Dark Aemilia

by Sally O’Reilly

  ‘If I worked on them… so they were improved. What then?’

  ‘I don’t know. You could find a patron, and a publisher.’ He leans over and begins to kiss my neck.

  ‘A bastard concubine could be a published poet?’

  ‘Why not?’ He has lifted my hair and is kissing the hidden skin beneath it.

  I push him away. ‘You’re making a mockery of me.’

  ‘As you wish. Leave this Art to those who understand it.’ He is laughing openly at me now. ‘You are such a wondrous pretty thing – no need to strive for a life of the mind.’

  I slap his face, slightly harder than I intended. ‘A woman can do anything, if she has a mind to it. The Queen writes verse.’

  He clutches his cheek in mock pain. ‘The Queen, good lady, is a prince. No, no, you are quite right. Stick to your love ditties; true Art is quite beyond you.’

  ‘What about you, the palace playwright? Everything you know, you learned at a country grammar school.’

  ‘Whereas your learning…’

  ‘Is of the Ancients, as you would expect.’

  ‘Oh, indeed. A little of Athens, and much of Rome.’

  ‘Much of both, sir. The trivium, of grammar, logic and rhetoric.’

  ‘Ay, like a learned blade at Oxford.’

  ‘Like the learned fellows everywhere. And also the quadrivium…’

  ‘Of arithmetic, geometry, astronomy…’ He hesitates, unsure.

  ‘And music.’

  ‘Of course – you are the lady of the virginals.’ He seems to think this is a joke of some kind, so I keep silent. ‘And this has fitted you for… rutting with an aged soldier, has it?’

  I get to my feet and walk to the river’s edge, hating him suddenly. He comes up behind me.

  ‘It has fitted me for discontent,’ I say.

  ‘You see?’ He pulls me close. ‘We are two of a kind. Would I have written plays if I had known my station? Or would I have stayed in Stratford, making gloves for the gentry?’

  I let him kiss me, but am still preoccupied. ‘I know enough to be a poet, I have read enough to know how it should be done, but I don’t know how to make my lines sing better!’ I say. ‘I can’t turn thoughts to written words! There is some magician’s trick to it.’

  Will leads me back to the grassy knoll and spreads out his cloak so that we can lie down again. ‘There is no magic,’ he says. ‘Treat words as if they were rubies.’ He unhooks the beaded hood from my hair, so that it falls around me, curled by its enclosure. ‘Choose the right one for each part of every line.’ He undoes my stomacher and lifts it away. ‘Write every line as though your life depended on it.’ He opens the front of my chemise and regards my dugs quizzically, as if deciding whether or not to buy them. ‘As if the executioner was standing by your shoulder, and this was the last chance to speak that you would ever know.’ With that, he pushes my chemise back, so my white shoulders are naked in the sun.

  I do not smile, nor assist him in his task. ‘That sounds like a kind of madness, I say. ‘I fear I am too sane.’

  He laughs again. The sun has browned his face. His eyes are full of sky. His lips are swollen red from reckless kissing.

  ‘Do you want me?’ he asks, very serious.

  Oh, I do. I do.

  And so we make love in the sunshine. Till at last Will calls my name, over and over. ‘Aemilia! Aemilia! Aemilia!’

  I need the skills of a player myself, in my dealings with Lord Hunsdon. It tears at me to lie to him, who was all in all to me for so many years. But I do so just the same, the whole summer long. And it scares me to think that, if he knew how I betrayed him, his anger would know no bounds. I once saw him kill a dog that turned. He beat the creature till it could not stand, and the ground was running with its blood. And that dog loved him, and had sighed at his feet with its great head upon its paws, watchful of his safety. If he knew how I lay with Shakespeare, and what we did, and how we cried out together in the boundless repetition of our lust, what would he do to me? I do not know.

  But what I fear is not his power to hurt me, although I know that he could wield it, but that discovery would put an end to my deception. My true life is lived in those secret times with Will, which make the fakery of my Court life fade to nothing. Each time we meet, he gives me a letter, and I give him one in return. He says my words are his comfort when we are apart; his missives to me are more beautiful than I can say. These are not just letters which talk of love, but which talk of everything. (And if you think me a fool as well as a wanton, then let me say these letters are written in a sort of code.)

