“Some of it did happen.”
“You dedicated the book to someone called Master W.H.”
“I didn’t dedicate it to anyone!” he burst out. “That muddle-headed Tom Thorpe got hold of it—how, I have no idea—and published it without my knowledge. He wrote the dedication. I don’t know what it means, I don’t know who it means. I assure you I didn’t write it. Does it sound like something I’d write?”
“Well, no.”
“Emilia, she is not you. For one thing, her breasts are dun. Yours, as I recall, are creamiest cream.” His eyes flashed with his old mischief.
She couldn’t keep back a smile. “If she’s not me, who is she?”
“She’s partly you—mostly the dark eyes and the music—and partly a lady in Oxford, a certain Court lady, a bawdyhouse madam, and, oh, let’s see—that girl in Southwark I got arrested with, the citizeness, the printer’s wife, and a chambermaid at Whitehall. And one poem was to my wife. One of my youthful efforts.”
Emilia pressed on. “Did you know these women when you and I were . . .”
“Did you know Lord Hunsdon and your husband when you and I were . . .”
“It’s not the same!”
“No?” He gave her a cool stare. “You had Southampton, didn’t you?”
“No.” She met his eyes.
He shrugged and fingered his empty cup.
She picked up her own cup and took a long swallow.
“Emilia, I didn’t come here to quarrel.”
She set her cup down. “Neither did I. How is your family?”
“Susanna married a doctor, a good, solid man. They take care of me. She sends me cakes she bakes herself and apples from her orchard, and he tries to cure me with herbs. They know it’s useless, but they still try.” His face softened.
“Don’t you have two daughters?”
He shook his head. “Judith goes her own way.” He sighed. “Sometimes I think she’s the shadow her brother left behind. My son died, you know. Many years ago. A sudden fever. He was eleven.” His words fell stark and flat.
“Oh, Will. I never knew. I’m sorry.”
His grief seemed to forbid sympathy. She started to tell him about Odillya, but decided that if he responded with indifference, she would not be able to bear it. Instead she asked, “Will, why did you write that terrible play about the Jew?”
He wrinkled his forehead. “What’s terrible about it?”
“You made him a monster.”
“No, I didn’t. He loans money at interest, and he wants revenge. What could be more human? Marlowe’s Jew, now, there’s a monster.”
“But all Jews aren’t like Shylock.”
“People in plays aren’t real. They’re extreme, good or bad. A play has to exaggerate.”
“Did you know—about my family being Jews?”
“Englishmen like to think no Jews live among them, but most people in London not only know who they are but where to find them. When I first learned Jews lived in London, I was shocked. I come from Warwickshire, where they’re believed to have horns.”
“You could have made him not so wicked.”
“I gave him a daughter who was not wicked at all. In fact, I thought she was rather loveable.”
“Were you thinking of me when you wrote her?”
“Emilia, do you fancy that everything I wrote was about you? You are quite the egoist.”
“Egoist yourself!”
Will smiled and poured her more wine. He filled his own cup and drank deep.
She leaned forward, elbows on the table like the long-ago Robin. “What have you learned, Will? From all you’ve known and done, all the folk you’ve met? What has life taught you?”
His changeable eyes, hazel-green and shadowed, countryman’s eyes, squinted through the window as though trying to discern the weather. “That I know nothing. God, man, the world—we understand nothing but that everything changes, and we all die. I thought I knew something, but I found I didn’t.” He sighed. “We can only bear us like the time and be content with what is.”
“But the world is full of injustice.”
“And what can we do about that? We don’t even know what justice is.”
“We know it’s wrong for the innocent to suffer while the guilty prosper. It’s wrong to lie and slander!”
“Art made tongue-tied by authority? Faithfulness betrayed? Simple truth called folly? Captive Good attending on Captain Ill?” He coughed and took a swallow. “Which of us has not been betrayed? Who has not been lied to or punished unjustly? Everyone sees the world as they wish—or fear—to see it. Monsters and angels are our own creations. None of us knows the truth.”
