Dark Lady

by Charlene Ball

  “Stop, you’re hurting me!” A dark shed, held down, men pushing inside her, a rushlight flaring bright, a spot of light under her eyelids. She struggled and kicked and tried to cry out, but he kept his hand over her mouth. He did not try to keep from hurting her, but thrust into her over and over until he suddenly groaned, “Oh, God!” and slumped across her, breath heaving. After a moment, he rolled away and stood up, fastening his points.

  She lay on the ground, breathing hard, heart pounding. She raised her hand to her face and brought it away wet. She stood, shaking. She bit her lip and leaned her hand against the nearest tree, feeling rough bark and lichen under her palm. She brushed bits of grass and crushed leaves off her wrinkled skirt.

  He busied himself with his clothes, saying nothing.

  She tied her points as best she could to conceal the ripped petticoat. The outer skirt was dark enough that grass stains and wrinkles would not show. But her white collar was crushed, and her chemise was stained. She turned her head away from him and blinked hard. A breeze chilled her neck and arms, and she pulled her sleeves down to cover her wrists. Breathe slowly, stop crying. She swallowed but could not keep back a sob. High up, a bird sang the same trill over and over.

  “All right, then,” Will said awkwardly. “Till evening.” He turned and walked away.

  How she got back to the chamber and got clean and into fresh linen without help, she didn’t remember. All evening she stayed close to Alfi, except when he played. She did not see Will. As she stood alone during the musicians’ break, Samuel Daniel, a fair-haired gentleman, came up. “You seem pensive, Mistress Lanyer. Does something trouble you?” His eyes, blue under fair brows, looked kind.

  “No, Master Daniel. If I am indifferent merry tonight, it is because I am unwell.” The word “unwell” usually discouraged male inquiries.

  “I am sorry. Is your malaise of the mind, body, or heart?”

  “My troubles are those of a woman, sir.”

  “The troubles of women,” said Master Daniel, “are often caused by men. I am writing a poem about a woman whose troubles led to death. Have you heard of Fair Rosamund?”

  “The mistress of King Henry the Second?”

  “Aye. Young, beautiful, well born, modest, sweet, virtuous—everything a maid should be. When the King first tried to seduce her, she resisted. She asked an old woman what to do, and the woman bade her yield to him.”

  As Lucretia advised me, thought Emilia with a shudder.

  “King Henry built her a bower in a maze where he visited her. But the Queen discovered a way into the maze, confronted her, and made her drink poison.”

  “The King caused her death as much as if he had poisoned her himself,” said Emilia. “He should have been able to resist temptation.”

  “But men are so overwhelmed by women’s beauty that they cannot control themselves.”

  “Nonsense!” I must finish my poem about Eve, she thought.

  Emilia did not see Will approach, but suddenly he was standing beside Daniel. He looked freshly washed and combed, and wore a clean shirt.

  “Surely, Mistress Lanyer, women enjoy the power their beauty has over men.” His face looked hard and taut.

  She set her teeth. “If they do, Master Shakespeare, the more fools they.”

  The Earl came up behind Will. “Mistress Lanyer, do you not enjoy the power of your beauty?”

  “I would rather have the power of virtue, my lord.”

  The Earl laughed. “That’s good, Mistress Lanyer, that you should instruct us in virtue!”

  Her rage blazed. She bit her lip. “I venture to instruct no one.” The Earl broke the silence. “Let’s have some more music! Mistress Lanyer, will you sing?”

  She chose her favorite air by John Dowland. “‘Dear, when I am from thee gone, / Gone are all my joys at once, / I loved thee and thee alone, / In whose love I joyed once . . .’”

  The melancholy song floated through the hall. Two ladies on floor cushions leaned forward, faces soft and intent, one’s arm around the other. A gentleman stood pensive against the wall. The Countess’s lips parted in a smile. When the last notes died away, everyone was still a moment before applause broke out.

  “Brava, brava, Mistress Lanyer!” called the Earl, clapping vigorously.

  Emilia looked around, but Will had disappeared.

  That night, when she finally fell asleep, she dreamed of dead rosebushes lying uprooted, leaves and petals scattered.

