He looked taken aback and gazed now at the back of her veil with almost paternal concern on his face. They remained in this tableau, and quite touching ’twould have been if I gave a feck about either of them.
“I did not realise you had been . . . misled,” he said quietly, in a trepidatiously concerned tone.
She cleared her throat a wee bit and continued in a brisker voice: “You surely know, Master Tilney, that if witchcraft is performed onstage, then I must, and will, accuse the parties responsible for it. In this case, that would be yourself and Mr. Shakespeare, and also the players performing it. Their Majesties would perceive any evidence of witchcraft as a threat to their own health, and therefore the health of the State. It is treason.”
“I am keenly aware of all of that. Therefore I found it meet to ask that you aid me in preventing treason now, to ensure you cannot accuse me of abetting treason later.”
“I say again, you are a man of wisdom for turning to me. But in my role as a plucker-out of witchcraft, I insist you tell me about the provenance of the spells.” They had retreated from their poignant moment to proper and impersonal deportment, which was fairly fecking dull, to be honest.
“They have their several authors,” Tilney said, “and I know not which to trust. One is from Mr. Shakespeare’s original manuscript. But a witch came to me claiming that an enemy of mine had tricked Mr. Shakespeare into inserting real spells into his script. She advised me to replace his with some of her own devising that she vouchsafed contained no magic.”
“Did she now,” said the lady, drily amused.
“But she has now protested too much on behalf of her own verses, which has made me doubt her. It may be she is dishonest, and it may be she herself who would entrap me.”
“Perhaps,” said the Court Witch. She hummed to herself as she once again regarded the two pages, as though she were after choosing which tart she might like from a dessert tray. Then she pointed one delicate finger to the paper-leaf lying to the left. “This one,” she said, “contains real spells. By no means use it.” Pointing to the other: “You must use this one. Ensure that these verses”—the one on the right—“are the only ones ever uttered upon the stage, and I shall have no cause to cry treason.”
“Indeed, I shall, my lady,” he said quickly.
“I advise you to destroy this page”—the one on the left—“to avoid any confusion. For if real spells such as these come to be uttered in the presence of Their Majesties, it will not go well for you.”
After a stupefied moment, Tilney snatched the left-hand leaf and tore it into bits.
Lady Emilia smiled approvingly. I bit my lower lip near hard enough to puncture it, but I made no noise. Tilney drew that right-hand paper closer to him. He raised his eyes to look at her. “I am truly and forever your humble and indebted servant.”
“’Tis no effort on my part, Master Tilney, and we at court are all so grateful for the entertainments you provide. ’Tis my honour to protect you.”
That coldly noble face softened, and genuinely touched he seemed, flushing with pleasure and not humiliation. He brought his hand to his chest and bent the knee to her. “You honour me.”
“You offered me a tour of your workshops,” she said. “I fain would see them.”
“Indeed,” said Tilney, and then paused ever so briefly. Right furious I was with both of them, but still needful to know what other intrigue might be brewing, so I listened. “I would be honoured to show you. But may I first ask another favour of you, Lady Emilia? This one on behalf of my own person, ’tis naught to do with the Revels Office.”
She gave him what I took to be a flirtatious smile, that bitch. “A personal favour?” she asked, looking delighted. She was flirting with him! How dare anyone flirt with that salt pillar of a man, when I myself had not? Especially when she had come near to breaking his heart a decade earlier? And whilst interfering with my schemes? My detestation of her grew by leaps.
Taken aback by her change in demeanour he was, and fumbled his words. “As—as I—as I spoke earlier, although we both know I am lacking as a poet, I authored a book our late exalted queen deemed very worthy,” he said. “’Twas later published, at her demand, to great acclaim and commercial success.”
Betrayed though I was by him, still my heart fluttered a bit to hear this. Good ol’ Edmund Tilney! A writer on top of all his other qualities!
“You are a man of many talents,” said Lady Emilia in a silky voice with a silky smile.
