A Court Affair (9 page)

Her false façade of morality makes me so mad, I want to tell her that if she is so worried about offending the Lord, she shouldn’t be wearing her bodices cut so low, but I’m too tired, and it’s more trouble than it’s worth to stand there bickering like hens who all want the only cock in the henhouse, so I let it go.

“Humph!” Mrs Forster sniffs, and she gives a smart tug to her new goose-turd green and yellow bodice and tucks a stray wisp of hair back beneath her lace-bordered white linen cap. “Put on airs and play pious as you will, Lizzy Oddingsells, but
I
have been going to country fairs all my life, many upon a Sunday, and enjoyed them every one, and my blood is just as good as yours is, if not better, and you’ll burn in Hell just the same whether you go to the fair or stay home with a whole stack of Bibles—for being my husband’s
whore
!” And with those words and a flounce of her green and yellow skirts, she’s off with her nose in the air to gather her children and prepare them for a day at the fair, determined to enjoy herself all the more to spite Mrs Oddingsells, and I know that for many days to come she will bubble like a pot boiling over every chance she gets about what a fine time she had at the fair while some falsely pious hypocrites with jumped-up notions about themselves stayed at home.

“Mrs Oddingsells is right. Sunday is the Lord’s Day”—like a judge, the grey-haired and grey-clad Mrs Owen solemnly weighs in, gravely intoning the words as if each one were as heavy as a granite boulder—“and a day meant for contemplation and prayer. After church I shall return to my chamber and spend the day quietly with my Bible.”

“But you
must
go!” I insist, turning first to one and then to the other, fighting the urge to fall on my knees and actually
beg
them. Mrs Owen, I could bear—I know she would not bother me—but I do not want Mrs Oddingsells about. I want peace and quiet and privacy, not prying eyes and forced companionship when I would have none. And I know that if she stays home, forced to make do with her own company, Mrs Oddingsells will soon be
so
bored that she will gladly suffer
any
company, even mine; that woman would sit down and drink a tankard with Satan himself if it would save her from being alone half an hour. “I promise, you will have a good time, and there is no harm in it! I have been to many a fair on Sunday, and my soul has suffered no harm from it! And it is not nearly so rough and rowdy as you imagine; the common folk are jolly and good, and most are well-behaved.”

Mrs Owen turns and sweeps her glacial grey eyes over me in a glance so cold, it makes me shiver. Her voice drips with disdain when she begins to speak to me. “You are mortally ill and abandoned by your husband, Lady Dudley, a man who leaves you alone to die of an incurable and agonisingly painful disease while he goes to court to dance and fornicate with the Queen. And, when last I looked, my fine lady, your name was not on the lease to Cumnor, nor is your lord’s. You have no home of your own and are merely a guest in this house, so what makes you think that you can give orders here, or to presume that God is
not
punishing you with your suffering for some transgression you have committed, mayhap even all those fairs you have attended on Sundays?”

I gasp and reel back as if she had just struck me. If Pirto had not caught me, I surely would have fallen flat. I stare back at her, aghast, with tears of anger and surprise welling in my eyes. My chin quivers, but, as is often the case with me, I feel myself helpless and tongue-tied in the face of such bluntness and cruelty.

Ignoring me, Mrs Oddingsells turns to Mrs Owen and asks if perchance she would like to dine with her.

“Perhaps you would like to dine with me instead, Lizzy?” Mrs Owen counters with an invitation of her own. “My cook is preparing a fine suckling pig stuffed with apples and pears and raisins. The
dear
woman spoils me so; but it is far too rich and full a repast for a lonely old woman like me.”

“Gladly!” Mrs Oddingsells beams. “Many thanks, Mrs Owen; you are an angel in disguise who has come down to earth to shower blessings upon me!”

“And perhaps later we might have a game of cards?” Mrs Owen suggests as, arm-in-arm, they turn and start to walk away, down the Long Gallery, heading for the stairs. “Though since it is Sunday, all the winnings must go into the church’s poor box, of course.”

“Of course!” Mrs Oddingsells readily agrees. “I would not have it any other way! I would not feel right even touching a deck of cards on a Sunday unless some poor soul were to reap some benefit from it. Win or lose, I know I shall have helped some poor soul in need.”

