Watch the Lady (19 page)

“Nor do I,” said Penelope.

“Watch and learn, Pygmy. Watch and learn,” said the Queen, turning briefly to Cecil.

Penelope had not heard her call Cecil that before. She knew the Queen was fond of pet names, but “Pygmy” seemed so cruel. If he was offended, he didn't show it, just smiled the Queen's way, his lips peeling back to reveal a row of surprisingly neat, sharp little teeth. She remembered the incident when his book was snatched from his hands and thrown about, how the savage jeers had slipped off him, and wondered if his resilience was learned young. She had seen the runt in a litter of puppies grow up to become the most savage in the pack.

“This girl could teach you a thing or two about playing cards.”

There it was again, that smile that could so easily have been mistaken for a snarl, and he said, “I have heard Lady Rich is most proficient,” but the Queen had already returned her attention to Penelope.

“I don't like it when my favorite ladies go off like that.”

“I shall try not to make a habit of it, Your Majesty.” The Queen laughed at that and made a passing comment about how different she was from her “disobedient dolt of a sister.” Penelope kept her smile intact as the Queen shuffled the cards, snapping them out onto the table one by one, then picking hers up and spending several minutes ordering them and reordering them in a fan.

They played in silence; Penelope could sense Cecil's scrutiny and the thought came to her that perhaps he had been advised to watch her, just as she had been to keep an eye on him.

“I am most displeased with that sister of yours,” continued the Queen. “I would have thought she'd have had more sense.”

“Love can make people do silly things,” said Penelope.

“Yes,” she replied with a sigh, then murmuring, “like mother, like daughter.”

Penelope clenched her jaw, refusing to be riled.

“I cannot fathom why all my courtiers insist on being so disobedient when it comes to marriage. It reflects badly on me.” She played on a while before adding, “
You
would not seek to betray me, would you?” casting a look Penelope's way that was so icy it took all the self-control she could muster not to show her apprehension.

“Never,” was all she replied, fearing, had she said more, her words might have been judged insincere.

They played on silently once more; it was Burghley who spoke next: “What think you to the Sidney wedding, my lady?”

Penelope's breath caught in her chest a moment until she understood it must have been the younger brother he was talking of. “Robert Sidney is to wed? Who is the bride?”

“No, not Robert,” said the Queen, “the older one—Philip—the poet.”

“Philip Sidney . . .” She was hollow, emptied out of everything, and it took all her strength of will to remain seated with that uninterested smile spread over her face, feeling Burghley and his boy observing her.

“With Frances Walsingham. She's a rather bland girl, very young. Do you know her?” continued the Queen. Penelope slowly shook her head, trying to assimilate the news. “It pleases her father. Walsingham has served me well. What do you think?”

Penelope shrugged. She was afraid to open her mouth for fear of what might emerge from it. It made sense then, that rueful look Sidney had worn in the long gallery earlier. The Queen seemed to approve of her apparent indifference, and Penelope noticed Cecil exchange a look with his father, wondering what it meant.

“He has matured lately—used to have ideas above his station,” the Queen went on. “Took it upon himself to try and dissuade me from my match with Anjou once.” She huffed, rearranging her fan of cards. “Came to nothing anyway,” she murmured under her breath as she placed a trio of clubs faceup on the table: a nine, ten, and knave.

Penelope managed somehow to make her play as if all was normal, as if a seed of jealousy had not sprouted in her and sent out shoots into the far reaches of her being, twisting about her vital organs, suckering themselves to her heart, woody fingers gripping tightly, staunching her blood flow.

“Sidney once asked me for
your
hand. Tried to resuscitate that old betrothal your father arranged. Did you know? Don't know what he expected; you were already promised to Rich, and Sidney had nothing much to offer you.”

Penelope cleared her throat and uttered, “Is that so?” as if she had barely ever given Sidney a thought, but the suckers continued pushing and winding, ever deeper.

“I've rather warmed to him lately though,” continued the Queen. “I believe Sidney may be destined for great things. He is certainly much loved, isn't he, Pygmy?”