  Today I am trying to put such thoughts from my mind, and I am reading St Paul’s letters to the Corinthians in my chamber, disliking his view of women. But Hunsdon comes in, and says, ‘Aemilia, are you tired of your life here?’

  I put St Paul down, taking my time about it. ‘Tired in what way, sir?’

  He sits beside me. ‘You know what I have spoken of. I am growing older.’

  ‘Not to me,’ I smile and touch his cheek, trying to read his expression. ‘You are my lord in all things, dear Henry.’

  He takes my hand and places it in my lap. ‘What do you say to this – we go away from here?’

  ‘Go? Where?’

  ‘To Titchfield, where Wriothesley has his seat.’

  The fear rises in me – is this a trick? A ruse to get me away from Will? I smile, and lean across to kiss him. ‘Why, what shall we do there, my love?’

  ‘The Queen is going on a progress.’

  ‘But is this newly thought of?’

  ‘Her Majesty has been out of sorts, and blames the parched and putrid drains. She wants fresh air, clean rooms, and some diversion. The players have a new piece, and they’re to stage it there for her.’

  The fear remains. ‘Which piece is this?’

  ‘Love’s Labour’s Lost. Wriothesley has commissioned it, Shakespeare has wrote it, and he assures me it is good. Some comedy or other. He claims it’s better than the Shrew.’

  ‘Mr Shakespeare?’ I feel the room swimming around me. ‘And… Mr Burbage? Will they be there too?’

  ‘Most decidedly they will! Why would they not be? It will be an entertainment for us all. And much needed, before the nights draw in, and the autumn creeps upon us. Place House is handsome, and the country all around is green and pleasant. And it’s not too far – no more than three days’ ride.’

  ‘But… are you sure you want me with you?’ Hunsdon usually leaves me behind if he goes on a progress with the Queen. It is unspoken but understood between us that it pleases his wife better if I stay in my Whitehall rooms when he is gone from London, as if my body was a chance adornment of the palace and not a chosen pleasure. Travelling with his lordship is too spouse-like. So is this suggestion a sign of his growing fondness for me, or his burgeoning mistrust?

  He kisses my obedient little breasts, pushed up tight and high by whalebone and fashion. ‘But me no buts, my dearest chuck. We shall have the players to please us by day, and by night we shall have our sport together.’

  Scene V

  There is little sign of the countryside being green and pleasant during our journey, which seems to take three weeks, not three days. A great storm rages for the whole duration, so fiercely that I cannot ride, which I prefer, but instead must leave poor Frey to be ridden by a servant, while I am piled into a coach with a heap of scented, smirking ladies, all of whom seem party to some private joke. This conveyance bumps and trundles along, giving us all great discomfort, and the rain is so heavy that it trickles through the leaking roof, and soaks our cloaks, and the ladies declare that they will all die of the sweats, which sets them off again in the most hysterical and unpleasant-sounding laughter. I stare out of the window, watching the dark clouds flying and wondering at the amount of mud that churns along our way. We should have been better off in an Ark than a wobbling coach, for the wrath of God seems to be upon us and the heavens turned to perpetual water, as if the ocean has risen
to the sky and must now fall down upon us, returning to its rightful place beneath the moon.

  At last, the coach shudders to a halt, and I look outside. Through the falling rain I can make out a huge edifice, long and many-windowed, its lights blurred by the downpour. Stout towers reach up into the stormy sky, and it is neatly turreted, like a child’s picture of a castle. Herded inside with my giggling companions, I am dazzled by the brilliant splendour of the great hall, so high and spacious as to rival that at Nonsuch, if not Whitehall. There are chandeliers and torches everywhere, casting their flaming light on many-coloured tapestries and golden panelling, so that I feel as if I am walking into a giant’s treasure casket. The gallery above our heads is filled with musicians, who sing sweet and unfamiliar melodies as we come in – though of course these newly written tunes are not for us but for Her Majesty, whose entrance follows ours and we must push ourselves against the walls as she sweeps past, smiling with marble impregnability.

  As I make my way up the great staircase, with Hunsdon close behind me, I see that Will is standing at the top. I never saw him look so handsome. He is dressed in black. He stares at me solemnly as he bows before the ascending procession of courtiers and I feel a sudden urge to weep. I have never wanted him so much, nor feared so painfully that I may not have him.

