Dark Aemilia (9 page)

‘Goodbye, Will.’

‘Goodbye? Jesu, is that it?’

‘You said there are no words. And you are right, there is none. I have sinned and we are done.’

‘Ay, we are done alright, for you have killed my soul!’

‘I love you, Will.’

This seems to goad him more than anything I have said or done, for suddenly he is wild with rage and tears the pages on his desk and throws them round the room. ‘Love me! Love me! God’s blood, what do you do to men you hate? You are a witch – a witch; you have ensnared me and you are trying to destroy me!’ He runs towards me, brandishing the torn paper. ‘What can I say? What can I do?’

‘If you think I do not love you, this is false, and what I did today was –’

‘Oh – you say this is false?’ He is so close now that his spittle wets my face and I see the blue veins jumping in his forehead. ‘Look – I have a new phrase…’ He runs to the table, takes up a quill and scribbles fiercely on one of the torn pages. ‘Praise God – I am still a writer! Praise him, praise him, the poet lives! Look…’ He runs back to me. ‘See? See here? What I have wrote – you are still my Muse, Mistress Busycunt… see – “the bay where all men ride”! You see? I have made you into Art. That, that is poetry. Poetry is pain. Poetry is blood and hatred. D’you see?’

As he gets angrier, I grow colder. I am a prisoner in this place, and can only stare, round-eyed, at what I have made him. ‘Will…’ say I. ‘Please, I beg you –’

‘What, will you contradict me? How dare you contradict me? You came into my bed straight from Hunsdon’s…’

‘How could I do otherwise, when –’

‘I saw the look upon his face when he arrived with you! Jesu, you whipped that old goat to a frenzy even as he edged towards the grave! As for Wriothesley – well, forgive me for my boldness! I just saw you, straddling the fellow, with your great-belly in
your mother’s hands as he shafted up inside you! God’s balls, I’d sooner spit my own arse on Satan’s cock than witness such a thing again!’

‘I am no Jezebel. If you would only hear me!’

‘Jezebel! What did she do to deserve comparison with you? I need new words for sin, for you have torn up decency and thrown it to the four winds.’

I stand at last, though I don’t know how my shuddering legs can carry me. The babe is kicking, and I fear all this torment might force it early into the world.

‘Farewell, Will,’ I say. I go to the doorway, and turn to look at him. ‘If you will not let me speak, if you will not understand…’ But he is sitting at his desk, writing, his body racked with sobs.

Sometimes I read so hard and so long that when I close my eyes I see a million dancing letters, formed of white light against my own darkness. Sometimes, when I examine my face in the looking glass, my eyes are sore and bloodshot. Sometimes I think I see words falling down my cheeks, mixed with my tears.

My little house is made from seasoned Kentish oak, its heartwood turned outward to withstand the wind and weather. Thirty trees were felled to make it, sky-shifting branches fallen among wet fern. I first saw it when it was no more than a wooden skeleton, bare timbers sticking out of the mud, each one marked with a Roman numeral. It looked squashed and small, stuck between two older buildings. I could scarce believe that I was supposed to mark out my new life on so little ground. But within a week the carpenters added walls and floors and windows, like the lungs and belly of a man, and strangely it seemed to grow in size. Even so, my courage falters when I think of all the trammelled years I am doomed to spend inside it, a placid little Jill-in-a-box.

My space is this: six rooms in all, with the main door opening into a hallway, which is like a little version of the great hall in a great house, and is two storeys in height. A wooden staircase ascends from its centre. At the back of the hall is a door which leads to the kitchen, with its open hearth and cupboards, which Hunsdon has filled with the finest pewter. Around the fire is a fine array of pots, grid-irons, coal rakes and toasting irons, and from the ceiling hang pots, saucepans and frying pans. On one
side of the kitchen is a low door, leading to the garden, such as it is, and the privy. At the top of the hall stairs is a handsome solar, an oak-panelled sitting room with a grander fireplace than the kitchen hearth, some heavy carved chairs and a long oak dining table. And on the floor above are two bedchambers, also brightly painted and well furnished with curtained beds and solid old chests. All are gifts from Hunsdon.

