Dark Aemilia (11 page)

My mind rages, but here I stand in my drab dress, a creature half-mad with the tooth-ache. Wood smoke drifts upwards from the close-crowded chimneys of the houses opposite. The cat is still shaking his tail in angry jerks, ears flat to his head. He lifts one paw and shakes it singly, and little shining droplets of water catch the sunlight as they fall.

Widow Flood, my neighbour, comes out of her door with a full pot, and pours the foul-nosed contents into the reeking
kennel that runs down the centre of the street. She is a plump woman, with a pleasant, open face, but she has an irksome weakness: knowingness. On all subjects she believes herself the expert. And she is an over-dresser, too, in keeping with this good opinion of her status. Even in the house she wears a white lawn ruff. Her face pokes out from the wired cloth like a pig’s head on a platter, and she takes care to hold the pot well away from the wide bulk of her farthingale. So grand, and yet the ferryman of her own filth. You could not tell a baronet from a bee-keeper in the streets of London.

‘Tooth still bad, Aemilia?’ She puts the pot on the ground next to her and stands back, hands on her padded hips, as if ready to enjoy the sun. Noticing a dead rat lying near, she kicks it on to the dung-pile that banks against her house. Beneath her fine skirt she is wearing wooden pattens.

‘Still bad.’

‘The barber surgeon should pull it for you.’

‘Indeed.’

‘Should bleed you, too, for safety’s sake.’

‘You should join my husband’s recorder band, since you pipe the same tune.’

She laughs. ‘Pain can make you surly, Aemilia. It’s good advice.’

Anne Flood was well-named. Good advice flows from her, and good fortune to her. Even her husband’s death has been a sort of blessing, since he was a wintry old skinflint, a haberdasher by trade, who was more than twice her age when they married. Her son Tom has just been apprenticed to the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, and will soon be prancing on the boards at the Globe.

But here is Joan with a bolster to shake out. ‘There is devilment behind this, Mistress Flood,’ she says, flapping it fiercely. ‘I don’t like it. The air is full of spirits and the streets are full of demons, preying on the unwary.’ She folds the bedding against her chest and holds it tight against her.

‘Spell-making?’ Anne Flood’s eyes glint. She is curious about my clever servant, whose knowledge of witchcraft far outstrips that of the other women in the street.

‘Something wicked. And no village art, neither. Devil’s magic. It was not by chance they met her. They were waiting.’

‘Shush, Joan, don’t speak of it,’ I say. But the witches’ words have stuck in my head. ‘
The plague is coming
.’ And not as I have known it. ‘
Not like this
.’ I feel the wisdom of Joan’s words – there was some design behind our meeting, something I don’t yet understand.

Anne nods. ‘Speak of the Devil and he will appear. We should praise the good Lord, and pray for our immortal souls.’

‘Amen to that,’ says Joan, crossing herself. ‘God have mercy. Let each of us know our place. That magic which can ease our suffering and help us along our way is well enough. That which seeks to harness Evil will always do us harm.’

I put my arm about her shoulders. ‘It is a tooth-ache, my good Joan, that’s all. I broke my tooth on a plum-stone; there was no fiendishness.’ I push her gently towards the house. ‘It’s nearly twelve – go and prepare something for us to eat. Something soft that will swallow down easy. I could eat rabbit stew, on the left side. Or a little scraped cheese, with sage and sugar…’

She goes muttering into the house.

Anne is still pressing her case. ‘All that is needed is a trip to the barber. I know of a man in the Shambles who is most excellent,’ she says. ‘Pulls teeth like eels from mud – you hardly feel a thing. See?’ She grins, showing off her graveyard gaps with pride. ‘He broke my jaw once, trying to gouge out a buried wisdom tooth. Almost too much even for him. But it soon mended.’

That night, my face swells fit to fill the bedchamber. Sleep twists pain into trumpets, drum beats, the drone of an afternoon recorder. The dreams I have are dense and dazzling; my head aches with
the colour and busyness of them. I see the Queen again, not as she must be now, but as I used to know her, ten years ago. She is herself, and yet not herself: a tapestry in gold and green thread, a painted face on a wood panel, a straight-backed monarch sitting on a jewelled throne. Satan might send us pain; God soothes us with insanity to make a picture of it.

The rose garden at Whitehall, enclosed on four sides by high, crenellated walls. The heads of traitors all around, dripping
fat-rot
on to the pathways. Rose-heads rising ever higher. The Queen appears from the privet maze, fanning herself in the summer heat, face white in spite of the sun.

