Dark Aemilia (19 page)

‘I never saw such a thing!’ says Anne. ‘I never did!’

‘It’s a shame her waxen self can’t rule us,’ I say, ‘rather than some Scottish prince who knows as much of England as I do of France.’

‘Oh, what will become of us?’ Anne cries out. ‘The pity of it! The pity of it!’

I watch the chief mourner pass, Lady Northampton, her black train carried by two countesses. It looks like a procession
from the Underworld itself. In my memory I see the Queen laughing, striding, picking up her skirts to make more speed. I see her drinking a glass of watered wine, accusing Blanche Parry of making it too strong. I see her straighten the gold circlet upon her curled red hair, when her beauty could still be faked for a grand occasion. And I see her face, that last time, fallen into a death-mask beneath the clown’s paint.

As the hearse rumbles past, there is a general sighing, groaning and weeping.

‘God rest Your Majesty! God rest your soul!’

‘Lord save you, for all eternity!’

‘Lord Jesu, save us all!’

Suddenly, there is a terrible scream and the plague cry: ‘Lord have mercy on us!’

‘Back, back,’ shouts someone. ‘See who comes – a
plague-mort
! Mind yourselves…’

A young maiden is pushing to the front of the crowd. The people fall back, more anxious to avoid her than to see the coffin of our departed Queen. Once, this girl must have looked a little like Elizabeth. She has the same bright red hair, crinkled and shot with gold, and the same fair skin. But her beauty has been blasted. Her eyes are sunken and bloodshot. Her face is swollen and purple with plague-spots. The skin of her bare arms and legs is covered in weeping lesions. She is half-naked, wearing nothing but a linen undershift, torn and bloodied and hanging from her shoulders. She cries out, and runs at the procession, but a sergeant-at-arms pushes her back.

‘Leave off – away!’ he shouts, shoving her with his
ceremonial
lance.

The distracted creature puts her head back and screams again – such a soul-sick sound! She tears at her smock, grunting and laughing, so it hangs down in front of her to show her white breasts, covered in evil sores, putrid and stinking. There is barely an inch of her that isn’t riven and bleeding, as though she had
been flayed with a whip. She turns to face the crowd. ‘You should kill me!’ she calls out. Her voice is soft and childish. She catches the arm of an old man, standing next to me. He shakes her off, white with fear. ‘Who will kill me? Who will cut my throat?’

No one speaks. The procession moves on. Now the Queen’s ladies pass by, in orderly completeness, as if they can neither see us, nor hear us.

‘You would slay me if I was a dog!’

‘By Jesu, what are you all? Will no one help her?’ Father Dunstan forces his way to the front. He pulls the maiden to her feet, and wraps her in his cloak. ‘Shame on you!’ he shouts.

The girl is chattering again. The cloak hides everything but her bright hair.

‘Will you slay me, Father? Will you throw me to the dogs at Bankside? Or shall I poison them? Shall I poison them, Father?’ But then she begins to convulse like a hanging man, and her mouth foams. Father Dunstan drags her away, through the parting crowd.

London is my home. A horde of bloody prentice-boys shouting ‘Clubs!’ can make me smile. I love the filthy bustle, and would as soon hear the shout of the night watch as the song of a nightingale. But we breathe yellow, corrupted air that chars our throats. Even our snot is black with soot. The petty pains of daily life are cruel enough. So it’s not always plain what is plague, and what is not. And the fear that every ague and pustule is the harbinger of certain death can haunt the best of us.

So. There is first a fever, but the sun is hot, the day is long; we may need no more to cure it than a draft of small beer. Then there is the vomiting – but who in London does not throw up their guts from time to time? We are careful never to eat raw fruit from the tree, but still the lurgy gets us. Every time we puke up in the chamber-pot, we think we are victims of a poisoner’s craft. But there are signs, Lord help us, and, when these come, we know the end is near. God preserve us from the swelling, for that is a portent of the end indeed. And though there are those who live, they are few, and strong. It starts like a strain, a pain that stretches down an arm, or around the groin, but then focuses its evil into one place. Which place is fixed to be a bubo, a sac of heavy poison that will kill in moments if it bursts within your body. The ones who live are those whose buboes split outside their skin, so the fluid may be drained off. For whatever humour you may have – phlegmatic, sanguine, choleric, melancholic – none blends happily with this vile contaminant.

It is early summer. I am sitting at my hearth place, reading. Joan is standing at the doorway, looking out into the street, with that look of sour enjoyment with which she likes to greet disaster.

‘It’s a merry do,’ she says. ‘The dead outnumber the living all over the City. Heaven and Hell are bulging at the gate. St Bride’s yard is full, and St Olave’s. If it takes us off now, we shall be buried in the ditch.’

