“It’s late enough that we’ll have the room to ourselves. And if more show up, that bed will hold ’em.”
Emilia looked at the bed, a massive edifice of dark, carved wood draped with a threadbare coverlet and equally threadbare curtains hanging from the tester. She glanced back at Will, trying to hide her sudden fear.
“Don’t worry,” he said gently. “I’ll stay a furlong away from you, I swear.”
“But others?”
“I won’t let them near you.” He tried to look fierce but ruined the effect by sneezing.
“You should have a tisane of chamomile and rosehips to ward off the damp humors. Lemons would also be good.”
“So would a coach and four, but I’ll settle for ale.”
The bed was wide enough for a family of six. She drew the sheets close around her and curled tight under the heavy layers. Something bit her below the knee. She reached down and pinched a tiny carapace. “This place is full of fleas!”
“Would you rather be back out in the rain?”
Emilia woke to hear rain lashing against the windows. She felt heat rising from the player’s body and fell asleep again to the sound of his soft breathing.
When she next woke, light was filtering through the oiled paper over the window. Someone was moving about. Opening her eyes, she saw the player standing naked before the fire, testing his clothes to see if they were dry. He pulled the shirt over his head, put on his trunk hose and doublet, and finished with stockings and boots. She watched him, pretending to be asleep, observing his slender, well-muscled body half in shadow, half lit by the dying embers of the fire.
In the morning, they caught a ride to Paul’s with a waggoner, and at the river got a wherry to Westminster Stairs. Emilia watched the boat pull away from the Stairs, oars softly plashing, until fog swallowed it. Then she hastened to King’s Street.
As she drew near her house, the gate flew open and a large man on horseback rode out: Hunsdon. She felt panic: when had he arrived? She ducked down a side street and peered around the corner, pressing herself against a wall as he rode past. Then she slipped around to the back of her house and through the wicket gate and hastened through the kitchen garden where sallet greens and onion spears were pushing through the ground. At the kitchen door, she pounded.
It opened a crack, and Min’s narrowed eye peered out. “Good lord, Mistress, where in the world have ye been? We’ve had a to-do, I can tell you!” The cook pulled her in and slammed the door.
“She’s found!” Jenny exclaimed. “Mistress, are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” Emilia said. “I was—walking about the City, and got caught in last night’s rain. I, ah, spent the night in an inn.”
Min frowned and folded her arms. “In the meantime, we’ve been entertainin’ Lord Hunsdon. He was here last night, y’know.”
“I saw him leave,” panted Emilia. “I wasn’t expecting him.”
“Well, nor was anyone,” answered the cook. “He came around the middle of the afternoon yesterday wanting to know where you was. I had to think fast.”
“What did you say?”
“I said Mistress Lucretia had sent her carriage askin’ you to her house for supper. He stomped around and fretted and finally said, ‘Fair enough, I didn’t tell her I’d be here today.’ Then he said he’d go to Court and return this evening. So we were hoping and praying that you’d get back before nightfall. Around dusk, back he comes. I says, ‘Mistress Emilia sent word she’s going to stay the night at the Lanyers.’ So he humphs some more and then says he’s goin’ to stay here hisself. He says, ‘Belike she has things to do that don’t include me.’”
“Aye, me.” Emilia sighed. “This is the first I’ve not been at home for him.”
“Well, what’s done is done.” Min unfolded her arms. “Would ye like some bread and jam?” She handed Emilia a slice. “It’s warm from the hearth. And maybe some mulled small ale?”
“Please,” said Emilia. She looked in dismay at her ruined clothes and muddy boots.
“All right, you lot,” Min said to Marco and Jenny, “back to work. No more gawking.” Marco left, and Jenny began to wash pots and dishes.
Emilia sat at the kitchen table, giving silent thanks. Then she tucked into her breakfast.
“What’s that on your arm, Mistress?” Min pointed to a red welt. Emilia suddenly felt a tremendous itching in several places at once.
