The Dark Lady's Mask (16 page)

Swifter than the moon's sphere.

And I serve the Faery Queen

To dew her orbs upon the green.

When her song ended, she discovered that she and the young Earl were not alone. From out of a shadowy corner stepped a man who gazed at her as though her song had left him undone. A slender man with hazel eyes and soft brown hair. Her pulse quickened when she recognized the poet she had met outside the astrologer's. Though he must have been wearing his finest garments, he looked utterly out of place in this manor house. How had he earned his invitation? And why had he been hiding? Was this one of Harry's elaborate jokes? If so, then who was the laughingstock, the poet or herself?
Likely both of us,
she thought.

“Is our nightingale not enchanting?” Harry asked, glancing from the poet to her. “Aemilia-Emilio, this is my dear friend, sweet William. He writes the most enthralling sonnets just for me.”

Such a gulf separated the two men in wealth, station, even age—the poet was probably a decade older than the boy. Yet Harry took his place at the poet's side, his hand on his shoulder as though claiming possession of him. How the poet quivered at Harry's touch—surely this gesture was too intimate for her eyes. Her skin flushed when she deduced what secrets they must share. Then she remembered the poet's sonnet that she had read that very morning, those verses that still held her in their thrall.
So true a fool is love that in your will, though you do anything, he thinks no ill.

Adoration blazed in the poet's eyes. Poor besotted wretch. Aemilia tried to glance away but the poet now held her with his gaze, perhaps struggling to remember where he had seen her before. His mien then darkened, as if in jealousy. It seemed the poet truly saw her as a young man, a rival for Southampton's affections.

“Sir,” she said, speaking plainly as a woman. “Do you not recognize me? We met earlier this day.”

“Why this is very midsummer madness.” The poet took a faltering step backward. “You sing and speak like a very young boy and yet you are grown. Are you a castrato?”

Harry collapsed on a chair and writhed in hilarity, as though she and the poet were players acting in a comedy just for his pleasure.

“In Thames Street,” she said. “Outside the astrologer's.”

The poet reeled, as though fearing he'd lost his senses.

“My maid knocked you down,” she said, which made Harry laugh all the harder.

“Had I only been there!” Harry cried. “If only you could see your face, Will Shakespeare!”

The poet looked scalded, as though someone had tipped a boiling cauldron over his head. “This morning I saw a lady.”

“And now you see a lady.” She removed her cap and shook out her long black hair.

“A lady in breeches!” Harry pounded his thighs.

Aemilia remained as sober as Will. “In faith, you have never heard a trained female soprano before. We are not allowed to perform in public, sir. It's considered too vulgar. Only at court or at manor houses such as this might you hear a woman virtuosa sing.”

The poet looked humiliated. She longed to take his shoulders and whisper in his ear,
No need to explain. Southampton has made us both his fools!

She turned to Harry who struggled to make his face serious again.

“More music, my lord?”

When Harry nodded, she sat at the virginals and began to play, her back to the men. In truth, she came here as much for Harry's virginals as his gold. As her fingers walked in gentle gait over the painted wooden keys, she prayed that she could lose herself in the melody and forget Southampton and his friend were even there. But it was no use—she heard every word of their ensuing spat.

“Is Master-Mistress Aemilia not a marvel?” Harry asked his friend.

“The most exquisite creature in all Middlesex?” the poet cried. “Why do you make me your ass?”

Aemilia played on, pretending that she inhabited her own universe far away from Harry's whims and jests. But her stomach dropped to hear them speak of her.

“Her people were denizens of Venice,” Harry said, lolling the name of that fabled city on his tongue as though savoring a sweetmeat. “Have you heard how
inventive
Venetian courtesans are?”

She gritted her teeth to keep from striking a wrong note. Was Harry trying to convince his friend that
she
was such a courtesan who knew every lascivious trick? Big words from Harry who had never bedded a woman in all his nineteen years.

From behind her back came the sound of Harry opening a drawer.

“This,” she heard him say, “is a portrait of a Venetian temptress painted in that very city.”

