The Unfortunate Traveller and Other Works (37 page)

All soul, no earthly flesh, why dost thou fade?
All gold, no worthless dross, why look'st thou pale?
Sickness, how dar'st thou one so fair invade,
Too base infirmity to work her bale?
    Heaven be distemper'd since she grieved pines,
    Never be dry, these my sad plaintive lines.

Perch thou, my spirit, on her silver breasts,
And with their pain-redoubled music-beatings,
Let them toss thee to world where all toil rests,
Where bliss is subject to no fear's defeatings:
    Her praise I tune whose tongue doth tune the spheres,
     And gets new muses in her hearer's ears.

Stars fall to fetch fresh light from her rich eyes,
Her bright brow drives the sun to clouds beneath.
Her hairs' reflex with red streaks paints the skies,
Sweet morn and evening dew flows from her breath:
    Phoebe rules tides, she my tears' tides forth draws,
    In her sick-bed love sits and maketh laws.

Her dainty limbs tinsel her silk soft sheets,
Her rose-crown'd cheeks eclipse my dazzled sight;
Oh glass, with too much joy my thoughts thou greets,
And yet thou showest me day but by twilight:
    I'll kiss thee for the kindness I have felt,
    Her lips one kiss would unto nectar melt.

Though the Emperor's Court and the extraordinary edifying company of Cornelius Agrippa might have been arguments of weight to have arrested us a little longer there, yet Italy still stuck as a great mote in my master's eye; he thought he had travelled no further than Wales till he had took survey of that country which was such a curious moulder of wits.

To cut off blind ambages
¹⁷⁸
by the highway-side, we made a long stride and got to Venice in short time; where having scarce looked about us, a precious supernatural pander, apparelled in all points like a gentleman, and having half-a-dozen several languages in his purse, entertained us in our own tongue very peraphrastically and eloquently, and maugre
¹⁷⁹
all other pretended acquaintance would have us in a violent kind of courtesy to be the guests of his appointment. His name was Petro de Campo Frego, a notable practitioner in the policy of bawdry. The place whither he brought us was a pernicious courtesan's house named Tabitha the Temptress's, a wench that could set as civil a face on it as chastity's first martyr, Lucretia. What will you conceit to be in any saint's house that was there to seek? Books, pictures, beads, crucifixes, why, there was a haberdasher's shop of them in every chamber. I warrant you should not see one set of her neckercher perverted or turned awry, not a piece of a hair displaced. On her beds there was not a wrinkle of any wallowing to be found; her pillows bare out as smooth as a groaning wife's belly, and yet she was a Turk and an infidel, and had more doings than all her neighbours besides. Us for our money they used like emperors. I was
master, as you heard before, and my master, the Earl, was but as my chief man whom I made my companion. So it happened (as iniquity will out at one time or other) that she, perceiving my expenses had no more vents than it should have, fell in with my supposed servant, my man, and gave him half a promise of marriage if he would help to make me away, that she and he might enjoy the jewels and wealth that I had.

The indifficulty of the condition thus she explained unto him. Her house stood upon vaults, which in two hundred years together were never searched; who came into her house none took notice of. His fellow servants that knew of his master's abode there should be all dispatched by him, as from his master, into sundry parts of the city about business, and, when they returned, answer should be made that he lay not there any more but had removed to Padua since their departure and thither they must follow him. ‘Now', quoth she, ‘if you be disposed to make him away in their absence, you shall have my house at command. Stab, poison, or shoot him through with a pistol, all is one; into the vault he shall be thrown when the deed is done.' On my bare honesty, it was a crafty quean, for she had enacted with herself, if he had been my legitimate servant, as he was one that served and supplied my necessities, when he had murthered me, to have accused him of the murther, and made all that I had hers, as I carried all my master's wealth, money, jewels, rings, or bills of exchange continually about me. He very subtly consented to her stratagem at the first motion: kill me he would, that heavens could not withstand, and a pistol was the predestinate engine which must deliver the parting blow. God wot, I was a raw young squire, and my master dealt judasly with me, for he told me but everything that she and he agreed of. Wherefore, I could not possibly prevent it, but as a man would say avoid it. The execution day aspired to his utmost devolution, into my chamber came my honourable attendant, with his pistol charged by his side, very suspiciously and sullenly. Lady Tabitha and Petro de Campo Frego, her pander, followed him at the hard heels.

