Dark Aemilia (12 page)

Today I rise early, with the words of Dr Forman in my head. What are these ‘dark days’? Can they be avoided? There is no doubt that the old lecher knows what he is about. Not only has he cured the infection, and not only is there barely a scar to show where the cursed tooth has been – all my other little aches and torments have gone. Those besetting symptoms that all of us in London must put up with: soot-wheeze, ale-runs, head-gripe, back-ache, lassitude and dread-belly – not to mention sundry scabs, carbuncles and lesions of the skin – all such ailments have vanished.

I get up and sit at the little table by the window, and look at the books and pages that are stacked in order there. I have little money for paper, so I have taken to scribbling in the margins of my books, adding my own thoughts to those of Hortop and Plato. What was Forman’s advice? ‘
Make time for those scrawled words. Make time for your mind
.’ Make time – now there’s an exhortation! If only I could. I would spin it, the way that other housewives spin their wool, and I would fill the house with it, the product of my labours. I would weave sheets of genius and sheaves of golden poetry, the harvest of my hours. Standing up, I stretch my arms upward, letting my mind’s attention dwell on every inch of my body. Every inch is free of pain. My body is well; my mind still rages in its skull. If I wish to be well in my mind, then I must write, and there is no cure for my ambition, and thank the Lord for that.

I cross to the mirror. Has Forman’s art restored some of my lost beauty? I see that I am not, as Lettice claimed, a woman old
before her time. My hair is still black, without a single streak of white; my skin is unlined. My eyes, so much admired in the past, are dark, watchful, unblinking. When I look into them, I cannot tell what I am thinking. Perhaps I am still beautiful. Perhaps I might triumph over other matters. What is there to be afraid of? The plague? We have always lived with its comings and its goings. Fogs and dunghill odours bear contagion. Some say that Death is trapped in rugs and feather beds, and cover their faces when they pass a woollen draper’s shop. Alfonso stuffs his dainty nose with herb-grace. Joan, with her store of soothing cures and potions, greets each new outbreak by hanging the house with rue. God will protect us, surely, until it is our time to meet Him. After all, there are ten thousand ways for Death to cut you down.

And so, in the days that follow I think,
Let God’s will be done
. I can write my words, cross-hatched and cramped sideways in the margins of the works of great and famous men. I can gnaw at a chicken leg, delighting in the taste and texture of the meat, the greasiness of the bone. I am alive and well. The sun has forgotten us, the skies are dark and the streets and lanes are torrents of rainwater.

Yet what do I care if the sun shines, or the rain falls? I must go to the baker’s, and the chandler’s, to the cobbler and tailor, with my basket over my arm. And the mud and summer drizzle make me smile, even though my skirts are smeared with pavement mire, and I must barter for cheat-bread.

Do I think of Will? I will confess I do, for I see him every time I look at Henry, and even the touch of my own face reminds me of Will’s skin. The Greeks knew far more of emotion than we do, and there is no English word for the feeling that I carry with me, shamed and rejected by the only man I ever loved. The Greek word is
pothos
– milder than wild
eros
but longer-lasting: a longing for someone unobtainable or far away. The nearest word we have is ‘yearning’. I yearn for the Will I’ve lost, the Will who
loved me, and who will never come again. But I can make my mind blank, keep memory in a little box.

A fortnight after my meeting with the doctor, there is a loud knock on the door. Anne Flood is standing there, dressed in her usual absurd splendour, head trussed in a new style of starched ruff – French, I dare say – which seems fit to throttle her. I let her in and return to my task: I am marking out a pie crust, pressing my right thumb in a firm pattern round its edge.

‘Aemilia!’ she says. ‘I have an invitation for you.’

‘An invitation to what, Anne?’ I have a feeling this will be an event I would rather not attend.

‘Oh, it’s Tom’s first big performance! He is in a new play at the Globe. We are off tomorrow afternoon, and should be so delighted if you would come.’

My thumb jerks and rips the pastry, but I don’t look up. ‘Alfonso is at Court.’

‘Come yourself! Bring Henry. And Joan, too. You should be there, not only because you are my good neighbour and have known Tom since he was an infant, but because of the very part he is playing.’

Graymalkin, as if curious to hear more, unfurls himself from his position next to the smouldering fire, and comes grandly over, blinking and stretching.

‘The very part? He is the leading lady?’

