The Dark Lady's Mask

by Mary Sharratt

  Aemilia’s brain revolved in circles, struggling to decipher those images that filled her with such yearning.

  “Good cards indeed,” a familiar voice behind her murmured.

  She turned to see Prudence.

  “Pray, what does it all mean?” she asked her maid.

  “I’d reckon you shall encounter any number of esteemed ladies, though I can’t say when or where.”

  Aemilia kept her own counsel. Surely those images were allegorical—apart from the Queen, precious few women in this world wielded that sort of power. But Prudence held her gaze and grinned, as if she already saw that august circle of ladies her mistress would one day meet.

  I have placed all my hopes in men and where did that get me? The time had come to take refuge in the company of learned women, if only she could meet them. Her memory traveled back to her days at Grimsthorpe Castle where Susan Bertie had taught her Latin and Greek, and allowed her to dream of great things. Aemilia had thought that idyll was forever lost, yet the cards hinted that she might gain such a haven once more.

  The triumph promised to her in the tarocchi cards, that constellation of brilliant and powerful women, seemed as distant as the farthest-flung stars. And yet she was her own mistress again. A woman of slender means, to be sure, but she had her privacy and independence. Now I might be a poet.

  BUT WHEN AEMILIA SAT down to write, she trembled at the very cost of paper, aware that she might soon be a widow. Even if, by the grace of God, Alfonse returned unscathed, war was a costly adventure. Gentlemen volunteers such as her husband were obliged to pay their own way even while fighting the Queen’s battles. What if Essex’s folly left them ruined?

  All the more reason to write and aspire to some sort of patronage, she told herself. This time she must write in her own name, write something that couldn’t be taken from her as the plays had been taken. If she had remained in Italy, she might have penned her own comedies or poetic allegories of love and philosophy. Here in England, a woman might write only if she translated the work of a great man or if she wrote about religion—the Queen’s religion.

  Aemilia’s quill hovered above the page and dribbled black ink, but no words came.

  Soon she would be thirty, her youth well and truly spent. In a matter of months, the century would end. What new world might be born when the old one passed away? Aemilia gazed into her steel mirror, hoping to catch a shadow of a vision of what would unfold.

  Despite her Latin, Greek, French, and Italian, she had no desire to be a translator; she wanted to write only her own poetry. But religious verse? Who could take that seriously, coming from a woman like her? She would have to claim some dramatic conversion, similar to Paul’s being speared by lightning on the road to Damascus.

  She considered her Puritan education with Susan Bertie, considered Anne Locke’s pious sonnets. Mary Sidney Herbert, the Countess Dowager of Pembroke, had written a collection of poetry based on the psalms, a project her brother, Philip Sidney, had begun before his untimely death. Mary had finished where Philip had left off to create a tribute to him. Being an aristocrat, the Countess could hardly sully herself by allowing her work to be published on the printed page. Instead, she permitted her hand-scribed manuscripts to be shared in a few chosen circles. Aemilia had chanced to read the poems when Ben had shown her the pages. How they had amazed her.

  Closing her eyes, she thought how Jacopo Bassano, after his forced conversion, had spent his life painting masterpieces of Christian art, yet still his soul and deep truth were present in each despite the mask he was made to wear.

  Dipping her nib into the ink, Aemilia wrote four words, forming each letter slowly, deliberately, as if in a dream.

  Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum

  Hail, God, King of the Jews.

  28

  VERY SOUL IN THE realm seemed to converge on Westminster that April morning in 1603. Men, women, and children of all ranks crammed the streets and jostled for the best view. Others hung out of windows and even crowded the rooftops to watch the funeral cortege of a thousand mourners, Aemilia among them, who followed the Queen’s coffin from Whitehall Palace to Westminster Abbey.

  There she passes, the Virgin Queen. Aemilia strained her eyes to see to the very front of the procession, where four gray stallions draped in black velvet drew Her Majesty’s hearse. The coffin was covered in royal purple and topped with an effigy so lifelike that it made the onlookers point and gasp. Six knights supported a canopy over the coffin. Behind the hearse, the Queen’s Master of the Horse led Elizabeth’s palfrey. As Chief Mourner, the Marchioness of Northampton led the peers of the realm, all of them arrayed in black.

