Danielle Dutton - Margaret the First

*

When he returns, the snow is melted, the almond trees in bloom. “I nearly forgot what you looked like,” Margaret says. It was only those two weeks he’d planned for, plus another six or seven he could never have foreseen.

William has brought her a gift: Experimental History of Cold , the latest from Robert Boyle, which includes an account of experiments touching the force of freezing water, experiments touching the weight of bodies frozen and unfrozen, bodies capable of freezing other bodies, and bubbles formed in ice. “It is,” he says, “the latest talk of learned men.”

She turns it in her hand.

Like throwing an apple into the pond without causing a single ripple — has no one read her Blazing World ?

“Give it time,” says William. The plague has only just passed, if it has; the theaters are still black; the birdmen with their leather masks still step between the corpses. Yet when he praises Boyle’s book, Margaret gets tart and raspish; she can feel it, and dislikes it, and she walks a path through the garden thinking Margaret Margaret Margaret . I am old, she thinks. I am ugly. “But you do it again and again,” he has said. “Into what depths of despair had you let yourself fall before receiving those letters from Flecknoe and Hobbes in praise of your plays?”

“Give it time,” he says.

So Margaret gives it time, and William gives Margaret a pony: black with a star on its crown.

Together they ride to Creswell Crags, where cool wind whistles in and out of caves, and spiderwebs like watery nets link the tallest branches. Head tipped back, she asks: “Might not the air be made like that? Little lines, clear and close, which stretch across the universe and hold us all in place?” William cannot hear; he’s ridden ahead; she’s alone with the wind and the spiders. Why else don’t we float into the sky?

In a copper tub of lukewarm water scented with burnet, water mint, and thyme, Lucy colors Margaret’s hair, with radish and privet, to give it back a reddish glow, for on Tuesday they’ll be visited by John Evelyn and his wife, whom Margaret hasn’t seen these many years.

“Not since Paris?”

“Not since Antwerp, at least.”

They arrive, John and Mary, in a plain coach thick with dust, though Margaret, curtsying deeply, assures them that she’s never seen one finer. Together they view the grounds — the alley of fir trees, the riding house, a black and trumpeting swan — and as they turn around the lake, William begins an account of a demonstration he witnessed in London, in which a spaniel and a mastiff were each tied to a table. “The spaniel was bled out one side,” he explains, “while the blood of the mastiff was run into the spaniel through a quill.” The mastiff died on the table. But the spaniel was taken to the country to recover. “Remarkable!” Evelyn says, sorry to have missed it. They fall behind to talk. Meanwhile, Margaret notes Mary is smartly dressed, in a long-waisted bodice, a narrow skirt draped and pinned in back. Her own shimmering sea-green dress billows like a wave.

“That a person might even think up such a thing,” she says at last, as if in answer to a question.

“The dogs?” says Mary. “But surely you see that here is progress. Imagine the possibilities.”

“No, my dear, imagine the risk. Such hubris.”

They pass before the stables, which stink in summer heat.

“Nature,” Margaret advises, “is far too vast for you or I to comprehend her.”

Mary says nothing, still in her traveling hat.

Then Margaret tries again, for truly she once loved Mary’s mother, Lady Browne, now as dead as her own. “Do you remember,” Margaret smiles, “how you carried my bridal bouquet?”

Back in the house: a chilled silver bowl with ripe fruits from the garden. Lunch is lamb from the flock that munches the nearby hill, and stewed chicken with prunes, and boiled leeks, and salmon, though Margaret eats only a clear broth and clarified whey with honey, hoping tonight for success on the stool.

“You and your duchess are absolute farmers,” Mary smiles at William, who credits a recent rain.

“Naturally,” Margaret says, “every part and particle in nature hath an influence on each other, and effects have influence upon effects.” But Mary only eats her lunch, while, over the raisin pie, Evelyn tells how plague deaths are down in nearly every parish. How Hooke established the rotation of Mars. How Hooke discovered tiny rooms called “cells.” Of coming trouble with the Dutch. How a lead actor in Davenant’s company killed a man in a duel in a play. And an invention the size of a pocket watch meant to slice a human foot into many thousands of parts.

“For whatever possible reason?” Margaret finally blurts.

“For mathematical purpose,” says Evelyn.

Back outside they drink their wine. Blue and yellow flowers dot the garden wall. The couples split again: he with him and she with her. In gaps in his own conversation, William hears his wife: “I am sufficiently mistress of,” then, “with the devastating clearness that I do.” The sky is light as servants refill their glasses, yet evening shadows begin to creep cool air across the lawn. The two men soon fall quiet. “It is a great pleasure to me to write,” Margaret is telling Mary, “and were I sure that nobody read my books, yet I would not quit my pastime.”

“Indeed, Duchess,” Evelyn says, turning in his chair, “I’ve heard admiration of your new book.”

“Have you?” Margaret says — but jumps in her chair, for someone shoots in the woods.

“ The Discovery of a New World Called the Blazing World ,” he says.

“There, you see,” William says, taking a bite of fruit.

“From Samuel Pepys,” says John, “who works in the Navy Office.”

“Yes?” she says, straining to seem relaxed, as pop! pop! pop! go the woods.

“Indeed, he declares it quite romantic. Also from Robert Boyle, author of The Sceptical Chymist , you know, who,” he turns to catch William’s eye, “is lately writing an account of objects that oddly shine. Inspired, I am told, by a piece of rotten meat found glowing in his pantry.”

William and Mary smile.

“Forgive me,” John says, coming back to Margaret, “for I have not had the pleasure of reading your book myself.”

But before she can ask him, What were Boyle’s words? John has turned and attends his wife, who is speaking to William of their garden in Deptford, its many species of trees. “Conifers,” Mary tallies, “and laurels, oaks, and elms.” Margaret dabs her upper lip. Robert Boyle, she thinks. Robert Boyle. Samuel Pepys. She dabs her neck, her lip. She has had too much to drink. But would it be rude, she wonders, not to acquaint him with my book? On such a pleasant night? For he says he has not read it. Yet Boyle has, she thinks, and a man called Samuel Pepys. She could easily fetch a copy. She could read them the passage about Descartes. or the description of the Bird-men. or the one about the microscope. or the vehicles made of air. “Two potted limes!” laughs Mary, and John and William smile. Still someone shoots in the nearby woods, and a flock of rooks rises from the treetops like a cloud.

In bed that night, she won’t be sure what she said next. She’ll remember how the cloud of birds rose up over the trees. It begins as in a dream, she might have said. Then the cloud broke up and found itself again. But thing must follow thing. She must put her thoughts in order. I pray, she might have said, that if any professors of learning and art should humble themselves to read it, or even any part of it, I pray they will consider my sex and breeding, and will fully excuse those faults which must unavoidably be found.