  Hunsdon catches my arm. ‘Aemilia, have you met our great scribe?’

  I turn to look at him, chiefly so I can avoid looking at Will. ‘What scribe is this, my lord?’

  ‘Young Will Shakespeare.’ Reaching Will’s side, he grasps him by the shoulder. ‘This is my sweet mistress, sir. As clever as she is beautiful, and quite as skilful in… every art as any man could wish.’

  Will bows, unsmiling.

  ‘Aemilia fancies herself a poet, don’t you, my dear?’

  I can only incline my head, scarlet with discomfort.

  ‘I am sure that no poetry she could ever write would match the perfect symmetry of her face,’ says Will. His voice is cold.

  ‘Symmetry, sir! It’s not the length of a lady’s nose that keeps an old man happy. You poets! What a strange set of fellows you are! Do you slake your lust with symmetry, or with sport?’

  Will bows again, as if to acknowledge Hunsdon’s superior wisdom. ‘Poets are poor lovers, my lord. We save our deepest passions for the page.’

  Hunsdon laughs and takes my arm. ‘Come now, Melia, forgive us for our idle talk. Let’s go to our chamber and read some verse!’ He makes a final bow to Will, the faintest inclination of his head. ‘She prefers Sidney’s Astrophil and Stella to your Venus and Adonis – what d’you say to that?’

  Tonight, as luck would have it, my lord is in an amorous mood. Despite the fact that he has been a lusty lover for many years, in recent months he has been too tired or ill to fornicate with me, but this night he is keen to get to bed early, and undoes my bodice breathing heavily, showing every sign of wanting to have me as he used to. I confess, with Will nearby I can’t bear the thought of this, and come up with the stratagem of reading my poetry to my lord, as a supposed preliminary to our love-making. In fact, as I had hoped, Hunsdon is snoring peacefully after three stanzas.

  For a while I lie next to him, singing a lullaby and stroking his white hair back from his brow. And then I stop singing, and watch him breathing, steady as a rivertide. I pull the counterpane over him to keep the night chill from waking him, slip a shawl over my nightgown, and pick up a candle from our bed-table. I am an assiduous adulteress, and I noted where the players are sleeping. Will was given a small chamber to himself, while the other players were given a large room in the eaves. Will claimed he needed a quiet room to finish some writing. I don’t know if this is true, or if he is hoping that I might find a way to go to him, at dead of night. Whether this was the case or no, I will do it. The thought of his look as I climbed the stairs with Hunsdon drives me on.

  I close the door of my bedchamber behind me, and tiptoe across the dark landing. The house spreads all around me, like a village in the sky, with corridors and staircases leading in every direction. Shielding the flame with my hand, I make my way silently along, counting the doors and noting my way. I hardly dare breathe, and hate my own heart for its fulsome beating. Yet I swear to God I have never felt more alive than I do at this moment, fearing discovery, astonished at my own foolishness and longing to lie once more with my lover, skin to skin.

  Just as I pass a grand, carved door to one of the great bedchambers at the front of the house, I hear a noise and stop still, a dribble of sweat trickling down my neck. I can hear voices shouting, and dare not take another step lest they burst out of the door. I can see nowhere to hide, so I stay, motionless, like a vole sensing the descending hawk. As I stand there, the voices rise higher and higher, and I recognise one of them: it is that of our boyish host, Henry Wriothesley, the Earl of Southampton. The other – a deeper man’s voice – I do not know.

  ‘Oh my lord,’ says this voice. ‘Oh my lord! Oh my lord! Oh my lord! Oh my lord!’ Each cry is followed by a bang, like a board being struck in steady rhythm. I stand, terrified, willing myself to move, but unable to take a step.

  There is a pause on the other side of the door, yet not silence. The two voices mingle to make the strangest noise, part scream, part groan. Then the deeper voice makes a peculiarly terrible sound, a wolfish howl.

  Now comes Wriothesley’s light and laughing tone, as if he had had no part in what had gone before. ‘Say, “Oh my Lord God.”’

  ‘My lord?’

  ‘Say “Oh my Lord God” each time I go up you.’

