Dark Aemilia (35 page)

I am a sinner, steeped in evil that is past, and I can never make amends. So it is now my habit to go to St Botolph’s Church at Aldgate every morning for the matins service. It is a simple building, despite its gold-tipped spire. Today I feel ill and restless, and believe that the end of all this might be the madhouse. I have passed a disturbed night. The house echoed and stirred with malevolent spirits, and the air I breathed seemed odorous and distempered, infected by the demons that dwell among us. I could hear them whispering and gibbering in my ears, so I wrapped my head in the bed-sheet, sweating with terror. In the end, I crept up to the garret and sat upon a joint-stool by the window, waiting for the first rays of sunlight to drive the evil spirits away. Only when the rooftops and chimneystacks were gilded with the dawn did I dare to drowse a little, head sagging. I dreamed of Will, as I do most nights.

The last I heard from him was a short letter, sent to explain that the second publication of the sonnets was done without his knowledge. A volume was printed two summers ago: his hate-verse and the fulsome words he wrote to please Wriothesley. His note was polite, but there was no love in it. I keep it, with his poems.

Now I am sitting in the church, I feel as if I am lost in a dark mist, and the voices of my fellow worshippers seem far away. I sit among the other women, head bowed, ignoring their chatter,
waiting for the service to begin. Our usual prelate is not here. I don’t see the new man when he enters, as I am busy with my prayers. But, as soon as he begins to speak, something in his voice and manner catches my attention.

‘It has come to my notice,’ says he, ‘that this City is as full of Sin as Sodom, and as riven with Bawds and Strumpets as Gomorrah. There is a not a homily that addresses this Disease of London, so this morning I have written you my own, in plain words. May the Devil in you hear this, so you can cast him out.

‘And you may ask yourselves – how did we come to this pass? And you may ask yourselves – how did we come to be cast out of the Garden of Eden, we whom GOD made in his own image, to have mastery over Creation and over all the beasts of the field, and all the birds in the air, and all the fishes in the sea?’

I shift my position. My knees are growing stiff. Where have I heard that rasping tone before? I clasp my hands tighter, and try to pray harder. But the voice is insistent.

‘I can tell you how. I can tell you why. I have studied in the greatest universities in all of Europe, and I have looked most carefully at the cause. I have found our culprit, with GOD’s help. It is Woman who has ruined us. First in the person of that weakest of vessels, Eve, and since then in the frail form of every woman born.’

I bow my head. ‘Lord, forgive me. Jesu, have pity.
Mea culpa
.
Mea culpa.’

But it is hard to concentrate on my own sin when there is so much of it about. And most of it the fault of my ignoble gender.

‘St Thomas Aquinas has warned us of this wanton, wayward sex. “
A male is the beginning and end of woman, as God is the beginning and end of every creature.”
Man is made in God’s image; Woman is a thing distorted from Man’s rib. Her Latin name is “softness of the mind”, but Man is called “
vir
” which we translate as “strength or virtue of the soul”. Compared to Man, the Woman is an imbecile.’

It is no good. I open my eyes. The man standing at the wooden table in the centre of the church is my old adversary, Parson John. I stare at him, blinking, forgetting my own misdoing for the first time for many years.

The prelate is warming to his theme. ‘What is lighter than smoke? A breeze. What is lighter than a breeze? The wind. What is lighter than the wind? A Woman. What is lighter than a Woman? Nothing. And yet, even in this lightness, she gushes most detestably, sullying all she touches with her womb-blood. Fruits do not produce, wine turns sour, plants die, trees lack fruit. The air about her darkens. If a dog should eat her vile blood, it will run mad.’

Lord above! Is this truly the Word of God? I glance around me, at the bowed and reverent heads of all the women.

‘A woman is the cause of all our ill. Adam was deceived by Eve, and not Eve by Adam. The Woman summoned him to Sin. She lied and tricked him, and the whole of Creation was overthrown. So the female must pay. She must yield to the man as a reed bends in the wind.’