  Aemilia hadn’t been in the presence of so many aristocrats since her days at court. Her sole reason for being allowed to walk in the procession was on account of her husband being one of the fifty-nine musicians chosen to play for the Queen’s funeral. Her ten-year-old son would sing in the choir.

  Aemilia nearly tripped over her hem when she sighted Mary Sidney Herbert, the great poet, and there was the Countess of Bedford, a noted patroness of arts and letters. On this somber occasion, the eminent circle of ladies Prudence promised to Aemilia in the tarocchi cards seemed close enough to touch. But surely these noblewomen would dismiss her as only the wife of a minor courtier.

  A woman of middle years stepped into pace with Aemilia. Though the lady appeared as an aristocrat in bearing, her black brocade gown with its silver thread was faded and worn. Her heart-shaped face looked so familiar, as did her huge brown eyes.

  “Forgive me, madam, but are you Aemilia Bassano?”

  “I was before I married, my lady,” Aemilia said, intrigued to be addressed by her maiden name for the first time in years.

  “I thought so.” The lady smiled. “I’d recognize you anywhere, Amy.”

  “My lady?” Aemilia struggled not to laugh aloud in joy. “My Lady Susan!”

  More than twenty years had passed since she last laid eyes on Susan Bertie. Is it a sin, Aemilia wondered, to feel this rush of felicity while marching behind the Queen’s coffin? She took Susan’s hand and Susan squeezed hers in return.

  Aemilia had always feared that her former mentor would have forever forsaken her after she had fallen from grace and become the late Lord Chamberlain’s mistress. But looking into Susan’s eyes, she saw nothing but affection. The years seemed to melt away.

  “How happy we were back in Grimsthorpe,” Aemilia murmured. “How I missed you when you married and left for the Netherlands. I thought I’d never see you again.”

  “I missed you as well,” said Susan. “You were such a spirited little girl. You know, I had two sons, but I always longed for a daughter.”

  “My lady, I’m so sorry to hear of your brother’s passing.”

  Susan lowered her gaze. “Poor Perry! In truth, I think that death was his only escape from his horrid wife. I am a widow now—did you know?”

  Aemilia shook her head.

  “The fate of being married to a soldier,” Susan said. “They sow their fortunes on the battlefield and reap only debt and death.”

  Catching the glint of unspilled tears in Susan’s eyes, Aemilia took her arm and held it tightly. “My husband sailed to Ireland with the Earl of Essex.”

  She couldn’t hide her contempt when speaking the traitor’s name, that turncoat who had led an armed rebellion against the Queen. When Elizabeth beheaded Essex, Aemilia had quietly rejoiced. Essex, the author of Alfonse’s misfortune. Southampton, who had joined the rebellion, was imprisoned in the Tower.

  “My husband had no part in Essex’s plot,” Aemilia told Susan. “Three years he fought in the Irish wars and returned only after the Spanish were defeated in Kinsale.” She dropped her voice to a whisper. “We, too, are much impoverished.”

  Alfonse had proved his loyalty to the Crown but at great cost, depleting their entire estate. He had run up a staggering four thousand pounds in debts, yet he didn’t even have a knighthood to show for his sacrifice, only
the title of captain. In the early years of their marriage, he had ruined his health and wasted her income on his dissolute life. In recent years, when he had been striving so hard to be a good man in the Queen’s service, he had suffered even more ill luck. Her family’s future remained uncertain. Aemilia could only hope that Alfonse would find a place in the new King James’s court.

  War and hardship, the great levelers, Aemilia thought, as she walked arm in arm with Lady Susan as if no rank separated them.

  WHEN THEY HAD TAKEN their places in Westminster Abbey, Aemilia pointed out her husband to Susan as he played with the other musicians.

  “Captain Alfonse Lanier,” she said, careful to mention the only title to which anyone in her household could lay claim.

  The wars had left their mark on Alfonse, scarring his face and thinning his hair. But the beauty of his flute playing moved Aemilia as much as ever.

