have, but your hand-wrist is very small. How do you fare with so thin a wrist? Open your right hand. See, your thumb and little finger are flea-bitten, for the black spots are there yet. Are there any fleas in your chamber? Or do you share your bed with such as harbour them? Pare her nails, Mistress Anne, for fear she scratch herself too much. And I pray you to wipe well the nipple of her dug before she puts it in my mouth, in case there be hair or any other thing. Now lay her down on her belly that I may see her back. Her shoulders are marked, do you see, but the little buttocks are fleshy and have not been bitten.' The stale old woman knew that she had good ware to traffic, so she became more content and merely hungered for her gold. 'Ah, what a woman's thighs are these! Wash the calves of her legs upwards. Now wash the soles of her feet and forget not to make clean her toes, the great toe and all. Now turn her again upon her back.' I knelt down now to make suck of her, but at that moment I spent myself even though I was still dressed. Then I felt such fear and horror that I stood up, trembling, and wiped my hand across my mouth.
'You make too much haste,' Marion said, looking upon me in bewilderment. 'Do you not know that haste makes waste?'
But I had seen, and done, enough. 'Swaddle her again,' I said. 'Put on her dirty petticoat. I must leave now.'
It is easy to fall into a net, but hard to get out again. 'Show us your purse, sir,' the ancient mistress answered urgently. 'We are not so low in the mud that we cannot reach for your money. What will it be, sir?'
I had too great a wish to be gone to enter into any contention with her, so I opened my purse and threw down some shillings for which they both scrabbled in the dust. 'Do you see what a kennel he comes from,' Marion shouted after me, 'that he must treat us all like beasts?'
'You deserve no more,' I replied.
Good Mistress Anne rose from her knees and, looking into my face, spat upon me; I made to strike her with my hand, but then she picked up a chamber-pot and threatened to spill its contents on me. So I let them go and, turning away, walked through the crowd of bawds who were listening keenly in the next room. I said nothing to John Overbury, who was cleaning his teeth with a knife by the threshold, but walked away from this wanton stew, this hot-house, this chamber of whores, followed by the most vile reproaches which a wit used to wicked and filthy thoughts can imagine. So ended the day on which my father died. Laus Deo.
FOUR
THE GARDENER FOUND the small bones. He had arrived to clean up the ground in front of the house and, although it was early in the morning, I thought I could smell drink upon his breath. He was wearing the headphones of a Walkman, and seemed to be swaying to some insistent tune. So I watched him as he set to work among the weeds and bushes; he was no more than middle-aged but he seemed very feeble, and immediately I regretted hiring him. The weeds defeated him, and he was bent over one patch of ground with a spade in his hand for several minutes. Then he began to examine the stone path tentatively and cautiously, as if it were about to collapse beneath his feet, before turning his attention to an area of tall grass. He was digging at its roots, without very much success, when suddenly he slipped and fell forward. I could see no other movement, so I hurried outside: he was sprawled inside a small pit which had been dug between some bushes but, more curiously, he had disturbed a ring of bones which had been neatly placed at the bottom of it.
'That's a very unusual thing,' he said, quite unperturbed by his fall. 'To see bones like that.'
My first sensation was that they were the remains of a child, and I looked at him in horror. 'What do you think they could be?'
'A dog. A cat. Some damn thing like that.' He picked up one of the bones and handed it to me; it felt oddly soft and pliable and I was tempted to put it up to my face, when I saw something gleaming by the side of the pit. It was a glass tube, snapped in half, and I recognized it at once: it was the same as the glass I had found in the drawer, with the odd distortion or protuberance at the end. But it had broken so neatly, as if something had been carefully poured on to the ground.