Dark Aemilia (6 page)

Having deceived Hunsdon and borne silent witness to Wriothesley’s peculiar sodomy, I am trembling with shock and fear. Yet once I am in Will’s bed I forget all my terror, and what we do now is like no other love-making that I have ever known, such is its silence and its slow tenderness. As we twist and rock together, I feel my mind fill with a profound sweetness, and I smile as I kiss him, locked closer, closer till we finish as one creature, still soundless, deeply bound. There is such joy in me that I am shocked to find that we are soaked with tears. And when we both lie tangled in my loose black hair, Will whispers, ‘We are married now, my love. I have no wife but you.’

We lie silent for a long time. Will strokes the round mole at my throat.

‘What’s this, my little sorceress,’ he says, ‘if not your third dug, where you give suck to your familiar?’

‘Shall you be my familiar, then?’

‘I would be nothing else, if it were possible.’

‘Do you ever wonder if the creatures of the night are those that God did not get quite right?’ I ask, dreamily.

He is busy kissing the mole upon my neck, but begins to shake with silent laughter. ‘Such as what, my strange one? Such as yourself?’

‘Well, both of us are wide awake when others sleep. So you are night-odd too…’ I laugh myself, and twist my neck away. ‘But I meant – badgers, hedgehogs, moles. Or bats. All the odd things that are queer to look at.’

‘What of the owls, though?’ says Will. ‘An owl is perfect.’

‘Perhaps he is the king of all nocturnal beasts,’ I say. ‘Unrivalled beneath the moon. He rules us too.’

His lifts his shadowed face to stare into my eyes with mock puzzlement. ‘What
are
you, Bassano?’ he asks. ‘Where did they find you?’

‘I found a bat once, fallen from the roof beams,’ I whisper.

‘Foolish bat, if it could not fly better!’ says Will, kissing his way from my neck to my breasts.

‘It was a baby, hardly bigger than two farthings,’ say I, gasping as he begins to suck. ‘I kept it in a little box and fed it with cow’s milk in a thimble, and it grew to full size, though I never would have thought it possible.’

‘Your witch’s magic, I have no doubt of it.’ His hands are creeping down, over the skin of my belly.

‘Afterwards, it made its home in the eaves of my apartment, and I would see it at dusk, spinning around the roof beams with sightless ease. And it would still come down and drink milk from a saucer, like a tiny flying cat.’

‘Fortunate bat, to sip from your saucer!’ His fingers have found their place, and he begins to jerk them in a rhythm that I know and love, and for some time neither of us speaks, but go at it bat-like, knowing our way.

‘I cannot bear to be without you,’ I say at last. ‘I cannot live like this, divided, like Judas.’

‘What else can we do?’ says Will. ‘Where else can we go?’

‘I don’t know,’ I say. I think of Hunsdon, pumping away with his old man’s wiry passion, and feel the bile rise in my throat. ‘I cannot bear to lie with Hunsdon! I am no better than a tavern whore, turning tricks for trinkets.’

‘This is our world,’ he says, with his arms around me. ‘There is no escape, except when we are lost together, and it’s those times that we must think of, and seek out, and keep safe.’

I kiss his ink-black, cunt-wet fingers.

‘Why can’t your words save us? Why can’t we set up in some fine house, Lord and Lady Letters? Why must it be so squalid and profane?’

‘Aemilia.’ He strokes my hair. ‘Before I knew this, I knew nothing. Nothing of love, and what I knew of life was book-learned, or filched from other poets, or sketched to please the crowd. My plays were martial, my poetry a forged confection, like a sugar-swan. No more. No more.’

‘What – and you were married? And had little children? And this taught you nothing?’

‘Nothing of this,’ he whispers into my hair. ‘Of
eros
and its wondrous madness. I love you, and, if that is wrong, so be it.’