His words work a curious magic on me. They rouse me from my torpid, grief-stricken state. Dismissing Eve as being both weak and wicked has always seemed foolish and unfair to me. She was subordinate to Adam, more obedient than Lilith. And yet, she ended by looking beyond the life of a child, fenced in by our Maker. Her existence as a naked animal enthroned in flowers was not enough. She sought out Knowledge. Was that a bad thing?
Should
mankind be stupid? The Serpent may have been the agent of the Devil, but in truth human beings contain the impulses of Hell as well as Heaven. We are not angels. In order to defend Eve, it is necessary to think beyond the version of the Fall that Parson John proclaims. Must all women bear this burden of limitless guilt? Must we spend all our lives accusing ourselves of sin, and despising ourselves as second best?

I sit upright. I am thinking of the Cornelius Agrippa book that I stole from Simon Forman, and the thoughts that this wise philosopher expressed. He was a good Christian – just as much so as our revered parson – and yet he saw women in a very different way. Supposing that the Old Testament God of rage and plagues was not the God of Jesus and his disciples? Supposing Eden had been, not a paradise, but a prison from which humankind had to escape? With knowledge came freedom. I blink hard.

The service is over, and the parson stands outside the church, addressing the congregation with an air of chilly discontent. I walk past him, with no desire to speak, but can’t resist giving him a sharp look I pass.

‘I see we have a Jezebel among us, a copy of that wilful Eve,’ he says.

‘Do you remember me?’

‘You are the termagant whose pestilent son was possessed by demons.’

The other churchgoers look at me askance. I must admit, I have not made it my business to be neighbourly, and they are already suspicious of me.

‘I trust he died soon after,’ says the pleasant parson.

The fear and self-loathing fall away from me. ‘He lived, sir,’ I said. ‘And he is living still, praise God!’

‘Then a miracle took place. God is good; he will save all sinners, even your diabolic son.’

‘Yes. A miracle. And I would like to tell you that your view of women is quite mistaken. Eve is not the mother of our undoing. She has been much maligned.’

‘It is not my
view
, mistress,’ says the parson. ‘I do not invent the Word of God. I am the mouthpiece of the Church.’ He bends forward slightly, as if to direct his spleen more precisely. ‘Ask forgiveness, and it may be that Our Lord will spare your soul.’

‘I will not.’

‘Will
not
, madam?’

‘The Church is wrong.’

‘Heaven protect us!’ cries an old man.

‘May the good Lord strike you down!’ says his companion.

Parson John regards me coldly, a pillar of furious contempt. ‘If you wish me to refer you to the City fathers for sedition, then I would be happy to oblige you. I will leave it to our Maker to offer a more long-lasting punishment, and broil your flesh for an eternity in Hell.’

‘Punish me when I am printed, sir,’ I say. ‘Punish me when I set down the true story of Eve and Eden in a chap-book. Punish me when I have made a poem of it. Then I will be quite content.’

My night fears have diminished. My wakefulness gives me time to write, and to think, and the shadows keep to themselves. I write and write, referring to the books upon my desk, and using the thoughts inside my head. I look upon the guilt and grief of other women, and I conclude that we have been the cursed receptacle for all the ills of mankind. In failing to be the Virgin Mary, we are Serpents every one.

It comes to me, as I write by candle-light and consider the darkness, that it is possible that poor Eve did not sin at all. She was not wicked. She was curious. I set out the words, and this time they are clearer and sharper than before. I see not only Eden; I see the truth.

And if Eve is free of blame, then Adam must take the consequence. Now the words flow. I break a goose quill in my haste to get them down, and dip a new pen, greedy for the ink.

From the suffering of Eve came the suffering of the rest of us. Of guilty women, who must pay eternally for the Fall of Man. I remember the lines that had haunted me when Tom sang his sad song at Yuletide: of Rachel, crying for her children ‘because they were not’. What is ‘not’? The empty cradle. The folded nightshirts, put away for other babes. Tom’s laughing face, his joy and foolery. So I write of that too, the love of all mothers, of which the love and grief of Our Lady is the highest expression.

I write at night. I write in the daytime. I write when the pottage burns. I write while the soap congeals. I write while the house-mice nibble the fallen cake-crumbs at my feet. I write.

It is a work of many months. Back and forth I go, repeatedly, until I have made a poem which praises the Bible women and puts their case, as if I were a lawyer at the Inns of Court. And, when I have done, I sit down and think of all the women of influence to whom I might dedicate it, and who might now give me patronage, and I write them all my thanks. I start with Queen Anne, and end with virtuous ladies in general. (Of which there are, as you will know, a substantial number.) Redemption is sweet. I find a printer and a seller. I do not go to Cuthbert Tottle, who has died of dropsy, but make a contract with Mr Valentine Simmes, a most enlightened fellow who sees no harm in women writing verse, and believes there is great merit in the case for
Eve. My book is sold in the bookshop of Richard Bonian in Paul’s Churchyard.

