Crossed Bones / The Tenth Gift, an excerpt
To the Right Honorable Lords of his Majestie's most honorable Privy Council.
Haste, haste, posthaste.
Plymouth, the eighteenth of april, eight in the eve
--Thomas Ceely, Mayor.
--May it please yr honors to be advertised that this daie I have heard of certaine Turks, Moores, & Dutchmen of Sallee in Barbary, which lie on our coasts spoiling divers such as they are able to master, as by the examination of one William Knight may appeare, whose report I am induced the rather to believe, because two fisherboats mentioned in hys examination were very lately found flotyng on the seas, having neither man nor tackle in them...
--I am also credibly informed that there are some thirtie sail of shippes at Sallee now preparing to come for the coasts of England in the begynnyng of the summer, & if there bee not speedy course taken to prevent it, they would do much mischeef.
--Hereof I thought it my dutie to inform yr honors.
And so I rest,
Yr honors in all dutie bounden,
Thos. Ceely, Mayor
Plymouth, 18th daie of april 1625
One
'There are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they have never happened before, like larks that have been singing the same five notes for thousands of years.'
I had scribbled this down in a notebook after reading it in a novel the night before I was due to meet Michael and was looking forward to slipping it into our conversation at dinner, despite knowing his likely reaction (negative; dismissive – he was always sceptical about anything that could even vaguely be termed 'romantic'). He was a lecturer in European literature, to which he presented an uncompromising post-structuralist stance as if books were just meat for the butcher's block, mere muscle and tendon, bone and cartilage which required flensing and separating and scrutiny. For his part, Michael found my thinking on the subject of fiction both emotional and unrigorous; which meant that at the start of our relationship we had the most furious arguments which would hurt me so personally as to bring me to the edge of tears, but now, five years in, we were able to bait one another cheerfully. Anyway, it made a change from discussing, or avoiding, the subject of Anna, or the future.
To begin with it had been hard to live like this, on snatched moments, the future always in abeyance, but I had got used to it little by little so that now my life had a recognizable pattern to it. It was a bit pared down and lacking in what others might consider crucial areas, but it suited me. Or so I told myself, time and time again.
I dressed with particular care for dinner: a devoré silk blouse, a tailored black skirt that skimmed the knees; stockings (Michael was predictably male in his preferences); a pair of suede ankle-strap shoes in which I could just about manage the half mile to the restaurant and back. And my favourite hand-embroidered shawl: bursts of bright pansies worked on a ground of fine black cashmere.
I've always said you have to be an optimist to be a good embroiderer. A large piece (like the shawl) can take six months to a year of inspired and dedicated work. Determination, too; a dogged spirit like that of a mountaineer, taking one measured step at a time rather than panicking at the thought of the whole immense task, the crevasse field and headwall of ice. You may think I exaggerate the difficulties – a bit of cloth, a needle and thread: how hard can it be? But once you've laid out a small fortune on cashmere and another on the silks, or it's under a tight deadline for some nervous girl's wedding, or an exhibition, and you have not only to design and plan but to stitch a million stitches, I can tell you the pressure is palpable.
We were meeting at Enoteca Turi, near the southern end of Putney's bridge, a smart Tuscan restaurant which we usually reserved for celebrations. There were no birthdays looming, no publications or promotions, that I knew of. The latter would, in any case, be hard for me to achieve, since I ran my own business, and since even the word 'business' was something of a stretch for my one-woman enterprise: a tiny craft shop in the Seven Dials. The craft shop was more of an indulgence than a money-making concern. An aunt had died five years ago leaving me a decent legacy; my mother had followed two years later, and I the only child. The lease on the shop had fallen into my lap; it had less than a year to run and I hadn't decided what to do with it at the end of that time. I made more money from commissions than from the so-called business, and even those were more of a way of passing time, stitching away the minutes while awaiting my next tryst with Michael.
I arrived early. They do say relationships are usually weighted in favour of one party, and reckoned I was carrying seventy per cent of ours. This was partly due to circumstances, partly to temperament, both mine and Michael's. He reserved himself from the world most of the time: I was the emotional profligate.
I took my seat with my back to the wall, gazing out at the other diners like a spectator at a zoo. Mostly couples in their thirties, like us: well-off, well-dressed, well-spoken, if a bit loud. Snippets of conversation drifted to me:
"What is fagioli occhiata di Colfiorito, do you know?"
