The Dark Lady's Mask (29 page)

“Sing something English,” he implored her, “that I might think of the life your father and his brothers lived.”

“An English song.” At a loss, Aemilia turned to Will, who sat on the broad, deep windowsill with her lap desk and scribed while she played. The autumn sun shone behind him, filling his hair with red-gold light. “Can you think of one, Will?”

Her Bassano kin seemed to accept her explanation that Will was a loyal family friend who had protected her when Jasper had to return to England. But to her deep regret, the days of her easy familiarity with Will had come to an end now that she had returned to dressing as a lady. After his initial teasing had subsided, Will had become much more formal and reserved, as he would have to be with a gentlewoman in her family home. Even when they worked together on their new comedy, he remained at a cordial distance. If she had gained a family, it seemed she had lost the intimacy of their friendship. It was as though their former cameradie had been a mere illusion. Perhaps his real affection had been for Emilio, not Aemilia at all. And she, the fool, had believed in that sweet fabrication, believed they were kindred souls.

“What about that song you sang for Southampton,” Will said, his eyes a world away. “About the Faery Queen.”

Aemilia closed her eyes and sang, willing herself to evoke the enchantment of that moon-drenched midsummer night until she could almost smell the roses and hear Will read his impassioned poetry.
Does he still pine for his beautiful young Earl?
she wondered.
Does he still write Harry those sonnets filled with love and longing?

When her song ended, she saw that she had lulled Jacopo to sleep. With gentle efficiency, Olivia herded them out of the room to give the old man his rest.

Aemilia found Will in the corridor, holding her lap desk with the penned pages stacked neatly on top. His eyes, she noted, were soft and unguarded as though her song had awakened his own memories of Southampton House.

“Were you writing a letter to Harry?” she asked, instantly regretting her words. What business was it of hers?

“No, I write to my son.”

“Your son, not your wife?” Again the words shot out before she could stop herself. But she was indeed puzzled, for the lad couldn't be older than eight.

“Aemilia, my wife cannot read,” Will said, with a stiffness she hadn't heard from him since London. “Not every woman is like you.”

She stopped short, wondering what he meant by that and wondering why he could not at least write to his wife so that she could bring the letter to someone who
could
read it to her, even if it was only her young son. Did Will have so little regard for the mother of his children?
But who are you to call him a callous husband, you who abandoned your husband at the first opportunity?

Welcome distraction came in the form of thirteen-year-old Giulietta, who seized Aemilia's hands. “Mama says I may not walk out alone, but I may walk with
you.
Come, it's so close inside this house. I can't breathe!”

The girl was like a filly in her unbridled energy as she swept Aemilia along the corridor.

“Won't you join us?” Aemilia shouted to Will over her shoulder.

“Only if I can bring Enrico.”

“I'
VE NEVER MET A
lady as brave as you!” Giulietta told Aemilia, as they crossed the square.

Both to Aemilia's pleasure and embarrassment, the girl seemed to idolize her. When her mother had learned of Aemilia's true identity and puzzled as to what room she could put her in, Giulietta had insisted that Aemilia share her room.

“Traveling so far in the guise of a man!” Giulietta went on. “You say this is an English habit? Tell me, do all English ladies wear
riding boots
under their skirts as you do, Aemilia?”

“On our native island, the sexes mimic each other,” said Will, who walked alongside them, carrying Enrico on his shoulders.

If he was reserved around Aemilia, he was gallant with young Giulietta. Indeed, Aemilia was impressed at how rapidly his Italian was improving.

“I know many a boy,” Will said, “who can put on a gown and pretend to be a girl, even one as winsome as you,
signorina.
”

Giulietta laughed as though she were shocked and enjoyed every second of being shocked.

“Perhaps one year for Carnival,
I
shall go in pantaloons and a doublet with my face hidden behind a mask,” Giulietta said, her eyes dreamy. “You are always scribbling,
signore.
You, too, Aemilia. My parents say you're uncommonly educated. What is it you write?”

