The Dark Lady's Mask (13 page)

“In truth, I do not,” the Countess said. “But your verses to Her Majesty were most accomplished.”

The lady's manner was benevolent, yet there remained an air of distance.

They don't dare snub me,
Aemilia sensed, as Lord Hunsdon introduced her to the other high-ranking courtiers.
Yet I will never be their peer.
A mistress, not a wife, and certainly no aristocrat, she was here only because the Lord Chamberlain was so besotted with her. But she strove to hide her anxieties behind her smile.

The aging Queen surrounds herself in beauty,
Lord Hunsdon had told Aemilia.
You shall be the exotic flower of her court, a dark Italian rose amongst the English lilies.

Aemilia knew she could not help but stand out from the other ladies and that this was precisely what had first drawn Lord Hunsdon to her even before she threw herself at his mercy. Her youth, musical virtuosity, education, and Italian flair held a gleaming mirror to her lover's power and refined tastes. Aemilia knew she was Mary Sidney Herbert's equal in education, and she even surpassed her in languages. Had Susan Bertie only known that the humanist education she had given her had made Aemilia the Lord Chamberlain's perfect courtesan.

Her lover introduced her to George Clifford, the Earl of Cumberland and Her Majesty's champion of the tiltyard, and to his wife Margaret, one of the most trusted Ladies of the Bedchamber.

George Clifford gave Aemilia a look of frank appraisal before kissing her hand. He exchanged a smile with Lord Hunsdon, as though congratulating him on his choice. To conceal her discomfort, Aemilia dropped in an even deeper curtsy before his wife, laying all her respect at the lady's feet in hope that she wouldn't wish her dead.

Margaret seemed as quiet and reserved as her husband was bold and extravagant, her eyes filled with a resignation that pierced Aemilia far more deeply than arrogance or even hatred would have done. It appeared her husband's eye for other women was nothing new to Margaret Clifford.

Do these aristocratic wives view me as a traitor to womanhood?
Aemilia wondered. Anne Locke's admonition haunted her—
remember this, my dear, you must cherish your own sex.
She asked herself if Anne Locke would still speak to her now that she had thrown away her virtue.

Curtsying before the Countess of Bedford, Aemilia wondered if the ladies of court were making secret bets as to how long she would last as the Lord Chamberlain's mistress before he tired of her. Even if he remained constant, he was sixty-one to her sixteen and would die long before she did. Who would want her when he was finished with her? Whenever Aemilia dropped her guard and allowed her thoughts to wander, she heard Mary de Vere's accusing voice.
Whore!
Hadn't Aemilia sold herself to the richest and most powerful man she could find?

“Why do you look so grim, my love?” Lord Hunsdon whispered. “Enchant them as you enchanted me. They will eat like doves from your hand. Let them see your beautiful smile.”

Aemilia blushed to see him gaze at her like that, with undisguised adoration, as though she were a shining goddess. Unlike those miserable wives trapped in dynastic marriages, she had a fervent lover who treasured her. She lived in a fine house in Longditch, Westminster, where she entertained him by playing the virginals and lute until he led her upstairs to bed. Was this new life of hers not paradise itself, a world apart from what her sister had endured?
There are far worse fates than being a kept woman.

At the far end of the Royal Presence Chamber, her Bassano cousins in the Queen's Musicke struck up a galliard. She could hardly wait for the opportunity to throw her arms around Jasper and reunite with her kin. But now she turned to Lord Hunsdon, who took her hand and led her in the dance.

And so she surrendered to the effervescence of court life, smiling at the ladies as though she were one of them and dancing with one earl after another, confident in the knowledge that no man would dare take liberties with the Lord Chamberlain's mistress.
Wear the mask of frivolity and charm until you become it.

 

HE ROYAL MUSICIANS PLAYED
an oriental air as Aemilia glided to the center of the candlelit stage. Her black hair flowed loosely, crowned in a diadem of golden wire twisted into fantastical shapes. Diaphanous silks flowed around her gown. At her breast she wore an ankh. With her every sinuous step and gesture, she sought to embody Cleopatra. Flanking her were two young ladies who played Cleopatra's maids. At Aemilia's feet lay the handsome young Earl of Southampton in the role of the dead Antony.

Aemilia was by now a woman of twenty-three, Lord Hunsdon's paramour for seven years. Only one thing shadowed her happiness, but she forced it into the farthest recesses of her mind.

Through her painted mask, she gazed at her audience. There, surrounded by her courtiers, sat the Queen, her face transfixed by the spectacle on stage. Elizabeth's many jewels twinkled and glimmered as if her person encompassed all the starry heavens. At Her Majesty's right, Lord Hunsdon appeared almost as regal as the monarch in his black-velvet doublet gleaming with gold braid. As Lord Chamberlain, he was responsible for court entertainment. Nothing made him prouder than when Aemilia shone in the masque, she the moon reflecting his sun. His look of tenderness softened her belly and nearly threw her out of character. Her lover had just returned from a sojourn with his family at their country house. Aemilia tried not to think too much about that part of his life.

Aware of the many eyes on her—even the court musicians had laid down their instruments to watch the masque—Aemilia burst into her speech, framing her every word with the passion and pathos of a woman who blamed herself for her beloved's ruin.

That I have thee betrayed, dear Antony,

My life, my soul, my sun? I had such thought?

