The Dark Lady's Mask (32 page)

“Come, gentle night,” she recited, “come, loving black-browed night.”

She trembled as Will traced her own black eyebrows. “Go on,” he whispered.

“Give me my Romeo; and when he shall die—”

She stopped short, unable to hide her smile, for
die
meant not just physical death but surrendering to the heights of sensual ecstasy. She shivered as Will traced her breasts through the thin fabric of her shift.

“Take him,” she continued, her eyes locked with Will's, “and cut him out in little stars, and he will make the face of heaven so fine that all the world will be in love with night and pay no worship to the garish sun. Oh, I have bought a mansion of a love, but not possessed it—”

The pages flew from her hand as she pounced upon Will and took possession of him. She laughed and caught her fingers in his hair.

“My dark lady,” he said. “You hang like a jewel on the cheek of night.”

Together they writhed and then died in each other's arms.

“Such happiness,” she whispered. “My life before I loved you was but a dream.”

His hand found her belly, still flat and taut, though for how much longer she could not say, given the vigor of their lovemaking.

“We'll have a family as big as Jacopo's,” he said. “A whole brood of children, each of them as beautiful as their mother.”

 

O YOU EVER MISS
England?” Aemilia asked Will, one glittering June morning as they walked arm in arm down the path between the vineyard and olive groves.

She smiled to think that they had known each other for a full year. How quickly their love had blossomed, leading them to this paradise.

“Last night I dreamt of the Forest of Arden,” Will said. “But I found it full of cypress trees. The Faery Queen appeared in the moonlight as an Italian lady with long black hair.” He spun her in his arms and kissed her. “So you see, my love, Italy has conquered even my dreams. What can compare with this?”

They gazed down at Verona nestled below in the bend of the Adige River. The cathedral, the basilica, the old Roman forum and amphitheater, and the
castello
glowed hazy pink in the early morning light. Set within massive fortified walls, this was the largest city in mainland Veneto and nearly as rich as Venice, for it lay at the crossroads of the great trade routes. German and Dutch merchants passed by on their way south to Rome and Naples while French and Spanish traveled through en route to Venice and Trieste.

Scattered around Verona lay farms, orchards, and vineyards, some large and some as modest as Aemilia's own small holding. But all of them prospered, thanks to the Turkish trade embargo blocking the importing of wine from Greece and the Levant. The Veneto wine growers made their fortunes shipping off barrel after barrel to satisfy the Venetian market.

At this fresh hour of morning, before the baking heat of midday, Verona and its environs seemed like lost Arcadia come to life. Aemilia squeezed Will's hand, scarcely believing how fortune had blessed them.

“Is this not the perfect setting for our romance of Giulietta and Romeo?” she asked him.

“Ah, if there is one thing I do miss, it's the chance to see our plays performed at the Rose Theater,” he said.

“What, have our tender Giulietta played by a boy in a wig?” She enjoyed teasing him. “Let's translate them into Italian and see them performed right here in Verona.”

He shook his head. “All my wordcraft would be lost. No, when we're finished, I shall send our plays to Harry.”

When Will spoke of his former love, she detected neither longing nor bitterness, only a fondness he might reserve for an old friend. Still, she was secretly glad that Harry was not yet in possession of
Giulietta and Romeo.

“I fear he would make us twist our romance into a tragedy,” she said. “People like him seem to put great store in maidens stabbing themselves and bleeding all over the stage.”

None of Isabella Andreini's heroines would have killed themselves,
she thought.

“The original tale
is
a tragedy,” Will pointed out. “How could it not be in such a clannish place?”

Verona, like many an Italian city, was riven by feuding families competing for power and wealth, each plotting the others' downfall. Aemilia was grateful to live up in the hills, far removed from such intrigue.

“Think for a moment—is not tragedy more profound?” Will asked. “For tragedy is high art, not mere entertainment. It touches the deepest places inside us.”

Aemilia rolled her eyes to hear him expound on Aristotle when he had never learned Greek. But she took care not to remind him of that fact or that she, a woman, had received a more thorough education. Instead, she used reason.

“How could any tragedy ever written, even by the ancients, be a finer work of art than Dante's
Divine Comedy
?” she asked him. “For comedy
is
at its essence divine. What could touch the spirit more profoundly than the triumph of love and goodness over hatred, violence, and greed?”

Comedy in its true, classical sense, she reflected, did not refer to humorous, lighthearted entertainment but to the belief in a just universe that orders all things to their ultimate good, just as Dante's pilgrim progresses from the inferno to the heights of heaven.

Will stared at the city below as if to read his answer in that labyrinth of streets and piazzas.

“We have written four comedies in the Italian style,” he said. “The romance of the shrew. Viola's tale of adventure. Rosalind's tale. The romance of Benedick and Beatrice.”

Aemilia warmed to hear him list their creations, their strong-willed heroines.

“Might we not have
one
tragedy?” he asked her. “If only to prove we are masters of the entire range of drama, not just comedy.”

When he was being stubborn, his Warwickshire accent grew stronger. She tried not to laugh lest he think she was mocking him. Instead, she considered his boyhood in Stratford, apprenticed to his glover father who had expected him to live a humdrum existence in a backwater town. Will's stubbornness had preserved him, raising him to loftier aspirations. If he had not been such a willful, contrary soul, he would have never come to London to carve out his life as a poet. She would have never met him, never fallen so deeply in love. Instead, the stars had conspired to bring them to this vine-clad slope high above Verona.
How lucky we are! How lucky!

“Let us think on it,” she said gently.

They turned and walked back up the path where they came across Prudence gathering herbs in the long shady grass of the peach orchard. Singing under her breath, Pru was trailed by a procession of goats and geese, as if the creatures were in her thrall.