The clouds thickened, and the sky darkened further. Rumblings of thunder sounded overhead.
Emilia drew a deep breath. “Will, exchange forgiveness with me.”
He raised his eyebrows. “For what?”
“You raped me and spread slander about me.”
“What? When?”
She drew a deep breath. “At Place House, in the orchard.”
He snorted. “You had given yourself to me many times.”
“I said no.”
He ran his hand over his bare forehead. “You played the whore with him and others.”
“No, I did not. He tried to force me. I fought him off. You came in.”
He looked at her, disbelief all over his face. “You were not . . . you didn’t . . .”
“No. Never.”
“I thought you and he . . .” he murmured.
“You loved him, didn’t you?”
His mouth tightened.
“Did you . . .” She could not ask it.
“Did I commit the sin of buggery?” he burst out. “Did I hold him in my arms and smooth the hair from his brow and wish he would never change or grow old? Did I look into his eyes and take his hand and laugh and talk about everything under the sun? Did I weep as though the earth had shriveled black and the sun blotted out forever when he was imprisoned and I thought he was going to be killed? Did I fling myself into the beds of women, trying to forget him?” He began to cough.
She touched his arm. “Will, it’s all right, you don’t have to. Forgive me for asking.”
He waved his hand and shook his head. When his coughs subsided, he took a swallow of wine. “When he was in the Tower, I visited him. He had a cat, a great black-and-white creature that sat on a table and looked at me. It was like him: beautiful, elegant, ferocious.” He sighed. “When the King pardoned him, I was ecstatic. I hoped to see him once in a while. But when he got out, he had no more use for me. He had grown up.”
“Do you know why you loved him?”
He smiled a ghost smile. “As Montaigne says, ‘because he was he, because I was I.’” He paused. “We cannot choose whom we love.”
But we can open or close our hearts.
“I’ve loved many,” he went on. “Pursued, been pursued. And no matter how sweet it begins, it ends by turning into the same old muck.”
“Muck? Is that how you see it?”
“After the last jig, when the crowd has gone and the ladies put off their farthingales and the kings their crowns, and all go to the alehouse where they sit with their whores and ingles drinking and laughing and slipping their hands under . . .” He sighed. “I’m just so tired of it all.”
She asked in a small voice, “Did you love me?”
He looked at her. “Yes, Emilia, I loved you.”
But you loved him more.
A few large drops of rain fell, splattering against the glass panes.
Will began to sing under his breath, “‘When that I was and a little tiny boy / With a hey, ho, the wind and the rain . . .’” His voice was so soft she could hardly hear it.
When he paused, she said, “I believe Henry is your son. The older he grows, the more like you he looks. The way he holds his head, the pointed chin. The way he holds a lute. When I see him, sometimes, all of a sudden, I think it’s you with dark
hair and eyes.”
He gave that ghost smile again. “My mother had dark hair and eyes.” He shook his head. “Another bastard.”
“You have others?”
“So they tell me in Oxford.” The lines around his eyes and mouth deepened.
“You damned old spindleshanks whoreson fart!”
Will laughed. After a moment, she joined him, and they both laughed until tears gathered in Emilia’s eyes and ran down her cheeks.
He began to sing, almost inaudibly: “‘A long time ago the world began . . .’”
She sang too, weaving a soft descant above his melody. “‘But that’s all one, our play is done, and we’ll try to please you every day. / With a hey, ho / The wind and the rain . . .’”
His hazel-green eyes sparkled, and his cheeks over his gray stubble of beard glowed pink. As the song ended, he threw back his head and laughed. “Ha, ha, he! Ha, ha, ha, he!”
The rain poured down outside.
January 1611
Emilia sat at her writing table, making final changes. She looked over the dedications, imagining her women dedicatees gathered around like the women in Christine’s City of Ladies. She read over the dedication to “All Virtuous Ladies in General,” hoping it was not too harsh.
