Then Ireland and its rebel leader, the Earl of Tyrone, called the O’Neill, was on everyone’s lips.
“Tyrone is a fox,” declared Alfi, swallowing a gulp of ale. “He swore he was loyal to the Queen, then broke his oath. That island is a sink of corruption. Someone needs to go in and clean up.”
“Like your General?” asked Emilia.
“At least he’s not an old woman,” snapped her husband.
In July, Essex angered the Queen again. “They were arguing about Ireland in Privy Council,” said Alfi, “and the Queen disagreed with Essex, and he turned his back on her. Then she flew at him and hit him on the ear—whap!—and yelled, ‘Go and be hanged!’ And he put his hand on his sword.”
“Merciful Lord!” gasped Lucretia.
“Did she have him arrested?” asked Alfi’s brother Andrea.
“No, he stomped out, and she let him go.”
“Alfonso,” said Augustine, clearing his throat, “your talk has become reckless. Leave state matters to the Queen and her councilors.”
“Should I not be concerned about England?”
“Alfonso.” Augustine’s lined face creased even more. “The Earl of Essex is a dangerous man. He once tried to seduce his sovereign—yes, it is more than rumor—and now degrades and insults her.” He lowered his voice. “Many think he seeks the throne. If you continue to defend him, whether from hope of gain or misplaced hero worship—”
“You insult me!” Alfi growled.
Augustine raised his hand. “Hear me out, Cousin. You have also been absent from rehearsals and even performances.”
Alfi set his jaw. “The world is changing. I have changed. I’m a soldier, a captain. I’ve been in battle, I’ve sailed to Spain and the Azores. I cannot go on playing ditties for ladies to dance to. If the General will take me, I will follow him to Ireland—or anywhere.”
“Alfonso, think of your family!” urged Augustine. “We have found safety in England. Your wild speech endangers us all.” He hardened his voice. “If you continue, you can no longer be a member of the Consort.”
“Hang the Consort!” Alfi shoved back his seat and stomped out of the room.
As autumn drew on and the air mercifully cooled, Emilia felt as big as a house and twice as heavy. She waddled from parlor to hall to parlor and back again. She dragged herself up the stairs each night and dragged herself down them every morning. In November, she took to her chamber. A month later the baby was born.
From the moment Emilia first held the girl-child, her entire heart went out to the tiny, red-faced creature. She is like both me and Alfi, she thought as she stroked the baby’s black curls. This time she refused a wet nurse.
Lucretia suggested the name “Odillya.” It had belonged to one of her relatives. Emilia thought it sounded like an enchanted princess.
When Henry came in to see the baby, he threw himself into Emilia’s arms, all his weight falling on top of her. “Henry, no!” Emilia exclaimed. She was still tender from giving birth, and her breasts were swollen with milk. She pushed the little boy to one side and settled him against her, encircling him with one arm and holding the baby in the other. “See, here is your new baby sister.”
“I don’t want a baby sister.”
“Now you are a big brother like Cousin Nick.”
Henry looked a little mollified. “What’s her name?”
“Odillya.”
“O—dee—ah!” he sang, rolling off the bed. He still wore his baby dress, and his hair hung in curls to his shoulders.
We will put him in breeches and cut his hair, and he will feel so grown-up he will forget about being jealous, Emilia thought.
So Henry, brave in new little trunk hose and doublet, strutted and shook his head a hundred times a day to feel how light it was, freed of the heavy curls. Although he remained jealous, he liked to rock the cradle and sing, “Ba-low, O-dee-ah,” his piping voice strong and true.
Sometimes, when Emilia saw him tilt his head, she thought of another head, one with reddish curls . . .
Odillya was darker than Henry, with olive skin and a long Bassano nose. As she grew older, she looked more and more like Alfi. But her little arms reached out first for Emilia, and her mother swore that at four months she uttered her first word: “Mama.”
“Guess what?” shouted little Nick Lanyer, bursting into his grandmother’s parlor. “They’ve torn down the old Theater in Shoreditch!”
