The Dark Lady's Mask (22 page)

“
I
certainly can't,” Winifred said.

Will's face turned stony before he threw up his hands. “Well, how would you end it, then?”

“If she makes that silly speech, she must do it with her fingers crossed behind her back for all the audience to see,” Aemilia said, with a complicit glance at Winifred. “And then Emelia, her sister, must tell Polidor, her bridegroom, that a shrew is better than a sheep.”

“Oh, yes, mistress!” Winifred nodded vigorously. “That's the most sensible thing I've heard you say all day.”

“And
then,
” Aemilia continued, “the play ends with the drunkard Alfonso—”

“Christophero Sly!” Will shot in.

“—being dragged back outside the tavern where his pranksters first found him. There he awakens in the cold dawn. The taming of the shrew was but the vain fancy of a sot who can scarcely expect his wife to respect him, much less obey him.”

At that, she snatched her lap desk from Will and began to scribble furiously.

“Mistress, have a care!” cried Winifred. “You're spilling ink on the blankets.”

Will cleared his throat. “And now the scene when the suitors disguise themselves as tutors to gain an audience with Battista's younger daughters. Hortensio carries a lute whilst Lucentio and Biondello bring books. However, they can scarcely conceal their desire for Bianca and Emelia.”

“Our Caterina sees straight through their ruse,” said Aemilia, glancing over the written page. “And knows they seek only to seduce her sisters.”

Winifred looked appalled. “Why, I would never stand for such a thing! If it were me, I'd take that lute and smash it over that lying scoundrel's head! That would teach him not to take liberties with my sisters!”

Will and Aemilia's eyes locked.

“Most excellent!” Aemilia cried.

He grabbed the lap desk and began to scribe. “Iron may hold Kate,” he read aloud, “but never lutes. Hortensio emerges with the broken lute over his head as though he is wearing stocks about his neck. Petruchio, upon seeing evidence of Kate's violent temper, decides he loves her all the more. Now for the dialogue when Petruchio first meets Kate.”

“
Caterina!
” Aemilia cried.

Standing on the swaying floorboards as the ship pitched and tossed, Will threw himself into character and before her eyes transformed into the swaggering Petruchio.

“Come, come, you wasp,” he said. “In faith, you are too angry.”

The way his eyes burned into hers reminded her for an instant of how he had gazed at Harry that midsummer night in Southampton House. Her face went hot and her belly grew slack. Then she wanted to slap herself. He was a playwright and a player by profession. He was
acting.
What was worse, he was grinning in triumph because his wit had left her tongue-tied.

Gathering herself together, she leapt to her feet and responded in kind, improvising her dialogue. “If I be waspish, best beware of my sting.”

“My remedy,” he said, raising an eyebrow, “is to pluck it out.”

“Aye,” she said, beginning to enjoy playing the unrepentant shrew, “if the fool could find where it lies.”

Winifred sighed as though she were locked in a cell with two Bedlamites. “Who knows not where a wasp wears his sting?”

“In his tail,” Will said, his eyes glistering into Aemilia's.

“In his tongue!” she cried.

“Whose tongue?”

“Yours,” she said, gazing up at him, “if you talk of tails, and so farewell.”

“What, with my tongue in your tail?” he said, with such verve that she found herself blushing. “Nay, come again. Good Kate, I am a gentleman.”

“What is in your crest?” she demanded, for she couldn't allow his Petruchio to best her Caterina. “A coxcomb?”

This time she made him blush. She saw that her barb reached its target, for Will did not possess a family crest or coat of arms as she did. But he soon rallied.

“A combless cock, so Kate will be my hen.”

“No cock of mine. You crow too much like a craven,” she said, before a wave sent her tumbling into Will. She clung to him for an instant before the next wave sent them flying apart. Will sprawled on the floor while Aemilia fell into Winifred's lap. Both of them collapsed into helpless laughter.

“My word!” said Winifred. “How the pair of you do carry on! Any more talk of cocks and I'll be wringing the fowl's neck.”

“Peace, Winifred,” Aemilia said fondly. “It's only a play.”

 

 

CROSS THE WAVES
, V
ENICE
glimmered like a dream. Aemilia hugged Enrico close then reached for Jasper's hand. Tears blurred her first glimpse of the city where their fathers once dwelled. La Serenissima
,
the Most Serene Republic.

Had Papa only lived to see this day. She felt the loss of him as keenly as if he had died yesterday—Enrico would never know the grandfather who would have showered him in such love and pride. Her grief subsided in a rush—here her new life would begin. Turning to Will, she found him as rapt as she, his hazel eyes gleaming.

“Our fair pilgrim has reached the hallowed shore,” he told her in his teasing fashion, as if she were the heroine of a brand-new play.