Then sleep comes. I wake and hear the sweet song of the nightingale and see a faint light round the shuttered window. Sitting upright, I notice that the candle has burned right down. Will is fast asleep, curled into his pillow. I kiss his sleeping mouth, slip from the bed, pull on my nightgown and shawl and leave with anxious haste. I retrace my steps as quickly as I dare but, as I pass Wriothesley’s door, it opens. A figure steps out and stands in my path. I am filled with horror. It is the young earl, in a splendid purple robe, like some Roman pontiff. In the half-light, I can only see his outline, slim and flimsy as a girl, and the pale aureole of his curling hair, which hangs loose about him.

‘What’s this?’ he says, in a loud voice, more suited to the daytime.

I stare at him, in an agony of horror.

‘It’s Hunsdon’s pretty mistress, if I’m not mistaken? Pert Aemilia, the bed-wise scholar.’

‘It is, my lord.’ He may speak as loudly as he wishes; I will whisper.

‘What are you about, my swarthy little puss? Why are you not with his lordship, in his chamber?’

‘I was restless, my lord.’

‘Restless! Oh, my sweet lady. You should have come to me – and with me – sweet and stealthy restlessness of woman! I would have given you no rest at all.’

‘I have been… walking in the garden,’ I say. ‘My mind was disturbed. I sometimes walk at night.’

Wriothesley comes towards me and kneels down. I see that the grey light is casting day-shapes on the dark landing – here a carved chair, there a great urn. Hunsdon might be waking up, and wondering where I am. He picks up the hem of my nightgown and scrutinises it carefully. He looks up at me, his blue eyes suddenly illuminated in a ray of morning light.

‘No dew on your gown, I see.’ He stands up and comes close, so I can smell the semen on him. ‘But I daresay you are drenched… in some other place.’

I smile at him, desperate. ‘When I came to myself I was standing upon the pathway, looking up at the moon,’ I say, twisting my hands together. ‘Sometimes my night-walks bring forth new ideas for poems.’

‘Indeed!’ He smirks, and kisses me lightly on the cheek. ‘Perhaps one day you will write a poem for me.’

The performance is the cause of much excitement. The beauteous Rosaline has made a great impression on our host. Yet I find myself distracted all the way through. Will is playing Berowne, and his words make me ache. I cannot look at him. After it is over, the Queen announces that she must see the gardens and out we spill, out of the dark Play-Room, down the handsome staircase and out into the square of summer light. A storm has soaked the fields and gardens and disappeared without a trace, so that the dripping trees and heavy flowers have the brightness of spring, and yet are deep-coloured with summer’s heavier hues.

The Queen and her ladies process along the wide garden paths, surveying the knot garden and fanning themselves as they
talk and laugh. I fall behind them, so tired that black shards of night faze in and out of my sight. I feel sick and strange, wishing in one part of myself that I could leave all this spoiled and rotten life behind me, and enter some cool nunnery and pray my way slowly back to God. I am sick of Greeks, and Romans, and learning; sick of fine clothes and smart words and the ways of Court, in which everything is permissible if the Queen wishes or approves it, or does not deign to notice it.

Indeed, I am so worn out that I do not at first notice that Will has fallen into step beside me.

‘How are you today, my love?’ he asks.

I turn to look behind me, but no one is walking within earshot. ‘I am well, sir,’ I say.

‘What do you think of all this?’ he asks, indicating the wide garden which has subjugated Nature with such ruthless symmetry.

‘It is very fine.’

‘Could you see yourself in such a place? A country lady?’

‘Certainly not! The life of a country lady consists mostly of praying, walking, Bible-reading and being unwell.’

Will throws his head back and laughs delightedly. ‘God’s teeth, you have a way with words, Aemilia! What a summary!’

‘Ssh, do not laugh so loudly. Hunsdon will hear you.’ I look across the knot garden to the far window. Hunsdon and his advisors are in an important huddle, discussing affairs of state. The Queen and her ladies have settled down in a leafy bower. A lute-player is hurrying towards them, as if anxious to stave off the spectre of boredom with his sweet songs.

Will is abruptly serious. ‘At least a country lady has a place. A position.’

