Watch the Lady (38 page)

“I think I have found you a puppy,” he says, grinning. “A spaniel bitch whelped yesterday at the Inns of Court.” She is reminded of the time when she first encountered Spero, and inevitably recollections of Sidney drift through her mind. Sidney's spectral presence makes her appreciate all the more the solidity of Blount.

The road from Whitehall is bustling: women shuffle through the filthy slush under the weight of baskets piled high with wares. Carts trundle past, flicking up frozen splashes, men in pairs heave cartons between them, all delivering goods to the palace kitchens for the Christmas feasting. After the long fast of advent it will be good to eat meat once more and drink undiluted wine and dance. She can already hear the music in her mind. Once they are beyond the melee and onto the open land behind the Strand, they break into a canter, profiting from the sense of freedom before they reach the tight clog of the city.

Slowing as they pass the back gates of Burghley House, they notice the windows are still shuttered in mourning. It has been four months since Lord Burghley died, and his son has slipped seamlessly into the space he left behind. They decide to loop round, give themselves time to talk alone. “I have news,” he says. “Excellent news.”

“Tell me, then.”

“Essex received a letter from King James, in his own hand, acknowledging our support for his claim. And . . .”

“And what?” Penelope's gut is fluttering as if she awaits news from a lover, remembering how this was set in motion nearly a decade ago and how even then there had been a sense of urgency, as if the Queen's days might have been numbered.

“He has said that in return he will support your brother, ‘should he ever need it.' Those were the exact words.”

“What do you think he means by that?” She is suddenly suspicious of this. It sounds invested with a drama that might prove tragic. “Does it not smack of danger, Charles?”

“I think not. It seems to me he is saying that if things were to change . . .” He lowers his voice to a whisper, though there is not so much as a tree nearby for someone to hide behind, and besides if anyone were in the vicinity their footsteps in the snow would betray them. “Were the Queen to pass away, he guarantees his preferment to Essex. James knows he will need powerful allies in England if he is to get to the throne without mishap.”

“Of course,” she says, but she cannot help but wonder if her brother has begun to stir up some other, more treacherous, business and implied a little of it to the Scottish King. Essex had felt so utterly disempowered after his latest disgrace, it would make sense if he'd sought to shore himself up elsewhere. No, she concludes, he would have said something to me and, besides, he is back in favor now. “Who else do you suppose will come forward with a serious claim when the time comes?”

“James's cousin, the Stuart girl, Arbella.” Blount begins to count on his fingers. “It is said she might take up the Catholic cause.”

“She was raised in the New Faith, that I do know.”

“But there are Catholics in her family who may well be pulling her strings. There is the Seymour line: Lord Beauchamp. Their claim would be strong; Lady Katherine Grey was his mother, so there is an abundance of Tudor blood there. But there are problems of illegitimacy.”

“Katherine Grey was a dear friend of my own mother.” Penelope remembers Lettice talking of Kitty Grey, the great-granddaughter of the seventh Henry, how she wed in secret and died a prisoner. Another woman to fall foul of the Queen's wrath.

“Then there is the Spanish Infanta,” Blount says.

“It would take a Catholic uprising of gargantuan proportions to achieve that,” she says.

“Or a Spanish invasion,” he adds. “And if the rebels are not effectively suppressed in Ireland, that will be their gateway.”

Penelope shudders. “And my brother is to see that it doesn't happen. It is Essex she is sending in your stead.”

“God help him!” says Blount. “I cannot lie; I am glad it is not me.”

Penelope says nothing. She is glad too but cannot betray her brother by putting it into words. They ride on in silence for a while before she adds, “We must ensure that King James is crowned, whether the Queen names him or not. Then we will all be safe. After all, his is the only uncomplicated claim.” They continue on, riding through the snow without speaking.

“Cecil approached me again,” says Blount eventually. “I think he has a mind to recruit me.”

“What did he say?” she asks.

“Not very much. I'd say it was more of a gesture of friendship, than anything. Like before, he talked about how the Privy Council could do with someone like me.”

“And what did
you
say?”

