The Dark Lady's Mask (51 page)

Aemilia gulped the cold air. “Oh, what mischief is he tangled up in? I hope at least Henry has behaved himself.”

“You have every cause to be proud of your son,” Jasper said in a loud voice. “Why, Henry's the most diligent of all my apprentices, well on his way to becoming a virtuoso.”

Henry, his cheeks glowing as if from both embarrassment and pleasure, turned and grinned at them. Jasper then took the satchel from the boy and Aemilia reached for her son's arm, holding it tightly as they walked up Gracechurch Street.

“I
am
proud of you,” she told him. “You shall make a fine court musician.”

“I sang again for the Queen,” Henry told her. “And I saw Lady Anne Clifford dancing with Her Highness in the masques. But I think Lady Anne has no future as a musician. Her fingers on the lute are far too clumsy, and when she sings, she sounds like a wounded goat!”

“Pray, speak no ill of my pupil,” Aemilia said. “If you sang for the Queen, you must also sing for me. I shall write a song just for your voice.”

Though she tried to focus her mind solely on her son, her anxieties about Alfonse kept crowding in.
Arrested?
What if he lost his good name along with everything else? Trouble and ill luck seemed to chase him at every turn.

O
NCE THEY ARRIVED AT
Jasper's house in Camomile Street, Aemilia found a scrap of paper and wrote the poem that had been playing in her head since she left Cookham. She would turn it into the song she had promised Henry—the melody a jewel case for his haunting soprano that so enchanted the Queen. But the lyrics she would dedicate to Margaret. She would sing the song to her friend as her New Year's gift when she returned to Cookham after Twelfth Night.

W
ITH
J
ASPER'S FAMILY AND
apprentices gathered round, Aemilia played the lute to accompany Henry as he sang her new composition. His every note shimmered like silver.

Sweet holy rivers, pure celestial springs,

Proceeding from the fountain of our life—

Her son's ethereal voice was lost in the great racket erupting from the front door.

“Captain Lanier,” a dazed servant announced.

“Papa!” Henry cried, charging forward to hug him.

Aemilia set down her lute and sprang to her feet as Alfonse swaggered in, none too sober, looking more jubilant than she had ever seen him. Her relief to see him again, safe and whole and in such high spirits, was overshadowed by her worry.

“Jasper said you were arrested,” she murmured, with a quick glance to her cousin and his wife. “How did they let you go so soon?”

Her husband twirled her in his arms. “My noble friend, he came to my rescue!”

When his companion strode in, Aemilia felt the floor drop away. She shrank behind her son, clutching his shoulders as though the boy were her shield.

The mere sight of this man stung her. His long mane, as lustrous as any maiden's, had darkened from gold to auburn. No longer a boy, he was stalwart looking, tall and muscled, but no less beautiful. Harry was the epitome of male perfection grown into maturity. Pray God, let him not recognize her. Perhaps he had forgotten about her visits to Southampton House eleven years ago. But the moment Harry laid eyes on her, his face shone in recognition.

“Ah, the lovely Mistress Lanier! Your husband has told me so much about you.”

Alfonse made her son step aside so Harry could kiss her hand. He looked her up and down as though tempted to lift her skirts to see if she wore breeches beneath them.

At least Alfonse appeared oblivious to all this as he made his obsequious introduction. “We are graced by the presence of none other than my Lord Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton!”

Her son frowned and folded his arms in front of his chest. “But, my lord, the late Queen locked you in the Tower!”

Alfonse looked as though he would weep.

Harry laughed and cupped her son's chin. “Ah, the monstrous regiment of women! If Elizabeth imprisoned me, our gracious Majesty James released me and restored me to court. Now I am at liberty to reward my dear Alfonse for his loyal service in Ireland.” He looked at Aemilia while he spoke. “I have petitioned the King to grant your husband a patent on the weighing of hay and straw brought into London and Westminster. He shall have six shillings on every hay load and three shillings on every load of straw.”

“Our worries, they are over!” Alfonse said, kissing her. “We shall have a proper home again.”

“A patent,” she said, turning to Harry. “Truly, my lord?”

