The Dark Lady's Mask (19 page)

“It's Greek,” she said quietly. “The
hetairai
were the highest class of courtesan. The Athenians kept their wives and daughters as ignorant as sheep. But the
hetairai
were as educated as the men they entertained.
Hetaira
means companion. A companion to men.”

With a nod to him, she walked out, shutting the door behind her.

A
EMILIA RODE HOME BY
way of the shady back lanes, her hat brim pulled low over her eyes. As she approached Westminster, her heart began to hammer. What if one of her neighbors betrayed her? Even if her disguise fooled them, they might recognize her horse. She could very well finish off the day in the pillory.

Though she spurred Bathsheba on, the heat rendered the mare sluggish. The fastest gait Aemilia could push her into was a halfhearted trot.

A prayer formed on Aemilia's lips.
Please, oh please, just let us get safely home.

She asked herself to whom she was praying—her departed father's secret God or the Queen's God who divided humanity into the Elect and the damned? On which side of that gaping divide between the saved and the condemned did she stand as a cast-off mistress, mother of a bastard, a miscreant in men's clothing? Perhaps her many sins and deceptions had cast her beyond the reach of divine grace. To think the departed Kit Marlowe had been bold enough to brag of his atheism. What did she believe or disbelieve? Papa's ghostly voice whispered,
Hell is empty. All the devils are up here.

Aemilia swallowed a scream. His eyes red with drink, Alfonse swayed before her in the narrow lane. In a panic, she kicked the mare onward, but her husband made a drunken lurch and grabbed Bathsheba's reins. Aemilia reached for her sword then, thinking better of the idea, pulled the half-full bottle of elderflower wine from her saddle bag. Bathsheba, meanwhile, proceeded to rub her sweaty, itchy head on Alfonse's doublet, knocking him down so that his sprawled body blocked their path.

With glittering eyes, Alfonse gazed up at her. “Sir, beware of women. They will destroy you.”

Something caught in her throat. Was he truly so drunk that he didn't recognize her or the horse? Bathsheba nuzzled him and started to lick his unruly hair into place, but the mare refused to step over his body. In gutter French, he railed on about the disgusting
putain,
his wife, who had bedded every man in the realm except for him, her lawful husband.

Aemilia recoiled. She must get herself home before he returned to his senses. But his inert body blocked her passage. She considered how blurred his vision must be from the drink and how tall she must appear as he lay on his back in the dust.

“Sirrah,” she said, in mimicry of the poet's voice, his rustic Warwickshire vowels. “How can any woman respect you? Legless drunk at eleven in the morning. Surely you have only yourself to blame for your misery.”

Alfonse gulped back a sob. From within the Lamb Inn came the voices of men calling him back inside for another round. He attempted to rise but collapsed again and curled himself in a ball, allowing Bathsheba to squeeze past him. Aemilia regarded him from her perch. She stood in her stirrups to appear even loftier.

“Don't waste your wife's money on drink.” She spoke from deep in her belly. “If you must drink, take this instead.”

She bent from the saddle to hand him the flask of elderflower wine. Before he could say a word, she trotted away.

“D
ID YOU SEE THE
mistress take the elderflower wine?” Prudence demanded of Winifred. “Have you any clue where she's gone?”

The Weir sisters gathered in the kitchen and stared dolefully at the empty space on the sideboard where they had placed the bottle the previous evening.

Sweat streamed down Winifred's face as she began to pace, kicking up the rushes and disturbing a mouse that darted away in panic. “She was up before the cockerel! Up and gone before dawn. She's like an airy sprite, she is, how fast she can disappear.”

“Wherever she went, she took the bottle with her,” said Tabitha. “Oh, what awful mischief!”

The cat pounced on the mouse. Tabitha shuddered and covered the baby's ears as the rodent squealed in its death throes.

“Good pussycat,” said Prudence.

“Had we never prayed over that bottle,” Winifred lamented.

“Hush!” Prudence snapped her finger to her lips.

The Weir sisters stood to attention when in tramped their mistress clad as a young gentleman for all the world to see. Her face was pale and drawn, as though she had witnessed the depths of hell. Not uttering a word, she took Enrico from Tabitha and flew up the stairs. The Weir sisters listened to the floorboards creak under her footfalls and then the thud as she bolted herself in her bedchamber.

“Awful mischief,” Tabitha said again, in a strangled whisper. “At least the master didn't see her.” With no baby to hug, the girl clutched her own arms and shivered.

A
N HOUR OR SO
later, Alfonse staggered in. His eyes were downcast, his hair a rat's nest, his clothes filthy.

“Master!” Winifred cried. “How good to see you.” She pitched her voice loudly so that the mistress upstairs would hear and be warned.

Her eyes huge, Tabitha pinched Winifred's elbow and pointed to the empty flask he carried.

“How are you this fine day, Master Lanier, sir?” Prudence asked.

“Can you make the hot water for me?” The master sounded quieter and humbler than Winifred had ever heard him. “Today I shall bathe.”

Thank Christ for that,
Winifred thought. He stank worse than a tanner's yard.

“Right you are, sir,” said Prudence. “We'll heat that water for you straight away.” She sent Tabitha out to draw water and fetch firewood.

“Can you send for a barber?” The master ran his hand over the dark stubble on his chin.

“Sir, I can shave you and cut your hair at no expense to the household,” said Winifred. “But first you should eat something.” She turned to Pru. “Where's that lamb pie you baked yesterday?”

“Tonight I shall dine with Madame Lanier,” said the master. He trembled as though this were a daunting prospect. “Have I any clean linen?”

“I'll look for you, sir,” said Winifred.

“This morning I saw a gentleman.” Alfonse spoke in a faraway voice. “His shirt it was immaculate. He looked like an angel.”

