The Dark Lady's Mask

by Mary Sharratt

  She smiled to think that they had known each other for a full year. How quickly their love had blossomed, leading them to this paradise.

  “Last night I dreamt of the Forest of Arden,” Will said. “But I found it full of cypress trees. The Faery Queen appeared in the moonlight as an Italian lady with long black hair.” He spun her in his arms and kissed her. “So you see, my love, Italy has conquered even my dreams. What can compare with this?”

  They gazed down at Verona nestled below in the bend of the Adige River. The cathedral, the basilica, the old Roman forum and amphitheater, and the castello glowed hazy pink in the early morning light. Set within massive fortified walls, this was the largest city in mainland Veneto and nearly as rich as Venice, for it lay at the crossroads of the great trade routes. German and Dutch merchants passed by on their way south to Rome and Naples while French and Spanish traveled through en route to Venice and Trieste.

  Scattered around Verona lay farms, orchards, and vineyards, some large and some as modest as Aemilia’s own small holding. But all of them prospered, thanks to the Turkish trade embargo blocking the importing of wine from Greece and the Levant. The Veneto wine growers made their fortunes shipping off barrel after barrel to satisfy the Venetian market.

  At this fresh hour of morning, before the baking heat of midday, Verona and its environs seemed like lost Arcadia come to life. Aemilia squeezed Will’s hand, scarcely believing how fortune had blessed them.

  “Is this not the perfect setting for our romance of Giulietta and Romeo?” she asked him.

  “Ah, if there is one thing I do miss, it’s the chance to see our plays performed at the Rose Theater,” he said.

  “What, have our tender Giulietta played by a boy in a wig?” She enjoyed teasing him. “Let’s translate them into Italian and see them performed right here in Verona.”

  He shook his head. “All my wordcraft would be lost. No, when we’re finished, I shall send our plays to Harry.”

  When Will spoke of his former love, she detected neither longing nor bitterness, only a fondness he might reserve for an old friend. Still, she was secretly glad that Harry was not yet in possession of Giulietta and Romeo.

  “I fear he would make us twist our romance into a tragedy,” she said. “People like him seem to put great store in maidens stabbing themselves and bleeding all over the stage.”

  None of Isabella Andreini’s heroines would have killed themselves, she thought.

  “The original tale is a tragedy,” Will pointed out. “How could it not be in such a clannish place?”

  Verona, like many an Italian city, was riven by feuding families competing for power and wealth, each plotting the others’ downfall. Aemilia was grateful to live up in the hills, far removed from such intrigue.

  “Think for a moment—is not tragedy more profound?” Will asked. “For tragedy is high art, not mere entertainment. It touches the deepest places inside us.”

  Aemilia rolled her eyes to hear him expound on Aristotle when he had never learned Greek. But she took care not to remind him of that fact or that she, a woman, had received a more thorough education. Instead, she used reason.

  “How could any tragedy ever written, even by the ancients, be a finer work of art than Dante’s Divine Comedy?” she asked him. “For comedy is at its essence divine. What could touch the spirit more profoundly than the triumph of love and goodness over hatred, violence, and greed?”

  Comedy in its true, classical sense, she reflected, did not refer to humorous, lighthearted entertainment but to the belief in a just universe that orders all things to their ultimate good, just as Dante’s pilgrim progresses from the inferno to the heights of heaven.

  Will stared at the city below as if to read his answer in that labyrinth of streets and piazzas.

  “We have written four comedies in the Italian style,” he said. “The romance of the shrew. Viola’s tale of adventure. Rosalind’s tale. The romance of Benedick and Beatrice.”

  Aemilia warmed to hear him list their creations, their strong-willed heroines.

  “Might we not have one tragedy?” he asked her. “If only to prove we are masters of the entire range of drama, not just comedy.”

  When he was being stubborn, his Warwickshire accent grew stronger. She tried not to laugh lest he think she was mocking him. Instead, she considered his boyhood in Stratford, apprenticed to his glover father who had expected him to live a humdrum existence in a backwater town. Will’s stubbornness had preserved him, raising him to loftier aspirations. If he had not been such a willful, contrary soul, he would have never come to London to carve out his life as a poet. She would have never met him, never fallen so deeply in love. Instead, the stars had conspired to bring them to this vine-clad slope high above Verona. How lucky we are! How lucky!

