The Dark Lady's Mask

by Mary Sharratt

  “My word!” said Winifred. “How the pair of you do carry on! Any more talk of cocks and I’ll be wringing the fowl’s neck.”

  “Peace, Winifred,” Aemilia said fondly. “It’s only a play.”

  IV

  Pierced by the Arrows of a God

  15

  CROSS THE WAVES, VENICE glimmered like a dream. Aemilia hugged Enrico close then reached for Jasper’s hand. Tears blurred her first glimpse of the city where their fathers once dwelled. La Serenissima, the Most Serene Republic.

  Had Papa only lived to see this day. She felt the loss of him as keenly as if he had died yesterday—Enrico would never know the grandfather who would have showered him in such love and pride. Her grief subsided in a rush—here her new life would begin. Turning to Will, she found him as rapt as she, his hazel eyes gleaming.

  “Our fair pilgrim has reached the hallowed shore,” he told her in his teasing fashion, as if she were the heroine of a brand-new play.

  His words gave her pause for thought. Perhaps she was indeed a questing pilgrim, each station on her journey bringing her closer to her father’s enigma. To the mystery of who she was.

  THE BONAVENTURE ANCHORED IN the lagoon while the passengers and cargo bound for Venice floated toward the Piazza San Marco in a convoy of smaller boats. The journey from England had been slow, the Bonaventure moving in fits and starts, stopping at every major port while making its cumbersome way around Iberia and the Italian peninsula. With their fleeting forays into Calais, Lisbon, Malaga, and Naples, Aemilia reckoned that she and her traveling companions had seen a goodly glimpse of the great world. But Venice defied all comparison.

  It was October, an auspicious time to arrive in this watery city, so Jasper said, when the weather was mercifully mild and the season of summer fever and marsh sickness had passed.

  As their boat drew nearer, Aemilia saw a column rising into the sky, topped with the winged lion of San Marco. The piazza appeared as a vast stage crowded with characters of every description. Black-skinned, white-turbaned youths helped them dock. No one in this city will call me dark, she thought. Not on this piazza where she might walk shoulder to shoulder with Africans and Turks.

  “Are we in the Orient?” Will asked, holding her arm to steady her as she stepped ashore with Enrico in her arms. “Nowhere in Christendom have I seen such marvels. Marry, if this is where your people came from, I cannot fathom why they’d ever want to leave.”

  She waited with Jasper while Will handed the Weir sisters out of the boat. They, too, seemed transfixed. Even homesick Tabitha smiled beatifically as she took the baby from Aemilia’s arms and planted a kiss on his head.

  Enrico’s eyes drank in everything. At nine months, Aemilia’s son had grown into a hearty babe. To her joy, he seemed to thrive on this life of wandering that brought new sights and another language or dialect every day to fill his ears. If she stayed in Veneto, he would grow up speaking Italian. He would have no memory of England.

  San Marco’s basilica gleamed with gold and gem-bright mosaics, as sumptuous as a jewel box. The jumble of domes and half domes reminded her more of a palace than a church. Beside it, the Doge’s Palace, with its sculpture-graced façade and its marble-pillared arcade and loggia, made Queen Elizabeth’s Whitehall resemble a stable yard. Craning her neck, Aemilia stared up at the sculpted relief of a little girl in a boat, her one hand rising to the heavens to grasp the crescent moon while another hand reached into the water to catch a crab. Such exquisite art for all the world to see, from the highest-born aristocrats to the lowest galley slaves. The Doge was no monarch but the elected ruler of a republic where the law applied impartially to all. Over the palace’s pinnacled grand entrance rose the statue of Justice with her sword and scales.

  Aemilia uttered a startled cry as Will pulled her out of the way of a procession. Priests waved incense thuribles and bore the banner of Saint Pelagia of Antioch.

  “Take note of the saint,” her friend whispered. “A reformed courtesan who disguised herself as a man and lived as a hermit in the desert, her true sex being discovered only after her death.”

  Sometimes Will mystified her. From the tone of his voice, she couldn’t tell if he was joking or speaking in earnest. Was he trying to tell her that if a saint might leave her old life behind and live as a man, then so might she?