A
T THE SOUND OF
her husband's voice downstairs, Aemilia made certain the bedchamber door was bolted fast. She crept as noiselessly as she could past the cradle where Enrico slept in sweet innocence. From her dressing table, she picked up the steel mirror that Anne Locke had given her so long ago.
Let this be a mirror of your virtue, my girl.

Gazing at her reflection, she observed what an odd creature she was with her long tousled hair and her men's clothing. How had she managed to fool anyone? It seemed impossible that earlier that morning she had carried herself like a young gallant, bursting with merry wit as she persuaded her luckless poet to agree to write comedies with her. Now, like a fugitive, she cowered behind a locked door. What would Master Shakespeare think of her if he knew the truth?

Aemilia shed her doublet and breeches and her treasured linen shirt. Once she had believed this disguise would protect her as though it were magical armor. As she folded the garments carefully, her palms smoothed out every wrinkle and crease before she laid them in their coffer with her riding boots, sword, rapier, and hat. She locked the coffer, slid it under the bed, and hid the key at the bottom of the box where she kept the rags she used while menstruating—the place Alfonse was least likely to look.

Naked, she assessed herself in the mirror, eyeing herself dispassionately, as though she were looking at another person. Men, she decided, would still find this woman comely enough, but childbirth had taken its toll. Though she was as slender as ever, her belly was not as taut nor her breasts as high or firm as before her pregnancy. Her face was no longer that of a girl but of a woman who had tasted life's bitterness as well as its sweetness.

“You are a ruined woman,” she told the lady in the mirror. “But fear not. It only means you answer to no one but yourself.”

Perhaps Alfonse could be mollified, at least for a time, if she bedded him. But the thought of such a loveless exchange sickened her. And what if he got her with child? They could barely manage as it was.

Lord Hunsdon had done his utmost to be tender. In his way, he had truly loved her. She recalled how Master Shakespeare had asked her what
hetaira
meant. How she had sparkled in her role as Lord Hunsdon's companion. She had played the virginals for him and read poetry to him in Latin and Greek, French and Italian. They had conversed on subjects as diverse as stargazing and statesmanship. He had adored her mind as well as her body. But at the age of twenty-four, it seemed her life was finished. Even if she was the most submissive and obedient wife that ever lived, Aemilia suspected Alfonse would always hold her past over her head.

Regarding herself in the mirror, she considered how Doctor Dee, the Queen's conjuror, was said to summon spirits in his magical looking glass. Might she do the same?

“Come, you spirits that tend upon mortal thoughts,” she whispered. “Unsex me now.”

She closed her eyes and imagined leaving Aemilia behind. Becoming Emilio. But a woman she remained.

She dressed hastily, becoming Mistress Lanier once more. She worked her comb through her hair, ripping through the snarls until the tears came to her eyes. Beneath all the curses Alfonse heaped upon her, behind every mask she had ever worn, her true self lay hidden, and this was the one thing that could never be taken from her.

A
EMILIA SAT AT THE
table with her husband, her hands clamped between her knees to still their trembling. Had he truly not recognized her when he grabbed Bathsheba's reins that morning?

The young man seated opposite her seemed subdued. He was scrubbed as clean as Prudence's kitchen table, his curly hair combed back from his face. His eyes were shadowed and heavy, and his gaze seemed unfocused, as though he were seeing double, another face imposed upon hers that made him squint and shake his head. His voice seemed to be coming from beneath the waves. Aemilia put it down to the ravages of drink. His head must be splitting. Fortunately, Winifred had watered down the wine so that it tasted no stronger than cordial.

“In three days I sail,” said Alfonse, staring at his plate of starling pie.

In the interests of economy, Prudence had taken to snaring birds in the garden, a trick she had learned in Essex. Aemilia lowered her eyes as she skewered a piece of sinewy fowl on her knife. For months she had prayed for Alfonse to depart. Soon she would be free of him, at least for a time—she imagined he would be gone half a year at the very least.
Perhaps this seafaring life is just what he needs
, she thought. He could direct his wrath at the Spanish instead of her, possibly even reaping his share of captured gold. If and when he returned, he might prove wiser and kinder. Or would he come back with only a heap of gambling debts?

“You shall speed well on your voyage,” she said. “The astrologer said so.”

“Will you miss me?” he asked, in that querulous tone she had come to despise. “Will you think of me at all?”

“Of course, I shall.” But her words sounded dishonest even to herself.

“You think me beneath you,” he said, shoving away his pewter plate. “You think I am nothing. What must I do to win your
tendresse
?”

His words left her reeling. She had never thought it possible that he could address her so plaintively, his naked heart bared. Could it be that in his fog of sack sherry and self-pity he harbored true feelings for her? She searched for the right words.

“Just be a good man,” she said.

She reached across the table to take his hand, but before their fingers could touch, he swayed on his chair and toppled backward, hitting the floor with a bone-cracking bang. She ran to kneel beside him. Wetting her handkerchief, she pressed it gently to his brow and temples, but he only looked at her blankly as though the blow to his head had wiped away all memory of their previous conversation. When he finally revived, the familiar look of disdain was set on his face as he winced and rubbed the back of his skull.

 

EMILIA SAT AT THE
dining table with paper and quill, and tried to summon words that were vibrant and piquant, some idea for a play she could pen with the poet. Perhaps a comedy of errors or mistaken identity, of an intrepid girl who dressed as a boy only to fall in love with the gentleman she served in her male guise. But when Aemilia closed her eyes and attempted to picture these characters stepping out upon the stage, she saw only Alfonse's accusing face. Yesterday he had sailed from Billingsgate, en route to Plymouth where the voyage to the Azores would officially embark. His parting words thundered inside her head:
As soon as I'm gone, one hundred men will come to your door.