The Dark Lady's Mask

by Mary Sharratt

  With a flourish, the girl pulled back the curtains on the bed, revealing a brand-new gown of lilac silk trimmed with ivory brocade. Beside herself, Aemilia stroked the soft, slippery fabric. Not since her days as Henry Carey’s mistress had she owned anything so fine. Margaret’s belief in her raised her up to heights she had thought impossible. For a woman of her station to receive such finery not in exchange for the favors of her body but for leading a virtuous life dedicated to poetry and learning. She found she was in tears, too moved to speak. In Margaret’s company, she was not an adulteress or a jilted mistress or the discontented wife of an impoverished courtier. Margaret had washed her clean.

  Her friend placed a gentle hand on her shoulder. “Our New Year’s gift to you.”

  THAT EVENING, AFTER A meal of roast pheasant with apples and chestnuts, Aemilia performed her new composition, the poem she had written for Margaret. Each word fountained up from the depths of her soul.

  Sweet holy rivers, pure celestial springs,

  Proceeding from the fountain of our life;

  Sweet sugared currents that salvation brings,

  Clear crystal streams, purging all sin and strife,

  Fair floods, where souls do bathe their snow-white wings,

  Before they fly to true eternal life:

  Sweet Nectar and Ambrosia, food of Saints,

  Which whoso tasteth, never after faints.

  This honey dropping dew of holy love,

  Sweet milk, wherewith we weaklings are restored.

  THE MONTHS PASSED, SNOW melted to reveal new grass, and Aemilia’s stack of written pages grew, improved upon day by day as she chanted the verse aloud in the privacy of her room and later read each poem to Margaret.

  She gave Anne her lessons in the library until at last it was warm enough to walk up Cookham Dean and play their lutes beneath the oak.

  With Master Daniel, Anne was stiff and formal. With Aemilia, she was like a younger sister, grabbing her hand and whispering secrets, showing her bird nests and the orphaned hedgehog she had adopted.

  Mewed up in her laboratory, Margaret distilled perfumes for Anne and Aemilia made from flowers and herbs chosen especially for them. Anne’s was light and sweet with freesia and lily while Aemilia’s was darker and more mysterious with rose, lavender, and night-blooming jasmine. Margaret’s own scent was a blend of rosemary, cedar, lavender, and hyssop, the purifying herb celebrated in Psalm 51.

  IN SUMMER MASTER DANIEL departed to visit other noble patrons on their country estates. Aemilia taught Anne to sing new madrigals in French and Italian while Anne taught Aemilia the latest dances she had learned at court. Tutor and pupil crowned each other in floral garlands before enacting masques for Margaret. Afterward, they bowed and laid their garlands in Margaret’s lap. The three of them lay in the long summer grass, their heads touching, forming a three-spoked wheel as they watched the clouds form fantastical shapes then dissolve in the infinite sky.

  31

  Queen and huntress, chaste and fair,

  Now the sun is laid to sleep,

  Seated in thy silver chair,

  State in wonted manner keep;

  Hesperus entreats thy light,

  Goddess excellently bright.

  EMILIA SAT BESIDE MARGARET on the weathered bench beneath the great oak and plucked her lute to accompany Anne as she sang the lyrics of Ben’s poem, “Queen and Huntress,” written in praise of departed Elizabeth. Nicholas Lanier, Alfonse’s nephew, had composed the melody. Anne’s voice had much improved during the two and a half years Aemilia had been teaching her. The girl wore a simple woolen gown and had woven a wreath of bloodred grape leaves about her loosened hair to better resemble a maiden of antiquity, one of Diana’s retinue. The wind whipped her brown tresses as she sang.

  Now fifteen, Anne was turning into a woman. Soon George Clifford would intrude on their idyll, Aemilia suspected, with talk of arranging the girl’s marriage to a nobleman of his choosing. He would wrest the girl from her mother, like Hades abducting Persephone. Margaret’s heart would break to be separated from her daughter, still so young. Aemilia knew that her friend wanted her daughter’s days of youth and freedom to stretch on and on.

