The Dark Lady's Mask (56 page)

Aemilia tried to convince herself it didn't matter, for in 1612, a year after her book's publication, Alfonse finally received his promised patent on the weighing of hay and straw entering the cities of London and Westminster. It seemed that now her husband might finally make headway paying off his debts. Aemilia told herself that she had every reason to be content, that a good woman couldn't ask for anything more.

Yet it haunted Aemilia that one recipient of
Salve Deus
who still hadn't responded to its publication was Will, though Ben assured her he had placed a copy directly in Will's hand. For many months, she had braced herself for some stinging repartee or satire on his part ridiculing her poetic pretensions. But there was only silence. Did Will think this, her reply to his sonnets, unworthy of his notice? Courtesy demanded that he should at least send her a note of acknowledgment, however perfunctory.

A
EMILIA BIDED HER TIME
until Ben's next visit.

Her cousin was lately returned from a sojourn in Paris, where he had traveled as a tutor with his nineteen-year-old protégé, Wat Raleigh, whose father, Sir Walter Raleigh, had been locked in the Tower since Elizabeth's reign.

While Aemilia served Ben wine and sweetmeats, he regaled her with his adventures. “Dear cousin, had you only seen me. Young Wat contrived to get me dead drunk then laid me out in a cart, which he wheeled about the whole of Paris, telling its fair denizens that this was a livelier image of the crucifix than any they had.”

Aemilia shuddered to imagine how much liquor her cousin had imbibed to leave him so inebriated. But when she could think of no reply and failed to even smile, her cousin leaned forward with a look of concern.

“Something troubles you,” he said.

She forced herself to say the words. “Have you heard anything at all from Master Shakespeare?”

Ben clasped her hand. “Did you truly not hear the news? He's stopped writing plays and returned to Stratford.”

Aemilia waited for Ben to burst out laughing at his own joke. But it appeared he was in earnest.

“He no longer writes?”

Impossible
, she thought, remembering him shut up in their bedchamber in Verona, covering page after page as if in thrall to the poetry coursing through him. Now that she had become a published woman of letters, Will had ceased to write at all?

Ben shrugged. “In truth, he may of late have scribbled a play or two with some collaborator from the King's Men. But I fear we've seen the end of Shakespeare as we've come to know him.”

 

EMILIA TROTTED HER BORROWED
mare down a road tunneled in arching leaves. She breathed in the air, redolent with blossoming elderflower. Whitethorn and blackthorn wove their branches in a living web, and at their feet sprang foxglove and greater Solomon's seal, everything glittering from the rain that had just ceased. From her perch in the saddle, her eyes sought out gaps in the hedge, hoping to catch a glimpse of the fabled Forest of Arden. Instead, she saw fields of wheat and barley, and pastures adrift in buttercups, until at last she reached the outskirts of Stratford.

“It seems an unremarkable place,” said Henry, riding beside her, as they passed a row of cottages with unglazed windows.

At twenty-three, her son was only a year younger than Aemilia had been when she absconded to Italy with him as a babe in her arms. Tall and broad shouldered, Henry was armed with the sword and rapier Alfonse had wielded in the Irish wars.

“So hard to believe your father is already three years dead,” she said.

Alfonse lay buried in Saint James's churchyard in Clerkenwell. He had left her with the straw and hay patent and thousands of pounds of debts. The thought of her late husband's unfulfilled life washed her in sorrow. If only she'd had the power to grant him his knighthood, his portion of glory.

“He wasn't my father.” Henry stared straight ahead, his reproach of her hanging in the air between them.

Aemilia felt her temper flare.
Be thankful you're a man,
she wanted to tell him.
You will never have to make the same choices I was forced to make.
But when she replied, she kept her voice mild. “He was your father in every way that mattered.”

She watched her son rub his wet eyes.

“He truly loved you,” Henry said, glancing sideways at her. “He would hear no ill spoken of you.”

Now it was her turn to blink back tears. She had begun to think that grief was her constant companion, for she was a woman twice bereaved. Not only had she lost her husband, but just a month ago Margaret had gone to her eternal rest.
How shall I live without you, my arctic star, my refuge?
On a silken cord around Aemilia's neck hung the golden ring Margaret had bequeathed to her, the precious metal warm against her heart.

If losing her dearest friend had left Aemilia anguished, Margaret's daughter was truly at sea, for Anne had lost her one champion in the battle for her inheritance. Her husband threatened to take her children away if she didn't submit. Aemilia carried her former pupil's letter in her saddle bag.

Oh, Aemilia, if you could only see me now. I am like an owl in the desert, so broken and hopeless. Every day I read your Cookham poem. My memories of our time there are one of my few remaining consolations.