“Indeed,” replied Cecil, oozing indifference and straightening his cuffs, which were bright and stiff with starch, before throwing her a look that suggested he knew more than he should. Penelope only then realized that, while she had been away birthing her infant, Cecil, who had once barely been able to meet her eye, had become someone who knew things. Here was an example of knowledge as power—these two men, father and son, bristling with the confidence that comes from having looked into every dark cranny, from knowing that nothing occurred without their knowledge. Burghley's espionage network was renowned, spreading secretly out through Walsingham, into the royal courts of Europe. She attempted levity, placing her cards on the table with the words, “Beaten again! I am out of practice, madam.”

Penelope compared herself, a woman with no inkling even of her beloved's marriage, entirely disempowered by ignorance, to this man Burghley, who had eyes everywhere, who held the reins of England behind its Queen because of all he knew. Was Sidney's marriage to Walsingham's daughter a power play—was Sidney shoring up his position with connections? Whatever the reason, it felt as if a knife were being skewered into her heart. But something hardened in her, and with it came the realization that she too could have eyes everywhere, make a web of connections, if she put her mind to it, and she resolved never to be the victim of ignorance again.

A man approached Burghley, quietly whispering something to him, upon which he turned to the Queen. “There is pressing business, Your Majesty, with the Scottish woman.”

Penelope's curiosity was pricked by this. It was Mary of Scotland they spoke of, surely—the Queen's cousin who had lost her crown to her infant son and languished for years as England's prisoner. Penelope wondered if she truly was a threat to the throne as they said, or if it was more complicated than it appeared.

“We shall continue our game later, my dear. I am required,” said the Queen, nudging her head in Burghley's direction.

Penelope sensed Cecil's eyes slip over her as she walked from the chamber. She picked up Spero, and took the door to the long gallery, forcing her thoughts away from the Sidney marriage, refusing to give voice to her inner devastation as she made her way to her rooms.

“I have been searching for you,” said Jeanne as Penelope entered. Something of her hidden distress must have shown on her surface, for Jeanne said, “What is it?” All she could do was shake her head, clutching at Spero for comfort. Jeanne guided her to the bed and, sitting beside her, placed an arm about her shoulders and passed her a package. “This came for you.”

“What it?”

“I have no idea. Come, let me untie you, make you more comfortable.” Jeanne peeled away her layers of clothing and loosened the laces of her bodice. Penelope lay down on the bed, numb to the core. Jeanne must have sensed her need for solitude for she began to gather up some linens and announced she was going to the laundry. When Jeanne had left the room, Penelope picked up the packet. Recognizing the hand instantly as Sidney's, she flung it back onto the bed but then took it up again, tearing away the wrapping.

It was a loosely bound ream of papers. She flicked through it; each page was filled tightly with Sidney's precise writing, divided into verses, the front page saying o
nly Astrophil and Stella
, no note, no explanation, nothing. She pulled a chair to the window, where the early-evening sun flooded in, alive with floating motes of dust, dipping and swirling in the agitated air as she moved.

She began to read. The words took hold in her, catching onto the dry kindling of her sadness as she began to understand that this—marks in ink on a sheaf of pages—was the intimate articulation of Sidney's love, a true likeness of his heart. Entranced by the rhythm of his words she read on, unable to recognize herself in that distant Stella, black-eyed, alabaster-skinned, pearl-toothed tyrant—thief of his heart, in one moment cold stone, in another a heavenly nymph, and elsewhere a deliverer of delightful pain. His love was monstrous, terrifying, filled with jealous rage and desperate longing, sweetness, sadness—an endless battle between ecstasy and pain.

She barely looked up when Jeanne returned. “What is it?” she asked.

“Poems.”

“From
him
?”

Penelope nodded, unable to drag herself away from the words, reading as if her life depended upon it; as if she were lost and the marks on the paper were the map that could either guide her to safety or its opposite—she could not know which.

