Watch the Lady (40 page)

Lady Rich has stepped forward to kiss her brother. She holds him in an embrace. Cecil momentarily substitutes himself for Essex, surprised by this, for he has not had lascivious thoughts about Lady Rich for some time, had believed them in remission. The Queen nods to her women, the signal that they may descend to wish farewell to their husbands and brothers below, and Cecil is reminded that neither Lady Southampton nor Lady Essex are there—ah, the invisible Lady Essex, with child it is said. Their disgrace is final, just as it was with the earl's mother. The Queen seems always to allow her disgraced men to inveigle themselves back into her heart, but never the women. Perhaps she is right to be suspicious of the women. Cecil makes a point of gathering information on the wives as well as the husbands, for they do so like to get their hands dirty with politics these days.

He smoothes the velvet of his cape, arranging it so it drapes correctly from his shoulders, before stepping forward, as Lady Rich detaches herself from her brother. He takes the earl's hand and wishes him well, noticing the Queen's look of satisfaction, like a mother surveying a reconciliation between her squabbling children.

“Go to it, my lord,” Cecil says. “If anyone can outfox Tyrone, it is you.”

Essex surprises him with a genuine smile that sends a waft of guilt through him, makes him feel fraudulent. “I shall do my best to serve England and our Queen.” The gaggle of ladies that has gathered about him clap at this, their white hands fluttering like butterflies.

“Don't go and get yourself killed. I want you back,” says the Queen loudly, over the applause.

The earl's eyes twist fleetingly like those of an unbroken horse, allowing Cecil a glimpse of his fear, which surprises him, for he had thought Essex's courage impermeable. “I shall be back, don't doubt it, Your Majesty,” he replies, appearing to exude nothing but confidence once more, turning, descending the steps, and mounting his horse.

A trumpet sounds and Essex moves off with his men. As they leave the gates, a roar goes up from the crowds without:
Ess-ex
,
Ess-ex
,
Ess-ex
. The royal party watches as the earl stoops to speak to a few in the throng, taking the hand of a woman and kissing it, then, to another great cheer, he hauls a delighted child up to sit pillion behind him, allowing the boy to inspect his sword. The Queen scowls. He remembers his father telling him how she loved to stop and chat with her people on state occasions. “It is they who put me here,” was what she always said. Cecil has never seen that, she has become far too closely guarded these days, too fearful of the assassin's knife.

“I've seen enough.” The Queen turns and offers Cecil an arm to escort her back inside the palace. “They love him,” she says quietly, unable to conceal her resentment. “People are drawn to youth and beauty, always.”

“But you are the picture of—”

“Don't belittle me with the usual nonsense. I have eyes in my head. You of all people must understand.”

“Indeed,” he replies. “Beauty is a quality that has evaded me.”

“But you have other assets.” He wonders what she believes his assets to be—loyalty perhaps, constancy, ruthlessness. Then she leans in close and whispers, “I intend to bestow the Court of Wards on you, but shhhh, tell no one.”

“Your Majesty, I am astounded; it is too great an honor.” In his mind he is already spending the money it will generate: he will remodel the gardens at Theobalds, can imagine yew bushes shaped meticulously as classical sculptures set on either side of the entrance.

“I promised your father. It was my final benefaction to him, but mind you hold your tongue about it.”

He is fashioning a fountain in his mind: a nymph as beauteous as Lady Rich, pouring water from an amphora. But he is also thinking of how the Queen dangled the Court of Wards like a sweetmeat before Essex for months and wonders, in a sudden epiphany, if his hatred, his gross rivalry with the earl, has been generated from without rather than within. Was it the Queen, having noticed that original seed of dislike sown in boyhood, who has watered and tended its germination and set them further against each other with her subtle ministrations of favor, a titbit here, a titbit there, in order that neither became unmanageable?

“Are you not pleased? You do not seem it.”

“I am merely taking pains to hide my joy, for I fear it might arouse curiosity, madam.” Essex looms in his mind, for this is as much a triumph over his adversary as a triumph of his political career, but the thought of the earl's defeat does not affect him as he might have expected—the feeling is one of deflation.

