The Knot

‘They have two roots in the soil like a man’s cods,’ he explains. ‘One fat, one shrivelled. Spotted, fleshy leaves, thick upright stems with—’

The woman’s face clears. ‘You means butcher flowers, long purples. Too late for them now.’

‘But there are others like them—’

‘Ah! Like maybe fools ballocks, or sweetheart’s, you mean?’

‘Possibly, it’s just that—’

She looks sly. ‘I may have been approached by several gentlemen in London and once a lady for the same before. I may know of a place where they grow. In confidence, you’ll want them, like they did.’

‘In confidence? Why?’

Her eye fixes abruptly on a spot upon the floor and does not waver.

‘It’ll cost.’

Henry sighs. ‘How much?’

The woman’s good eye briefly meets his own then slides away. She shrugs. ‘If you want ’em I can get but it’ll be sixpence. Each,’ she says flatly. ‘There’s not so many of them and with my sight I’ll be scrabbling all over the hillside up off for too long before I’m spotting any. Got to make it worth my while.’

‘I shall need a variety of specimens. Whatever you can find.’

‘What did you call it? Stander grass? Never heard that. Don’t know that I call it anything much, any old name’ll do half the time, and the other half I calls ’em nothing.’ She perks up suddenly, having got her price.

‘And just the fat cod out of the two roots it has, Master? You’ll not want the slack one with nothing in it? That’s no good to Venus, Master, is it.’ Her lopsided wink is a peculiar sight and Henry Lyte looks at her uncomprehending. Surely the wretched woman doesn’t think he wants them for a provocative to venery. He has seen a recipe called a diasatyrion that mixes orchis cods with grains of Paradise and nuts and Malaga wine and candied eryngo root among other things, a sweet electuary. But he needs to observe them, and then if still fresh enough he may set them in the garden when he is done with that. He is irritated to find that his face is flushing.

‘No, no, I’ll need the whole plant, my good woman. Bring me the various sorts you can find. And try to remember where each specimen comes from. It is for my research. They have … they have no practical application whatsoever.’

The woman smirks. ‘Whatever you say. No doubt there are no other uses a man could find for them.’

She goes off into the corridor just as Lisbet passes by with a besom.

‘Several sorts of dog’s testicles for you then, Master,’ the simpler hisses out noisily, winking. ‘No bother at all.’

Lisbet drops her brush on the flags with a clatter. As she bends to retrieve it Henry Lyte sees the disgust on her face, and he is sure that by the evening the entire household will be discussing his business, as if he was practising witchcraft in addition to everything else, damn it! He slams the door behind the simpler’s squat retreating figure, behind everybody, and stands with his back to it.

‘God’s wounds! I do not have to explain myself,’ he says angrily, to the empty room.

But of course he must. First he puts his mind to other things for several days more, thinks instead of the confusion caused by too many diverse names. This is always the difficulty with employing simplers, they all have their own aberrant, singular names for a herb or plant. It is, he believes, one of the obstacles for a sharing of knowledge, or any collective progression, it is also a source of mistaken identities and the reason for many a wrong or dubious leaf finding its way onto an apothecary’s shelf by another name. Ask a local where a particular plant may be found and he will look at you blankly unless you can name it as he was taught it as a child, toddling at his mother’s knee in the grasses. But if a proportion of those who can read would learn from or recognize what they know in print, set out clearly, consistently in black and white, and in English, then a hoard of particulars would be transformed into knowledge. Misbeliefs, wrongnesses and ill-used wisdoms could be set right, and many lives saved. This thought breeds hope and frustration mixed up in him.

Increasing age is supposed to make a man grow more contented with his lot, with what God has bestowed upon him, but some days Henry Lyte can still feel something like the rage of youth inside him at the slowness of progress, at the satisfaction with the state of stupidity the world is so often content to live in, himself included.

We are so ignorant, so coarse in thoughts and knowledge! he rages at the pear trees that afternoon, stretching his back between batches of summer pruning. Our aspirations should be high, higher than they are.

But then when he goes to his pages spread out, he finds that he takes a very long time to write a sentence, to think through anything. This is the real trouble, the gap between what is needed, wanted, and what is possible for the ordinary man.