  As she was leaving the servants’ hall after breakfast, she passed a door that stood ajar. Behind it she heard the voices of Will and the Earl.

  “I don’t believe it!” The Earl laughed. “You had her in the garden just like that? She must dote on you, for all that she’s married.”

  Emilia’s heart thudded. She stopped and stood close to the door.

  “How many women is it now?” the boyish voice continued. “The printer’s wife in Blackfriars, the innkeeper’s wife at Oxford, the rowdy girl of Bankside, the bawd in Clerkenwell, and your wife back in the country. All your dark ladies!”

  Will murmured something.

  “And let’s not forget the citizen’s wife who wanted Richard the Third but made do with William the Conqueror!”

  Emilia turned away, nausea and rage filling her throat. The voices grew louder as the men approached the door. She composed her face as the Earl and Will emerged.

  “Mistress Lanyer!” exclaimed the Earl. “Shall we make music again today?”

  She smiled at him. “Indeed, my lord, I would enjoy that. It would banish my cares.”

  “Ah, have you cares?” asked the Earl. “Such lovely, dark eyes should never weep.”

  “They smile, sir, when your eyes shine upon them.” She looked up at him through her lashes.

  “Oh, you are a poet! What say you, Will?”

  “Mistress Lanyer has many skills, my lord.”

  Emilia gave him a cold stare that he returned.

  “I regret I cannot join you,” he said. “I must write.”

  “Ah, my promised poem.” The Earl clapped him on the shoulder. “Write well, my poet.”

  He offered Emilia his arm, and they went to the solar, where they played and sang for almost two hours.

  “Mistress Lanyer, you sang with such feeling last night. Mayhap the song expressed some sorrow of your own?”

  “A singer, my lord, feigns feeling to suit the song.”

  “I think you were not feigning. What is your sorrow?”

  “Sir, I have none.” She shuffled the pages of music.

  He gestured to the window seat. “Let’s sit.” He sat on a cushion and leaned back against the windowpane, slipped the latch, and pushed the window open. A gust of cool air rushed in. “The new grass is springing in the meadow. Fruit trees are budding. I can smell new life in the rain. It calls to me.”

  She smiled. He really was charming.

  “Yet there is one thing I long for,” he went on, “to make my captivity bearable—a lady to return my love.”

  “Many would be delighted.”

  “They’re not easy to find. When I’m in London, I’m watched so carefully I can’t sneeze, let alone bed a girl. But”—his face brightened—“in a year, I will be twenty-one and can do what I like.”

  “Chastity in gentlemen is greatly to be commended,” Emilia said primly. “You will bring your wife a rare gift.”

  The Earl leaned toward her, blue eyes smiling, intent. “You are so beautiful.” He traced his finger along her cheek. “Will you lie with me?”

  Emilia pulled back with a short laugh. “Sir, I am married.”

  He smiled. “Many a married woman has a lover. And you were Lord Hunsdon’s mistress.”

  She drew herself up and put ice in her voice. “My friendship with Lord Hunsdon ended with my marriage.”

  “But your friendship with Will did not.”

  “My lord,” she said, voice level and calm. “I know not what you may have heard, but I am my husband’s loya
l wife.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Yesterday while your husband practiced with his fellows, you were romping in the garden with Will.”

  She leaped to her feet. “I must go, my lord.”

  “Mistress.” He leaned so close she could smell his breath, sweet as a child’s. “No one need know.”

  None but every man within range of your voice. “Sir, let us forget this idle talk.” She got halfway to the door when the Earl caught up with her and grasped her about the waist. She tried to pull away, but his grip was strong.

  “My lord . . .!” She struggled, but he gripped her firmly. He wrested her back to the window seat and reached under her skirts. He was breathing hard. She gave him a tremendous shove and was struggling to her feet when the door flew open.

  “Harry . . .” said Will. His eyes widened as he took in the scene, she all disheveled, hair down, skirts half up; the Earl with his points loosened. “What is this?” Will’s face was dark with disbelief and shock.