  “Let us think on it,” she said gently.

  They turned and walked back up the path where they came across Prudence gathering herbs in the long shady grass of the peach orchard. Singing under her breath, Pru was trailed by a procession of goats and geese, as if the creatures were in her thrall.

  “There’s something of the witch in your Weir sisters,” Will remarked. “Particularly that one. I heard Lucetta muttering that Prudence dabbles in love potions.”

  Lucetta was Paolo the winemaker’s wife, and she and the Weir sisters were currently engaged in a fraught battle over supremacy of the kitchen.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Aemilia said. “Lucetta’s only vexed that her son is so besotted with Tabitha, as if a pretty girl like her had any need of a love philter. Look there! Romance transpiring before our eyes.”

  She pointed to Tabitha trading pleasantries with Antonio, who was as handsome as Apollo. Tabitha appeared as Venus herself, her golden hair gleaming even brighter in the sun. Now that Aemilia was in love, every single person and thing seemed to shimmer with a deeper radiance. And why should Tabitha not be blessed with romance, have a child of her own now that Enrico was weaned?

  Even Winifred seemed back to her old self. Her hand clasping Enrico’s, Winifred inspected the plump young lambs, as if trying to decide which one she would pick for her lamb pie. Here in the countryside, Winifred’s girth had expanded once more to its full magnificence.

  “Papa!” Enrico broke free from Winifred to toddle toward Will, not content until he rode in grandeur on his idol’s shoulders.

  It brought tears to Aemilia’s eyes to hear Enrico call Will papa, to see how Will treasured him. Truly, they were a family and soon there might be another child on the way. Even as the thought danced inside her head, she felt a twinge inside her, a slight dizziness as the day grew hotter. But she wouldn’t breathe a word to Will until she was certain.

  His eyes traveled over her face. “You’ve gone pale. Go inside, love. Out of the sun.”

  “Not just yet,” she said, jingling her chatelaine with the keys to the wine cave, storerooms, and cellars. “Duty first.”

  At that, she set off to find Paolo. Meanwhile, Will was careful to carry Enrico out of the sun before it scorched him.

  Paolo was weaving his way among the vines, inspecting them for pests. Everything Aemilia knew about wine growing she had learned from him. He saw to the husbandry and harvest, the winemaking and oil pressing, while she saw to the accounts and the shipping of the wine and olive oil to Bassano and Venice.

  Their small holding produced three different red wines. The first was a young, fresh-tasting table wine that slaked the thirst on a dusty summer day. One could drink a glass or two and not be drunk. The second, the ripasso, was stronger with fermented grape pomace added to create a more robust flavor. But their finest vintage was the amarone, made in the Greek style with grapes dried for three to four months before fermentation began. Then the wine was aged in oak barrels in their cave for at least three years. The amarone was heady and potent. Half a jug could render a strong man legless.

  Paolo, Aemilia concluded, is an artist as gifted as Jacopo had been, an artist of wine.

&n
bsp; “Will it be a good year?” she asked him.

  The man’s sunburnt face creased into a smile. “The best year in memory, signora. If this weather holds. If God spares us from hailstorms and heavy autumn rain.”

  Lifting his eyes to the heavens, Paolo crossed himself. Aemilia bowed her head. Again the mask constricted her. What must Paolo and the farmworkers think of their new mistress, this foreigner, so hastily married? She who attended Mass as infrequently as possible.

  “There’s a matter I must discuss with you,” Paolo said. As the sun glared down, the edges of his face seemed to blur. “It’s only gossip, signora, and you know how foolish folk are, but I’ve heard it murmured that your Prudenza is a strega, a witch.”

  Aemilia’s temples pounded in the heat. “You would use kitchen gossip to condemn my faithful servant? She’s an herb wife, to be sure, but there’s no wickedness in her. I trust her with my own son.”

  If she had only known Prudence during her time with Lord Hunsdon, Aemilia had no doubt that Pru’s remedies would have prevented her from falling pregnant, unlike the useless decoctions of that midwife Lord Hunsdon had bade her use.