  Besides, how could she hope to compete in beauty or style with the Venetian ladies who floated across the piazza in a shimmer of diamonds, rubies, sapphires, and emeralds, each woman appearing to carry a fortune in gems and gold. The men were no less opulent in their mantles of velvet and sable, their oriental brocades.

  Aemilia caught Will staring open mouthed at those handsome merchants’ sons.

  “The gentlemen of Venice are even more beautiful than your Earl of Southampton,” she said lightly. “Do you not agree?”

  “I was studying their clothes,” he said, somewhat huffily, before he ran his hands over his patched doublet. “To them I must appear shabbier than the most wretched pauper in Cripplegate.”

  But Aemilia found it impossible not to notice how their journey had transformed him. Gone was the hungry, haunted look she remembered from his London days. His English skin was now bronzed by the Mediterranean sun. Give him a new set of clothes, she thought, and he could hold his own among those handsome Italian men. A flush crept over her cheeks before she steered her thoughts to more practical matters.

  “Tomorrow we shall visit the vendors of used clothing,” she told Will.

  Indeed, she counted the seconds before she could trade her English weeds for garments made in this city to match these people and their gentle climate. But it was not a silk gown or a lace mantle she desired. In this foreign city where no one knew her name, she would become Emilio. Become a young man, his future wide open, a blank page on which she might write anything.

  AS A COURTIER ON the Queen’s official business, Jasper might have secured them guest rooms in the English ambassador’s palazzo. Instead, owing to the secrecy surrounding their family’s past, he chose an obscure but respectable inn on the Campo Santo Stefano. They were set to stay in Venice at least a week, their onward journey to Bassano delayed until Jasper fulfilled his obligations of buying instruments for the Queen’s Musicke.

  After her cousin rose early to make his rounds of the instrument-makers’ workshops in the Castello district, Aemilia locked herself in her narrow chamber and, for the first time since leaving England, donned her linen shirt and doublet, her boots and breeches, her sword and rapier. Rather than hiding her long hair beneath her cap, she took Winifred’s sewing shears and began to cut. The finality of those sharpened blades slicing through her locks thrilled her. Here she had no husband to appease, just her new self. When she had finished, she cast her chopped-off tresses into the smoldering fire and opened the shutters to release the stink of burning hair into the morning rain. Grabbing her steel mirror, she studied herself from every angle. A short and slender young man, his wavy black hair falling fashionably to his shoulders.

  Jasper would not be pleased, but what could he do? Prudence would shake her head, Winifred would berate her to high heaven, and Tabitha would sigh, but she trusted the Weir sisters would not abandon her. Her son would have no memory of her life before this moment. She could live the rest of her life in this guise and only be unmasked posthumously like the saint in Will’s story.

  Will would probably agree that her bold and ebullient nature was more befitting a man than the woman she was. In faith, she and the poet had grown to be friends because Will saw beyond the woman. He saw her mind equal to his own. Together they had completed the comedy of the shrew. What more might we pen now that we have at last arrived in Venice? she wondered. They must go to the theater, not only so they could experience the commedia dell’arte firsthand, but also so they could see female players sharing the stage with male actors.

  AEMILIA STOLE DOWN THE back staircase before emerging on the Campo Santo Stefano, where she had arranged to meet
Will. Spinning in a circle, she saw no sign of him. They had agreed to meet at ten bells, but when she glanced at the clock tower, she saw she was nearly half an hour late.

  Scanning the campo, she sighted her friend vanishing into the immense brick church of Santo Stefano, perhaps to seek shelter from the rain. Sprinting across the wet cobbles, she reveled in the freedom of wearing boots and breeches again. In only seconds, she reached the church, but once she was inside, the dim silence swallowed her. The churches she knew in England were plain inside, with stark whitewashed walls and no image to be seen save for the plain cross. But this was a grotto smelling of frankincense, with candles glittering at the feet of countless statues. Anne Locke and Lady Susan would have fainted at the sight of such idolatrous display. Aemilia observed the alternating red and white marble pillars dividing the aisles from the nave, then she arched her neck to view the ceiling, which resembled the keel of an upturned ship.