  “Will!” The Earl sat up and raised a protesting hand. “It’s not—”

  Will rushed forward. “Take everything I have, then, why don’t you? I have nothing of my own, Harry, nothing left. Everything is yours already—my time, my work, my very soul, and now my mistress!” He drew back his clenched fist.

  The Earl grasped him by the wrist, and they looked for a moment as though they would fight. Then Will let his hand fall and started to turn away. Then he swiftly turned back and pulled the younger man into a tight embrace.

  As Emilia looked on, stupefied with shock, they held one another, Will’s face against the Earl’s shoulder, the Earl whispering, “Shush, Will, shhh. Silly Willy, silly Willy.”

  As the Bassanos jounced in the open coach back over the road to London, Emilia sat between Alfi and several large bundles, feeling the sun’s warmth and light on her face. The sky turned from pale gray to blue, and the sun rose and dried the dew. Light and shadow played over the fields, and birdsong clamored in the trees. The carriage creaked, and the horses’ hooves clop-clopped as they jounced along the rutted roads. She leaned against Alfi’s shoulder without saying anything. He seemed to sense something was wrong and did not break the silence.

  The green countryside unfolded around them as they rode, strips of new-tilled fields between rows of hedge, pale river sallows sweeping their long hair into the stream, mist rising off the river and dispersing over the fields. Emilia held all her roiling thoughts and feelings as in a bowl balanced on her lap, not allowing it to spill. She said nothing for mile after mile as they rode through fields and hills, streams and woods, past shadows cast by the shifting clouds that raced before the sun.

  Part 3

  “Th’expense of spirit in a waste of shame / Is lust in action . . .”

  1596–1603

  CHAPTER 14

  Voyages and Spells

  June 1596-April 1598

  Alfi skinned an orange, unwinding the peel in a long S-shape. Its pungent smell filled the room.

  “May I have a slice of your orange, husband?”

  Alfi handed Emilia a couple of slices and popped one in his mouth. “I hope these oranges keep the plague away.”

  “Better plague than angry prentices,” murmured Clement.

  “Have you been fighting again?” his mother asked in a sharp voice.

  John, Alfi’s eldest half-brother, said, “If they have been fighting, it’s because the English started it. There’s been another poster put up attacking strangers, saying they’re taking bread from Englishmen’s mouths, taking away work, and so on.”

  “Like the placard on the Dutch church door,” said Clement. “It threatened strangers, saying they practice usury and flood the market with their cheap wares, like”—his voice went low—“like the Jews.”

  “Some say Kit Marlowe wrote that,” muttered Alfi.

  “He wouldn’t have written such a thing,” said Emilia.

  “Whether he wrote it or not, he paid for it with his life.”

  They were all silent a moment, remembering Marlowe, dead in a tavern fight that was rumored to be no fight at all.

  “Remember the riot last summer at the Tower?” added Andrea, another brother. “A thousand apprentices throwing rocks, yelling death to all strangers and Jews.”

  Augustine shook his head. “If we think about such things, we will worry ourselves into our graves.”

  “But remember what happened to Doctor Lopez—”

  “He was a fool,” snapped Augustine. “He should never have meddled in politics.”

  “He thought that saying he loved Jesus Christ would save him,” said John.

  Doctor Lopez had died a traitor’s death last year, accused of conspiring against her Majesty’s life. The Earl of Essex had made much of his being a Jew, although Lopez protested that he loved Jesus Christ as he stood on the scaffold.

  “We are all Christians, yes?” Augustine’s eyes met theirs, one at a time.

  Lucretia stared back with defiance. “Speak for yourself.”

  He muttered, “Pray no one listens to a woman’s chatter.”

  Alfi cleared his throat. “There’s a new play called The Merchant of Venice. Anyone want to go hear it?”

  “Where?” asked Nick Lanyer.

  “The Theater. By the Chamberlain’s Men.” Hunsdon’s new company, with Will Shakespeare as one of the principal actors and playmakers.

  “It’s about a wicked Jew,” said Alfi. “Like Marlowe’s Jew of Malta.”

  Lucretia shook her head. “I will not go.”

