The Dark Lady's Mask

by Mary Sharratt

  “What are you doing here?” the poet hissed. “And what do you know of Kit Marlowe?”

  “Why, he was a friend of my cousin’s, Ben Jonson. I presume you know Master Jonson.”

  “I know of him,” the poet said with much venom, making her wonder if Ben had actually called him a sheep-biting bumpkin to his face. “What can I say of a man whose greatest cause of distinction comes from dropping the h from his surname?”

  “Why so grim, sir?” Aemilia reproved. “I think you should be glad to see me. The other night you fled with such haste that I had no chance to return this.”

  Reaching into her satchel, she handed him the scrolled pages of Venus and Adonis. She had devoured every line of the epic and its cadences still haunted her.

  As the poet seized his manuscript and clutched it to his chest, his face seemed to unclench. For the first time, she saw him smile, which transformed his entire face. He was distractingly handsome, she noted.

  “I thank you for its safe return,” he said. “Has anyone else seen it?”

  “Only Southampton and I.”

  Had he feared that Southampton’s odious guests had laid hands on it?

  “Sit you down, sir,” she told him. “I asked your landlady to warm a lamb pie I brought for you. My maid was right—you are too thin. But I hope your lean times shall soon end. This poem will make your fortune.”

  “No poet can survive without a patron.” He pulled up a stool. “Do you carry a message from my Lord Southampton?”

  The plaintiveness in his voice made her drop her eyes. “Lord Burghley summoned him away to his country estate. He fears the boy keeps the wrong company if left to his own devices. I fear neither of us shall see Southampton for quite some time.”

  The poet sagged. “No matter. My London days are over.”

  She cocked her head. “Where do you intend to go?”

  “Lancashire,” he said. “To seek a teaching post with a noble family. I served them once before.”

  “Lancashire,” she breathed. It seemed as far away as the Americas. “Is that your home?”

  He laughed bleakly and shook his head. “I hail from Warwickshire.”

  “Do you not miss your family?” she asked him. “Your wife?” Southampton, she recalled, had mentioned Will’s wife.

  He stared at her for a moment before gazing down at the stale rushes on the floor. “They all see me as a failure. I’m nearly thirty, yet I’ve nothing to show for it. Only a few history plays performed by Lord Strange’s Men. My wife earns more as a country maltster than I do in London for all my toil and ambition. I daren’t return to her until I’ve made something of myself. I’m ashamed to show my face to my own son. But anything I do earn, I send home so he can attend grammar school.” Will seemed particularly keen to make this last point.

  Aemilia sensed his secret relief to be offering this confession to a stranger he thought never to see again. She could nearly taste the man’s dejection. As she had, this poet had lost any sense of a true home, of belonging anywhere.

  “Your wife is a maltster, you say?” she asked him.

  “She brews ale,” he said.

  “A useful skill, indeed.” Aemilia tried to imagine life as a prosperous tradeswoman, independent of the vagaries of her husband’s earnings. “Why did you attempt to leap out the window at Southampton House?”

  “To avoid that bleating wastrel Robert Greene.” The poet let out a sigh. “He satirizes me in his pamphlets. Because I never attended university, he thinks me ignorant. He mocks me as a base-bred hayseed from the shires, a Johannes factotum.”

  “Jack of all trades and master of none,” Aemilia translated.

  “One night I scribe a play. The next I’m a player upon the boards. But my adventures here have ended.”

  “Lamb pie, good sir!” Mistress Skinner pranced in with a tray.

  Her servant girl set up a table between Will and Aemilia then the landlady set down two steaming wooden trenchers. The poet fell upon his food and devoured it. When the landlady’s back was turned, Aemilia took his empty trencher and passed him her own untouched portion.

  “Before you leave for Lancashire, pray hear my proposal.” She looked him in the eye without coyness or guile, as though she truly were another man. His equal. But what she said next made him choke. “I want to write plays with you, Master Shakespeare.”

  He sputtered.

  “My cousin, Master Jonson, says it’s not uncommon for playwrights to work with collaborators. Have you never done so before?”

