Watch the Lady (27 page)

Instead of the angry outburst Cecil has quietly been hoping for, the Queen sighs theatrically, saying, “What shall we do with you, Essex?”

“If you wish to punish me, Most Gracious Majesty, then I beg you do not force me out of your presence, I could not bear it. It would be as if the sun were extinguished from my world. I would wither and die.”

Cecil is glancing towards the window and catches Ralegh's eye; judging by the look on his face, he is thinking the same thing. Perhaps now the Queen will at least dismiss the earl's nonsense with a harsh word or two.

But all she does is smile and say, “No, Essex, I will not banish you. You are my brightest bloom. I would not see you wither.”

As the Queen dismisses them Cecil has the feeling that a cutpurse has spirited something precious from him and left him bewildered, patting his empty pockets. He bows and makes to leave but the Queen bids him stay, says she would “like a private word,” and shoos off the girls at her feet, indicating that Cecil should take their place.

“Pygmy, you wear your envy outwardly. It is not becoming.”

“Highness, I—”

“No.” She holds up a hand to stop him. “I can see that you are not fond of Essex and it irks you when I favor him. But consider this: you have grown up under the wing of your magnificent father, the man I have trusted more than any other—I see evidence of him in you.” Cecil begins to tingle with pride but if he was looking at her expression rather than her hands he would see the slight sneer she wears, as if he is something distasteful she must tolerate for her own good, like Doctor Lopez's remedy. “And your mother—God rest her soul—was a wise and honorable woman, who was there to guide you until your twenty-fifth year. Essex can barely remember his own father, and as for his mother.” She spits out the last word as if she cannot bear her mouth to be adulterated by it. Her eyes narrow. “That woman couldn't mother a litter of pigs.” She lowers her voice and drops her gaze. “She stole my most precious treasure.” She must surely be talking of Leicester. “Essex even lost his stepfather at a tender age.” Cecil is thinking that twenty-two is not
such
a tender age. “You see, Pygmy, you may be lacking what Essex has in beauty but I see your loyalty. It shines from you.” For Cecil it is like a purification to hear such words from her. “Essex is in desperate need of guidance and who better than I to act as both mother and father to him, but do not think that because I value him so greatly I value you any the less.” He feels a surge of emotion like a man remembering he is loved by God.

“I hardly know how to describe my gratitude,” he says. “I live only to serve you. You and England.” He understands, now what his father has been trying to make him see, that just to serve her is enough—all else is distraction.

“Overcome your envy, though, for it is an ugly trait.” She holds out her hand. It is his cue to leave and as he kisses her ring he feels all his wickedness, the envy, the covetousness, the jealousy, drop away as if he is reborn.

“I still don't understand why you are here and not at your husband's house,” says Lettice, who sits beside the bed with Dorothy.

Penelope does not want to think of her husband now but cannot help remembering his reaction when she had announced to him that she was carrying another's child.

“One day you will have to atone for your behavior,” he had said. She resisted pointing out that he was hardly free from sin either. He looked deflated, resigned, too burdened to be angry with her. They sat in a hollow silence for some time. Rich didn't inquire who the father was; perhaps he knew. It is hard to know where gossip has spread when you are the subject of it. She has watched the Queen closely for signs that it has reached her ear but has discerned no change in her behavior. Either she knows nothing of Penelope's adultery, or she chooses to pretend so. Rich looked so desolate that she reached out to touch his hand, but he snatched it away, as if he might be defiled by her. “You kept your side of the bargain,” he said. “Despite myself, I admire that.”

“Thank you.” She was aware that he must have had to muster all his magnanimity to pass the compliment.

“And I must give the bastard my name, for the sake of appearances.”

“Yes.”

“Well, so be it.” His expression pained her. “We are both burdened by a secret now.”

She wanted to tell him to try to wear his own more lightly, to point out that no one is entirely free of sin, that the opinions of others are not so important. But to him they are, as is his opinion of himself. It is he who chooses to live his life shrouded in shame.

