EXCERPTS

1
At the end of last year, my cousin Maria Margarelon gave her hand in marriage to a continental nobleman, Francois du Barry. He was of an extremely rich family whose lands spread through the South of France, across the Pyrenees, and into parts of Spain. The du Barrys were of traditional stock; it goes without saying that they did not work, had no profession, and lived entirely of renting out their land. At harvest’s end, they automatically confiscated the produce, so as to sell it back to those from whom it had been confiscated in the first place. They were good people, as you can see, honest and refined in their manners. The only regular activity undertaken by the valiant du Barry clan was the production of some exceptional wines, to which they gave the highly original name of Chateau du Barry. Whites and reds, dry and sweet, all were of equal excellence. Naturally enough, the consumption of these wines was also a regular du Barry activity, but this matter can wait a little longer.

When Maria and Francois married, the bride’s mother, my aunt Harriet Margarelon, and her father, Frederick Quince – Margarelon through marriage and uncle Fred to his intimates – were still living together in the castle in Shropshire – living, indeed, right royally, thanks to a debt of gratitude owed to our family by the Tudor dynasty. It is well known that Henry VIII was possessed of rare virility, a man on whom no wife could have conferred the mental equilibrium necessary for concern with affairs of State. My grandfather, Sir Richard Margarelon, at an early stage an ally of the Tudors, was apprehensive as to the King’s performance – in political matters, of course; there was no reason for any such preoccupation in other areas of royal activity. He perceived that brave King Henry found difficulty in keeping his concentration during the meetings imposed on him by his Council of State. International politics, alliances, the devilries of the Kings of Spain, the economy, overseas trade, these and other such matters stretched the patience of the impetuous King to its extreme. Then it was that, in a gesture of both personal friendship and deep political loyalty, my grandfather established a direct connection between the royal castle and a certain lady, Rore Harlot by name. Mistress Harlot lived on the outer fringe of London, and was aunt to the most adorable nieces known to anyone in this island. From that time on, the Tudor dynasty recognized an eternal debt of gratitude to my family – as also did the English navy. This was, so legend has it, due to the tranquility which arose from the fraternal friendship between the King and Mistress Harlot’s nieces (and that alone) caused him to give ear to his admirals; and so to build more ships, even today the basis of our wealth.

But to go on: at the time when Maria entered upon marriage with Francois du Barry we lived amid an abundance of comfort, thanks to the allowance from our Queen, Elizabeth I. The first months of the marriage were peaceful enough, and passed by with no apparent surprises. The family was already awaiting the heralds of maternity and the announcement of the forty-seventh generation of Margarelons. Yet the longed-for heir failed to make an appearance. This circumstance caused Francois’ popularity among his new family to fall to deplorable depths. Furthermore, increased familiarity had led us to perceive other signs of weakness in his personality; among these were a degree of disinterest and inability deemed prejudicial to the administration of the family estates, and a somewhat exaggerated taste for alcohol, a habit which he had not left behind at his crossing of the English Channel. In brief, the defects typically displayed by sons-in-law all over the world, but particularly uncomfortable in the bosom of our own family. He had at first seemed a good match, bearing in mind his wealth and the land which he would inherit on the continent, but no one had foreseen the severe limitations of his moral reserve.

Since, as the often plagiarized saying goes, “disgraces do not come as single spies, but in battalions”, it must now be admitted that Maria was also revealing herself to be a wife of questionable quality. Francois demonstrated all due dedication to the noble cause, and did battle nightly on her account, but she seemed incapable of conceiving a son and heir. As a girl, vivacity had never been a strong point in her character, but she now exhibited unusual indifference to the matchless efforts of her husband. She was uninterested, overcome by the deepest melancholy; she sighed her way around the house, her unseeing gaze falling on the things about her. She was unimpassioned by games of love, though not only did she have a right to them, seeing that she was married according to the laws of man and God, but they were also her duty, since our own family and the du Barrys were awaiting the fruit of this union with much anxiety.

