Watch the Lady (18 page)

“I don't know,” he said, shredding blades of grass with his fingers, then grabbing her arm again and pulling her back to him—“Don't leave”—then releasing her once more—“No, you must go. I don't think I could bear to spend a night under the same roof, knowing you were only a few yards away.” He picked a poppy and handed it to her without another word.

She stood, gathering all her strength, and whistled for Spero, who skirted round Sidney with a sideways look before falling into her wake. She turned, briefly, and blew him a kiss, then reprised her path back through the orchard, twisting the stem of the poppy between her fingers. At the gate she retrieved her shoes and her coif, replacing them, as if to put everything back to normal, but her entire world had shifted off its axis, and she knew that nothing could ever again be normal. She looked at the poppy—a scarlet splash in her hand—but under her scrutiny its veined petals seemed so very fragile and insubstantial, translucent like the papers of a Bible, wilting already, as if all its life had been spent in that moment of vivid display.

She heard the horses before she saw them, and rushed to the stables.

“Dorothy,” she cried, running to where her sister was dismounting. Dorothy turned, her face smudged with tears, her eyes rimmed in red. “What is it?”

She flung the reins to the groom and took Penelope by the elbow to a quiet corner of the yard. “Leicester will have me wed Sidney. It is sure this time. He is gaining the Queen's permission and has offered a dowry of two thousand pounds for me.”

Penelope felt unsteady and sank onto the edge of the mounting block. She couldn't think of what to say, just repeated, “Two thousand pounds.”

“I love another,” said Dorothy, “and I need your help to wed him quietly.”

So they both had their secrets. It was as if a shaft of light had fallen across her path. “Then you will not be free to wed Sidney.”

“Clearly!” Dorothy seemed impatient at her sister's statement of the obvious. “You will help me, won't you?”

“But you will be disgraced, Dot—ostracized from court. You know what that means? Look at Mother.” Her conscience pricked at her, would not allow her to encourage such an elopement lightly.

“Look at
you
! I couldn't bear a loveless union like
yours
.” Dorothy's words stung, despite the fact she spoke the truth. “And Sidney—when we met he barely looked my way; there was not a sympathetic gesture in the man. He was haughty, cold, arrogant, distant—not even the flicker of a smile.”

Penelope's prevailing thought was that, given her sister resembled her so greatly, this was proof that Sidney loved what lay beneath. She wanted desperately to confide in Dorothy but something held her back, the fear that perhaps her sister might see it as a means to escape this marriage by lifting the lid from her secret. She had always trusted Dorothy and felt a twinge of resentment that the circumstances of love and secrecy could so easily come between them in such a way.

“You risk too much, Dot. My conscience will not allow—”

Dorothy cut in sharply, locking onto her with black eyes, twins of her own: “You think you understand everything, but you do not. What do
you
know of love, in your loveless union?”

Penelope took a breath to prevent the truth from spilling out, saying quietly, “You do not know everything about me.”

“I'm sorry.” Dorothy looked chastened. “This whole business has driven me quite out of my mind. You must help me. I don't care if I am banished from court for all time, as long as I am with my Thomas.”

“Thomas who?”

“Perrot.” Dorothy, embarrassed, dropped her eyes as a flush marched over her breast.

“I see.” Penelope knew well enough that Thomas Perrot, though a childhood friend of theirs, was nowhere near sufficiently noble to make a match with the daughter of one of England's foremost earls. She couldn't help but admire Dorothy's spirited defiance. How easily she would escape the responsibility of being a Devereux at court, with this marriage. “He is a fine lad, but no one will support the match.”

“Do you think I don't know that? That is why I beg of your help. You are the only soul I trust. Please, Penelope. I understand the consequences. Please . . .”

“I suppose that now you are one of the Queen's maids you need me to provide an excuse for your absence?”

“So you
will
do it?”

“You know what might happen to you? The Queen has put maids under lock and key for less.”

“That is a risk I am prepared to take.” Dorothy's conviction was infectious and Penelope found herself caught up in it.