“You are welcome to join us, of course, Lady Dudley,” Mrs Owen calls back over her shoulder. “If you find solitude weighs too heavily upon you, you will know where to find us. You know, Lizzy, I am not the superstitious sort,” I hear her say in a confiding tone as, arm-in-arm like the oldest, dearest friends, they walk away from me, “but my maid is, and she told me that Tom, the miller’s son, saw the Black Man.” At her words my skin crawls, and I can’t help but think of my husband’s sinister henchman, Sir Richard Verney. “Yes”—Mrs Owen nods as she continues her tale—“the Devil himself, in human form, by moonlight at the crossroads last night, out looking for desperate souls to sign their name in blood inside his big black book; it’s all ignorant country folderol of course, but just the same, I should not like to tempt fate by going to the fair today …”

I pale at her words, and my knees buckle and shake, and Pirto has to put her arm around my waist to steady me.

“I don’t think it was the Devil at all,” I say after Mrs Owen and Mrs Oddingsells have gone, as I sag weakly against her. “I think the Black Man is Death, and He is coming for me, mayhap even in the guise of Sir Richard Verney.”

“Now, now, pet,” Pirto gently chides, “’tis no such thing at all, merely superstitious nonsense, just like Mrs Owen said. But are you
sure
you would not like me to stay with you? I don’t like to leave you alone when you’re so distressed,” she adds as, rubbing my back, she shepherds me back into my room and helps settle me in my chair again. “I’ve been to enough fairs in my lifetime, so ’tis no sacrifice at all.”

“Dear Pirto.” I reach out and stroke her wizened cheek, so like the faces of the poppets we used to make from dried apples when I was a little girl. “Thank you, but I
want
you to go; I want you to enjoy this fair for me. I want one more fair before Death closes my eyes forever, but I have not the strength to go myself, so you go, for me, for both of us. Let your eyes drink in every detail, and bring me apple cider and cinnamon cakes, and ribbons for my hair, and sit here with me tonight when you come back and tell me all about it.”

“Aye, that I will, though I hate to leave you even for a day, love,” Pirto says, stroking my hair and pressing a kiss onto my brow before she leaves me.

“I’ll bring you a bit o’ gingerbread back as well, love,” she says brightly, just before she closes the door. “That’ll tempt your appetite—you always did love it so—and the ginger’ll settle your stomach and keep the nausea down.”

I breathe a sigh of relief when I hear the heavy front door close behind them all, followed by the clatter of hooves and wheels in the courtyard. With a deep, shuddering sigh, I let the pretence fall away from me as I lean back in my chair, holding tightly to the arms, digging my fingers into the embroidered flowers, gasping, with tears rolling freely down my face, as a pain, like a lance driven all the way through me, pierces my breast and rings like a shrill, echoing bell up and down my spine and across my ribs, and Death gives my heart a little warning squeeze, toying with me, teasing me, like a braggart showing me what he can do. I wait until it has passed; then slowly, carefully, I raise myself from my chair and go to the shelf where the medicines are kept, all except the ones my husband sends.

A pain shoots along the length of my arm as I reach up for the bottle I want. A sunbeam streaming in through the window catches it as I lift it down, causing the dark liquid to glow like the richest amber, agleam with honey and crimson lights. When he sent his last letter to me, Dr Biancospino also sent this. If I choose to let my illness take its natural course, he wrote, when the end is nigh and the pain at its most excruciating, this will ease me into the arms of Death, and I will think Him merciful then, not cruel to take my life away when I am only eight years past twenty, with my hair still gold instead of silver. I should never have doubted Dr Biancospino; he was, I think, the only one who ever told me the truth laid bare, ugly and naked, not falsely painted to make it look pretty. And what if this bottle does contain one or more of those deadly ingredients described in his book of poisons? It was not given me out of malice, and it was meant to be saved, to be used only to drive pain away from my deathbed; it is not a tonic to sip every day like the lime and orange water Mrs Owen recommended.

Boldly, defiantly, I uncork the bottle and take a sip, grimacing at the bitter, burning taste. It should be mixed with wine, or have sugar added, to make it more palatable and sweet, the pasted paper label says, written in Dr Biancospino’s elegant script, but, yet again, I am deaf to reason and ignore good and sound advice, acting again as if I alone know better. Mayhap I do, and mayhap I don’t. Today I’m too tired to care and quibble about it. Just a sip to ease my pain and prove my trust; what harm can it do? If I fall down dead, it is just the inevitable come sooner rather than later.