‘Thank you for those cheering words, Joan. If you can’t say anything more uplifting, go upstairs and tell your beads.’ Rosaries are forbidden by the law, but I know she has one hid beneath her bedstead in a casket.

She takes no notice of me. ‘The City pageant has been cancelled.’

‘I know it.’

‘Jack Mellor, that ran amok yesterday with his sores all out, was put to death this morning.’

‘I know.’

‘Cruel, I call it.’

‘He would have died anyway,’ say I.

‘I was talking to the dog-catcher at St Margaret’s, and he has killed more than five hundred hounds. Five hundred!’

‘No wonder the streets are quiet.’

‘Seventy-two parishes infected, Mistress Flood told me. And there are nine houses boarded up in Westminster, and eleven souls are newly dead. It stalks us close.’

I put my book down. ‘For pity’s sake, Joan! What do you want of me? Henry is kept from school. The house is full of onions and garlic. We have sweet herbs in every room: the physick garden is bare. And we pray.’

‘I know it, mistress. We are taking every care we can.’

‘What more can I do? Shall I lie down and weep in the fireplace? Shall I fill my hair with ashes? We are not dead yet. We shall sit it out.’

‘Says who? Has the Almighty sent you word?’

‘Don’t be insolent. You are my servant, not my keeper.’

‘Oh, and are the two so very far apart? Who would keep you, if not old Joan? Not your popinjay husband, that’s for sure.’

This is quite enough. I get to my feet, ready to strike her. But she says, ‘Mistress, you know I would do everything in my power to help you.’

I let my hand fall. ‘Yes.’

‘But what I can offer… my skills and remedies… they won’t save us.’

‘No.’

‘There is something evil here.’

I have tried not to think of the witches, but they are never far from my mind. ‘Joan – there is something that I want to ask you…’

Alfonso rushes in at this worst of moments. Back from the palace, and breathless with his own importance.

‘The new King has called for the consort.’

‘But the King is not here – not yet crowned…’

‘Precisely. We are leaving London.’

‘Praise be to God!’ says Joan.

‘Praise indeed!’ I say. Is it possible that for once Alfonso has been useful? But – of course – there is a guilty look upon his face. I see how it will be without the need to ask. ‘This
is
good news,’ say I, falsely smiling. ‘All the family will be saved. When do we go, husband?’

He looks down at his feet – fine shod in French boots, elaborately pointed. ‘I… it is the musicians who are needed. At Cambridge, at the pleasure of His Majesty.’

‘So be it,’ says Joan. ‘I will see to our preparations.’

‘Preparations for what?’ he asks, uneasily.

‘Why, for the journey sir.’

‘To
mine
. To my… preparations. Not to yours, Joan, or my wife’s.’

‘Nor to Henry’s either?’ I feel a surge of anger, even though this is no surprise. ‘You will leave us, then. To live or die. And see what remains of us when you return.’

‘This cannot be so, master,’ says Joan. ‘More people die each day. The pest house is full. They are digging graves out at Tothill Fields – graves as big as caverns… They lime the dead when their bodies are still warm… You could not leave your little son to that.’

Alfonso twists his hands together, his long, perfect fingers. ‘It is not my choice, Joan. I am the master here, but merely a servant to the King.’

‘Then you can pay for us to follow.’ Her voice is quiet, but I have never known her so outspoken. ‘You have gold, don’t you? Or, if it is gambled, you have your fine Court friends, who will lend you a ducat or two to save your wife and child.’

‘Get out!’ says Alfonso. ‘This is not a matter for you.’

Joan climbs the stairs, silent with rage.

I stare into the fire. I can see that this unmans him more than the tirade he was expecting. I watch the flames, thinking that each lick of heat is a like a human life, flaring up for an instant, and then gone for good. My calm is aided by my knowledge of my husband – expecting nothing is an excellent preparation for receiving it.

After a while he clears his throat. ‘I am sure you will be safe.’

‘Surely.’

‘It will die out soon. Everyone says so.’

‘Indeed. “Everyone” has such confidence that they are packing up their goods and chattels, boarding up their houses and heading for the hills of Kent.’

‘The doom-sayers.’

‘The wealthy. And the wise.’

‘We have seen the plague before. Every year, it comes and goes.’

‘Not like this,’ I say. ‘Not for years. If you insist on being a snivelling coward, then kindly have the grace to be an honest snivelling coward.’

‘I shall be soon be back. With money. And preferment. A certain position, with the new King. I am doing this for all of us – for our future.’

‘Alfonso?’

‘Yes, my chuck?’ He smiles, uneasy.

‘Go.’

And so he does, with some clean linen in a bundle, and Joan’s last impudent accusations following him down the street.

