John the Posthumous Read Free Page A

appropriate term, at least in these dioceses—while the second is a confession, neatly abridged. Here we have the alcove bed, for instance, from 1793, made up in gray. The trestle bed, from 1810, resembles—if I may beg your indulgence—a trembling man. The canopy bed, from 1819, from 1822, from 1827, hides ten items. A treatise on drapery follows, regarding, in part, a brace of grouse and a saddle of mutton, or—depending upon the sadness of the family—green chains and a windowsill.
    The landscape plan mistakes the location of the garden wall.
    Hoddypoll, which also means fool , I believe, derives from dod —as in snail and small hill— and from koll —which is Norwegian for head or crown , and is the root of kill . We may find doddard , then, in the beheading of a gentleman in the fifteenth century—but dodder , by the sixteenth century, for a kind of chokeweed or for a body shaking in pain. Kellen implies neither a corruption of poison nor an argument for catgut , despite the scarechild—a torn rag with brass eyes—in the basket. Buck’s-head, a later variation, presents happier facts—one’s wife repairs to the country, surveys the scenery, returns home in the evening—but disappears by the nineteenth century.
    The drawings of the shoreline are rather inexact.
    Five—I have five.
    She cut out a little square, and then another—and in this way made the faces. You would prefer a brick walk and a privet? Certain of the words resemble ants in distress.
    The lake is named for the town, or for an animal, and is shaped like an ax-blade.
    Adulterium , as defined by the Julian Statute, circa 13 B.C. , offers fewer charms, given the particulars of winter, not to mention various old-fashioned sentiments concerning execution. Mutilation, for its part, is more common—the adulterous wife, or adultera , to use the legal term, surrenders her ears or nose, and, on occa sion, her fingers—with divorce following in short order. Some transcriptions neglect the stranger, or adulter , in favor of graves—a simple matter of manners, this, notwithstanding the disquisition upon the marriage bed. Others relate ordinary household details—dismantling the chairs, and visiting the windows, and departing the courtyard.
    A gentleman, remember, always averts his eyes.
    Cuckold’s Point, near Brockwell, in London, is most notable for its gallows—the red sticks recall horns—and for the drowning of dogs. A cuckold’s neck requires a spar or beam, as I understand it, unlike the Matthew Walker found on the fainting couch, or the nail hitch found among the movables in the front room. The hangman’s knot, with seven coils, or even eight, as per custom—the shade of brown is often a subject of debate—fails to explain the odd formation of lampposts on the avenue. Colonial towns preferred a woolen hood, manacles and chains, and—regarding the father—the scaffold painted black.

FIVE
     
    T he foregoing ignores—or mistakes—several details. Cuckold’s Point, according to the map I have in hand, is closer to Evelyn than to Deptford. And Brockwell, strictly speaking, does not exist—in London, anyway. Furthermore, the horned figure—now gone—was not a gallows, in fact, but a simple post. It had been exhibited at a fair—the Horn Fair—in celebration of a king’s cuckolding. Which king? King Richard or King Edward. (John the Posthumous—usually rendered in red—was a French king, alive for five days.) The fair would occur every October, on Saint Luke’s Day. The houses, like the tower, were south of the river, and were torn down in due course. A gibbet—absent, however, any configuration of slats or bars or sticks that might suggest horns—once stood ten or twenty paces from the road. Perhaps the murder had occurred on a doorstep. The cage, on this occasion, was made to recall the human form. (The remains of a certain William Fine, a Jew, were exhibited here for seven years and then removed to another gibbet, in