“I don't suppose there is any sense in us both having marriages entirely bereft of affection. I would not want that fate for you.” Penelope felt a smile open over her face. “But Mother will be furious.”

“Was it as painful as they say?” asked Martha. The Queen's maids had gathered round to greet Penelope on her return to court.

“Excruciating,” she replied. Martha's eyes popped, round as pennies. “I bellowed like a heifer, didn't I, Jeanne?”

“I've never heard such a sound,” agreed Jeanne with a laugh.

“But they say you forget the pain the instant you set eyes on your infant,' said someone. “Is it true?”

Penelope looked at their expectant faces. They all wanted it to be true but it was not. She wanted it to be true too. Her baby had not been the panacea of all ills she had hoped for. What she had felt when she held Lucy for the first time was a profound dread, as if she were on the brink of an abyss.

“Mother told me you fall in love with your baby on sight,” sighed another girl. “ ‘An indescribable feeling,' she said it was. What is it like—tell us?”

“Yes.” Penelope pretended to adjust her skirts so as to avoid meeting their eyes. “An indescribable feeling.” She was afraid that they would see, etched onto her, the mark of a bad mother, a mother who didn't love her infant.

“Were you not disappointed that your firstborn was a girl? Your husband cannot have been pleased.” This came from Peg, who hovered at the edge of the group. She looked thin, as if her own bitterness was eating away at her.

“A healthy child could never be a disappointment.” Penelope looked Peg in the eye then, maintaining a steady gaze and a painted smile, willing herself not to reveal her true feelings. She said nothing of how her baby had not thrived—the struggle for breath, the tiny rib cage heaving with each wheezing inhalation—and that she blamed herself for her lack of love. The midwife said she had seen cases such as that before, declared the baby would not live. Lucy had been hastily baptized but Penelope could not accept that her infant, even one she could not find a way to love, would be taken by God before her life had begun. She had called for the Queen's physician, Doctor Lopez, who rode to Leighs from London in haste. He palpated Lucy's tiny chest; as if by magic she coughed up a gob of matter and her life was saved.

“Becoming a mother for the first time can be daunting,” Lopez had said to her, indicating that somehow he understood Penelope's turmoil. “You will take to it, just you wait.” Those few kind words had caused a change in her and almost instantly she felt a splinter of love for her daughter.

“You will understand how it is,” continued Penelope to a sneering Peg, “when you have an infant of your own.”

Peg looked away, tight-mouthed. Penelope knew well enough that there was no sign of a match on the horizon for Peg and that her words had hit their mark. She'd forgotten, in her months away, how sharp one's aim needed to be at court.

“You must miss her terribly,” said Martha.

Penelope nodded, remembering how glad she had been to hand over her infant into the capable hands of Mistress Shilling. A thick cloud of despair had settled over her, making even the simplest task seem quite beyond her reach, as if all the joy had been siphoned out of her. She tried to pray, to ask forgiveness for whatever it was she had done to lose God's favor—she had resisted Sidney, was that not enough, she had done her husband's bidding—but she felt her faith worn thin as parchment. It was only the kind care of dear Jeanne that kept her going through those dark days. Rich, contrary to Peg's belief, was delighted with his daughter, which pleased Penelope, though that pleasure was felt at a distance, as if she were watching someone else's experience, not her own.

Eventually, Jeanne had got her up and dressed and to the chapel to be churched and then forced her to leave the house, to feel the warmth of the sun, to walk, to ride. Little by little she unfolded, as if she had been left forgotten in a chest for years and was being shaken out and aired. But the residue, when her mood had lifted enough to feel herself again, was guilt, and she suspected that no amount of Jeanne's tender care would shake that out of her. What kind of mother cannot love her child? she asked herself silently over and over again. There was no answer to that.

“Dorothy is gone,” said Peg, running her fingers over her feather fan.

