Woman Who Gave Birth to Rabbits - Donoghue [16]
From Fà's window you can see the little churchyard where, in time, we will lie together. Our souls, I hope, will be in a better place. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain, saith the Lord.
Until then I will do nothing, say nothing to divide us. Fáalways says she cannot abide a lie, but I think a little discretion is necessary if two lives are to lie alongside each other as quiet as cutlery in the drawer. So I will never let her suspect: my disloyalty to the cause, the weariness that comes over me as I gum down another envelope, the utter indifference with which I set it aside for the post. I will keep my treachery locked up in my heart.
I am making her a cat in alabaster for her fifty-fourth birthday.
Last spring Fit took a solemn vow never to go to bed at night leaving a stone unturned that might help to stop vivisection. My own oath is a more private one. To stand by her in this doomed cause, as in everything else. And with my last breath—because for all her girth and aches, she is sure to outlive me—I will urge her to keep up the good fight. Yes, that's the phrase she will want to hear. 1 will say it not because I believe, anymore, that she or anyone else can save the animals, but because she is most herself in battle. Like the Cavalier in the old poem: she could not love me, loved she not honour more.
Note
My main source for "The Fox on the Line" is The Life of Frances Power Cobbe (1898, 1904); I have also drawn on her Essays on the Pursuits of Women (1863) and The Duties of Women (1881). A brief mention of the career of Mary Lloyd is found in the Reverend T. Mardy Rees, Welsh Painters, Engravers, Sculptors (1912). The line of poetry quoted, "I have looked coolly on my what and why," is from Augusta Webster's 1870 monologue, "A Castaway."
After the passing of the watered-down Cruelty to Animals Act of 1876, Cobbe and her Victoria Street Society changed tactics and fought for a total ban on live animal testing (incidentally, a cause yet to be won). After twenty years based in London together, in 1884 Mary and Fä (as Cobbe was called by her intimates) retired to Wales, but continued to be involved in the campaign. When Mary Lloyd died in 1898, her will forbade Cobbe to "commemorate her by any written record."
Account
Games played by James the Fourth, King of Scotland: tennis, bowls, backgammon, and dice.
Year in which the King rode to Drummond Castle: 1496.
Number of Lairds who had already given their daughters to the King as mistresses: unknown.
Month in which the King rode to Drummond Castle: April.
Number of languages spoken by the King: 8 (English, Gaelic, Latin, French, German, Flemish, Italian, Spanish).
Number of children already born to the King by 1496: unknown.
Number of hours the King could stay in the saddle without a rest: 10.
Price of the Kings falcon in gold: £150.
Age of the King in 1496: 23.
Number of years since the Drummond Clan had locked the Murray Clan into the church at Monzievaird and burnt it down: 4.
Number of Murrays who died in that church on that occasion: 120.
Number of Lord Drummond's sons who were executed as a consequence: 1.
Number of daughters of Lord Drummond: 3 (Margaret, Euphemia, Sibilla).
Number of languages in which Lord Drummond's daughters could say "Yes, Sire": 3.
Number of Lord Drummond's daughters invited to and installed in Stirling Castle, two months after the King's visit to the Drummonds in 1496: 1 (Margaret).
Number of retainers who travelled with the King: 100.
Time the King's party could spend in each of his castles before the smell from the garderobes made it necessary for them to move on: 3 weeks.
Number of times a day the King washed his hands: 5.
Number of new links the King added every year to the rusted chain he wore around his waist as a penance for having let the rebel Lairds kill his father: 1.
Age of the King at the time of his father's death: