The Dark Lady's Mask (21 page)

Why indeed,
Aemilia asked herself. Why was she putting all their lives at risk for the sake of a poet she hardly knew? Her bargain with him was rendered void with the theaters closed down for the duration of the plague. Perhaps he had already absconded. But she found she could not abandon him. Not without at least first offering him deliverance.

“Wait here,” Aemilia told the Weir sisters, as they stopped outside the Whitecross Tavern.

Winifred, perched high in the driver's seat with Aemilia's sword and rapier strapped to her girth, was frightening enough, so her mistress hoped, to ward off the thieves who hadn't already fled.

Since speed was of the essence, Aemilia didn't bother jumping down from her horse as she entered the courtyard and yelled loudly enough to make Bathsheba jump and snort.

“William Shakespeare! If you are there, come out at once!”

Out shot Mistress Skinner.

“What do you want with him?” the landlady demanded, peering at Aemilia suspiciously. “Does he owe you money? You're out of luck, madam. God's teeth, he's skint as a mole.”

The poet stepped blinking into the sunlight before staring at Aemilia as though she were a phantasm. Not since their first encounter outside the astrologer's had he seen her in feminine garb to match her true sex and station.

“The lady looks familiar,” Mistress Skinner muttered, with a sidelong glance at her tenant. “Now where have I seen her before?”

“Master Shakespeare,” said Aemilia. “I'm off to Italy. Will you come with me?”

“Italy?” His voice was as incredulous as if she had told him she was flying to the moon. “Why Italy?”

“Family business,” she said, her every word measured and brisk. “I'm traveling with my cousin.”

“Your cousin Ben Jonson?” Even in these dire circumstances, the poet could not hide his derision. Would he take the Black Death over a journey with his rival who had insulted him?

“No,” Aemilia said, exasperated by his vanity. “My cousin Jasper Bassano, musician to the Queen.”

“Aha!” cried Mistress Skinner. “It was your cousin who called on us a fortnight ago. A very handsome fellow, your cousin is, madam.”

“Choose now,” Aemilia said to Will. “Will you come or stay behind? I've no time to wait.”

“But why would you take
me
?” he asked. “And how shall I pay my fare?” He lifted his empty hands to the sky. “As you well know, I'm penniless.”

“That he certainly is,” Mistress Skinner said.

Leaning forward in the saddle, Aemilia handed him an envelope. “I've taken the liberty of intervening on your behalf and sent word to Southampton, who has agreed to provide you with his letter of credit to pay your expenses. He's written a personal letter as well.”

The poet snatched the envelope from her and cast a furtive glance round, as though he longed to dash back into the boardinghouse and read Harry's missive in the privacy of his room. Meanwhile, Mistress Skinner's eyes threatened to pop out of their sockets.

“Bless me, an earl!” she cried, fanning herself with her hand. “Since when do you receive letters from earls, Master Shakestaff? Well, what does it say?”

With a snap of her riding crop, Aemilia cut the conversation short. “You can read the letter in the cart. Come, make haste! We must away before they close the harbor.”

After racing in to pack his satchel, the poet climbed aboard the cart, wedging himself between Tabitha and Prudence. With Winifred driving the ox, Aemilia rode ahead, setting a swift pace. She told herself she wouldn't look back, but it was hard to ignore Tabitha's sobbing. Aemilia glanced over her shoulder to see the poet gently take the baby from Tabby. He cradled Enrico tenderly, as if the infant were his own.

The wind off the Thames whipped Aemilia's sweat-slick hair and threatened to sweep away her hat. Clinging to the side of the merchant ship
Bonaventure
, her heart was in her throat to see Billingsgate harbor recede from view. Her first time aboard a ship, she could not quite get used to the pitching. What would it be like once they reached the open sea? London Bridge with its traitors' heads on spikes and even the Tower were soon lost from her sight. Papa had told her she would never be banished from her home, and yet here she was, retracing his journey.

Standing beside her, the poet likewise gazed back at the world they were leaving behind. She told herself that since she was traveling with him she must start thinking of him by his name.
Will,
she thought.
William.

Will turned, as though about to say something to her, but stopped short at the sight of Jasper approaching them. As Aemilia introduced the two men, her cousin looked Will over critically, as if inspecting a bullock at a fair.

“In faith, I don't know what you see in him,” Jasper said, after Will had gone to find his berth. “You honestly mean to take him all the way to Bassano? What if he should dishonor you? You're finally shot of Alfonse only to entangle yourself with a poor scribbler?”

“Peace, cousin,” Aemilia said. “I could not command him to leave this ship even if I wanted. The Earl of Southampton is paying his passage, not you or I. Whether he chooses to travel to Bassano or sail all the way to the Levant is his own choice. Besides,” she added cheerfully, “I am quite safe with Master Shakespeare. He's far more enamored of his fellow man.”

Jasper reddened then shook his head. “You do befriend the oddest people.”

A
WHILE LATER
, A
EMILIA
found Will staring out over the water, his face pensive, Southampton's letter clutched in his hand.

“Did Harry say anything amusing?” she asked him.

“He wants me to return to him as a man of the world,” Will told her. There was something bittersweet in his voice, as if he were still reeling from the young Earl's capricious treatment of him. “A model of Italian sophistication.”

“And no doubt to procure for him some choice Italian pornography like that ridiculous miniature of the courtesan,” she said.

To her relief, Will laughed.

“Once in Italy, I may never return,” she told him. “Though you might. But whilst we are there, I shall show you the cities I know only from my father's stories. Verona, Padua, Venice.” She thrilled at the magical names, yet soon they would become more than names—she would see them with her own eyes.

“But why me?” Will asked yet again, looking her directly in the eye.

With no prying landlady or cousin listening in, Aemilia could finally speak her mind.

“I think we are both lost in the world and in need of a friend. Will you be my friend?”

Her words left him speechless.
Perhaps he is shocked by my candor
, she thought. No proper lady was as blunt and reckless as she was, carelessly speaking of pornography and then offering a strange man her friendship. But he suddenly took her hand as delicately as if it were a bird and kissed it.

“Friendship,” he said, “is indeed a solace in this world.”

She flushed to see him so formal. How much more at ease she was when he was his sardonic self, regarding her as a brazen interloper in his male world. But then, releasing her hand, he grinned at her as though they had known each other all their lives.

“Do you still wish to write comedies with me, Aemilia-Emilio?”

“Yes!” She laughed aloud in pleasure and relief. Even as the wind blasted against the sails, she felt herself grow warm and expansive as though she were sitting in the sunlight beneath an arbor of Veneto grapes. “About a man married to a clever and quick-witted shrew. She is Italian and never lacks for repartee. I shall show you what I've already written.”

They found a place to sit out of the wind where Aemilia took the scrolled pages from her case so that Will could read the beginning of the play they would finish together.

“I'
VE LOST ALL SIGHT
of land,” Tabitha lamented, as the ship barreled down the Channel toward the Atlantic. “What's to become of us? Will we ever see England again?”

“Give me that babe,” said Prudence, easing Enrico from Tabby's arms. “Marry, you'll drown the poor mite with all that weeping.”

While Pru fussed over the baby, Winifred squashed Tabby in her fierce embrace.

“At least we've escaped the plague, lovey,” Winifred told Tabitha. “We're still together, all three of us. Why, we're off on a great adventure.”

As if in mockery of her brave words, Winifred felt a queasiness climbing up her throat. When the ship breached a huge wave, she released Tabitha and rushed to the rail where she spewed and spewed into the seething foam, her stomach wrung inside out.

“My poor Winifred!” Tabby held her shoulders.

“I'll soon be right,” Winifred grumbled. “Just a bit of seasickness.”

But her heart dragged like an anchor.

“O
UR PLAY THUS FAR
begins with Christophero Sly.” Will peered down at the pages of quarto with many smudges and crossed-out lines. “A drunkard found lying senseless outside a tavern.”

Aemilia shook her head and sighed. “First of all, Christophero isn't even proper Italian, let alone Sly. It's
Christoforo,
if you please. But can we not call him Alfonso?”

