The Dark Lady's Mask (48 page)

“My lady, that's generous.” Aemilia couldn't keep herself from smiling at the Countess as though she were the very apparition of Pallas Athena.

A
WHILE LATER
, W
INIFRED
entered the room with her mistress's lute. In her wake followed two youths lugging Aemilia's trunk. After setting down the lute and chasing the young men back out the door, Winifred hugged Aemilia hard enough to crack her ribs.

“Oh, my sweet mistress, this is what I always wanted for you! A respectable home amongst honest ladies. Surely here you'll get into no mischief at all!”

Aemilia watched as her maid, filled with the zeal of renewed purpose, hunted through her trunk in search of something presentable for her to wear.

“Such a pity you sacrificed your finest gowns to make clothes for Henry that he'll only outgrow, but
this
will do.” Winifred seized a gown of light summer wool, the same hue as the bluebells in their jar. “Ah, but we need water for washing.”

Beside the curtained bed was a washing stand with a pewter ewer, a cake of soap, and a white linen towel, but Winifred discovered that the ewer was empty.

“Let me go fill this,” the maid said, letting herself out of the room.

Aemilia stuck her head out of the ivy-draped window and breathed in the scents of the rose garden below. She caressed the leaves of paper, blank and pure. From the pocket hidden in her skirts, she drew the fustian pouch containing her
tarocchi
cards. Sitting at the desk—Samuel Daniel's desk!—she laid out, one by one, the nine cards she had drawn three years ago. She hadn't touched her deck in all that time, keeping those nine cards at the top, waiting for their promise to be fulfilled.

Losing all sense of time, she pored over those gilded pictures of mighty women—warriors, queens, empresses, maidens who danced fearlessly at cliff's edge.

“What are they, Mistress Lanier?” a voice behind her asked.

Swallowing a yelp, Aemilia turned to see Anne Clifford. Winifred must have left the door open. Yet as flustered as Aemilia was, she discovered she couldn't lie to the girl. “They're called
tarocchi
cards.”

“Marry, they're lovely! May I touch them?”

“Yes, my lady.”

Without hesitation, Anne chose the card of the female knight brandishing her unsheathed sword as she charged into battle.

“This is my card.” The girl leaned close as if to impart a secret. “When we rode to York to meet the new King, my father made bold to exercise his right as a peer of the realm to wear his sword in His Majesty's presence. Afterward, when he unbuckled his sword belt and handed it to his servant,
I
took it. Before Father could stop me, I belted his sword around my waist before the King.”

Aemilia was staggered to picture this thirteen-year-old virago standing armed before both her father and her monarch.

“Am I not Father's heir?” The girl seemed anxious that Aemilia should understand her reasoning. “My ancestral office, it is, to bear my father's sword. One day I shall be mistress of his estates in Westmoreland and Yorkshire.”

Aemilia wondered what she possibly had to teach this girl who seemed a force unto herself.

“These are fortune-telling cards, are they not?” The girl placed the female knight beside the maiden dancing with the star in her palm. “My mother can foretell the future, but she doesn't need cards. She has the gift of prophecy. Like Deborah in the Bible.”

“A prophet? Truly?” Aemilia didn't know what else to say.

“Mother's an alchemist, too.”

Aemilia fell silent at the sight of Margaret Clifford standing in the doorway.

“Mother, come and see Mistress Lanier's
tarocchi
cards!”

Aemilia stepped aside so that the Countess of Cumberland could inspect the nine cards that had foretold their meeting and Aemilia's very presence in this house. The Countess's eyes were riven on one card in particular, which she held up to Aemilia with a questioning look. The card of the nun wearing the papal tiara.

Petrified, Aemilia wondered what the Countess, who was by all accounts uncommonly pious, would make of this. Would Margaret Clifford accuse her of filling her daughter's head with papist perdition? Aemilia would be cast out of Cookham as unceremoniously as she had been booted from Grimsthorpe.

Just then, Winifred entered with the ewer of water. Her maid looked as though she would drop it in despair as she viewed the scene unfolding before her.

“La Papessa,” Aemilia said in a small voice. “The female pope.” She cleared her throat. “The cards are from Italy, my lady.”