“For past services rendered,” said Harry, his eyes on her, not Alfonse.

Aemilia gripped her son so tightly that young Henry looked up at her in confusion.

A
S
A
LFONSE
, J
ASPER, AND
Deborah fussed over their aristocratic guest, Aemilia found an excuse to slip out into the garden and breathe some fresh air.

Had Harry been in earnest? Could such a patent truly meet the King's approval? Or did Harry only toy with their hopes? She conjured Margaret's quiet presence, her sober counsel. If Fortune was inconstant, Margaret was Aemilia's Polaris, her arctic star, steadfast and ever radiant, shedding light on her deepest turmoil. The Muse that guided her hand.

“This is where you hide, my old friend!”

Aemilia spun round to see Harry.

“Won't you even say thank you?” he asked her.

“It's kind of you if you're being serious and not playing games with my poor husband.”

From inside the house came the sound of Alfonse's singing.

Harry laughed. “As if
you
never went behind his back and played the trickster, my dear Emilio.”

“My days of wearing breeches are long past,” she told him.

“Indeed, I hear you serve the most pious Countess of Cumberland,” he said, his voice as light as hers was grave.

“And what is that to you, my lord?”

“My dear Aemilia-who-is-no-longer-Emilio, pray, don't be so cross! Am I not allowed to pine for my vanished youth and its lost pleasures?”

She fell into silence, recalling that midsummer night when she had witnessed Will's hopeless love for Harry.

“At least
you
still remember,” he said, with a note of mournful nostalgia. “At least I can still make you blush. Unlike
him.
”

“You refer to Master Shakespeare, my lord?” She turned to Harry and saw the hurt in his eyes.
So Harry loved him after all.
“He's quite rich, I hear. A gentleman with a coat of arms.” She realized for the first time that there was no bitterness left in her heart.
Now I speak with the wisdom of a poet—not the anguish of a poet's spurned mistress.
“Those whom Fortune favors do as they please.”

“But he's grown so very self-important,” said Harry. “And
cold,
Aemilia, as though he never loved at all.”

She saw that he trembled and wondered if he wept.

“Whilst I was in the Tower, I wrote letter after letter to him. Most respectable, you understand, for the guards read them before allowing them to be sent. He never answered one. I fear I was no longer useful to him. How I miss my William as he was that summer—so humble and sweet.”

“Let the past rest,” she said. “Let your heart be at peace.”

“We were so beautiful then,” he said, with such yearning that she thought his voice would break. “The three of us in that room and you playing the virginals whilst he read his poetry.”

“If it's music you desire, you are in a house of musicians. Come, let's join the others. My son will sing madrigals for you.” Aemilia gave Harry's arm a sisterly squeeze before leading him back inside the crowded house.

T
HE MORNING AFTER
T
WELFTH
Night, Aemilia bade her farewells to her husband and son. When she cried into Henry's hair, Alfonse gently gripped her shoulders and kissed her. “Peace, our boy shall be fine.”

Then Alfonse returned to court and Henry to his apprenticeship while she boarded the wherry back to Cookham. Though it always wrenched her to leave her son, a quiet joy glowed in her heart as she and Winifred traveled up the Thames. No matter what happened at court, no matter the outcome of Harry's patent, no matter what misadventures Alfonse tangled himself up in, Margaret awaited her. Her kindred spirit, her soul's harbor.

M
ARGARET EMBRACED HER IN
greeting and Anne clasped her arm and chattered as they traveled by cart up to the manor house.

“As a New Year's gift, I gave the Queen a fan of lace and she gave
me
a pair of embroidered gloves!” The beaming girl held up her gloved hands for Aemilia's inspection.

“Poor Aemilia can hardly get a word in, the way you prattle, my dear,” her mother said. “How fares your son, Aemilia? I hope you found him in good health.”

“The best health,” she said, with gratitude. “One day I must bring him here to sing for you both.”

“I've heard him sing at court,” Anne said. “In truth, his voice moves the Queen to tears.”

“He mirrors his mother's brilliance,” Margaret said, not masking her fondness.