  “I just thought you should know what people are saying,” Paolo said. “The neighbor’s washerwoman told my wife that she saw Prudenza at the marketplace and your Prudenza gave her the evil eye. Later that same day, the poor woman suffered a miscarriage.”

  A wave of dizziness seized Aemilia, forcing her to kneel in the black earth.

  “Signora, are you not well?” Paolo helped her to her feet.

  “Dear God,” she said. “Many a woman miscarries. But surely this has nothing to do with Prudence. Tell me, Paolo, have there been recent witch trials in Verona?”

  Unlike in England, where supposed witches were hanged, here the Inquisition had the authority to torture the accused and burn them at the stake. Aemilia couldn’t bear to think of such a fate befalling Prudence.

  “Not in many years, signora,” Paolo said. “I pray we will be spared such an event.”

  “Mistress!”

  Aemilia turned to see Tabitha come sprinting, cheeks flushed and eyes shining. Truly this girl had no clue what was being said about her sister.

  “Mistress,” Tabitha panted. “Olivia and Giulietta have come to visit all the way from Bassano!”

  Close at Tabitha’s heels came Giulietta. The girl flung her arms around Aemilia, nearly knocking her over.

  “How I’ve missed you, Aemilia! It’s so dull without you,” the girl said breathlessly. “Have you and Will finished your romance of Giulietta and Romeo?”

  “Nearly.” Aemilia kissed her cheeks. “Today our lovely heroine has come to Verona.”

  “I’m so glad I’m not a character in one of your plays!” Olivia had finally caught up with her daughter. “I’d find it rather embarrassing.”

  Aemilia and Giulietta shared a secret glance, for Aemilia had shown the girl the play of Viola and Olivia. But the girl made an earnest face for her mother.

  “Giulietta in the play is not me, Mama, but a young lady who lived in the time of Dante Alighieri.” The girl’s eyes were dreamy. “She lost her heart to Romeo, secretly married him, and then died for love when she was only thirteen!”

  Olivia cringed. “I would never let you marry so young, carissima. Not a day before you turn sixteen. Don’t speak of this nonsense of dying for love! Love is meant to make us happy.”

  “You both must be hot and dusty from your journey.” Aemilia linked arms with her kinswomen. “Let me take you to the loggia. It’s cool and breezy there.”

  “First show us around the property before it gets too hot, cara,” said Olivia. “I came here once when I first married Francesco, but that was many years ago.”

  Just a few minutes with Giulietta and Olivia had lightened Aemilia’s heart. Her guests chatted of Bassano and of Francesco and Leandro’s paintings as she led them through the olive and almond groves and the orchards of peach, apricot, apple, and pear. Giulietta admired the goats and sheep that wandered freely, their presence announced by the trilling bells tied to their necks.

  “You’ve done well with the kitchen garden,” Olivia said approvingly. “You are truly self-sufficient. The only thing you need buy is meal to bake bread. Francesco once said that if he was in charge of this property he would plant mulberry trees to raise silkworms. You might consider this, cara, for some years the wine harvest fails.”

  Aemilia pictured the mulberry tree and three silk moths in the Bassano family coat of arms. Then she thought of Papa’s ancestors who had raised silkworms in Sicily until they were driven away. Yet something told her not to mention this buried history to Olivia. Apart from the late Jacopo, it seemed her kin in the Casa dal Corno thought the past was best left to lie.

  “Where’s Will?” Giulietta asked.

  “He took Enrico inside.” Aemilia gazed at the villa dripping with wisteria, its shutters closed to keep out the heat.

  “Ah, speaking of Will, I have a letter for him.” Olivia drew an envelope from the brocade purse that hung at her waist. “It arrived only a few days ago.”

  Taking the letter from Olivia, Aemilia saw the Earl of Southampton’s coat of arms on the wax seal. As she stepped out of the shade, intent on showing her guests the olive press, the heat closed in with a force that sent her stumbling. The letter fell from her slack hand.

  “It’s only the heat,” she said, when Olivia took her arm. “I swear I’ll be fine.”

  “I think it’s hot, too,” Giulietta declared. “It’s far hotter here than in Bassano.”

  The girl bent down to pick up the fallen letter and handed it back to Aemilia.

  “Come, let’s away,” said Aemilia. “Out of the sun.”

