The Dark Lady's Mask

by Mary Sharratt

  She opened a cupboard to reveal a row of labeled flasks and drew out a bottle of clear fluid.

  “This,” she said, “is my own elixir. Pure spirit of the grape. I use it for dissolving herbs when I create my medicinal remedies.”

  One by one, the Countess unstoppered her flasks, allowing Aemilia to smell her various perfumes and tinctures.

  “In another few weeks, it will be time to start harvesting flowers and herbs,” she said. “I harvest them by night according to the phase and astrological sign of the moon to preserve their moisture. Ah, here’s my most secret elixir, made from nineteen different plants.”

  Smiling to herself, she poured a tiny glass for Aemilia to taste.

  “My lady, these are potent spirits.” The first sip was enough to make Aemilia’s eyes water, yet the flavor was clean and subtle. “I haven’t tasted its like since my visit to Bassano del Grappa, where they distill their own aqua vitae.”

  “Strictly medicinal, you understand.” The Countess poured some for herself.

  “My lady, what do these represent?” Aemilia went to examine the sigils drawn on virgin parchment.

  “Salt, mercury, and sulphur,” the Countess said. “All matter is composed of these three components, ranging from the gross to the subtle: salt for the physical body, mercury for the spirit, and sulphur for the soul. All alchemical operations separate a substance into these separate elements. But then the three are brought together again in a single vessel and join, this time in perfect harmony, to create a brand-new essence.”

  Aemilia was struck by the thought that Cookham was a crucible in which its three residents—the Countess, Anne, and her—might be utterly transformed. Transmuted into something brilliant and clear.

  QUILL IN HAND, AEMILIA sat at her desk, yet she simply couldn’t find her Muse or conjure a single phrase commendable enough to justify the expense of the paper she scribbled upon. The only poems that emerged were groveling odes of praise to the Countess, which Aemilia feared would only embarrass the lady, if they were worthy of her attention at all, which Aemilia was beginning to doubt.

  At least the lessons with Anne seemed to be going well, with a steady rapport developing between her and her pupil, although sometimes Anne’s high spirits got the better of her. One day Aemilia found her charge dashing off to the cherry orchards in the middle of a reading of Ovid. Anne soon returned, cheerful and contrite, her fingers stained, her kerchief full of ripe cherries to share with her tutor.

  When they sat beneath the great oak on Cookham Rise, strumming their lutes and singing in harmony, Aemilia felt transported to a pastoral scene from Virgil’s Eclogues. She was seized by such an overwhelming love and loss all at once, her fondness for Anne evenly matched by her grief and longing for her lost Odilia. Even as she rejoiced in these precious hours with another woman’s witty and precocious daughter, Aemilia realized with a guilty start that in the space of weeks she had grown closer to Anne Clifford than she was to her own son now that Henry was Jasper’s apprentice. She sent Henry a long letter describing her life at Cookham and received a note in return saying that he had sung in a masque for the new Queen. At the age of ten, her son had already gained his entry into the new court that Aemilia would probably never see.

  AEMILIA LAY IN BED with the covers thrown off and listened to the sultry July night. Outside her open window, trees trembled in the wind. The old house creaked and settled. Though all seemed exactly as it should be, something remained unsettled in her heart.

  She had heard rumors of plague in London. Pray God Henry was well. She worried about what Alfonse might get up to while she was away, what new foolish and expensive scheme might take his fancy. Ever since he had returned from the Irish wars, he seemed haunted, even more desperate to distinguish himself. What if he fell into bad company?

  Oh, why couldn’t she put these things out of her head and simply sleep?

  Rolling over, she closed her eyes and tried to envision Morpheus, the god of dreams, arriving in his chariot. Then she jerked at the sound of a drawn-out cry. Is it some nocturnal creature? she wondered. A screech owl? No, it seems to be coming from within the house. The cry rose and fell, rattling her bones.