His words gave her pause for thought. Perhaps she was indeed a questing pilgrim, each station on her journey bringing her closer to her father's enigma. To the mystery of who she was.

T
HE
B
ONAVENTURE
ANCHORED IN
the lagoon while the passengers and cargo bound for Venice floated toward the Piazza San Marco in a convoy of smaller boats. The journey from England had been slow, the
Bonaventure
moving in fits and starts, stopping at every major port while making its cumbersome way around Iberia and the Italian peninsula. With their fleeting forays into Calais, Lisbon, Malaga, and Naples, Aemilia reckoned that she and her traveling companions had seen a goodly glimpse of the great world. But Venice defied all comparison.

It was October, an auspicious time to arrive in this watery city, so Jasper said, when the weather was mercifully mild and the season of summer fever and marsh sickness had passed.

As their boat drew nearer, Aemilia saw a column rising into the sky, topped with the winged lion of San Marco. The piazza appeared as a vast stage crowded with characters of every description. Black-skinned, white-turbaned youths helped them dock.
No one in this city will call me dark,
she thought. Not on this piazza where she might walk shoulder to shoulder with Africans and Turks.

“Are we in the Orient?” Will asked, holding her arm to steady her as she stepped ashore with Enrico in her arms. “Nowhere in Christendom have I seen such marvels. Marry, if this is where your people came from, I cannot fathom why they'd ever want to leave.”

She waited with Jasper while Will handed the Weir sisters out of the boat. They, too, seemed transfixed. Even homesick Tabitha smiled beatifically as she took the baby from Aemilia's arms and planted a kiss on his head.

Enrico's eyes drank in everything. At nine months, Aemilia's son had grown into a hearty babe. To her joy, he seemed to thrive on this life of wandering that brought new sights and another language or dialect every day to fill his ears. If she stayed in Veneto, he would grow up speaking Italian. He would have no memory of England.

San Marco's basilica gleamed with gold and gem-bright mosaics, as sumptuous as a jewel box. The jumble of domes and half domes reminded her more of a palace than a church. Beside it, the Doge's Palace, with its sculpture-graced façade and its marble-pillared arcade and loggia, made Queen Elizabeth's Whitehall resemble a stable yard. Craning her neck, Aemilia stared up at the sculpted relief of a little girl in a boat, her one hand rising to the heavens to grasp the crescent moon while another hand reached into the water to catch a crab. Such exquisite art for all the world to see, from the highest-born aristocrats to the lowest galley slaves. The Doge was no monarch but the elected ruler of a republic where the law applied impartially to all. Over the palace's pinnacled grand entrance rose the statue of Justice with her sword and scales.

Aemilia uttered a startled cry as Will pulled her out of the way of a procession. Priests waved incense thuribles and bore the banner of Saint Pelagia of Antioch.

“Take note of the saint,” her friend whispered. “A reformed courtesan who disguised herself as a man and lived as a hermit in the desert, her true sex being discovered only after her death.”

Sometimes Will mystified her. From the tone of his voice, she couldn't tell if he was joking or speaking in earnest. Was he trying to tell her that if a
saint
might leave her old life behind and live as a man, then so might she?

Besides, how could she hope to compete in beauty or style with the Venetian ladies who floated across the piazza in a shimmer of diamonds, rubies, sapphires, and emeralds, each woman appearing to carry a fortune in gems and gold. The men were no less opulent in their mantles of velvet and sable, their oriental brocades.

Aemilia caught Will staring open mouthed at those handsome merchants' sons.

“The gentlemen of Venice are even more beautiful than your Earl of Southampton,” she said lightly. “Do you not agree?”

“I was studying their clothes,” he said, somewhat huffily, before he ran his hands over his patched doublet. “To them I must appear shabbier than the most wretched pauper in Cripplegate.”

But Aemilia found it impossible not to notice how their journey had transformed him. Gone was the hungry, haunted look she remembered from his London days. His English skin was now bronzed by the Mediterranean sun.
Give him a new set of clothes
, she thought,
and he could hold his own among those handsome Italian men
. A flush crept over her cheeks before she steered her thoughts to more practical matters.

“Tomorrow we shall visit the vendors of used clothing,” she told Will.

Indeed, she counted the seconds before she could trade her English weeds for garments made in this city to match these people and their gentle climate. But it was not a silk gown or a lace mantle she desired. In this foreign city where no one knew her name, she would become Emilio. Become a young man, his future wide open, a blank page on which she might write anything.

A
S A COURTIER ON
the Queen's official business, Jasper might have secured them guest rooms in the English ambassador's palazzo. Instead, owing to the secrecy surrounding their family's past, he chose an obscure but respectable inn on the Campo Santo Stefano. They were set to stay in Venice at least a week, their onward journey to Bassano delayed until Jasper fulfilled his obligations of buying instruments for the Queen's Musicke.