Dark Aemilia (20 page)

‘What is – ?’

‘Hush. Keep your foot still – Lord knows what you have stood in. Fox shit, most likely. It’s the worst of all, unless you ever step in the leavings of a wild boar.’

I am in the kitchen. My feet are in a bowl of warm water, scented with rosemary and orange peel, and Joan is squatting down before me, rubbing at my filthy toes with a piece of cloth.

‘Night-walking again! I thought you were all done with that.’

‘So did I. It’s been years… not since…’

‘…Henry was born, God bless him.’

I have only the vaguest memories of that dreadful time. Left on my own with Alfonso, who was rarely in the house, I was at first content to watch my belly grow bigger and bigger, waiting to be delivered of my baby. I ate well, and had a good serving girl who baked me apple cakes and brewed small beer. But, as the birth-date drew nearer, I began to sicken. Gall rose in my throat and would not clear, so I had to sit upright every night. Then my whole body swelled up to match my distended belly: my face and hands were so round and tight they might have been pregnant with their own progeny, and about to spill forth little newborn limbs. After a few days of this, I was struck down with a blinding head-ache, and I had a violent fit.

I remembered Joan’s words when she gave me the potion in her apothecary shop. So I sent for her, and she came and saved me. All through the howling horror of the birth I was blind with
pain and my head seemed to be stuck inside a dark box. What kept me sane was the sound of Joan’s calm voice, urging me on. And at the end of it, she gave my perfect son to me, with his blunt and folded face and his curled hands, and he opened his mouth and began to suck, and I would not have him taken from me, and I would not have a wet nurse, but fed him from my own breast and everybody marvelled at the way he thrived. When at last I emerged from my chamber, ready for churching, it turned out that Joan was now my servant, and my old one had vanished away. I never questioned this, being so pleased to have her there. Joan said little enough about it, only that her apothecary shop had been burned down by a mob, and they had stolen her herbs and simples before they torched the thatch.

She is looking at me now, her eyes bright. ‘You’re a good pupil, mistress. You have the makings of a wise woman, if not a sensible one.’

‘Thank you.’

‘So maybe you would like to help with a new concoction.’

‘What is it?’

‘An ugly brew.’

‘What is it
for
?’

‘It is a plague-juice.’

‘An elixir? A cure?’

‘No. For some, not all, it may work as a preventative.’

‘How do you know it works?’

‘I don’t. But I made it once, long, long ago, and it saved my village.’

‘From the plague?’

‘We called it the Black Death back then. Only a few of the people caught it, but those that did all died.’

‘Shame it’s not a remedy.’

‘Once you have the contagion, mistress, it is time to pray.’

‘Pray? I do that every night. Dr Forman must know more than you do.’

Joan is quiet for a moment. ‘If he has cured himself of plague, then he has bargained with the Devil himself. I told you – the Devil tempts the scholar just as he does the crone.’

‘Perhaps he found a means through science and knowledge.’

‘Maybe so. But all science comes from somewhere, and all knowledge has its price. All finished now – they’re nice and clean.’ I lift my feet out of the water, and she wraps them in a linen cloth. ‘You aren’t as strong as you think you are,’ she says, drying them gently. ‘The spirit is willing, I’ll say that for you, but flesh is just flesh.’

‘It’s not my fault the plague has come.’

‘No. But you are pitting yourself against it.’

I shrug. ‘Who else can help me? Almighty God? I don’t see much hope for this life coming from Him. All
His
promises are to be fulfilled when we are dead souls in Heaven. Then I shall be grateful. Now I am afraid.’

Joan ignores my blasphemous talk. ‘That pamphlet for Mr Tottle,’ she says. ‘What’ll you get for that?’

‘Two shillings. I’ve given half to Inchbald, anyway.’

‘Should you want another way to make a penny or two, you could always give him the recipe for my plague-juice.’

‘There is a
recipe
?’ I almost laugh. I think of plum pies and stuffed swans, of simnel cake and peacocks poached in wine.

‘You need the brain of a plague corpse to make the paste, for one thing. A palmful of that. And a mandrake root. And various other – items.’

‘What sort of items?’