  Monks, some in dark robes and a few in white, prowled the aisles, one giving her a long disapproving stare. She froze at the thought that he could see straight through her disguise. Or was it her sword and rapier he shunned? It occurred to her that she was completely out of her depth, that she had no clue how to behave in a Catholic church. Have pity on a poor foreigner, she wanted to shout. Then it struck her, like a blast of cold wind, that she was even more an alien here in the land of her father’s birth than she had been back in England. Where in this wide world do I belong? Did she have a true home anywhere or was she doomed to be forever in exile?

  Her eyes darted across the church until she finally found Will on his knees, his hands folded in prayer, gazing intently at the marble statue of the Virgin, illumined by a sea of votive candles. This act of devotion could have seen him arrested back in England. Aemilia bowed her head. So it appeared that Will was a secret Catholic, just as her father had been a secret Jew. Her friend had kept his true faith hidden. Even witnessing yesterday’s procession, he had been careful not to give himself away. As she did, the poet wore a mask.

  Even when he sprang to his feet, Will seemed overcome with reverence and gratitude. How easily he was being drawn into this world. Will, she decided, might make a better Italian than she.

  After blinking in his surprise at seeing her as Emilio, he smiled as openly as though she were that dashing young man. His sworn friend. Her heart quickened in a burst of joy.

  “I’M NOT ESPECIALLY PIOUS,” Will told her, as they walked together toward the canal. “But I am loyal. My three successive schoolmasters at Stratford Grammar School were secret Jesuits. I’ve rarely met men of such lofty ideals. What risks they took even setting foot in England, just to educate ordinary boys. They believed they could draw out the best in me and create something greater than anyone would expect of a glover’s son.”

  “You follow their faith,” she said quietly. “Because they had faith in you.”

  She thought how grateful she was to Anne Locke and Lady Susan, yet she had failed to find solace in their stern religion.

  Leaning close, Will confided how the last of his teachers, John Cottam, had been betrayed and sentenced as a traitor. The man had been hanged, drawn, and quartered.

  “Whenever I walked past those poor corpses spiked on Cripplegate,” he said, “all I could think of was Master Cottam. What a debt I owe him. If only I could give something great to the world to vindicate him.”

  “Don’t we all yearn to bring glory to those who believed in us,” she murmured.

  In a gesture of solace, she took his arm. In Italy men might walk arm in arm and no one thought ill of it. But as she gripped his sleeve and felt the warm muscle beneath the worn cloth, the thrill of the forbidden rippled through her. This was the first time she and Will had walked out alone together, an unthinkable breech of propriety for Aemilia. But as Emilio, she could do as she pleased.

  When they reached the canal, she flagged down a gondola to take them to the Ghetto.

  “We wish to buy clothing,” she explained to the gondolier.

  The best used-clothing vendors in Venice could be found in the Ghetto, so she had heard. Her heart drummed in anticipation. Soon she would arrive at the place where Papa and his brothers would have dwelled had they not elected to wear their masks.

  “Two English signori!” the gondolier cried. “You shall not be disappointed. Our secondhand markets have richer clothes than you will find anywhere else. Soon you will be dressed like dukes!”

  This young man appeared to be of Moorish ancestry, but he dressed and behaved like any other Venetian. Aemilia found his dialect nearly impenetrable until he sighed and spoke in loud, simple words, as though speaking to children.

  “To reach the Ghetto, we must first pass through the Rialto, signori, where you shall see many beautiful cortigiani!”

  “What’s he saying?” Will asked.

  “He intends to take us through the district where the courtesans ply their trade,” she said archly. “Pity Harry couldn’t join us.”

  “There is a great thick book!” the gondolier shouted, pitching his voice over the other boatmen crowding the canal. “With the names of all the cortigiani, their prices, their special games, and the height of their chopines, their high shoes.”

  Aemilia translated for Will, whose eyes widened considerably. Her friend appeared altogether too intrigued by this information for her liking.