The gift I value most is the pair of Flemish virginals which have been placed in the hall. The elegant instrument takes up the most part of one wall. Most beautiful, its soundboards painted with flowers, birds and moths, all within blue scalloped borders. The natural keys are covered in bone, and the sharps are chestnut. The inside of the lid is embellished with a Latin motto:
Sic transit gloria mundi
. The notes it makes are soft and plangent and take me far away, back into a world of long galleries echoing with music and private laughter, of lush gardens overlooked by mullioned windows, of feasts and opulence and the giddy knowledge that the furled papers on my lord’s table will govern the lives of earls and paupers, scribes and burghers, pimps and haberdashers, all across the realm.

At the very top of the house is a little garret, with straw-stuffed eaves coming down almost to the wooden floor. This is the servant’s room, and has in it just a truckle bed and a three-legged stool. If I stand on this – though it wobbles badly – I can put my head through the window in the thatch, and see as far as the City with its Roman walls and mess of roofs and smoking chimneys, and above these the pointing fingers of a dozen churches, and the mighty Ark which is blasted, spireless St Paul’s.

My hectic son is hardly able to breathe with the wonder and wickedness of it all. His eyes are everywhere: Bartholomew Fair, the greatest Fair in England. Such a press of people that you can barely work out where you stand. And what people – half the underworld is here: cutpurses from Damnation Alley, tricksters from Devil’s Gap, vagrants from Snide Street. Everything muddled: stalls and sideshows, fops and ladies, apes and
peacocks
. As big a hotchpotch as the filthy warren of London itself. You can buy anything – oysters, mousetraps, gingerbread men; a hobbyhorse, a songbird or a bale of cloth. Pay to see a cockfight or a puppet show or join a game of dice and thimble. Everywhere is bother, jostle and noise. High fashion and foul breath, all pressed together: children and dotards, dogs and chancers, pigs and prostitutes. And the two of us – Henry leaping at my side, desperate to be off to buy a cheese-cake from Holloway or a Pimlico pie. Rattles, drums and fiddles rip into the air. The smell of roasting pork rises up from the eating-houses. One step too quick and you will fall upon a sweetmeat-seller or topple on the side-rope of a dancing tent. Here – a great, pockmarked head, ducking out of the crowd and leering at my chest. There – a glimpse of putrefying tumour, sprouting from a beggar’s shoulder, tattered shirt turned down so the passers-by can get an eyeful and toss a halfpenny his way. ‘Show! Show! Show’ calls the crowd, all about us, pushing and shoving, careless of a small boy and a slight woman.

We are smack-bang in the middle of it all: besieged by every kind of mountebank and con-man, bawdy and punk. I try to
side-step
one way, thinking I see some open ground to my left, in front of the fish-scale virgin’s stand, but a giantess blocks my path, stinking like Hound’s Ditch and with a back as wide as a cart. So I twist another way, Henry’s hand gripped in mine, but up loom three pissed prentice-boys, arm in arm, faces running sweat, eyes rolled back in their heads.

Henry is nearly ten. A boy who likes to throw himself to the ground, run, yell, eat. Hell-bent on everything. Big-boned, but pretty, with his flushed cheeks and fuzz of gold hair. Nothing like Alfonso, but we don’t speak of that.

‘Mother! Over there – can we see the baby with two heads?’

‘No.’

‘Why?

‘I’ll be sick.’

‘The bearded mermaid?’

‘No.’

‘The pig-trotter man?’

‘No.’

‘The midget unicorn?’

‘No.’

‘Why? Why? All the boys at my school have seen the midget unicorn! Why can’t I?’

I don’t know why the thought of standing in a cramped booth, face to face with some freak – man-made or a slip of nature – makes me feel so weak and dizzy. I’ve seen it all before, and worse. So has Henry, come to that. He likes a good execution, that child; nothing lily-livered about him. Perhaps I’m pregnant again. My pregnancies ebb and flow in my body like the river tide. Few last more than six weeks. A good thing, as we live on next to nothing, and Alfonso is an idle dolt, barely able to put his doublet on the right way around.

‘Buy my fat chickens!’

‘Fresh asparagus!’

‘Any baking pears?’

Now Henry’s face is winding up into a baby-scowl. His curiosity amounts to a disease.

‘You
said
I could come to the Fair, and now we can’t
do
anything
!’

‘Henry!’

‘Termagant!’

‘Wherever did you – ?’

‘Whore!’

‘Obnoxious brat! How dare you!’