  IN THE COOL REFUGE of the loggia, the midday feast awaited them. Winifred poured wine, still cool from the cellar. Tabitha carried out Enrico so the guests could fuss over him while Prudence and Lucetta bustled back and forth from the kitchen carrying out dish after dish of freshly baked bread, soft white cheeses made from the milk of their goats and sheep, peaches and apricots, almonds and olives, a stew of lentils, and bigoli, homemade buckwheat noodles, and fagioli seasoned with rosemary, raisins, and pine nuts. When Lucetta appeared with the platter of braised rabbit in amarone sauce, the sight and smell made Aemilia’s stomach curdle. Staggering from the table, she heaved over the rail into Prudence’s herb garden.

  “She is ill!” Giulietta cried.

  Olivia laughed and supported Aemilia’s shoulders. “I think I know the sickness she suffers and it’s a very happy sickness for married ladies.” She wiped Aemilia’s mouth with her handkerchief. “Does Will know, cara?”

  “Not yet,” Aemilia said.

  Olivia took her back to the table. “Come, have a glass of watered wine and some bread. You need something in your stomach.”

  Winifred hovered over Aemilia protectively. “Never you worry, mistress. From now on, we’ll make proper English food. Let me take this evil-smelling rodent away.”

  With a pointed look at Lucetta, Winifred carried the offending rabbit back to the kitchen.

  “Why hasn’t Will come to the table?” Giulietta asked.

  “He must be upstairs writing,” Aemilia said. “When he writes, he loses all sense of time.”

  She imagined him in their shuttered bedchamber, mewed up like a molting hawk, scribbling his heart out. Perhaps he was so immersed in his inner world, he hadn’t even realized guests had arrived.

  “Shall I fetch him down, mistress?” Tabitha asked.

  But just then Will appeared, his face animated and cheerful as he took his seat beside Aemilia.

  “At last!” Giulietta clapped her hands. “Were you truly writing up there?”

  “Indeed,” he said. “I was hard at work on the play of your Veronese innamorati. This is the scene I’ve just written.” Flushed with excitement, he turned to Aemilia. “Romeo is peaceable and yet he is fated to live in feuding Verona. Thus, he’s drawn into a duel to avenge the dea
th of his friend Mercutio who died fighting to save Romeo from attack.” Here Will had to pause for breath. “And so Romeo kills Giulietta’s cousin. This sets everything else in motion. From this scene onward, comedy turns to tragedy.”

  He gazed expectantly at the women, who viewed him with uncomprehending stares.

  “Fighting duels.” Giulietta made a face. “What about the romance?”

  “So it’s Mercutio who comes between the lovers and spoils their happiness,” Aemilia said in a hollow voice, as flies buzzed around her head.

  At the corner of the table lay Harry’s letter, which Will had evidently not yet noticed.

  “Will, we far prefer to hear your poetry of love,” Olivia said.

  For a moment, Will looked crestfallen. Then he shrugged, his eyes darting up and down the table. “What, there’s no meat for our guests?”

  Olivia offered Aemilia a complicit smile. “Meat spoils quickly in this heat. Have some cheese instead.”

  Will turned to Aemilia. “You’re so quiet. This is very unlike you.”

  Olivia smothered a giggle.

  Will raised his hands in exasperation. “So what is this secret you ladies are hiding from me?”

  “That’s what I’d like to know!” Giulietta shot her mother an indignant glance.

  Aemilia took his hand and felt her face flame even hotter. Though it seemed awkward to tell him in front of their guests, there seemed little point in keeping her condition a mystery.

  “I’m with child,” she told him. “I hope it’s a little girl this time.”

  “Oh,” said Giulietta, turning to her mother in amazement.

  Tabitha cried out in delight and clapped her hands. Prudence grinned.

  “Such a blessing,” said Will, kissing Aemilia before them all. “Such happy news.”

  Aemilia blinked back her tears, her heart pounding in joy. She imagined a daughter with Will’s hazel eyes flitting like a dryad through the olive groves.

  “Here comes a cooling breeze, mistress,” Prudence said in English, too softly for Will to hear. She spoke as though the weather itself obeyed her command. “Eat in peace, sweet mistress. Your troubles shall soon pass.”