“I can’t stay here hiding in an instrument-making shop when the country’s in danger.” He kicked the cobblestones.
“Cousin, if you must go, I won’t try to stop you. But I’ll worry.”
Alfi leaned over and quickly kissed her on the cheek. Marco rattled up with the carriage, and she thought the two young men exchanged glances. As the carriage trundled away, she looked back and saw Alfi alone in the street in the dusk.
“Marco’s gone!” Jenny shrieked.
“What?” Emilia started up. Min stood before her, twisting her hands in her apron. “That boy’s nowhere to be found, Mistress,” the cook said. “This morning, I came into the kitchen to find the hearth cold and his sleeping pallet folded. He left this.” She handed Emilia a piece of rough paper.
Emilia read aloud: “‘I hav gown to fite the Spanyrds. Farwel til we mete agin. M.’ ”
“I thought he looked a bit like he had summat on his mind.” Min folded her arms.
“I knew that ruffian was not to be trusted,” Marie muttered.
After breakfast, Emilia went over her accounts. She had enough money to meet expenses, but no Marco to go to market. How much she relied on him, Hunsdon, and Alfi to accompany her and bring her news. How could she shop with no one to drive the carriage, or send a message with no one to carry it? A market woman could sell her wares in the streets, but a gentlewoman walking out alone risked being robbed or worse. It might be risky to venture out on foot even with Jenny or Marie.
That afternoon, Jenny burst into the parlor. “Mistress! There’s a boy here from Mistress Lucretia!” The boy, brave in Lanyer livery, held an invitation to dinner that said his mistress would send her carriage.
At the Lanyer house in Greenwich, dinner talk was about war and the Spanish Armada. John, Nick’s oldest son by his first marriage, had just played at Court.
“Drake wants to confront the Spaniards,” he said, “but the Queen says no.”
“She seeks for peace,” Lucretia said.
“Even in the mouth of the cannon.” John shook his head.
“What of Parma’s army?” asked John’s wife, Frances.
“They wait to cross at Calais.” John speared a piece of chicken with his knife.
“Where are the Spanish ships?”
“Off the Scilly Isles.”
“Ah, mercy!” exclaimed Frances, heavily pregnant.
“Let us not fear, but pray to the Lord,” Lucretia said.
Nick led them in prayer. When he came to the end, he said, “In the name of the Lord, Amen.”
After dinner, out came musical instruments—four recorders, a flute, a harpsichord, a couple of viols, and a viola da gamba.
“Let us play Alfonso Ferrabosco’s ‘Pavane,’” said Nick, “since he’s not here to tell us what we’re doing wrong.” Everyone laughed. Alfi’s famous godfather was known for his irritable perfectionism.
“Cousin Emilia,” asked Nick, “do you know that song of Dowland’s, ‘Now, Oh Now, I Needs Must Part’?”
Three Lanyers on lute, flute, and viola played the introduction, and Emilia joined them: “‘Now, O now I needs must part / Parting though I absent mourn . . .’”
Lucretia began to weep. After the song, she murmured, wiping her eyes, “I so fear for Alfonso’s safety.”
“Shall we have a galliard?” John asked.
They played a few galliards and dances. Bianca drew her husband onto the floor, and soon several couples were dancing. One of the boys beat out the rhythm on the table.
Lucretia came and sat beside Emilia.
“Cousin,” she said, “did Alfonso tell you he was leaving?”
“Yes, Cousin Lucretia. He told me Friday.”
“I knew it.” Lucretia pressed her lips together. “He and that Marco were whispering.”
“Yes, Marco’s also gone.”
“Hmmph,” Lucretia said. Then she brightened. “Why don’t you stay here a while?”
“How will Master Carey know where I am?”
“Send a letter to Tilbury.”
“My servants . . .”
“Leave the house in the care of your cook, and bring your French waiting woman—what is her name?”
“Marie Jaquelin.”
“She is a refugee, is she not?”
“Yes, her parents were killed on St. Bartholomew’s Day.”
“Oh, Lord save us,” Lucretia murmured, closing her eyes. “She is thrice welcome.”