"So sad about Justin and Alice ... lovely couple ... what will they do with the house?"
"What do you think of Marrakech next month, or would you prefer Florence again?"
Nice, normal, happy people with sensible jobs, plenty of money and solid marriages; with ordered, comfortable, conforming lives. Rather unlike mine. I looked at them all embalmed in the golden light and wondered what they would make of me, sitting here in my best underwear, new stockings and high heels, waiting for my one-time best friend's husband to arrive.
Probably be envious as hell, suggested a wicked voice in my head.
Probably not.
Where was Michael? It was twenty past eight and he'd have to be home by eleven, as he was always at pains to point out. A quick dinner, a swift fuck: it was the most I could hope for; and maybe not even that. Feeling the precious moments ticking away I began to get anxious. I hadn't allowed myself to dwell on the special reason he had suggested Enoteca. It was an expensive place, not somewhere you would choose on a whim; not on the salary of a part-time lecturer, supplemented by desultory book-dealing, not if you were – like Michael – careful with your money. I took my mind off this conundrum by ordering a bottle of Rocca Rubia from the sommelier and sat there with my hands clasped around the vast bowl of the glass as if holding the Grail itself, waiting for my deeply flawed Sir Lancelot to arrive. In the candlelight, the contents sparkled like fresh blood.
At last he burst through the revolving door with his hair in disarray and his cheeks pink as if he'd run all the way from Putney Station. He shrugged his coat off impatiently, transferring briefcase and black carrier bag from hand to hand as he wrestled his way out of the sleeves, and at last bounded over, grinning manically, though not quite meeting my eye, kissed me swiftly on the cheek and sat down into the chair the waiter pushed forward for him.
"Sorry I'm late. Let's order, shall we? I have to be home—"
"—by eleven, yes I know." I suppressed a sigh. "Tough day?"
It would be nice to know why we were here, to get to the nub of the evening, but Michael was focused on the menu now, intently considering the specials and which one was most likely to offer value for money.
"Not especially," he said at last. "Usual idiot students, sitting there like empty-headed sheep waiting for me to fill them up with knowledge – except the usual know-it-all big mouth showing off to the girls by picking a fight with the tutor. Soon sorted that one out."
I could imagine Michael fixing some uppity twenty-year-old with a gimlet stare before cutting him mercilessly down to size in a manner guaranteed to get a laugh from the female students. Women loved Michael. We couldn't help ourselves. Whether it was his saturnine features (and habits, to boot), the louche manner or the look in those glittering black eyes, the cruelly carved mouth or the restless hands, I didn't know. I had lost perspective on such matters long ago.
The waiter took our order and we were left without further excuse for equivocation. Michael reached across the table and rested his hand on mine, imprisoning it against the white linen. At once the familiar burst of sexual electricity charged up my arm, sending shockwaves through me. His gaze was solemn: so solemn that I wanted to laugh. He looked like an impish Puck about to confess to some heinous crime.
"I think," he said carefully, his gaze resting on a point about two inches to the left of me, "we should stop seeing each other. For a while, at least."
So there it was, the monstrous nub, squatting huge and ugly between us. So much for discussing larks. The laugh that had been building up burst out of me, discordant and crazy-sounding. I was aware of people staring.
"What?"
"You're still young," he said. "If we stop this now you can find someone else. Settle down. Have a family."
I hate it when men tell you the decision they've taken all on their own is for your benefit, as if we can't see them justifying their escape. Smooth the little cat's fur, make it purr again. Watch her sheathe her claws. Besides, Michael hated the very idea of children: that he would wish them on me was confirmation of the distance he wanted to put between us.
"None of us are young any more," I retorted. "Least of all you." His hand went unconsciously to his forehead. He was losing his hair and was vain enough to care about it. For the past few years I'd told him it was unnoticeable; then became a bit of a lie, that it made him look distinguished, sexy.
The waiter brought food: we ate it in silence. Or rather, Michael ate in silence: I pushed my crab and linguini around my plate and drank a lot of wine.
