Dark Lady

by Charlene Ball

As though mesmerized, Emilia opened the book and read the dedication page: “TO. THE. ONLY. BEGETTER. OF. THESE. ENSUING. SONNETS. Mr. W.H. ALL. HAPPINESS. AND. THAT. ETERNITY. PROMISED. BY. OUR. EVER-LIVING. POET. WISHETH. THE. WELL-WISHING. ADVENTURER. IN. SETTING. FORTH. T.T.” Hand trembling, she turned the page and read: “From fairest creatures we desire increase . . .” She turned the page: “My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun.” She flipped through the book: “Two loves have I, of comfort and delight.”

  “What’s the price?” she demanded.

  “Madam, it was a shilling, but I will let you have it for five pence.”

  “What is it, mistress?” asked Marcella.

  “A book of sonnets by a scurvy knave of no account.”

  July 1609

  On a sultry July afternoon, Emilia went with Lucretia to hear a play at the Globe. It was an old play being revived, the one about the two young noblewomen who run away to the forest, one dressed as a boy. The young actor playing the female lead was willowy and graceful, with fair hair and a clear, soprano voice. Will had a small role as an old man. The musicians sat high in the gallery under the banner, next to the thatched roof. They should have roofed it with tile, Emilia thought. That thatch will go up in a flash if a spark hits it.

  She noticed Luce Morgan, the courtesan known as Black Luce, in a box surrounded by her painted nymphs. Luce wore an imposing headtyre covered with gold and black wires, twined and curled to mimic an elaborate hairstyle, and a low-cut bodice that displayed her breasts. One girl filled and lit a long pipe and gave it to Luce, who drew on it and blew out clouds of smoke.

  Amongst the girls lounged a boy who looked about eighteen, well dressed in knee-length trunk hose and a short cloak, a sword at his belt. His hair was brown and curly, his feathered hat sat at a rakish angle, and his booted feet rested on a rail. A girl broke pieces from a small cake and fed him with much giggling and dropping of crumbs. He leaned his head on her shoulder and slapped his knee at the jokes. At one bawdy line, he glanced up, caught Emilia’s eye, and winked.

  After the play, as Emilia and Lucretia pushed their way through talking, laughing playgoers, Emilia heard behind her a light, husky voice. “Did you enjoy the play, Mistress?”

  Turning, she saw the curly-haired boy, who doffed his hat and bowed.

  “Sir, do I know you?”

  “Nay, we are not yet acquainted. I would remedy that.” At close range, she saw from the light lines around his eyes and mouth that he was older than she had thought. His curls grew low on his forehead, and thick lovelocks adorned his cheeks.

  “You shall have no remedy from me,” she returned, suppressing a smile.

  “How now?” The boy’s mouth turned down in mock sadness. “You strike me in the heart with a dart from your crystal eye, then refuse me the remedy? ’Tis a paradox.”

  “Sirrah,” she said, pulling her mask over her eyes, “you are acquainted with more than a pair of doxies, it seems.”

  The youth threw back his head and laughed. “You should write for the stage, Mistress.”

  “Seek to be entertained by the play, young sir, not by my bad jests. Farewell.”

  They were almost out of the courtyard when the youth caught up with them. “I pray you, stay. I would disabuse you of your misapprehension.”

  “What misapprehension, sir?”

  “During the play, you believed that Rosalind was a girl, but the epilogue proved her none. Now, you believe that I am a man.”

  Emilia lowered her mask. “What are you, then?”

  “Mary Frith, called Moll, at your service.” Off came the hat, and its wearer bowed low and raised up, grinning.

  Emilia stared. “You’re a woman?”

  “Aye, Mistress.” Her round face beamed with mischief and high spirits. Now Emilia could see that her smooth cheeks had never known a razor.

  “Why are you dressed thus?”

  Moll Frith shrugged. “It suits me.”

  “Then you misrepresent yourself.”

  “Nay,” answered Moll, “I always tell folk right off. I never pretend to be other than who I am. Like Rosalind, I dress to suit my purpose, which today is to compliment you, for you are the handsomest woman I have laid eyes on in many a day.”

  Emilia could not suppress a smile. “Flatterer! I’m old enough to be your mother.”