“Oh, I was noncommittal. It might be useful if I go along with it.”

“Be careful.” She has a sense that things have become dangerously complicated, too elaborate to keep a firm grip on, and she is suddenly reminded of that hard, cold look of the Queen's earlier.

“You know me, I am the lord of all carefulness.” He reaches out to squeeze her arm and she is a little reassured. It is true he is the personification of caution.

“I am so thankful we have each other,” she says.

“Together we are a force to be reckoned with.”

“So where is it we are going?” she asks. He had sent word earlier saying there was something he wanted her to see.

“The Tower.”

“The Tower—do you mean to have me clapped in irons?” She smiles.

“I want to surprise you.”

“Why didn't we take the barge?”

“The river is almost frozen solid by the bridge. There were boys playing on it this morning. One fell through.”

“Oh, no!” She is suddenly filled with misery at the thought of some poor boy meeting his end in the cold lonely world beneath the ice.

“They hauled him out. There was no great harm done to him.”

She cannot shake the idea of those chilled depths out of her head as they ride on, entering the city by Ludgate, and down Cheapside, where all the goldsmiths' signs have icicles dripping from them in long glassy shards. Soon they are at St. Paul's, from where they have a view of the Tower: a sight which always shoots her through with apprehension.

“My brother says he may have to sell Wanstead to pay some of his debts,” Penelope says. “I can't bear the idea of that house belonging to someone else—never being able to go there again.” She knows it is only a house, and not even hers, but somehow it has grown to represent all that is happy and good.

“I have discussed an offer for Wanstead with your brother.”

“You would buy Wanstead?”

“I am in need of a house suitable to my station. Since I have been going up in the world . . .” He throws his nose into the air with a haughty pout and then grins, laughing. It has been a joke of theirs these last few years, that he must have yeast in his blood, given the ease with which he is rising at court.

She can feel the joy welling in her. “Like a loaf left to prove.” She stretches out a hand to take his. “Maybe one day . . .” The rest of her words stick in her throat.

Their horses slide, struggling to get a grip on the icy planks of the bridge across the moat. It has frozen over entirely and its banks are thick with snow. The last time she was here was years ago when poor Lopez was in some miserable cell within these walls. She had tried to erase the memory of what happened between her brother and Lopez—it filled her with shame on Essex's behalf: the signifier of his hidden cruelty—but the incident found its way into her mind often, running round and round, like a tune that settles in and will not be expelled. She had brought the poor man victuals to ease his discomfort but they wouldn't let her see him. It was summer and the foul stench of the moat water then was almost unbearable. God only knows what lurks under that smooth white surface. A scarlet-liveried guard greets them and they dismount, handing their horses over to a groom.

She hooks her arm through Blount's as they follow the guard along a path cleared from snow that crosses the courtyard and runs around the White Tower. They stop at the far end, before a great door, and the guard takes the bunch of keys that hangs from his belt, inspecting them, finally selecting one and opening the door with the words, “The menagerie, my lord.”

She can hear a cacophony of strange sounds, and once through a farther door, they find themselves confronted by an enclosure which is home to a colony of about a dozen large apes, swinging from the branches of a dead tree and howling in raucous glee at their visitors. A courageous fellow approaches the barred gate. He has a face that seems to be both doglike and yet also curiously human, and when he yawns he reveals a pair of devilish eyeteeth, that are long and pointed, capable of tearing a carcass to shreds. She gasps and the monkey cackles, proceeding to fondle his privates as a female sidles towards them with an infant astride her back. The male turns away, displaying a purple behind, and Penelope reaches her hand out with the intention of stroking the soft fuzz of fur on the baby ape's head, but the guard grabs her, causing her to gasp, and says, “That wouldn't be wise, my lady. The mother'll have your arm off.”

She laughs to hide her alarm. “It is like a scene at court. Look how that fellow resembles Cecil.” She points to one with a dark glossy coat who is carefully picking fleas from his head.