She looked about her parlor. Its calm and order soothed her. All was neat and carefully appointed. The clavier stood in the corner, its inlaid wood polished and softly glowing. The damask curtains over the windows were drawn. A tapestry from France hung on the wall. The floor was laid with a Turkey carpet. The lutes and recorders, carefully polished, lay in an open chest. Whatever else she had lost, music was her irreplaceable friend and always would be.
She looked at her shelf of books. Mistress Prowse’s translation of Calvin; The City of Ladies; Songs and Sonnets by Wyatt and Surrey; other poetry collections; a few quartos of plays. Her Ovid’s Metamorphoses was missing, for she had loaned it to Will and he had never returned it. She hoped he had made good use of it. To her surprise, the rancor she had felt against him for so long had dissolved. She searched, but could not find it. In its place was a sort of pity. He believes in nothing. That is too hard for me. I live in this world and am bound to it by rich chains of love and gratitude. I have loved three men, yet women have been my most staunch and loving friends. Jenny remained with her, caring and cared for. Moll Frith dropped by often, always welcome. Lucretia treated her like a daughter, albeit a wayward one. Lady Suzan, strong and wise, had come back into her life, bringing her hope. She had heard no word yet from Lady Cumberland, but Lady Suzan encouraged her not to give up. I will win her back. I will, thought Emilia.
She dipped her pen into the inkwell and wrote, applying the pen’s nib to the thick rag paper. The lines slanted upward in an optimistic curve. Finally she heaved a great sigh and leaned back in her chair, laid down her pen, and thought, Well, that’s done. Let it go forth and do what it will. She took a deep breath and wrote firmly at the top: Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum. Hail, God, King of the Jews.
Afterword
I first learned about Emilia Bassano Lanyer in the late 1970s when I heard a talk by historian A.L. Rowse in which he gave his theory that Emilia was the “Dark Lady” of Shakespeare’s Sonnets. I was fascinated that Shakespeare’s lover had been a poet in her own right, and an early feminist! But I didn’t like Rowse’s negative assessment of Emilia’s character—it sounded sexist to me.
I wrote a play about Emilia and Shakespeare in the 1980s and put it away. In the early 2000s, I again began to write about her. By then, she had become well known among feminist and English literature scholars, who wrote about her as a serious poet. Most of them did not take seriously Rowse’s claim about her involvement with Shakespeare.
But what if she was Shakespeare’s lover, as well as a serious poet? Couldn’t she be both? I wanted to write about Emilia from her own point of view. So I wrote a novel in which I described Emilia as a woman of her time, making many of the choices she did, yet always keeping to her own sense of who she was, as well as to her personal sense of loyalty and honor.
Rowse spells her given name “Emilia” and her last name “Lanier,” following Forman. Later scholars use the spelling on her book, with the first name spelled “Aemilia” and the last, “Lanyer.” When I began writing about her, I used the spelling “Emilia.” I tried to change it later, but the name resisted; for better or worse, my character was named “Emilia.” I compromised by spelling her last name in the way it appears on her book. Spelling had not yet been standardized in 1611, and Shakespeare signed his own name six different ways.