She turned to Winifred, who only snorted.

Aemilia and Will worked together in the cabin she shared with Enrico and the Weir sisters. She sat on her bed, which was built into a niche in the wall, while the poet perched on the water barrel. The two of them passed Aemilia's wooden lap desk back and forth as inspiration seized them. Dosed with Prudence's seasickness remedy, Winifred remained too queasy to even do her mending. Instead, she sat green faced beside Aemilia and observed the goings-on with heavy-lidded eyes, as though on guard, even in her debilitated condition, to shield her mistress from any improprieties.

“A noble hunting party stumbles across the drunkard and decides to play a prank on him,” Will continued, pitching his voice to be heard over the ship's creaking. “They drag him unconscious to the manor house, dress him in fine garments, place him in the lord's bed, and then a page boy puts on a gown and masquerades as his lady wife.”

“How our Harry will relish this scene,” Aemilia said.

Will narrowed his eyes at her before reading on. “Then a troupe of players arrives in the noble bedchamber and there performs the tale of the shrew.” With his Warwickshire accent, he pronounced the word
shrow.
“And thus, we have a play within a play.”

“Set in Padua,” Aemilia said, with some satisfaction.

The Italian setting was, of course, her contribution. She had named the heroine's father Battista, a man with three daughters, two beautiful and one quarrelsome, whom he had educated in music, Latin, and Greek. But any resemblance to her own father ended there. Battista in the play wanted to be rid of his difficult eldest daughter, Caterina, as soon as he could. As for Bianca and Emelia, the beautiful and desirable daughters—he was content to auction them off to the suitors who claimed the greatest fortune.

Winifred remained unimpressed. “I don't care if it's set in Cheapside Market, mistress. It's utter nonsense if you ask me. Worthless drunkards and page boys in skirts? I thought you were writing a romance.”

Aemilia had never seen her maid this short-tempered. Winifred seemed to be convinced their vessel was bound not for Italy but hell, and were it not for her loyalty to her mistress, she would have muttered her prayers and hurled herself overboard the moment they left Billingsgate harbor.

“A romance by degrees.” Will exchanged a smile with Aemilia. “Have some patience, good Winifred, and it will yet unfold.”

Some of their work in progress Aemilia thought very good indeed. She thrilled at the poetry Will brought to their comedy, even as the pranksters sought to fool the drunkard into believing he was a wealthy lord.

Dost thou love hawking? Thou hast hawks will soar

Above the morning lark. Or wilt thou hunt?

Thy hounds shall make the welkin answer them

And fetch shrill echoes from the hollow earth.

Only none of the poetry in this play was of love. Perhaps Will was still too wounded by Harry to write of tender things, yet he seemed happy enough to write of a man and woman sparring with words. She adored writing of a spirited shrew instead of a beautiful, limp, docile heroine, but Will's idea to write of the
taming
of her beloved shrew stuck in her craw.

“The play will only work if Caterina is Petruchio's equal in wit,” she told Will.

But he was just as stubborn as she. “It only succeeds if Kate—”

“
Caterina!
” Aemilia cried. “She's an Italian lady, not a Cripplegate tavern wench.”

“If
Kate
and Petruchio love each other,” the poet said, with his usual dogged insistence. “Thus far you've painted Petruchio as a callous fortune hunter who marries Kate for her dowry and then starves her into submission.”

“Such men exist,” she said, thinking of how her brother-in-law had turned her beautiful sister into a tortured ghost. If only Angela had been a shrew, she might have stood a chance.

“Oh, that they certainly do,” Winifred said darkly, agreeing with her mistress for once.

“Are we to see our hero as a rank villain?” Will argued. “That's too cynical for me. Kate's only a shrew to scare off the suitors who are after her dowry. Once she meets her true match, her barbs and prickles melt away.”

Aemilia and Winifred rolled their eyes.

“You would turn my shrew into a sheep,” Aemilia said. “That speech of wifely obedience poor Caterina must parrot at the end is ridiculous! Tell me true, can you imagine Mistress Shakespeare uttering such nonsense without injuring herself laughing?”