The Astrologer's Daughter

Celia did not like him. Handsome he might be, and the housekeeper cast sheep’s eyes on him, but there was something about him which made her shudder. Besides, the stars said that he was a danger to her. Adam had cast Buckingham’s horoscope for him and she had written it out, and there, lo, when she placed it beside her own, was the message that she was in an unknown way tied to him.

Fear rode on her shoulders, for Buckingham was great, and she and Adam, for all their arcane knowledge and the respect in which the commonalty held them, were small.

There was a bustle outside—a noise. It was the Duke, come with all the train which his state demanded, rowed downriver from Whitehall in his barge, doubtless, surrounded by his minions, to come to leer at Celia Antiquis while using old Adam’s knowledge which increasingly, as he aged, was her knowledge.

The door was rapped upon, was opened. Mistress Hart was there, curtsying to the visitors, her head held low. A steward stood before her, a white staff in his hand. Today my lord of Buckingham had come as Duke, not as he sometimes did, informally, to lean on Adam’s shoulder and call him friend.

Buckingham entered. He was all gravity, in black and gold. There was a pearl in his right ear; the wig above his handsome dissipated face was like his silver-blond hair—except that it had not faded with age. He had his right arm draped round the broad shoulders of a man whom Celia had not seen before and was whispering in his ear. None other was with them.

Celia, curtsying, avoided the eyes of both of them. Like a wild creature, she would not give the Duke a direct glance of her eyes, keeping her head submissively low, focusing her attention on the white bows of her polished black shoes.

His Grace would not allow her that. He pulled his arm away from his companion’s shoulders, nodded briefly to Adam, put a hand under Celia’s chin to tip her face towards him.

‘I would have a proper greeting from you, mistress. And one for my friend, Sir Christopher Carlyon, too. He hath a mind for you to cast his ’scope, or provide him with an horary—is not that so, Kit? What question shall thy horary answer? Nay, that you must tell the maiden, not myself. She is your eyes, is she not, Master Antiquis?’

If Adam disliked His Grace’s easy handling of his daughter there was no show of it in his manner. He murmured his agreement, offered the Duke a chair as Celia bowed to the two men. Sir Christopher stood beside it, leaning on the chair-back, curious green and hazel eyes roving the elegant parlour.

Celia had been compelled by the Duke to look Sir Christopher Carlyon straight in the eye. She saw a tall man, taller than the Duke, more carelessly dressed in green and silver, whose face was deceptive, for while he was not handsome there was something compelling in it. As she looked at him, the room moved around her. For a moment Celia was lost. She had had such a fit before, where her body remained but her spirit roved, but never such a profound one. Adam knew of her rare trances and they frightened him, for nothing he had read, or been taught, could explain them.

She was in the open. There was a smell of burning and the sky was not blue, but black and orange. The air was not fresh, but hot and humid. People were shouting and the face of Sir Christopher Carlyon was before her, strangely distorted. She thought that he was shouting but she could hear nothing.

And then she was back in the parlour again, the sweet smell of spring was coming through the window, the smell of fire had gone. No time at all had passed, and yet an infinite time had held her imprisoned.

The green and hazel eyes were hard on her. She knew that her face changed on these occasions, that her eyes became wide and blank. He had seen the change, the shift of her consciousness, and he said, leaning forward, ‘You are ill, mistress? Master Antiquis, your daughter needs attention, I think.’

His voice was beautiful, a caress, the voice of a singer or an actor. For sure he was neither. Her spirit, that sometimes remained with her after her trance had passed, told her that he was, or had been, a soldier. The spirit vanished. She was ordinary Celia Antiquis again, saying in a submissive voice, as colourless as she could make it, ‘It is nothing, sir. A passing malaise only.’

She was surprised that he had registered that something strange had happened to her. It supposed a sensitivity in him which she would not have thought he possessed. The green eyes were suddenly veiled and Sir Christopher waved a dismissive hand. ‘Enough, then, mistress. George, I must not stop you from your business here.’ He looked through the open window at the pretty garden and turned his green eyes away from Celia as though, restored again, she bored him.