I send a copy to Will, with my good wishes, but I hear nothing from him.

Time passes not as a river flows, smoothly and ever onward, but as a mob seethes, wild and unpredictable. First walking, then running, then slowing to a stop, then starting to speed up again: faster, faster. Or this is how it seems to me. So I am standing here, on this bright, blustery spring day, and cannot believe that I am so old, or that the things that live in my memory happened so long ago. My chest aches with the pain of times past and loves lost. But I have Henry still, and my penitence, and this good hour.

Alfonso is dead, and I miss him more than I thought I would, though it is pleasant to have the whole bed to myself. (And to know how much money I have in the house from one day to the next.) I have a widow’s freedom, to walk the streets and go about my business. The Globe was burned down, and then built up again, in brick. All were saved from the fire, and I hear the King’s Men are doing well. Will is no longer with them – he retired after the blaze and came here to live the life of a fat gentleman with his wife. It is this wife – this Ann Shakespeare – who wrote a curt note to me. Summoning me here, to speak to Will. I would have ignored her message if I could. Why should I be told to jump to it by this queening country wife? But I have longed to see him for so many years.

Stratford is a busy, noisy place. Outside the inn, there is a bustle of carts, livestock and crowding townsfolk, blocking the
thoroughfare completely. There are plenty of beggar-folk as well, just as vile to look upon as their city cousins: doxies, vagabonds and all manner of hard-eyed beggars, displaying their deformities to tempt money from passers-by. And yet it’s but a village compared to London’s great smoking tumult. Around us is a rolling landscape of green hills and pleasant pasture. The trees that line the market square are beginning to put forth new leaves, and their branches whisper in the breeze. Stratford’s most pungent odours are of the shippon, not the jakes.

I stare at the shop-fronts and at the cheery, bartering housewives, trying to imagine Will buying a joint of lamb or a bolt of cloth. The houses are modest, built tight together, so that each shop counter, which juts out into the street, buts on to the next. A master tailor is sewing a shirt; a barber smoothes a linen cloth over his customer’s chest; a baker flaps her hands at the flies that buzz around the sugar loaves.

‘Somewhat small,’ I say to John Heminge, who has come with me from London. ‘Too small for
him
.’

But Heminge isn’t listening; he is paying the horse-boy.

‘Is New Place in this street?’ I ask

He frowns, looking at his change. ‘Close by,’ he says. ‘You’ll have to wait, Aemilia. We don’t know when he will see you yet.’

‘Did
she
not ask for me to come?’

‘Be patient. He is not the man he was. And speak fairly of Mistress Shakespeare. It was good of her to ask you here.’

That night, sleep deserts me again. I sit in my room, watching shadows, and light one candle from the next to stop them from haunting me. I think of my past, and wish that I could be a better sort of person. I think of my poems and wish that I could have made those better too.

I finally sleep, bolt upright.

I
am a child in Bishopsgate again, walking with my father. The air is full of music, and we are walking past the walls of Bedlam, listening to the mad singing their angel songs.

My father tells me not to listen, and not to look through the keyhole of the great gate we come upon, which is so high that it reaches the clouds. I say I will not, and then he goes away. Then I look through the hole and there is a yellow eye.

I look at the yellow eye, and the yellow eye looks at me.

A voice whispers, ‘Little girl.’

‘What?’

‘Little girl. I have been watching you.’ It is a woman’s voice. It has a sibilant hiss.

‘I didn’t do anything.’

‘You have come here for a reason.’ Now there is a wheedle in the voice. It wants something.

‘I must go now. My father told me not to look.’

‘You came because I called you, little girl.’

‘I didn’t hear you.’

‘That is because I did not need to speak.’

New Place is built from solid brick and sturdy timber. It is a long building, which stretches along one side of Chapel Street, edged by a high brick wall. It has three storeys and five gables. Much of it is raw-coloured, where new bricks or wood have been used to patch and mend it. There a gate in the wall which leads to a grassy courtyard.

A great deerhound lopes across and welcomes Heminge as an old friend, wagging its tail and gently butting him with its head. Then he leaves me there and enters the house, pressing my hand before he goes.

