Dark Aemilia (16 page)

He looks up again, and the lawyers begin to laugh, and the Frenchmen, seeing it is an English joke, laugh too.

‘There is more,’ I say, snatching the pages from Tottle. ‘This is not the best of it.’

Tottle takes me to one side. ‘Indeed, it is not the best of anything. This is not what the public is looking for. Look around you, see what sells!’

‘What sells is mostly pap and nonsense.’

‘Maybe so, but it is pap and nonsense aptly done. This work… there is no audience for it. It’s slip-shod, badly phrased and – I hate to say this, Aemilia, but I speak as an old friend – it’s really little more than doggerel. You must find a better subject, and you must improve your mode of expression.’

I hate him then, with his round, soft smile. ‘You are making a fool of me.’

‘I’m trying to make you more than the author of the unpublishable.’

‘I will try another seller, Mr Tottle. I don’t need you.’

He bends towards me, confidential. ‘You are a woman; we don’t expect you to do this well. The wonder is that you do it at all.’

‘Go and piss in a puddle.’

‘No, look, madam, I am trying to help you. Consider the market. Religion is good, but don’t go off on some mad rant. Remember that you need to
entertain
us. Readers like martyrs. Blood. Decapitation. A breaking of the body on the wheel, or a long-drawn-out crushing with stones. This can never fail – what we call a crowd-pleaser. Who dies in your story? Who is disembowelled? Or, if God is not your fancy, histories will always sell. But don’t shilly-shally. Skewer the reader with your sword! Find me a gentil knight whose story is untold, a fierce dragon, a brave battle on a field of gore.’

‘Boys’ twaddle.’

‘Oh, come now.’

‘This is fine work. Only a man could fail to see it.’

‘You have a fanciful nature. This can work in your favour. So give me a tale from far away. A minaret, a monster. A traveller’s tale will always catch the eye.’

‘A story for a merchant to relate, or some loquacious seaman.’

‘Or fashion. Have you an eye for fashion?’ He looks at me uncertainly. As usual, I am wearing my old grey dress, embellished only with a ruff that Anne has loaned me. My hair is scraped back under my bonnet, and my cheeks are ruddy from the sun.

I hesitate for a moment, thinking of Anne and her like, and some of the strange outfits that Alfonso insists on wearing when he goes off to play for the Queen. ‘Cunning ways with
cross-gartering
?’ I ask.

Tottle clasps my arm. ‘Oh, most excellent notion! Can you do a thousand lines on this? New ideas, Venetian styles, the courtly colours? I could pay you two shillings. One shilling now, one shilling when you bring it in.’

On the one hand is poor Eve, downtrodden since the dawn of time. On the other is a month’s security, which might be purchased for this sum.

‘Done,’ I say, holding out my hand.

The dwarf has spies, no doubt, or the gift of second sight. No matter: there he is. Sitting outside the charnel-house, scoffing an apple cake.

‘Mistress Lanyer. You have my money?’

‘One shilling,’ I say. ‘A down-payment.’

He chuckles. ‘I like a lady with wit. But this is not the bargain.’

I glare at him.

‘You are still a fine woman, Mistress Lanyer.’

‘And this means – what?’

‘It’s common knowledge that once you used your face to your advantage. Not to mention your other parts, which I’m sure are quite as sweet. Of course, no courtier would look at you now. But a humble landlord, like myself, might take a sup.’

‘What do you want?’

‘Some time with you might settle half the debt.’

‘Some
time
?’

‘These are the terms I have agreed with Mistress Flood: I visit once a month, and she pays me in kind. And very kind she is too, if I may say so.’

He beckons me over. Reluctantly, I draw nearer. He clasps my hand in his dry little paw.

‘Yet nobody would call her fair. Her breasts are like sacks of dough halfway down her belly. Yours, I can see through your shift, are still sweetly rounded. Just the shape for sucking.’

I pull my hand away, not sure whether to box his ears or smack his arse. ‘You aren’t even tall enough to reach them, you lecherous little toad.’

‘Two fucks a month would do me nicely. I should look forward to it, which, between ourselves, is more than I do with some of my ladies. With some it’s a case of skirts up, cock out, and let’s go about our business. But with your good self…’ The little turd is ogling me as if he thinks we might go to it right away.

I have to laugh, even though the thought of Anne Flood giving herself to this manikin sickens me. ‘Oh, Mr Inchbald! Most lascivious of insects! I would rather die, sir.’

He brushes the crumbs from his beard. ‘You take a foolish risk, in speaking to me so rudely. Remember who I am, and who you are. Your grand ways edge you ever closer to the gutter. You are nothing but an ageing whore.’

‘A plague on you, Inchbald!’ I call after him, as he goes hobbling on his way.