‘Oh, surely. She is planted in her lord’s estate, like an oak tree, and she must manage servants and clink with keys to all that must be locked and tidy. For variety, she may admire her fine linen or fish for trout.’

‘A pleasant enough existence.’

‘While her lord parades himself at Court, perhaps gaming, perhaps fornicating, and probably amusing himself around the town or at the theatre. Did I miss my vocation, in being too much the bastard whore to make a proper match? I think not.’

‘You are a woman, Aemilia. You cannot rise above that.’

‘Why not? If Our Lord rules over all the magnificence and violence of Creation, then why must his women be so timid and obedient?’

‘Aemilia –’

‘All of it is His – the wolves and roaring bears, the wild boar, the proud lion, the swift claws of the eagle and the kite.’

‘Madam, if I may only speak –’

But I will have my say. ‘Think of it all – the secret vastness of the great Leviathan that slides, lightless and unclassified, beneath the mighty ocean. And we placid little Marthas may have the hearth.’

‘You are too clever for this old game. You should rule kingdoms, not that dotard Hunsdon.’

‘Ay, that would be a fine thing. Except that our Prince is also the keeper of her own prison. She rules her own spirit quite as harshly as she rules any of us.’

We walk on in silence for a while, with a cautious space between us. Only my skirt touches him as it swishes along the path.

‘What riles me is the littleness of learning,’ I say, suddenly.

‘The what? Is this more of your philosophy?’

‘The facts and factions, the scholars in their ponderousness of robes and competition and self-display and mutual vilification.’

‘Ha! Yes. Now this, I like.’

‘How can any man know a little and not crave to know much more – the “all” that is the sum of what we have? To go beyond the walls of this fine college or that one, and be Godlike in his wisdom, so that the map of all learning is stretched before his gaze?’

‘They are gentlemen. They have nothing more to prove.’

‘I cannot credit it, the narrow, self-regarding focus of the scholar on his portion of Cicero and Seneca, his puffed-upness with it, his satisfaction with the verse he’s stuffed whole into his empty head. For every Bacon there are a thousand lettered dolts.’

‘Lady, what fuels this rage? You speak like no one else I know.’

‘Oh, yes, I should calm myself. I am just a woman, accidentally and freakishly deformed by teaching which took no regard of my station, nor of my sex.’

Will stops and turns to face me. ‘God above, you’re like a maze, with every twist and turn taking me further from the sober world! Such anger and…’ here he swallows ‘…such ardour. I never knew anything like the earthly joy you spun with me last night. I keep thinking of your soft tears in the darkness, and how they mixed with mine.’

‘My love,’ I whisper. ‘We must be cool in daylight.’

‘And of… Jesu. I am sick with love for you, Aemilia. I am ill with it.’

‘Will, be quiet, don’t speak of these things in this place! Be cautious!’

‘I cannot be cautious and love you. I must be reckless, or give you up.’

‘No, sir, you must be cautious and not give me up!’

‘How does Rosaline compare to Katherine?’ he asks, abruptly.

‘How… what?’

‘It is the man who is quelled in this tale, don’t you see it? Who must cool his ardour and his arrogance to win his love. She is as far removed from that poor Shrew as I could make her. And she is darkly beautiful, like another lady that I know.’

I can’t help laughing in spite of myself. ‘There is a message in that play for me, is there?’

‘It’s a love letter to my own fine, clever Rosaline, who makes me think and makes me weep and will not let me have my way.’

‘Oh, sir! Now you are playing with me! How have you been thwarted? Why, there is not a man alive who has got his way with me as you have, or for whom I’ve taken greater risks!’

A drop of rain falls heavily on my hand. I look up, and see the storm clouds have returned. The knot garden is empty, and we are standing at a stone gate, at the furthest side from the house.

He is standing closer now, and as the new rain falls he pushes me into the gateway and I see there is a tiny room within it, with a stone slit for a window and a cracked oak door.