I shield my eyes and look up at the plain glass windows, set in lead, wondering if Will is behind one of these, and whether he might be secretly studying me, as I am trying to catch a glimpse
of him. Nausea grips my throat. What will we say? How shall I meet his eye?

After a while, Heminge returns. He looks unhappy.

‘Will is worse,’ he says.

I frown. ‘Worse than what?’

‘He is very ill, Aemilia. I hope you understand that. It was no one’s wish but his that you came all this way. Ann only tries to please him.’

‘Then I must see him.’

‘I don’t know if he is well enough to see you today.’

‘I am not going away till I have spoken to him,’ I say. ‘Even if it’s only for five minutes.’

‘She had better come in,’ says a voice from the doorway.

I turn to see a woman standing there. I’m not sure what I expected in a neglected country wife, but it was certainly not this. A tall, upright woman, older than I am, but with fine, pale skin. Her eyes are grey, with long black lashes, like those of a young girl. She is dressed in a green velvet gown. She looks at me for a long moment, as if she was fearing the worst but I have exceeded it.

‘I am Ann Shakespeare,’ she says. ‘The wife.’

‘I am Aemilia Lanyer,’ say I.

‘The mistress.’

I nod.

‘Come inside,’ she says. ‘I have been meaning to speak to you for some time.’ I follow her to the foot of a wide oak staircase. It leads up to a long gallery, hung with bright tapestries. Behind her, a door stands open. I can see a physick garden, and hear children laughing.

We stand for a moment.

‘We are alike,’ she says, at last. ‘I have heard that is often the way.’

‘Yes, Mistress Shakespeare.’

‘With some differences, of course.’

‘I would expect as much.’

‘Such as scruples, with which, I imagine, I have been better endowed than you.’

‘I have scruples enough.’

‘I dare say even a murderer has his limits.’

What has she heard? What has he told her?

‘I won’t stay long, Mistress Shakespeare, and I want to say how grateful I am that you have been kind enough to let me come. Ever since I heard about the fire at the Globe I have been anxious…’

‘It was not your place to be anxious. He has people here who are anxious enough.’

‘Of course. And then, I heard that he had left for good…’

‘Not left.
Returned
.’

‘After which, I heard that he was ill…’

‘He
is
ill.’

‘And then… then you invited me to Stratford.’

‘He has become much concerned with giving things away. His books, for the most part, though I would like to read them myself. But, never mind – he had too many of them. I believe that he has something of this sort to give to you.’

A servant comes, and Ann speaks to her at length about drying malt, as if I were not there at all. Then the girl disappears. Ann stares at me in silence for a moment. ‘You were beautiful,’ she says, finally. ‘I suppose there is at least some dignity in that.’

She takes me up the stairs, and leads me to a closed door. ‘Here you are,’ she says. ‘When I open it, go inside and sit in the chair by the window. Keep your eyes down till I close the door again. Don’t move from the chair till he has finished speaking to you. Do not go near him, and do not open the shutters. You will get used to the darkness when you have been sitting there a while.’

I go obediently to the chair by the shuttered window in the light of the open door. When it closes, I can see nothing. The room
smells of woodsmoke and peppermint. But after a while I realise I can hear the sound of unsteady, rattling breathing coming from the far side of the room. I think of the last time we lay together; the hot night in that other darkness.

I keep my eyes on the shutters and their cracks of daylight.

‘Your wife told me that you asked to see me,’ I say.

There is a break in the shuddering breathing and then it begins again. It pains me to hear it, and I find I am taking deeper, slower breaths, as if this might help. I want to touch Will again so badly that I grasp the arms of the chair to stop myself from flying across the room. ‘I have come to pay you my respects, sir.’

Silence.

‘I am very sorry that you are unwell.’

The breathing becomes faster, accompanied by the creaking of a chair. At length, a rasping voice says, ‘Not unwell, Aemilia. Not unwell.’

‘Then I am glad.’

‘Dead, rather.’

‘No! Do not say that!’

‘Yes, for I am stuck here, away from the world, and I am not of it any longer. That is death to me.’

‘The fire…’

‘Ah, yes. The fire.’

I wait for him to say more, hardly daring to breathe myself, as each word seems to cost him so much.

‘Did you hear what caused it?’ he asks, then wheezes and coughs.