  “Ah, Mistress.” Moll shook her head. “Your beauty is ageless.” Ignoring Emilia’s snort, she went on, “My second purpose in speaking to you is”—she turned to the scandalized Lucretia, then back to Emilia—“to invite you two lovely ladies to supper.”

  “I believe you already have company, Mistress Frith,” said Emilia. “Your friend awaits by yonder coach.” She nodded in the direction of Luce and her girls. Luce was laughing, while Moll’s friend looked furious.

  Moll Frith shrugged. “They can do without me.”

  “Nay,” said Emilia, “no gentleman leaves a lady in the lurch. Go to your friend and enjoy the evening in her company.” She raised her mask again. “You make a charming youth, Mistress Frith, but you are as fickle as most men. I would expect one of our sex to do better. Farewell.”

  “Aye me,” exclaimed Moll Frith. “When I first went to a playhouse, I thought, that is a fine thing.” She took a sip of wine. “Nothing delights me so much as seeing a play.” They sat in the Mermaid Tavern in Blackfriars on a warm autumn afternoon drinking claret. The enterprising Moll had found out Emilia’s address and sent a message asking if they could meet. Emilia, after a moment’s hesitation, had answered yes.

  Moll proved to be courteous, cheerful, and talkative. They spent the afternoon talking and enjoying the inn’s food and wine. Moll sat on a bench against the wall, one knee drawn up, elbow on the table, her feathered hat pushed back, a clay pipe in her hand. A large, yellow mastiff lay at her feet.

  “Mistress Frith,” said Emilia, “how—”

  “Call me Moll, I pray you.”

  “How came you, Moll, to keep company with Black Luce?”

  “Ah, ’tis a long story,” said Moll. She drew on her pipe, sending a wreath of smoke around her head. “My father was a shoemaker who died, leaving my mother with four infants to support. She took up with a discharged soldier who drank and beat her. I hated him.” She frowned. “I was always strong and rowdy, playin’ and fightin’ with th’ boys. One day me step-dad hit me, and I fought him back. I ended up in an alleyway with the sense knocked out o’ me. Black Luce took me in and nursed me back to health.” She smiled softly. “She let me stay with her till I got my business started.”

  “What is your business?”

  “I’m a sort of merchant. Eh, Toby?” Moll reached to scratch the dog’s ears. He opened one eye and licked her hand, then settled back to sleep with a grunt.

  Two men came in and went to a table. Moll got up. “Excuse me a moment.” She strode over to them, took a seat, and began talking in a low voice. Emilia heard her voice grow louder, saying, “I maund but what’s mine.”

  Suddenly one man kicked back his chair and rose, hand on dagger, and said something that sounded like “Cut me na queer whids, ye ruffman mort!”

  Moll leaped to her feet. “Ye skeldering foist!”

  After a tense moment, the man threw back his head and laughed. “Sit, me dainty dell, and share a gage o’ Rom-booze.”

  Moll did not move. Her hand stayed on her dagger. “Ye’re smoked, me hearty. Give it up.”

  “Ye’re a hard ’un, Moll,” sighed the man. He put his dagger away, reached into his pouch, pulled out a purse, and threw it to her. She caught it and stuffed it into her boot. The man raised his cup. “To our own Moll! Best of doxies, fairest of dells.”

  “I’m no man’s dell nor doxy,” said Moll. “Ye mun know that by now.” She tossed down her drink, turned on her heel, and walked back to Emilia.

  “What was that about?” asked Emilia.

  “Is that flask of wine empty?” asked Moll. “We’d better have another.” She waved her hand. “Mine
host, more of your excellent claret.”

  “Who are those men?”

  Moll shrugged. “Some of me business associates.” She pulled out a small pouch and began to refill her pipe. The aromatic smell of dried tobacco leaf rose to Emilia’s nostrils. When Moll got the pipe lit, she leaned back, taking a deep draw. “Best Virginia leaf. Like a draw?” She proffered the pipe to Emilia, who took it and puffed.

  “A man I once knew liked to smoke tobacco,” said Emilia, handing back the pipe.

  “Who was it?” asked Moll, scratching the ears of her mastiff. He looked up at her, golden eyes full of affection.

  “Kit Marlowe, the playmaker.”

  “I knew him. He wrote about that conjurer, Doctor Faustus. Got hisself offed, did he?”

  “They said it was in a brawl over the reckoning.”