‘Gibbon blood can be hard to come by, unless you know the right apothecary. Not so difficult for someone with my history, of course.’

I watch her as she dries my feet, patting them gently with the towel. Joan can make a poultice of ointment flowers, read a urinal of piss, and brew up the most powerful of purgations. When Henry was teething, she soothed his sore gums with the brain of
a hare, and knew a cure for shingles made from earthworms and pigeon dung. Once, when Alfonso had been poisoned by a rival at the gaming-house, she cured him with a potion of rue, figs, walnuts and powdered Narwhal tusk. No more and no less than you would expect from a good apothecary. Yet there is something truly sinister about this plague-brew. She is a wise woman, and a faithful servant. What else do I know of her? And what don’t I know?

Her hair is loose and hangs around her shrivelled face. Her skin is dun, her hands withered like the talons of a bird of prey. As she works she sings to herself. I don’t recognise the tune, or understand the words.

‘How old are you, Joan?’ I ask.

She is drying the skin around the great toe of my left foot. Her grasp is firm; the cloth is rough and ticklish. She doesn’t look up. ‘Five hundred years,’ she says. ‘Or thereabouts.’

‘
What
?’

She folds the towel, and straightens up, using a stool to lever herself on to her feet. ‘Five hundred years,’ she repeats. ‘Time enough to learn all I needed.’

I’m not sure Methuselah lived so long. ‘Joan, are you a witch?’

‘What does it matter what I am?’

‘I want to know. I believe I have a right to, being both your mistress and your friend.’

‘I am a cunning-woman, who knows more than most.’

‘A woman? Just as I am? And you have lived to such an age?’

‘Remember, mistress, you are still learning. You know less than little, even now.’

‘Joan, I have something to tell you. I should have told you this before, no doubt, but I thought you would take it for one of my night-fancies. If I tell you about this thing, will you tell me, in return, what you really know of witchcraft?’

Her face is shrewd. ‘I might say a little more, but not enough to put you in the way of harm. Tell me your story, mistress. Does it concern the witches? I can see them standing by the Tyburn Tree.’

So I tell her the story of the meeting, and what they said about Baptiste and the plague, and how they showed me the bed with Henry dead upon it.

At the end she says, ‘We must pray.’

‘Pray! Will God help us, who helps no one when the pestilence comes?’

Joan hangs the towel over a chair to dry. ‘God bless you, mistress, and give you strength.’

‘God bless us all,’ I say, testily. ‘Now, Joan, what is this you say about being five hundred years upon this earth? Did God play a part in that?’

She crosses herself. ‘Do not speak lightly of Our Lord, Aemilia. I was a witch once, and I did many things that I cannot bear to think of, and I have lived for many years beyond my span through the use of my craft. But I have repented of it now. They shut me in a nunnery, and I escaped it, and resolved to do my penance in this world, not in some stone prison. And so I am here. I have come to you. So you must believe me when I tell you that some matters are the will of God, and His will only. I have some experience in these matters.’

‘But five hundred years!’ I say. ‘That is not possible.’ Anne says there are rumours that Joan is mad, and I have always thought this to be a foolish piece of gossip. She is strange, yes, and possessed of far greater knowledge than most wise women. But… perhaps she is out of her wits after all? She hands me a pair of woollen stockings and I pull them on. I remember the two young ruffians who threatened me.

‘What happened to those boys?’ I ask.

‘What boys?’

‘Outside. They thought I had escaped from the boarded house.’

‘You were dreaming. I saw no boys.’

I go to the door. It is a dank day with a dull grey sky. A dead-cart has stopped outside the plague house. The carter is adding two fresh occupants to his load. But they aren’t boys. They are street-hounds. Their grey tongues are dangling from their open mouths. One is black with shaggy fur, the other brown, a bearded collie-dog.

Even Paul’s Churchyard is quiet in this time of plague. The shops stand empty, their open fronts showing here a solitary printer proof-reading a chap-book, there a determined play-buyer, scrutinising a bill. When I reach Cuthbert Tottle’s shop and look inside, at first it seems deserted. All I can see is the monstrous printing press, filling the room almost to the ceiling. Then I see Cuthbert, sitting alone, head bowed, hands folded as if he is praying. He is dressed in black.