That I have betrayed thee, my Lord, my King?

That I would break my vowed faith to thee?

Leave thee? Deceive thee? Yield thee to the rage

Of mighty foe? I ever had that heart?

Rather sharp lightning strike my head,

Rather may I to deepest mischief fall,

Rather the opened earth devour me.

This masque was drawn from Mary Sidney Herbert's translation of Robert Garnier's
Marc Antoine
. Aemilia reveled in her role, in delivering each exquisite line, only regretting that the poet and translator was not present—the Countess was away at her estate, tending to her sick child.

Beneath her mask, Aemilia's skin grew clammy. If only it wasn't so overpoweringly hot. Too many candle flames and bodies crowded into one room. Too many layers of clothing against her skin. Her stomach churned, but she made herself ignore it. Perhaps she had laced her stays too tightly.

The taste of bile flooded her mouth. The floor pitched and her world turned black.

S
HE HAD FALLEN TO
the bottom of a dank pit. So far down, she could no longer reach the light. Until something damp touched her face. Her eyes snapped open to see Margaret Clifford holding a wet cloth to her cheek. Aemilia wrenched her head away, unable to bear the quiet pity in Margaret's eyes.

She lay on a bed in an unfamiliar room. Her bodice and stays had been opened to expose her thin linen shift and the swollen breasts and belly she had been so determined to conceal. Ladies crowded round, murmuring as though she were still unconscious.

“She's five months on at the very least.”

“Fainting in the middle of the masque! She might as well scream from the rooftops that she's heavy with Lord Hunsdon's bastard.”

Their voices fell abruptly silent as Lord Hunsdon marched into the room.

“Leave us,” he told them, his voice like ice.

Aemilia tried to force herself up and close her stays, but there was no time. Her lover was already standing at her bedside. He was so tall, so far above her as she lay there.

“Henry,” she said, looking up through her tears.

She had never seen him so angry. It was enough to send her tumbling back down into that void.

“How long did you think to hide this from me? How could this have even happened? I thought you were taking care.”

She closed her eyes. “By my troth, I was taking care.”

She had been absolutely vigilant in her use of pessaries of wool soaked in vinegar to prevent conception. At the first sign of her tardy menses, she had imbibed countless decoctions of hay madder boiled in beer, to no avail. To think that Lord Hunsdon had kept her for seven years only for her own body to betray her.

“The Queen will not stand for this,” he said. “A most undignified end to your time at court, I must say.”

“So I am to be banished.” Aemilia stared at the ceiling because she no longer dared meet his eyes. Was he so furious because this had humiliated
him
? How could her life change so completely in the course of an hour?

“Don't carry on like that,” he snapped, as she began to sob. “You should count yourself fortunate. If you were a lady of high birth, the Queen would throw you in the Tower.”

Though Her Majesty tolerated mistresses, the mothers of bastards were punished and ostracized.
My life is over.
Aemilia watched her lover edge away, as though thoroughly disgusted by her.

“Henry, I beg you, please don't leave.” She held out her hand until he took it.

For a long moment, he sat at the edge of the bed and stroked her hair while she clung to him and wept. For a fleeting instant, he rested his hand on her belly. His lips cool against hers, he gave her his parting kiss. Then he stood and walked toward the door.

“What's to become of me, my lord?” she called after him.

He stood with his back to her. “You must be married with all speed.”

A
EMILIA TRIED TO REASON
with herself. No one could say Lord Hunsdon had not been generous, keeping her far longer than anyone at court had thought possible. He pensioned her off with forty pounds a year and even allowed her to remain in the house in Longditch, Westminster.

It was perfectly understandable why he would want her respectably married off to a man of her own rank, a royal musician like her departed father. Perhaps Lord Hunsdon even thought he was doing her a kindness in choosing for her husband the flautist Alfonse Lanier, handsome and three years younger than she was, who shared her foreign background. The young man's father was a French Huguenot from Rouen, his stepmother none other than her own first cousin Lucrezia Bassano. Lord Hunsdon could surely be forgiven for believing he had delivered his former paramour safely into the arms of her extended family.

Except that Lucrezia Bassano had long regarded Aemilia as no better than a whore. And why would any young man cheapen himself with a hasty marriage to another man's pregnant, discarded mistress? The Willoughbys hadn't even succeeded in marrying Aemilia off when she was a beautiful young virgin.

But she was now worth forty pounds a year and rich in silk and jewels. And so she passed from one man's hands into another's, from being the Lord Chamberlain's damaged goods to Alfonse Lanier's stepping stone to wealth and advancement, her income his to spend however he desired. After everything Aemilia had gone through to escape her sister's fate, Lord Hunsdon was marrying her off to a man who only wanted her money. A man she didn't, and couldn't, love.

In October 1592, six months pregnant, Aemilia exchanged her everlasting vows with her bridegroom. She was lacerated both by the greed in Alfonse's eyes and by his father's and stepmother's contempt for her. Her own mother had passed on five years ago, and Aemilia could only be thankful the poor woman was spared from witnessing this. Her sole well-wisher was Jasper, who could hardly seem to conceal his concern for her as she walked out of the church with her avaricious new husband. To think she and Alfonse would begin their married life in the same bed where she had sported with Lord Hunsdon.

Aemilia concluded that her life hereafter would only be bearable if she thought of it as a comedy. A ludicrous marriage farce.