The Dark Lady's Mask (40 page)

“Now go in peace,” she said.

W
ILL EXITED THE ROOM
as silently as a ghost. Behind him, the door closed with the quietest sigh. Sinking back onto her chair, Aemilia cradled her lute in her shaking hands. She couldn't see for her tears.

What if Will was right and life was but a tragedy, a cruel joke? What if all her love and suffering were for nothing, cold stars abandoning her to ill fate?

“Zounds, dear cos! Do you truly weep for that provincial poetaster?”

Aemilia looked up to see Ben. He knelt and took the lute from her hands.

“Never you worry. I'll make sure Shakescene never cheats you, at least as far as money is concerned. Don't trouble yourself about the child either. My wife and I shall stand in as godparents. If you're married to a fool of a Frenchman, I'd say even adultery is forgivable.”

Merry from the wine, Ben strummed her lute and began to sing. His comically off-key voice sent her rocking in laughter.

Sigh no more, lady, sigh no more,

Men were deceivers ever,

One foot in sea and one on shore

To one thing constant never.

Then sigh not so, but let him go,

And be you blithe and bonny,

Converting all your sounds of woe

Into Hey nonny, nonny.

Winifred came in to listen.

“It might be a silly ditty,” the maid pronounced, “but it's the most sense I've heard all day.”

T
HOUGH FOREVER EXILED FROM
her lover, Aemilia thought of herself as an invisible player, scribing fair copies and arranging the stage music. Why should Jasper and her other Bassano cousins not benefit from her plays and earn a lucrative side income as theater musicians? She wrote a letter to Jasper in hope that this opportunity might be her means of smoothing her way back into the family fold.

When Jasper called in later that week, he looked as conflicted as when they had parted in Venice more than a year ago. At least his face betrayed no shock at the sight of her pregnancy. Indeed, he appeared resigned, as if he had suspected such an outcome all along.

“I should have never left you with that interloper,” he said. “Had I only insisted that you return to England with me.”

“I would have refused,” Aemilia told him amiably. “When, dear Jasper, have you been able to bend me to your will? Let's hope that the theater venture might at least prove profitable for us both.”

“Profits? Is that all you can speak of?” He stared at her in disbelief. “This man has humiliated you.”

“Do you propose to challenge him to a duel?” She threw up her hands. “What purpose would that serve? If you would champion me, then see if you can arrange for Alfonse to join the Queen's Musicke again—should he ever rise from his sickbed.”

Jasper fixed her squarely in his gaze. “Aemilia, you walk a dangerous path. You weathered one scandal with the Lord Chamberlain—”

“Fortune be praised for that,” she said. “The man has been my lifeline.”

With a start, she realized that she had passed beyond the realm of shame.

“And now you are pregnant by this scribbler, a married man.”

Aemilia regarded her cousin in silence. No more tears flowed. No blush crept over her cheeks. Finally, it was Jasper who lowered his eyes.

“Let's hope your husband plays along and gives you cover of decency,” Jasper said.

“At this point, I'd say he has little other choice.”

“
Two
scandals,” Jasper said, as if to drive his point home. “In God's name, you can't afford a third.”

“You needn't worry. Henceforth, I am a reformed woman.” She clasped her hands in a semblance of contrition. “The penitent Magdalene.”

Jasper stared as if trying to determine whether she spoke in earnest. Finally, he changed the subject. “Was Bassano as grand as you thought it would be? The villa with its painted façade?”

“The villa is just a building,” she said. “But Jacopo had the biggest heart of any man I've met since Papa died. He was sorry not to meet you, Jasper. Do you know that he and Papa wrote letters to each other?”

“Aemilia,” her cousin said. “Can you forgive me for abandoning you in Italy?”

Her laughter surprised even herself. “I wouldn't take back my time in Italy for all the world. Not one minute of it.”

“In faith, you don't sound particularly penitent to me.”

“Jacopo would have said our deepest regrets are about what we didn't do,” she said.

Jasper bowed his head.

“By the way,” he said quietly, “I've returned something that belongs to you. I left it in your garden. You'll want to order hay and straw.”

“Hay and straw?” She looked at him in confusion until suddenly it registered.

Planting a kiss on her cousin's cheek, she rushed as swiftly as her condition allowed to the kitchen and tore open the door to the garden. There, covered in shaggy winter fur and cropping winter's grass, was a chestnut mare that now threw up her head and whinnied. Bathsheba ambled toward her, inserted her pink muzzle in her mistress's arms, and blew softly on her belly.

 

EMILIA PANTED AND THRASHED
, in thrall to her body. Wrenching waves surged through her, building into a tempest that swept her out to sea. Even her sweat tasted of brine.

Winifred offered her hand. “Squeeze as hard as you're able,” she pleaded, as though yearning to take all of her mistress's pain onto herself.

Prudence wiped Aemilia's face with a cool cloth and told her when it was time to bear down and push.

But Aemilia's thoughts soared free from the prison of her flesh. Already in character, Will and his players rehearsed
Twelfth Night
—she could see him as clearly as if he stood before her. He had chosen the role of Feste, that mercurial poet-jester who by his wit and wordcraft could pass effortlessly between the servants' quarters and the duke's court, mingling with both high and low, and yet transcending all social stations and being no man's vassal. To think she had once aspired to such freedom, thinking it merely a matter of donning a male disguise, as though a pair of boots and breeches could erase her womanhood—and her troubles.

“Mistress, you're fading.” Prudence's voice was sharp. “Stay with us. Now push.”

