Dark Aemilia (31 page)

I turn away.

‘There is something terrible! Please tell me. What’s happened?’

I shake my head sorrowfully.

Her voice rises up to a wail. ‘Tell me what it is that ails them! I beg you!’

‘I cannot say it. I am sorry, but I cannot say.’

With shaking hands she undoes the linens so that her malformed babies are revealed. Four-legged, four-armed, two-headed… two bodies linked by flesh and bone. She screams and flings them down upon the bed, and they wake, and wave their freed limbs in the cold air and wail with her. ‘Alair! Alair!’ Such a sorrowful sound that it tears at me; the sound that Henry made when he was tiny, and Joan put him in my arms for the first time. And I feel such pity for them.

I pick up the joined infants, and wrap them tight once more. Their cries quieten. Marie’s do not. She screams and screams and screams, half in English, half in French. Sadly, I understand both languages: her words are more evil in that foreign tongue than in our own. Wilder and madder and louder she shouts, calling for the lynching of Our Lady, an end to Time, the emptying of Hell and sundry other changes to the proper order of things. Until at last she spews green bile upon the floor – a dreadful stench. I clean it up. I am starting to tire of skivvying for my own maid. After that – silence. The rage has passed. It is as if Marie has puked out some evil in herself. She sits hunched up in the bed, a shawl pulled round her shoulders, staring ahead of her, contemplating nothing.

After a while, she wipes her mouth with her long hair and says, ‘I have committed a mortal sin. God has sent this to me.’

‘We are all sinners,’ I say. I sit down beside her. ‘What you did with Tom is no more than a thousand girls have done before you. A thousand thousand! You fell into bed before you made a marriage vow. You are more fool than sinner.’ I take one of her hands in mine. ‘I will fetch a wet nurse.’

‘What wet nurse will suckle
that
?’ she says. She nods in the direction of the cradle. ‘She’ll run from the very sight of it.’

‘Yours is not the first freak born in Westminster, nor will it be the last. It is “they”, not “it” – and they must be fed. Just like other children.’

‘But they are not like other children,’ she says. ‘They are joined! They are doomed!’

‘We don’t know what their fate will be. There’s an old tale of twins joined like these two, who lived in Kent, in Biddenham, and were born to a good family. They lived for more than thirty years.’

She isn’t listening. ‘What shall I tell Tom?’

I shake my head, pick up the infants and begin to feed them with a horn of watery gruel.

After this I must have slept. I wake to find that I’m curled beside Marie on the bed. I rub my eyes and look out of the window. The sun is high in the sky. The hour to meet with Will is long gone. I stand up, unsteadily. Marie is watching me. Her eyes are calm. The joined twins are fast asleep, snuffling in their cot.

‘Give them to me,’ she says.

‘What?’

‘My babies.’

I gaze at her, confused. ‘I was going to fetch a wet nurse.’

‘I don’t need one. Give them to me.’

I stumble to the cot and pick up the joined twins. She takes them from me. And she sticks her little finger into the mouth of one of them, waking it, then gently probes her teat into its mouth. I’ve seen many women struggle with this first suckling, and their babies fall away from the offered breast. But this child knows well what it needs and drinks greedily, eyes creased closed, one hand clasped around the white orb of her dug. The second infant rests its cheek upon it.

The door opens a crack. Henry’s face appears in it, bright and curious. I hurry over to block his view. ‘Is she alive?’ he asks. ‘I heard such screams I thought she must be dead.’

‘Of course she is alive, you dolt!’

‘And is the baby born?’ He cranes round me to get a better look.

‘It is… all done, yes.’

‘In that case, praise to God,’ says Henry.

‘Indeed.’

‘And hurrah!’ says a loud voice, and in bursts Tom before I can stop him. For a moment he stares at the frozen scene: the pile of blood-soaked rushes, the disordered bed, Marie, clasping the tiny freaks. One head feeding from her breast; the other waiting, round eyes fixed upon her face. Though they are swaddled again, it is clear that something is strange. But Tom, young as he is, seems puzzled rather than afraid.

‘Marie – you have your – children!’

‘Oh, Tom – go away!’

‘Don’t you want to see me?

‘I do – but not now. Get out please, Tom, my dearest love.’

‘But –
I
want to see
you
!’