“We write comedies,” Aemilia said, “like Isabella Andreini.”

Giulietta leapt up and clapped her hands, her face flushed pink. “I adore the commedia dell'arte! Do you write romances?”

“Yes,” Aemilia and Will replied in unison.

Though Aemilia regarded their shrew play as a pale attempt at romance, their new play of a shipwrecked girl who disguised herself as a boy seemed more promising in that vein.

“Make me a promise, Aemilia.” Giulietta looped her arm through hers. “When you write your next romance, you must name your heroine after me.”

“At your command,
signorina,
” Will said, speaking before Aemilia could get a word in. “No promise could be easier to keep.”

Giulietta led the way out of the town gate and down the hill that led into the vineyards, left bare after the harvest, and the autumn forest of green pine and yellow larch. The fallow fields rested as though wrapped in a dream. But the beauty of the landscape was not all that met the eye. Aemilia understood at once why Olivia had forbidden her daughter to walk out unchaperoned—amorous couples were everywhere. Young men embraced their sweethearts with an ardor that left nothing to the imagination. Young women drew their lovers into the shadowy woods.

“Is it wise to walk here?” she asked Giulietta. “Perhaps we'd best turn back.”

Will raised his eyebrows while the girl seemed to pretend not to hear.

“If you are writing a romance,” Giulietta said, “you must go to Verona. I've heard a most romantic tale of a boy and girl there who died for their love of each other.” Her eyes shone as though she were that enraptured heroine.

Aemilia shook her head. “It's not a comedy if the lovers
die.
”

She looked at Will, expecting him to weigh in, but he was staring at the lovers with something like hunger in his eyes. The muscles in his throat twitched and he turned to gaze at her as though stricken. Her face burning, Aemilia blinked and felt a deep ache inside her.

Then, mindful of Giulietta's presence, she forced a laugh, took Enrico from Will's arms, and said they had better go back before her son caught a chill.

I
N JACOPO'S CHAMBER
, a fire crackled in the hearth. Outside the windows, snowflakes drifted down. Propped against his pillows, the old man watched Enrico play with a carved wooden horse. Though Jacopo grew feebler, he seemed to draw renewed vitality from doting on the little boy, now the youngest resident in the Casa dal Corno.

“He looks just like my son Francesco at that age,” Jacopo said, smiling at Aemilia who played Giulietta's virginals.

Aemilia and Enrico were the only ones left with Jacopo on this Sunday morning with the rest of household gone to Mass. She wondered whether Jacopo longed for them all to return, this man who seemed to relish being engulfed by the noisy bustle of his family, or if he was savoring this rare moment of stillness with just her and the child to keep him company.

“Play something cheerful,” he said, when she struck a minor chord. “There will be time enough for dirges when I'm dead.”

She obliged, playing the swift and lively notes of the
coronto,
a running dance that sent her fingers leaping across the wooden jacks while her body swayed. The old man nodded his head in time. Enrico giggled and made his toy horse prance along with the music.

“Have you forgiven me?” Jacopo asked her, after the vibrations of the last note faded into silence. “For usurping your father's home?”

She turned to him, silenced by the haunted look on his face.

“You see, they'd already fled,” he said, “and I thought it better that I take the house than a stranger. I always prayed they would return and I would be the one to welcome them home. But I never saw them again.”

The old man's face crumpled.

Aemilia sat by his bed and took his hand. “I'm sure Papa understood you never acted out of malice. When faced with hardship, we must all make bitter choices.”

“I've made provisions for you after I'm gone,” Jacopo said, his face serene once more. “There is a house in the hills above Verona I shall leave to you, along with a small vineyard. You and Enrico should have a decent income from the winery. Enough to lead a comfortable if modest life.”

She felt like weeping all over the old man in gratitude, for now she knew she could stay in Italy forever and never return to England. Never face Alfonse again.

“You are so kind to me, Jacopo.” She kissed his cheeks.

