Love's Alchemy

by Bryan Crockett

  Jack left the house through a back door. He made sure to slide out the heavy bolt even though the door was open. He eased the door back into place; the bolt held against the doorjamb. If no one discovered the unlatched door, Jack could re-enter the same way. He strode off to seek out a messenger.

  Three streets away he found a livery stable and overpaid the puff-eyed, grizzle-pated owner. By the light of a candle the old man examined the gold coins in his hand: more than the weather-bitten stabler earned, Jack supposed, in a good month. Wide-eyed, the man looked up at Jack and promised to go himself, immediately, and deliver the message. Jack leveled his gaze and said, “Fail me not, as you value your skin. And forget this face; you have never seen it.”

  The man bobbed his head. “Already it is forgotten.”

  Jack finished giving instructions, then turned and walked back toward Ivy Lane.

  He re-entered Cecil’s house through the same door he had exited not a quarter of an hour before. He stepped into the hallway. Where to find Anne? Cecil’s library, maybe. If not, he’d keep looking. He checked several rooms on his way to the library, then rounded a corner. There she stood in the hallway, a book in her hand. She glanced up at him, dropped the book, and had begun running toward him almost before it hit the floor. She fairly leaped the last few feet, threw her arms around him, and held him tight, convulsed with sobs as she pressed her face against his neck.

  Jack did not know what to think, and it did not seem to matter: he could hardly think at all. Dimly he was aware that his intent had been to chastise her. At the moment, though, he desired nothing but to embrace her. All that mattered was that he keep holding her close to him, keep kissing her hair as she wept.

  At length she pulled her head away and looked at him with love and pity. “Oh, Jack, what happened to your face?” She reached up to touch his cheek but drew her hand back before making contact.

  “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “A brick.”

  “And your hand: it’s been burned.”

  “It has, but do not think of it.”

  “And your eyes. . . .”

  “A few months in a dungeon, nothing more. But none of that matters; I’m here now.” In an attempt to show her his wounds were not serious, he gently caressed her hair with his burned hand. His palm was burned much less than the back of his hand or his wrist, but the pain of even his light touch on her hair was surprisingly sharp. He did not let on. “Only tell me: are you happy here?”

  “Now I am, yes. Now that you’re here. I’ve never been so happy.” She took up his unburned hand and kissed it. Then with tender sorrow in her voice she said, “A dungeon. Was it Cecil put you there?”

  “Yes, but that doesn’t matter. I will deal with him. What I want now is to know: how could you . . . ? Why did you ever consent to marry that twisted little Machiavel?”

  She took a step back. “Marry? Why do you ask such a thing? I didn’t marry Cecil. How could I? I’m married to you.”

  “You didn’t . . . ?”

  “No! It’s true I feared you were dead; we all did. But even if you were, I’d never. . . . No. No! I moved to this house but to learn something that would help you, if you still lived. That’s all: I wanted to do whatever I could. And here you stand! But what made you think I had married the man who had wronged you so?”

  “Your cousin made me think it. Wolley told me so.”

  “He what?”

  “He told me you had married Cecil.”

  “Jack,” she said softly, “are you thinking aright? Such a blow with a brick. . . .”

  “It’s not the brick; it’s Francis Wolley. He’s here in the house. Ask him yourself.”

  “Oh,” she said, “rest assured I will. But not now. I have something to show you.” She led him down the hall. They walked past a spacious room with tables set up for various games. A girl of some twelve or thirteen years sat on a cushion, singing a sad, lovely song as she played a lute. Sprawled on a couch a few feet away lay Francis Wolley.

  Jack said to Anne, “Wait. There he is.”

  Anne said, “But I want you to see. . . . Oh, very well: Francis first.”

  Wolley glanced up, looked at Anne and the dark-clad man she led by the hand. Then horror spread across his face along with the recognition that had eluded him before. “Jack! You’re. . . . That was you!”

  “I made no attempt to conceal the fact.”

  Wolley stood and backed away. The girl stopped her music. “Leave us, Emilia,” Anne said without looking at her. After propping her lute in a corner, the girl got up and skipped lightly away through the door opposite the one Anne and Jack had entered.

  Wolley held his hands before him as if to fend off an attack. He opened his mouth, but it took some time for sound to emerge. “I ...I ...he made me do it, Jack.I had to do it. He made me.”