To you alone I sing this mournful Verse,

The mournful'st Verse that ever Man heard tell;

To you whose softned Hearts it may empierce,

With Dolour's Dart, for Death of Astrophel.

Edmund Spenser,
Astrophel
(his eulogy to Sir Philip Sidney)

News of Mary Stuart's execution had begun to seep out on the day Sidney was laid to rest, but such was the outpouring of grief for the poet soldier that the death of a deposed queen did not resonate as it might have done on a different day. It had been a full three years and more since Penelope had begun to understand the intrigue surrounding Mary of Scotland, and how Burghley had invisibly orchestrated her circuitous route to the scaffold. Penelope had watched and listened, allowing information to accumulate in her, knowledge to shore up her future, as she observed the business of state take place beside the fickle amusements of court. She had grown to understand that the Queen had to sacrifice her Scottish cousin for the sake of England, that politics are ruthless, and sometimes death, even if it is cruel, makes perfect sense.

But there was no sense to Sidney's death—injured, fighting far from home. It was not even a fatal wound, yet it had been the death of him. If Mary's death symbolized Elizabeth's supremacy, Sidney's was its opposite: it achieved nothing and stood for nothing, unless it marked the end of chivalry. The Queen had chosen him for greatness, but none could have predicted how short his time in the sun would be. And Penelope's heart was shattered.

She had been asked by Leicester to accompany Sidney's wife to the funeral, and they stood together in the gallery on Cheapside to watch the cortège go by. Penelope was thankful for her sister's reassuring presence right behind her, one firm hand on her shoulder. She had been conveyed to Cheapside in a trance, was too riddled with desolation to be aware of anything around her. Jeanne had helped her dress—there had been a fuss, her black velvet would not fit, for she was with child again, and she had had to borrow a gown of her mother's; she couldn't have cared less what she wore.

She could feel Frances's slight presence beside her, barely there, as if she were a figure in a dream. She glanced at her wan profile and was surprised by the force of feeling that surged in her. What was it: a brooding envy of the girl for being the one who held Sidney's hand as he died; for being the one who had lain with him and been his wife near on four years; for being the one to bear his child; for being the one who would spend eternity alongside him. It was an ugly emotion, but undeniable. She couldn't find a way to truly hate the girl, though she had tried. But Penelope was strangely glad of Frances's presence that day, for it meant she had to hold the disparate parts of herself together, on the surface at least—beneath she felt herself crumbling like plasterwork in an abandoned building.

The cortège seemed endless, seven hundred mourners, and thousands more turned out into the streets to watch in silence—it was like a royal funeral. She wondered what he would have thought of that—he would have liked it. For all his chivalry he was not immune to vanity.

The press of the crowds in the street directly below was so great that the procession struggled to pass. They watched without a word as the high-hatted men went by in twos, their long gowns dragging in the dirt. Behind a pair of guards, with halberds held pointing to the ground, walked two drummers beating out a mournful rhythm. On and on they passed, his men-at-arms, his household, his friends, his distant kin, and all heralded by the beat of those infernal drums, until the horses came into sight—Sidney's field horse, followed by his beloved Barbary, both rattling with finery and mounted by his preferred pages. On seeing the broken lance carried by one, Penelope felt a lump, hard as a stone, in her throat, and lines of his poems began to float through her mind.

While no night is more dark than is my day,

Nor no day hath less quiet than my night,

She knew what was to come, could hardly bear to look and yet could not help herself, as the bier came into view, draped in black, swaying like an ancient barge, the bearers struggling under its weight. Frances made a small gasp and Penelope felt a storm of tears gather in her. Without thinking, she took the girl's hand, squeezed it.

What sobs can give words grace my grief to show?

What ink is black enough to paint my woe?

Frances leaned in against her, light as a cloud, and Penelope put an arm about her shoulders. There was his brother, Robert Sidney, face half hidden beneath his cowl, leading the chief mourners, and then came Leicester and Huntingdon with Essex and all the great noblemen—mounted, jangling, magnificent.