Her mother, my aunt Harriet, was sister to my deceased mother, and had taken me in after my parents had died in an attack by highway bandits. She was an extremely religious lady, even if less orthodox than was advisable in those days of latent Puritanism. It is unbelievable how much fuss these Puritans can make about mere trifles or even about nothing at all. I am prepared to wager that they will still give the monarchs of this land a good deal of trouble. But to get back to our subject: Aunt Harriet’s religious bent was such that it overflowed the bounds of any religion; none of the dogmas then in vogue, be they Catholic or Protestant, was sufficient to satiate the thirst of that good soul for divine blessing. Priests and pastors were, to her way of seeing, men of equal worth in the sight of God, men equally ennobled by their vocation for religion, no matter what the creed professed. Yet, in spite of this religious passion, my aunt Harriet was far from being a mere church mouse. Her strong temperament had turned her, over the years of her marriage with Uncle Frederick, into a matriarch whose authority in the family home brooked no discussion. Her rotund and imposing body, her loud and sonorous voice, her face, lined but still firm, completed the character dictated by her temperament. And this is what caused her, not only as a mother but as a chief of the clan, to be the first to hear from Maria an explanation of just what was going on. As the objective of my proposal is to establish the truth of the facts, I will reproduce verbatim any dialogue which may seem relevant to my purpose.

“Mother mine”, said sweet young Maria, “since my marriage I have been assailed by a strange dream, which haunts me at every moment, sleeping or waking, a vision which I do not understand, but which leaves me neither day nor night. This obsession which takes from me all interest in the caresses of my husband, which makes me lose all appetites of the flesh, important as they are to the success of my marriage. In this dream a golden lion, with solemn mane and majestic movement, runs through a flowery meadow; the flowers are blue, all alike, in their hundreds and thousands. The lion runs towards the horizon, until at last its hind paws lift, it takes a leap, and disappears into thin air.”

“My daughter, what the devil (my aunt was to repent of her own accord for having thus sworn, and to take to her prayer-desk for weeks afterwards) is all this stuff about a dream? A lion? Get away with you! Stop being silly; you’re a married woman now. How could a dream affect your mind thus, or cause you to lack interest in your husband?”

“I know not. I only know that the lion is carrying something in its mouth, and that I am running after it. It is running away with something of mine, and I am running after it, running for all I am worth, but without catching up. From time to time it looks back, and I see something white hanging from its teeth, and in my sleep I know what it is, but not when I am awake. Then I only know it is mine, and that I want it back, but that I cannot get it. The lion looks back before it leaps into the void, and it seems to smile, full of malice, full of devilry. It runs, and it knows I will follow, and it seems to wish this, but I can’t catch it, I can’t catch it, mother!”

2
“I am the Mother of Nottingham; take me to the room of the possessed, so that I may know how she can be cured.”

On our recovery from the surprise at first caused by this vision, the sound of these words awoke us as if from some sort of collective trance; we hastened to rise and take her to the room in which the sick woman lay. Maria’s rooms were on the same floor as the banqueting hall, and were decorated with the utmost simplicity. There was a heavy chest of drawers, carved from fine wood, on which stood candlesticks and an ivory crucifix; there was a narrow bed, and above it, hanging on the wall, an enormous arras depicting a bucolic French landscape. The modesty of the room was not in keeping with the Margarelons’ traditional good taste in furniture and decoration. But the simple nature of the girl herself, the fear that the procession of old witches might bring thieves in its train, the humility always to be recommended when divine favors are being sought, all these had spoken in favor of austerity.

On her entry, the Mother of Nottingham went towards Maria and without further delay began to question her as to the dream by which she was afflicted. The curious thing was that no one had spoken so much as a word to her about this dream or any other. Perhaps it was all part of her magic, but it is not up to me to explain her mode of work. Once again, however, the mysterious flight of the golden lion was described in every detail such as the field with its coloring of blue flowers, the white object in the lion’s teeth, the malicious smile, the leap, and the disappearance into thin air. The Mother of Nottingham listened attentively, and assured us that only too often the cure of bewitchment is hampered by ignorance of the objects which unleash the forces of evil. The objects are placed near the victim of the bewitchment, and work as a point of attraction for the demoniac powers within her; these must be discovered and nullified.

“If the powers are not brought out, then the bewitchment cannot be ended”, the old woman pronounced her sentence.

3
The Mother of Nottingham returned to her labors, and quickly plagued the room with the smell of cheap tobacco. She then asked us to find her a pair of scissors and a sieve. Once in possession of these objects, the old woman jabbed the scissors into the rim of the sieve and asked Maria to put her two index fingers through the handles, and to hold the sieve with her remaining fingers. While Maria rather clumsily undertook the prescribed movements, the old woman repeated under her breath the words: “Think of the dream, remember the lion, the flight of the golden lion, the fields of blue flowers, the sickness which afflicts you, concentrate … concentrate on the lion”, and thus induced my cousin to evoke the mystical forces which held sway over her.