“As are you,” Anne said brightly.

Up until this point, Margaret Clifford had been the portrait of solemnity and reserve, but suddenly she laughed. Her mirth filled the room like the fresh air wafting in from the garden.

“I think we shall not have a dull summer now that Mistress Lanier has come to join us,” the Countess said.

Smiling, she drew her daughter out of the room.

“
That
was a close call!” Winifred huffed, when she and her mistress were alone.

“Peace, Winifred.” A lightness stole over Aemilia's heart as she placed the cards, one by one, back in their fustian pouch. “I suspect the Countess is broader minded than either of us imagined.”

Never in her life had she thought to meet a woman alchemist. Who was this Margaret Clifford? Though only nine years older than Aemilia's own thirty-four years, the Countess seemed so wise. Her secrets and veiled tragedy, and her fierce love for her daughter, reminded Aemilia so much of her own father. If Papa had been a magician, so was this lady.

A
T CHAPEL THE FOLLOWING
morning, Aemilia almost believed she had been spirited back to Italy. Though the service itself was soberly Protestant, frescoes covered the walls and the centuries-old stained-glass windows depicted miracles and saints. Carved on the baptismal font were the Instruments of the Passion. Above the altar, dominating the entire space, was the crucified Christ, an image that Anne Locke would have denounced as idolatry and replaced with a plain wooden cross. Flanking the crucifix was a statue of the Virgin Mary as the Mother of Sorrows. Though seemingly every other church and chapel in the entire kingdom had been whitewashed, its statues destroyed, this private chapel had been spared, undoubtedly because it was owned by the Crown.

“Mistress Lanier, I can see you are as thunderstruck as I first was,” Margaret Clifford said, after the service had ended.

Anne and the chaplain had already gone on ahead, leaving the Countess and Aemilia alone in the chapel.

“In truth, I've come to take great comfort from these images.” The Countess paused before an image of Christ, naked and bound, being scourged by the Romans. “Meditating upon this helps me endure my own sufferings as a wife.”

“My lady,” Aemilia said, shocked to hear a woman of her rank reveal so much of herself. Then she remembered how George Clifford's scorn of his wife had been on display for all the world to see. Perhaps the Countess had discovered that the best response was candor.

“For who inflicted such agony upon our Lord?” Margaret Clifford asked.

Aemilia felt bruised inside, thinking that the Countess expected her to reply that the Jews killed Christ. But the lady's answer to her own question took Aemilia's breath away.

“Men,” the Countess of Cumberland said. “Men killed Christ. And yet they blame poor Eve, and all womankind, for our fall from grace.”

Not since Aemilia was a girl and her father had whispered in her ear that hell was empty had she heard such a radical pronouncement.

Before leaving the chapel, the Countess lingered beneath a stained-glass window showing Saint Clare in her nun's habit.

“If I envy the Catholics one thing, it's that,” she said, lifting her gaze as the sun pierced the warm umber tones of Clare's habit. “If only I had been able to marry God instead of George Clifford. The sole good to come of our marriage was Anne, and he despises her because she's not a son.”

“Your daughter is a magnificent young lady,” Aemilia said. “I trust you're very proud of her.”

The Countess took Aemilia's arm as they walked out of the chapel. “Let her enjoy her girlhood. If it stays fine today, would you be so good as to give her her lessons outdoors? You shall teach her the lute, of course, and to sing madrigals in any language you please. And you'll read Ovid and Spenser with her.”

“Of course, my lady.” Aemilia remembered the books the Countess had left in her room. “Nothing would give me greater pleasure.”

Already she anticipated long summer afternoons discussing poetry and philosophy.

The Countess gave her a wry look. “I think writing your own poetry would give you greater pleasure still.”

Aemilia ducked her head, uncertain what to say.

“I was in earnest, you know, about encouraging you to write during your time with us,” Margaret said. “Once I, too, attempted to write.”

“You are a poet, my lady?” Aemilia thrilled at the possibility of meeting another Anne Locke.