Henry is chasing butterflies with Essex's boy, young Robert, both brandishing their nets like weapons, laughing as they run with Fides bouncing excitedly alongside them. Penelope sits in silence next to Lizzie Vernon, who has dozed off at her needlework with her little white dog curled into the crook of her elbow. Closing her eyes and lying back in the long grass, she listens to the sounds of summer: the trickle of a stream, the distant parping of a duck and, farther away, the “hoy” of a cowherd and the gentle hollow clink of cowbells. She has been in town so long she has almost forgotten the melodies of the countryside. Her sister-in-law, Frances, is at a distance, with Dorothy. They are reading aloud to each other. Frances occasionally calls out, “Be careful, Robert,” or, “Not so fast, you might fall.”

Penelope laughs inwardly at her sister-in-law's caution, for Robert is as robust and reckless as his father, always bruised at the knees and with cuts on his fingers, he seems utterly without fear. Even her Henry, who is a year older, finds it hard to keep up. But Frances always was a nervy creature, a quiet little thing so easily overlooked. Even now it is hard to imagine she was once wed to Sidney. She remembers Frances on the day of Sidney's funeral, saying, “It was you he loved.” The woman has her own subtle brand of courage.

In spite of the past, Penelope has grown to like her over time, though they have little in common. Frances hasn't an ear for music and can never be coerced to express an opinion on political matters, but she is loyal to the core. She has never made much of being the Countess of Essex—there are others who would have milked the role dry, but not Frances; she values her privacy too greatly. But Frances seems more fretful than usual, worrying constantly about the infant in her belly, afraid she will lose it with all the agonizing over her husband. She is not the only one concerned about Essex. Penelope too, if she allows herself to think of what it might be like in Ireland, falls prey to the dread; it drips into her until it fills her so full there is no space left for anything else. She is thankful Blount is in London at court, “Keeping an eye on things,” as he puts it.

A rumor is spreading that another Spanish Armada is about to make its way to England's shores and, thanks to Anthony Bacon's intelligence, Blount will be in the know before anyone else has thought of it.
She has made me Deputy General of the army
, he wrote in a letter the other day.
You are rising well with all that yeast
, had been her reply. She is not ignorant of the irony that if Blount proves himself in such a role, he may well render her brother expendable, but that is a thought that must be cached away, for she cannot bear the idea of having, someday, to pin her allegiance to one or other of them.

Things have not been going well for Essex in Ireland. He had defied the Queen's command to march north and confront Tyrone, traveling south instead to acclimatize his men and wait for provisions. He told her of the desperate need for supplies if the mission was to be a success. Penelope herself had entreated the Queen to send funds, but judging by his letter of yesterday nothing has reached him:

I fear greatly I have lost her favor altogether. I have no support from Whitehall and I can barely feed my army. She is enraged that I defied her in appointing Southampton as my Master of Horse, but she has no sense of the paramount importance of trust in the field. The Spanish are arming the rebels and it's only a matter of time before they send an army themselves. You must continue to plead my case with her, for I have word that Cecil is profiteering from this war and monies that should be funding supplies are being diverted his way.

P.S. You cannot imagine what it is like here. The rebels use ambush tactics, which leaves all my men in a constant state of jitters and wholly dispirited.

She had burned the letter for fear of Frances reading it and sinking further into a mire of anxiety. There had been a violent storm an hour after Essex's departure and Frances had been near hysterical, saying it was a sign that the campaign would fail.

“No, not up the tree!” cries Frances now, getting to her feet, her eyes wide.

Robert is balancing on the gnarled trunk of an old apple tree, feet perched on a woody swelling, one arm slung over a low bough, the other stretching out with his net. He looks so much like his father that Penelope's heart lists towards the past.

“Fret not, Frances,” says Dorothy, taking her hand.

“My children have been climbing that tree since they were tots,” calls out Penelope. “And there has not once been an accident.”

