The Dark Lady's Mask (46 page)

Already the door opened. A servant came to take her son's things from the Weir sisters who said their good-byes to Henry before turning and leading Bathsheba back home. Tabitha was crying. Aemilia hoped the girl might soon marry and have children of her own. Lately, Tabby had been walking out with a young wainwright brave enough to face Winifred's scrutiny in order to court her beautiful sister.

Jasper and his family crowded the doorway to welcome Aemilia and her son. Last year her cousin had married Deborah, a widow with a boy Henry's age and a girl one year younger. Deborah was pink cheeked and auburn haired, her belly huge with her and Jasper's first child together.

Jasper already had four apprentices, so Henry would be the fifth. Her cousin's house was as crowded and bustling, as lively and warm, as Jacopo's villa in Bassano had been. The wainscoting gleamed with beeswax, there were real tapestries on the walls, and enough fireplaces to keep the place cosy. The air smelled of freshly baked bread and roasting meat.

Because Jasper was not ambitious like Alfonse but content to be a minstrel, he had prospered, saving his money as a court musician and stage minstrel, and earning an additional income taking on apprentices. Aemilia wished her husband could be so prudent and not waste their money on foreign expeditions and schemes to advance himself.

She exchanged kisses with Deborah, who took her into the dining room with its table set for ten. The family shared all meals with their apprentices.

“Don't you worry about your Henry,” Deborah said. “He'll share the truckle bed with my Edward. They'll be like brothers. Aemilia, you're crying!”

Aemilia was about to turn away so Henry wouldn't see her tears. How could she embarrass her son on his day of days, when his childhood ended and he became an apprentice musician? But Henry was too busy chattering with Deborah's children to even notice, as though they were the longed-for siblings Aemilia had failed to give him.
Let him be part of a proper family.
He couldn't hope for a more accomplished teacher than Jasper, and Deborah was goodness itself. How could Aemilia stand in the way of her son's education and happiness? As a loving mother, she would have to let him go.

N
OW YOU ARE TRULY
alone.
Aemilia unlocked the door to her house, so empty and silent with the Weir sisters gone to the market.

The men in her life, even her seven-year-old boy, had left her to pursue their destiny. But what of her own dreams? Fetching the
tarocchi
cards down from their hiding place in her trunk, Aemilia sat at the kitchen table and shuffled those cards of fortune as though she, like Simon Forman or Doctor John Dee, could glimpse into the future. Nine cards she drew and laid in a row, both trumps and court cards, their colors and faded gilding flashing in the weak sunlight coming through the window. All nine were female figures reveling in inconceivable authority and might.

A female knight brandished her unsheathed sword. A girl danced fearlessly at a cliff's edge while cupping a star in her open palm. A queen held in her lap a golden coin as big as a shield. La Papessa
,
the female pope, wore a nun's habit and the papal tiara. Balanced on her leaping steed, another female knight wielded a baton as though it were a magical wand. In the trump Il Carro Triumphale
,
a crowned woman bearing a scepter and an imperial globe drove a chariot pulled by winged white horses. L'Imperatrice sat enthroned, her shield emblazoned with the black eagle of the Holy Roman Empire. Her fair hair flowing, La Temperanza danced with a jug in each hand, not spilling one drop. Serene and unmoving, Fortuna sat at the hub of her ever-turning wheel, while those hapless figures clinging to the wheel's rim rose and fell in a never-ending round.

Aemilia's brain revolved in circles, struggling to decipher those images that filled her with such yearning.

“Good cards indeed,” a familiar voice behind her murmured.

She turned to see Prudence.

“Pray, what does it all mean?” she asked her maid.

“I'd reckon you shall encounter any number of esteemed ladies, though I can't say when or where.”

Aemilia kept her own counsel. Surely those images were allegorical—apart from the Queen, precious few women in this world wielded that sort of power. But Prudence held her gaze and grinned, as if she already saw that august circle of ladies her mistress would one day meet.

I have placed all my hopes in men and where did that get me?
The time had come to take refuge in the company of learned women, if only she could meet them. Her memory traveled back to her days at Grimsthorpe Castle where Susan Bertie had taught her Latin and Greek, and allowed her to dream of great things. Aemilia had thought that idyll was forever lost, yet the cards hinted that she might gain such a haven once more.

The triumph promised to her in the
tarocchi
cards, that constellation of brilliant and powerful women, seemed as distant as the farthest-flung stars. And yet she was her own mistress again. A woman of slender means, to be sure, but she had her privacy and independence.
Now I might be a poet.

B
UT WHEN
A
EMILIA SAT
down to write, she trembled at the very cost of paper, aware that she might soon be a widow. Even if, by the grace of God, Alfonse returned unscathed, war was a costly adventure. Gentlemen volunteers such as her husband were obliged to pay their own way even while fighting the Queen's battles. What if Essex's folly left them ruined?

All the more reason to write and aspire to some sort of patronage
, she told herself. This time she must write in her own name, write something that couldn't be taken from her as the plays had been taken. If she had remained in Italy, she might have penned her own comedies or poetic allegories of love and philosophy. Here in England, a woman might write only if she translated the work of a great man or if she wrote about religion—the Queen's religion.

Aemilia's quill hovered above the page and dribbled black ink, but no words came.

Soon she would be thirty, her youth well and truly spent. In a matter of months, the century would end. What new world might be born when the old one passed away? Aemilia gazed into her steel mirror, hoping to catch a shadow of a vision of what would unfold.

Despite her Latin, Greek, French, and Italian, she had no desire to be a translator; she wanted to write only her own poetry. But religious verse? Who could take that seriously, coming from a woman like her? She would have to claim some dramatic conversion, similar to Paul's being speared by lightning on the road to Damascus.