  “But you . . . but you . . . are a—”

  “An Italian!” she said brightly, with a wink to Mistress Skinner who hovered nearby, dusting everything in sight while leaning close to eavesdrop. “And that, sir, works in your advantage. Do you think Mistress Skinner would be so kind as to fetch two goblets?”

  The landlady nearly fell flat delivering her curtsy. “At once, sir!”

  Aemilia returned her attention to the poet. “Master Jonson says your history plays have not made much money.”

  The poet’s mouth twisted, as though preparing to deliver some sarcastic retort, but then he looked resigned.

  “Imagine if your plays were to catch the Queen’s attention.” Leaning across the table, she found herself staring into his hazel eyes. She saw the face of a country man trapped on the outskirts of a heaving city that would spit him out like a broken tooth if his luck did not improve. “Her Majesty’s favorite entertainments are Italian. The masque and the madrigal. Her favorite dance is la volta. And she adores commedia dell’arte. We shall write comedies, you and I. It would be scandalous for me to write under my own name, so we shall do it under yours. And evenly divide the profits.”

  “How shall one as lowly as I attract Her Majesty’s attention?” The skepticism fairly shot from his tongue.

  “Why, Southampton himself told you of my . . . my association with the Lord Chamberlain. I still have his ear. I shall persuade him to form a new theater company—the Lord Chamberlain’s Men.” She could not resist smiling in triumph.

  Still, his suspicions were not allayed. “If you have the Lord Chamberlain at your beck and call, then surely you don’t need me. Why not collaborate with your cousin, Master Jonson?”

  “Because I’ve read your poetry, and no one writes about love the way you do.” She had been in awe of his verses ever since she first laid eyes on the sonnet he had dropped in Thames Street. “Besides,” she added cheerfully, “you seem rather desperate.”

  He shot her a cross look.

  “Just imagine comedies filled with your poetry of love,” she said.

  “Two goblets, sir!” Mistress Skinner swept in.

  “Poets may write of love,” Will said in a low voice. “But poems are private things. Such sentiments are not for public display.”

  “Don’t listen to him, sir!” Mistress Skinner interjected. “What does a provincial like Master Shakestaff know? I fancy a good love story, me. A proper romance!” She cast Aemilia a smoldering glance.

  Clearing her throat, Aemilia pulled the flask from her satchel and poured pale wine into the two pewter goblets. “Drink with me, if you will, to seal the bargain,” she said to the poet.

  “What sort of wine is that?” Mistress Skinner asked. “Might I have a taste, sir?”

  “It’s nothing grand,” Aemilia told her. “Just some humble elderflower wine my servants brewed in Essex.”

  “What are those odd bits floating in it?” the poet asked.

  Aemilia shrugged. “Special herbs, no doubt. Each country wine has its own secret recipe.”

  “Bottom’s up!” Mistress Skinner seized Will’s goblet and was about to knock back the pale liquid when a caterwauling in the passageway made her wrench her head round.

  “Mistress!” her maid screeched. “That lying sod Mullin is flitting off with all his goods and gear!”

  The landlady slammed the untasted wine down on the table.

  “Satan’s toenails!” Mistress Skinner
bellowed, rolling up her sleeves. “I’ll have his bollocks on a plate!”

  Off she thundered in pursuit of the hapless Master Mullin, whom Aemilia judged to be even further behind on his rent than the poet.

  “Now we have our peace,” Will said, with a smile.

  They raised their goblets to each other.

  “To poetry!” she cried.

  “To the Muse,” he said.

  “I know this must seem very strange to you.” With the landlady gone, Aemilia dropped her guard and spoke in her natural voice. “I have a humanist’s education and yet I am forbidden to use it to earn my bread. So I am forced to wear a mask.”

  “And that is what you want from me,” he said. “To be your mask.”

  He held her gaze for a second before sipping the pale wine.

  She stared into her goblet. Fragrant and light on her tongue, it was clearly weak enough in alcohol content to render it harmless and completely wholesome. A child could drink it and suffer no ill. The poet drained his goblet while she sipped and savored hers.

  “We shall write comedies,” she said. “Full of love and Italian sunlight.”