At their entrance I saluted them all very familiarly and merrily, and began to impart unto them what disquiet dreams had disturbed me the last night. ‘I dreamt', quoth I, ‘that my man Brunquell
¹⁸⁰
here (for no better name got he of me) came into my chamber with a pistol charged under his arm to kill me, and that he was suborned by you, Mistress Tabitha, and my very good friend here, Petro de Campo Frego. God send it turn to good, for it hath affrighted me above measure.' As they were ready to enter into a colourable
¹⁸¹
commonplace of the deceitful frivolousness of dreams, my trusty servant Brunquell stood quivering and quaking every joint of him, and, as it was before compacted between us, let his pistol drop from him on the sudden, wherewith I started out of my bed and drew my rapier and cried ‘Murther, murther!' which made goodwife Tabitha ready to bepiss her.

My servant (or my master, which you will), I took roughly by the collar, and threatened to run him through incontinent if he confessed not the truth. He, as it were stricken with remorse of conscience (God be with him, for he could counterfeit most daintly), down on his knees asked me forgiveness, and impeached Tabitha and Petro de Campo Frego as guilty of subornation. I very mildly and gravely gave him audience; rail on them I did not after his tale was ended, but said I would try what the law could do. Conspiracy by the custom of their country was a capital offence, and what custom or justice might afford they should be all sure to feel. ‘I could,' quoth I, ‘acquit myself otherwise, but it is not for a stranger to be his own carver in revenge.' Not a word more with Tabitha, but die she would before God or the devil would have her. She sounded
¹⁸²
and revived, and then sounded again, and after she revived again, sighed heavily, spoke faintly and pitifully, yea, and so pitifully as, if a man had not known the pranks of harlots before, he would have melted into commiseration. Tears,
sighs, and doleful-tuned words could not make any forcible claim to my stony ears. It was the glittering crowns that I hungered and thirsted after, and with them for all her mock holyday gestures she was fain to come off, before I condescended to any bargain of silence. So it fortuned (fie upon that unfortunate word of Fortune) that this whore, this quean, this courtesan, this common of ten thousand, so bribing me not to bewray her, had given me a great deal of counterfeit gold, which she had received of a coiner to make away a little before, amongst the gross sum of my bribery. I, silly milksop, mistrusting no deceit, under an angel of light took what she gave me, n'er turned it over, for which (Oh falsehood in fair show) my master and I had like to have been turned over.
¹⁸³
He that is a knight errant, exercised in the affairs of ladies and gentlewomen, hath more places to send money to than the devil hath to send his spirits to.

There was a delicate wench named Flavia Aemilia lodging in Saint Mark's Street at a goldsmith's, which I would fain have had to the grand test to try whether she were cunning in alchemy or no. Ay me, she was but a counterfeit slip,
¹⁸⁴
for she not only gave me the slip, but had wellnigh made me a slip-string.
¹⁸⁵
To her I sent my gold to beg an hour of grace: ah, graceless fornicatress, my hostess and she were confederate, who having gotten but one piece of my ill gold in their hands, devised the means to make me immortal. I could drink for anger till my head ached to think how I was abused. Shall I shame the devil and speak the truth? To prison was I sent as principal, and my master as accessory; nor was it to a prison neither, but to the Master of the Mint's house, who, though partly our judge, and a most severe upright justice in his own nature, extremely seemed to condole our ignorant estate, and without all
¹⁸⁶
peradventure a present redress he had ministered, if certain of our countrymen, hearing an English Earl was apprehended
for coining, had not come to visit us. An ill planet brought them thither, for at the first glance they knew the servant of my secrecies to be the Earl of Surrey, and I (not worthy to be named I) an outcast of his cup or pantofles. Thence, thence sprung the full period of our infelicity. The Master of the Mint, our whilom refresher and consolation, now took part against us: he thought we had a mint in our heads of mischievous conspiracies against their state. Heavens bear witness with us it was not so (heavens will not always come to witness when they are called).