  “Why not, Mama? As Cousin Augustine says, we’re Christians.” Alfi began to peel another orange.

  “We should all go,” said Augustine. “Staying away might give cause for suspicion.”

  “Yes, let’s,” said Emilia. “We have nothing to fear from a play.”

  “I hear it’s by that player we met at Southampton’s: Shakerag, Shakeshafte, something like that.” Alfi’s narrowed eyes watched Emilia.

  She held her breath steady and met his gaze. “Is that so.” The smell of oranges pervaded the room.

  They went to hear The Merchant of Venice the next afternoon. Emilia felt her stomach clench as the trumpets sounded and the players marched onstage, Will among them. The Jew was played by Will Kemp, the company’s clown, in a red wig and a false nose. When he appeared, the audience booed and laughed. Will played the merchant, who agreed to a peculiar bargain: if he could not pay back the money, Shylock could take a pound of his flesh.

  When the merchant became bankrupt, the Jew insisted on the letter of the agreement. But a clever young lawyer argued in court for the merchant, and Shylock ended up having to pay all his goods to the merchant and turn Christian. The lawyer turned out to be a wealthy lady in disguise, who married the merchant’s young friend. At the end, when Kemp stepped forward holding the Jew’s nose and wig, the audience cheered.

  The Bassanos and Lanyers left the Theater in tight-lipped silence. The lines in Augustine’s face looked deeper.

  Emilia’s rage had cooled to a hard, frozen lake inside her. The treacherous bastard, she thought over and over. He knew about us.

  Ahead of them they saw an old man being helped along by a middle-aged man. Emilia gasped. It was Hunsdon.

  His beard was white, his back bent. He took small steps and flinched at each one. His face looked sunken, his skin red-blotched and freckled. Sir George, his son, supported him.

  Emilia rushed forward. “Master Carey!”

  Sir George frowned. “Woman, get out of the way.”

  Hunsdon shook off his son’s grip and peered at her, eyes narrowed in a puzzled squint.

  “Master Carey,” she said, voice trembling. “It’s Emilia.”

  His eyes, covered with bluish cataracts, squinted from beneath his shaggy eyebrows. But they lit up in recognition. “Emilia!” he whispered. “My little Emilia.” He smiled and reached out, and she grasped his freckled hand. At the familiar touch, tears sprang to her eyes.

 
“How do you, my dear? Is your mother well?”

  She drew in her breath. “Master Carey, do you not know me?”

  “Of course I know you, child.” He squeezed her hand. “You’re Baptista Bassano’s girl. The loveliest of the little Bassanos. You’ve grown to be quite a beauty, m’dear.”

  She looked, bewildered, at Sir George. “Does he remember nothing?”

  Sir George’s eyes looked hard, but when he spoke, his voice was soft. “No, he remembers little now. You had best let him be.”

  She pressed her lips to the dry, bony hand and whispered, “Good-bye, Master Carey.”

  “God save ye, little one,” the old man quavered, still smiling. “Remember me to y’ mother.”

  She stood, tears streaking her face, as she watched Sir George lead his father to a carriage.

  “Emilia, what possessed you?” said Augustine.

  Lucretia stepped to Emilia’s side and put her arm around her.

  A few nights later, a comet streaked across the northern sky. The next day they heard that Lord Hunsdon was dead.

  March 1597

  Alfi had become obsessed with sea voyages. “Em, it’s the chance of a lifetime. If you’re willing to take a risk, you can make your fortune. Essex will make me a captain if I can buy my armor and pay my keep.”

  The Earl of Essex, red beard long and untrimmed since his victory at Cadiz, now sat in Parliament and on the Privy Council. Many saw him as the next rising star, brighter than the fading moon of Gloriana.

  “I have a chance to be knighted!” Alfi jumped up. “Think of it, Em! Wouldn’t that be fine? We’d go to Court, and you could strut with all the lords and ladies. You’d look as beautiful as any countess.”

  It would be fine to sweep into Court on Alfi’s arm as a lady. “But how will you get the money?”

  “That’s what I want to ask you. Em, I need your pearls.”

  “What?” She dropped her sewing.