Penelope did not reply, just smiled as if nothing was wrong. But Dorothy, like their mother, was not to be mentioned in earshot of the Queen. Penelope hadn't witnessed Leicester's fury at the secret wedding, nor the Queen's. Perrot had festered a few weeks in the Fleet prison and it was only through her stepfather's influence that Dorothy wasn't also incarcerated, though she was banished from court. But Penelope had received a letter from her sister with a rapturous description of her country idyll. She explored herself for envy, but found none, understanding her taste for power meant there was little allure in a quiet existence.

“She is persona non grata.” Peg was failing to aggravate her, but nonetheless Penelope was glad of the distraction when a group of men strode by, stopping before the women, removing their hats, and stooping into polite bows. She hadn't seen Sidney initially, realizing he was there only when Spero began to growl on her lap. She followed the dog's gaze and there he was, trying to catch her eye. Her stomach lurched and she wanted to hate him for being the reason she could not love her baby, for existing, for stealing her heart.

“Lady Rich's spaniel appears to have an aversion to you,” quipped one of the men.

Sidney's expression was pained, even perhaps rueful, but she turned sharply away and kissed the smooth dome of the dog's head. Sidney had written letters, reams of them, beautiful secret words that wrung her out. She burned them all, in the grip of her misery, instantly regretting it. Jeanne had found her before the dead hearth, covered in soot, searching desperately for fragments. She had helped her to her feet and begun to undress her, as if she were a child or an invalid incapable of even removing her own clothes, quietly saying, “arms up,” “turn round,” “step out of it.” Penelope obeyed like a puppet, as if she had lost her soul. Jeanne wiped away the soot with a cloth and combed it carefully out of her hair, but even so the following morning there was a dark shadow on the white linen pillow, a manifestation of her state of mind.

“I thought you had lost your grip on things altogether,” Jeanne had said of that time. “I worried I would never get you back.”

“The Queen has asked for you,” said Peg, jolting her into the present. “You'd better not keep her waiting.”

Penelope was glad of the excuse to remove herself from Sidney's doleful gaze. There were six armed guards at the door to the privy chamber, which made her wonder if there had been a further plot uncovered. She found the Queen deep in conversation with Burghley and Cecil, but as Penelope entered they all looked up and watched her walk the length of the chamber. Burghley wore a smile that seemed counterfeit and the son was expressionless, making Penelope ask herself what he was hiding, what it was they had been discussing. She prepared herself for a volley of questions from the Queen, as she dropped her dog to the floor and sank into her curtsy, anxious she might have to bear the brunt of her sister's misdemeanor.

But all the Queen said was, “You were missed. Come and play a game of cards. I'm tired of listening to this company of old wives fretting over my safety.”

Penelope was, as ever, impressed by the Queen's nerve but felt the familiar confusion of feelings, admiration tainted with something infinitely darker, flood back as she sat on the stool that was procured.

“They are convinced I am about to be murdered.” The Queen flicked her eyes in the general direction of Burghley and his boy, who shrank back like dismissed children. “I'll play you for that trinket on your gown.” She rubbed her hands together like a miser, as Penelope fumbled at the jewel, unhooking it and placing it on the table. It was one of her mother's brooches; Penelope knew that the Queen would recognize it as such, and think it a small victory. Penelope had thought often about her mother's treatment at the hands of the Queen and the misery her ostracism had wrought. She had long realized the Queen's favoring of her was a revenge of sorts; to take ownership of her enemy's daughter, to make a pawn of her, was indeed a formidable gesture but one that fueled Penelope to play her own game.

It would take more than a little royal favor to break the bond between a mother and daughter; and the Queen had no daughter, nor did she ever really know her mother, so couldn't comprehend the depth of such a bond. Favor brought its own advantages and even a pawn, if it is placed well on the board, can hold more power than it might seem.

“And
my
wager is this.” The Queen untied a coin purse from her girdle and put it on the table. “But I don't intend to lose.” The purse was fashioned in the form of a frog and, even exquisitely embroidered as it was, looked like a dead creature, lying there with its legs dangling over the table's edge.