To a straiter ward were we committed: that which we have imputatively transgressed must be answered. Oh, the heathen hey-pass
¹⁸⁷
and the intrinsical legerdemain
¹⁸⁸
of our special approved good pander, Petro de Campo Frego! He, although he dipped in the same dish with us every day, seeming to labour our cause very importunately, and had interpreted for us to the state from the beginning, yet was one of those treacherous Brother Trulies,
¹⁸⁹
and abused us most clerkly. He interpreted to us with a pestilence, for whereas we stood obstinately upon it, we were wrongfully detained and that it was naught but a malicious practice of sinful Tabitha, our late hostess, he, by a fine coney-catching corrupt translation, made us plainly to confess and cry
Miserere
, ere we had need of our neck-verse.
¹⁹⁰

Detestable, detestable, that the flesh and the devil should deal by their factors. I'll stand to it, there is not a pander but hath vowed paganism. The devil himself is not such a devil as he, so be he perform his function aright. He must have the back of an ass, the snout of an elephant, the wit of a fox, and the teeth of a wolf; he must fawn like a spaniel, crouch like a Jew, leer like a sheepbiter. If he be half a puritan and have scripture continually in his mouth, he speeds the better. I can tell you it is a trade of great promotion, and
let none ever think to mount by service in foreign courts or creep near to some magnifique lords, if they be not seen in this science. Oh, it is the art of arts, and ten thousand times goes beyond the intelligencer.
¹⁹¹
None but a staid, grave, civil man is capable of it. He must have exquisite courtship in him or else he is not old who;
¹⁹²
he wants the best point in his tables.

God be merciful to our pander (and that were for God to work a miracle): he was seen in all the seven liberal deadly sciences, not a sin but he was as absolute in as Satan himself. Satan could never have supplanted us so as he did. I may say to you he planted in us the first Italianate wit that we had. During the time we lay close and took physic in this castle of contemplation, there was a magnifico's wife of good calling sent to bear us company. Her husband's name was Castaldo; she night
¹⁹³
Diamante. The cause of her committing was an ungrounded jealous superstition which her doting husband had conceived of her chastity. One Isaac Medicus, a Bergomast,
¹⁹⁴
was the man he chose to make him a monster,
¹⁹⁵
who being a courtier, and repairing to his house very often, neither for love of him nor his wife, but only with a drift to borrow money of a pawn of wax and parchment,
¹⁹⁶
when he saw his expectation deluded, and that Castaldo was too chary for him to close with, he privily, with purpose of revenge, gave out amongst his copesmates
¹⁹⁷
that he resorted to Castaldo's house for no other end but to cuckold him, and doubtfully he talked that he had and he had not obtained his suit. Rings which he borrowed of a light courtesan that he used to, he would fain to be taken from her fingers, and, in sum, so handled the matter that Castaldo exclaimed: ‘Out, whore! strumpet! six-penny hackster!
¹⁹⁸
Away with her to prison!'

As glad were we almost as if they had given us liberty, that fortune lent us such a sweet pew-fellow. A pretty round-faced wench was it, with black eyebrows, a high forehead, a little mouth, and a sharp nose; as fat and plum, every part of her, as a plover, a skin as sleek and soft as the back of a swan; it doth me good when I remember her. Like a bird she tripped on the ground, and bare out her belly as majestical as an estrich. With a lickerous rolling eye fixed piercing in the earth, and sometimes scornfully darted on the t'one side,
¹⁹⁹
she figured forth a high discontented disdain; much like a prince puffing and storming at the treason of some mighty subject fled lately out of his power. Her very countenance repiningly wrathful, and yet clear and unwrinkled, would have confirmed the clearness of her conscience to the austerest judge in the world. If in anything she were culpable, it was in being too melancholy chaste, and showing herself as covetous of her beauty as her husband was of his bags. Many are honest because they know not how to be dishonest; she thought there was no pleasure in stolen bread because there was no pleasure in an old man's bed. It is almost impossible that any woman should be excellently witty and not make the utmost penny of her beauty. This age and this country of ours admits of some miraculous exceptions, but former times are my constant informers. Those that have quick motions of wit have quick motions in everything: iron only needs many strokes, only iron wits are not won without a long siege of entreaty. Gold easily bends; the most ingenious minds are easiest moved;
Ingenium nobis molle Thalai dedit
²⁰⁰
saith Psapho to Phao. Who hath no merciful mild mistress, I will maintain, hath no witty but a clownish, dull, phlegmatic puppy to his mistress.