  As the English sun streamed through the unglazed window, the poet seemed to warm to her proposal. Collaborating with a woman in breeches might seem an eccentric arrangement, but surely it was a more inviting prospect, she reasoned, than for the man to exile himself in Lancashire where he would surely vanish into obscurity.

  “Let me give you this before I go.” She passed him a small pouch of coins. “This should keep your landlady happy.”

  She also offered him the rest of the elderflower wine. When he shook his head, she stoppered the flask and returned it to her satchel. Their conversation concluded, she rose from her chair and headed for the door.

  “Wait,” he said.

  She turned, glancing back at him over her shoulder.

  “What is a hetaira?” His face shone in earnest entreaty.

  She felt herself blush all the way down her neck. Damn Southampton for putting that word in the poet’s head.

  “It’s Greek,” she said quietly. “The hetairai were the highest class of courtesan. The Athenians kept their wives and daughters as ignorant as sheep. But the hetairai were as educated as the men they entertained. Hetaira means companion. A companion to men.”

  With a nod to him, she walked out, shutting the door behind her.

  AEMILIA RODE HOME BY way of the shady back lanes, her hat brim pulled low over her eyes. As she approached Westminster, her heart began to hammer. What if one of her neighbors betrayed her? Even if her disguise fooled them, they might recognize her horse. She could very well finish off the day in the pillory.

  Though she spurred Bathsheba on, the heat rendered the mare sluggish. The fastest gait Aemilia could push her into was a halfhearted trot.

  A prayer formed on Aemilia’s lips. Please, oh please, just let us get safely home.

  She asked herself to whom she was praying—her departed father’s secret God or the Queen’s God who divided humanity into the Elect and the damned? On which side of that gaping divide between the saved and the condemned did she stand as a cast-off mistress, mother of a bastard, a miscreant in men’s clothing? Perhaps her many sins and deceptions had cast her beyond the reach of divine grace. To think the departed Kit Marlowe had been bold enough to brag of his atheism. What did she believe or disbelieve? Papa’s ghostly voice whispered, Hell is empty. All the devils are up here.

  Aemilia swallowed a scream. His eyes red with drink, Alfonse swayed before her in the narrow lane. In a panic, she kicked the mare onward, but her husband made a drunken lurch and grabbed Bathsheba’s reins. Aemilia reached for her sword then, thinking better of the idea, pulled the half-full bottle of elderflower wine from her saddle bag. Bathsheba, meanwhile, proceeded to rub her sweaty, itchy head on Alfonse’s doublet, knocking him down so that his sprawled body blocked their path.

  With glittering eyes, Alfonse gazed up at her. “Sir, beware of women. They will destroy you.”

  Something caught in her throat. Was he truly so drunk that he didn’t recognize her or the horse? Bathsheba nuzzled him and started to lick his unruly hair into place, but the mare refused to step over his body. In gutter French, he railed on about the disgusting putain, his wife, who had bedded every man in the realm except for him, her lawful husband.

  Aemilia recoiled. She must get herself home before he returned to his senses. But his inert body blocked her passage. She considered how blurred his vision must be from the drink and how tall she must appear as he lay on his back in the dust.

  “Sirrah,” she said, in mimicry of the poet’s voice, his rustic Warwickshire vowels. “How can any woman respect you? Legless drunk at eleven in the morning. Surely you have only yourself to blame for your misery.”

  Alfonse gulped back a sob. From within the Lamb Inn came the voices of men calling him back inside for another round. He attempted to rise but collapsed again and curled himself in a ball, allowing Bathsheba to squeeze past him. Aemilia regarded him from her perch. She stood in her stirrups to appear even loftier.

  “Don’t waste your wife’s money on drink.” She spoke from deep in her belly. “If you must drink, take this instead.”

  She bent from the saddle to hand him the flask of elderflower wine. Before he could say a word, she trotted away.

  “DID YOU SEE THE mistress take the elderflower wine?” Prudence demanded of Winifred. “Have you any clue where she’s gone?”

  The Weir sisters gathered in the kitchen and stared dolefully at the empty space on the sideboard where they had placed the bottle the previous evening.