“Aye,” said John, coming in with Alfi and Andrea. “The players lost their lease, so they went over during the big snowstorm, took the hulk down timber by timber, and hauled it away.”
“Isn’t that stealing?” asked Lucretia.
“That’s what the landlord charged when he sued them,” answered John. “But they took it to court and won. The lease says the landlord owns the land but says nothing about the building. They’ve leased a bit of land over by the Rose on Bankside, and they’re going to build a new theater.”
“That’s your friend Will’s company, isn’t it, Em?” said Alfi, popping an orange slice into his mouth.
She pictured Will and the other players, knee-deep in snow, pulling pegs and tearing away boards, three or four of them hauling huge timbers to a wagon to be dragged away. It might even have been his idea. He had said he knew the law well enough to tell a hawk from a handsaw, the crafty bastard.
“He is no friend of mine,” she said, “nor ever was.”
One day, she passed a bookshop in Cheapside, where a stack of new volumes caught her eye. The title of one was The Passionate Pilgrim, by William Shakespeare. She slowly picked it up and turned to the first poem. Her heart jumped into her throat, for it was “Nothing like the sun.” She flipped over a few pages and saw another: “Two loves I have, of comfort and despair.” It claimed that the poet loved a “man right fair” and “a woman colored ill” and that the man was his good angel and the woman his bad angel. She closed the book, gripping it tightly.
“May I help you, Madam?” inquired the bookseller.
“I would purchase this book,” said Emilia. “Marcella, pay him.”
At home she read, and her rage grew. “Damn him,” she whispered. “Oh, damn him.” The events at Place House rose before her eyes—lying on the ground in the garden, her cheek pressed into the grass, her skirts about her waist, pain between her legs, the man she loved getting up and fastening his points in silence. The Earl pushing her down, struggling against him, Will and the Earl embracing . . .
The old rage and hurt blazed up in her afresh and she paced the room, fists clenched. Damn him! Oh, damn him.
She imagined asking Doctor Forman to place a spell on him. To make him suffer, make him grow ill unto death, lose all his friends—in particular those rich and highborn. To make those who now praise him ridicule him and make his name a laughingstock; to make him lose all his money and go begging for his bread; to make the pox fall on him and his hand shake, his steps falter, his mind rot. To make him know it was I who did it to him.
She imagined Doctor Forman in his consulting room surrounded by potions, powders, and charts. We would descend to his basement chamber, and he would mold a poppet to represent Will, using hair and cloth. He would cast powders into the dish and on the doll. The fire would flare, and he would call the spirits by name. He would stand inside the pentagram in the circle on the floor with freshly drawn names, letters, and spells, and he would call a spirit to appear and do his bidding.
She felt herself shaking. What would the spell do? Will might be walking to his lodgings or sitting in a tavern, laughing and talking. He might be alone in his room writing, thinking of nothing but the words he scrawled on page after page, and suddenly fall ill. He might linger for years, wasting away, his flesh falling from his bones.
She remembered the day they walked over the heath, how they took shelter in the inn with rain pouring down outside. She saw him as he gave the players their lines, gesturing, reading the lines of a young king, then a sharp-tongued lady, then a old,
bragging knight, his voice ringing out soft and clear. His reddish hair that curled around his neck and grew high on his wrinkling forehead, his hazel-green eyes with tiny lines radiating out from the corners, his lips pursed in a secret smile. His bed in the attic room, his arms around her. That last time at her chamber window, looking out at the moon.
She went to the window and looked out. The sky was dark, but then the moon rode out from behind a wisp of cloud.
No, she could never do that to him. With a sigh, she pulled the curtains.
March-December 1599
Alfi left in March for Ireland, a captain in Essex’s army. He took his leave one rainy morning, his pack on his back and a gleaming new sword at his side.
“We’ll defeat Tyrone,” he assured Emilia. “It will be over by autumn.”