‘Not now, Tom, no, you must go.’

Henry, with his skill of slipping where he isn’t wanted, has made his way to the bedside.

‘Why don’t you put one of them in the cradle,’ he asks, ‘while the other feeds? Doesn’t it get tired of watching?’

‘Is it – twins? Our children?’ Tom’s voice is uncertain.

‘You heard what Marie said to you – get out,’ I say. ‘This is no place for you, and beyond your understanding. And Henry, come away from there!’ I seize his arm and pull him roughly towards the door.

Tom looks at me, suddenly frightened. ‘What is there to understand? She is my love, and we will marry – and these are my children! There is nothing strange in that.’

‘Marry? What’s this? No one is marrying without my consent.’ Anne bustles in, bare-headed and wearing her shabbiest dress and oldest ruff, which droops down at one side.

Tom wheels round. ‘Mother, you cannot forbid me to wed Marie. We are promised to each other already. Burbage oversaw the handfasting.’

She glances at the bed, seeming to notice the twins for the first time. ‘Handfasting? Handfasting? How dare you even use such a word to dignify your sport? And with such a common little bitch as this? Handfarting, more like. She is a servant girl, nothing but a silly strumpet. There is no more reason to believe these… twins are yours than that they are the spawn of any other Tom Fool who came knocking.’

‘Mistress Flood,’ says Marie, ‘please stop.’

‘Stop? Why should I take note of you, that’s laid a trap for my dear son?’

‘Forgive me, but I think I can put him straight. These aren’t your babies, Tom. I had a strange dream one night, and I believe I was ravished by some demon.’

Tom laughs. ‘What? Marie, you are mad.’

‘She’s lain with another man, is the truth of it,’ says Anne. ‘More than one, I’m sure. Half the prentice-boys in the City have been up those skirts. She’s a skittish, shameless doxy.’

‘Marie, is that true? Have you been with another man? If so, tell me now.’

She looks up at him. Then she unwraps the twins. Anne screams and prays to Our Lady. Tom stares, as if the demon she had spoken of were sitting right in front of him.

Anne is still praying, eyes tight shut. ‘Lead me from this place of sin,’ she says. ‘Lead me from it, and do not ask me to return.’

‘Anne,’ I say. ‘This is cruel! Such things do happen, in the normal way of things. No demon needs to creep into a virgin’s bed. God’s creatures aren’t all perfect – you can see that every time you walk down the street. Have pity on the girl.’

‘Take me from here, Tom,’ commands Anne, blindly holding out her hands. But Tom is still looking at his lover, as she quietly fastens one of her babies to her breast. Her movements are small and neat, and she has never looked so pretty. He kneels down and bows his head in prayer.

‘Tom?’ says his mother. ‘Tom?’

‘It is my fault,’ says Tom. ‘Get down on your knees, Mother, and pray to God to be merciful.’

‘What?’

‘May God forgive me, I have lain with whores. I have not been true to Marie as I should have been. This is my punishment. Pray for her, and pray for me. For we are man and wife, and nothing will divide us.’

I close the door and run, my head bare, hair flying. I am too late to meet Will, of that I am sure. But this is the only thing that I am certain of. It is as if all the times we ever met, or lay together, or quarrelled, have been broken into tiny pieces and tossed into the air, and mixed up with all my dreams of him, and his sonnets, and his burned letters. Everything has always conspired to keep us apart, and now this. Yet how could I have left that child, in her dark labour? I am human, after all. And what was it that he wished to say to me that has not been said already? Words joined and divided us. Words and the world. I think of Wriothesley and feel sick with rage. The great lord. His word against mine. I think of my play, that tumult of wild emotion, put to work at the Globe without my name upon it. I think of that wife, sitting Stratford-smug, counting his money.

But… there was once such a bond between us that it seemed that we could best them all, make our own world, and let them keep their lesser one. And there is still Henry. Oh, Lord. If Marie had given birth the day before, or the day after, all might have been… What? My mind is so full, it seems it must break
open. All I can see is that last look I had from Will. My memories swirl; my thoughts are frantic – I can’t tell truth from tale. I run full-tilt, heading for the Church of St Peter, my breath tearing at my chest. When I see the great stone structure rising up ahead of me, I stop and hold my side and weep, because I know there is no reason for this hurry. Too late! The bells are ringing. Twelve tolls. Twelve knells. I walk up to the church door and push it open.

