The Dark Lady's Mask

by Mary Sharratt

  “She’s perfect.” Aemilia kissed her daughter’s damp head and counted her fingers and toes.

  Even covered in the blood of birth, Odilia was a marvel. Henry, as a newborn, had appeared as an ordinary healthy baby, his skin blotchy and his head a bit misshapen, although he looked fine enough when he was a few weeks old. But Odilia was a creature set apart. After Prudence washed and dried her and delivered her back into Aemilia’s arms, Aemilia saw that her daughter’s skin and form were completely unblemished. This baby was exquisite, as though she were more angel than flesh, her eyes as blue as the midnight sky, her crown already covered in her father’s soft brown hair. Yet she seemed so tiny, even for a child who had just emerged from the womb. Odilia breathed sweetly but did not cry.

  With Henry weaned, Tabitha’s milk had dried up. Aemilia would have to nurse Odilia herself. Prudence showed her how to let the baby suckle on the clear fluid that came before the first milk. Cradling her daughter to her breast, Aemilia couldn’t get over her wonder. To think this creature was hers, flesh of her flesh. Even if she had lost the man, the child redeemed everything, this rush of love that transfixed her. How could any man’s love compare to that of a mother’s for her newborn?

  Settling back against the bolster with Odilia in her arms, Aemilia dreamt of the life she would give her. Teaching her to read, to write, and to ride. Instructing Odilia and Henry in Latin and Greek, astronomy and music. Odilia would be more learned than her father, more fortunate than her mother. This girl child would eclipse both her parents. As brilliant as the morning star, she would outshine any poem or play either of them could hope to write. Aemilia would weave garlands for her hair. She would clothe her in silk and brocade.

  Her heart leapt to see Tabitha leading Henry into the chamber to meet his new sister. Not even two years old, the lad stared with enormous eyes at the baby. Shy and gentle, he rested one finger on the baby’s hand. When her tiny fingers closed around his, he jumped then gazed at Odilia in amazement, as though too awed to be jealous.

  Aemilia invited the boy to clamber into bed with her. One hand still cradling the baby, she cuddled him close.

  “You must always protect your little sister,” she told him.

  How might my own story have played out, she wondered, had I been blessed with an adoring older brother?

  “A FINE MORNING FOR a christening!” Ben said that snow-bright day, as they walked toward Saint Margaret’s. “To think I shall be a godfather.”

  “Had you only picked a man more godly,” his bride, Annie, said, with a wink to Aemilia.

  Newly risen from her childbed, Aemilia had emerged from the house for the first time in more than a week. She measured each step on the icy ground and kept a careful grip on Odilia, who was bundled like a precious package in layers of blankets and quilts. The baby’s breath floated up in steamy little puffs. Winifred kept hold of her mistress’s elbow, prepared to catch both mother and child should Aemilia slip.

  Ahead of them, Tabitha walked with Henry, and Jasper hung his head as he slunk along, as though he felt a guilty responsibility for the baby’s very existence.

  “Odilia.” Ben leaned over to peer at the infant’s face. “An exotic name.”

  “An Italian name,” Aemilia told him. “Like my own.”

  Her cousin waved his hand in dismissal. “Spare me any explanation of whichever weeping saint inspired the appellation. I prefer to think you gave her a humanist name.”

  “Humanist?” Aemilia asked, exchanging a smile with Annie. “How do you reckon that?”

  “You have ingeniously turned ode into a girl’s name that rhymes with your own,” Ben said, beaming at his own cleverness. “The name of a poet!”

  Aemilia laughed in genuine happiness, warmed by the idea. It was as if Ben had unwittingly removed Will and the chapel from her daughter’s story, as though she hadn’t named her baby in memory of the man who had deserted them both. Instead, she had named her daughter for poetry.

  “Odilia, Aemilia,” Annie said. “I think they’re beautiful names. Far less plain than Anne and Ben.”