  Sweat streamed down Winifred’s face as she began to pace, kicking up the rushes and disturbing a mouse that darted away in panic. “She was up before the cockerel! Up and gone before dawn. She’s like an airy sprite, she is, how fast she can disappear.”

  “Wherever she went, she took the bottle with her,” said Tabitha. “Oh, what awful mischief!”

  The cat pounced on the mouse. Tabitha shuddered and covered the baby’s ears as the rodent squealed in its death throes.

  “Good pussycat,” said Prudence.

  “Had we never prayed over that bottle,” Winifred lamented.

  “Hush!” Prudence snapped her finger to her lips.

  The Weir sisters stood to attention when in tramped their mistress clad as a young gentleman for all the world to see. Her face was pale and drawn, as though she had witnessed the depths of hell. Not uttering a word, she took Enrico from Tabitha and flew up the stairs. The Weir sisters listened to the floorboards creak under her footfalls and then the thud as she bolted herself in her bedchamber.

  “Awful mischief,” Tabitha said again, in a strangled whisper. “At least the master didn’t see her.” With no baby to hug, the girl clutched her own arms and shivered.

  AN HOUR OR SO later, Alfonse staggered in. His eyes were downcast, his hair a rat’s nest, his clothes filthy.

  “Master!” Winifred cried. “How good to see you.” She pitched her voice loudly so that the mistress upstairs would hear and be warned.

  Her eyes huge, Tabitha pinched Winifred’s elbow and pointed to the empty flask he carried.

  “How are you this fine day, Master Lanier, sir?” Prudence asked.

  “Can you make the hot water for me?” The master sounded quieter and humbler than Winifred had ever heard him. “Today I shall bathe.”

  Thank Christ for that, Winifred thought. He stank worse than a tanner’s yard.

  “Right you are, sir,” said Prudence. “We’ll heat that water for you straight away.” She sent Tabitha out to draw water and fetch firewood.

  “Can you send for a barber?” The master ran his hand over the dark stubble on his chin.

  “Sir, I can shave you and cut your hair at no expense to the household,” said Winifred. “But first you should eat something.” She turned to Pru. “Where’s that lamb pie you baked yesterday?”

  “Tonight I shall dine w
ith Madame Lanier,” said the master. He trembled as though this were a daunting prospect. “Have I any clean linen?”

  “I’ll look for you, sir,” said Winifred.

  “This morning I saw a gentleman.” Alfonse spoke in a faraway voice. “His shirt it was immaculate. He looked like an angel.”

  AT THE SOUND OF her husband’s voice downstairs, Aemilia made certain the bedchamber door was bolted fast. She crept as noiselessly as she could past the cradle where Enrico slept in sweet innocence. From her dressing table, she picked up the steel mirror that Anne Locke had given her so long ago. Let this be a mirror of your virtue, my girl.

  Gazing at her reflection, she observed what an odd creature she was with her long tousled hair and her men’s clothing. How had she managed to fool anyone? It seemed impossible that earlier that morning she had carried herself like a young gallant, bursting with merry wit as she persuaded her luckless poet to agree to write comedies with her. Now, like a fugitive, she cowered behind a locked door. What would Master Shakespeare think of her if he knew the truth?

  Aemilia shed her doublet and breeches and her treasured linen shirt. Once she had believed this disguise would protect her as though it were magical armor. As she folded the garments carefully, her palms smoothed out every wrinkle and crease before she laid them in their coffer with her riding boots, sword, rapier, and hat. She locked the coffer, slid it under the bed, and hid the key at the bottom of the box where she kept the rags she used while menstruating—the place Alfonse was least likely to look.

  Naked, she assessed herself in the mirror, eyeing herself dispassionately, as though she were looking at another person. Men, she decided, would still find this woman comely enough, but childbirth had taken its toll. Though she was as slender as ever, her belly was not as taut nor her breasts as high or firm as before her pregnancy. Her face was no longer that of a girl but of a woman who had tasted life’s bitterness as well as its sweetness.

  “You are a ruined woman,” she told the lady in the mirror. “But fear not. It only means you answer to no one but yourself.”