The Countess shook her head. “No, I began writing my autobiography—for my chaplain, you understand.
The Seven Ages of Woman,
I called it. Alas, I had only reached the Fifth Age when I ran out of inspiration. Better I should provide patronage for those who are truly blessed by the Muses.”

Aemilia's heart surged.

“Sometimes I think a woman's life is a dance with backward and forward movements,” Margaret said. “A pilgrimage of grief.” She fixed Aemilia with rueful eyes. “But enough of my melancholy. Come, let's walk beneath the sun.”

“I
TOLD
YOU WE
would walk and walk.” Anne clasped Aemilia's hand as she led her along the winding path up Cookham Dean. “Wait till you see it! The tallest hill in miles!”

What a counterpoint the girl's enthusiasm sets to her mother's gravity
, Aemilia thought. When she looked back at the Countess marching behind them, the lady's eyes appeared lost in contemplation. In Margaret's wake came the servants, carrying Anne's and Aemilia's lutes and books.

Their uphill progress was slowed as Anne swooped to gather white harebells, purple vetch, blue forget-me-nots, and the lacy white blooms of cow parsley. Aemilia helped her tuck the wildflowers into her hat band.

“Look!” Anne struck an allegorical pose. “I am a rustic shepherdess! And you are a dryad!”

Laughing, Aemilia fended Anne off as the girl tried to tuck a spray of new birch leaves in her hair. Instead, she carried Anne's offering in her hand.

On they wandered, through cherry and apple orchards, across pastures of sheep and curious heifers, past brooks nearly spilling their green banks. The air rang with birdsong and lambs calling to their mothers. The winds and waters sang in harmony.

When they arrived at the heights of Cookham Dean, Aemilia marveled at the view, an endless tapestry of hills and vales, towns and hamlets, groves and pastures, castle turrets and church steeples, and the Thames winding into the green distance.

“From here,” the Countess said, “you can see into thirteen shires.”

Margaret Clifford, Aemilia noted, was not even out of breath from the climb.

The Countess led the way to an ancient oak. In its shade, the servants laid down a cloth for pupil and tutor to sit on.

“What think you of my schoolroom, Mistress Lanier?” Anne asked.

In the shade, the girl flung off her hat.

“Why, surely this is Mount Parnassus,” said Aemilia. “The home of the nine Muses.”

Winifred, red faced from the climb and puffing like an old donkey, handed her mistress her lute. Aemilia threw her maid an apologetic look before tuning her instrument.

“Let us begin with music,” Aemilia said to Anne, “and finish with Ovid.”

The Countess sat a short distance away upon a much-weathered bench built around the oak's massive trunk.

“She's reading her Psalter,” Anne whispered.

Gazing off into the green hills, Aemilia understood why the Countess allowed Anne to have her lessons here. From this summit, they might see so far in the distance. Margaret Clifford longed to give her daughter the world.

W
INIFRED NEEDN'T HAVE WORRIED
about my clothes
, Aemilia reflected. In this house of women, with no men to dazzle or appease, they dressed simply, without jewels or ostentation. The Countess wore sober dark gowns and even Anne's attire was robust, allowing her to freely rove across the grounds.

But on this glittering May morning, Anne was invited to the neighbor's estate for a fete. Aemilia stood beside the Countess and waved to Anne as she rode forth. Bedecked in pearls and brocade, the girl looked as though she were a princess on procession, accompanied by two maids, two footmen, and the stable groom.

Her mother, however, stayed behind, as though she embraced the life of a recluse.

“Let the girl amuse herself with the other young ladies,” the Countess said. “I can't abide those gatherings. All the local gentry who pity me.”

Aemilia longed to take Margaret's hand but feared that would be overstepping the boundary between them.
Remember your place.

The lady regarded Aemilia with her dark eyes that radiated quiet intelligence. “Mistress Lanier, would you like to see my laboratory?”

N
OT SINCE HER VISIT
to Simon Forman's consulting room ten years ago had Aemilia set foot in such a place, its walls bedecked with mystical diagrams. The Countess showed her the furnace and oven, the retorts and hermetically sealed fermenting vessels, and the copper distilling body with its glass head and receiver. There was a pestle and mortar, and all manner of dishes, beakers, and tubes.