  She groped for a candle and her cloak to cover her nightshift before venturing into the hallway, which appeared as a tunnel of darkness but for another guttering candle on the far end. Her stomach pitched in fear, but she forced herself forward, bare feet clammy against the floorboards, toward that unsteady pool of light.

  She found Anne huddled outside her mother’s chamber door where the wailing dragged on and on, as though someone were trying to murder the Countess.

  “Mother’s having her nightmares,” Anne whispered.

  In the candlelight, the girl’s face appeared as disembodied as a ghost’s, her brown eyes huge in her pale face glistening with tears.

  “We must go to her.” Aemilia tried to open the door, but it was locked.

  “She gave me the spare key.” Anne pressed it into Aemilia’s hand. “She dreams of my father. Once he nearly killed her. The servants had to pull him off her.”

  “Good God,” Aemilia murmured.

  As the shaking girl clung to her arm, Aemilia understood that Anne was terrified of venturing into that room and seeing her mother so undone.

  “Allow me.” Aemilia turned the key in the lock.

  With Anne at her heels, Aemilia stumbled through the dark room until she came to the bed where the Countess thrashed in her sleep. After setting the candle and key on the bedside table, she grasped the Countess’s shoulders and gave her a gentle shake.

  “Peace, my lady, it’s only a dream!”

  With a judder, Margaret Clifford shoved herself upright. Her face was as white and rigid as a death mask.

  “Mother?” Anne reached for her hand.

  “Go back to bed, child,” Margaret said. It seemed the Countess was mortified to have her daughter see her in this state.

  Anne retreated at once.

  Aemilia imagined that the Countess wanted her gone as well, but she was reluctant to leave her alone. The lady’s nightdress was translucent with sweat and there was no maid in attendance.

  “Are you ill, my lady? Feverish?” Aemilia dared to touch her forehead. “Shall I send for a physician?”

  Margaret now appeared cross. “What need have I for a quack to apply leeches when I have physick enough of my own making? Marry, I shall take a remedy in the morning. Good night, Mistress Lanier. I’m sorry I awakened you.”

  Yet behind Margaret Clifford’s wall of brusque authority, Aemilia sensed that the nightmare still held her in its thrall.

  “Forgive me, my lady, but your nightdress is sodden. Have you a fresh one I may bring to you?”

  “In the chest at the foot of the bed,” the Countess said.

  “You had better wash as well if you’ve had the night sweats.” Aemilia carried an ewer of fresh water, a basin, a cake of soap, and a towel to the bedside table. “To sleep with damp skin is to invite sickness.”

  Aemilia then turned her back on the Countess to allow her to wash herself. After what she thought was a decent interval, she turned to face her again. Margaret shrank behind the towel. As she snatched the fresh nightgown from Aemilia’s hand, Aemilia could not avoid seeing the atlas of welts on her skin.

  “Oh, my sweet lady. Who could do this to you?”

  Margaret crumpled and began to weep, as though she were a broken thing. Aemilia helped her into the nightdress and wrapped her in her own cloak. She held her and let her cry.

  “Let it all out,” she whispered. “All the melancholy and grief, my lady. If you bottle it inside, it will poison you.”

  “He took a horsewhip to me,” Margaret said. “No God-fearing man would treat his horse as he treated me.”

  They sat at the edge of the bed, their hands clasped.

  “At first I thought it was because he thought me plain,” she said. “I thought that had I been beautiful—like you—he would have bee
n kinder.”

  “My lady,” Aemilia said, her cheeks burning. “In truth, I had a sister who was the loveliest creature who ever lived, but her beauty did not spare her. She suffered from such a husband as yours, only he was of meaner birth.”

  “Where is your sister now?” Margaret asked her.

  “Dead, my lady.” Aemilia’s eyes filled. “Her child, too.”

  “I longed to die,” said Margaret. “But I couldn’t—I have a daughter. And your husband, Mistress Lanier—is he good to you?”

  “Bless him, he tries to be a good man, but he wasted my money, and his traffic with whores infected him with the great pox. Once I was so desperate, I took a lover, but all in vain, for the man proved fickle and faithless.”