  Aemilia felt a fondness for her cousin’s new wife and hoped that she and Annie would be friends. Small and neat with nut-brown hair, Annie wasn’t flashy in her looks, but her mind was as fiery as her husband’s. My honest shrew, Ben called her. A man like him could never love a meek mouse. Aemilia could not fail to notice the way the newlyweds walked arm in arm, their paces in harmony. She saw the secret looks they shared. Truly, they adored each other. May their love endure, she prayed, even as her own loneliness gnawed at her.

  Ben abruptly stopped in his tracks and cast a look behind him. “We had better slow down or we shall lose our Lazarus.”

  With a guilty start, Aemilia turned to see Alfonse struggling along, one hand gripping his walking stick, his other arm supported by Prudence. This was his first foray outside the house since Aemilia had arrived back in England to find him deathly ill. Thanks to Pru’s physick, his boils and fever were gone, but he remained gaunt and weak, barely limping along. She felt a stab of pity even to look at him, though Pru had assured her that a brief spell of fresh air would do him good. His face bore an expression of dazed astonishment, as if he could not get over his shock of still being alive. Lazarus, indeed.

  Can Alfonse and I live together in amity now? she wondered, while waiting for him to catch up. A weight settled in her chest. To think it was Will’s child that chained her to this marriage that she had run away to Italy to escape. Alfonse’s ring was back on her finger.

  Smiling faintly at her husband, she walked the rest of the way to the church at his side. It seemed the least she could do.

  WHEN THEY REACHED THE church, Aemilia observed her circle of kin gathered round the baptismal font, the one gaping absence being the baby’s true father. Still, her eyes remained dry and her voice steady as she murmured the replies to the curate’s prompting.

  Under the cleric’s keen gaze, Alfonse’s eyes seemed to snap open at last. He looked from Aemilia to the baby as if finally awakening to the depths of her treachery. No longer Lazarus, he was a man betrayed, forced to wear the cuckold’s horns as he posed as the father to his wife’s bastard for a second time.

  “Dost thou forsake the carnal desires of the flesh, so that thou wilt not follow, nor be led by them?” the minister asked of Aemilia and Alfonse.

  Alfonse’s eyes were like needles, but Aemilia returned his stare head-on. What right did he have to judge her considering that he nearly died of the French pox?

  “I forsake them,” Aemilia and Alfonse said in unison.

  Jasper covered his eyes while Ben smirked. Odilia remained tranquil, not even crying when the water splashed down on her forehead.

  BACK AT THE HOUSE, the Weir sisters laid out the sparse feast of pottage, mutton pie, and stewed apples. Aemilia hoped the plays would soon bring money into the household.

  His face pale with exhaustion, Alfonse retreated to his bed. While her guests sat down to eat, Aemilia took the baby into the nursery to feed. In truth, it troubled her that Odilia hardly cried. What if she wasn’t getting enough milk? Henry had been such a lusty baby, crying then feeding till he was content. But this infant was so quiet, Aemilia needed to be especially vigilant, offering her breast if Odilia so much as opened her mouth or turned her head toward her.

  “Is she latched on properly?” she asked Tabitha. “I fear she’s lost weight since the birth.”

  “Don’t fret,” said Tabby. “She’ll soon gain it back. If worse comes to worst, you can always hire a wet nurse, mistress.”

  The girl sounded guilty, as though she blamed herself for her milk drying up after weaning Henry.

  Aemilia peered at her little babe, so helpless and fragile. “I’m her mother. Pray God, I can feed her.”

  Even after Tabitha helped her to get the baby to latch on, Odilia suckled for only a moment before falling asleep. Aemilia tickled her feet to wake her then offered her the other breast, all the while blowing soft
ly on her face to keep her awake.

  “Try rocking her in your arms whilst you’re nursing,” Tabitha said.

  Aemilia rocked her and tried to stop worrying, to simply surrender to the baby’s sweet tug on her breast. But after a few moments, Odilia fell to sleep once more.

  “Maybe she’s just weary from all the fresh air,” Tabitha said. “Shall we let her rest and try nursing again in another hour?”

  Tabby eased the baby from her mother’s arms and tucked her into the cradle.

  “Henry was an easy feeder,” Aemilia said. “He grew so fast.”

