Free Conceit by Mary Novik Page B

letter from Con warning him about the smallpox. He wrote to Pegge, saying, I am in fear for your life. In the next sentence, he announced that he would detour toUncle Grymes’s house at Peckham rather than risk contagion at the Deanery.
    In the daytime, Pegge dreamt of lying with Izaak Walton beside the curves of a sinewy green river, but at night, when she could not control her thoughts, she dreamt of eating. In a small book, Pegge made a list of fishes she would devour when Doctor Foxe allowed it. She drew a river that rambled across the pages from a cold, clear winterbourne, through slow middle reaches, and finally into the broad flat-marshes of an estuary. Adding pictures of fish to be found along the way, she wrote meticulous notes on their bait and habitat to show to Walton. But though she waited day after day, he did not come.
    By now, Walton would have hunted down the monstrous pike and tamed it to feed from bread-paste in his hand. Even now, he might be carrying the prize towards the Deanery to share with her. First, open your pike at the gills , she wrote in the sextodecimo,
and if need be, cut also a little slit towards the belly. Out of these, take his guts; and keep his liver, which you are to shred very small with thyme, sweet marjoram, and a little winter-savoury; to these put some pickled oysters, and some anchovies, two or three; both these last whole, for the anchovies will melt, and the oysters should not; to these, you must add also a pound of sweet butter, which you are to mix with the herbs that are shred, and let them all be well salted. If the pike be more than a yard long, then you may put into these herbs more than a pound, or if he be less, then less butter will suffice.
    If fat slathered around beef heightened its flavour, surely butter would sweeten a bony pike? But if it melted straight out of the pike’s belly more would be needed in the sauce. She filled yet another page in the tiny book.
Let him be roasted very leisurely; and often basted with claret wine, and anchovies, and butter, mixed together; and also with what moisture falls from him into the pan. When you have roasted him sufficiently, to the sauce you are to add a fit quantity of the best butter, and to squeeze the juice of three or four oranges. Lastly, you may either put it into the pike, with the oysters, two cloves of garlic, and take it whole out, when the pike is cut off the spit; or, to give the sauce a haut goût, let the dish into which you let the pike fall be rubbed with it: The using or not using of this garlic is left to your discretion.
    Pegge was certain this dish would be most tasty, for she had put everything she fancied into it. On the cover, she drew a handsome pike lying in the pickerel weeds with his loyal mate beside him. Then she wrapped up the sextodecimo and addressed it to Mr Izaak Walton of Fleet street, near Chancery lane.
    Not even a minnow arrived from Fleet street in response. She began to think that something had befallen him. Perhaps he too was laid up with the pox. It seemed to attack the furthest points of flesh—the hands, the feet, and the complexion. She thought of his sweet bruised ankles and his smile, and wondered who would care for him.

    Each night, Bess stripped Pegge to the waist and rubbed her with cream to stop the itching. Pegge’s eyes were bathed with a cotton ball dipped in saltwort-water, the relief immediate and exquisite. Each morning, Pegge woke to the scent of almonds clinging to her skin, her breasts like tender, aching buds.
    Giving her a sponge bath after a week, Bess pointed out the straight sparse hairs between Pegge’s legs. Only so much as a brown mallard, thought Pegge, blushing, or a speckled fowl. But at least they were not falling out like the hairs on her head, which were coming out by handfuls. Nothing could slow the ravage of the pox, not even the gentian violet painted on her scalp. First the scales on her cheeks turned into pustules, then they plumped up like