At last our plates were cleared away, leaving a looming space between us. Michael stared at the tablecloth as if the space itself posed a threat, then became strangely animated. "Actually, I got you something," he said. He picked up the carrier bag and peered into it. I glimpsed two brown-wrapped objects of almost identical proportions inside, as if he had bought the same farewell gift twice, for two different women. Perhaps he had.
"It's not properly wrapped, I'm afraid: I didn't have time, all been a bit chaotic today." He pushed one of these items across the table at me. "But it's the thought that counts. It's a sort of a memento mori; and an apology," he said with that crooked, sensual smile that had so caught my heart in the first place. "I am sorry, you know. For everything."
There was a lot that he had to be sorry for, but I wasn't feeling strong enough to say so. Memento mori; a reminder of death. The phrase ricocheted around my mind, causing damage wherever it hit.
I unwrapped the parcel carefully, feeling the crab and chilli sauce rising in my throat.
It was a book. An antique book, with a cover of buttery brown calfskin, simple decorative blind lines on the boards and four raised, rounded ridges at even intervals along the spine. My fingers ran over the textures appreciatively, as if over another skin. Closing myself off from the damaging things Michael was saying, I applied myself to opening the cover, careful not to crack the brittle spine. Inside, the title page was foxed and faded.
The Needle-Woman's Glorie, it read in bold characters, and then in a fine italic print: 'Here followeth certain fyne patternes to be fitly wroghte in Gold, or Silke or Crewell as takes your plesure'.
Published here togyther for the first tyme by Henry Ward of Cathedral Square Exeter 1624.
And beneath this, in a round, uncertain hand: 'For my cozen Cat, 27th Maie 1625'.
"Oh!" I cried, ambushed by its antiquity and its beauty. An intricate pattern filled the verso page. I tilted it towards the light in a vain attempt to examine it better.
Michael had just said something else, but whatever it was flew harmlessly over my head.
"Oh," I exclaimed again. "How extraordinary."
Michael had stopped talking. I was aware of a heavy silence, one that demanded a reaction."Have you heard any of what I've been saying?"
I gazed at him wordless, not wanting an answer.
His black eyes were suddenly almost brown. Pity welled in them. "I'm so sorry, Julia," he said again. "Anna and I have reached a crucial point in our lives and have had a proper heart to heart. We're going to give our marriage another go, a fresh start. I can't see you any more. It's over."
I lay alone in my bed that night, curled around the book, the last thing in my life that would carry a connection with Michael, sobbing until I had made myself so unattractive it was simply no surprise he had left me. At last, sheer exhaustion overtook me, but sleep was almost worse than being awake: the dreams were terrible. I surfaced at two-thirty, at three; at four, retaining fragments of images – blood and shattered bones, someone crying in pain; shouts in a language I could not understand. Most vivid of all was a sequence in which I was stripped naked and paraded before strangers, who laughed and pointed out my shortcomings, which were many. One of them was Michael. He wore a long robe and a hood, but I knew his voice when he said, "This one has no breasts. Why have you brought me a woman with no breasts?" I awoke, sweating and shamed, a creature of no account who deserved her fate.
Yet even as I loathed myself, something in me knew that my reaction was skewed; I felt disorientated, detached, as if it were not me suffering the indignity, but some other Julia Lovell, far away. I drifted back into sleep, and if I dreamed again, I do not remember it. When I finally woke up, I was lying on the book. It had left a clear impression – four ridges, like scars, on my back.
Two
The doorbell rang. Michael crossed to the window and looked down. In the street below a man stood, shifting awkwardly from foot to foot as if in dire need of a visit to the lavatory. He was dressed too warmly for the weather, in an old wool Crombie and cord trousers. From his bird's eye vantage point Michael could see for the first time that the top of Stephen's head was almost bald, save for a thin covering of comb-over which looked almost as if it had been glued down. He looked comically out of place in this part of Soho, where young men paraded up and down in muscle shirts, ripped denim or leather and knowing smiles, and tourists got vicarious thrills by entering, if only for an hour or so, the cruising scene.
Old Compton Street hadn't been quite so outré or lively when Michael had first moved into the flat: he felt now, watching the tide of young life passing by outside, as if he were looking through a window into someone else's party, one to which he was too old and straight to be invited. Especially now that he was back on the narrow path, playing the good husband.