Though it was bitterly cold, Aemilia felt radiant and warm from the roots of her hair to the tips of her toes. Likewise, Winifred, sitting in the depths of the cart with the satchels and boxes, seemed as sleek with contentment as a well-fed cat. She wore her brand-new cloak with the rabbit-skin collar, Aemilia's gift to her.

T
HE MANOR HOUSE WAS
fragrant with the smell of Yuletide evergreens burning in the great hearth to bring luck for the New Year.

“Master Daniel is returning in a fortnight,” Margaret told Aemilia, as they walked up the stairs. “But we shall put him in a different room so that you might keep yours. He's to teach Anne mathematics and rhetoric while you teach her music and read with her.”

“I prefer my lessons with Aemilia,” Anne said. “Master Daniel is so solemn and serious. He
never
laughs.”

Margaret took Aemilia's arm as they entered Aemilia's freshly aired room beneath the eaves. A pomander of roses and spices was set in a dish beside the stack of fresh paper.

“With Master Daniel teaching half of Anne's lessons, you shall have more time to write,” Margaret said.

Without the least hesitation or embarrassment, Aemilia threw her arms around her friend, her patron, her savior. “My every poem I shall dedicate to you and the Lady Anne!”

“To me!” Anne cried, dancing around the room and clapping her hands as though performing in one of the Queen's masques. “Ah, but you haven't seen our surprise!”

With a flourish, the girl pulled back the curtains on the bed, revealing a brand-new gown of lilac silk trimmed with ivory brocade. Beside herself, Aemilia stroked the soft, slippery fabric. Not since her days as Henry Carey's mistress had she owned anything so fine. Margaret's belief in her raised her up to heights she had thought impossible. For a woman of her station to receive such finery not in exchange for the favors of her body but for leading a virtuous life dedicated to poetry and learning. She found she was in tears, too moved to speak. In Margaret's company, she was not an adulteress or a jilted mistress or the discontented wife of an impoverished courtier. Margaret had washed her clean.

Her friend placed a gentle hand on her shoulder. “Our New Year's gift to you.”

T
HAT EVENING, AFTER A
meal of roast pheasant with apples and chestnuts, Aemilia performed her new composition, the poem she had written for Margaret. Each word fountained up from the depths of her soul.

Sweet holy rivers, pure celestial springs,

Proceeding from the fountain of our life;

Sweet sugared currents that salvation brings,

Clear crystal streams, purging all sin and strife,

Fair floods, where souls do bathe their snow-white wings,

Before they fly to true eternal life:

Sweet Nectar and Ambrosia, food of Saints,

Which whoso tasteth, never after faints.

This honey dropping dew of holy love,

Sweet milk, wherewith we weaklings are restored.

T
HE MONTHS PASSED, SNOW
melted to reveal new grass, and Aemilia's stack of written pages grew, improved upon day by day as she chanted the verse aloud in the privacy of her room and later read each poem to Margaret.

She gave Anne her lessons in the library until at last it was warm enough to walk up Cookham Dean and play their lutes beneath the oak.

With Master Daniel, Anne was stiff and formal. With Aemilia, she was like a younger sister, grabbing her hand and whispering secrets, showing her bird nests and the orphaned hedgehog she had adopted.

Mewed up in her laboratory, Margaret distilled perfumes for Anne and Aemilia made from flowers and herbs chosen especially for them. Anne's was light and sweet with freesia and lily while Aemilia's was darker and more mysterious with rose, lavender, and night-blooming jasmine. Margaret's own scent was a blend of rosemary, cedar, lavender, and hyssop, the purifying herb celebrated in Psalm 51.

I
N SUMMER
M
ASTER
D
ANIEL
departed to visit other noble patrons on their country estates. Aemilia taught Anne to sing new madrigals in French and Italian while Anne taught Aemilia the latest dances she had learned at court. Tutor and pupil crowned each other in floral garlands before enacting masques for Margaret. Afterward, they bowed and laid their garlands in Margaret's lap. The three of them lay in the long summer grass, their heads touching, forming a three-spoked wheel as they watched the clouds form fantastical shapes then dissolve in the infinite sky.