‘Ay,’ she says. ‘Dark Aemilia, inspirer of our cousin’s lust. We two – freakish black, and freakish red, would you not say?’

‘Your Majesty?’

‘Both of us midnight-weird.’

I curtsey as low as I can, as if my legs were liquid.

‘For God’s sake! Is this how you behave in the presence of other mortal beings? Stand up!’

She pulls me to my feet. She is shorter than me, face withered under the layer of white powder. Her fierce blue eyes are hungry for information, but flat, with nothing behind. Like a kite, looking sideways as it scoffs its offal. She takes my arm and sweeps me along the path beside her.

‘You,’ she says. ‘Plaything of my Lord Hunsdon, yes?’

‘Yes, Your Majesty.’

I look down and my child Henry is curled inside me, unborn, though a hefty boy of almost ten.

‘Plaything, or his tormenter?’

‘I – his tormenter, madam. Or both, by turns, madam.’

‘He in charge? Or you, by any chance?’ She waves a courtier away. He is carrying a galleon in full sail, ocean waves drenching the padded sleeves of his doublet.

‘He is always in charge, madam. I am but a weak and feeble woman.’

The Queen’s face is rigid with amusement. Her ladies come tittering towards us, carrying baskets filled with fiery
sugar-plums
, hitching their skirts so their beaded hems sweep clear of the wet grass.

Have I woken? Or is this still sleep? Night-time, or day? I can see only darkness, but fancy there is sunlight too, coming at me from around Alfonso’s head.

‘Aemilia! You are awake! What a fever you have run – we have barely slept.’

Joan’s face looms in front of me. She is holding a great wooden spoon, fit for a giant, which she forces into my mouth. There is some heavy, treacly substance on it, tasting of wine and hartshorn. Splinters of pain send more sunlight into my head; the morning rays seem to be breaking my skull apart. The scream which echoes from the walls might be my own noise, I suppose, listening to the sound with mild surprise. What tooth-ache is this?

‘She must see the physician,’ says Alfonso.

‘Physician! What skill will he have, to cure such a condition?’ asks Joan. ‘This is more than tooth-ache. I said so before. More like the dropsy or the sweats.’

‘The sweats! Don’t say it! Unless we do something, she will die! I never saw such a thing – all from an ailing tooth.’ His voice is breaking. ‘I shall send for him now…’

‘There is no physician on this earth that can give her the help she needs, master.’ Joan speaks so firmly to her ‘master’ that if I weren’t so ill I would smile.

‘Then the barber surgeon can pull it out. She would hear none of that, of course. If she only would have listened to me…’

‘It’s too far gone.’

If I could speak, I would tell them that some vileness is eating me from within, and the cracked tooth has been an entry point for some evil poison, just as a viper’s bite looks like a pin-prick and yet may kill a calf. I try to speak – but my whole body is frozen, although my mind is clear. My body, my limbs, my aching head – all are rigid and inert. I am like living marble, fixed upon my bed.

‘Why can’t you cure her of this, woman?’ shouts Alfonso, sounding close to tears. ‘She swears by you and all your tricks. Much use your cures and treatments are to her now!’

‘I told you, sir, there is something far beyond my remedies here. I have the skill to know that, and the wit to let another cure her who has more knowledge than I do. If you ask me, someone has put a spell on her.’

‘A spell! God’s blood, who would do such a thing? That’s nothing more than fancy.’

I feel a wet cloth soothe my head. ‘It could be belladonna,’ says Joan, as cool liquid seeps into my hair. ‘But… I can’t be sure. The antidote to that is worse than the poison…’ Thin hands smooth my cheek. ‘I need advice, that’s what I’m saying. You can see the state she’s in – look, try to move her arm. It’s like a rock.’

‘Very well, go to the apothecary.’

‘I
am
an apothecary. I need a cunning-man for this.’

‘Jesu!’ Alfonso’s voice fades away, as if he had walked to the window. ‘I’m not paying for some mountebank to come sliding in here, mutter some incantations and then go on his way.’

‘Then she will die.’

‘No!’ I am surprised to hear the fear in his voice. Has the fool grown to love me? But men are simple, even the clever ones. He has me where he wants and, even now he’s spent the dowry, he still has a roof over his head and a woman in his bed.

‘Forman,’ says Joan.

‘Who?’

‘Forman,’ she repeats. ‘The man we need is Simon Forman. I’ve heard her speak of him.’

‘That turd-faced lecher! Most foul and Satan-bothering necromancer! Over my dead body will she see this man!’