On their second day in Greenwich, Marie came to Emilia. “Madam, I cannot stay here.”
“What’s the matter, Marie?”
Marie shook her head and glanced around.
“Come to the garden where we can talk privately.” Emilia led Marie outside, where the sun beat down on a brick path by a hedge. She sat on a secluded bench and patted the seat beside her. “Now, Marie, what’s wrong?”
“Madam, I must inform you of great wickedness.”
Emilia’s mind ranged over possibilities: Some man forced his attentions on her; someone insulted her.
“Madam, the people in this house are infidel Jews.”
Cold washed over Emilia. “What do you mean?”
“They lit a candle in a pitcher last night. They read from a book with strange writing. The cook hangs the meat to drain the blood out before roasting. They do no cooking on Saturday but serve only cold meats. These are the signs of secret Jews.”
“Marie, have you ever met any Jews?”
“No, Madam.”
“Then how do you know what they do?”
“In France, some pretended to be Papists. My father told me of their wickedness and bade me not go near them or they would shed my blood for their secret rites.”
That same father who was slaughtered by Papists. “Marie, those tales of secret rites are lies.”
Marie gave her a hard stare. “My father would not lie.”
Emilia sighed. “Do you not know it is un-Christian to slander those who have been kind to you?”
“We are commanded to denounce evil.” The Frenchwoman’s mouth tightened.
“What evil?”
“The candle—”
“The candle!” Emilia burst out. “The candle is worse than massacres, no doubt! Worse than beheading, dismembering, burning—”
“Ah, Madam, say no more!” Marie covered her face.
After a moment, Emilia said quietly, “Marie, my kin have opened their home to you, given you food and shelter, offered you nothing but kindness. Would you reward them with false accusations and slander?”
“They are infidels—”
“It is none of your concern. Now swear to say no more of this.”
Marie’s shoulders stiffened. “I dare not promise anything against true religion, Madam.”
“You owe me obedience!” Emilia blazed.
Marie’s eyes narrowed in defiance. “I owe obedience first to God.”
They stared at one another.
Emilia said, tight-lipped, “Go to your duties.”
Marie rose, dipped the ghost of a curtsey, and left the garden.
Emilia did not hear the bees humming in the shrubs or see the sun cast a triangular shadow on the sundial; nor did she smell the lavender and hyssop blooming in carefully tended borders, or hear the seagulls crying overhead. She walked back to the house, plagued by worry.
After the talk in the garden, Marie spoke little. She obeyed Emilia, but always looked past her with tight lips.
August 1588
All the talk now was of invasion. The Spaniards were on their way from the port of Corunna. Drake waited, forbidden to engage them, for negotiators still parleyed with Parma in Brussels.
Finally, the Queen gave permission to attack.
Emilia thought of Alfi, Marco, and Hunsdon at Tilbury among the soldiers. Marco could take care of himself, but Alfi, for all his bragging, was only a boy who had never seen fighting more dangerous than apprentices’ brawls. Hunsdon, on the other hand, would be in his element, bark
ing orders, bristling, helmeted, and armed with the worn, oiled sword in its battered scabbard that he had carried for forty years.
What about Will the player? Would he go fight? No, he would be conning his part at the Rose, the Curtain, the Theater, listening for his cues, speaking his lines, bowing to applause. He would eat his supper with other players in taverns and alehouses and talk about the war. He would sell books and pamphlets, read broadsides, listen to news, question soldiers, sailors, merchants, knights.
One day John burst into Lucretia’s parlor with news: “We’re to repair to St. James tonight, and in the morning we will go by river to Tilbury with the Queen.”
The next day, in the cool air of morning, Emilia and the Lanyer women rode by carriage to Westminster Stairs. Crowds lined the walkway along the water. All London had turned out of homes and shops to see the Queen. People leaned out of windows; boys perched on roofs and balconies. Suddenly a great shout went up and echoed on and on, mingling with the blaring of trumpets.
“There she is!” Lucretia cried.