‘Mistress Lanyer,’ he says. ‘I bid you a good day.’

‘And the same to you.’

I stand, waiting for him to demand a cheerful pamphlet, or one with two-headed monsters or demon births. But, after smiling at me vaguely, he returns to the contemplation of his hands.

‘I have the cross-gartering pamphlet that you asked for,’ I say. I’ve little confidence in this. I have rarely seen a thing so dull. But I hand him my pages and he peruses them, pushing his little spectacles up his nose. I see that it is wet with tears, which set his glasses sliding down again, and what I thought was prayer is grief.

‘How is Mistress Tottle?’ I ask, as he reads. ‘I don’t see her in the shop today. I hope she is well?’ Of course, I fear the worst.

‘She died on Sunday.’

‘Oh, God rest her!’

‘It took her off in two days. I was away at Cambridge, or else I would be boarded in our house, to await the Maker with
her. On Friday she sat over there…’ he indicates her habitual place ‘…setting a psalter. She was as perfect… as perfect as… Well. I can’t bear to see the half-done words.’

I frown. ‘Mr Tottle, the pamphlet I have brought in is a very poor thing. I don’t think I should trouble you with it any further.’

Grief has not affected his head for business. He hands it back to me. ‘I can’t find fault with your description. It’s not worth sixpence,’ he says. ‘Nor even a farthing. At least your Lilith poem had some amusing passages, I seem to recall. I mean to say, they seemed amusing then…’

‘I am sorry for your loss…’ I hesitate. ‘I do have something else. Something useful for these dreadful times.’

He rises from his seat and stands awkwardly, dwarfed by the printing machine. ‘Hmm,’ he says. ‘If you can help us to survive the plague… I think I can vouch that there is an audience for that.’

‘There is this,’ I say, and give him a sheet of paper. It is Joan’s recipe for plague-juice. ‘It wards off the pestilence,’ I say. ‘It doesn’t cure it.’

‘Isn’t that what we all want? Better avoid the smallpox than survive it, with the face of a pitted toad. Better avoid the plague than dance with death.’

‘Then we might do business.’

He reads it, front and back. Then he turns it over, and reads it once again. His face brightens. ‘Very interesting. I like this. I like it very much. It needs a little background – where you found this cure, why it works, why this is the best protection known to Man. That sort of thing.’

‘I can do this.’

‘When can you bring it to me?’

‘Give me some paper and I will write more now.’

‘Would that all the pamphleteers and poets could match your industry.’

‘Would that I could match their sex.’

He brings me new paper, virgin-white. I stare at it for a moment, almost frightened to ruin its purity. But then I shake my head, sit down and write for two hours. I find that I can recall almost all of Joan’s lore and a fair bit besides. Scraps of rumour, homilies from Anne, stories of strange cures and spontaneous recoveries. A little touch of Plato adds a scholarly flourish. When I have finished, Tottle takes the pages to the window and reads my words. Finally, he says, ‘This is worth three shillings of anybody’s money.’

He pays me in silver coins and I look down at them, not sure if I have been rewarded for words or witchcraft.

There is a rat on the kitchen table, bold as you please, eating cheese off Henry’s trencher.

‘Be off with you!’ scolds Joan, thwacking it on the head with a poker. The creature barely seems to notice, but jumps off the table, a large chunk of cheese bulging out of one cheek. Its great earthworm of a tail flops into a bowl of small beer as it lollops on its way, finally disappearing into a hole in the wainscot.

‘What’s ailing Graymalkin?’ I ask. ‘Are we overfeeding him, or has he lost his taste for rat-flesh? There are more than ever this summer, I swear.’

‘On account of the weather being so warm,’ says Joan. ‘It’s not natural. I pray for rain, and a wholesome north breeze.’ She fans herself with a pamphlet I had been reading to distract myself. (The title is
Jane Anger: Her Protection for Women to defend them against the scandalous reports of a late-surfeiting Lover, and all other like Venerians that complain so to be overjoyed with women’s kindness.
Nothing about cross-gartering there, you will observe.) ‘Flaming June indeed. We are burning up.’