“Jenny,” said the cook, “help her undress and bathe in the kitchen. We don’t want fleas an’ bedbugs in the house. And burn these rags she’s wearin’!”
“Yes, mum.” Jenny scurried to the pump to draw water.
“Oh, no!” Emilia cried. “The clothes aren’t mine . . .”
“Matters not whose they are,” Min retorted. “I’ll have no fleas in my kitchen!” She produced a cake of lye soap. “Now, you have a good wash, and I’ll get ye a tincture for the bites.”
Bathed and fed, hair washed and dried before the fire, stinging salve applied to each red welt, Emilia sat wrapped in a warmed coverlet before the kitchen fire. She closed her eyes, but worry gnawed at her. What if Hunsdon were angry enough to throw her out? She could live in one of her rental houses. She would lose the rent, but she would have a roof over her head. She would have enough money from the other houses to pay wages to Min, Jenny, and Marco, now that her father’s debts were paid. Master Vaughan was supposed to pay the rents to her quarterly, but one of the houses had stood empty for a year, and then when he finally found tenants, the family stayed only two months before fleeing in the night without paying. So one was empty. Thank goodness a well-to-do friend of Augustine’s, Master Vellutellye, leased the other.
Lucretia might take her into her household, but the prospect was not cheering. She was used to being her own mistress. Lucretia! I’ll have to ask her to say I was at her house last night.
But she did not regret her adventure, and she knew she would do it again. She would put on boys’ togs and wander with the player over streets and alleyways, along City walls and the river, across fields and through thickets, past market stalls and shops, to taverns and ordinaries and alehouses, and sit at wooden tables taking her ease like a young man. She would talk freely, laugh out loud, drink deep, and wipe her mouth on her sleeve. She would drink the delight in the player’s face as she heard his voice endlessly talking, spinning tales, cracking jokes, planning yet more places to go and things to see and do. She would feel her own delight mingle with his as though they had recovered heedless childhood once more.
A few days later, Emilia received a letter from Hunsdon. He was coming to see her, he said, and wanted to make sure she was at home. She looked at the message, trying to read between the lines.
She planned an elegant supper. When he arrived at dusk, she greeted him with smiles, music, food, and drink. He behaved as though everything were as usual. In her chamber, he embraced her with desire. She had been tense, but now she relaxed.
After they had made love, he stretched out on the pillows. “Ah, my girl,” he said, sighing, “I’m not what I was. You must be longing for some young blade.”
She sat up carefully and drew the sheet up to cover her breasts. “I long for nothing, Master Carey, now that I have you again.”
He shook his head. “You are a warm-blooded, lusty girl.” He took her hand and touched a ring on it. “Gifts I’ve given you in plenty, but I can’t buy your love.” He traced a pattern on the sheet. “I went to Greenwich the other day. I happened by Mistress Lanyer’s house, and stopped to pay my respects. It seems you were not at her house on Tuesday after all.”
She froze. “Master Carey . . .”
He looked at her through narrowed eyes. “You have a lover, do you not?”
“No!” Panic ran through her. “I am true to you. How can you suspect me?”
“Ah, my girl.” He touched the dark mole at the pit of her throat that he had once called Venus’s own seal, then twined a curl about his finger. “Do you think me a fool
?”
She shook her head. “Of course not!”
He seized her arm tight and pulled her toward him. “I should have known, shouldn’t I? A pretty young creature, not quite innocent, but fresh and lovely as the May.”
“Master Carey, let go. You’re hurting me!”
He let go but still looked at her with eyes narrowed. “I should have known what you’d turn out to be.”
Anger overcame fear. “And what is that?”
“Don’t make me call you whore, girl.”
His hand loosened, and she slipped out of his grasp and stood, throwing her bed gown about her.
“I suppose I am getting what I deserve. An old man, a foolish, fond old man, thinking a girl like you could be true to me.”
She breathed slowly. “Master Carey—”
“It’s the player, isn’t it?”
She drew herself up. “Master Carey, you wrong me. I have done nothing.”