  “And that’s my son,” she whispered, pointing to Henry in the choir.

  “The child has an air of nobility about him,” Susan observed, making gentle note of his parentage.

  At ten, Henry was tall and solemn, with his natural father’s penetrating gaze and his mother’s dark eyes and hair.

  The Queen’s funeral service was half in English, half in Latin, as if the country’s religion were again uncertain. Everything might be turned upside down, as when Elizabeth ascended to the throne after her Catholic sister Mary Tudor’s death. The new King James was Catholic Mary Stuart’s son, but he had been raised a Protestant. Who could say what the new order might bring—the Scottish monarch had yet to show his face in London or Westminster.

  AFTER THE FUNERAL HAD ended, Aemilia walked with Susan through the throng of grandees gathered outside Westminster Abbey.

  “Nothing in this world is constant,” Susan whispered, her face white with indignation. “Just look at them all.”

  The lady’s eyes darted to the noblemen who muttered behind their hands, as though already plotting how to secure their positions in the new court even though the old Queen’s coffin had barely been laid to rest. Aemilia, likewise, could read the thoughts emblazoned on the courtiers’ faces. They could barely contain their jubilation to have a man back on the throne after two reigning female monarchs.

  “Now watch them take flight,” Susan whispered. “They’ll gallop to York to greet the new King, killing three horses in a day to try to get there before all the others.”

  Susan pointed out a man whose face bore an expression of barely concealed impatience, as though he couldn’t stand to wait another minute before racing north to stake his claim. With his sweeping dark hair and black-velvet doublet, he cut a dashing figure, but his entire mien was of insufferable arrogance.

  Aemilia recognized him at once—George Clifford, the Earl of Cumberland, the late Queen’s champion of the tiltyard. Beside him stood his wife, Margaret Clifford, the Countess of Cumberland, who still looked much the same as Aemilia remembered from her days at court. She was a lady with the modest manner of a virtuous wife, except her husband appeared as though he couldn’t stand the sight of her. Even Aemilia had heard the rumors that George Clifford had all but repudiated his wife. Margaret’s face, clenched in humiliation, tore at Aemilia’s heart. She knew that pain only too well.

  Beside Margaret stood a slender girl whose eyes gleamed falcon bright. Aemilia noted the way the girl stood close to her mother and held her hand, as if to shield her from her father’s disdain. Aemilia could not take her eyes off their clasped hands. Love seemed to radiate from mother and daughter like the glow around a lamp. At least you have this consolation, Aemilia longed to tell Margaret Clifford. Her own arms ached for the daughter she had lost.

  The crowd began to disperse, and already George Clifford was walking away from his wife and daughter. Before they, too, could depart, Susan drew Aemilia forward and greeted Margaret Clifford and her daughter, Anne.

  “This is my dear friend, Mistress Aemilia Bassano Lanier, wife of Captain Lanier, a most loyal servant of our late Queen.”

  Aemilia was mystified why Susan should make such a show of presenting her, but she dropped down in a curtsy just the same.

  “Aemilia Bassano,” the Countess of Cumberland said. “Yes, I remember you from your time at court.”

  Aemilia was on fire before her gaze. Margaret Clifford had witnessed her downfall, the ignomy of fainting in the masque then coming to in that room full of scandalized, gossiping women. Only Margaret had looked on her with compassion.

  The Countess now regarded her with dark, serious eyes in a face that was as pale as the pearls at her throat. Aemilia could sense the intelligence pulsing inside her. This was a woman of great forbearance. She showed me kindness that day because she knows what it is to suffer and be shamed.

  “I educated Aemilia when she was a girl,” Susan told the Countess.

  “And a fine education that was,” Margaret Clifford said. “I remember your many accomplishments, Mistress Lanier.”

  “My Lady Margaret, would she not make a fine tutor for Anne?” Susan spoke smoothly with a subtle smile.

  Aemilia could not believe her mentor’s boldness. Meanwhile, Anne seemed to examine Aemilia with sharp, inquisitive eyes.

  “Master Samuel Daniel is my tutor,” the girl said grandly.

  “The renowned poet!” Aemilia interjected. She couldn’t help herself. “How I admire his Complaint of Rosamond.”