Still gobsmacked by her sudden friendliness, he was. “Poetry is not among my talents, of course,” he insisted, his cheeks pink. “You more than anyone would know that, and as for prose works, I have not published since, as I have given years of my life and labour in service to this office.”
“Which we all heartily applaud you for, Master Tilney.”
“But, Lady Emilia, I must confess to you.” He paused, then drew a long and careful breath. “I have been quietly toiling at another manuscript for many years. A work on diplomacy and policy. I had hoped to give it to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth, but I was unable to polish it to my own satisfaction before her death. I feel now that it is quite perfect.”
“Ah. And you would like me to show it to Her Majesty Queen Anne, in hopes that she might show it to the King.”
“Only if you yourself felt it was worthy of such advancement. Given our epistolary history, I recognise you as my most honest critic.” Backstabbing bastard though he was, ’twas sweet to see him blush like this.
“Let us not ruminate too strongly on my past perceptions of your works, Master Tilney. This manuscript is unlike your sonnets, I am sure.” And here poor Tilney truly turned so pink I feared he might faint. “But you are under the Lord Chamberlain,” she continued. “Surely he may present it to His Majesty directly.”
He grimaced. “The Lord Chamberlain will not do me the favour of reading it. Despite the success of my previous book, the Lord Chamberlain considers my work for the Revels Office to be the sum total of my talents.”
“’Tis a shame that he be so limited in vision,” she sympathised.
“He may also have heard that I make a poor poet.” Tilney, having mastered the art of blushing, now practised the art of fidgeting. “Certainly many others have heard as much.”
“Edmund,” she murmured, suddenly so soft and familiar I nearly peed myself. “Even with magic at my command, I cannot undo history. But I assure you I suffered from that episode as well.”
He looked at her. Their faces were very close—I could see hers but not his from the angle I was at, and she was softly lit by the clouded daylight through the stained glass. She was right dazzlingly beautiful. I waited for him to grab her close and plaster her with kisses, maybe even tear her gown off.
Instead, he turned away and tapped the table nervously. “’Tis unfortunate the Lord Chamberlain cannot help,” he said. “And thus I break with custom and beseech you, though I know I am out of my place to do so. ’Tis called Topographical Descriptions, Regiments, and Policies. ’Tis a diplomatic treatise. I . . . beseech you to show it to the Queen.” He cleared his throat and took a demure step away from her and studied his feet, all self-effacement.
Realising the moment was past, she collected herself and cooed in her gracious, courtly manner that she would be pleased to read it and would send a man to fetch it from Tilney later that day.
Tilney’s eyes came near to popping out of his face, although he tried his best to contain it. “I am beside myself with gratitude that you will even consider this request,” he said, suddenly looking a right sycophantic arse.
“Your timing is most admirable,” she said.
Now his back grew something straighter. “Admirable? How so, milady?”
“Her Majesty Queen Anne would interfere with the rising ambitions of one Philip Herbert, brother to the Earl of Pembroke.”
“Ah yes, I know of him,” said Tilney, his dignity recovered now, and using the particular tone that means, I understa
nd he and the King are fuck buddies, but we mustn’t say so.
“He is a loathsome man, though very pretty,” Lady Emilia informed him. “Extremely foul-tempered and ill-spoken. He has no manners and spends all his indoor hours at dice. The King is enthralled with him. He pays off the fellow’s gambling debts, appointed him Baron of Shurland, and next month, ’tis rumoured, he will be made an earl. The Queen despises this Philip Herbert and wishes him put in his place.”
“And he has written a book as well?”
She laughed gently. “He is not capable of such a feat. However, he is the patron of several writers.”
“And?” prompted Tilney, when disinclined she seemed to continue her thought.
“And one of his writer-pets has, by coincidence, written a diplomatic book to do with travel in Europe.”
Tilney’s eyes widened. “That is the very subject of my endeavours!” he said.
She smiled. “Yes. The King will not entertain two such books. Thus with the Queen’s support, you may eclipse Herbert’s writer. This would please the Queen greatly.”