"Stephen!" he called down, and the balding man lifted his head, shading his eyes against the sun. "Here!" He threw his keys out of the window. "Top floor."
Not just his keys, either, he thought ruefully as they left his hand, but Julia's too. He supposed he should return them to her now that it was over. But it just seemed so ... final.
The arrival of Stephen Bywater interrupted his thoughts.
"You could have come down to the shop," he said accusingly, wiping the sweat off his forehead. Four flights of rickety stairs, and he wasn't a young man. "It's not as if Bloomsbury's more than ten minutes' walk." He struggled out of his Crombie as if to emphasise his discomfort.
"I didn't want people interrupting us," Michael said quickly. "You'll see why in a moment. Sit down."
He pushed a pile of newspapers and textbooks off the threadbare sofa to make space for his visitor. Stephen Bywater looked at the stained canvas dubiously, as if he didn't want to risk his trouser-seat to it, then balanced himself uncomfortably on the edge, his bony knees and elbows sticking out at all angles like a praying mantis.
"It'll be worth your while," Michael went on excitedly. "Just wait till you see this. It's quite extraordinary, a real gem, unique. Really, there's no point in my wittering on. Take a look at this and see for yourself."
From a black carrier bag on the coffee table he extracted a small, brown-paper-wrapped parcel. This he handed to Bywater. His visitor opened it gingerly, removing a little pale, calf-leather-bound book with flecks of gold tooling on the spine. He murmured appreciatively, turning it to examine the back board, the rough paper edges, the binding.
"Very nice. Sixteenth, seventeenth century." He opened the front cover with infinite care, turned to the title page. "1624. Remarkable. The Needlewoman's Glorie. Heard of it, of course, but never actually laid my hands on a copy. Very pretty. A little light spotting and some old handling marks, but generally very fine condition." He grinned up at Michael, showing teeth as yellow as a rat's. "Should fetch a few quid. A grand, at least. Where did you say you got it from?"
Michael hadn't. "Oh, a friend. Selling it on behalf of a friend." This wasn't the entire truth, but it wasn't too shy of it. "Look inside, look properly," he urged impatiently. "It's a lot more extraordinary than you might think at first glance."
He watched avidly as the book-dealer blew on the pages and separated them gently, making faces as he did so. "Well, it's all there," he said at last. "The patterns and slips and all."
Michael looked deflated. "Is that all you can say? Come on man, it's unique, a ... a palimpsest! Can't you see the secret text, written in the margins and between the patterns? It's not easy to make out, I'll admit, but you can't have missed it!"
Bywater frowned and reapplied himself to the book. Eventually he closed it and looked at his friend oddly. "Well, there's certainly no palimpsest here, dear boy. This is paper, not vellum: there's no sign of scraping, no scriptio inferior, nothing that I can see. Marginalia, well that's quite a different matter, as you should know. Now marginalia in the author's own hand, that would add some value, possibly double it—"
"It's not in the author's hand, you idiot: it's written by some girl. It's a unique historical document: it's probably priceless! You must need glasses--"
Michael snatched the book roughly from the dealer's hand, opening it at random, flicked through it frantically as if the writing he had seen the previous day might magically reappear.
After a minute, he put it down again, his face like thunder.
Then he ran to the phone.
Three
I knew Anna, Michael's wife, from university. There, we had been the Three Amigos, me Anna and my cousin Alison, as unlike from one another as you could imagine. Where Anna was petite and doll-like, Alison and I were of solid Cornish stock, raised on rich dairy products and pasties. When I let it down, I could sit on my blonde hair, while Anna's was short and black and model-perfect; and Alison's shoulder-length hair was chestnut brown, then red, then black, then scarlet and back to brown again, depending on whether she was teaching English or Drama. Together we made the perfect symbiotic unit for getting through the trials of university and our first post-degree jobs – Anna in a bookshop, Alison teaching, me in an endless series of cafes and bars.
Alison and I messed around, took drugs, got drunk; got laid, had fun; but Anna made shapes with her life: she took the threads of her experiences and wove them into something purposeful. She worked hard, and it showed. She was now a successful fashion magazine editor, earning a small fortune, although ironically, she was the only one of us who never really needed the money. Her family were, from what I could gather, though she was quite secretive about her background, and a bit shy around me and Alison and our noisy and frequent financial crises, really rather rich.