  “Every babe is different, mistress.” Tabitha smiled down at Odilia while tucking the blankets around her. “Some are noisy, some are quiet. She’s a cherub, she is. Don’t you worry. In six months, she’ll be twice as big as she is now, mark my word.”

  AFTER TABITHA HAD LEFT the room, Aemilia took her smallest pair of scissors and cut a brown ringlet off her slumbering daughter’s head. Opening her lap desk, she selected a sheet of fine paper and put the lock of hair upon it. She plucked the gold ring Will had given her from its hiding place at the bottom of her desk and placed it on the paper, beside their daughter’s hair. Dipping her quill into the ink pot, she wrote on top of the page:

  Odilia Lanier baptized 2 December, 1594

  After the ink had dried, she folded the paper carefully around the ring and hair then sealed it with wax she heated over a candle flame.

  Writing a proper letter to Will alluding to his daughter’s paternity would be far too incriminating should the missive fall into the wrong hands. All the world must see Odilia as Alfonse Lanier’s child.

  The missive hidden in her palm, she headed back downstairs to join her guests.

  IN THE PARLOR, JASPER played Aemilia’s new lute while Annie fussed over Henry. Aemilia took Ben aside.

  “Please deliver this to Will,” she whispered. “To his own hand. No one else’s.”

  Her heart ached to surrender the ring. In truth, she had wanted to keep it forever as her secret treasure to prove that he had once loved her. Instead, she made herself let it go. What’s past is past.

  “Cousin, you must stop weeping for him.” Ben offered her his handkerchief, the cleanest she’d ever seen on him, owing no doubt to Annie’s care and attention. “Sweet Aemilia, you’re as soft as a lamb. In this world, lambs get devoured.”

  DURING HIS NEXT VISIT, Ben brought her Will’s reply along with news of the rehearsals.

  “The sets are nearly ready and the music fits the play quite well. I imagine it shall be a success. At least our Warwickshire pretender wasn’t vain enough to cast himself as the handsome Duke Orsino. I must say he found some very pretty youths to play the female roles.”

  No pimpled boy from Putney then.

  “I’m pleased to say I’ve angled an invitation to see the performance,” Ben told her. “An old friend who is a barrister has invited me as his guest. A pity no ladies are allowed in that hallowed hall.”

  A surge of anger welled up inside her to think that she could neither write plays under her own name nor even see her creation enacted in this rarefied male enclave. Then again, going out to plays was inconceivable to her now as the nursing mother of a new baby. Perhaps in spring when Odilia was a bit older, she might see her plays in Shoreditch.

  “In the meantime, dear Ben,” Aemilia said, “you must be my eyes and ears.”

  “The pleasure,” he said, with a wicked laugh, “is mine.”

  AFTER BEN HAD LEFT, Aemilia retreated to the nursery to read Will’s letter, breaking the wax seal with her penknife. From out of the folded paper, a necklace of Murano glass beads tumbled into her palm. In an instant, she was transported. She and Will clasped hands while watching the commedia dell’arte.

  Surely he had purchased these beads in Venice, though she couldn’t remember him doing so. Perhaps he’d bought them for one of his daughters back in Stratford only to return to find her grown too big to wear this necklace that would only fit a small child.

  Accompanying the beads was his message. Even the sight of his handwriting made her ache for everything they had shared and lost.

  Dear Mistress Lanier,

  Please accept this, my humble christening gift for your daughter. With wishes for the good health of mother & child,

  W. S.

  His message was both respectable and respectful, above reproach, so that even Alfonse might read it and not be offended. But it was so distant, the kind of letter one might write to a near stranger. Then again, what could he say in a letter without bringing dishonor upon her and Odilia?

  Aemilia held up the beads to the cold winter light. They gleamed as blue as Odilia’s eyes. She lifted the baby from her cradle, careful to support her head, and dangled the beads before her, watching her gaze follow their sparkle and flash.

  Will had acknowledged his natural daughter with a necklace if nothing more. These beads her patrimony.

  AEMILIA FELT AS THOUGH she had washed up on some strange and foggy island thousands of miles from the rest of the world. She hardly strayed more than twenty paces from her daughter. To think she had once traveled the world, sailing to far Italy. How she had swaggered in her breeches, as though she would never have to suffer a woman’s lot again. And how improbable those adventures seemed now, as unreal as the fairy tale that Will had ever sworn his troth to her.