“Who is the other writer? I have my suspicions.”
“I know not,” she said. “Philip Herbert, despite being a boorish, graceless idiot, patronises several scribblers, because that is the fashionable thing to do. He considers them his personal pets, although I daresay he never reads a word that ’tisn’t directly writ to flatter him. I daren’t speak with certainty as to his pet’s identity, although I shan’t deny that Mr. Shakespeare is a likely option.” (Lady Emilia really must despise this Philip Herbert fellow, for even I know one should speak of lords according to their lands or titles, not their Christian names. Her contempt was visceral.) “But even this week, Herbert has petitioned the King to read his own pet’s treatise. If Queen Anne could likewise petition him with a better candidate, and thus come between Herbert and his sycophantic ambitions, she would be very pleased. To thwart even a small attempt of Herbert’s is agreeable to her. She wishes to be perceived as the chief patron of writers. She would not cede that to a presumptuous upstart.”
“And it does not matter to you that the other writer, the one you would be undermining, might be Mr. Shakespeare?” he demanded hoarsely.
She gave him an impatient look. “Have you understood nothing of what you’ve heard from me today?”
“But you preferred his poetry, my lady,” Tilney said quiet-like, looking away.
“Mr. Shakespeare is a poet in the truest sense, more concerned with what his words can effect in another, than with claiming his prey once he has brought it down. He is barely of the corporeal realm. And that is very old news, Master Tilney. Mr. Shakespeare is nothing to me. You and I are only interested in what the future holds, are we not?”
My excellent Tilney regained his shellacked self again. “I shall send a boy with the manuscript this very afternoon,” he said. “And if your ladyship wishes, let us begin the tour . . .”
As soon as they were gone from the office, I made my way down the steps and didn’t I enter, just to glower at the page on the table that Tilney had shown Lady Emilia. I was furious that she had so cheated me of opportunity. I was outraged, so I was, that one of the sisterhood would not share my ambition to safeguard magic above all else. She with her life of privilege and plenty, traitor to her race for the sake of convenience.
I rushed to the table and snatched the one remaining sheet from it. I read it.
And didn’t I gasp then? Is right I did. For I’d wholly misjudged her.
ROBIN’S MID-ACTION REPORT, STRAND 1, NEW PLAN (CONT.)
Once I’d delivered the gigglers to Tilney, I was determined to stay close to him. Gráinne might have him under her sway, but not enough that he’d let her murder me on his watch. So I went along on the tour of the costume shop (which is amazing, but Tilney could barely hide how over it he was). Once the young ladies had swooned over how gorgeous their gowns were and had departed with many thanks, Tilney surprised me by demanding I follow him into a tiny private chamber through a door I’d always assumed led to a storage closet. We were alone in here.
“Be you a player in Macbeth?” he demanded.
“Sir?” I said, blinking stupidly.
“I have heard from certain sources I trust that you are rehearsing as a witch. In Macbeth. Is this true?” Rather than await my answer, he continued, in a righteously pontifical tone: “You continue to meddle, boy. ’Tis the very script—nay, the very lines—that you and I have argued over. ’Tis more than passing strange that you should continue to busy yourself with those verses. You will explain yourself.”
“S-sir,” I stammered. “In the name of our Savior, I know not what you speak of.”
“How did you pass your time two eves ago?” he asked, looking at me narrowly.
“As I do all evenings, sir, in the company of my cousins. We sup at the Mitre tap-house, as ’tis on the way back to our lodgings.” I looked him full in the face and gave him my best bland-but-honest expression.
“In a private upstairs chamber, is it?” he demanded.
So the landlord is a spy for Tilney? I wondered. Did the landlord mention the bear?
“Will is well loved in Cheapside and tires of being approached by admirers when he would be private with his kinsmen. If the landlord of the Mitre claims we do aught but sup and speak together, he is a liar, and we will henceforth take our patronage elsewhere.”
“’Tisn’t the landlord I heard it from,” said Tilney.