He slips his hand from mine and he’s off.

‘Henry!’

I look this way, and that. No idea which way to chase him. He has no money, will not go far. But I’m wrenched with fear. All I can see are the lurid banners: ‘Giant Blackamoor’… ‘Child Leprechaun’… ‘Neptune from the Deep’.

‘Henry!’

How will he hear me? My loud cries are lost in a multitude of voices.

‘Posset for you, lady?’ A skinny lad with a tray hanging from his neck.

‘See the man who swallows fire!’

A blind girl thrusts her pouch at me. ‘Sugar-pane fancies! Sweetest in Smithfield!’

‘Henry!’

Then, the crowd pushes me forward till I am jammed hard against a wooden palisade. I can barely see through the spaces between the planks, but can just make out the back view of a fairground caller, dressed in scarlet like an alderman.

‘Upwards of ten feet high!’ he cries. ‘His consumption of hay, corn, straw, carrots, water is that of twenty men! The Oliphant, the human race excepted, is the most respectable of animals! He has ivory tusks, four feet long, as sharp as swords! His trunk
serves him instead of hands and arms! He can lift a man with it, or a mouse!’

The crowd surges forward behind me. Where is Henry? If the mob pushes at him as violently as this, he will suffocate in the crush.

‘He remembers favours as long as injuries: in short, if you aid him, he will repay you. If you harm him, he will never forget…’

I have never seen an Oliphant, though I have read of them and seen a drawing. And at Whitehall Palace there was a monstrous tusk, among the Queen’s objects and treasures, which were brought from all the corners of the world. It was heavier than any sword or musket. I don’t believe this mountebank has an Oliphant in his tent – a great bull, perhaps, with an adder for its trunk, and dark hangings to keep the creature in the shadow. This is the Devil’s marketplace, after all.

But Henry? Where is Henry? I turn, and begin to force my way out through the mass of people. And then a woman stands in front of me. Bars my way. Her face is almost touching mine. She is motionless; her face a mask. Looking into her cold eyes, I could not say her age, or type.

‘Tell your fortune?’

‘No. Go away. I’m looking for my little boy.’

‘Oh,
he’s
safe enough. For now, at least.’

‘Where is he?’

‘Tell your fortune?’

‘Where’s my son?’ I try to push past her.

She sidesteps so she still blocks my way. ‘Cost you nothing.’

‘Where can I find him?’

‘Not a penny.’

‘I don’t want my fortune told! But I’d give you five shillings gladly if you told me where to find him.’

‘For nothing, I’ll tell you this. You’ve a whore’s past, and a poet’s future.’

‘Get out of my way!’

I turn, but now face a much older creature, shrivelled and black.

‘Beware of slip-shod words,’ she says. She looks into me with unseeing eyes. ‘Words will make you, and undo you. You will aim too high, and fall too low.’

‘What are you – lunatics? Or purse-thieves?’ I look behind me. ‘Are there three of you, a third to pick my pocket?’

‘Beware of your own wit,’ says the first woman, her voice whispering in my ear. ‘Your human pride.’

‘As for your son…’ The crone’s flesh reeks of piss and sweet decay.

‘What?’

‘The plague is coming.’

‘The plague is always coming. No wonder your predictions cost nothing.’

‘Not like this.’

And then – they are gone.

I spin round, full circle, hemmed in by the throng of
fair-goers
, the tricksters and the tricked. Then, stop. Another face. Smiling at me, all rouged and painted. A face out of place and time.

‘Well, how delightful!’ it says. ‘Aemilia Bassano! I would not have known you.’ A dramatic and unnecessary curtsey, and I have time to work out who this is.

‘Lettice Cooper.’ We were Court ladies together, ten years ago. She is flanked by two servants.

‘
Lady
Lettice,’ she says, ‘to you.’ She raises her eyebrows in disdain so that her manservant smirks to oblige her (odious palace arse-licker). If I have changed, then so has she. Always careful of her looks, she has plucked and powdered herself out of existence. She has taken Her Majesty for a model, and to no good effect, having made herself a doll-face of false surprise.

She hands her purse to her serving woman, and holds out her hand. I take it. Her fingers are silky, slippery.

‘You!’ she says. ‘Who was once so beautiful! I would never have thought it!’