Her mother is still talking but she is not listening. She closes her eyes, pushing all thoughts of Rich to the back of her mind and, grabbing Jeanne's small hand, takes a deep breath to fend off the next wave of pain—they are coming thick and fast now. Her mother's voice is grating. She squeezes Jeanne's hand tighter still and imagines Blount pacing the chamber below.

Jeanne whispers, “Nearly there.”

“And where is Rich, why is he not downstairs awaiting the birth of his baby?” It is Lettice again.

“Shhhh,” whispers Jeanne, smoothing a cool damp cloth over her forehead.

She begins to pant as another wave engulfs her.

“Rich really should be—”

“RICH IS NOT THE FATHER!” The shout bursts out of Penelope with the force of cannon fire.

The midwife gasps and Lettice stares at her daughter in openmouthed shock. Dorothy takes their mother's hand: a gesture that says,
Leave it be
.

As the pain abates Penelope wonders if her mother is more horrified in the deed itself or the fact that it is spoken out loud. The tension falls from her body and she sinks back into the bed, taking a sip of caudle from Jeanne. It is likely Lettice, whose expression has settled into pinch-lipped indignation, is wondering how she could have spawned children so lacking in morals: Essex has an infant on the way with one of the Queen's maids—though no one else is yet aware of it—Dorothy eloped and wed in secret and now
she
is birthing a bastard. Penelope can feel her annoyance building at her mother's outrage.

“For God's sake,” says Dorothy. “She wouldn't be the first woman to birth another man's baby.”

“What will people think?”

“You must know by now,” says Penelope, “that I couldn't give a fig about people's petty judgments and hypocrisies.” She can see her sister smiling behind her hand.

Lettice expels an exasperated sigh but Penelope can feel another contraction accumulating in the small of her back and sending spiked fingers round her belly. She heaves herself onto all fours, moaning like a cow, surprised by the sounds emanating from her, and Dorothy begins to rub her back with firm fingers, while Jeanne wipes the cooling cloth over her brow again, but there is no relief. She rocks back and forth until the pain recedes once more.

“Not long now,” repeats Jeanne.

Lettice is having words with the midwife: “Nothing goes beyond this chamber, understood?”

“My lips are fastened, my lady. Women say things in the heat of labor that they do not mean. Your daughter is confused by the pain.”

Penelope hears this exchange as if from under water. Jeanne is holding her with her eyes and emitting short sharp puffs of breath for her to mimic.

“Here he comes,” says the midwife. “Push, my lady, push and pant.”

A sound gathers in the deepest part of her, a terrible savage noise, and with it a new kind of pain sears through her body. She keeps her eyes locked onto Jeanne's. Puff, puff, puff, and then comes the irresistible need to push this baby out. She is being torn in two. Another ghoulish howl escapes from her. And it is out.

“A girl,” says Dorothy.

“Never mind, you have two boys already,” says her mother.

Penelope lifts her head away from the pillow, straining to catch a glimpse of her infant, but she cannot see properly. “Let me have her.”

“But we must clean her,” says the midwife, “and let her begin suckling to bring down Nurse's milk.”

“Give her to me,” Penelope's voice is firm.

“Darling,” says Lettice, “I don't think—”

“I want to hold my baby.”

It is Jeanne who takes the infant, still bloody, from the midwife and places her on Penelope's breast, covering her with the blanket for warmth. And it is as if the whole chamber falls away, everything falls away—the worries about her brother, his erratic moods, that niggle at her constantly; concerns about Rich, that delicate balancing act that is her marriage; the seam of dread that runs through everything, of her correspondence with Scotland being uncovered. Slowly, slowly, she is making inroads, gaining King James's trust, letters moving up and down the Great North Road, but it is a most delicate matter; then there are the Catholic plots; the Spanish threat; the plague, which they say is running rife in parts of the capital; a thousand fears that habitually haunt her—all dissolved and she is left in a state of complete contentment with her daughter—Blount's daughter—drifting in space.