‘Oh, no, he is too green yet for that. Only fifteen, you know, for all he is so tall! No, he is a second-ranking character, but one essential to the plot. Or so he tells me. I have only seen the pages with his lines.’

‘I fear I am –’

‘But wait, wait till you hear! His character is you!’

A coldness in the air, a north breeze. I put the pie in the oven and slam the door. ‘
How
is it me?’

‘Aemilia!’ Anne looks triumphant. ‘He is a serving lady called Aemilia! It must be you. A friend of Mr Shakespeare’s as you were. And I doubt he knows many Venetians, and the play is set in Venice. It’s about a Moor.’

‘Anne, I’m not a Venetian, I was born at Bishopsgate…’

‘Yes, but your father was. And he named you. And this “Aemilia” is cynical and worldly, and has a speech making little of men! You! To the very life!’ She seems to think that I should share in her delight.

‘I…’ But, before I can think up my excuse, Henry is here, all bounce and frenzy. He falls over the cat, who runs away, furious, to lay waste to some rats.

‘Mother! You are in a play! How good! Can we be at the front? Can we be groundlings? Please! I want to be a groundling. John Feather and John Dokes have both been groundlings, and they saw a whore suck a –’

‘We are busy, Henry; we must –’

‘We are
not
busy, Mother. You were going to make me swot my Latin.’

‘It is most historical,’ says Anne, seeing how to play it. ‘Based on the
Decameron
, says Tom. Mr Shakespeare translated it himself, he’s quite the linguist. Though not as handsome as Mr Burbage, I have to say.’

‘Please, Mother!’ Henry grips my arm and squeezes tight. ‘One afternoon of Latin is not going to make me an Oxford man. And Tom is my very best friend. I shall be heartbroken if you say no.’

I count it a small victory that I have not set foot in the Globe for ten years. Nor have I been to the Rose, nor the Curtain, nor the Swan, nor the Fortune. All London might be in thrall to the theatre, but not me. And yet. I can’t lie: as we come up to the great entrance gate to the play house, part of a dense London throng, I am as curious as Henry, who is leaping and dancing and
singing like a Bedlam boy. Joan has him by the arm, a grim set to her smile (she has no love for a play). I, meanwhile, am borne along by Anne, who is twenty times as giddy and talkative as my cavorting son.

‘You see there?’ She gestures at a portly nymph ahead of us in the line, with tight-curled hair and a tavern laugh. ‘Breasts quite out – it’s all the thing, they say, at Court. And yet, look, she’s straight off to the pit, for all her gown is of silk taffeta.’

‘A whore, Anne, as any fool can see.’

‘Whore? Where, Mother?’ comes from behind.

‘Never mind that, Henry, you are here to see the play,’ says Joan.

‘What great big nipples has she, though! Half the size of her dugs! Mine are tiny beside hers.’ Anne is frowning at the sight.

‘Oh, yes, I see them now!’ says Henry. ‘Big as conkers!’

‘Enough of this, in front of the child, Anne!’

‘I quite forgot myself, forgive me.’ But her expert eye has distracted her again. ‘Is that Mr Burbage? Over there, with the gold and silver girdle? I am sure it must be him! Look at his actor’s bearing – a true player, wouldn’t you say?’

‘That isn’t Burbage. He will be in the tiring-house, waiting to go on.’

‘It’s him. Mr Burbage! Over here!’

‘Not if he is the lead, which it says he is, on the playbill.’ I flutter the bill before her face. ‘Why would he be out here, gawping at the crowd?’

But Anne looks vague. She does not like me to draw attention to the fact that I can read.

Through the gate ahead of us, I can see the afternoon sun tilting down on to the pit, gilding the crowd that is gathering there. Eight-sided, the great Globe, like a Roman amphitheatre for our own day, the centre open to the air, the surrounding walls and galleries thatched. I have my pennies ready, to pay for a gallery bench, but Anne will have none of it: she pays for
each of us. We push our way along, past the doorkeeper and into the bright ‘O’ beyond. Henry bouncing up and down, no matter what Joan does to try and quiet him.