  Moll nodded. “Aye, that ‘great reckoning in a little room’ in the play we saw last week. As Ye Will It, or some such scurvy title.” Moll shook her head. “Kit was a good man, for all they said of ’im. How did ye make ’is acquaintance?”

  “I was friends with a player and met him in taverns dressed as a boy.”

  “Hoo!” Moll slapped her knee. “Go to! You’re full of surprises, Mistress Emilia! Dressed as a boy? That would fool a blind man, an’ he wi’ a kerchief o’er his eyes.”

  Emilia laughed. “I was young and reckless—and in love.”

  “Aye,” said Moll, shaking her head. “I well know what we go through for love.”

  At that moment, two men came into the tavern and took a table in a corner.

  Moll glanced at them. “Isn’t that the playmaker wrote the show last week?”

  Emilia turned to look and saw Will with the young actor who had played Rosalind.

  Moll asked softly, “Are ye all right, Mistress Emilia?”

  He looked prosperous, at ease. He wore his hair longer on the sides and back, the graying curls brushed around his ears, one adorned with a small gold earring. His linen collar lay open, giving him a look both solid and sensual. A sword hung from his belt, good boots shod his feet, and his cloak was of fine worsted.

  Emilia stood. Several coins fell to the floor and rolled. Will looked up.

  She walked over to his table. “Master Shakespeare!”

  “Good day, Mistress Lanyer,” he said, rising to his feet, voice tense.

  Emilia looked at the youth. “I have not met your friend.”

  Will hesitated. “Mistress Lanyer, Master William Ostler of the King’s Men.”

  Master Ostler’s eyes darted to Will, then back to Emilia.

  “Master Ostler.” She extended her hand, and the boy touched it but did not rise.

  “Master Shakespeare, I see you are prospering.”

  “I do well enough.”

  “Your wife must be proud of your success. Is she in London?”

  “No.” He drew a guarded breath. “She remains at home. She is too busy with her household to go about as City madams do.”

  “Aye, we City madams have more freedom than country dames, and we do enjoy it.”

  “Of that, I have no doubt.”

  “Has she seen your book of sonnets?”

  “What?” his forehead wrinkled.

  “I was especially taken with ‘Two loves I have, of comfort and despair . . .’”

  Will’s eyes narrowed, and he started to speak.

  “Two loves,” she repeated. “A bad angel and a good. The bad angel is a dark woman . . .”

  “Emilia—”

  “And now you’ve found another golden lad.”

  “Look here—” Will’s voice rose.

  “Does he know you’re also prone to assaulting women?”

  “You’re mad, Emilia.” He turned away. The innkeeper arrived with two mugs of ale and set them on the table.

  “And you’re a lying, deceiving, raping bastard,” she said calmly.

  She would have left it at that, but he gave a contemptuous snort. She picked up a mug and dashed its contents in his face.

  He blinked and shook his head, sending drops flying. His shirt collar and doublet were soaked, and his hair plastered to his head. “You black Jewess she-devil!” he spluttered.

  At that, all Emilia’s pent-up rage exploded, and with a yell she fell on him like a wild creature. She landed a hard blow on his ear, another on his nose, swung at his chin, hit him wherever she could, tried to scratch his face, tore at his clothes, kicked his shins.

  “Get—away—from—me!” Will grunted, trying to push her away. Master Ostler leaped to his feet and tried to drag them apart, but she seized the boy’s embroidered collar and ripped it, then whirled back to Will and landed another kick.

  “Damn you, stop it!” He staggered and almost fell.

  Buoyed with rage, she had no idea what she might have done next if at that moment she had not felt a strong hand on her arm and heard a husky voice murmur, “Now, Mistress Emilia, that’s enough. Time to call it quits.”

  She made a weak attempt to pull away, but her rage was spent, so she let Moll Frith take her arm and lead her out of the tavern. As they left, the innkeeper called, “Never darken the door of this place again, ye brawling whores!”

  Once in the street, Moll took a kerchief to Emilia’s tear-streaked face, gently wiping her eyes and cheeks and nose. “Oh, my girl,” she said, laughing softly, “ye gave ’im some good whomps, ye did. I bet he had that coming.”

  “I didn’t know I was going to do that.” Emilia both sobbed and laughed. Then she cried without restraint, and Moll held her and patted her back. “I’m sorry, Moll,” she gulped. “The innkeeper called you a whore, and you’d done nothing.”