Celia’s surprise was now at herself. She sat down at the table, listened to her father taking the Duke’s instructions, heard her father’s answers and wrote in her clear plain script at his instruction, and was, astonishingly, piqued at Sir Christopher’s lack of interest in her.

Kit, his friend called him. Or was the Duke his master? She thought not. No one was his master. Green-eyes was owned by none. How did she know that? She did two things at once, a trick Adam had taught her. She was achingly aware of Sir Christopher’s every movement while appearing to be absorbed in her work. He was listening to the Duke, who needed advice from Adam on a financial enterprise.

‘I will leave it to you, Master Antiquis. You will bring me your answer to Whitehall, will you not? And your daughter shall accompany you. You may need her eyes and her good right hand.’ He had risen from his seat and walking over to where Celia worked, he said idly, ‘You write a fair hand, mistress.’

He made no move to touch her or to woo her as he had been wont to do in the past. Was it because of his friend, or had he lost interest in her? She was grateful for that if he had.

Celia continued her work for a moment; the horoscope grew on the parchment before her. She consulted an almanack.

Buckingham surveyed the parlour. ‘A fair room, sir. Thy presses are fit for the treasures you display in them.’ And he gestured at the books behind the glazed doors of the presses. ‘Hast a fine library, and a strange one. There are texts here, sir, that would have brought you down under the late tyrant, Cromwell.’ He swung on his red-heeled shoe to stare at his friend. ‘Silent, Kit? Most unlike you. I have a mind to be entertained. Entertain me—and the astrologer and his daughter, too.’

Kit remained silent, neither agreeing nor disagreeing with him. Buckingham clapped his hands together loudly. His steward, white rod in his hand, who had been standing the while beside the door, started towards him. ‘Your Grace?’

‘Fetch the servants and the food and bid Sir Kit’s man bring him his guitar. A fair white cloth as well, to cover Master Antiquis’s good table after the French fashion. I would eat, sir. You will join me?’

It is his house now, not ours; these great ones own all that they desire or see, thought Celia resentfully, looking up to catch Sir Christopher’s eyes on her. They said, silently, I know what you are thinking. Adam, by contrast, showed his pleasure at the Duke’s condescension, spoke to him with a catch in his voice.

‘You will do me a great favour, Your Grace, and drink of my wine, before you eat?’

The Duke waved a beautiful careless hand, flung his arm about Kit’s shoulders again and, after agreeing to drink with Adam, announced, with none to say him nay, ‘We shall drink in thy garden, Master Antiquis, thou and I and Kit and thy daughter. When his servant brings his guitar, Kit shall sing for us as we drink. What is better on an afternoon of sun and scents, such as this, but to eat and drink and listen to good music? Faith, they have no better time of it in heaven. Cherubim, seraphim, powers and principalities will envy us.’

Kit has little to say for himself, was Celia’s sardonic thought; he leaves all to his master—for Kit merely nodded his agreement and Adam opened the door to the garden and they all walked through, the Duke leading. Outside, the early April afternoon was as warm as June. The sun was up and high. The flowers were all out as though it were very June, indeed. Apple trees, a crab among them, arched their boughs over them. The Duke flung himself on the garden bench, Kit at his feet, and motioned to Celia and Adam to sit with him, their seat being the grass, already yellowing. It had not rained for weeks.

Kit’s man brought his guitar, Mistress Hart the wine and goblets. Adam was proud that his possessions were so fine. The yeoman’s cottage where he had begun his days seemed far away. The steward came and a man following him in the Duke’s colours handed the wine about. Kit tuned his guitar, bent his head over it, looked up and this time collected Celia’s eyes.

‘A song for you, mistress, seeing that you have been a good and obedient clerk. It is one of the late Will Shakespeare’s and is a favourite of George’s. The cherubim will envy this.’ It was the longest speech he had yet made. His musician’s hands plucked the strings. He sang, and his voice was so soft and tender that the tears started in Celia’s eyes.

O mistress mine! where are you roaming?

O! stay and hear; your true love’s coming,

That can sing both high and low.

Trip no further, pretty sweeting;

Journey’s end in lovers’ meeting,

Every wise man’s son doth know…

What is love? ’tis not hereafter;

Present mirth hath present laughter;

What’s to come is still unsure:

In delay there lies no plenty;

Then come kiss me, sweet and twenty,

Youth’s a stuff will not endure.