  “Who made you do it?” Anne asked.

  “Cecil. He made me. Oh, I’m sorry. I’m terribly sorry. But I had no choice.”

  Anne’s tone was businesslike as she said, “Francis, you had better tell us plainly what happened.”

  Wolley took another step back, then slowly let his hands fall. “It was a lover,” he said. “A week ago at Whitehall. I . . . I took some pleasure with Sir Thomas Kerr’s son Robbie—no mere boy by now, mind you, but fully grown—and Cecil caught us in the very act. Well, how was I to know the King himself fancied this same Robbie Kerr? So Cecil sent me back to Pyrford Place, and told me if ever Jack Donne came to find Anne there, I was to tell Jack—oh, I’m such a fool—that she had remarried. Then I was to ride post-haste to this house and tell Cecil where to find you. When I arrived here I told him you had ridden toward London from Pyrford Place despite my attempts to keep you there, but I knew not where you lay. I had to lie to you, Jack. I had no choice. You know how Cecil. . . . Anne, I’m sorry. Truly. I love you both, but if Cecil were to tell the King. . . .”

  Anne took a menacing step toward Wolley. “Oh, Francis,” she said as he retreated still more until he had backed against a wall. “Oh, Francis. When I have done with you—”

  They heard men’s voices in the hallway. “No, eighty,” Cecil was saying to Monteagle as he walked past the open door, glancing into the room on his way. “Eighty foot-soldiers, but sixty of the other.” He had passed the doorway.

  Anne stood with panic in her eyes for a moment, then collected herself. She hissed at Wolley, “Mouth shut, whatever we say.” Apparently ready to do anything to avoid more trouble, Wolley nodded eagerly. The men’s voices in the hallway continued for a few seconds, then ceased. Anne turned to Jack, stood on tiptoe, and hastily whispered into his right ear, “Forged annulment, I think. Check the seal. Cecil’s desk. Steal it.”

  She gave Jack a little push toward the doorway opposite the one Cecil had just passed. He slipped out of sight.

  Anne turned to face Wolley and assumed a posture that suggested she had been talking with him for some time. An instant later Cecil reappeared in the doorway. He seemed puzzled. “Wasn’t there . . . ? There was another man in here. I thought I recog—. That man in black, where did he go?”

  Anne turned to him, smiled, and put on a quizzical look. “What mean you, my lord? What man in black?”

  “The one here in the house. I saw him in this room. He looked like. . . .”

  Anne said, “Whom did he look like, Your Grace? Francis and I have been alone in this room.”

  “No, he was here. In this room. Even now, as I passed. He looked like. . . .”

  “He looked like whom, my lord? You speak in riddles.”

  Cecil turned to Wolley. “Where is he?”

  Wolley raised his palms. “Whom means Your Grace?”

  “Him! Donne! You know very—Monteagle, you saw him, did you not?”

  “Of course, my lord,” Monteagle replied. “I saw. . . . Whom did I see, my lord?”

  “Donne! Or a man very like him. In this room. The man in black. With the hat and a jerkin but no shirt. Don’t tell me you have forgotten.
I think the man is Jack Donne.”

  Anne put her hands to her lips: “Donne? You say you saw Jack? But where? Perhaps you saw some spirit betokening trouble that has befallen him. Maybe it seeks our help.”

  Cecil narrowed his eyes. “Spirit? That is the best you can do? Please. The man I saw was no spirit. Come, where is he? The two of you dissemble, or one of you does. You cannot both have missed him: he was here but now.” Cecil turned to Monteagle. “You saw him, did you not? Jack Donne.”

  Monteagle said, “My lord, I am afraid. . . .” Cecil glared at him. Then Monteagle said, “Yes! Yes, of course I saw him! Standing in this very room. Dressed all in black. I did not know his name until this moment, but of course I saw him.”

  Cecil looked at him murderously. “So you did not see him.”

  “My lord, I must protest: I was listening to you.”

  Cecil pointed at the doorway Jack had exited. “Go and find him! No. First alert the guard, within the house and without. Tell them my orders are now that they not meet me as planned, but to have some of them guard the doors and others find the man. Then bring him to me here.”

  “Yes, my lord.” Monteagle began an elaborate bow.

  Cecil said, barely audibly, “As you value your skin, go.”