The crowd is an unruly mix, with only beggars and the drunkest fools kept out. While all of London, and of England, may be divided in rank and importance, with attention to each man’s smallest difference in wealth or status or the opinion of his peers, here is a place where no one quite knows where he stands – excepting only that he should have a good view of the stage. Court folk and well-bred dandies might dance around each other, puffing pipes and opining on the latest works of Dekker, Middleton and the rest; but they are perilous close to all who seek to fleece them; the knaves and tricksters, cozeners and
coney-catching
foists. And there are also plenty of the middling folk among them: cheery shoemakers, solid burghers and
prentice-boys
, daft with youth. The finery of the rich is half-hidden in the crush of sallow kersey, dun coats and rough-sewn jerkins, so that here you might see a flash of bright velvet, there a yellow ruff, so big it blocks the view of those behind, and there again an azure ostrich feather, nodding prettily above the rollicking crowd.

We climb the stairs and reach our place, and I look around me. I had forgotten how grand the inside of a theatre can be. It is like entering a great cathedral before they stripped out the gold and daubed lime over the frescoes, but better, for there is no homily to endure. The main stage, set at the far end of the pit, has vast pillars on each side, painted in a swirling pattern to resemble marble. Above the stage is a canopy held up by two smaller pillars: the Heavens, decorated with the sun and moon and celestial bodies. Gold and scarlet hangings cover the back of the stage, hiding the tiring-house, and green rushes are strewn upon the stage itself. Running out into the pit is a long, narrow walkway, so the actors might dance among the groundlings.

The musicians are already assembling on the balcony, blowing and strumming raggedly. A few young blades are taking their
places on the edge of the stage, perched on three-legged stools, as eager to be part of the spectacle as they are to get a good view.

‘Well,’ says Anne, ‘this
is
pleasant. I do so love a play.’ She offers me a Seville orange, and I shake my head, nausea beginning to rise up in my throat. ‘I don’t for the life of me know what ails you,’ she says. ‘Why are you all on edge?’

‘I am not well.’

She peels her orange with her squat white fingers. ‘What is the matter?’

‘I finished off a mutton pottage last night; perhaps it disagreed with me.’

Just then, something digs into my back. I turn, thinking it must be Henry. ‘Keep still, child, can’t you?’

But it is not Henry. It is a hunchback dwarf, bent over nearly double, so his head looks as if it is growing out of his chest. He is dressed well, like a prosperous guildsman. And yet this man does not belong to any guild. This is my landlord, Anthony Inchbald.

‘Mr Inchbald,’ I say. ‘Good day to you, I am sure.’

‘A pleasure to see you, as always, Mistress Lanyer. I suppose your husband told you I had called?’

‘Sadly, no.’

‘His mind seemed… occupied elsewhere.’

‘I trust your visit was successful?’

He worms his way forward and settles himself next to me on the bench, legs dangling. He looks straight ahead, very calm.

‘This will be a fine production,’ he says. ‘Love, and blood, and tragic death. What more can you ask for from a play?’

‘What indeed?’ say I.

‘Though it’s hard enough for a poet to keep pace with nature. I went to the bear garden yesterday. Saw the great beast Harry Hunks kill off four greyhounds, with a few claw-punches and much assurance!’

‘Oh, sir!’ says Henry, staring at Inchbald, wide-eyed. ‘What joy!’

‘One landed in the lap of the lady next to me, with two legs missing,’ says Inchbald.

‘By Our Lady! There could be nothing finer,’ says Henry. ‘I wish I could go. Mother keeps me from everything, I may as well live in a dog kennel for all the sport I see.’

‘And there were rockets and fireworks, and hungry vagrants fighting for some bread and apples, and it all ended with an ape on horseback.’

‘What are words compared to that?’ I say, avoiding his gaze and staring into the crowd below, where I can see two cutpurses jostling their prey. One stuffs a purse into his doublet even as I watch.

Inchbald squints round at me. ‘There was no success to be had.’

‘At the bear pit?’

‘At your house in Long Ditch.’

‘I am sorry for that.’

He smiles. His two teeth are like twin pegs on a line. ‘Nothing, in short, to be had at all. The cupboard, in a phrase, was bare. And yet you have the money for the Globe! I admire this, for I share your passion. A woman who would sooner be homeless than miss the latest offering from the Lord Chamberlain’s Men. This I must applaud, even as I call the bailiffs to your door.’

‘She is my guest, Mr Inchbald,’ says Anne, leaning over me in a flurry of importance. Her house, too, belongs to him. ‘We are all good friends here this afternoon. Your business can wait for another day.’ She pats him playfully on the wrist. I am surprised she can bear to touch him.