  Aemilia’s voice shook, for she had never revealed so much of herself to any other woman besides her own servants. Would Margaret dismiss her as a wanton, unsuitable to teach her daughter?

  But Margaret offered her a sad smile, as if their misfortunes as women bound them together. “I might have taken a lover, had the chance arisen. Perhaps, after a manner of speaking, I did.” The lady flushed as she spoke. “By my troth, the only way I endured my marriage was by telling myself that my true husband was not George Clifford but he whose sufferings eclipsed all my own.”

  Now Aemilia understood why Margaret took such solace in that image of the scourged and tortured Jesus.

  “Do you think me a heretic, Mistress Lanier?” As Margaret framed the question, Aemilia realized she had been entrusted with the lady’s most guarded secret.

  “I think you are a godly woman,” she said, meaning every word. “Why, think of the women in the Bible whose grace helped them overthrow the most despicable men. Judith, Esther, Deborah, Susanna, and Jael. You are their daughter, my lady. If I held a mirror to your virtues, you would never doubt yourself again.”

  Aemilia blinked when she saw that her words had moved Margaret to tears.

  “My lady, may I bring you a glass of your herbal elixir?” she asked.

  “You’ll find a flask in that cabinet,” Margaret said. “Pour a measure for yourself as well. But no more ‘my lady,’ if you please. Not after what you’ve seen and heard this night.”

  “How so?” Aemilia asked, as she poured the aqua vitae into tiny goblets of Venetian glass. “You are still the Countess of Cumberland and I the wife of a minstrel.”

  “Such distinctions are but worldly vanities. Does not God make both even, the cottage and the throne?”

  “Then you must call me Aemilia.” She handed Margaret her goblet. “No more ‘Mistress Lanier.’”

  Margaret smiled. Before she even took the first sip, the color returned to her face. “To friendship.”

  “Friendship,” Aemilia echoed.

  They clinked their glasses and drank.

  “I have been so lonely for friendship, Aemilia. I hope you stay with us for a very long time.”

  As the aqua vitae’s warmth traveled from Aemilia’s tongue straight into her heart, she felt lifted beyond herself, suddenly whole and complete.

  THE EARLY MORNING SUN shone through the ivy curtaining Aemilia’s window, casting a delicate tracery on a fresh new page. Sitting at her desk, as though she were a poet on par with any man, Aemilia dipped her quill in the ink pot and began to write.

  Sweet Cookham where I first obtained

  Grace from the Grace where perfect Grace remained,

  And where the Muses gave their full consent,

  I should have the power the virtuous to content.

  Grace welled up in her heart like precious oil. Only a single drop was needed to light her inner lamp. Her very soul blazed.

  This was an idyll more priceless than her time in Italy. Instead of the torch of passion, that inconstant betrayer, the quiet flame of friendship illumined her days. That lost Italian romance shrank into the cobwebs of distant memory, for this was the culmination of all her yearning. Here she had found her fountain of delight. Cookham was the alchemical vessel that burned away her dross until only her highest essence remained.

  On her desk was a bouquet of roses and scented stocks, a gift from Anne, but their lessons did not begin until midmorning. Margaret had purposely given these early hours to Aemilia so that she could rise at dawn and write for hours in the sunlit stillness before resuming her duties as tutor. Write to your heart’s content, as long as your writing serves virtue. Under her friend’s patronage, Aemilia could truly dedicate herself to poetry.

  She longed to give Margaret, her Muse, something in return. Let her write poetry that was powerful enough to ease the melancholy that gnawed at her friend’s heart. Margaret might one day have to leave this house with its painted chapel that gave her such comfort. Yet Aemilia hoped her poetry could immortalize what they shared in this hallowed place. In secret she penned her everlasting tribute to Margaret Clifford.