Wrenching her thoughts from Anne, Aemilia turned to her son. “It was good of you to make the journey with me.”

They had been traveling for four days, covering about a hundred miles. Winifred had offered to accompany her as well, but her maid hadn't sat in a saddle for more than two decades. Aemilia had deemed it best to spare her the ordeal of the long-distance ride.

“I could hardly have you come all this way on your own, Mother.” Henry spoke with an air of dutiful propriety that reminded her of Jasper.

Her son was as circumspect as she had been reckless at his age, as frugal as Alfonse had been spendthrift. Though Henry was a devastatingly handsome young man, with his natural father's aristocratic cheekbones and her own dark coloring, her son had vowed not to marry until they managed to pay off Alfonse's debts. She hoped her son wasn't condemning himself to a life of loneliness. To complicate matters, Alfonse's brother Innocent was badgering her to sign over the hay and straw patent to him as he had eight children to feed. He promised to have the patent renewed and divide the proceeds, but she didn't know if she could trust her brother-in-law to keep his word.

One thing remained certain—she needed to find a reliable source of income in her widowhood. After years of giving private lessons to young girls, she longed to have her own establishment where she could teach not just music but also Latin and Greek, offering the same kind of humanist education Susan Bertie had given her. After all, girls weren't welcome in the grammar schools and not every family, even among the gentry, could afford a private tutor. However, a day school for girls might be just within their reach.

Aemilia was negotiating to rent a property in Drury Lane near Saint Giles-in-the-Fields, where many wealthy families lived. If Fortune proved kind, the school would not only allow her to pay off Alfonse's debts but also widen the circle of learned young women. Then again, so many of her dreams had been dashed. Did she dare believe in this one?

She and Henry rode through Rother Market, where the houses grew more substantial as befitting a thriving town of two thousand souls. Still, it seemed such a small place, as though its burghers were resigned to live their lives in miniature far away from the great stage of power and influence. She could still not grasp why Will at the very height of his success had retired to this backwater never to write another play.

Townspeople gaped at her and her son. It seemed they were unused to the sight of strangers, especially one as fetching as Henry. When he stopped to ask one of the market wives where they could find respectable lodgings, Aemilia observed how the young woman gazed at him as though he were Adonis fallen to earth. But Henry seemed oblivious to her adoration.

“The Swan Inn in Bridge Street, sir.” The woman pointed out the direction they must go.

Aemilia murmured her thanks and pressed a silver penny in the woman's hand.

O
NCE THEY HAD SECURED
rooms at the Swan and Aemilia had washed and changed into her good gown, she asked the innkeeper the way to New Place.

The man snapped to attention. “Good mistress, what business have you at New Place?”

She hesitated, knowing that whatever she replied would be spread across town, giving the gossips something to chew on.

“I'll hazard it's Master Shakespeare you've come all this way to see,” the innkeeper said. “I fear you're too late. He died in April.”

“I've heard the sad tidings,” she said, lowering her head in respect for the deceased.

A fortnight ago Aemilia had received a letter from Will's eldest daughter summoning her to Stratford on account of a secret bequest he had left to her, one that did not involve money.
Should you venture here for lucre's sake,
the letter had sternly informed her,
you shall be sorely disappointed.

“In faith, it's Mistress Susanna Hall I've come to see.” Aemilia regarded the innkeeper without shame, as befitting a woman of forty-seven years clad in the sober attire of a widow. She told herself that no stranger could even guess at her past.

The innkeeper nodded, his curiosity apparently sated, for surely a widow calling on a matron was hardly a matter worthy of further speculation.

“Doctor Hall is away in Warwick,” he said, “but you'll find Mistress Hall at home. It's not ten minutes' walk from here, New Place is. I suspect even a Londoner like you will find it impressive. Left it all to his daughter and son-in-law, Master Shakespeare did. Shamefully neglected his own wife in the will, though. That's what everyone round here says.”

Aemilia's heart pricked to think of poor Anne Shakespeare and all she had endured.

“You speak as if Master Shakespeare was not the most popular man in Stratford,” she said.

The innkeeper nodded, as though he harbored strong opinions on the subject. “First he runs away, a young father leaving behind three little children. His wife never complained, mind you. She just carried on with her brewing and did as best she could. Then he returns, as rich as a lord and as arrogant, too, hoarding grain in his barn during the famine a few years back when we'd hunger riots in the streets.”

Aemilia struggled to connect the landlord's description of this avaricious man to the Will she had known, that hungry poet who had devoured the lamb pie she brought to him at his boardinghouse.