The most overpowering force Aemilia could imagine seized her in its fist, the unstoppable might of her womb pushing new life into this world. She clenched Winifred's hand so hard that even her stalwart maid grimaced. She wailed and bellowed, unleashing noises that didn't even sound human.
Some swan song this is.

But all pain dissolved when she felt the child slip from between her thighs. She wept and laughed and trembled as she held her slippery little mermaid. Her heart swelled until she thought it was large enough to contain the earth and starry heavens.

“She's perfect.” Aemilia kissed her daughter's damp head and counted her fingers and toes.

Even covered in the blood of birth, Odilia was a marvel. Henry, as a newborn, had appeared as an ordinary healthy baby, his skin blotchy and his head a bit misshapen, although he looked fine enough when he was a few weeks old. But Odilia was a creature set apart. After Prudence washed and dried her and delivered her back into Aemilia's arms, Aemilia saw that her daughter's skin and form were completely unblemished. This baby was exquisite, as though she were more angel than flesh, her eyes as blue as the midnight sky, her crown already covered in her father's soft brown hair. Yet she seemed so tiny, even for a child who had just emerged from the womb. Odilia breathed sweetly but did not cry.

With Henry weaned, Tabitha's milk had dried up. Aemilia would have to nurse Odilia herself. Prudence showed her how to let the baby suckle on the clear fluid that came before the first milk. Cradling her daughter to her breast, Aemilia couldn't get over her wonder. To think this creature was
hers,
flesh of her flesh. Even if she had lost the man, the child redeemed everything, this rush of love that transfixed her. How could any man's love compare to that of a mother's for her newborn?

Settling back against the bolster with Odilia in her arms, Aemilia dreamt of the life she would give her. Teaching her to read, to write, and to ride. Instructing Odilia and Henry in Latin and Greek, astronomy and music. Odilia would be more learned than her father, more fortunate than her mother. This girl child would eclipse both her parents. As brilliant as the morning star, she would outshine any poem or play either of them could hope to write. Aemilia would weave garlands for her hair. She would clothe her in silk and brocade.

Her heart leapt to see Tabitha leading Henry into the chamber to meet his new sister. Not even two years old, the lad stared with enormous eyes at the baby. Shy and gentle, he rested one finger on the baby's hand. When her tiny fingers closed around his, he jumped then gazed at Odilia in amazement, as though too awed to be jealous.

Aemilia invited the boy to clamber into bed with her. One hand still cradling the baby, she cuddled him close.

“You must always protect your little sister,” she told him.

How might my own story have played out
, she wondered,
had I been blessed with an adoring older brother?

“A
FINE MORNING FOR
a christening!” Ben said that snow-bright day, as they walked toward Saint Margaret's. “To think I shall be a godfather.”

“Had you only picked a man more godly,” his bride, Annie, said, with a wink to Aemilia.

Newly risen from her childbed, Aemilia had emerged from the house for the first time in more than a week. She measured each step on the icy ground and kept a careful grip on Odilia, who was bundled like a precious package in layers of blankets and quilts. The baby's breath floated up in steamy little puffs. Winifred kept hold of her mistress's elbow, prepared to catch both mother and child should Aemilia slip.

Ahead of them, Tabitha walked with Henry, and Jasper hung his head as he slunk along, as though he felt a guilty responsibility for the baby's very existence.

“Odilia.” Ben leaned over to peer at the infant's face. “An exotic name.”

“An Italian name,” Aemilia told him. “Like my own.”

Her cousin waved his hand in dismissal. “Spare me any explanation of whichever weeping saint inspired the appellation. I prefer to think you gave her a humanist name.”

“Humanist?” Aemilia asked, exchanging a smile with Annie. “How do you reckon that?”

“You have ingeniously turned
ode
into a girl's name that rhymes with your own,” Ben said, beaming at his own cleverness. “The name of a poet!”

Aemilia laughed in genuine happiness, warmed by the idea. It was as if Ben had unwittingly removed Will and the chapel from her daughter's story, as though she hadn't named her baby in memory of the man who had deserted them both. Instead, she had named her daughter for poetry.

“Odilia, Aemilia,” Annie said. “I think they're beautiful names. Far less plain than Anne and Ben.”

Aemilia felt a fondness for her cousin's new wife and hoped that she and Annie would be friends. Small and neat with nut-brown hair, Annie wasn't flashy in her looks, but her mind was as fiery as her husband's.
My honest shrew,
Ben called her. A man like him could never love a meek mouse. Aemilia could not fail to notice the way the newlyweds walked arm in arm, their paces in harmony. She saw the secret looks they shared. Truly, they adored each other.
May their love endure,
she prayed, even as her own loneliness gnawed at her.

Ben abruptly stopped in his tracks and cast a look behind him. “We had better slow down or we shall lose our Lazarus.”

With a guilty start, Aemilia turned to see Alfonse struggling along, one hand gripping his walking stick, his other arm supported by Prudence. This was his first foray outside the house since Aemilia had arrived back in England to find him deathly ill. Thanks to Pru's physick, his boils and fever were gone, but he remained gaunt and weak, barely limping along. She felt a stab of pity even to look at him, though Pru had assured her that a brief spell of fresh air would do him good. His face bore an expression of dazed astonishment, as if he could not get over his shock of still being alive.
Lazarus, indeed.

Can Alfonse and I live together in amity now?
she wondered, while waiting for him to catch up. A weight settled in her chest. To think it was Will's child that chained her to this marriage that she had run away to Italy to escape. Alfonse's ring was back on her finger.

Smiling faintly at her husband, she walked the rest of the way to the church at his side. It seemed the least she could do.