‘One would think it were a folly that one could offer to wash his hands in a well-polished silver basin, wherein there is not a drop of water, yet this may be done by the reflexion of the Moon beames only. Hands, even after they are wiped, are much moister than usually.’
‘A Late Discourse by Sir Kenelm Digby in a Solemn Assembly of Nobles and Learned Men at Montpelier, Touching on the Cure of Wounds by the Powder of Sympathie’, 1664
ALL WEEK, HE studied long and late in his laboratory. One night, when his candle guttered out after many hours, he was left in a bluish darkness to which his eyes quickly grew accustomed, and he saw it was a night as bright as day outside, and the gardens of Gayhurst were drenched in moonbeams. He stood at the open window of his laboratory, catching them in a glass bubble. He turned it wonderingly in his hand, sending two dashes of moon-juice chasing across the orb. Moonbeams are cold and moist, he noted in his ledger. They leave an acquatic and viscous glutenising sweat upon the glass.
He tipped the moonbeams onto the back of his hand, where he saw them dissipate into a silver sheen on his skin, waxy like the belly of a snake. Could lunar rays assist in safely beautifying a complexion? He made a private note in Latin.
The next night was cloudy.
The night that followed, he and his wife stood out in their garden under the huge moon, two owls in flapping nightgowns. Sir Kenelm held a silver basin up to catch the moon-dew, and Venetia dipped her face into the splashing shimmers. The pores across her nose and cheeks were picked out by the light, and he angled the basin, so the light caught the places under her eyes where the skin was very thin, the veins standing out like the underside of an ivy leaf. The softness twisted across her face, like an inverse sunbeam. If men tanned by daylight, wherefore could they not be healed by night light? As above, so below. ‘It is a potent moisture,’ breathed Sir Kenelm. ‘I can see the refulgent beams at work.’ Venetia shut her eyes and inclined her face deeper inside the basin, until a cloud on the silver formed in the shape of her sigh.
She looked up at him. The elms waved violently behind her. She was radiantly beautiful again. The cure had worked already. She was her Platonic self, ageless, transcendent. Or was she only softened by the moonlight? He reached out to put his arms about her, to claim and hold this sepia-tinted, black-and-silver Venus, but she was already gone, hastening back across the lawn to bed, her nightgown wind-swollen, her hair flying.
After a week of nightly moonbaths, she could discern no improvement in her complexion, although her husband maintained there was a new, subtle, luminosity. His well-meaning comments, his encouraging tone, hurt her more than anything. She found herself commenting on his alchemical work in a sarcastic, disbelieving tone, as if her pride were a debit and credit sheet. Come, she told herself, be bigger than that, but it was not easy.
On the Sunday morning, Kenelm lay half asleep in her bed, while she sat in front of her glass at her toilette, making ready for their private mass held by Chater in their chapel, with a few other recusants from the other side of the shire also in attendance. He asked her if she could see the good effect on her complexion. She did not answer. He suggested that he could see the blue vein on her forehead better than before, as this usually pleased her. It was one of her marks of beauty. He asked if she wanted to try the lunar cure again tonight. Silence. He looked at the stiff outline of her shoulders as she sat at her dressing table, and inferred there was trouble coming. Her voice was strange and cold: ‘I cannot go with you to court.’
‘Venetia, come—’
‘I cannot bear it. I do not know why you persist in this nonsense of moonlight – this, ha, lunacy – when there are other, better cures available, which you well know.’
‘Other cures? What do you mean? Have I not provided you with every safe cure I know of? Have I not imported snails into our grounds from distant climes, at some cost? And yet you will not have them for healing purposes, neither taking their slime to drink nor submitting to have them crawl upon your face.’
She turned to look at him, and her skin was blotchy with tears.
‘I will not speak of those snails! I would have thought that you, a man of Physick, schooled in chemistry, would know better than to chase after village remedies.’
Sir Kenelm leaned forward, very serious. ‘It is because I know the power of Physick that I caution you against it.’
‘Other ladies drink preparations.’
‘You have no need of other ladies’ cures. You barely have any need of a cure at all.’
‘You do not understand.’
‘I do, my love.’
‘And yet you do not, my darling.’
That evening, though the moon was a bright crescent, they lay abed all night.