He had not been gone a week when Emilia received a message from Sir George Carey, now Lord Hunsdon, saying he needed the house and demanding that she vacate within the month. She stood in the middle of the parlor, mind racing. We will go to my parents’ house in Bishopsgate. It’s rented; I’ll have to turn out the tenant and lose the rent. Send a message to Ireland to Alfi. How much will moving cost? Packing up, hauling furniture, linens, clothes, personal items, musical instruments—the clavier!—wall hangings, kitchen stuff . . .
When she told the servants, Jenny turned pale. Emilia assured her, “Jenny, you will stay with me no matter what.” Jenny crept to her side and kissed her hand.
Emilia moved into the Bishopsgate house. It was smaller than she remembered and prone to dampness. Marco slept in a tiny pantry off the kitchen. Jenny and Min shared a small room in the attic, Marcella and the children slept in Emilia’s room. While muskets fired in the streets below, Odillya placidly chewed on a coral necklace that Emilia had found for her at the Exchange. She fell asleep to Emilia’s singing and Jenny’s tireless rocking.
By July, men were arriving in London on foot and horseback to defend against the expected invasion. They drilled, marched, practiced firing in the streets, and stood and sat about on corners and in taverns. One day, Marco burst in announcing that chains had been fastened across the streets and each house must hang a lantern full of candles at the door. They hung theirs and lit it when night fell. All along Bishopsgate Street, the row of lanterns flickered, winding off into the dusk.
That night they heard the watch go by, led by a constable shouting, “Eleven o’clock and all’s well!” Emilia heard each hour of the night and did not sleep until dawn.
August dragged on. All month, tales flew about, each more fantastic than the last. But no Spanish ships appeared, for English ships intercepted some of them and storms did the rest. The chains came down, and so did the lanterns. Men dispersed and returned to their homes.
On Accession Day in November, Emilia stood with her servants in the rain down at the quay and watched the Queen’s barge pass by on the river. The rail-thin figure, clad in black and silver, face stark white with its thread of scarlet mouth, held her arms high and mouthed words no one could hear. The people on the shore did not shout and cheer as in years past. All seemed dispirited and dampened, and not just by drizzle and fog.
Is everyone tired of the myth of Gloriana, thought Emilia, even the Queen herself?
One night in cold December, winds raged with more than accustomed fury, blowing down signs from over shops and tiles from rooftops. They overturned carriages in the streets, capsized small boats, and even felled trees in Richmond and Kew. Emilia, in the upstairs parlor, listened to the clattering shutters and wrapped her shawl tighter.
That night, Odillya seemed fretful. Emilia put it down to the winds’ howling and the house’s creaking.
Early next morning, she woke early to see Jenny bending over the cradle.
“Mistress, the baby . . .”
Emilia sprang out of bed. As she lifted Odillya, the baby whimpered. Emilia pressed her hand against the hot little forehead. The baby was burning up with fever.
“Jenny, go get Min and Marcella.”
Emilia walked up and down, holding the baby close. Maybe she has become overheated in this warm, close chamber, she told herself. But, touching the hot forehead again, she knew the child was sick.
Marcella bustled into the room, cap awry. “Give me the little one, Mistress.” She held out her arms and took the baby, crooning, “There, there now.” She laid Odillya on Emilia’s bed, unwrapped her swaddling bands, and felt her all over. “She’s hot as fire. We must cool her. Jenny, bring cold water and cloths.”
In a few moments, Min rushed into the room, followed by Jenny. The four women applied clothes wrung out in cold water to the small, fevered body. Emilia took the baby up and tried to nurse her, but she refused to suck. Min dripped a little water into her mouth from a wet cloth.
Emilia dispatched Marco to fetch Lucretia. Waiting, they tried to give the baby broth and water, but Odillya coughed and turned her head away. Her small arms and legs had broken out in red blotches.
When Lucretia arrived, she took her turns wetting and applying cloths. All day, quiet pervaded the room. By late afternoon, darkness had fallen. The wind still wailed. Jenny pulled the curtains over the blackness in the window. Min went to the kitchen and brought mugs of small ale and a plate of bread and butter. All but Emilia sipped and ate. Emilia doggedly applied cool cloths to the baby, held and rocked her, tried to get some nourishment into her. Min left to feed Henry his supper and put him to bed. The women worked like soldiers manning a barricade, fighting for the life of one small baby.