‘It’s her dead body we’ll have to worry about, not yours, unless we find some cure. Forman may be a lecher, and he may be a necromancer, but he is wise. They say he cured himself of plague – who else do you know who has done such a thing?’

‘You speak out of turn.’

‘Forgive me, but I am all on edge.’ Joan’s voice is soft, but furious.

I want to thrash my head about, or wave my hand as if to say,
Not that filthy little chance-man, with his tricky hands and his ready cock, God save us!
But I can’t move, nor even blink my eye. And it occurs to me that if it is a choice between being entombed by my own flesh and bone, or being groped by a ginger goat, I had better choose the latter. And, with that wise thought, my mind slips into darkness.

‘Now, my dear, you can open your eyes.’

I open them, expecting pain and calamity, but nothing happens. The ceiling above my head is a familiar criss-cross of wood panelling. If this is Heaven or Hell, it looks remarkably like my own house.

‘See if you can get up,’ says a quiet voice. ‘It’s all done now.’

I struggle up so that I am propped on my elbows. My mind feels clear and sharp, more so than it has for many months. A bearded, elderly man is sitting next to the bed. Dr Forman is smiling. There is something complacent in his attitude, as if he has won a wager. And behind his chair stands Joan, all twisted with anxiety.

‘Oh, Aemilia, praise God!’ she cries. ‘You are better.’

I put my hand up to my cheek, aware of a mild soreness, but nothing like the agony and madness of the last few days. ‘My tooth?’

Dr Forman holds up a glass vial. Inside it is something bloody and rotted, tiny as a baby’s little finger. ‘I don’t know what magic these crones put on you, but really,’ he says, ‘I have never seen such vileness. I am afraid your poor husband has had to go to a tavern. He did not have the stomach for it.’

‘And my son?’

‘He is downstairs. He’s asked for the tooth, but I’m not sure it’s safe to give it to him.’

I rub my face, and stretch out my arms, which are stiff and painful. ‘Never saw such vileness, you say? I find that hard to believe. A man with your wide experience of all things unspeakable and horrid.’

‘I know you have a sharp tongue, Mistress Lanyer, but within a few days you would have been dead from this infection, and lying in your grave. I won’t take the conventional remuneration from such an old friend as you, but a little gratitude would be an appropriate payment, I feel.’

Joan looks at him, quizzical. ‘Gratitude? Isn’t her money good enough for you?’

‘Mistress Lanyer is well known to me,’ says the doctor. ‘I would rather have her friendship than her gold.’

Joan pulls a leather money-bag from her basket and holds it out to him. ‘Take this, and let us keep it strictly business. Gratitude smacks of debts that stay unpaid.’

‘Joan, let it be,’ I tell her.

She looks at me, her green eyes cold. ‘There is some magic which is better measured by a pile of coin. Or else the scent of it will linger, like a sick dog’s stench.’

‘Joan!’

‘It was a simple request for thanks,’ says Dr Forman, bowing stiffly. He stares at me. I had forgotten the strangeness of his gaze,
withdrawn and mesmerising at once. Last time I saw him, he was as ginger as a squirrel. Now his beard and hair are grey. He wears both long, as if styling himself a magus or a necromancer. And his robes are both mystical and splendid – his coat and breeches are purple velvet. Magic and medicine must have made him a rich man.

I sit up and swing my legs down to the floor. ‘Thank you, Simon. I am sorry for my ill manners.’

‘And so you should be, mistress,’ says Joan. ‘We’d given you up for dead.’

‘You have skill in healing?’ the doctor asks her.

Joan folds her arms across her chest. ‘More than skill. It’s in my blood.’

The doctor bows again, and smiles his sweetest smile. ‘Then you have the better of me, most assuredly. What I know is merely the stuff of book-learning and weary application.’

‘Will you like something to eat?’ I ask.

‘Thank you, you are kind. It is so many years since we have spoken. I have often thought of you, wondering how my predictions served you.’

Joan leaves to prepare some food.

Forman settles himself back in his chair. ‘Well, well, Aemilia! If I were not a student of the constellations, I would call this a stroke of luck. As it is, I can see that the stars were in a most propitious alignment today. Which, if I may say so, marks a change where you are concerned.’

‘I have not been blessed with great luck, except that I have my dear son Henry.’

He takes my hand and spreads out my palm. ‘Dear, oh, dear. Hmm. What? You know full well the stars are not windows to the future, but perform a similar function to that which they fulfil on a dark night.’