‘Will, I…’

But I move first, kissing him so hard I bite his lip and taste his blood, and as the storm breaks with a clattering roar of thunder we fall together in the garden room, and he kicks the door shut and somehow my skirts are undone and I am in my under-shift wedged halfway up the wall, and Will is tight inside me pushing higher with each shuddering breath, and I am shouting with each thunderclap, as nearly mad as I have ever been, and as close to Heaven as I’ll ever come. Unless God is more forgiving than I dare to hope.

This is a fervent time, and I must remember it. I must keep it with me. I am writing notes on what we do, and how we love, all of them in Hebrew, which I know Hunsdon can never read. It is a sad fact of our lives that it is easier to convey pain and sorrow than pleasure and happiness – I trust that in the afterlife we shall find perfection more to our liking. This is a passion that transforms me, and a love that makes the world glitter. It is nothing like drunkenness, nor like witchcraft neither: it is like being reborn in Eden. And I have him: he is mine and no one else’s. And I am his: no other man comes close. What happened to us before, and whatever sadness may come after – they cannot touch this period of our glorious rapture. Will belongs to me, and I rejoice in my dominion, and he is at once my equal and my lord.

We snatch at time together when we can, not just lustful but curious, and hungry to know each other’s minds. We read together and write together, and laugh and weep and whisper in that secret room. And yet it’s true, our wildest rapture is to
occupy
each other, in that modern phrase, and each time we lie together we count it a miracle, and wonder if a greater ecstasy could be reached than that which we knew in our last coupling; and each time it turns out that it can. Such is the way with new lovers when their bodies match.

The greatest miracle, I must say, is that for many months no child comes of all this exultant fornication. But Nature will have its way in the end, as Nature must. And there is no question: keeping two lovers makes me careless and distracted, for I
have been a watchful, canny mistress for many years. I used to keep myself away from Hunsdon at my fertile times, and if my curse was late I would take a vile cure made from mandrake root. Which did its work, though each draught nearly killed me. I proceeded with these treatments with such success that I have come to think I must be barren, or that Hunsdon’s seed is spent.

It turns out that, rather than being barren, I am like a mossy bank in springtime, ready to burst forth with new life. One day, soon after Michaelmas, I realise that my curse-blood is late. I cannot remember when it last flowed. Quite unconcerned, and confident that I can soon put this to rights, I say nothing. I take my usual draught of poison, pinching my nose to get it down. Then I wait for the blood to come, calmly enough to start with. But this time nothing happens, excepting only that my belly seems tighter than a drum. I take another draught, a heftier dose this time, which gives me fearful cramps. This time I am certain the brew has done its work, and wait once again. Again, nothing. Now, with mounting fear, I begin to pray for my deliverance, though it is of course against the teachings of Our Lord to ask for an unborn child to die. Night after night, I lie awake, dry-eyed. I know only too well what happens to a kept mistress who finds herself in this predicament. She is cast off, and sent away. I must free myself. I must get rid of it.

But who will help me? There is no one I can trust, no one I can turn to. Dr Forman might have a tincture he can give me, but I am not certain he would keep the secret. My dugs – so recently the size of winter apples – have swelled up so they seem ready to burst out of my bodice, and are painful to the touch. And I seem to have gained a layer of fat, even though everything I eat tastes like pewter. If I were a pig, I would soon be ready for the pot. I am nauseous and dizzy and can barely think. The pregnancy itself seems like a spell. I sleep in dream snatches, and see Will and Hunsdon fuck together, and wake twisted in the bed-sheets, crying out.

At last my head clears. Hunsdon has gone away, to execute some Catholics at York. And I hold Will off, writing a coded note to say I am too ill to meet him in our little room. Which is no more than the truth. If I am to do something to save myself, the time to act is now.

Alice, as luck would have it, is a stupid, unobservant girl, who lives most vividly in the looking glass. Thus, she sees nothing strange in my repeated bouts of puking.

‘Dear me, mistress, what have you eaten?’ says she, fetching me a cup of small beer as I empty my guts into the close stool. ‘You’ve been ill for days! And yet you’re no thinner – there’s a marvel!’