This is the church where I worshipped with Lord Hunsdon every Sunday, unless the Lady Anne was visiting, which was seldom. A royal church, and royally magnificent as befitted the rulers of England. They have dissolved, destroyed and cruelly disfigured much of what once was, yet this great building seems as permanent and vast as any fortress. In the lofty nave the air is cold and still. Sunlight shifts in through the jewel-coloured window panes, illuminating the flat glass faces of the saints.

Unsteady, and still breathing hard, I make my way down the passageway towards the chapel of St John the Baptist, where Hunsdon has been laid to rest. I look around me, filled with wonder in spite of everything. I have been excluded from the majesty of Whitehall and the other palaces, but not from the splendour of this House of God. The gold and silver working of the high altar and the rich embroidery of the altar-cloths are bathed in soft light. Behind the altar at the far end of the nave, a polished brazen screen glows brightly. Above my head, the stonework has been carved with such marvellous skill that it seems to hang in the air, as light as cobwebs.

The chapel of St John the Baptist opens off the north transept. It is a little enough space, fenced off from the main church with a high grille. Anyone entering is confronted by Lord Hunsdon’s vast tomb, which takes up most of the space on the wall opposite. I pause and look at it now. Such a monstrous and ungainly lump of marble-work you never saw. There is no sleeping statue of my Lord Hunsdon here: no, it is as if he were a guild rather than a
man. His sarcophagus is decorated with black and white cheque-point, surmounted by what looks like a colonnaded fireplace. The man I knew is trapped behind a prison wall of weapons, armour and prancing bulls. It was his proud wife who built this hideous monument in his name, with money given to her by the Queen. No woman who loved her husband truly would erect a tomb that looked like Nero’s privy.

My lord died in debt. Some say his taste in mistresses added to his woes. They used to say that I had put up with his aged passion for the sake of my fine gowns and the suite of rooms I had in Whitehall. There was a joke that I would make him hump me three times nightly in the hope that it would see him off. They did not know what we were to each other. He was a tender lover and a true friend, and I was happy with him. Until I fell in love with Will.

I sit down and rest my head in my hands. Twelve of the clock. There is no reason to expect that he would wait so long. I try to pray, to calm myself, dizzy with images of two-headed infants and splurting womb blood. Like a Puritan, I address myself direct to God, as if he were sitting next to me on the chapel step.

‘Oh, Lord, please show me what should be done and give me the strength to see it will be…’ My mind trails off again, seeing the knife slashing at poor Marie’s pudenda and a face peering out from within.

‘Oh, Lord,’ I start again. ‘I am sorry for wishing that Will would come, and I thank you for giving me the chance to help Marie and her baby. Her babies…’ Now a vision of Will as I last saw him comes to me, and I stop again. It’s not a prayer I remember now, but lines of Marlowe’s:
Come live with me and be my Love…

How beautiful these lines are! Why have I never lived straightforwardly?
And we will all the pleasures prove
… Why has my life always been such an unseemly muddle? I am blighted, like Eurydice, who died from a snake-bite on her wedding day,
and was followed by faithful Orpheus into Hades. But there is no Orpheus for me.

‘Oh, Lord…’ But this time I can think of nothing else, excepting only, ‘Why?’

I open my eyes and look around me. The silence in the high church, with its sunlit windows and its soaring stonework, is complete.
That Hills and Valleys, dale and field, and all the craggy mountains yield
. If my passion could have found its true expression, I would conjure Will now, and bring him here before me. Solid flesh. Ink-stained fingers. Leather doublet. And his questioning, relentless gaze. To see him, to feel the weight of him, to sense his fingers touching mine. My hand flinches, as if he has reached out from my mind.

The pews gape. Empty, empty, empty. I feel my feebleness and littleness as I never have before.
You are old, Aemilia
, I think.
You are weary.

And then I think,
Will. Come
. I summon all my passion, all my woman’s power, and wish him, wish him to come before me. I close my eyes and plead with him, so hard that my head aches. He has slandered me, and dishonoured me, but that was long ago. Can I forgive him? I don’t know. But I yearn to hear his voice.

When I open my eyes, for a moment I think that someone is standing in front of me. I look up. ‘Will?’