A great flood of love surges in her, inundating them both, and she takes in the sight of her infant: the miniature hands waving as if under water, the mop of sticky black hair, the pink scrunched face. Penelope is mesmerized by this perfect creature made inside her own body, astonished by the miracle of it. The infant's eyes pop open suddenly, meeting those of her mother, and Penelope is shot through with a fear-tinged euphoria at this confrontation, as if those eyes hold secrets within them so great they can never be uttered. They are black and deep, a place to become entirely lost. A voice insinuates itself into her mind, a faint recitation, fragments of poetry, an incantation from the dead, forming, shaping, becoming whole:

. . . in beamy black, like painter wise,

Frame daintiest luster mixed of shades and light?

She has the overwhelming sense as she gazes at her baby, of looking into her own eyes, feeling that God has made in this infant a mirror to the past. She can hear Blount saying, “If it is a girl, we shall name her after you.”

“Little Pea,” she breathes.

Lest if no veil those brave gleams did disguise,

They sun-like should more dazzle than delight?

Sidney is there with them; she feels him in a shiver that runs up through her being. “You are made in love,” she murmurs to her infant.

She e'en in black doth make all beauties flow?

And slowly, like a leaf twirling and drifting to the ground, Penelope returns to the birthing chamber to see the smiling faces of her mother, her sister, and the midwife at the foot of the bed, and Jeanne, dear, dear Jeanne, beside her, head cocked, enchanted. “She has the look of her father,” Jeanne says very quietly, so the others cannot hear.

Penelope smiles. “He will want to see his firstborn.” She can feel the strings of her heart attached to the pulsating core of Little Pea and her others in the nursery at Leighs and also flying out like a fishing line to draw Blount in, right in, to the fulcrum of her world.

Cecil sits beside the lake remembering the Queen's visit almost two years earlier and the miniature galleons enacting a sea battle for her delight. He has been on the Privy Council for some time now but still feels ineffectual, as if his function is merely to be his father's proxy. He is a man of almost thirty, should be at the height of his powers, but he can see no way out from Burghley's shadow. Whatever heights Cecil rises to there is always the sense of Burghley's bitter dissatisfaction in his son's failure to achieve the appointment of Secretary of State. How he would love to create something brilliant, some kind of extraordinary policy, something to make the Cecils' legacy indelible. Peace with Spain: he imagines his father's delight—his ancient face opening into a rare smile—as the papers are signed, the Queen's name beside King Felipe's. Then his father will recognize his worth. But as he is thinking it, the pragmatic side of him simultaneously recognizes the impossibility of such a thing—but great things are achieved by those who dream, are they not?

The lake is covered in flotsam, a scum of debris; a swan has made herself a nest on a platform that had once been the stage for a magnificent display of fireworks. He walks towards the water's edge, carefully picking his way around the weeds and mud, where he remembers a bank of fragrant wildflowers artfully designed to appear as if they had seeded there by chance.

It upsets him to see the place in disorder; he finds it almost unbearable to sit amongst such chaos, and he tries to cheer himself by thinking of his son and heir, William, back in the nursery at Pymmes. He conjures up an image of the child in his mind's eye, sensing the blossoming of feelings—love and pride—deep within. He makes the nurse strip William naked from time to time, just so he can marvel at his boy's straight spine, imagining the little mobile shoulder blades are the nubs of wings that will one day sprout and allow him to fly. Thinking of his boy, with his perfect proportions, so unlike him, gives him hope.

He can see the chimneys of Pymmes from where he stands, emitting strings of grey smoke. Another wave of inadequacy washes over him; to live in a house, however magnificent it may be, that is built on land carved out from his father's estate, funded by monies gained by his father's clever dealings, is not the sign of a successful man. If he had been of a different disposition, a different shape, he might have earned martial glory and had his own honors bestowed on him.

He walks through the arbor towards the house, ankle-deep in dropped blossom, refusing to see the wild beauty of the unkempt gardens, only irritated by the lack of order. Essex had stolen away his father's gardener. The earl had wanted something spectacular to impress the Queen and had achieved it by covering his cherry trees with sacking to hold off their fruit. A week before her arrival they had been exposed to the sun and, by the day of her visit, they were groaning with cherries a month after the harvest was over. It was on everyone's lips at court, how Essex's trees had borne fruit magically in the glow of the Queen's splendor. Cecil would have chopped those blasted trees down, given half a chance.