‘Thought what? That I would turn out such a hag?’

‘Oh! My dear, have you quite lost your mind? Why would I say such a thing? They say the natural look will be in next year. In France, the ladies are letting their hair grow quite low on the forehead. You will be all the rage.’

‘Lettice…’

‘
Lady
Lettice…’

‘I have lost my son…’

‘He is dead?’

‘Only lost – mislaid…’

‘It comes as no surprise. I’ve heard you spoil that bastard boy and he runs wild.’

‘I had forgot the ways of Court.’

‘Indeed.’

‘Common people have better manners.’

A neat, malicious smile. ‘I see Alfonso, from time to time, of course. In the distance. Quite the merry thing, those tunes from Mr Tallis.
Dear
Alfonso. With his little pipe…’

As she moves away, she seems to remember something. ‘Oh – Aemilia. Oddly enough, I met a man the other day who was asking after you. That jumped-up fellow who used to be with the Lord Chamberlain’s Men. With the awful
accent
, you know?’

‘No, I don’t.’

‘Face of a clerk, but wears an earring. Arrogant, for a provincial.’

Arrogant is clue enough. And she would know his name in any case. He has been doing very well for himself of late.

‘What did he say?’

‘Mmm… can’t quite think. Oh, well – it can’t have been important…’

‘If you see him again, tell him I hope he burns in hell.’

‘What, the author of those pretty sonnets? He pleases everyone, they say.’

‘Not all his sonnets are pretty, your ladyship, and he certainly does not please me.’

She bows her head, seeming delighted with our exchange. ‘Do you know, I believe that his star may continue to ascend, even without your blessing?’ She walks on.

Then, through a gap in the crowd, I see Henry, staring up at a sugar-plum stall. I catch up my dress and struggle through the mob, taking no notice of the shouts of annoyance as I elbow my way forward.

‘Henry, for God’s sake! I have been so worried! What were you thinking of, running off like that?’

He is crying. ‘I’m sorry, Mother. I said bad words to you. The Devil tempted me.’

I hug him tight. His body is burly, already hard-muscled. He is growing up a manly man, the equal of anyone, if not their better.

‘I don’t deserve a sugar-plum, do I?’ he says. ‘Though they are so round and sweet to look at.’

‘No, you don’t.’

‘Not even one. You must punish me, so that my character will be built up strong.’

‘Not even one.’ I squeeze him tighter.

‘I’m a bad, rude, evil creature.’

‘Bad and rude, Henry.’ I bend down and kiss his hair. ‘But never evil.’

The stall is heaped with sweets and fancies made from sugar and marzipan. There are animals, birds and tiny baskets. Wine glasses, dishes, playing cards and little flutes, all made as dainty and perfect as God’s creation. I’ve seen such craftsmanship at Court, painstakingly fashioned for royal banquets. But never outside the palace. Even there, they were not as beautiful as this luscious, lustrous fruit. The sugar-plums are piled head high, a
rampart of dark pinks and soft purples, frosted with sugar like a fairy shroud. I look at the stall-holder. She is as lovely as her dainty wares, fair-skinned, with yellow hair plaited tightly back from her brow.

‘How many do we get for a halfpenny?’ I ask.

She smiles. ‘Two pocketfuls, mistress.’

‘Go on, then, Henry,’ I say, pushing him forward.

She fills his pockets and I give her the coin.

‘One for you?’ says Henry, turning to me with his best smile.

‘One for me.’ I choose a fat, mauve fruit. The sugar tingles on my lips as I bite into it. But my attention is distracted – I see the two witch-women, sitting on the ground just by the stall… I bite down, and my tooth cracks on the plum-stone. There is a sudden pain, a knife-jab in my gums.

I grab my jaw. ‘See – there!’ I shout.

Henry turns to look, mouth full. ‘What? Where?’

They have disappeared. A trumpet band starts up. A troupe of acrobats is turning cartwheels. A bear begins to dance, its moaning growl like human words.

I peer distractedly. ‘Nothing. Just… nothing.’

‘Did you hurt your mouth?’ says Henry.

‘I think so.’ I take the mush of plum, sugar and gore out of my mouth and look at it in my palm. There is a shard of tooth there. More than that. Half a molar.

‘So much blood, Mother!’ says Henry. He seems well satisfied. ‘Would you like another one?’