  Monteagle stopped in mid-bow, righted himself, and hurried out the door.

  His brow contracted with suspicion, Cecil looked at Anne.

  The stabler plodded toward Westminster on his dependable old gelding, the frightening, black-clad fellow’s letter in his pocket. The message was of the highest import, the man had said. But who could trust such a fierce-eyed, battered stranger? Well, no matter: the pay was more than generous, and all the stabler had to do was deliver the letter to a gray-headed fellow, a short, bandy-legged man called Owen. The stabler had but to knock on the door of a room above a chandler’s shop across the yard from Westminster Palace. If Owen answered, or if any man answered who knew Owen, the messenger had only to hand over the letter. Or if no one was in, the stabler would find across the stair-landing a stooped old woman called Aylesbury. She could receive the letter, but only if she could be made to repeat three times that she was to give it to Owen. Failing that, the stabler was to wait until one of the men arrived.

  The old man’s mouth watered as he thought of the Blue Boar, two or three doors down from the chandler’s shop if his memory served, where a bit of the battered stranger’s gold would buy the best ale in the house.

  Leaves began to swirl in little eddies along the paving-stones as the gelding made his way toward the chandler’s shop. The stabler guided the horse to the side of the street as he approached a hooded man, plump and thin-legged, and a stooped, arthritic-looking old woman who hobbled beside him. She wore a red, tightly woven mantle draped around her shoulders. The hooded man seemed to be trying to hurry her along, but she hung bent between two canes and moved haltingly, as if she were trying to step carefully on every cobblestone.

  The stabler turned a corner and pulled the collar of his coat about him; the wind was rising, funneling along the street. He glanced at the sky and frowned. Banks of clouds were moving toward each other, some churning in off the Atlantic to the east and some sweeping down from the north. He hoped to make the delivery and sit warm and safe in the alehouse before the storm hit. From the windows here and there, arms reached out to pull shutters closed. Street-vendors hurried to cover their stalls. He clucked the gelding to a trot.

  The first of the large drops had begun to smack against the pavement by the time he pulled up before the chandler’s shop. As he dismounted, the stabler had to hold his hat on his head to keep the rising wind from carrying it away. After looking longingly toward the Blue Boar, he pulled the stranger’s letter from his pocket and turned to climb the stairs.

  Cecil had been pacing for perhaps ten minutes. Anne and Wolley sat, as they had been told to sit, side by side on the couch. Anne had tried a number of times to tell Cecil that he must have been mistaken; she had seen no man in black, least of all Jack Donne, standing in that very room. Wolley had said the same. Clearly, though, Cecil was not convinced. Two or three times he had pointed out that Anne and Francis had been facing one another, so that at least one of them must have seen a tall man standing not four paces away. But both insisted that if such a man had in fact stood so near them, neither had seen him.

  At the sound of men’s voices all three turned to face the doorway Monteagle had exited. A guardsman holding one of Jack’s arms pulled him into the room. Another held Jack’s other arm, and Monteagle gave the prisoner a little shove from behind. Half a dozen other guardsmen followed into the room. Jack’s hands had been tied securely behind him, but some of the guard had drawn their swords and now held them pointed at him. Jack looked at Anne and gave her the slightest of nods.

  She sprang from the couch as if she had only that instant recognized him, took a quick step toward him, and said through gritted teeth, “You! Who let you into this house?”

  Cecil said, “Leave him to me, my love. I will make him speak truth.”

  Anne turned to Cecil and held up a hand. Sounding as if she had never been so certain of anything, she said, “No! Leave him to me; there’s time enough to shackle him hereafter. For now, my lord, I shall make him answer to me for his misdeeds.” She turned to face Jack again, then strode up to him and with both hands shoved him in the chest, hard. Had Monteagle not been standing directly behind him, Jack would have been knocked into the hallway. As it was, Jack stayed on his feet after colliding with Monteagle, who stumbled to the floor.

  Anne reached up, grasped the collar of Jack’s jerkin, and pulled his face to within an inch of hers. Anger flashed across her eyes. She said, “You dare to come to this house. You who are a traitor to the Crown and a traitor to your own family.” She shoved him again, and this time he tripped over Monteagle, so that both lay sprawled on the floor. “Get him up,” she said to no one in particular. Two of the guardsmen helped Jack to his feet. Monteagle picked himself up and moved off to the side. This time Anne grasped Jack by the beard and pulled him to her. With slow menace in her voice she said, “Do you think I do not know of your betrayal?” A third shove, and this time he kept his feet, but his back slammed against the doorjamb. Then Anne venomously spat out the words: “We thought you were dead and I wish to God you were. I know of your treason and I know of your doings with that seamy hobbyhorse Lucy the Whore of Bedford.”