  At the top of the page, Aemilia wrote the title that had come to her, as if in a dream, three years before: Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum. Beside her stack of writing paper lay the Geneva Bible open to the Gospel of Matthew. Let her words create a tableau of the Passion, of the suffering yet victorious Christ as Margaret’s true and eternal husband, as lovingly rendered as Jacopo Bassano’s paintings.

  Jacopo’s voice whispered in her ear, telling her to turn to the Canticles, the book of wedding poems in the Old Testament, for inspiration. The words flowed from her quill like paint from a brush.

  This is the Bridegroom that appears so fair.

  His lips like scarlet threads, yet much more sweet

  Than is the sweetest honey-dropping dew,

  Or honeycombs, where all the Bees do meet;

  Yea, he is constant, and his words are true,

  His cheeks are beds of spices, flowers sweet;

  His lips, like Lilies, dropping down pure myrrh,

  Whose love, before all worlds we do prefer.

  SUMMER PASSED IN a round of poetry, lessons, and walks up and down Cookham Dean. In the evening, the three of them gathered in the great hall to sup beneath the tapestry of the dancing goddesses. Come nightfall, Aemilia followed Margaret into the moth-haunted garden where they harvested flowers and herbs under the rising moon.

  “So much beauty,” Margaret murmured, as she filled her basket with blooming roses, their scent heavy and sweet in the cool air. “Is this not a glimpse into paradise?”

  Aemilia lifted her eyes to the waxing moon sailing high, pouring her silver on meadow and grove. Enchanted by the night, she began to sing as she and Margaret worked together.

  Over hill, over dale,

  Through bush, through briar,

  Over park, over pale,

  Through flood, through fire,

  I do wander everywhere,

  Swifter than the moon’s sphere.

  And I serve the Faery Queen

  To dew her orbs upon the green.

  Only when she had sung the last note did Aemilia remember that this was what she had sung for Harry and Will that midsummer night at Southampton House a decade ago.

  “Your voice is still as lovely as when you used to sing at court,” Margaret said, plunging Aemilia even further into her past.

  “I was just a girl then. Barely older than your Anne.”

  “The dark jewel of the court,” Margaret said, her skirts rustling like the wind in the leaves as she moved through her garden. “Isn’t that what the Lord Chamberlain used to call you?”

  In the darkness Aemilia felt herself blush. Why did Margaret speak of that now?

  “If only you knew how I envied you then,” Margaret said. “In those days I would have given anything for my husband—or any man—to look at me the way Henry Carey looked at you.”

  “He was a good man,” Aemilia said. But something about the intimacy of the moonlit night demanded greater honesty. “In faith, I doubt any woman envied me when he put me aside and married me off. I envied highborn ladies like you who seemed so secure.”

  Margaret laughed. “Ah, but now y
ou know better. Sometimes I think you are my confessor, Aemilia Lanier. You know my every secret. But to me, you still seem a mystery, like a lake hiding an entire city in its depths.”

  Aemilia remained silent, cutting the lavender. The night breeze touched her nape, sending a shiver through her. “You think I conceal some terrible scandal?”

  “Forgive me lest you think I pry, but sometimes when we bear our secrets alone, the burden becomes so heavy. You helped lift my burden and I would help you bear yours—if you let me.” She peered into Aemilia’s basket. “I think that’s enough lavender. Now let’s take this to the still room.”

  Following Margaret down the flagged path, Aemilia thought how she had yearned for a true friend all her life. But to have a friend, one must be a friend. She thought how she had lost sweet Olivia by keeping so much hidden from her and telling her too many lies. Her soul’s depths she had revealed to Will, who had betrayed her, but never to another woman.

  In the laboratory they worked by lantern light. After stripping the lavender blooms from the stalks, Aemilia ground them with mortar and pestle.

  “My entire life I have worn a mask,” she told Margaret.

  “So have we all,” Margaret said, grinding rose petals. “Most people’s masks slip from time to time. But you wear yours so well, I cannot tell where the mask ends and your true face begins.”

  Aemilia carried on pounding the lavender until her muscles ached. “Is it the secret of my lover? He was . . . he is a poet. Would you know his name?”