‘No.’

‘The effects! In
Henry VIII
. We launched a stage cannon outside, to mark the King’s majestical entrance, and the thatch caught fire.’

‘You over-reached yourselves.’

‘Yes, we over-reached ourselves. Indeed we did. I should have learned my lesson from that cursed crane.’

There is another pause.

‘I wanted to ask you about Henry,’ he says quietly.

‘He is well, sir. Clever and handsome. A fine young man now.’

‘And… what I want to ask is… does he know me?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Does he know that he’s my son?’

I close my eyes. ‘Yes. I have told him.’

‘And…’

‘He is glad. He is proud to have such a father.’

‘Does he… what does he do?’

‘He plays in the King’s consort.’

‘Ah.’ He breathes heavily. ‘My wife has a doublet and rapier downstairs for him. I have told her that he was a player at the Globe. I mean… she has no idea of his connection to me. It is a good doublet – I hope it fits him. She doesn’t know the value of the rapier, nor that the grip and pommel are solid silver.’

Silence once more. I wait, listening so hard that my ears began to ache. ‘I am sorry, Will,’ I say at last, able to bear it no longer. ‘I am sorry for all the pain and suffering I caused you. I am sorry if I was ever faithless, and I am sorry for doubting your love. But I am sorriest of all for summoning that evil demon, all because of my jealousy and spite, and my rage about the play.’

‘No, no,’ he says.

‘Yes, it was my fault! I wanted to put a stop to it. I wanted to be avenged on you, and Burbage, and all the others. All the poets and players who are men, and look me up and down, and either see a strumpet or nothing at all. And then Tom died for it – for my revenge! I can never forgive myself. I am damned for it, damned for all eternity, no matter how much I pray for redemption. And so I should be, for I deserve nothing less.’

‘Ah, my Aemilia,’ he says, his voice faint. ‘You are troubled with thick-coming fancies.’

I smile sadly. ‘My words, or yours?’

‘Yours, I believe. Poor Lady Macbeth.’

‘They are thick-coming, certainly. But are they fancies?’

‘Aren’t they?’

I wait.

‘I have read your poems,’ he says. ‘Or I should say, Susanna has read them to me. For I am… weak.’

‘Your daughter?’

‘Yes. She doesn’t approve of your opinions. She thinks they are seditious.’

‘And you?’

‘I think it’s excellent work. Most… polemical. You are right about the mistreatment of poor Eve. I saw… I saw how it might be. The other side of it. To be shut out because of your sex, by men and boys. And,
de facto
, by all the world. Not all maids can storm the Inns of Court by aping Portia.’

‘No.’ I am so happy to hear his words that I can think of nothing else to say.

‘I once said – among many other cruel and angry things – that you would never be a poet.’

‘You did, sir.’

‘Well, you have proved me wrong. You
are
a poet, Aemilia Lanyer, and you are a good one, too. And you taught me much – remember that!’

‘About Italy, and the ancients.’

‘Ay, and about love.’ Will is breathing heavily again. ‘You must go soon.’

‘I am so thankful to you. You are so… gracious.’ These words are so feeble that I burst out: ‘No one else’s opinion is
anything
to me. No one else’s words
exist
.’

‘Think nothing of it. You have worked hard at your Art, and deserve much more than this. But…’

‘But what?’

‘Let me tell you something about the fire.’

‘Only if you have the strength.’

There is silence again. Then Will speaks, and the rattle in his breathing fades and it seems almost as if he is talking to himself. ‘It was a hot, bright day. Cruelly hot, so even the shadows sweated, and dogs lolled panting in open doorways. I was not at the Globe for the performance: I had business in the City. So the first I knew of the fire was black smoke, drifting over the house-tops as I hurried from St Paul’s.’ He pauses, and coughs again.

‘As I reached Blackfriars Stairs, a cry went up. “The Globe is burning!” And I raised my head – for I was thinking of a verse that I was writing, and staring at the ground – and then I looked across the water and saw the flames, leaping into the summer sky. I paid the boatman half a crown to row quickly, and I ran from the south bank to the theatre door. What a sight it was! Like the Pit itself! The sun had crisped the thatch and dried out the walls, and the sound was terrible – the roaring of fire, and the crashing of timber. The heat smote me as I stood there, and I saw that the trees nearby were catching too.’