“And there is your brother and Bess Brydges.” He indicates a half-concealed couple mating behind the tree. She can't help giggling, wondering if the guard is shocked that she is not hiding her eyes in horror. “And that one is . . .” Blount exchanges a look with Penelope and she follows his eyes to a vast female with pendulous breasts sitting alone, scrutinizing a leaf, as if it is a book of philosophy, and snarling if any of the others come too close.

“Shhh.” She puts a hand to her mouth to stop herself from saying it but he is surely thinking, as she is, that in this odd, upside-down court of apes, that cantankerous and solitary female baboon is the Queen.

“Once
more
unto the breach, dear friends . . .” One of the players stands stage center. He is bootless but wears a chain-mail vest over his shirt and waves a broadsword, thrusting it into the air.

“I think the emphasis ought be on ‘friends' rather than ‘more,' ” says the playwright, walking over, “and repeat ‘once more'—‘Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more,' then you thrust the sword upward.” He makes a stabbing motion into the air with his hand, “and then into, ‘Or close the wall up,' and so on.” They have an exchange of words, which Penelope cannot hear from where she sits in the balcony with her brother and friends.

“Do you suppose he is meant to be me?” asks Essex.

“Of course,” replies Meyrick, who cannot imagine a world without Essex at its heart. “Otherwise, I can't imagine why they were so keen for you to watch them rehearse.”

“It is because we will all be gone by the time the first performance is fit to be shown,” says Southampton. “You think they are all you—the heroes, anyway!” He slaps his friend's shoulder with a laugh. “Of course it is you! The great conqueror Henry V, victor at Agincourt.”

“We shall take our fight to the Irish,” says Essex. Meyrick and Southampton emit a muffled cheer that causes the rehearsing players to break out of their huddled conversation and turn their heads up towards the shadowed balcony. Penelope notices that her brother is jigging his leg nervously. She fears it will visit trouble on him to be so publicly compared to a king. Southampton brings his hand down firmly on Essex's jittery leg, letting it rest there. She is thinking about a rumor she has heard that some scholar or other has penned a treatise on Henry IV's usurpation of Richard II and dedicated it to her brother. She has tried to discover who the scholar is, had put Anthony Bacon on the paper trail, in order to suppress it, for she doesn't want a repetition of the business with that infernal book of a few years ago. To have her brother's name attached to a tract that lauds the deposition of a monarch—the consequences could be devastating.

The player has started his speech again: “Once more unto the breach, dear friends,
once more
; Or close the wall up with our English dead . . .”

She is not watching the stage; she has her gaze fixed on her brother's profile and can see, in the faint glow of candlelight, the beads of perspiration on his forehead, gleaming like little jewels, and the slight movement of his jaw where he is grinding his teeth. His mouth is set in the scowl that, she recognizes from childhood, is designed to hide his apprehension.

When the players are done with their rehearsal, Penelope leads the way down the narrow stairs, through the empty pit, and onto the stage.

“May I try this?” She points to the chain-mail vest hanging discarded over a chair with the broadsword propped beside it. She unpins her ruff and a player helps her into the garment. It rings as it is lowered carefully over her head, the chime of a thousand tiny bells, but once it is settled onto her shoulders it is a dead weight, so heavy she can barely move. She is handed the sword and it takes both hands to hold it off the ground. It is vast, a battle broadsword, nothing like the fine things the gallants wear attached to their belts at court. She had imagined herself prancing about, wielding the weapon, raising a laugh out of the company, but she finds she is weighted to the spot, paralyzed. “How on earth do they manage to fight?”

“This is nothing compared to the armor we wear these days—a full suit, you should try one of those,” laughs Southampton, who looks too delicately wrought, with his smooth skin and girlish features, to wear anything but the finest silk. He grabs the great sword from her hand and with a flourish of his wrist, makes a figure of eight in the air. She sees then the muscles in his forearms are sinewy and deceptively strong and remembers Lizzie describing his body the day after she first gave herself to him. She had commented on his strength, how he had pinned her down so she was unable to move, compared him to Samson. Penelope had thought her exaggerating but now—watching him play fight with her brother, who has snatched up another weapon, a pike with a point that would have your eye out were you not careful—she can see that Southampton is more a man than she'd thought.