The plague. I wish I could unsay it. Like the Devil’s name, it’s better not to mention this curse upon our times. And down on the
harbour-side the busy ships are disgorging men and cargo from the furthest limits of the fevered globe. The wind picks up, the sky darkens. I feel the first sharp tang of autumn, and pull my cloak tighter around me. I look up, at the chasing clouds, knowing that what seems bleak now will soon look like Paradise.

‘
The plague is coming
,’ whispers a voice, and I look to see who speaks. But there is no one there. I stop: surely the voice was that of the old crone from the Fair? What do these creatures want, who stalk me with their foul predictions?

When I return home, I seek out
Malleus Maleficarum
and open it. I read till the candle has burned down and the words are scorched into my mind. We women, it seems, have a penchant for devilment, being so lascivious and lustful. A lecherous woman might lie with the Devil and become a witch in consequence. I remember my forced copulation with Wriothesley and Will’s poisonous verse: this was how he saw me. ‘
All witchcraft comes from carnal lust
,’ declaims the pamphlet, ‘
which in women is insatiable
.’ And their device for recruiting new witches is to make something go amiss in the life of a respectable matron or young virgin, so that they consult a sorceress, and are tempted into witchcraft in their turn. I think about this for a long time, wondering if those fairground furies might have such a scheme in mind. But I am not like the other matrons, whose skill lies in the churning of butter and the fattening of geese. I am as clever as any man, and as cunning as any witch.

In my opinion, if we are made in God’s image, it is God that we see dangling from the gibbet, and it is God’s work to end a human life, not Man’s. I know I am alone in this thought, as in so many others. But this scruple of mine about the executioner’s craft has made any gallows-place a place of horror to me: I have no love for an execution. And there is no gallows-place more horrible than Tyburn Cross. It is a lonely, God-forsaken place, and the winds seem to sweep in from in all directions. The Triple Tree is a large triangular structure that stands upon the northwest road, in the way of passing traffic, so that the carters and horsemen can see what will befall those who break the English law. The ingenuity of its construction is that as many as twenty-four felons may be hanged at once, which is an expedient measure, as there is no shortage of murderers or cutpurses to keep the hangman busy. Beyond the Tree is an open field where soldiers are shot for their misdemeanours: I suppose this is of some benefit to them, as they die with their guts inside them, more or less.

When I was young, not long after I was married, I saw them execute poor Robert Southwell. He was a devout Jesuit, and tried to make the sign of the Cross with his pinioned arms, before quoting Romans: ‘
For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness
to all that believeth
.’ They wanted to bowel him alive, as they do all traitors, but Charles Blount and some of the other nobles jumped up and hugged Southwell’s legs until his neck broke, to save him that final agony. He died so bravely that after his corpse was bowelled and quartered, and his blood flooded
across the highway, the assembled crowd was silent. There were no cheers or catcalls, and no one shouted ‘Traitor!’ in the customary way. And that silence filled me with a fragile hope for all of us, that we could recognise true goodness and respect it, even as the hangman acted out his ritual butchery in the name of Law.

I think of that day as I walk to Tyburn. It was fitting that Southwell was a Jesuit, for they are often accused of idolatry and witchcraft. Healing relics and icons are part of the Old Religion, but they have no place in the new one, and Catholic priests are sometimes accused of ‘Devil-conjuring’ among their many other crimes. Devil-conjuring is not a skill I’d take up lightly.

I watch the heavy carts clattering along the centre of the pitted roadway, while parties of horsemen overtake them, trotting briskly. Not many women to be seen today – just one or two ladies riding side-saddle. It’s a position both ungainly and undignified, as if riding a horse sensibly is the proper business of a man. Did Diana the Huntress ride all skewed over in her lady’s saddle? I think not. For the most part, men ride, while women have nothing better than their own legs to carry them.

It’s a pale, sickly afternoon, with a foul wind. I walk slowly, unwilling to arrive. Tyburn is an evil place – they say that Satan walks there, and I can well believe it. As I come nearer, I see there is a row of corpses hanging from the Tree. I do not look close, but notice that one is a woman. The poor creature’s breasts are showing through her torn dress. A kite is perched on the Tree, proud and puff-chested, as if displaying its wealth. When I am a few yards away, I stop, looking first one way down the high road and then the other. Black clouds loom overhead and rain begins to fall. I take shelter under an elm tree and watch the travellers passing by. I think of the ships landing at the quayside, and the rats scurrying behind the wainscot, and the stench of the dunghills piled against each common house, and the wrath of
God and a thousand things besides, and wonder which of these is to blame for the plague. God surely has a gift for punishment. We are accustomed to horror and fear, and so Hell is easier to summon in a fresco or imagination than Heaven, a place of obscure cloud and blurred inaction. Job has many brothers (and sisters) in his suffering and pain.