The Queen’s barge loomed into view, pulled by a galley with oars flashing. Everyone shouted and cheered. More barges followed, pulled by smaller galleys. The barge, painted in gold and white, glittered in the sunlight, and its reflection burned as though the river had turned to shining metal. Gold and white banners flew from the barges and galleys.
“I see John! And Clement and Nick!” Frances cried. The musicians rode on a separate barge playing silver trumpets, flutes, and recorders. Behind the Queen’s barge came three or four others carrying gentlemen pensioners and yeomen guards in armor and gold and white plumes.
The Queen herself stood resplendent, surrounded by armored and plumed halberdiers. She wore white velvet with a silver cuirass on her chest that shot dazzling light into everyone’s eyes. Pearls were looped in her brick-red hair, and her white train spilled around her. She raised her arms as though blessing the crowd. Her mouth was moving, but her words were swallowed up in the cheering and blaring of trumpets.
People pushed and jostled one another and crammed as close to the water as they could, shouting, “God bless our Queen!” One old woman sobbed, “God save ye, Bessie! God save ye, my sweet child!”
At the sight of that pale, smiling face, the sun gleaming off silver and iron and steel, the silken, flapping, gold and white banners gliding along the river at the head of the barges, the sounds of the music and cheering, Emilia felt tears spring to her eyes. Our Queen, our own Lady, England herself.
Two days later, a messenger galloped up. “A letter for Mistress Bassano from my Lord of Hunsdon,” he announced.
Emilia tore it open. “I’m to return to Westminster to make ready to receive Master Carey and the Lord Admiral.”
All was ready—food prepared, trestle set up, and Emilia dressed in her dark green gown and her best hood sewn with pearls—on the morning Hunsdon and the Lord Admiral, Charles Howard, and half a dozen other men arrived on horseback.
“Welcome, good sirs,” Emilia said.
Hunsdon smiled under his bristling brows and held out his arms, and she flew to him.
After some pleasantries, she led the men to the trestle table, all set for dinner.
“Thank ye, Madam, for this fine welcome on such short notice,” Hunsdon said as he sat at the table. “We’ve routed the Spaniards!”
Everyone in the room cheered.
“The Spanish made their famous crescent formation, but—”
“Pardon, my father, but may I tell it, since I was there?” said the Lord Admiral.
Hunsdon laughed and clapped the Lord Admiral on the back. “Go ahead, son.”
The joke was that although the Lord Admiral was Hunsdon’s son-in-law, he looked older; he had a white beard and bald head, while Hunsdon’s hair was still dark and thick, and his beard was only a little grizzled.
“Drake came up with the idea of using fireships,” said the Lord Admiral. “The Spaniards threw grappling hooks, wrested the first of them around, and flung them onto the beach, but the rest sailed straight into their midst. As soon as one exploded, the Spanish formation broke; they panicked and went off in all directions. The air was black with smoke and loud with the bellowing of men.”
Oh, the poor sailors, Emilia thought, trapped on those burning wrecks.
“We blasted them broadside,” continued the Lord Admiral, “the whole day long. With evening came a storm and blinding sheets of rain. They kept firing on us. We could see nothing for the darkness and driving rain. The storm lasted the night, and in the morning when the fog cleared, we saw only a few Spanish ships left—all farther on up the coast, looking confused and out of formation. I ordered a few of our ships to remain at Calais and Dunkirk to stand guard while the rest of us pursued the Spanish northward through the fog. The following day, when it lifted, we saw them far up the Channel—scattered, some crippled. We watched as they disappeared into the mists past Berwick, heading up toward Scotland.”
“Why did you not pursue them?” Hunsdon asked.
“My charge was to protect England from attack,” answered the Admiral. “The Queen did not order us to chase them; she ordered us to protect England. And that is what we did. We knew they would run into gales to the north; there was no need to pursue them,”
Everyone was silent. Then Hunsdon said, “Thanks be to God, who has given us the victory.”
“Aye, thanks be to God,” echoed the Lord Admiral.
The Spaniards prayed to God just as hard as we did, and they thought they were doing His will, Emilia thought. But she raised her glass and said, “A toast to the Lord Admiral, to Drake, and to all their brave men!”
A week later, two muddy figures appeared at the Lanyers’ gate.