  The vast tapestry that had been Aemilia’s life shrank to a tiny point. Odilia became her entire world.

  How she fretted over this baby, over each and every feeding, in her desperation to see roses in those pale cheeks, to see Odilia grow as chubby and robust as her brother. How could she have ever taken Henry’s appetite for granted? Day after day Aemilia waited for proof that her daughter thrived, that she wasn’t just her mama’s precious angel but a girl of growing flesh and bone who would endure in this world.

  Aemilia’s breasts engorged with enough milk to drown them both, but Odilia remained a fickle feeder while her mother throbbed with milk fever. Yet, she kept nursing through the pain, for the only cure was to keep the milk flowing, so Tabby told her. Prudence treated Aemilia’s hot swollen breasts with cabbage leaves. It seemed she spent half her waking hours coaxing Odilia to suckle, waking twice or more in the night.

  Alfonse, meanwhile, convalesced. Hobbling on his stick, he staggered through the rooms, as pale and utterly wrung out as she must look. Of an evening, they sat together for pottage and bread, both of them too shattered to quarrel. What a strange truce this was.

  YET EVEN HERE, NEWS of the outside reached Aemilia with a banging on the door.

  A breathless Winifred handed her the letter. “That’s Lord Hunsdon’s seal if I’m not mistaken. Go on, read it, mistress. I’ll hold the baby.”

  Aemilia had to smile at the sight of her tiny daughter in Winifred’s enormous arms. Her maid gazed down at Odilia with a face full of ferocious love while the baby gurgled and waved her hands. The letter, however, filled Aemilia with trepidation—what if the play had been an utter failure, an embarrassment to Lord Hunsdon? She’d heard not a word from either Ben or Jasper since Twelfth Night’s debut performance several weeks before. Since the christening gift, she had heard nothing at all from Will.

  My shining Hypatia,

  I must congratulate you on your foresight, for Twelfth Night is indeed a success. How the audience relished the rude wit of Sir Toby Belch. Whenever Malvolio the Puritan appeared, they hissed. Yet they also marveled at Viola and Olivia’s poetic exchange.

  Your Master W. S. has gathered together a most accomplished troupe of players while your Bassano cousins have played fine music to accompany the drama, though they could hardly be heard at times for all the cheering and roaring. Thus the players have staged encore performances of Twelfth Night in both the afternoon and evening. Now the goodly gentlemen of Gray’s Inn clamor for more comedies.

  Pray choose another similarly convivial piece, but you need only submit one copy this time. Master W. S. himself shall then
make fair copies for the players. In faith, I’ve heard it said that some of his actors thought the last batch of copies looked to be written in a woman’s hand, which was the subject of much mockery at Master W. S.’s expense. Surely you agree that it is best to put an end to such speculation.

  May I not forget to congratulate you on the birth of your daughter. I hear you are staying home these days, which is most sensible, given this inhospitable weather. May both your children flourish and their good mother rejoice in this most felicitous turn in fortune.

  Fondly, H. C.

  “Whatever is the matter, mistress?” Winifred asked, her face creasing in concern. “Is it not good news?”

  Aemilia blinked. “It’s very good news. The play is a success.”

  “Then why do you look so sad?” Winifred wiped drool from Odilia’s chin.

  “It’s only the lack of sleep.”

  Aemilia tried to beat down her disappointment that she had received this news from Lord Hunsdon but had not heard a word from Will. Such adulation had come his way. Could he not at least thank her for securing Lord Hunsdon’s patronage? Perhaps Will was simply caught up in his newfound success. If he did return to Stratford, he would go as a man who had proved his worth in the great world. His family would honor him and take pride in his accomplishments.

  Our accomplishments, she reminded herself. Yet it was a struggle to remember that she’d had a hand in this all, scribing those lines in partnership with Will, spinning her Viola and Olivia from the gossamer of her longing until at last they had taken form and flesh as the players enacted them upon the stage.