She considered her Puritan education with Susan Bertie, considered Anne Locke's pious sonnets. Mary Sidney Herbert, the Countess Dowager of Pembroke, had written a collection of poetry based on the psalms, a project her brother, Philip Sidney, had begun before his untimely death. Mary had finished where Philip had left off to create a tribute to him. Being an aristocrat, the Countess could hardly sully herself by allowing her work to be published on the printed page. Instead, she permitted her hand-scribed manuscripts to be shared in a few chosen circles. Aemilia had chanced to read the poems when Ben had shown her the pages. How they had amazed her.

Closing her eyes, she thought how Jacopo Bassano, after his forced conversion, had spent his life painting masterpieces of Christian art, yet still his soul and deep truth were present in each despite the mask he was made to wear.

Dipping her nib into the ink, Aemilia wrote four words, forming each letter slowly, deliberately, as if in a dream.

Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum

Hail, God, King of the Jews.

 

VERY SOUL IN THE
realm seemed to converge on Westminster that April morning in 1603. Men, women, and children of all ranks crammed the streets and jostled for the best view. Others hung out of windows and even crowded the rooftops to watch the funeral cortege of a thousand mourners, Aemilia among them, who followed the Queen's coffin from Whitehall Palace to Westminster Abbey.

There she passes, the Virgin Queen.
Aemilia strained her eyes to see to the very front of the procession, where four gray stallions draped in black velvet drew Her Majesty's hearse. The coffin was covered in royal purple and topped with an effigy so lifelike that it made the onlookers point and gasp. Six knights supported a canopy over the coffin. Behind the hearse, the Queen's Master of the Horse led Elizabeth's palfrey. As Chief Mourner, the Marchioness of Northampton led the peers of the realm, all of them arrayed in black.

Aemilia hadn't been in the presence of so many aristocrats since her days at court. Her sole reason for being allowed to walk in the procession was on account of her husband being one of the fifty-nine musicians chosen to play for the Queen's funeral. Her ten-year-old son would sing in the choir.

Aemilia nearly tripped over her hem when she sighted Mary Sidney Herbert, the great poet, and there was the Countess of Bedford, a noted patroness of arts and letters. On this somber occasion, the eminent circle of ladies Prudence promised to Aemilia in the
tarocchi
cards seemed close enough to touch. But surely these noblewomen would dismiss her as only the wife of a minor courtier.

A woman of middle years stepped into pace with Aemilia. Though the lady appeared as an aristocrat in bearing, her black brocade gown with its silver thread was faded and worn. Her heart-shaped face looked so familiar, as did her huge brown eyes.

“Forgive me, madam, but are you Aemilia Bassano?”

“I was before I married, my lady,” Aemilia said, intrigued to be addressed by her maiden name for the first time in years.

“I thought so.” The lady smiled. “I'd recognize you anywhere, Amy.”

“My lady?” Aemilia struggled not to laugh aloud in joy. “My Lady Susan!”

More than twenty years had passed since she last laid eyes on Susan Bertie.
Is it a sin
, Aemilia wondered,
to feel this rush of felicity while marching behind the Queen's coffin?
She took Susan's hand and Susan squeezed hers in return.

Aemilia had always feared that her former mentor would have forever forsaken her after she had fallen from grace and become the late Lord Chamberlain's mistress. But looking into Susan's eyes, she saw nothing but affection. The years seemed to melt away.

“How happy we were back in Grimsthorpe,” Aemilia murmured. “How I missed you when you married and left for the Netherlands. I thought I'd never see you again.”

“I missed you as well,” said Susan. “You were such a spirited little girl. You know, I had two sons, but I always longed for a daughter.”

“My lady, I'm so sorry to hear of your brother's passing.”

Susan lowered her gaze. “Poor Perry! In truth, I think that death was his only escape from his horrid wife. I am a widow now—did you know?”

Aemilia shook her head.

“The fate of being married to a soldier,” Susan said. “They sow their fortunes on the battlefield and reap only debt and death.”

Catching the glint of unspilled tears in Susan's eyes, Aemilia took her arm and held it tightly. “My husband sailed to Ireland with the Earl of Essex.”

She couldn't hide her contempt when speaking the traitor's name, that turncoat who had led an armed rebellion against the Queen. When Elizabeth beheaded Essex, Aemilia had quietly rejoiced. Essex, the author of Alfonse's misfortune. Southampton, who had joined the rebellion, was imprisoned in the Tower.

“My husband had no part in Essex's plot,” Aemilia told Susan. “Three years he fought in the Irish wars and returned only after the Spanish were defeated in Kinsale.” She dropped her voice to a whisper. “We, too, are much impoverished.”

Alfonse had proved his loyalty to the Crown but at great cost, depleting their entire estate. He had run up a staggering four thousand pounds in debts, yet he didn't even have a knighthood to show for his sacrifice, only the title of captain. In the early years of their marriage, he had ruined his health and wasted her income on his dissolute life. In recent years, when he had been striving so hard to be a good man in the Queen's service, he had suffered even more ill luck. Her family's future remained uncertain. Aemilia could only hope that Alfonse would find a place in the new King James's court.

War and hardship, the great levelers,
Aemilia thought, as she walked arm in arm with Lady Susan as if no rank separated them.

W
HEN THEY HAD TAKEN
their places in Westminster Abbey, Aemilia pointed out her husband to Susan as he played with the other musicians.

“Captain Alfonse Lanier,” she said, careful to mention the only title to which anyone in her household could lay claim.

The wars had left their mark on Alfonse, scarring his face and thinning his hair. But the beauty of his flute playing moved Aemilia as much as ever.