Emilia was reading to her cousin and a handful of other women when the young men were ushered in. She raised her eyes to see two familiar faces.
“Alfi!” she gasped. “Marco!”
“Oh, thank the Lord you are safe!” Lucretia ran to embrace her son, not minding the mud that spattered him and transferred itself to her gown.
Alfi patted her back as she wept against his shoulder. “Ah, mother, don’t weep. It was glorious!”
“We heard about the battle from the Lord Admiral,” Emilia said a trifle smugly.
Alfi smiled. “But we saw and heard the Queen!”
“You heard her? Tell us, tell us!” Emilia urged.
“I could use some ale,” Alfi said. “And something for my man here!”
Marco was hustled off to the kitchen to be greeted with joy and acclaim while Alfi sat on a cushioned seat among the women, a cup of ale in one hand and a piece of his favorite manchet bread with cheese in the other.
“We arrived at Tilbury after a day and a half of traveling. The camp was a mess. Food, drink, and blankets were in short supply. Lord Essex called us together and said the Queen was coming next day so we had better start looking like an army. We got clean and polished our knives and swords. About eleven in the morning, our captains lined us up. She rode into camp on a great white horse, flanked by several dozen of her own bodyguard. The sun glared off her breastplate and was so bright we could hardly look at her. She rode up and down and inspected us. Next day when she came back, she dismounted and walked about. She stood as close to me as I am to you. She has two or three teeth missing, and her face is painted so thick it looks like a mask.”
“What did she say?” Emilia prodded.
“That she had been warned against it, but was not afraid to go among her loving people; that she had come to be with us in the heat of battle and to live or die amongst us. She shouted, ‘Let tyrants fear!’ and everyone cheered. She said that although she had the body of a weak and feeble woman, she had the heart and stomach of a king, and a king of England too.”
“Hurrah!” Emilia pounded her fist into her hand.
“She said that if Parma or Spain or any other foreign prince dared invade the borders of her realm, she would take up arms herself and lead us
into battle. She said that because of us and our bravery, England would have a famous victory.” Alfi took a large swig of ale and wiped his mouth.
Emilia sipped her ale. “So what will you do now?”
“Go back to the shop, I expect.” Alfi sighed. “It’s a letdown. I wish the war had lasted longer.”
The fear of invasion had ended, and England rode on a wave of exultation. She had defeated the invincible Armada. God was on her side, and on that of the Protestants. Emilia went once more to Court with Hunsdon, and saw a new portrait in the Presence Chamber of her Majesty standing on a map of the counties of England against a background of storm-tossed Spanish ships, wearing a dress trimmed with enough lace, bows, and jewels for six women’s dresses. One hand rested on a globe, a peacock-feather fan in the other. Her hair was dressed in elaborate red curls.
The eclipse of the moon came as predicted in late August, twelve days before the Queen’s birthday.
“Well, Cousin,” Emilia said to Alfi, “we saw the moon eclipsed, yet kingdoms were not overthrown nor monarchs deceased.”
“Spain got his comeuppance. How about that?”
But if heavenly confluences predicted calamity that did not come, they foretold the real misery of the newly discharged troops. Soldiers and sailors, unpaid and penniless, flooded the City, begging outside taverns and foodshops. Emilia shrank when she looked from her carriage and saw men lying in the streets, missing legs or arms or eyes, all but naked, stretching out their hands for alms.
“What can be done for them?” she asked Hunsdon.
He shook his head. “My son Howard has begged the Court to send their pay, but no answer has come.”
“Let’s give them something.” Emilia gestured to Marco. The minute the carriage stopped, ragged men crowded around, hands out. She pressed shillings into their hands until she had no more. Then she waved, shaking her head and closing the curtains.
Hunsdon shook his head. “It will do no good. Drops of water in the sea.”
“Master Carey,” said Emilia, “I would speak with you about my gentlewoman, Marie Jaquelin. I wish to dismiss her.”
Hunsdon’s forehead wrinkled. “She is a French Protestant refugee and has seen much terror and death. I hoped to help her. How does she displease you?”
Dark Lady Page 11