‘It’s the sort of weather that makes a boy want to run out and play!’ Henry is sitting at the table, grinding a knife into its side. ‘No one else but me is stuck inside, with their old serving-maid, and nothing better than rats for playmates!’

‘You stay here, where it’s safe,’ says Joan. ‘There’s another plague-house in this street, Lord save them. We must do all we can to stay away from the sick, Henry. It’s a terrible illness, and a cruel end.’

‘I don’t care,’ says Henry. ‘If I did get the plague, I wouldn’t notice any difference, seeing I am a prisoner already.’

Joan crosses herself.

‘The difference would be that you would be purple-limbed, racked with pain and burning up with fever,’ I say. ‘Instead of missing the open fields, you would have a most sincere wish for Death. And stop sawing the table.’

‘Well, I wish for Death now, if I can’t go out,’ says Henry, sawing harder. ‘I want to watch the dead-carts! I want to see a plague-pit! I want to see them pour the lime! It’s not fair!’

I smack his hand, and the knife falls to the floor. Joan crosses herself again. ‘Dear Lord,’ she says. ‘There is no reasoning with the child. Say your prayers, Henry. You are tempting Providence.’

‘I care nothing for Providence,’ says Henry. ‘I care for running and fighting and… falling over in the mud. And tree-climbing, and throwing stones at ducks and mallards, and making footballs out of dead frogs. And stealing eggs and blinding cats. All the normal things that boys must do.’

Joan shakes her head at him. ‘These are not normal times. People are dying in hedges and on the highway. They say half the prisoners in Newgate died in one night, still chained to the walls. In any case, the bells of St Sepulchre’s never stop their tolling. No wonder the new King is shut up at Greenwich and keeps out of the City.’

‘Joan is right,’ I say. ‘And it’s not just an illness, it’s a madness too.’ Sometimes the sick run mad through the streets, driven by witless spite to try to infect their fellows. They cast down their ruffs and cuffs and handkerchiefs as they go, wishing to spread contagion.

‘I care for none of that. I am not a coward.’

‘It is not a matter of cowardice, but of wisdom.’

‘Then let me help you with the plague-potion. I am wise enough for that.’

‘No, Henry,’ I say, picking up the knife. ‘It’s as disgusting as anything you could get up to with those urchin friends of yours. We are using the brain of a plague corpse…’

‘How good! Wait till I tell Tom!’

‘Which is too much of a risk for a young boy. And tell no one. We came by it by means that not everyone would approve of, least of all Father Dunstan, so don’t go blabbing on to Tom. Now, be off with you, and we will get on.’

‘Stay in, but be off with me? Be off where?’

‘Go into the vegetable garden. Or up the stairs.’

‘You are a wicked gaoler. I shall go up to the attic and look out at the sky, and watch the kites and learn to fly.’

‘So be it. Go away, you cheeky little hound.’

He runs up the stairs, in a great commotion of clumping feet.

Joan smiles wryly. ‘You’ve made a rod for your own back,’ she said. ‘The child does as he pleases.’

‘Yes, well, it’s too late now. He is what he is, and I must take the consequences.’

We set to with the potion, and Lord above, it is a filthy business. When we have done, we scour our hands clean. Then we sit at the table, drinking ale. The plague-brew is simmering on the hearth, belching out its foul odours.

‘Fetch Henry down for something to eat,’ I say to Joan.

But she comes back shaking her head. ‘He’s hid himself somewhere,’ she says. ‘There’s always something with that boy.’

‘What’s he up to now?’ I sigh. ‘I’ll soon find him.’

But the bedchambers are empty, and he isn’t in the wardrobe on the landing, or in the space under the eaves, or hiding on the balcony over the street. I climb the ladder to the attic. There is no sign of him there either. All I can hear is the rustling of rats in their nests, and the sound of their babies squeaking. Could he have climbed out upon the house-top, to look at the sky as he had promised? I open the window and see that a rope has been flung
across to the open window opposite, above the narrow street, to make a bridge. The house belongs to Anne Flood.

‘Henry! I call. I half-expect his head to appear at their window, but no. There is no reason for him to stay at Tom’s once he has made his escape. He could be anywhere.