  “Might we go a different way and avoid the cortigiani?” she asked the gondolier. “We mustn’t shock my friend. He was educated by Gesuiti.”

  Her plea was in vain. Soon they passed beneath the Ponte delle Tette where, despite the rain, women and girls stood with their breasts bared. Aemilia’s face burned. How was she to keep up this masquerade when she wanted to clap her hands over her eyes? Here she was in Italy, embarking on her new life as Emilio, but she had never felt so much like an Englishwoman. How must those courtesans feel, exposed like that in the October chill?

  “Signore, you lied,” the gondolier observed. “It is you, not your friend, who is ashamed to look at the cortigiani. Your friend likes them very much. I can see his codpiece jumping up!”

  A shock ran through Aemilia. One glimpse of Will’s face revealed that he, indeed, appeared transported to the gates of paradise. She didn’t dare look at him below the chin, but the swaying of the gondola kept knocking his thigh against hers. She tried to edge away only to keep sliding back into him.

  Will’s elbow jabbed her ribs. “Pray, gentle Emilio, why have you stopped translating?”

  His gales of laughter sent the gondola rocking even harder.

  “You trickster!” she hissed. “I thought you were a lover of men.”

  His eyes danced. “There are more things in heaven and earth, Emilio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

  Aemilia squirmed as she remembered reassuring Jasper that she had no cause to fear anything untoward from Will. To think she could be so naïve. God’s teeth, the man sired three children!

  “How shall you hope to pass as a man in a man’s world,” Will asked her amiably, “if you shrink each time you see a bare-breasted courtesan?”

  But I was a courtesan! The mere sight of those women and girls mirrored everything Aemilia longed to escape, all the degradation heaped upon her own sex. The way Southampton had spoken of her that night in his house, as if she were a Venetian cortigiana no different from those standing on the Ponte delle Tette.

  “It’s not enough to wear the guise,” Will said, speaking now with gentle sobriety. “You must play the part and stay in character through every circumstance.”

  Meanwhile, the gondolier was staring at Aemilia in a way that made her stomach constrict. Had he guessed that she was a woman?

  “Signore, our cortigiani are so cunning, they know a trick that will lure even one such as you. The slyest of them will put on breeches and a codpiece, then lure unsuspecting gentlemen with cultured conversation.”

  “What did he say?” Will asked, no longer looking at the courtesans but onl
y at her. “Has he offended you?”

  He reached for her hand, but she shoved him away.

  “And the Church?” The gondolier cackled. “She allows this! For it is better that a man should sleep with a cortigiana in breeches than with another man.”

  LEAVING THE RIALTO AND its courtesans behind, the gondolier navigated the narrow canals of the Cannaregio, a poorer district with unpaved streets and taverns reeking of sour wine. They floated past workshops, their windows open to release the racket of carpenters and ironsmiths.

  Turning a corner, they approached a small isle surrounded by canals and fortressed by tall scabrous walls. What doors and windows had originally been built were bricked up. Boats with armed guardsmen were on patrol.

  “Is this a place of punishment?” Will asked, his face as somber as those confining walls. “Marry, even the Tower of London has windows.”

  “Here we arrive at the Ghetto!” the gondolier cried out, guiding his craft to the guarded entrance gate. “You recognize the Jews for they wear the red caps. Don’t linger here too long, signori. They lock the gates at sunset.”

  Aemilia’s heart rattled like a chain. “It looks so small. I thought the Ghetto would be bigger.”

  The gondolier shrugged. “It is the most crowded place in Venice. The Jews live stacked on top of one another like chickens and they still keep coming. Because our Doge is tolerant, they come from every corner of Europe, even from Turkey and the Levant. But I don’t mind as long as they stay inside their Ghetto. It’s the Marranos I despise.”

  “The Marranos,” Aemilia said, her voice as flat as a plank.

  “Jews who pretend they are no Jews!” The gondolier raised his hands in a gesture of disgust. “They live among us, go to our churches, marry our sisters. But they are still Jews. One was discovered in the house of a cortigiana, who reported him to the Inquisition. The whore knew at once he was a Jew because he was circumcised. Ha, ha!”