It is high summer now, brutally hot when a man has been working. When he goes back to the garden, the hot green smell of it is like a smack in the face. The annuals they grew from seed are now clambering up the walls, the stakes, thick in the beds, covered in bees.

Indoors, Frances is vast and panting, drinking quantities of buttermilk, writing lists, preparing herself for any outcome as her confinement draws near.

‘I must write to my father,’ he mentions out loud when he goes in to see her.

She sits up on her elbow. ‘Do not write, Henry. Let him stew in his own juice for a while yet. Leave it a month or so. You are his son. Make him suffer for the hurt he causes you. Besides, you may just make it worse.’

Henry does not think he has her steely reserve. But then again, she does not know the full extent of it, that last letter which she did not see was by far the worst. Every night he prays she will not hear what his father says of him. But although he can feel himself yielding, as a son, and it is natural enough to want to be on good terms with one’s father, it is easier to go along with her suggestion. Women can be very wise, he thinks. His mother was.

‘Leave it awhile. Be strong, Henry! Let it lie, just a little while longer,’ she says.

‘I shall do it soon,’ he concedes. But a day passes, and then another, and still the letter is not sent.

The orchis arrives just over a week before Lammas. He unwraps it fully and pays the simpler. A dug-up plant is always disconcerting. It is limp on his desk, an unhappy, naked tangle, dried mud everywhere as he examines it closely in order to be able to properly describe it to others, making notes. It is only later that he remembers one other characteristic ascribed to the orchis. Too late now, he thinks, with Frances approaching the time of her lying-in. It would have been worth a try. Anything would. If men do eat of the fullest and greatest rootes … they shall beget sonnes. Of course he has been blessed with many daughters. But is it not the truth, he thinks defensively, that in this world a man needs a son?

Chapter XIV.

Of ARCHANGEL, or dead-Nettle. Is of temperament like to the other nettles.

IT IS NEVER GOING TO BE GOOD NEWS when an urgent letter arrives on horseback in the late evening. Henry has not yet retired for bed and is already halfway across the hall when he hears the knock, a familiar dread already tight in his stomach when one of the kitchen boys opens the great door. As soon as he has it he recognizes the hand – it is from Nicholas Dyer, his father’s friend.

He thanks the messenger, who is sweating and thirsty and covered with dust from the late summer roads in riding from Marlborough at speed, and orders his horse be watered in the yard. Henry waves him into the kitchen for a drink and bite to eat, and still does not read the letter for some moments because he has a sudden urge to urinate, and goes hastily up to his room to use the close stool. Frances is sitting in bed sewing in the hot July dusk.

‘What was that rapping?’ she asks, pulling her thread through its length, and tucking the needle in again. The sound of the thrush’s song from the ash outside drifts in through the open window.

‘A letter from London. I haven’t read it yet, but I know what’s in it.’ He does up his breeches and sits down on the end of the bed with a creak of rope. The evening has taken on a horrible significance. He knows he will remember forever the particular sight of the loose weave of the bedcover, the smell of the half-used washing ball on the form by the bed, the ordinary aftertaste of the wine from supper in his mouth.

He breaks the seal and the stiff paper unfolds unwillingly for him, and then he reads the scant, crabbed lines three or four times over, as if there was not enough there on the page to tell him what he already knows.

He puts the paper aside and lies flat on the bed with his shoes still on.

‘What? What is it?’ Frances says.

‘He is dead. My father is dead.’

Silence. Frances puts her sewing in her lap. Outside even the thrush is quiet. Henry can hear no noise from any quarter. Not a whistle, not a breath, not a creak of anything. Then he hears his heart, going on beating.

‘What is the date?’ he asks.

‘July the thirtieth. The eve of St Neot.’

‘As I thought. I cannot even pay my due respects because today they buried him at the church of St Botolph without Aldersgate. But I must ride to Sherborne to help tie up his affairs. There will be the inventory to sort out, and many papers …’ There is no air in here.

‘If Joan lets you set foot over her threshold.’

Henry sits up abruptly and swings round to face his wife. ‘That woman may think she has a life interest but my father’s business is my own. It should all be made clear to her at the reading of the will.’

THE SECOND PART

The Time