Time passes, and I have the strange sensation of watching it go on its way, in the guise of carriages and horsemen and herds of geese. At last, I see that the road has emptied, and night has snuffed out the feeble sun. All I can hear is the swish of the falling rain. There are no stars, but the moon shines bleakly through the clouds. The silvery light gives the world a shifting luminescence, and most objects are silhouettes. A solitary carriage clatters by me, pennants fluttering. It rounds the corner, heading for Oxford, and disappears from sight. Once more, the road is deserted except for a troop of muddy dogs, sniffing and snapping at each other. Then the leader of the pack – a barrel-bodied mastiff – raises its head, listening. It howls, and runs back along the London road. The other dogs follow, barking fiercely.

Swallowing, I turn my gaze back towards the Tyburn Tree. Five of the corpses still dangle against the wet sky. But the sixth – the woman – is lying on the ground, beneath a severed rope. Three figures are crouching over her. One of them is sawing at her neck with a long knife. I gather myself and begin to walk slowly towards them. As I approach, I feel the air thicken around me, and the sounds of voices come through the rain’s hiss, as if conjured from its pattering repetition.

‘Bassano.’

‘Bassano.’

‘Aemilia Bassano.’

‘No, she’s Lanyer now; they tied her to the fool.’

‘But it’s Bassano that we know, my dears.’

‘Aemilia Bassano.’

‘Bassano.’

The rain falls in sheets, half-blinding me, and I can’t see my way clearly till I am right by the Tree. The three dark figures are standing around a black cauldron that bubbles and steams upon a fire of blue flame, which leaps and crackles despite the downpour. One of them is scraping the eyeballs out of the dead woman’s head, and dropping the scarlet mess into the pot. Another holds a severed arm, and is busy prising out its fingernails. The third – an aged, decrepit crone – watches me with hooded eyes.

‘She comes, see, sisters. Bassano comes.’

I feel a wind rise, which seems to come from the ground below me, so I am enveloped in a screaming cloud. My cloak is torn from me, and the bonnet ripped from my head, so my hair streams out behind me and I am staring at the three women.

‘What do you want with me?’ I shout. ‘What do you mean by creeping round me and whispering of dread things, and the plague?’

They are silent, and I listen to the rain.

I gather my courage and try again. ‘You have tricked my husband, and stolen my money. What is the meaning of this? Tell me! I demand to know.’

‘She challenges us,’ says one of them.

‘You don’t challenge us,’ says another.

‘But you may seek our counsel.’

‘I don’t want your counsel!’ I cry. ‘I want you to leave me be!’

The three figures separate and walk slowly around the Tree, so that their slow footsteps mark out a circle. A spume of dark flame flies up from the cauldron, and the earth around it heaves, like boiling porridge.

‘Hail, Bassano, bastard of Bishopsgate!’ cries the First Witch.

‘Hail, Bassano, strumpet of Stratford!’ says the Second.

‘Hail, Aemilia, spawn of the Equivocator!’ says the Third.

‘What do you mean? What are you saying?’ I am shaking, my hands twisted together. Sky and earth seemed to have merged into one.

‘He tricked us.’

‘He tried us, sorely.’

‘We gave him what he asked for, and he gave us nothing back.’

I pushed my wet hair out of my eyes. ‘Who did? Who tricked you?’

The air seeps sound again, all around me.

‘Bassano!’

‘Bassano!’

‘Baptiste Bassano!’

A spectre starts to form in the dark flames spewing from the pot. I see with horror that the face of my father is forming in the vapour. He is bloody and screaming, as I saw him in his final moments.

‘What do you want from my poor father? He is dead, let him rest!’

‘He would’st be great.’

‘Was not without ambition.’

‘But too full o’ the milk of human kindness to catch the nearest way.’

‘What do you
mean
?’

‘Ah, yes,’ say three voices. ‘He is dead, but his soul escaped us. We are owed a soul.’

‘A soul was promised.’

‘The plague is coming,’ whispers the air around me.

‘The plague is coming.’

Another image begins to take shape in the flames. I see a bed with the curtains closed. As I peer at it, the curtains are slowly drawn back by invisible fingers, and I see a figure lying there, in that final stillness that is waiting for us all. It is a child, a boy, his eyes staring upwards, Heavenwards, at nothing.

‘Henry!’ I scream. ‘No – never! You shall not have him!’

And then I am lying beneath the gibbet, and there are five bodies staring down at me, and the witches have gone. I stand
up, shivering, my limbs stiff with cold. The rain has stopped and the clouds have blown away and the half-moon is reflected by the puddled ground.