“Then pardon me, sir, but none other even know we dine there. You have mystified me.”
He stared at me and said, slowly and distinctly, “Tell your kinsman in plainest terms: if he does not use the lines that I reformed, he will hang.”
“Sir!”
“Not by my order,” he continued, slow and firm. “By the King’s. And when his soul leaves his body, he may well be damned.”
“Sir?” I had never heard Tilney use such Christian language before. He was as casual about witchery as people in our time are of atheism. When Elizabeth was queen, he’d even been known to employ witches to help with special effects.
“Those were authentic spells your cousin wrote into the script,” said Tilney. “I have saved his career and possibly his life by reforming them.”
“Pardon, sir, but they were no such thing,” I said hotly.
“Foolish boy,” he said. “Not one but two witches have, independent of each other, confirmed them as such.”
“They are lying. My cousin does not truck with witches,” I said. Thinking: WTF? Two witches? Now who else do I have to contend with? Rose was the only other witch I knew of, and it wouldn’t have been her.
“Your cousin has been enthralled and does not know that he is trucking with witches,” he said impatiently. “Alert him. Alert him and whoever else might be rehearsing in that upstairs room in the Mitre at night. Those people are rehearsing treason and they will hang for it. Advise him to use the lines that are in the official script.”
I dropped my glance to the floor. “Yes, sir,” I said in a subdued voice.
“Advise him not to hire any of my clerks as players,” he said.
“Yes, sir.” Eyes still down. “And what else, sir?”
He hovered over me like Darth Vader without the heavy breathing. Then, relenting somewhat, he said in a kinder tone, “Advise him that the landlord of the Mitre has never said a word against him. My intelligence comes from elsewhere. I would not have him distrust his friends unnecessarily.”
I glanced up very quickly, then back down again, standard beta-dog physicality, Acting 101. He bought it.
But it was twice now he’d hauled me onto the carpet, and I doubted I would get away with it again.
Odd that whoever ratted on us didn’t mention the bear. London is a weird enough place that apparently a man-eating bear doesn’t even rise to the level of urban myth. Sheesh.
PERSONAL LETTER FROM
“repentant” witch Lady Emilia Lanier
My humble
duty remembered to my beloved sister,
I write to tell you of a most excellent and unexpected development that shall enhance all efforts I make at the court. While I cannot fathom the cause behind it, some other witch, unknown to me, convinced Edmund Tilney, Master of the Revels, to include our most wicked, dread spell (double, double, etc., but I dare not write the rest of it here) into the text of a playscript, so that it would not only be recited, but consecrated in the written words of a certain renowned playwright who, you know, has disappointed me in years past. Master Tilney, having some doubt as to this other witch’s honour, and further having possession of a verse of nursery-rhyme nonsense, and not being clear in his mind which was the dread words of witchery and which was nonsense, did summon me for guidance. Sister, I dissembled, and I have perfectly deceived him. ’Tis none other than our most potent spells of destruction that he has placed in the playscript! This other witch, whom I suspect I shall never even meet directly, has given us the means to preserve ancient knowledge and to hide it in plain sight before the very fool who would destroy our race. I lack the words to express the profound satisfaction this provides me.
Of course naught shall come of the performing of it, for witches are all female and players are all male, therefore nobody may ever stand upon a stage and actually cast the spell. But should His Majesty’s despotic madness be merely the beginning of an ages-long persecution to annihilate us (and, sister, I fear that may be the case), something of our power has been immortalised. Future witches, even if they have retreated to a life of fear and poverty, even if they are deprived of training in our arts, will at least have the spells to seek vengeance and topple tyranny someday.
To ensure Master Tilney remains pliant, I have further deceived him regarding a book he has written. He believes himself to be in competition with Mr. Shakespeare for His Majesty’s attention regarding a travel book, and that his only chance of success is to remain friendly to me no matter what. Thus I shall keep him hopefully dependent upon me, that I may guide him as desired should other opportunities arise.
Master of the Revels Page 32