Kit had kept his eyes on Celia while he sang and, when all was silent at the end, repeated, ‘Youth’s a stuff will not endure,’ not in his singing mode but low, breathily, as if he were giving her a message and they were alone in the garden, Adam and Eve together. But the serpent—where was he?

Buckingham spoke. It was to quote from Twelfth Night, the play from which the song was taken. ‘“A mellifluous voice, as I am true knight.” Well sung, Kit. Thy singing matches the wine. Matchless, Master Antiquis, like your talent—and your daughter. A toast to thee, Mistress Celia. A fairer face never adorned the court.’

There was mockery in his tone, but Adam was deaf to it. He took all as his due. This was his zenith, his apogee, to have a Duke in his garden, one of the King’s favourites singing to his daughter—for he knew of Kit Carlyon if Celia did not—wine before them and a meal waiting in his parlour, for the steward was at the garden door summoning them to eat.

Celia heard the Duke’s mockery, saw his knowing eye on her, and thought how much she preferred his friend, who had behaved so quietly, who had noted her earlier distemper, but had not refined on it to distress her. So, when Buckingham said to the steward, ‘In with you, man; Master Antiquis will accompany me and Sir Kit will take a turn around the garden with Mistress Celia before he brings her in to dine with us, for he hath a great interest in posies as well as poesies,’ she felt no fear of Kit.

She allowed him to take her arm after he had handed his guitar to his waiting servant, whose grin after Celia had walked away from him, her hand on Kit’s arm, was as knowingly insolent as only a servant’s could be.

Kit had not known what to expect when Buckingham had collected him at Whitehall. He had watched the Duke order the hampers of food to be loaded into the barge. He had laughingly told Kit to take his guitar with him to old Antiquis’s home, ‘For music undoes more ribbons and buttons than fingers do—as well you know.’

He had passed the house on the Strand many times. It was a decent place with its own curtilage. Many of the dwellings had gardens at the back. He had not accompanied the Duke to the astrologer’s before. Kit had grave doubts about astrology—he thought it a fraud and those who practised it mere tricksters.

Adam and his home had impressed him. There was a decency about it, a plainness, nothing tawdry. He had expected toads, perhaps, dried and pinned to the walls, mystic cabala—all the trappings of the charlatan—but nothing to that. Master Antiquis’s home was as grave as an Oxford scholar’s, like the rooms he remembered being tutored in that last year before the world fell in and he became a penniless rover around the principalities of Europe and the Turkish dominions.

Celia was a surprise, too. She was quite unlike Buckingham’s usual fancies. He had supposed her to be a knowing lass, sure of herself—George had told him that she was her father’s clerk. He had also called her a chaste Diana—but anyone who held him off was a chaste Diana, until she became the Whore of Babylon in his arms. Once the girl was conquered, George moved on. One day, however, Fate would play one of her tricks on him and cause him to fall desperately in love with someone quite unworthy, and leave him unable to move on—but that day lay in the future. For the present, he enjoyed life and defied it to rule him.

Yes, that grave face, the cleanly dress, the modest deportment—for there was nothing tawdry about the astrologer’s daughter; she matched his home—came as a surprise. But she was a woman and therefore to be won. What lay behind that demure mask? Could Kit Carlyon transform her to desire itself, writhing in his arms? To win her would be to win a trophy worth having, but only a cur would despoil her innocence.

Almost he cancelled the bet, handed George the ring he coveted. And then, why then, she showed the cloven hoof! Belial had laid his mark on her. The coy trance into which she had fallen was there to fetch him—or the Duke—was it not? Why, if Buckingham had but continued to pursue her, he could have had the sweet cheat for himself. Her tricks, like her father’s, were not obvious ones, but tricks they were.

What was it that Shakespeare had said? ‘Springes to catch woodcocks.’ He, Kit Carlyon, would not be a woodcock. She had given him her blind grey look and he had refused to answer it. Oh, she had known that he was there and had refused to look further. Another sweet trick.

He had sung to her and for a moment their eyes had met again. When she rose to accompany him on the Duke’s order, all in one fluid movement, her body was momentarily outlined beneath the concealing gown and he caught his breath at the sight of it. It was as purely lovely as her face with its classic profile.