  Anne made a fist of her left hand. With a broad sweep of her arm she smashed her fist against the right side of Jack’s face: the uninjured side, but still the blow jarred him. For an instant both sides of his head sent such jolts of pain through him that it took a moment to clear his mind. Never would he have imagined Anne could strike with such force: rather more force, he thought, than the circumstances merited.

  Still, he knew how to play his part in this strange drama. He raised his own voice. “Whore of Bedford? And what of you? Itis you and not I who married four years ago, only take another husband while the first yet lives. What does the God who just heard you request my death think of that?”

  She worked her face into a cruel smile and said, “What you call my marriage to you is dissolved.” With a little two-handed gesture suggesting dissipation into mere air, she repeated the word: “Dissolved.”

  Anne turned to Cecil and said, “Oh, my lord, I pray you let me curse this man into particles. Then you may have your way with him.”

  Cecil stood, apparently struck speechless, and looked at her as if he had never seen anyone so beautiful.

  CHAPTER 20

  Still talking to Cecil, Anne said, “No. Now I bethink me, I will not waste my curses upon this spotted Jack, this knave of spades. I will but hold up a glass to him, that he may see himself for the thing he is.” Cecil extended his hand in invitation as if to say, Far be it from me. . . .

  Anne turned to Jack and said, “From the start you deceived me, pretending you loved me when all you wanted was a name for yourself. Favor with
the Lord Keeper. And my father’s money. From the start you cared about me not one whit. Then with my father’s money and the Lord Keeper’s power, you could secretly abet these traitorous Catholics. Well, I thank Providence, my father knew better. As did my uncle the Lord Keeper. And now at last I know better. Lord Cecil has taught me to read the charactery inscribed on your paper-thin soul. He has given me a home. He cares for these children you abandoned at your first opportunity. Whether he fathered them or no, Lord Cecil knows how to love them. And he has given me love. Real love. For all your talk of it in your pretty, witty verses, I doubt you have ever known what love is. But it doesn’t matter. Our marriage—would that it deserved the name!—built as it was on your greed and your ambition, and defiled by your lechery with the Lady Bedford and who knows what other alehouse-queans, is dissolved. With these eyes I have seen the writ of annulment.”

  Jack said to Cecil, “This cannot be. Four years ago her father filed a challenge, and the ecclesiastical court upheld the marriage. It is legal. From the start it was legal. What court has overturned its legality?”

  Cecil smiled, but he said nothing.

  Jack said, “Where is this writ of annulment? Produce it.”

  Cecil luxuriated in a period of cold silence before saying, “I do not answer to your demands, Master Donne, and in any case there is no need. You need know only that your marriage is dissolved. My marriage—mine and Anne’s—will soon take place.”

  Anne turned to Cecil. “But why hide our glad tidings? Why not bring out the writ and show it proudly to all gathered in this room?”

  Cecil stepped to her and put his hand on her shoulder. He said softly, “My love, there is no cause. Why need we display our good fortune, baring it to all these uncomprehending souls?”

  Jack knew well enough why Cecil did not want to bring out the document. The little schemer must have composed it in the King’s name only in order to persuade Anne that nothing stood in the way of her remarriage; he had never meant it to be examined carefully. But after Anne had told Jack to steal the document and hurried him out of the gaming room, he had returned to Cecil’s study and found the writ of annulment on the desk. The handwriting was Cecil’s, but that alone did not damn him; the King could hardly be expected to pen his own edicts. It was the signature. The signature as well as the seal should have been the royal one. The signature was a fair approximation of the King’s but still bore traces of Cecil’s strangely crabbed penmanship. In his days with the Lord Keeper, Jack had seen Cecil’s scribblings often enough. And the blurred image in the sealing wax was not the King’s; Jack was sure of it. Probably the seal had been stamped with some signet of Cecil’s, then smeared: intentionally, no doubt, to fool Anne. But she had seen through the ruse.