He rose and slowly put on his own bed gown.
She met his eyes, defiant, waiting. He could have me whipped. Will too.
He looked at her from under heavy eyebrows, a rueful smile on his strong, old face. He shook his head. “Welladay, my Emilia, I knew what I was about, and so did you.”
After he left, she lay staring into the darkness. When she finally slept, dried and withered autumn images passed before her closed eyes: flowers with shriveled petals and broken stems, apples rotting on the ground.
“I don’t think we’ll do that play again soon,” Will said.
They were walking to the river after watching his new play, The True Chronicle History of King Leir, and his Three Daughters, as play’d at the Theater, with addyciouns by W. Shaxpere. It had not done well, and the applause from the half-empty groundlings’ yard had been interspersed with boos.
“I liked it,” Emilia said. She kicked a loose cobblestone and sent it flying.
“It needs more work. I’m not pleased with the ending.”
“You said you wrote a blood-and-guts play last year. How did it do?”
“Quite well.” A smile curved on his face. “We put it on at the Cross Keys. It was a big success.”
“What was it called?”
“Titus Andronicus. It’s full of bloodshed; one lady is ravished, her hands cut off, and her tongue cut out.”
She stared in horror. “How could you write something like that?”
“Audiences like it.”
“I would hate it.”
“Of course I would like to write uplifting stories that would make everyone leave the theater more virtuous than when they came in. But that sort of thing doesn’t sell. Shock them, scare them, disgust them, amuse them, make them feel all warm and lovey—but never bore them.”
Emilia breathed deeply. They walked on.
“Anyway, I’m only writing plays until I find something better to do.”
“Like what?”
“Poetry. I want to write a real poem and dedicate it to a nobleman. If he likes it, he’ll pay me. That’s how poets make their living, they get a patron.”
“Do you have one in mind?”
They reached the river and sat on a bench. “The young Earl of Southampton. He loves poetry. He’s still a boy, but someday he’ll be rich.”
“Maybe you could take a story from Ovid.”
He looked at her in surprise. Then his face fell. “I don’t have a copy. I read my schoolmaster’s.”
“I’ll lend you mine.”
“Would you?”
“I’ll bring it next time we meet. Have you always wanted to be a poet?”
“I’ve made up verses and songs since I was little. And speeches—I’d declaim every chance I got. Once I preached a funeral eulogy over a slaughtered calf. My brothers and sister were the mourners, and they wept and wailed when I told them to.”
“I should like to write poetry,” said Emilia.
“No reason you shouldn’t.”
“Would you read it?”
“Of course. What will you write about?”
“Maybe about how men have slandered and betrayed women.”
“Hah!” Will laughed. “Always harping on women. Have you no love for men?”
She laughed. “Of course.” All of a sudden she was aware of his smell: much-laundered linen and musty wool, the musk of his body. Her face grew hot and her breath quickened.
A boat appeared. “Where to, my masters?”
They rode in silence on the river as the sun gilded its surface to a shield of gold. At Westminster Stairs, they looked at one another, reluctant to part.
“Farewell, Robin,” said the player. His fingers brushed her hand. The boat rocked, and ripples spread out on the water.
Emilia sat at her desk trying to write. She pondered, biting the end of her quill pen. Evening was falling, and a light breeze whipped through the open window. She looked over the page and drew several dark marks across it. She had not seen Hunsdon for a fortnight. They had parted amicably, but she knew that things would never be the same.
She’d dreamed about the player the night prior. They were in the bed at the inn the night of the storm, but in the dream, they did not turn chastely away from one another.
Stop thinking about him. These are vain imaginings. She gave a resolute nod. Master Carey is good to me. He has given me a second chance. Would it be so hard to be faithful? Besides, the player has a wife and children.
But she remembered his body in the firelight as he bent to shake out his boots and put them on, the darkness that ran along half his back, and the light from the dying fire that illuminated his chest with its sparse thatch of dark hair; his lean, muscled forearm; and the top of his thigh against the shadows. His changeable eyes, now green, now hazel, crinkling under raised brows, and his laugh, soft, teasing, gently provoking.