“There's something of the witch in your Weir sisters,” Will remarked. “Particularly that one. I heard Lucetta muttering that Prudence dabbles in love potions.”

Lucetta was Paolo the winemaker's wife, and she and the Weir sisters were currently engaged in a fraught battle over supremacy of the kitchen.

“Don't be ridiculous,” Aemilia said. “Lucetta's only vexed that her son is so besotted with Tabitha, as if a pretty girl like her had any need of a love philter. Look there! Romance transpiring before our eyes.”

She pointed to Tabitha trading pleasantries with Antonio, who was as handsome as Apollo. Tabitha appeared as Venus herself, her golden hair gleaming even brighter in the sun. Now that Aemilia was in love, every single person and thing seemed to shimmer with a deeper radiance. And why should Tabitha not be blessed with romance, have a child of her own now that Enrico was weaned?

Even Winifred seemed back to her old self. Her hand clasping Enrico's, Winifred inspected the plump young lambs, as if trying to decide which one she would pick for her lamb pie. Here in the countryside, Winifred's girth had expanded once more to its full magnificence.

“Papa!” Enrico broke free from Winifred to toddle toward Will, not content until he rode in grandeur on his idol's shoulders.

It brought tears to Aemilia's eyes to hear Enrico call Will papa, to see how Will treasured him. Truly, they were a family and soon there might be another child on the way. Even as the thought danced inside her head, she felt a twinge inside her, a slight dizziness as the day grew hotter. But she wouldn't breathe a word to Will until she was certain.

His eyes traveled over her face. “You've gone pale. Go inside, love. Out of the sun.”

“Not just yet,” she said, jingling her chatelaine with the keys to the wine cave, storerooms, and cellars. “Duty first.”

At that, she set off to find Paolo. Meanwhile, Will was careful to carry Enrico out of the sun before it scorched him.

Paolo was weaving his way among the vines, inspecting them for pests. Everything Aemilia knew about wine growing she had learned from him. He saw to the husbandry and harvest, the winemaking and oil pressing, while she saw to the accounts and the shipping of the wine and olive oil to Bassano and Venice.

Their small holding produced three different red wines. The first was a young, fresh-tasting table wine that slaked the thirst on a dusty summer day. One could drink a glass or two and not be drunk. The second, the
ripasso,
was stronger with fermented grape pomace added to create a more robust flavor. But their finest vintage was the
amarone,
made in the Greek style with grapes dried for three to four months before fermentation began. Then the wine was aged in oak barrels in their cave for at least three years. The
amarone
was heady and potent. Half a jug could render a strong man legless.

Paolo
, Aemilia concluded,
is an artist as gifted as Jacopo had been, an artist of wine
.

“Will it be a good year?” she asked him.

The man's sunburnt face creased into a smile. “The best year in memory,
signora.
If this weather holds. If God spares us from hailstorms and heavy autumn rain.”

Lifting his eyes to the heavens, Paolo crossed himself. Aemilia bowed her head. Again the mask constricted her. What must Paolo and the farmworkers think of their new mistress, this foreigner, so hastily married? She who attended Mass as infrequently as possible.

“There's a matter I must discuss with you,” Paolo said. As the sun glared down, the edges of his face seemed to blur. “It's only gossip,
signora,
and you know how foolish folk are, but I've heard it murmured that your Prudenza is a
strega,
a witch.”

Aemilia's temples pounded in the heat. “You would use kitchen gossip to condemn my faithful servant? She's an herb wife, to be sure, but there's no wickedness in her. I trust her with my own son.”

If she had only known Prudence during her time with Lord Hunsdon, Aemilia had no doubt that Pru's remedies would have prevented her from falling pregnant, unlike the useless decoctions of that midwife Lord Hunsdon had bade her use.

“I just thought you should know what people are saying,” Paolo said. “The neighbor's washerwoman told my wife that she saw Prudenza at the marketplace and your Prudenza gave her the evil eye. Later that same day, the poor woman suffered a miscarriage.”

A wave of dizziness seized Aemilia, forcing her to kneel in the black earth.

“
Signora,
are you not well?” Paolo helped her to her feet.

“Dear God,” she said. “Many a woman miscarries. But surely this has nothing to do with Prudence. Tell me, Paolo, have there been recent witch trials in Verona?”

Unlike in England, where supposed witches were hanged, here the Inquisition had the authority to torture the accused and burn them at the stake. Aemilia couldn't bear to think of such a fate befalling Prudence.

“Not in many years,
signora,
” Paolo said. “I pray we will be spared such an event.”

“Mistress!”

Aemilia turned to see Tabitha come sprinting, cheeks flushed and eyes shining. Truly this girl had no clue what was being said about her sister.

“Mistress,” Tabitha panted. “Olivia and Giulietta have come to visit all the way from Bassano!”

Close at Tabitha's heels came Giulietta. The girl flung her arms around Aemilia, nearly knocking her over.

“How I've missed you, Aemilia! It's so
dull
without you,” the girl said breathlessly. “Have you and Will finished your romance of Giulietta and Romeo?”

“Nearly.” Aemilia kissed her cheeks. “Today our lovely heroine has come to Verona.”

“I'm so glad
I'm
not a character in one of your plays!” Olivia had finally caught up with her daughter. “I'd find it rather embarrassing.”

Aemilia and Giulietta shared a secret glance, for Aemilia had shown the girl the play of Viola and Olivia. But the girl made an earnest face for her mother.

“Giulietta in the play is not
me,
Mama, but a young lady who lived in the time of Dante Alighieri.” The girl's eyes were dreamy. “She lost her heart to Romeo, secretly married him, and then died for love when she was only thirteen!”