We search both houses, from top to bottom, with Anne exclaiming over Henry’s bad behaviour, and assuring me that Tom could have nothing to do with it, as the players have been summoned to a meeting at the Globe, which has been closed due to the plague. ‘I shall send word to Tom,’ she says. ‘Heaven help us! We must tell him Henry has fled.’

‘He’ll soon turn up,’ say I. But I am sick with fear, for there is no denying it: Henry has disappeared.

‘The Lord has taken him,’ says Anne. ‘Oh, my heart goes out to you, Aemilia!’

I turn away from her. ‘He has run away, off to play somewhere. He’ll be back by dusk.’

But dusk falls, and there is still no sign of him. Fear takes hold of my body with an uncanny coldness. My limbs are heavy with dread. Yet at the same time it is impossible to stay still for one second, and I pace the house, up and down, ceaselessly, endlessly mounting the stairs, searching each chamber, looking under the beds, climbing up into the attic and sticking my head out of the window. I even go to the outside privy several times, as if he might have found himself some cranny to hide inside that malodorous place. At last I can bear it no longer. I set out, torch in hand, leaving Joan to wait for his possible return.

In the City, bells toll, marking not the hour but the passing of the dead. The evening is close and airless. A raven flies over my head, giving out its strange, throaty call.
Prruk-prruk-prruk.
An ill omen, if I needed one. Where can I look? Where might he have gone? If Tom has been at the Globe all day, there is no reason to think that Henry is with him. In any case, the Globe is on the other side of the river. Going by the Bridge is too far round, and
he doesn’t have money for the wherryman. He would be more likely to head for the fields and woods. But then, he also likes to frisk along the outer walls of Whitehall Palace, fencing with himself and shrieking out in mock agony when the invisible blade strikes home. I can almost hear his high voice. ‘Ooh! Aargh! Have at thee, knave! I bowel you – dead man!’ My little Henry, wandering alone in the plague-ridden City.

Oh, Lord! Curse the boy! Or rather, bless him, protect him, deliver him from harm! I walk, as fast as I can, along Long Ditch and towards Camm Row, my breath heaving in my chest. If this is God’s way of punishing me as an unfit mother, then it is roughly in proportion to his other punishments – an eternity of hellfire for a life that mixes sin with sorrow. From time to time I call Henry’s name, in an agony of rage and pain.

I hold my crackling torch high against the dark sky, and what I behold looks like one of the old church wall paintings of the Dance of Death. I see a blasted, empty place. Deserted houses, blind and shuttered. An old woman, on her hands and knees, puking into the stinking kennel in the middle of the street. A skinny boy, carrying a limp baby. Here is a dead-cart rattling by me, loaded with corpses. Some are bundled in sheets; others are naked, mouths gaping open like landed fish.

I call out to the carter, ‘You haven’t seen a little boy, have you sir? A boy of ten or so. Yellow-headed and skittish.’ My voice sounds unreal in this weird place. I meant ‘haired’ not ‘headed’, and in my mind I see Henry-as-monster, skull gold-painted.

‘Not if he’s alive,’ says the friendly fellow, hunched and faceless. ‘I deal in Death. I don’t see the living.’

‘You might have seen him running along somewhere. You can’t miss him. He’s – bold and bonny. Noisy. You’d be sure to remember.’ I’m smiling at him, as if this might encourage him to recall my child.

‘Take a look in the cart if you’ve a mind,’ he says. ‘I’ve got all sizes in there. Might be one of about that age, if you’re lucky.’

I turn away, too brimful of horror to answer back in my normal way. The house before me is boarded – not a plague-house, but a grand merchant’s home, left in a hurry. A sack of flour is spilled across the doorway, evidence of the hasty departure of the occupants. Against one of the wood-shuttered windows, a pamphlet has been posted. It is a warning from the City fathers, recounting a litany of causes of the plague. The fault lies with ‘
runnygate
Jews, thrasonical and unlettered chemists, shifting and outcast pettifoggers, dull-pated and base mechanics, stage-players, pedlars, prittle-prattling bawds, toothless and tattling old wives’,
and many more. I read the words in a trance-state close to despair. I can’t stop looking. But where should I go? The very ground hungers for corpses and sucks them in, nameless and unshriven. I say a prayer, a wordless, secret prayer, for my mind is blank of proper thoughts.