Robert jumps down, scampering off in pursuit of his butterfly, seeming entirely ignorant of his mother's concerns, and Frances settles back to her book.

Lizzie wakes, stretching with a yawn. “Did I drop off?”

“If Mother were here, she would criticize us all for being so lazy. She would have us in the dairy churning butter or making cheese or overseeing the salting of meat, or grinding herbs and distilling tinctures.” Penelope laughs at the thought of her mother: “ ‘You idle housewife,' she would say. ‘How can you be sure your servants are not thieving if you do not oversee them?' ”

“I dreamed of Southampton,” says Lizzie, who is stroking her dog absently.

“Not a bad dream, I hope.”

“No, not bad.” Lizzie sits up and looks at her older cousin. “But there is something troubling me about my husband.” She picks a daisy and begins to pull its petals off.

“Are you worried that war will change him?”

“I hadn't even thought of it,” Lizzie replies. “No.”

Penelope has seen her own brother return from war altered beyond recognition—the effect of exposure to horror. He was locked into his own thoughts, completely impenetrable, as if he were wrought from stone; and then would suddenly lash out to reveal a monstrous cruel streak, like a boy who swings cats by their tails to measure their screams. She doesn't say it, doesn't want to upset Lizzie, who is clearly out of sorts already.

“Tell me what it is that vexes you.”

“I love Southampton, more perhaps than most wives love their husbands.”

“But that is a good thing, Lizzie.” Penelope smiles at her young cousin, wondering what nonsense her nurse must have fed her about love and marriage: that love is a madness, that there is no place for passion in matrimony.

“But,” she hesitates, seeming not to know how to form her words and casting her eyes towards Frances and Dorothy.

“They will not hear if we speak quietly,” Penelope reassures her.

“I saw him kissing someone.”

“Oh, Lizzie.” She reaches out to take her cousin's hand. “I wouldn't read too much into it. He still has wild oats to sow. He will settle down, I'm sure of it. I know he is fond of you. He has told me so, many times.”

“No, you don't understand.”

“Explain to me. What happened?”

“It was a while ago, when I was still carrying the baby, so we could not . . .” She reddens a little. “You know.” Penelope nods. “And I came upon him at Essex House in the gardens . . . with one of the servants . . .”

“One of the servants?” Penelope says, reminded of her own brother's relentless infidelities. There is surely not a servant girl left untouched at Essex House.

“In a manner of speaking.” Her skirts are scattered with shredded petals. “One of the kitchen lads.” She says this very quietly and a tear slides down her cheek. Penelope puts an arm around her, remembering how she had felt on discovering her own husband in a similar situation and Mistress Shilling's pragmatic words. She has had her suspicions about Southampton; he is strangely androgynous and she has seen the way he behaves with the players, how drawn he is to that world of men dressed as women. In a way it is all part of his allure.

“Men's desires are not like ours, Lizzie. It does not mean he loves you less.”

“But it is a mortal sin.”

“I don't believe that.” She wishes she could tell Lizzie of her own experience, how she became tangled inextricably in a thicket of notions about sin when she was trying to make sense of her husband's case. Now they have arrived at a mutual and distant tolerance, with him here at Leighs most of the time—when he is not on her brother's shirttails—while she is in London or at court. “Just a kiss—it is simply part of what makes him his own unique self. It is
that
you love.” She watches the boys over her cousin's shoulder; they are examining something in the grass. “Do not wish him different.”

Lizzie breaks out of Penelope's arms, wiping her eyes on her sleeve. “I thought you would be shocked. I have been so afraid to tell anyone.'

“It would take a good deal more than that to shock me. I have seen more than you could imagine. But never suffer the burden of a secret. Secrets eat away at you . . .” Her voice fades.

“But I fear he will tire of me.”

“None of us can control the desires of another. Just know this: he is devoted to you and you are his wife and the mother of his daughter. There is no lad in the world who can give him
that
.”

“I am so very relieved,” says Lizzie, lying back on the grass, “to have shared my secret.”