Slowly, absolute silence descended upon the castle; night fell, and only the sounds of darkness were to be heard. The foggy atmosphere of the smoke-filled room and the guttering candle-light isolated us from the cold, the darkness and the rest of the world. No one dared to say a word, while the sorceress whispered her magic spells, full of the names typical of popular belief. “Where’s the lion, cub of foul Fiend Flibbertigibbet? Where’s the meadow full of flowers, Saint Withhold?” Or she spoke to Maria. “Concentrate on the lion. Fix your thoughts on the lion. Think of it, think.” The suspense grew and grew, until suddenly the tapestry hanging behind the bed tore straight across the middle and shattered the silence – rrrrriiiiiip – as if two giant yet invisible hands were pulling it apart before our very eyes. We looked in fright at the wall, and Maria leapt from the bed, pushing scissors and sieve impulsively aside in her fear that the arras might fall on her head. She clasped her mother, trembled and perspired, while the old sorceress walked slowly to where the tapestry lay on the floor and from within its weave withdrew a small piece of embroidery in the shape of a coat of arms.

Now these embroidered shields are, as everyone knows, common in our country; they are symbols of social recognition for families or individuals, and through their figurative conventions they tell us much, including the owner’s origins, the activity to which he dedicates himself, and so forth. The Margarelon coat of arms, for example, is extraordinarily fine. It has the shape of a shield, broader at the top, narrower beneath. It portrays a most noble wild boar, standing upon its hind legs, stabbing proudly at the air with its curved tusks, its mouth open as if in a savage snarl, announcing from afar its warlike ferocity and visceral courage. Now, the reputation, social position, and even the knowledge that you my gentle readers already have about the members of my family, albeit indirectly by way of this narrative, make it clear that the Margarelons belong to an ancient warrior lineage, always ready to risk their lives for the King, St George and England. The background behind the sacred wild boar is occupied by a red and white chessboard pattern, scattered with graceful cow’s teats, pink and attractive symbols of our proud rural origins. As regards the Margarelons’ motto, inscribed at the foot of their arms, a malicious and unhappy rumor has spread about, the inevitable price to be paid by families which excite envy, such as ours. Long before the episode recounted here, of old Henry VIII’s debt of gratitude to my grandfather, our motto used to be a line from Horace, Laudator temporis acti, that is, “Acclaimer of time past”. This was an effort to crystallize, in just a few words, our appreciation of the traditions and the glorious history of our family, inseparable from those of the Kingdom and the English people.

However, after we obtained the royal patronage, certain courtiers and nobles to who envied us for our fortune and the thanks bestowed upon us by the crown conceived an ironic version of the royal gift. It was whispered about the court, and substantiated by the distortions of the manuals of heraldry, that the motto crowned by our coat of arms was in fact Lentus in umbra – that is, “Idle in the shade”. I take this opportunity to tell the rabble responsible to go jump in the lake!

I ask your pardon for my somewhat sanguine reaction to these despicable calumnies, and for having gone into such analytical detail on the subject of our family arms. My underlying purpose was to provide certain basic mechanisms for interpretation, so that the significance of the coat of arms found in the remains of the tapestry might be more easily understood. This too was in the form of a shield; I say this because, although it is the commonest shape, there are coats of arms with a horizontal arrangement, in which two animals flank a circle containing the family symbols, with the motto or emblem beneath. As I have said, the coat of arms suspected of being the evil instrument and perpetuator of my cousin’s sexual ailment was of the traditional form. It was divided into four quarters by straight lines, one vertical from top to bottom; the other horizontal. It contained only two iconographical patterns. One was a rampant lion, a common enough figure in English arms, being the symbol of England. Such lions are called rampant because they stand upright on their hind legs; similarly our wild boar is a boar rampant. Above the head of each was a small crown, making the animal a crowned rampant lion, showing this to be a royal coat of arms; the other figurative pattern was composed of blue fleurs-de-lis, an indubitable symbol of the Royal house of France. The upper quarters of the arms showed the lions on the left and the fleurs-de-lis on the right; in the lower quarters, the figures were inverted.

The connection between the dream and the coat of arms was evident. For the first time, we had made steps towards Maria’s recovery. As it happened, none of us was familiar with the annals of heraldry; we were thus unable to identify the owners of the coat of arms just through the symbols of which it was composed. Our ability was limited to the apprehension of certain messages implicit in its motifs; that was all. To make our reading even more difficult, it had no motto; that would have greatly simplified identification. And then, the simplicity of its composition, just two figures on a white ground, was in striking contrast with the importance of those figures, symbolizing as they did the Royal Houses of the civilized world’s two most powerful kingdoms. This might mean that the coat of arms was old, dating from a time when accessory decorations had still not come into use, or it might merely indicate a falsification, a non-existent emblem.