But oh, he must go carefully with her. He had spoken little. To win her would need all his arts for, were he to be clumsy, as Buckingham had been, sure in his power to woo and win, he would lose her. Never underestimate a clever woman—and the astrologer’s daughter was clever.

He put out his arm for her to hold and, when she took it, there was the sweet smell of her—lavender, a country perfume for a town girl—and he led her along her garden path—to perdition and surrender, he hoped.

Chapter Two

‘A fine garden, Mistress Celia. Are you the gardener?’

Celia shook her head and said a little timidly, which was most unlike her, for she was usually controlled where the opposite sex was concerned. ‘I tend the herbs only, Sir Christopher. Our handyman, Willem, cares for the rest.’

‘The herbs?’ Kit looked about him but saw no herbs. Celia gestured towards a wicker arch, with climbing plants wreathed about it, through which a further garden could be seen.

‘If you are interested in herbs, Sir Christopher, then mine lie through there.’

‘Then I would visit them, Mistress Celia.’ And he led her through the arch to find himself in a knot garden where, instead of flowers, herbs were arranged. Along the brick wall which divided them from the next property stood terracotta urns, filled with more plants whose scents perfumed the air.

Kit bent down to pluck a sprig of thyme and sniff it before handing it to Celia. ‘You use herbs in your mysteries, Mistress Celia?’

Celia crushed the thyme in her hands before smelling it and answered him. ‘I have no mysteries, Sir Christopher, but yes, I use the herbs. Like Mistress Ginner, of whom you may have heard, I serve those women among us who need help in their sicknesses. Culpepper hath shown us the virtues herbs possess, and both my father and I believe that they possess others, yet unknown. Since the willow gives us surcease from pain and mould from many plants aids in healing wounds, may it not be that other plants have their virtues, too? It is for us to discover them and to use them as the stars direct.’ And she slipped the thyme into the small pouch which swung at her waist and walked composedly on.

Kit, from his great height, looked down on her. She was not small, he noted, but neither was she over-tall. A woman to reach above a man’s heart, he thought. And what a strange woman. She had spoken to him as soberly as though she were a scholar and he another, nothing of a woman’s traditional coquetry about her.

He answered her as he might have done a scholar. He thought that George might have failed to win her because he spoke to her lightly, as he did to all women.

‘And the plague, mistress? Do you think there might be a specific against that? A fine thing if there were.’

Celia knew, as Kit did, that the plague was abroad in London and the numbers dying from it were growing each day. From being a thing distant from the haunts of the powerful and the comfortable, like Adam and herself, it was coming disturbingly near and to catch it meant almost certain death.

‘No herbal specific of which I or my father know, but…’ Celia paused; she was fearful that he might mock her if she spoke of what her father thought he knew.

‘A “but”, Mistress Celia? What does thy “but” conceal or reveal? Pray tell me.’

Celia looked up at him. Her eyes were as grey as clear water before a storm, Kit thought. Her face as calm as that of one of the many statues of the goddess Diana he had seen in Italy. It was not a holy, but a classic calm. If he touched her damask cheek would he feel flesh, or marble?

Kit’s hand rose. He checked himself. To win his bet would be far more difficult than he had thought. To go too fast would be to lose her. She would close herself against him as she had closed herself against Buckingham. She would live in a bubble, would be seen, spoken to, but not reached—forever sealed away from him.

Would she be so for any man? Or was there some Hodge, some decent, dull merchant to whom she would surrender her treasure? Or had she vowed herself a vestal virgin to the pale moon?

His hesitation, the thoughts hastening pell-mell through his head, took but an instant of his time. Celia barely noticed his movement, or his hesitation, and said again without artifice, ‘But Father thinks that perhaps we misunderstand the cause of the thing. He says that if it is mere bad air then why does the plague so often confine itself to the poor? The air is as bad in many great houses and yet the plague most often leaves them free. He thinks that perhaps it is because the houses of the rich are spacious, and not huddled together, hugger-mugger; that instead of shutting those infected away, as the law has recently ordered in St Giles in the Fields, we ought to put them outside and let them live in the open. What is there, he also asks, that the rich do and the poor do not, which makes the difference between them? Or mayhap it is the other way around; it is what the poor do.’