  Then they were off again.

  ‘Oh my Lord God!’

  Bang.

  ‘Oh my Lord God!’

  Bang.

  ‘Oh my Lord God!’

  This time it builds and builds till the final scream is so loud that I am sure the whole household will come running. A drop of candle-wax spills on my wrist, and wakes me from my trance. I hasten along the passage until I come to a narrow flight of stairs I had noted earlier. I climb them, breathless, and there, at the top, is a door, no bigger than the way into a priest hole. I pray to God that I have remembered right, and tap at it, three times.

  The door opens immediately, as if the occupant had been waiting for me.

  Will is wearing a nightshirt, but his bed, which I can see over his shoulder, has not been slept in. Close by is a table, on which a candle burns, cluttered with papers – he has indeed been writing. This is his habit at night: he is the only person I have ever met who sleeps as restlessly as I do. For a moment, we look at each other.

  ‘What’s this about Astrophil and Stella?’ he says. ‘Disloyal minx.’ Then he smiles and pulls me inside.

  Scene VI

  Having deceived Hunsdon and borne silent witness to Wriothesley’s peculiar sodomy, I am trembling with shock and fear. Yet once I am in Will’s bed I forget all my terror, and what we do now is like no other love-making that I have ever known, such is its silence and its slow tenderness. As we twist and rock together, I feel my mind fill with a profound sweetness, and I smile as I kiss him, locked closer, closer till we finish as one creature, still soundless, deeply bound. There is such joy in me that I am shocked to find that we are soaked with tears. And when we both lie tangled in my loose black hair, Will whispers, ‘We are married now, my love. I have no wife but you.’

  We lie silent for a long time. Will strokes the round mole at my throat.

  ‘What’s this, my little sorceress,’ he says, ‘if not your third dug, where you give suck to your familiar?’

  ‘Shall you be my familiar, then?’

  ‘I would be nothing else, if it were possible.’

  ‘Do you ever wonder if the creatures of the night are those that God did not get quite right?’ I ask, dreamily.

  He is busy kissing the mole upon my neck, but begins to shake with silent laughter. ‘Such as what, my strange one? Such as yourself?’

  ‘Well, both of us are wide awake when others sleep. So you ar
e night-odd too…’ I laugh myself, and twist my neck away. ‘But I meant – badgers, hedgehogs, moles. Or bats. All the odd things that are queer to look at.’

  ‘What of the owls, though?’ says Will. ‘An owl is perfect.’

  ‘Perhaps he is the king of all nocturnal beasts,’ I say. ‘Unrivalled beneath the moon. He rules us too.’

  His lifts his shadowed face to stare into my eyes with mock puzzlement. ‘What are you, Bassano?’ he asks. ‘Where did they find you?’

  ‘I found a bat once, fallen from the roof beams,’ I whisper.

  ‘Foolish bat, if it could not fly better!’ says Will, kissing his way from my neck to my breasts.

  ‘It was a baby, hardly bigger than two farthings,’ say I, gasping as he begins to suck. ‘I kept it in a little box and fed it with cow’s milk in a thimble, and it grew to full size, though I never would have thought it possible.’

  ‘Your witch’s magic, I have no doubt of it.’ His hands are creeping down, over the skin of my belly.

  ‘Afterwards, it made its home in the eaves of my apartment, and I would see it at dusk, spinning around the roof beams with sightless ease. And it would still come down and drink milk from a saucer, like a tiny flying cat.’

  ‘Fortunate bat, to sip from your saucer!’ His fingers have found their place, and he begins to jerk them in a rhythm that I know and love, and for some time neither of us speaks, but go at it bat-like, knowing our way.

  ‘I cannot bear to be without you,’ I say at last. ‘I cannot live like this, divided, like Judas.’

  ‘What else can we do?’ says Will. ‘Where else can we go?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I say. I think of Hunsdon, pumping away with his old man’s wiry passion, and feel the bile rise in my throat. ‘I cannot bear to lie with Hunsdon! I am no better than a tavern whore, turning tricks for trinkets.’

  ‘This is our world,’ he says, with his arms around me. ‘There is no escape, except when we are lost together, and it’s those times that we must think of, and seek out, and keep safe.’