If you would like to know more about Emilia Bassano Lanyer and her world, here are suggestions for further reading:
Greenblatt, Stephen. Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare (2004)
Grossman, Marshall, Ed. Aemilia Lanyer: Gender, Genre, and the Canon (1998)
Katz, David S. The Jews in the History of England 1485-1850 (1994)
Lanier, Emilia. Introduction by A.L. Rowse. The Poems of Shakespeare’s Dark Lady: Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum (1979)
Lanyer, Aemilia. The Poems of Aemilia Lanyer: Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum. Edited by Susanne Woods (1993)
Lasocki, David, with Roger Prior. The Bassanos: Venetian Musicians and Instrument Makers in England, 1531-1665 (1995)
Packer, Tina. Women of Will: Following the Feminine in Shakespeare’s Plays (2015)
Roth, Cecil. A History of the Marranos (1932)
Rowse, A.L. Sex and Society in Shakespeare’s Age: Simon Forman the Astrologer (1974)
Woods, Susanne. Lanyer: A Renaissance Woman Poet (1999)
Acknowledgments
Many thanks go to my writing group—Linda Bell, Valerie Fennell, Brenda Lloyd, and Libby Ware—for listening to dozens of drafts of this novel and for your support and encouragement. To Linda, Brenda, Libby, and Elizabeth Knowlton go thanks for reading early drafts. To Carol Lee Lorenzo: thank you for your peerless instruction and wisdom. Thanks to the writers of Fiction Intensives and of Womonwrites for your encouragement and advice. Thanks to Barbara Braun, my agent, for working tirelessly to find me a publisher, and for believing in my book.Thanks to Stephanie Cowell and Sarah Kennedy for reading my novel. Stephanie, I am grateful for your careful reading and suggestions. Posthumous thanks to Anne Cuneo for casting Emilia’s horoscope, and to Jenny Yates for helping me interpret it. Thank you to the Hambidge Center for the Creative Arts for providing a tranquil, beautiful mountain space where Emilia’s story could flower. Thanks to Cait Levin, my editor at She Writes Press, and to Krissa Lagos, copyeditor extraordinaire. Thanks to my wonderful publicist Caitlin Hamilton Summie. Thanks to Brooke Warner for creating a unique publishing space for women authors. And thanks most of all to my wife, Libby, for your encouragement, support, advice, and love.
About the Author
Author photo by Libby Ware
Charlene Ball holds a PhD in comparative literature and has taught English and women’s studies at colleges and universities. Although she has written nonfiction, reviews, and academic articles, writing fiction has always been her first love. She has published fiction and nonfiction in The North Atlantic Review, Concho River Review, National Women’s Studies Association (NWSA) Journal, and other journals. She has reviewed theater and written articles on the arts for Atlanta papers. She is a Fellow of the Hambidge Center for the Arts and held a residency at the Wurlitzer Foundation of New Mexico. She attends fiction workshops by Carol Lee Lorenzo, and she belongs to a writers’ group that she helped found. She retired from the Women’s Studies Institute (now the Institute for Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies) at Georgia State University in 2009 and has been busier than ever with writing and bookselling. She also volunteers with her congregation and other social justice groups. She and her wife, Libby Ware, an author and bookseller, were married in May 2016.
Selected Titles From She Writes Press
She Writes Press is an independent publishing company founded to serve women writers everywhe
re.
Visit us at www.shewritespress.com.
Even in Darkness by Barbara Stark-Nemon. $16.95, 978-1-63152-956-6. From privileged young German-Jewish woman to concentration camp refugee, Kläre Kohler navigates the horrors of war and—through unlikely sources—finds the strength, hope, and love she needs to survive.
A Cup of Redemption by Carole Bumpus. $16.95, 978-1-938314-90-2. Three women, each with their own secrets and shames, seek to make peace with their pasts and carve out new identities for themselves.
Lum by Libby Ware. $16.95, 978-1-63152-003-7. In Depression-era Appalachia, an intersex woman without a home of her own plays the role of maiden aunt to her relatives—until an unexpected series of events gives her the opportunity to change her fate.
The Vintner’s Daughter by Kristen Harnisch. $16.95, 978-163152-929-0. Set against the sweeping canvas of French and California vineyard life in the late 1890s, this is the compelling tale of one woman’s struggle to reclaim her family’s Loire Valley vineyard—and her life.
Tasa’s Song by Linda Kass. $16.95, 978-1-63152-064-8. From a peaceful village in eastern Poland to a partitioned post-war Vienna, from a promising childhood to a year living underground, Tasa’s Song celebrates the bonds of love, the power of memory, the solace of music, and the enduring strength of the human spirit.
Little Woman in Blue: A Novel of May Alcott by Jeannine Atkins. $16.95, 978-1-63152-987-0. Based on May Alcott’s letters and diaries, as well as memoirs written by her neighbors, Little Woman in Blue puts May at the center of the story she might have told about sisterhood and rivalry in her extraordinary family.
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