‘A marvel indeed,’ I say, sipping from the cup. My mind is sharper after this last horrid spewing-up, as if I have rid myself of some internal confusion along with my breakfast. ‘We must go out.’

‘Are you sure you’re well enough, mistress? You’re very pale.’

‘I am well enough to visit an apothecary,’ I say. ‘To seek a cure for this unpleasant malady.’

‘Oh, but I could go for you,’ says the girl, all eager. I know why: she will have the chance to prance past the law students at Middle Temple, showing off her pretty clothes, though they are like as not more interested in Aristotle’s ‘Refutations’ than in her Spanish ruff. ‘Oh – please let me!’

‘No, Alice, we shall both go. Hurry up, and don’t start messing with your cap. I’m well enough now, but may soon be worse again.

Most of the apothecaries’ shops are found in Bucklersbury, a narrow street which winds away from Cheapside. In the swirling City stenches this is a place which offers a rare delight to Londoners, for you can smell it half a mile away, such is the sweet
scent of its herbs and spices. But, of the hundred apothecaries who trade in the City, I have heard that half are useless and the rest are cozeners. On most occasions I send a servant to see Ned Hollybushe, whose father has wrote an excellent book upon this subject. But today…

‘Why here, mistress? Off the beaten way?’ asks Alice. ‘This is not our usual man!’ We have arrived in a cramped courtyard, which reeks even more strongly than the busy street. The jutting storeys of the ancient houses make it dusk at midday. An open shop front stands before us, the counter folded out so that – in theory – we can see within. But all that is visible is the shop sign, which is a hanging tortoise. Behind this I can see nothing.

‘Wait here,’ I say.

‘Oh, but, mistress…’

‘Do what I tell you.’

And, with that, I push open the door of the shop and go inside. What strikes me first is its exotic scent, something between the smell of cumin and sweet basil. But as I look around me I see that the shop is very different from what I have been expecting. Though it is ill lit, there is a shaft of sunlight coming from a window set high in the wall, and I see that it is a larger space than had seemed possible from the street. The walls are dull red and lined with shelves, upon which are ranged pots and pitchers and drug-jars made of blue and white porcelain, painted with red and blue flowers and symbols and marked with the name of the herb or spice which they contain. On the floor beside the counter is a giant pestle and mortar, as big as a bucket. Everything is polished and clean, so that the falling rays of sunlight are reflected in the shining surfaces. So much precision and order, such neatness – I confess I am surprised.

Behind the counter stands the apothecary, Widow Daunt. She wears a white bonnet, and her face is sallow and deeply lined. Her expression is somewhat sour, as if a shop like hers might do very well if only she didn’t have the bother of serving customers.
But there is no shortage of these. Joan Daunt is well known for her foul but cunning remedies.

Indeed, there are two people at the counter. A tall woman and her old manservant. The woman is wearing a fine wool cloak and her golden hair is arranged with great care. She turns to look as I come in, and I see that she has an old, shrivelled face, which is out of keeping with her good clothes and upright carriage. Her pretty hair must be a wig.

‘Is that all you have to say?’ she asks, turning back to look at Widow Daunt.

‘All what?’ asks the Widow. She has a surly manner, for a shopkeeper.

‘That you can do nothing else for me?’

‘What I have to say, madam, is that you came to me for an elixir to make you beautiful. Sparing your feelings as best I may, I told you no such thing exists, and gave you what I could, instead. And that was a potion to make a young man
think
you comely, at least for the space of one night.’

‘Wine can accomplish that much,’ says the woman.

‘Indeed it can, and I told you at the time that there was wine in that mixture and by all accounts it did its work.’

‘He loved for one night, that is true.’

‘So our deal is sound.’

The woman draws breath deeply, and I realise that she is on the brink of tears.

‘It is not enough, Mistress Daunt! I demand more! I want more from you!’

Joan Daunt leans forward across the counter. ‘What more would that be, mistress?’

‘I want him to love me!’ wails the woman. ‘I had him! I had him for one night – and what joy it was! And, when day broke, he looked down on me and fled the chamber. Make him love me! I demand you make him love me!’