Then, I remember Henry’s words – he wanted to see a dead-cart, and a plague-pit. Of course he did. Though the streets are empty and the populace lives in terror of this cruel distemper, gawpers crowd round the rims of the mass graves to wonder at the twisted faces of the dead. So, as I have no idea where to find him, I will follow the dead-cart to its destination.

I walk some distance from the cart, keeping it in view as I follow it along the road. From time to time the driver calls out, ‘Cast out your dead! Any dead bodies to bury? Cast out your dead!’ But the houses are silent.

Then, behind me, another shout goes up. ‘Have you any more Londoners to bury, hey down a down dery, have you any more Londoners to bury, good morrow and good day?’ I turn to look, and see two fellows behind me. The first is shabbily dressed and with a beard somewhat wild and untrimmed. The other is thicker-set, and looks more prosperous. His face is shadowed by his feathered hat. I quicken my pace, even though all there is to protect me is a cart loaded with corpses.

‘Madam,’ a voice calls out. ‘A fine night for barn owls, and cut-throats. Not so fine for the likes of you.’

I answer without slowing down. ‘A fine night for finding my son, I hope.’

‘You look to find him in a grave? You will be lucky.’

‘I look to find him above ground. He is not ill, he is merely disobedient.’

‘Ah, the disobedient roaring boys! London would not be the same without them. Myself, I pray they live forever. For if London’s underworld is the map of merry hell, then they are the dancing devils sent to please us.’

‘Shush, Dekker, shush!’ says the other man, grasping his arm. ‘It is she.’

I know that voice only too well. The cart has lumbered to a halt, and the driver has gone into a house. I stop and wait till the two men catch up with me, knowing now that I have nothing to fear from them. No danger to my life, in any case. And I realise, as they come closer and our three torches make a bright space in the night, that I know both of them. The first is Thomas Dekker, a boy actor with the Lord Chamberlain’s Men when I was Hunsdon’s mistress, who has now turned his hand to writing. An eager, lively fellow, who is smiling now even in this earthly hell. I know the other fellow better, even when he hides behind his cloak and keeps his head bowed in the guttering torchlight.

‘This is a strange time to be out,’ say I. ‘Did you come to take the air?’

‘Aemilia,’ says Will. ‘Forgive me, but Tom Flood told us your son was lost. And I wanted to… It seemed fitting to come to see where he might be.’

‘I assure you, sir, I have no need of help from anyone.’

‘You are white as alabaster,’ says Will. ‘The poor child! God bless him.’

‘Indeed, madam, you do not look well,’ says Dekker. ‘We will escort you, and I am sure we shall find this naughty son of yours.
Why, the whole City is running mad, but there is no need to fear for one quick boy who can outrun the pestilence.’

I know this is untrue, but I’m grateful for his cheerful tone.

‘We will search with you, whether you like it or not,’ says Will.

The flames illuminate his dark eyes and I see his fear, and I remember how he stared at Henry at the Globe. There is no mistaking the similarity between them.

Dekker’s spirits seem unaffected by our two drawn faces. ‘It’s a pretty place, indeed!’ he says. He gestures around him, as if to include the silent houses, the red crosses daubed on the doors and the weeds that grow on each side of the kennel. ‘I am tired of being a poet to whores and strumpets. So I am writing a pamphlet on the plague.’

‘A gloomy subject, as I am sure Mistress Lanyer will testify,’ says Will.

We walk on together. My mind is so fixed on finding Henry, and the fear of not finding him, that I accept Will’s presence as part of the nightmare chaos that surrounds me.

‘Never was a vile contagion so badly run,’ says Dekker. ‘The Corporation hires women to keep their eye upon the sick and dying, and insists they are all sober and ancient. But instead they are a bunch of blear-eyed, drunken night-crows.’ He lowers his voice. ‘As for the likes of that one up ahead – I swear they hire these carters from Satan’s own stable-yard. Nasty, foul-mouthed breed. Too brute and slovenly to make recruits for hangmen.’