The sorceress had left the mysterious piece of embroidery on the bed. We gave it every consideration, and arrived at the dilemma which I have just described. We turned to ask the Mother of Nottingham what part the arms might play in Maria’s cure. She was not there. As she had come, so she had gone mysteriously, and we had never even seen her face. All that was left was a piece of paper on the floor, with the message “Look for the owner”.

4
According to the report we received, the details of which correspond to the noises which I had heard from the bedroom below, what in fact happened is just what I have said. The playwright arrived before his friend Burbage, and disguised as him, just as arranged. That merchant of vulgarities then indulged in illicit enjoyment of the favors of my cousin, and welcomed his friend with a jest. My cousin told us that when she perceived this perfidious deceit, she had a moment of despair; in due course she ended up by telling her lamentable story to the vile Shakespeare, whose heart of stone and demon’s soul were impervious to her grief. Guilt and fear were mingled in her heart, Maria told him, as he was not the man she had seen upon the stage that afternoon, wearing the apparel and the arms of Henry Plantagenet. This mistake might have contributed to the exacerbation of her mortifying ailment, as it might also have compromised her honor in public. The ignoble fellow’s answer was not a little disdainful and overbearing, most reprehensible according to the rules of gentlemanly conduct.

“My dear, all this nonsense hardly suits the girl I heard earlier on in the wings of the theatre giving my friend Burbage an invitation. An invitation – nay, more like a command which, surprised and intimidated by your firmness, he obeyed. Yes, my dear; even he, a man of the world, well tried in the capricious ways of the wheel of fortune, even he was surprised to see in the eyes of so young a maiden the strength of a great Queen. A Cleopatra, a Theodora or – why not, as regards force of temperament an Elizabeth, though I hasten to add that I mean no disrespect, since the chastity of our Queen is public and of note. But thus he thought, and thus thought I, hidden as I was behind one of the few pieces of scenery of which our company can boast. It was the interest that your strength awoke in me which set off our little jest. But now you seem no more than country lass, such as I have known and had the pleasure to love on more than one occasion. The moment the fleshly act ends, they are repentant; ah, not that they didn’t enjoy it; they did, and greatly, as you did tonight. But this is their method to relieve their consciences. It is a reflex, conditioned by the traditional pieties; they blame themselves as if they were Magdalene, full of contrition and remorse. The world has changed, my dear; nature is no longer the place for order, in which a universal hierarchy rules over all on earth, ordering good and evil into absolute values. Nature is, I tell you, a space for disorder, in which we all struggle to make our own way as active individuals, owners of our destiny, capable of running our lives in accordance with the desires and aims set out in our minds. The story you have just told me shows that in our world today good can conceal evil, and evil good, a thousand times. Our criteria for good and evil are broad, they make use of basic values only, not absolute values, to judge both one and the other. It is up to us to know the relative importance of appearances, of social decorum, of name, of wealth. And so the spell, or what you call a spell, was good; it raised you from your apathy? Excellent! In your search for happiness you have laid with a stranger? Do not blame yourself in vain! This act does not make a whore of you, nor will it cause society to fall apart. Each human has duties and obligations to society, and we clearly wish to make our offering to the happiness, the peace and the collective good of the Kingdom. But we clearly wish, too, to become rich, to take our pleasures, to be respected. Such is natural, seeing that it is only thus that we make space for our personality to flower. Amid these two, worry at our collective destiny and nourishment of our individuality, man and woman are animals, full of desires and failings, who must be pardoned and not blamed. We must learn how to profit from our errors, not to go forth to self-chastisement or inquisitorial punishment. Protestants give themselves over to nonsense of this sort, but Puritans and you nostalgic Catholics go beyond the bounds of all sense. Come, dry those tears and see what has occurred as a positive, something which has given you back your womanhood. If your husband is a cuckold and a booby, why then, he got what he deserved; just as your acts are not wholly sinful, so his simple-mindedness and generosity are not wholly kind and noble. They may tell of incompetence and weakness, which in the case of your husband seems to me to be so. Do not let time flee with your life, grasp the opportunities which appear, and as far as today and tonight go, forget this rubbish about spells and possessions. I know when a woman is in full enjoyment of her sensuality, and believe me, you are. Whatever stood between you and love has ended, no thanks to Burbage or to me, no thanks to the coat of arms and the King. It has ended because you wished it so, because you have fought to conquer your happiness once again. Life’s a stage, my dear, and there’s no use in the Supreme Author writing the speeches if the actors do not take the stage and speak out loud, with conviction and authenticity. Let your aims crystallize in your mind and fight for them. Grasp the opportunities. Live and be happy! Farewell!