“You will love Verona,” he said. “It's a beautiful city and its winters are far kinder than Bassano's. Yet you will not be too far away from your family in the Casa dal Corno. When Enrico turns twelve, he's more than welcome to join our workshop as an apprentice painter. So you see,
cara,
you've no need to worry about your future. My family shall look after you always and you'll have your own house and vineyard.”

“Thank you.” Her heart was too full to think of any other words.

“Will you take some advice from an interfering old man?” he asked, with a sly sideways glance. “You should think of marrying again. You're too young and beautiful to live like a nun for the rest of your life.”

“Such things take their own time,” she told him. “By my troth, there's no man I care for in that way, and no man who cares for me.”

Jacopo's eyes pierced her. “What about your English poet? He adores you.”

“My good Jacopo, you are mistaken there,” she said with more vehemence than intended. “He's like a brother to me.”

Or he had been like a brother,
she thought sadly,
until we arrived at the Casa dal Corno and I stopped being Emilio
.

Jacopo regarded her with an indulgent smile. “First you lied to me, presenting yourself as a young man. Now you lie to yourself, Aemilia.”

He had turned the tables, leaving her stunned.

“I'm a man and I know what it means when a man gazes at a woman the way Will gazes at you.” The old man grinned. “He is in love. And I see the way you look at him. Do you truly have no feelings for him,
cara
? I suspect you, too, are in love.”

She could no longer look Jacopo in the eye, couldn't do anything but take her seat at the virginals once more and pound out a
saltarello,
playing so fast she thought her fingers might snap off. Anything to silence the ringing in her head.

“True love is precious and rare.” Jacopo raised his voice to be heard over the music. “Never turn your back on love.”

But this could never be.
Her collaboration with Will had hinged on her assumption that they would never desire each other, that their friendship would remain lighthearted and uncomplicated, free from the base lusts that had been her undoing as a young girl.

“Surely you can see how tender he is with Enrico,” Jacopo said. “Doesn't your son deserve a loving papa?”

The old man's words left her in tears. She, who after the humiliation of being put aside by Lord Hunsdon and then forced into a hateful marriage, had commanded herself to be impervious to romance, her heart a fortress. She was a woman of wit and reason, not some soft creature like Angela. Will was the one who had steeped himself in love. She would never forget his face when he stared at Harry upon that midsummer night, his yearning writ large, not just in his sonnets but also in the burning in his eyes.

Being your slave, what should I do but tend

Upon the hours and times of your desire?

She would be no man's slave.

“Aemilia, don't weep,” said the old man. “There's no shame in love.”

Does he guess my other secret?
she wondered.
Guess I am no widow?
And yet, as he beckoned her close, she sensed he would have given her his blessing regardless. This dying man was calling on her to embrace life, to allow herself to love a man who was already deeply in love with her, who would match her devotion measure for measure. A small voice inside her whispered,
Even you deserve to know true love.

Downstairs the door burst open. Footsteps clattered up the stairs and down the corridors, accompanied by happy conversation. Muttering her apology to Jacopo, Aemilia grabbed Enrico and darted from the chamber. She could not allow anyone, certainly not Will, to see her so undone.

T
HE ONE ROOM WHERE
she could hope to find privacy, at least on a Sunday, was the storeroom where Francesco and Leandro kept the rolls of canvas still waiting to be cut and stretched on frames and the pigments from which they mixed their paints.

Enrico seemed to find the narrow chamber as amusing as any, especially when she gave him a broken piece of chalk and let him draw upon an old slate tile. Seated on a wooden box, she opened her lap desk and leafed through the pages of the new play she and Will were writing. Viola, a shipwrecked maiden washed up on a strange shore, elected to pass as a young man for both expedience and adventure. Under her new guise as Cesario, she used her considerable intelligence and ingenuity to seek her fortune and so became the most favored servant of Duke Orsino. The duke, a romantic soul in love with love itself—Aemilia imagined him as beautiful, lazy, and vain as Southampton—sent “Cesario” to woo the beautiful Olivia on his behalf.