After college it was, I suppose, inevitable that we should drift apart. Alison met and married Andrew, for a start. I have to admit I was never that keen on Andrew. He was one of those ruddy sweaty rugby-playing men, hearty and over-confident, with a tendency to grab your knee, or something else, in the middle of a conversation, depending on how drunk he was. But he had a wicked sense of humour and no facility for embarrassment and he made Alison happy, for a while at least, and so I did my best to make friends with him. They took me in time after time when I got my heart broken by one unsuitable man after another, poured drink down me, and Alison would look on indulgently as Andrew flirted clumsily with me while I laughed and wept and choked on my wine. When he cheated on my cousin and caused her to come running to me in tears, feeling that her life had come apart and could never be put back together again, I was livid with him and did not speak to him for the best part of two years.
How ironic. For shortly after that I met Michael.
How well I remember it all. Anna, a little breathless, flushed, embarrassed. "Julia, come and have a drink. There's someone I want you to meet. My fiancé, in fact."
Well, she'd kept that quiet. I was astonished, and rather hurt by the secrecy and suddenness of it all. She'd never even had boyfriends at college. When the rest of us were making the most of our newfound freedom, Anna was writing essays, researching, revising. While I was cheerfully experimenting with sex, Anna stayed focused and celibate. She took life a lot more seriously than the rest of us. After college she had ploughed her energies into her career: she had a plan, she said, and it certainly seemed to be working for her. "I'll marry in my thirties," I remember her telling me, "once I'm properly established at the magazine and can take time off to have children." And at the time I'd scoffed and reminded her that life was what happened to you while you were making plans. So there she was, at thirty-one, announcing her engagement, the next step in her life-scheme.
"Are you pregnant?" I'd teased her.
She was indignant; but went very pink. "Of course not," she said.
I wondered if she had even slept with him.
There had to be a flaw, since there is no such thing as perfection, in life or art or anything else. Perfection tempts fate. I remember reading that ancient Japanese potters always worked a tiny flaw into each pot they created, for fear of angering the gods, and Anna must surely have tempted some impish spirit somewhere in the pantheon, to have been punished for her hubris with Michael. And in having me for a friend.
Unfortunately for all of us, the attraction between me and Michael was instant and mutual. We made electric eye-contact, and at one point during that first evening at a crammed little bar in Covent Garden, he brushed his hand, quite deliberately and with devastating effect, against my bottom. Three weeks later, after a lot of meaningful looks and some furtive touching, we slept together.
"I can't tell Anna," he said to me that same afternoon, as if it was a foregone conclusion; and I, missing my first and best opportunity to unravel the developing tangle, lay there concussed by sex and guilt, and agreed. After that it became increasingly unthinkable to admit our treachery. I was maid of honour at the wedding.
As we lay together on those snatched Wednesday afternoons in Michael's Soho flat when he wasn't teaching, summer sunlight slipping through the louvered blinds, slicing our bodies into lit and shaded slivers, he would confide to me, "She's not very physical, Anna. I always feel I'm imposing myself on her." At the time I felt triumph, but my confidence was misplaced. Anna's cool distance intrigued and challenged him: she remained an unseized prize, an elusive country he had only fleeting glimpsed but never claimed as territory. Whereas me he had staked out, explored, tied down; often literally. Sometimes when we made love, Michael would wind my long, pale hair in his hands, using it like reins. Once he tied me to a hotel bedstead with it. We had to use the pair of miniature sewing scissors I kept in my handbag with my embroidery kit, to cut me free, he had made such a mess of the knots.
I recalled that particular incident now, four years later: it seemed an apt metaphor – an omen perhaps -- for how things had turned out. Michael had knotted my life into a vile tangle, and then cut me free. I was angry with him; furious in fact, before remembering I had to take at least as much of the blame for the situation. Anna was, after all, my friend. My so-called best friend. I had felt ashamed of the affair, my betrayal of our friendship, from the start. But shame is an uncomfortable emotion, one we don't much like to confront. The pressures of Anna's work made this easier than it might otherwise have been, and I had become a master of excuses in avoiding dreaded tête á têtes and dinner á trois. Racked by the knowledge of how I was betraying her, day by day, hour by hour, I found I could not bear her company. She was so happy; and only I knew the truth that would render that happiness rotten and hollow.