She fell silent. She had spoken too long and too vigorously, but she and her father had thought much about the plague and how to contain it.

‘And the stars?’ asked Kit slyly, for he thought astrology a cheat, but would not tell the astrologer’s daughter so. ‘Why do they not tell your father where, how and why the plague works on us as it does? If they are so powerful over our destinies, that is a question which they can surely answer.’

‘That I know not,’ said Celia frankly, her brow a little troubled. ‘The stars do tell us when the plague is coming. All the charts which my father and I prepared for our almanack this year foretold its arrival, and it has come. Master Lilly, too, agreed with us. Perhaps there are things which we may not know…’

‘You dispute as well as any scholar,’ remarked Kit, fascinated by her, admiring first her full face turned towards him and then her profile, pure against the dark of the house.

‘So I have been taught,’ she answered. She had never spoken so long with any man other than her father and had not thought to spend an afternoon discoursing with one from Charles’s court. Nor had she thought that he would speak to her so gravely. Buckingham had always teased her, tried to make her talk nonsense, and had talked nonsense to her. She had no answer to that, so rarely answered him.

This man, now, was different. She stole a glance at Kit and admired his powerful face, his haughty pride, barely held in check. She knew he was proud because he bore the marks of it as the old text she had recently read had told her: ‘head high, eyes steady, mouth firm—he looks to the distant, not the near—carriage erect, voice sure’. To win his respect would be a fine thing, and already he spoke to her not as a woman to be lightly handled and then thrown away but as a fellow soul to dispute with, as he would have disputed with her father.

‘You do not believe in astrology, then, sir?’ she asked him as she would not have done had he merely played the light game of love with her.

‘I do not believe in anything that I cannot see, touch, or experiment with. I am with Prince Rupert in that,’ was his reply. ‘But, mistress, we must to the house again. The Duke and your father will wonder what has kept us and will not like to believe us if we say that we were having a most scholarly discourse. Such is not the usual converse of man and maid left alone together!’

Celia did not blush, or raise a hand to flap at him, but nodded her head in agreement. ‘I had forgot how long we had been alone,’ she said, ‘in the pleasure of our discourse. You are perhaps a member of the King’s great society which seeks to discover the secrets of the world in which we live.’

‘Most surely,’ agreed Kit, leading her back to the house. He was a little surprised that she knew of the Royal Society, but then if her father spoke freely to her of his work, and she had read widely, as it was plain that she had, then she was like to know of it.

‘Oh, I wish,’ said Celia wistfully, looking up at him so that Kit felt that he was about to drown in the grey waters of her eyes—and what a splendid death that would be—‘I wish that I were a man that I might be present and listen to the sages and the learned men speak. Sometimes when Father hath company I am allowed to be present, but I am not allowed to speak. I may merely listen.’

‘And what a waste—’ Kit was suddenly a gallant, a true member of the King’s dissolute court ‘—that would be. That you were a man, I mean, mistress. You are too fair to be a man.’

‘And that,’ she said gently, as they reached the door to the house where they could hear Adam and the Duke speaking together, both having drunk too well, and their voices rising and falling almost as though they were singing, ‘is what I most complain of. That it is my looks which men think of and never of me—the Celia who has thoughts and dreams that a man might have, but may rarely express them.’

She had thought him different but she had been wrong. He was a man and a courtier and he might dally for a moment with her and speak as he might have done to one of his fellows, but that was no matter, she was, forever and ever, merely a woman, and that she must endure.

Kit knew that he had sounded a false note, and that with it he had lost all that he had gained with her. But no matter. He could not believe that she was so different from all the other women he had known. Her wooing and winning would take longer, and would follow a different path, but the end would be the same—if only he guarded his tongue and showed to her that face of him which she would most like to see.

Buckingham lifted his glass mockingly to them as they entered the room. ‘Hast been a devil of a long time admiring the flowers, Kit, my boy. Or is that all you admired? Nay, do not answer me; I would not have the fair Celia put out of countenance. That would never do, my sweeting, would it?’ And he rose and bowed to her.