‘How shall I do such a thing?’

‘Give me another potion! A stronger one this time.’ She nods, and the manservant produces a money bag.

‘Something to make him love you for longer?’ asks Widow Daunt.

‘I want you to make me young again. And beautiful. Forever. I have money. I don’t care what pain I suffer, or how vile the treatment.’

Widow Daunt seems to find this a very good joke. ‘Madam, I am an apothecary, not Almighty God. Take your business elsewhere. Or you could always pray.’

The woman nods to the servant and he takes the Widow by the shoulders. ‘Do as my mistress says, or take the consequences,’ he says. ‘Do it, old woman, or you will suffer for it.’

‘Get away with you, you buffoon!’ says the Widow. ‘I will not be spoken to like that in my own shop! Get out, the pair of you!’

Then the woman leans forward and slaps her hard, across the face.

This is quite enough. I throw the hood from my head and approach them. ‘Kindly do the Widow’s bidding and leave this shop, if you have no further business,’ I say. ‘I have waited long enough to be served, and you are wasting my time as well as insulting her. You can’t bully your way to beauty, madam, nor bribe your looks back from Time. They’ve gone, and there’s an end to it.’

The woman turns her tear-stained face to me. ‘It is all very well for
you
,’ she says. ‘Old age comes to all of us, but
you
are still young.’

‘Get out, the pair of you,’ I say. ‘Leave the Widow be, and go about your business.’

The servant keeps his grasp. I draw out Hunsdon’s
paper-knife
and point it at his neck. ‘This knife was given me by the great John Dee himself. There is venom in this blade. One prick from this and you’ll fall stone dead, right on the spot. The last
person to feel its point lived for just two minutes. It’s not a sight I’d wish to see again.’

The servant lets go of the widow and leans away from me, his veined eyes full of terror.

‘Who on
earth
are you?’ shrieks the woman. ‘Who is John Dee to you?’

‘I am Queen Mab,’ I say, ‘for all it’s got to do with you.’

The strange pair leave. Joan Daunt waits until the door bangs shut, and then turns to look at me. She seems neither alarmed nor grateful for my help.

‘How can I help you?’ she asks, looking me over. ‘I see you have plenty of need for cures.’

‘Do you, indeed?’ A wave of sickness comes over me.

‘You’ll end up keeping it,’ she says.

‘Keeping what?’

‘The child.’

‘I never said…’

‘You didn’t have to.’

‘Well, you are quite wrong. I do want rid of it..’

‘Yes, but I just told you –’

‘I need something strong. And I don’t mind what you put in it. A hanged man’s sperm is fine with me. It can burn my womb out, for all I care.’

‘So that you could never have a child?’

‘Why should I want one? All they do is bind you, and I am bound enough already.’

The Widow stares at me, and I see something unexpected: kindness. ‘Sit down,’ she says. ‘I’ll do you something. But you won’t drink it.’

She collects together some jars and bottles, takes out a pestle and mortar – of larger than usual size – and fills it with leaves and fragments, which she begins to grind. Then she scoops a hideous little fish from a jar and scrapes the scales from its wriggling form. These she places into a clay burner and a most obnoxious
perfume fills the air. What she has made – a sickly, semi-liquid paste, the colour of a dog turd – she squeezes into a tiny vial and stops with wax.

‘Your remedy,’ she says, handing it to me. ‘Swallow it in one draught. The babe will come out in three spasms, whole and pulsing, but too small for you to see its face. It will be dead in five minutes.’

I open my mouth to speak, but she holds up her finger.

‘Be careful. You are in a bad way. And your old life is over, have no doubt of that. And… when you need me, send word.’

‘I have servants, Mistress Daunt. I am well cared for.’

‘Nonetheless, I wait upon your word. And, when I hear from you, then I will come. Remember that.’

I look at the vial and its horrid contents, puzzled. The potion is not still, but heaves and oozes, as if in some low kind of pain. And the stench is such that I can smell it through its coat of glass.