  The year had passed quickly. To think it was October, the week before All Hallows’ Eve, yet still balmy enough to have this performance on Cookham Dean. Our Mount Parnassus. Aemilia glanced at Margaret, who leaned back against the massive oak trunk. Her eyes were closed, as if to better savor her daughter’s singing in praise of the great Queen Margaret had served and loved.

  Lay thy bow of pearl apart,

  And thy crystal-shining quiver;

  Give unto the flying hart

  Space to breathe, how short soever.

  Thou that mak’st a day of night,

  Goddess excellently bright.

  As the final lute chord faded into silence, Aemilia saw her pupil leap and point down the hill. The ground itself shook. The unwelcome image of Hades encroached on Aemilia’s thoughts again, the earth opening to swallow the girl and sever her from her mother.

  Margaret stood, her face rigid, her arms clasped before her as if to shield her inner organs. Aemilia sprang to her feet at the sight of the rider galloping up Cookham Dean, white foam flying from the dark stallion’s mouth.

  The messenger, appearing as winded as his mount, flung himself from the saddle and nearly collapsed at Margaret’s feet.

  “My Lady Margaret Clifford, Countess of Cumberland,” the man panted.

  “That would be me,” Margaret said, her face as pale as the clouds passing overhead. She gripped Aemilia’s arm.

  Reaching into his doublet, the messenger took out a man’s emerald ring, which he handed to Margaret.

  “This is my husband’s,” she said, holding it up to the light.

  “My Lord George Clifford, Earl of Cumberland, lies dying at the Duchy House by the Savoy and requests your ladyship’s presence and that of Lady Anne.”

  The rider was so exhausted, it seemed to drain his last strength to utter that long sentence.

  Margaret turned to Aemilia with brimming eyes, as if in dread of facing her husband again even as he lay helpless and near death. What will this mean for Margaret and Anne? Aemilia wondered. Even after death, George Clifford controlled their fate by way of his last will and testament.

  Anne rushed to her mother’s side and clung to her. Aemilia’s heart quickened, for she hadn’t seen Anne so frightened since the night of Margaret’s terrible dream. The girl wrenched the garland from her head and flung it to the ground.

  Her husband’s ring hidden in her closed fist, Margaret addressed the messenger. “We will travel to the Duchy House with all speed. Pray go to the house and take refreshment. My groom will look after your horse.”

  Aemilia followed as Margaret and Anne walked shakily downhill into the abyss of their uncertain future.

  “THE BLACK GOWN,” MARGARET said to Aemilia, who was helping her pack.

  Aemilia located the black brocade Margaret had worn to Queen Elizabeth’s funeral folded inside the chest of drawers, kept fresh with pomanders of lavender and orange rind.

  Tears in her eyes, Margaret gazed around the room as if she would never see it again.

  “Margaret,” Aemilia said, fighting back her own tears. “Shall I stay with my family and wait till I hear word from you?”

  Her friend embraced her. “Sweet Aemilia. Pray wait for me here at Cookham until I return.”

  “My lady, I will.”

  Margaret gave her a crooked smile. “How many times do I have to remind you? I’m not your lady. I’m your friend.”

  “COOKHAM JUST ISN’T THE same without the Clifford ladies,” Winifred said, towering over her mistress who hunched at her desk. “Neither, dare I say, are you. The way you mope, anyone would think it was Lady Margaret dying, not her dung-heap husband. Good riddance, I say.”

  Aemilia allowed herself a small smile. “Peace, Winifred. Let me write.”

  After her maid
had left the room, Aemilia arranged her written pages in rows across her desk. In the past two and a half years, she had written scores of poems for Margaret Clifford: her “Eve’s Apology in Defense of Women”; her many poems praising Margaret’s virtues and comparing her to the heroic women of the Old Testament; her narrative poem describing Christ’s passion, based on the Gospel of Matthew; and the poem depicting Christ as Margaret’s divine husband.