She nearly laughed in derision. Once Harry had shown her that selfsame painted miniature, his one piece of pornography, the jewel of his curiosity cabinet. She didn't need to lift her eyes from the keyboard to envision Will's befuddlement. At first glance, it resembled a staid enough picture of a richly dressed woman with an elaborate coiffure, a white handkerchief, and an ostrich feather fan. How was anyone to recognize this creature as a courtesan? However, it wasn't an ordinary miniature but a cleverly constructed novelty piece. Harry had only to lift the central panel of the lady's skirt to reveal that she wore breeches and a codpiece beneath. That the same woman could appear as a lady on the outside but conceal a codpiece under her silken skirts appeared to fascinate Harry to no end. She heard him cackling like a schoolboy to the poet whose silence was deafening.

“The Venetian ladies of pleasure are an
entirely
different class,” the Earl said in his aristocratic drawl. “They are educated and quite refined.”

Why couldn't Harry put that silly miniature away and talk about something sensible? The tone of conversation was starting to make her skin itch. Thankfully, the poet seemed just as eager as she was to change the subject.

“My lord, I have written a poem for you, not just a sonnet this time but an epic.”

From behind her arpeggios, Aemilia could hear the rustle of paper.

“
Venus and Adonis,
” said Harry. “What a title! So saucy.” His voice was gently mocking, but then his tone grew tender. “Ah, sweet William, you dedicated it to me.”

“All my work is for you!” The poet couldn't hide his yearning if he tried. “The love I dedicate to your lordship is without end. What I have done is yours; what I have to do is yours, being part in all I have, devoted to you.”

In her mind's eye, Aemilia saw the poet's love-struck face. How could he squander his devotion, let alone his priceless poetry, on one as inane as Harry? Passion was a treacherous game. She couldn't fathom surrendering her heart to that vain boy, even supposing he desired women in the first place.

As Harry began to read aloud, Aemilia could not help but prick her ears to drink in every word, imbibing the poetry that intoxicated her like wine. She found herself altering her rhythm so that she played in time with his verses. Yet again, the poet wrote of the anguish of unrequited love.

Even as the sun with purple-colour'd face

Had ta'en his last leave of the weeping morn,

Rose-cheek'd Adonis hied him to the chase;

Hunting he loved, but love he laugh'd to scorn;

Sick-thoughted Venus makes amain unto him,

And like a bold-fac'd suitor 'gins to woo him.

“Thrice-fairer than myself,” thus she began,

“The field's chief flower, sweet above compare,

Stain to all nymphs, more lovely than a man,

More white and red than doves or roses are;

Nature that made thee, with herself at strife.”

“Am I then the handsome Adonis?” Harry asked. “So strenuously resisting the charms of Venus herself?”

Will replied in a voice too soft for Aemilia to hear. All went silent except for swallowed murmurs and rustlings. She burned when she guessed what must be passing between them. Surely now she must tiptoe away, give the two men their privacy. She lifted her hands from the keys only for Harry to rebuke her in a voice so haughty she longed to stuff a rag down his throat.

“What, no more music? But I
pay
you for your music, Aemilia-Emilio! If you would earn my gold, play on.”

Biting her lip, she obeyed.

“Why do men seek out whores?” the Earl of Southampton asked his friend, as though making a deeply philosophical inquiry. “To seek carnal pleasures when they lack a wife to provide such delights. Or when they grow tired of their wives. Like
you,
Will!”

The poet attempted to interject only to have Harry cut him off.

“When it comes to whores, pleasure is fleeting. Our common English harlot soon bores a man of any intelligence. And why, sweet William, do men seek out the company of other men?” Harry ended on a note of wicked mirth.

The poet answered in a heartbeat. “To seek true companionship of the soul and intellect. The noblest form of love, not mere animal urges. The marriage of true minds if you will.”

Aemilia decided she despised them both. Was that all women were to them, witless whores to service their beastly urges? If Southampton wished for a tête-à-tête with his poet, why had he summoned her?