Now that Michael and I had come to an end, I wasn't sure I could ever endure to see her again.
The day after our break-up, exhausted by weeping, I took myself out of London to walk the cliffs of the south coast, feeling much of the time like throwing myself over them, but never summoning the courage. I left my mobile phone behind in the Putney flat, to ensure I did not weaken and call him. Instead, in the time when I was not stalking mechanically along footpaths, impervious to the magnificent scenery, I devoted myself to a new embroidery design I had been meaning to start for some weeks.
It was for a wall-hanging, and therefore to be worked on stout linen twill, in coloured wools rather than silks. Ever since the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods this type of work has been known as crewel work, from the old Welsh word for wool. Which seemed fitting. I spent many bitter hours playing on the unfortunate pun in my head as I stitched. Crewel world, crewel fate, crewel to be kind, crewel and unusual ... I could go on, but won't. I had already marked out on the fabric a coiling monochrome pattern of stylised acanthus leaves picked out with flares of colour where flowers burst through the foliage. Very traditional in style, after the Flemish Verdure tapestries I'd seen in the Victoria & Albert Museum, the delicate in-filling of the leaf design inspired by the filigree of Venetian needlepoint lace. It was a large piece, and would easily cover the beautiful, framed black and white photograph of Michael that hung in my bedroom. This, I had ceremonially burned in the back garden before leaving the flat; but the wall annoyingly retained its ghostly shape, and it would be a constant reminder of the absence of both man and picture.
Embroidery is an improbable hobby for someone as disordered as me; but maybe it's the very precision of it that attracts me, the illusion of control it offers. When engaged in stitching a new pattern I can't think about anything else. Guilt, misery, longing all flee away leaving just the beautiful little microcosm of the world in my hands, the flash of the needle, the rainbow colours of the thread, the calming exactitude of the discipline. I think it was the wall-hanging that saved my sanity in the days following our break-up.
How ironic, then, that embroidery should also be the catalyst which was to throw my life into such catastrophic and glorious disarray...
I returned to London a week later, somewhat restored to myself, to find my answering machine flashing crazily. You have twenty-three new messages, the digital voice informed me. My heart thumped. Perhaps Michael had had second thoughts about finishing the relationship, perhaps he wanted to see me. I pushed this possibility firmly away. I did not want to go through this pain again. He was a bastard and I was well rid of him. Before I could backslide, I deleted all the messages. If there had been anything crucial, the caller would phone again, I reasoned. I knew that if I so much as heard Michael's voice, my resolve would crumble.
I walked away, into the bedroom, where all was still in the disarray in which I had left it: the bed unmade, discarded clothes scattered across the room. I cleared everything away, filled the washing machine and came back to make the bed.
The book Michael had given me lay in the tangle of sheets. It weighed beautifully in my hand, its soft calfskin cover warm, as if it were still alive. I opened it at random, folding the ancient paper back with care, and was confronted by a pattern for a slip: a delicate repeated motif of a twining vine designed to be executed in blackwork which the author suggested 'would doe beste in a quaife or a caule, or to edge a handcarcheef'. The rest of his instructions were obscured beneath a defacing cross-hatch of pencilled markings. Annoyed, I carried the book to the bedside lamp and squinted at it under the round of golden light.
Someone had written all over the page in a tiny, archaic hand. Long 'f's for 's's and that sort of thing; it was hard to read and in places blotched and faded, but from the words I could make out, it had nothing to do with embroidery at all; not unless the author had a taste for samplers themed on blood, and death. I retrieved a magnifying glass from the bureau, fetched a notebook and pencil of my own, turned to the frontispiece and began to make a sort of translation of what I had found.
This daie 27th of Maie in the yeare of Our Lord 1625 markes the sad deth of oure kyng James, & the 19th yr of the birth of hys servant Catherine Anne Tregenna & I must give thanks for that & for the gifte of this booke & plumbagoe writing sticke from my cozen Robert with which he sayes I may record my own slippes & paterns. That shall I doe but like my mystresse Lady Harrys of Kenegie I wille also keep herein my musings, for she tells mee it is a goodly dutie & taske for the mynd to thus practiss my letters...