She sprang up from the table and went to the door. “Jenny, bring candles. It grows dark.”
The bookstall cast its shadow over them as they stood next to the display table. The June afternoon was hot.
“How long will you be gone?” Emilia asked.
“About two months.” Will wiped sweat off his sun-reddened forehead. “I’m going with the Queen’s Men’s traveling company.”
“Where will you go?”
“Oxford, then on to Stratford. From there, we’ll travel all over Warwickshire and cut over to Herefordshire. From there we’ll go to Kent and Sussex in August, then back to London in September.”
He talked fast, hardly drawing breath. His linen shirt fell partway open, its ties loosened. A wavy strand of hair fell over his forehead, and damp curls clung to his neck. Under her tight bodice, Emilia felt damp with sweat. A breeze rustled the leaves of the books on the table, and he smoothed down a page.
“I haven’t seen my family since Christmas. I’m taking Hamnet a book with pictures of beasts and verses. He so wants to hear about the world and everything in it.”
“What about the girls?”
“Susanna’s eight now. She wrote me a letter all by herself and asked me to bring her some stories to read, so I’m taking her Aesop’s Fables with pictures.”
“I read Aesop when I was seven,” said Emilia. “We translated his stories from Latin.”
“Ah, you got the so-called New Learning from your countess, didn’t you?”
A pause stretched.
“Well, it must be farewell for a time, Mistress Emilia,” said Will. “Whatever will you do for books without me?”
“Oh, I forgot!” she exclaimed. She pulled the Ovid, carefully wrapped, out of her drawstring bag and handed it to him.
He clasped it to his chest. “My golden treasure of tales!”
“I hope it inspires you.”
“It will.”
“I don’t want you to go,” she whispered. Her blood pounded in her ears. Shaking, she rose on tiptoe and kissed him.
They drew back and looked into each other’s eyes. He breathed faster, and a flush spread under his fair skin. The red-go
ld hairs of his beard glinted.
“So,” he murmured. “I dared not do that. And now—I must away tomorrow.” He touched a strand of her hair and wound it around his finger. “Farewell, lady.”
“Safe journey, Will O’Warwick.”
CHAPTER 9
A City of Ladies
July 1591
The sun burned hot on the river at midday, but the parlor in the Vaughans’ great house on Bishopsgate Street was dark and cool. Sun filtered through the leaded panes in the windows, dappled and shadowed by trees outside. Rich fabric upholstery covered the armchair seat, and a Turkey carpet lay draped over a chest under the window.
Master Henry Vaughan strode into the room, the world of commerce and brisk activity seeming to swirl about him like the dark, worsted gown that flapped about his ankles. A thin-faced woman in a dark kirtle and bodice followed, leaning on a walking stick, in a collar of plain but fine white lawn.
“Mistress Emilia!” Master Vaughan exclaimed, striding forward to clasp her hands. “You must meet my sister. Anne, may I introduce Mistress Emilia Bassano, daughter of my late friends Baptista and Margaret Bassano. Emilia, my sister, Mistress Prowse, formerly Mistress Locke.”
Emilia curtseyed. “Mistress Prowse, It is an honor to meet you. I have long known of your important work.”
Mistress Prowse’s eyebrows went up. “Why, my child, what important work?”
“Your translation of Master Calvin. I heard my Lady of Suffolk read it when I served in the household of the Countess of Kent.”
Mistress Prowse nodded. “So you met my Lady of Suffolk. Truly a soul unsubjected.” She extended her hand. “I am right glad to meet you, Mistress Bassano.”
“Here are your rents, Mistress Emilia.” Master Vaughan handed a purse to Emilia. “My sister is in the City to visit her patroness.”
“The Countess of Cumberland wishes to hear me read from my latest book, a translation of Taffin’s Comfort in Afflictions. We in England shall sorely need comfort in the afflictions to come.”
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