I turn to my altar, thinking I would like to pray; it
is
Sunday after all, and it seems only right that even though I am not in church that I should talk to God just the same. Every day I pray for Him to deliver me from my desperation. I jump and nearly drop the bottle, my heart beats fast, and the familiar pain impales my breast, for there is the grey friar who haunts Cumnor Place, kneeling before my little altar, his head solemnly bowed, hidden deep in the dark shadows of his cowl so that I cannot see his face, his hands clasped tightly, wrapped with a dangling rosary of polished wooden beads and a swaying silver crucifix upon which Jesus Christ hangs in perpetual mute agony, nailed to the cross and crowned with thorns.

Slowly—I am in a defiant mood today—like one warily approaching a dangerous beast, like a wounded lion or slumbering tiger, I go to the phantom friar and carefully ease myself down to kneel beside him. The air about him is icy and pierces through my many layers of clothes, making me feel as if I were wandering naked and lost in a world made entirely out of snow. But I defy the icy blast. I have been afraid of him for far too long. I accept his presence now and no longer scream or try to evade and hide from him.

“Have I drunk Death?” For the first time I speak to him, my voice faint and all aquiver, like lute strings plucked by nervous fingers, as I set the bottle down upon the altar, like an offering. It glows and gleams in the candlelight as if it were lit from within by a fiery ember that, defying all reason, continues to emit a red glow even though, submerged in liquid, it should have gone right out. But the friar gives no answer and goes on with his prayers as if he has not even heard or noticed me kneeling beside him.

“Who were you in life?” I persist, though he continues to ignore me. “What was your name? Did you struggle with the desires of the flesh that bedevil most men? Or did you embrace the cloistered life? Was it something you came to willingly? Did it bring you peace? Were you happy? Or was it a struggle to honour your vows? Did you rebel and fight against yourself your whole life long or meekly accept and resign yourself to your fate? Was your life a success, or a failure like mine? There
must
be a reason your ghost still walks! Were you walled up alive for some grievous sin? Did you love a nun, or a great lady, or a peasant girl perhaps and plant your seed inside her? Were you caught trying to abscond to France to start a new life with her? Or did you take your own life? The servants tell such wild and lurid stories; I don’t know which, if any, to believe. Did you do something
so
terrible,
so
unforgivable, that the gates of Heaven are barred to you, and your spirit is damned to walk the earth forever? Is there no absolution, no atonement, that will bring you rest?”

But the ghostly grey friar is not inclined to divulge his secrets to me, and, intent upon his prayers, he ignores me, but I am used to that.

“The Queen wants my husband, and my husband wants the Queen, and to wear a golden crown and call himself King Robert I of England, and only my life stands between the fulfilment of all their desires,” I confess to him. This is no lurid fancy; this is fact all England knows, and only those who wish to be kind and comfort me lie and say it isn’t so.

Our lives—Elizabeth’s and mine—are a strange reversal of Fate. Usually it is the mistress’s lot to live hidden away in the shadows of a man’s life, while the wife walks proudly in the sun in a place of honour at his side. But Robert’s mistress rules the realm and basks always in the glorious, bright sun of pride and adoration, while I, his wife, languish forgotten and ignored in rustic obscurity, consigned and banished to oblivion, in one country house or another owned by those who wish to ingratiate themselves to Robert and the Queen.

Housing Lord Robert’s ailing and unwanted wife has become a coin to barter for and pay back favours. Sometimes I wonder which one of these “gentlemen” who house me will be the one to betray me, to ensure my death beneath their roof, that this inconvenient guest does not survive their hospitality, and bravely bear the stigma and the scandal and suspicion that will darken their character, and their doorstep, forever after, like Judas for thirty pieces of silver, with the Queen’s profile minted on each coin and doled out from Robert’s coffers. Sir William Hyde? Sir Richard Verney? Sir Anthony Forster? Just lately Robert has written to say that the Hydes have agreed to have me back again. They were so glad, so relieved, to see me go before; I wonder what he has promised them. I’m to leave Cumnor and go back to lodge with them for a spell, then back to Compton Verney, before I return to Cumnor again. Thus has Robert ordered my life. I’m to go back and forth like a shuttlecock between these three houses. Whose doorstep will be stained with my blood? Whose threshold will be forever shadowed by that black, funereal pall? Which one will the Judas be?