‘They shine, and they are mysterious.’

‘Quite so, quite so.’

He looks at my palm again, frowning. ‘Still scribbling at your verse, I see.’

‘As often as I can. In the early morning, sometimes, or at the very dead of night.’

‘Make time for those scrawled words. Make time for your mind.’

‘I do, sir.’

He strokes his fingers across mine. ‘I was hoping you might visit me for a friendly halek, dear lady, a little knee-trembler for old times’ sake.’

I pull my hand away. ‘Even though I have never fucked you in the past?’ Forman is the only man I ever knew who had his own word for fornication: a clear sign of his dedication to that craft.

‘Did you not? Ah, then, it is just that dreams and memories can entwine in the most confusing manner. In honour of many a merry skirmish, then, shall we say?’

‘The answer is no.’

He sighs. ‘You are cruel. But now…’

‘Now, what?’

‘Now, I feel that our time would be better spent looking, as far as we may with such feeble instruments as I possess, into the future. The possible, probable, potential future, as we astrologists like to say.’

He produces a pack of Tarot cards from a pocket inside his cloak. They are of ancient and arcane design. The pictures show men with the heads of eagles, and strange nymphs with gold faces and serpents for hair.

‘Shuffle these,’ he says, and I do so. He lays them out before me, face-down and with their edges overlapping. ‘Choose three,’ he says. ‘Not in haste, but without too much thinking. Let your intuition lead you.’

I choose them, and he turns them over, one by one. In the centre is the glorious figure of an Empress, clothed in scarlet. On
her left side are two Lovers, arms and legs entwined. And on her right hand is the mounted figure of grim Death.

‘What does this mean?’ I ask.

But he is silent again. Then he picks up the card which shows the Lovers, and puts it down in front of me.

‘This is a most auspicious card. When you came to see me… before… there was a certain poet in your stars.’

‘That was a long time ago.’

‘He loves you still.’

‘Now I know there are limits to your magic. He does not love me in the least.’

‘We are speaking of the same man, I take it?’

‘We are speaking of one who wrote me the most vicious, evil lines I ever saw.’

‘That cannot be!’

‘Some poets write pretty sonnets to their lady-love. Not he. If there is such a thing as a hate sonnet, then I have been presented with that very thing.’

‘A passing mood, perhaps? He feared he couldn’t have you.’

‘A very sheaf of loathing. I am, in his eyes, such a Muse as you might encounter in the fires of Hell.’

He stares at the cards, eyes half-closed.

‘So you are wrong,’ I say.

‘No. There is no mistake.’ He pats my shoulder. ‘Oh, my dear Aemilia. What travails you have had. I wish that I could tell you that they are over.’

I look at the Death card and shiver. ‘So, what does it mean?’

‘You must be brave, and resourceful, and bold, to cope with what is yet to come. Yet I have faith in you. And there is brightness, too, if you will only see it. There is love.’

From the same pocket which had held the pack of cards he draws out a pamphlet. The title reads
‘Malleus Maleficarum, Maleficas, & earum haeresim, ut phramea potentissima conterens
.’

‘
The Hammer of Witches
,’ I translate. ‘
Which destroyeth witches and their heresy as with a two-edged sword
. This has nothing to do with me! Why are you giving me this book, of all books?’

‘Not a particularly romantic gift, I fear, but you may find it instructive. And… well. There is something that you must do – of an urgent and peculiar nature.’

I look at the pamphlet, puzzled.

‘What is done cannot be undone, but what has come in consequence… Well. I can say no more. There is no time now to do a proper reading. Let me just say that there is much to know in this field, much you do not understand, and that there is something evil here. Something beyond ill-wishing. Come and talk to me again.’

‘I am not a fool, Dr Forman. And I have had my fill of aged lovers.’

‘My dear! You quite mistake my meaning. I would like to help you.’

‘Very handsome of you.’

He bends closer, and I see a glint of something like fear in his eyes. And yet, what is there to be afraid of? ‘Aemilia, you have a good mind, and more than enough curiosity. I asked you once what you knew of magic. Do you know more now?’

‘A little.’

‘From that servant of yours?’

‘She’s taught me a few remedies, and I can make a potion or a poultice for most of the common ailments.’

‘Yes, yes. That is useful enough – but what you need is something which goes beyond the household skills of women. Something to help you in the most severe and terrible adversity.’

‘What sort of something?’

‘There is no time to tell you now. If I am not mistaken, I hear your serving-woman’s footsteps on the stairs. But be sure of this: there are dark days ahead of you.’