  If Margaret’s time at Cookham, this blessed refuge, might be coming to an end, how better to honor and comfort her friend than to arrange the disparate poems in a grand narrative? Aemilia already had the title, Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum, but how could she piece it all together, Eve’s apology with Judith’s defeat of Holofernes?

  How would Jacopo Bassano have wedded the different images in a monumental master painting? Her love for Margaret provided the answer—by revealing her friend’s sorrows and joys as a mirror to Christ’s narrative. By proclaiming Margaret and, by extension, all virtuous women who suffered under the tyranny of unjust men as Christ’s true imitators. These good women would share in the triumph of the resurrection and so be liberated from the bonds of men. What was more, they could even use the scriptures to state their case for liberty and justice. She recalled Margaret’s argument that the weight of guilt upon men for the crucifixion far exceeded poor Eve’s plucking the fruit from the tree.

  Dipping her quill in the ink pot, Aemilia began to write.

  Let us have our Liberty again,

  And challenge to yourselves no Sovereignty,

  You came not into the world without our pain,

  Make that a bar against your cruelty;

  Your fault being greater, why should you disdain

  Our being your equals, free from tyranny?

  If one weak woman simply did offend,

  This sin of yours hath no excuse, nor end.

  The force of her words made her tremble, scattering ink across the page. She, a Jew’s daughter, was writing Christian poetry to vindicate all women, and all in honor of her beloved friend, her Muse, whose faith was vast enough to embrace the Geneva Bible, the Catholic chapel, and the Hebrew name of God.

  ON COOKHAM LANDING, AEMILIA gazed eastward into the mist rising from the steely Thames until the vessel emerged from the November fog. She waved to the Clifford women in their stiff black cloaks.

  When the craft drew up to the landing, Aemilia was quicker than any of the servants to help mother and daughter out of the boat. She had never seen Anne so wretched.

  “Oh, Aemilia.” The girl hugged her and quietly wept.

  How fragile Anne felt in her arms, a slender girl of fifteen shaking in the late autumn wind. Gazing over Anne’s shoulder at her mother, Aemilia regarded Margaret, whose face was set in tired, grim lines.

  “Come, my sweeting, let’s get you home,” Aemilia murmured. “My Winifred had the cook prepare pheasant pie.”

  “Home?” Anne reeled away toward the waiting cart. “I have no home.”

  Again Aemilia looked at Margaret, but the lady’s face was shuttered and guarded. She uttered no word of explanation until they reached the house. After Anne retreated to her room to change, Margaret ushered Aemilia into the library and locked the door behind them. Only then did Margaret’s mask slip to reveal her rage. With the violence of a caged she-wolf, she paced the room, her sweeping skirts knocking down a globe.

  “My friend, I beg you, what happened?” Aemilia asked, as the fear spiked in her belly. “I’ve never seen you like this.”

  “If I thought George Clifford was hateful whilst he lived, his curse endures beyond the grave.” Margaret seized the back of a chair and sent it crashing to the floor. “That man has robbed Anne of her inheritance. Left everything to his brother, the new Earl of Cumberland.”

  “Oh, Margaret, no.” Aemilia remembered the girl’s own terse summary of events: I have no home.

  “Everything, Aemilia!” Margaret shook her empty hands at the ceiling. “The estates, titles, and offices in Yorkshire and Westmoreland. Even those which by writ of Edward II are entailed to heirs general in the Clifford line—daughters as well as sons. Even the properties and titles in my jointure!”

  Aemilia had never heard her friend raise her voice to such a pitch. Pious, studious Margaret had become a Fury.

  “Surely he can’t leave her nothing.” Aemilia grasped her friend’s hands.

  A bitter laugh ripped from between Margaret’s clenched teeth. “He has granted her a monetary settlement, all of which shall go to her husband when she marries. She will indeed have nothing to call her own. The sole direct heir of the Clifford line!”

  Margaret’s pain became her own. Aemilia recalled how, on her first day at Cookham, Anne had claimed the tarocchi card with the female knight riding into battle. This is my card. The girl who had dared to wield her father’s sword before the King. My ancestral office, it is, to bear my father’s sword. One day I shall be mistress of his estates. Had the girl only known.