The poet then had the temerity to quote the recently deceased Kit Marlowe, as though claiming those words for his own. “If the male form once defined beauty in heaven, men on earth are fairer still.”

“Now imagine, if you will,” said Harry, “a sensuous woman with a man's intellect and learning. Our delectable Aemilia has a humanist education. Not only does she possess male attire—she has a mind to match.”

Aemilia told herself that her utter debasement was complete. That she had sunk as low as this, having to listen to Southampton gossip about her, literally behind her back, only a few yards away from where she played the virginals. Did he think she had no feelings? She certainly wouldn't give him the satisfaction of seeing her tears. If she were indeed Emilio, not Aemilia, she would have leapt from the virginals and pummeled his gut.

“Our beauty caught the eye of the Lord Chamberlain who taught her the arts of hawking as well as
amour.
But, alas, he put her aside when she revealed herself to be pregnant with his bastard—our dear Aemilia fainted and landed upon my very
person
during the masque, can you imagine the uproar? The Lord Chamberlain hastily married her off to a ridiculous French gudgeon who squanders her money. And so she is forced to fall back on her old profession.”

Southampton made her life sound so tawdry, as though she were the heroine of some second-rate play penned by the likes of Thomas Middleton. Both Harry and Alfonse cast her as the eternal whore beyond redemption, even though she had only given herself to one man, Lord Hunsdon, the father of her child.

“The Lord Chamberlain must be nearly seventy,” the poet said. He spoke as though listening to her tale discomfited him. As though he, for all his poverty, felt sorry for her. At least he had a heart beating in his chest. Unlike Southampton.

“Her loss is our gain,” said Harry. “You should try her some time.” The Earl spoke archly, as if imparting advice to a backward younger brother. “She'd be good for you, I dare say.”

In her imagination, Aemilia landed a smart slap across the Earl's face. So that was Southampton's game—praising her as the paragon of whores for the sole purpose of whipping his lover into a jealous frenzy. Yet she went on playing, not missing a single note. She reminded herself that she was here in his mansion to save herself and Enrico from ruin. That was all.

When the poet spoke, his voice rasped like ice. “And you, my lord. Have you
tried
her?”

“How am I to entertain the thought of marriage if I've never even known a woman? And such a woman! The closest thing we have to the
hetairai
of ancient Athens.”

The poet's silence opened as deep as a chasm.

“Ah, I forgot,” the Earl said. “They never taught you Greek at your provincial grammar school. You don't even know what
hetaira
means.”

“I think I must go.” The poet's voice was stretched as tightly as a rope about to snap.

But Harry was already spinning away from his friend. For a moment, he hovered over Aemilia's shoulder. As she twisted on her seat to face him, he tossed a pouch into her lap.

“I give you leave to depart, Aemilia-Emilio. As charming as your services are, we shall not require them anymore this night.”

While she weighed the bag of gold coins in her hand, Southampton sauntered to the far end of the room where, through the great double doors, an august company of gentlemen streamed in, arrayed like princes in their linens and silk. Soon they engulfed the young Earl.

“A midnight picnic on Midsummer's Eve! How enchanting, Southampton!”

Aemilia was about to dart from the room without further ceremony when she noticed that the poet stood as if turned to stone. How blithely his noble lord had deserted him. The pages of
Venus and Adonis
lay scattered across a table, as if those exquisite verses were of no greater worth than a soiled napkin. Aemilia went to gather them up when she heard the racket of less genteel men joining the fray at the far side of the room. Strident, common voices shouted and jibed.

“Do I spy Master Shakescene, the upstart crow?” a voice boomed. “What's he doing here? A charity case, my lord? That wretch owes me money!”

The poet seemed to jump out of his skin. As if in a blind panic, he bolted to the nearest exit—an open window. The only visible doors were on the opposite end of the room, now blocked by the intruders. Aemilia watched in horror as the poet lifted his leg over the sill. It was at least a twelve-foot drop into the garden. Dashing over, she seized his arm.