  “You yourself are a poet as I recall,” Margaret said. “Did you not once write a poem for Her Majesty?”

  “My lady, I did.” Aemilia was light-headed with elation that the Countess remembered. “Though it was but short.”

  Closing her eyes, she recited the poem that she had offered to the Queen when Lord Hunsdon had first introduced her at court. Her voice wavered in grief at Her Majesty’s passing. Though Aemilia had suffered the Queen’s ire and banishment when she fell pregnant, Elizabeth had been the bedrock on which this realm had stood for Aemilia’s entire existence. How could England go on without her courageous Queen?

  The Phoenix of her age, whose worth does bind

  All worthy minds so long as they have breath,

  In links of admiration, love, and zeal,

  To the dear Mother of our Commonweal.

  The circle of women remained silent, heads bowed.

  “Elizabeth was truly the phoenix of our age,” Margaret said, tears in her eyes.

  Aemilia saw the genuine love on Margaret Clifford’s face, for had she not been one of Elizabeth’s most trusted Maids of Honor? The Countess had attended Elizabeth on her deathbed.

  “In faith, Mistress Lanier,” Margaret said, drying her eyes, “I think your talents would impress even Master Daniel.”

  “She’s fluent in French and Italian,” Susan said. “Are not languages a marvelous accomplishment for a young lady?”

  “Father won’t let me learn languages,” Anne said, with the savage bluntness of a maid of thirteen.

  Aemilia couldn’t hide her astonishment. “What, not even Latin?”

  “My husband thinks it unbecoming of a woman,” the Countess said drearily. “The new King won’t even allow his daughter to learn Latin.”

  Aemilia wanted to wring her hands. The late Queen had mastered Latin, Greek, and many modern languages. What would James’s reign hold if even the Princess Royal was forbidden a humanist education?

  Anne exchanged a look with her mother, who seemed to view Aemilia more intently.

  “What else can you teach, Mistress Lanier?” Margaret Clifford asked.

  Aemilia’s tongue froze in her open mouth.

  “Music,” Susan said, speaking swiftly to hide Aemilia’s awkwardness.

  “I could teach your daughter to play the lute and the virginals,” Aemilia said, inclining her head in deference. “And to sing madrigals.”

  “I could sing in Italian, could I not?” Anne looked at her mother. “Father only said I couldn’t speak foreign languages.”

  “But you are m
arried, Mistress Lanier,” the Countess said. “Would your husband permit you to live elsewhere?”

  “My husband is often away at court,” Aemilia told her. “He would begrudge me no honorable occupation.” Alfonse, she knew, would kiss every coin she could bring to their household.

  The Countess nodded. “Tomorrow my daughter and I ride north to greet Queen Anne, but when we return, I shall send for you to join us at Cookham.”

  For a moment, Aemilia forgot to breathe. Then she blinked and the Countess and her daughter had departed.

  Susan took her hand. “You said your husband has fallen into poverty and decline. Why should you not use your learning to raise yourself back up?”

  29

  LIMBING OUT OF THE wherry at Cookham Village with its cottages hugging the banks of the Thames, Aemilia felt as wide-eyed and unsure of herself as when she had first made her journey to Grimsthorpe as an eight-year-old child. Though she was grateful to finally have a meaningful occupation, she had no clue what to expect from her new life as a tutor. Had the Countess of Cumberland hired her out of pity, as an act of charity to the wife of a man who had impoverished his family in service of the Crown? What if Margaret Clifford began to have second thoughts about hiring a woman of Aemilia’s tarnished reputation to teach her innocent daughter? How easily Aemilia could slip up.

  No such doubts seemed to cloud Winifred’s mind. In her exuberance, her maid nearly capsized the boat as she scrambled out.

  “I shall carry your lute,” Winifred declared, clutching her mistress’s prized instrument in her huge arms as though the boatman couldn’t be trusted to lay even a finger on it.

  The wherryman heaved Aemilia and Winifred’s boxes onto the landing.

  Before paying the fare, Aemilia gripped Winifred’s arm. “It’s not too late to go back. Will you not miss your sisters?”