  “What if her future husband wastes her entire fortune?” Gulping for air, Margaret looked into Aemilia’s eyes. “At least when my marriage turned a living hell, I had my brother to provide this refuge for me at Cookham. But Anne? After I am dead, she will have no one. Nothing and no one!”

  Everything seemed to drain from Margaret. She drooped in Aemilia’s arms and wept.

  “Sweet Margaret, what will you do?”

  Her friend sighed and stepped away from her. Picking the chair off the floor, she sat down, as though conserving her strength for the ordeal that lay ahead.

  “I will fight this, so I swear. I will take on his brother. I will go all the way to the King. I will contest this injustice until my last breath.”

  “Where will you and Anne go now?” It hurt Aemilia just to ask the question.

  Margaret glanced up, her dark eyes shining with tears. “We must leave Cookham and travel with all speed to my dower estate in Westmoreland before the executors of the will find some excuse to take that away as well.”

  “I shall mourn to see you go.” Aemilia’s world shrank to a dust mote. She sank to the floor and rested her head in Margaret’s lap.

  “Nothing would give me greater solace than to take you with us.” Margaret stroked her hair. “Now, more than I ever, I need a friend. But I fear that would be selfish of me.”

  “‘Entreat me not to leave you or turn back from following after you,’” Aemilia said, quoting the Book of Ruth. “‘For wherever you go, I will go; and wherever you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people—’”

  “Aemilia,” Margaret said, her voice softening. “How can I take you away from your son? Have you any idea how remote Westmoreland is? A week’s journey from London in the best weather. In bad weather, you cannot travel at all over those mountain passes. If you came with us, your Henry would lose his mother.”

  Aemilia lifted her face to Margaret, who leaned forward to wipe her tears. Of course, Margaret was right. Aemilia had stretched her liberties as a wife as far as they would go. If she went with the Clifford women to the distant north, she would effectively be abandoning her family. Alfonse, for all his foibles, had stood by her in her darkest hour after Odilia’s death. How could she even consider deserting him a second time? Still, she found she couldn’t speak, and Margaret held her as though she never wanted to let her go.

  “My dear friend,” Margaret said. “Will you write a poem about Cookham to preserve it in my memory?”

  Aemilia looked at her through her tears. “Sweet Margaret, I will.” She bowed her head. “Anne once told me you possessed the gift of prophecy. Can you reveal anything of my future?” How shall my life go on without you?

  Margaret took Aemilia’s face in her hands. “Yours is the soul of a true poet. Your words shall endure long after I am dead and forgotten.”

  THAT NIGHT AN ARCTIC cold descended. When Aemilia awakened, stiff and numb, she saw that outside her window the garden, hills, and trees glittered with frost.

&n
bsp; In defiance of the chill, she and the Clifford women took their last walk up to the heights of Cookham Dean.

  “We should have known our fleeting worldly joys couldn’t last,” said Margaret, her voice spectral as she marched up the path.

  Anne rushed off ahead of them, reminding Aemilia of a filly fighting the bit and bolting away.

  “Now I must arrange her marriage,” Margaret said. “Pray God, her husband will prove kinder than her father.”

  Aemilia’s heart weighed on her, slowing her steps as she recalled her first stroll up this hill in May 1603, when the trees were crowned in new leaves. When wildflowers spangled the grass. When the air rang with the songs of nesting birds. Now crows perched on naked branches. The weak sun gave no comfort. It was as if the world had grown old, the frozen grass brittle with age’s hoary hairs. How desolate everything appeared, each arbor, bank, and bush. Everything that had once been green withered away in cold grief, making the earth its grave.

  “Nothing’s free from Fortune’s scorn,” Aemilia told Margaret.

  “There’s one small property from my jointure that George neglected to pass on to his brother,” her friend said. “In Clerkenwell Green. In faith, I think it was too humble for them to trouble themselves over.”

  “I’ve often accompanied my husband to Clerkenwell,” Aemilia told her, “so he could drink the healing waters there.”