That night, I keep Henry in my bed, so I can will the plague away from him. His habit is to throw himself at an angle across the mattress, muttering and kicking, so the eiderdown comes off me, and there is no way I can lie straight. I lie there, sleepless. Much as I despise my husband, there is no doubt we are worse off without him. There was little hope of help before, but now no escape is possible. We can’t flee the City like the wealthy and well-born. Money isn’t all you need. Not only can the rich afford to hire carriages to remove their goods, they also have country estates to move to, with vast gardens, far from London. What’s more, they have the legal right to run away. Each has a certificate of health, a pledge that they are clean of plague and not carrying the pestilence. Without this, if you flee, you may be hanged for your pains. When I lived at Court, we removed to Windsor Castle during one outbreak. The Queen had a gibbet put up on the village green. Poor souls who fled the City were put to death at her command. Horses supped water from the trough as these innocent subjects kicked their last.

At last I fall asleep, but I am prey to such dreams and nightmares!
I see them kill my father again, a circle of dark figures. I walk up behind him, and at first his steps are light and
hurried, then slow and burdened, then they stop. Again he turns, and I see his silent scream. Again I reach out and my child’s hands are in front of me. But this time they are botched with gore. I scream myself, but my screams are still silent.

There is a voice.

‘Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?’

Then I see Lord Hunsdon, as he was the very last time I set eyes on him, in the promenading crowd at the Royal Exchange. Old and frail, and half-turning in the square, as if he wants to speak to me, but then I am pulled away by his companion. It is Lettice, all got up like a Globe whore touting for a groundling fuck, breasts like twin peaches. But then I see, it is not Hunsdon, it is Will. And we are not in the Royal Exchange but on the stage, and the audience is buzzing below us, angry and unhappy with our show.

Then I see Death, peering out of the Queen’s bed at me, laughing. The Queen is with him, and laughing merrily herself, quite back to her old form. Her forehead is blooded, as it was on the days she came back from hunting. For all I know, the stag is in there too, in a state of equal high spirits…
but then I wake. Or do I? It is a moment before I know what must have happened. My old affliction has returned, caused by dreams so violent they drive me from my bed. Night-walking.

I am not wrapped in blankets with my son. I am outside, in the plague-ridden street, bare-foot in my nightgown. I slap my wrist and pinch my skin to see if I’m still sleeping, and the pinches hurt, and my feet are cold, and I can smell the stench of putrefying flesh from the plague-house that is boarded up next door. I am awake, that is for sure, and abroad. I turn, too quick, to get back to my house, but for a second my head spins and I fear that I will fall. I stop for a moment, and put my hand upon the wall of the plague-house. From inside, I suddenly hear a dread cry, like the shriek of the damned.

‘God help us! Help us! Give us water, show us pity! I have children! I have a baby! Help me!’

Two sotted prentice-boys appear. Staggering along the road, laughing and doing a little dance. They are tossing a flat cap between them, and tussling to reach it when it falls to the ground. When they see me, with my hand upon the plague-house, in my nightgown and with my muddy feet, they take me for one of the unfortunates who live there.

‘What’s this – you have escaped to spread your pestilence?’ says the first, a great big lad with a mass of black hair. ‘Get back inside!’

‘You disobedient witch!’ says the other, who is smaller, and has a scuff of brown beard ‘Go indoors, and stay there till the Devil takes you.’ They grab my arms and began to push me towards the door, though how they intend to get me through it I don’t know, as the boards are nailed down sound, and there is no way in any more than there is any way out. I try to speak, and wrench myself free, but cannot, and a nauseous dark descends.

I dream of my father again.

We are on the stage with his consort; the boards stretch away in all directions, to the four corners of the earth, which are trimmed with heavy wainscots. To the east, these are carved with Chinamen and pearl-fishers; to the west with natives with feathered heads; to the south with Moors and minarets; to the north with wolves and mountains. Father is sitting cross-legged, holding his recorder. His lifts the pipe as if to play it. There is a dagger in his chest.

I sit down beside him. ‘Father,’ I say. ‘You aren’t dead.’

He looks up. ‘Why should I be dead?’

‘You were killed when I was seven.’

He laughs. ‘I never died,’ he says.

‘Then where are you?’

‘In Purgatory,’ says he. ‘Playing all my sweetest tunes.’

Then I look up and see a demon standing next to him. Its head is a thousand charnel-skulls, grinning rottenly; its eyes are empty graves. It is wearing a magician’s gown of cloth-of-gold. My father produces a vial of scarlet notes and throws them upward. And the air is filled with the music of rubies, ascending and descending in filigree formations.

‘Father!’ I cry. ‘Father, what happened to you?’

But he has climbed on to a giant viol, which is a tomb.