  “I’ve been called that and worse many a time, dearie,” said Moll. “Now let’s get ye home. Ye came in your carriage, right?” She looked around.

  “It’s at the corner. My driver’s called Marco.”

  Marco blinked to see his mistress crying, but said nothing.

  “Will ye be all right?” asked Moll.

  “Come and stay with me a bit, will you?”

  “Aye, me dear,” whispered Moll. She lifted Emilia’s hand and kissed it. In the carriage, she put her arm around Emilia and let her lie against her shoulder.

  Emilia clung to her and whispered, “Thank you.”

  “Hush, ’tis nothing,” murmured Moll. She touched Emilia’s face. “Ye got a bruise there, Mistress Emilia. That fellow hit you back.”

  “Did he?” she murmured. Then she remembered something. “We didn’t pay the reckoning!”

  “I think those two gentlemen paid it out o’ their hides.” Moll grinned.

  As they sat by the hearth in her parlor, Emilia sipped a calming tisane. “I don’t know what got into me. I thought I was over him.”

  Moll chuckled. “Things ’ave a way of getting out o’ hand.”

  Emilia opened the book. “Listen: ‘When my love swears that she is made of truth, / I do believe her though I know she lies.’”

  “Ha!” Moll laughed. “That’s a good one.”

  “Oh, it’s clever. But there’s more and worse: ‘Two loves I have, of comfort and despair / Which, like two spirits, do suggest me still: / The better angel is a man right fair, / The worser spirit a woman colored ill.’”

  Moll raised an eyebrow. “Hmm.”

  “He says he suspects the bad angel is tempting the good one to be a devil, but he isn’t sure, and he won’t know until the bad angel fires the good one out.”

  “Ye think he’s writing about you?”

  “Yes. And his friend, the young lord.”

  “So ’e was inclined that way, was ’e?”

  “Yet he was so passionate with me.” She told Moll about the events at Place House, and tears rose to her eyes. “He forced me, then I heard them laughing about it. And the young lord—he tried the same next day.”

  “Ah, Mistress Emilia, this playmaker fellow sounds like a piece of work. In me humble opinion, ye’d do best to forget ’im.”

&nb
sp; “But whenever I go to a play, either he’s in it or he wrote it. His playbooks are in all the bookstalls, and so are books with his poems in them. He is a fine poet, I grant him that. He’s better than Wyatt or Surrey, maybe even better than Spenser.”

  “He must mean something to you still.”

  “He means nothing to me.” Emilia closed the book and plunked it down on the table.

  “I believe ye love him,” Moll’s low voice murmured, “whether ye will or no.”

  Tears sprang to Emilia’s eyes, and she covered her face with her hands. “Oh, Moll, if I could only erase my heart clean and start over.”

  “We can none of us do that, dearie.”

  They were silent. Emilia blew her nose. “I’ve lost so much.” She paused. “He was in the past; I didn’t even think about him much—until I saw the book he wrote. What he called me, what he said about me. I found his poems in a bookstall. When I began to read them . . .” She shook her head. “And after losing my place with Lady Cumberland . . .”

  “Ah, you lost your place, did ye?” Moll looked sympathetic.

  Emilia shook her head. “Aye. I can’t speak of it now. Later, perhaps.”

  “As you wish,” said Moll.

  The fire crackled. Moll stretched out her legs to it, crossing them at the ankles. Emilia settled herself more comfortably and sipped her tisane. Her tears ceased. She felt calmer than she had in a long time.

  “Yet,” went on Moll as though continuing a conversation without a break, “a broken heart is wiser than one that’s fancy-free.”

  “‘Fancy-free.’” Emilia gave a small laugh. “That was one of his words, from his Robin Goodfellow play. He used to tell me stories about Robin and the fairy folk. He was full of stories. He was always pointing out something small and beautiful, like a flower or bird or even a snail.”

  “I see one o’ me old loves every day I live,” said Moll, taking a sip of wine and swirling it around in her mouth. “But it’s all right, see, because we’ve changed. We’ve cut the old bonds and made new ones.”

  “Who is it?”

  Moll smiled. “Luce.”

  “Black Luce?” Emilia frowned.

  “Aye. She was my first love.”