Conceit by Mary Novik

Author:Mary Novik [Novik, Mary]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: General Fiction
ISBN: 9780307373380
Publisher: Anchor Canada
Published: 2007-08-28T04:00:00+00:00

Two more days of agony passed until, looking out my window, I saw our boy guiding a strange horse towards the stable. Someone had come for a visit with my father, expecting to stay for several hours. I sent Bess down to listen.

Before long, she was back. “Another earl or bishop of some kind,” she reported. “His gentryship was a time coming out with it, but at last he pulled out some letters and your father chased him off.”

The stableboy was now leading the horse past my window, stopping to tighten the hastily buckled saddle. The gelding had barely got a mouthful of Loseley oats.

“Go and look for the letters, Bess. My father will be taking dinner in the hall. If he is angry, we do not have much time, for he might burn them.”

“And risk my life for you again?” She dumped a cold pie in front of me. “I’ll wait until your father rides out to inspect his grounds.”

The tapestry on the inner wall appeared seamless, but when I ran my hand across the pastoral scene I felt the narrow door, barely wide enough for a milkmaid to squeeze through. There was no knob or latch, just a finger-hole. My father had not needed to forbid me to use these hideously dark stairs, for he knew I had been badly frightened in them as a child. However, if John Donne could use the servants’ passageways, then so could I.

I held up my candle and pulled, stepping into the marrow of the house. Every so often, I saw a spear of light and felt for a finger-hole. Testing to see where each door led, I finally emerged through the wooden panelling of the study and reached for the letters stacked on top of my father’s table. They were all from John Donne.

My husband was back in his rooms under close arrest. He wrote to my father that enemies had been blackening his name for deceiving some gentlewomen and for loving a corrupt religion, and he feared this poison had reached my ears. Some uncharitable malice, he added, hath presented my debts double at least.

What rumour was here that I had not heard before? That he had written poems to other women? That I knew. That he was Catholic? That I cherished, for what other faith made saints of its women? That he had debts? We should remedy that state together, for poets and their wives lived frugally, if not entirely upon fresh air.

From his next despairing letter I learned to my anguish that Sir Thomas had let his secretary go, crushing his hopes of rising, for no one at court would employ a man dismissed by the Lord Keeper of England. My husband could not strike off such fetters with his own hammer blows. A torrent of self-pity was unleashed on page after page—wild, feverish writings that would have melted a fiercer man than my father. On the last page was scrawled a desperate pun: John Donne. Ann Donne. Undone.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.