As the hour of six approached, Odillya gave a long whine, struggled feebly, and lay still.
Min looked sadly at Emilia. “Mistress . . . Mistress, she’s gone.”
“No!” cried Emilia. She frantically pressed her mouth against the child’s and blew, trying to fill her lungs with her own breath. “Breathe, Odillya, breathe!” she whispered.
But the child did not breathe. Her body hung limp in Emilia’s arms, her head falling to one side as it never had before. Lucretia took her gently from Emilia, laid her in the cradle, and pulled the coverlet over her head.
“She can’t be dead! She’s our daughter, mine and Alfi’s.” Emilia sank, sobbing, onto the floor by the cradle.
Min rushed to her, but Emilia pushed her away. Jenny went to the kitchen and brought a cup of hot spiced wine.
Min held it to Emilia’s lips. “Drink, Mistress,” she whispered. “It will help.”
Emilia turned her head away. Finally, her weeping subsided, and she slumped against Min, who held and rocked her. The other women all sat about in the room, heads bowed, each in her own thoughts. The night drew on and the winds roared. When the tallow candles sputtered, Jenny brought wax ones, the household’s best, lit them, and set them in candlesticks on the hearth. At length they stood, and each went to perform her chosen task. Jenny fetched water, Emilia and Min washed the child, and Lucretia swaddled her in clean linen. Marcella laid her in her cradle. Jenny set candles at the head and foot of the cradle. They sat together and watched for the rest of the night.
CHAPTER 15
Potions and Headtyres
January–June 1600
The new century came in with dismal weather and dire predictions. Emilia lay awake at night hearing the wind whistle around the eaves, her breasts aching with unused milk. She could not bear to move the cradle or put away the swaddling clothes. She touched the baby garments, washed and folded in the linen press, took them out and held them to her. She imagined she heard small sounds, a soft gurgle or wail, whenever she entered her bedchamber. She whirled at the slightest rustle or creak from the empty cradle. Once or twice she was jolted awake at night by what sounded like a baby’s cry. She got up and sat by the empty cradle and rocked it for a while.
She knelt in St. Botolph’s dark church, so different from light-filled St. Margaret’s. Lord Jesus, forgive me. I should have known how sick she was. Why didn’t I stay up with her? I thought she was just fretful. I didn’t deserve to be her mo
ther. Oh, my Odillya! Her prayers turned to self-blame and curved in on her mind, binding it in tighter and tighter circles. I am being punished for my sins, my love of finery and luxury, my ambition for rank, the sorcery I did or tried to do. She felt her prayers rising above her head like smoke, floating under the dim church ceiling, then dissolving into air.
None of her family remained in the house, for Henry had gone to his uncle Andrea’s to be fostered. She protested he was too young, but Andrea argued that seven was the right age and the child’s talent must be nurtured. Since Henry had tootled his way through a recorder trio with two cousins earlier in the evening, Emilia knew that denying his ability was pointless. Andrea would be a kind master and a better father than the absent Alfi. So Henry, dressed in a new suit of clothes, his black curls freshly trimmed, knelt in the parlor to receive her blessing.
“Goodbye, Mama,” he piped. “Shall I ever see you again?”
She held back a sob that was half a laugh. “Of course you shall, darling. You shall see me each Friday night at Grandmama’s. Now go and learn all you can. Make us proud of you.”
“I will, Mama,” he said. He bowed low, almost falling over.
After Henry was gone, Emilia paced the parlor. She picked up a book but could not keep her mind on the words, so she sat alone as the shadows drifted across the wall and early night came on.
She began to take a few drops of Doctor Forman’s potion in a glass of wine before bedtime. It soothed her, lowering a soft curtain between her and the edges of life. At night, she fell heavily into dreams; in the morning, she pulled herself awake slowly. She lay down in the afternoons, drawing the curtains and covering her face.
She sent for Doctor Forman, and he came.
“I need more of the potion.”
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