Dark Aemilia

by Sally O’Reilly

  He comes closer to me, smiling more sweetly than before. ‘Forgive me. Forgive me. I would like to hear your verse. I see no reason why a lady like yourself – one well-known for her intelligence and learning – should not be a writer as good as any man!’

  ‘You surprise me, sir!’

  ‘I am young, mistress. I am part of the modern age. You are ill-served, and misunderstood.’

  ‘That’s true enough!’

  ‘You see? I understand you. I know my reputation may be off-putting, but lay your prejudice aside. Let me hear your verses. Please.’ He takes my hand, still smiling. ‘Come and sit with me, and read your verse and I will see… what I can do.’

  He leads me to the corner of the library and gestures towards a low bed heaped with velvet cushions. I pull my hand away.

  ‘Isn’t there somewhere else… more public?’

  ‘Come, you’re not afraid of me? A woman of your bearing? It is I who should be afraid! Look at you! God’s blood. Almost too beautiful.’ He pours out two glasses of wine and hands one to me. ‘Almost. But not quite.’

  I can hear two voices. But which is the angel, and which the devil? ‘Run! Flee! Escape!’ says one. ‘Stay! This could be your salvation! Prove yourself!’ says the other. He is smiling, smiling. I can feel the baby moving inside me. I wonder if, like me, it is afraid.

  When I realise that I am scared of him, I force myself to step forward and take the glass, and sip it. For I am afraid of no one, and nothing, except Death itself. I will take this chance, and see where it leads. While I read, Wriothesley at first contents himself with listening ‘raptly’, which is to say, he acts out the role of one who listens with exaggerated astonishment and delight. His mock entrancement has the effect of making the shortcomings of my verse more obvious to me, and I vow that, if nothing else, I will make my poems better in future, even if I die in the attempt. And I also notice, as I read the stumbling, bumbling words, that his lordship is edging ever closer to me on the divan, so that, when I come to the end of the third stanza of the third poem, his breath is on my neck. When I finish, there is silence for a moment, and then he takes my face between his hands and twists it round so he can scrutinise it. Then he says abruptly, ‘Your eyes are black, aren’t they? Truly black. I have never seen such a thing.’

  I stand up.

  ‘The Bassanos are Venetian,’ I say. ‘My father was a Marrano, some say from Africa.’

  He stretches out on the bed, with his head propped on his elbows. ‘You know, I have had my eye on you since the night we met,’ says he.

  ‘Have you?’

  ‘Do you want to know what I think?’ he asks.

  I say nothing.

  ‘You are greedy. Greedy for pleasure, my glorious hussy. Greedy for men.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Or should I say – for poets?’

  I stare, and he gets up and winds his arm around my waist. ‘Standing by Will Shakespeare’s stairway, in a dry nightgown with a wet cunt. Oh, don’t look at me like that, sweet lady. I could smell it from where I stood.’ He bends down, as he did that night, but this time his hand creeps underneath my skirts and I feel his silky fingers stroke the inside of my leg. ‘He had you good and plenty, didn’t he? Am I not right? I’ll never forget the look upon your face. He fucked you all the way to Heaven, that gentle poet. Pumping like Beelzebub, I’ll wager.’ Now his hand is creeping up the soft skin of my thigh. ‘Luckiest of poets.’

  With a sudden motion Wriothesley forces me down, and I am lying on my back upon the low bed. I feel his weight upon me. He is heavier than he looks, and I scream out. ‘My lord! My baby – be careful with my baby!’

  ‘Ah, the poet’s bastard, is it, lodged inside you?’ He begins to laugh – a boy’s laugh, hysterical and shrill. With a sudden force of effort I push him away and he falls to the ground, still laughing. He stands up and shakes out his sleeves. ‘Listen. I know you have been lying with William. I am a witness to it. If you want me to keep this information private – which I suspect you do – then I am determined to extract a fair price from you. If you wish to keep yourself from me – and that is entirely your decision – then I will let Lord Hunsdon know that his dowry missed its mark, and that he may as well have gone down to the Liberties and paid for any shilling strumpet to live like a merchant’s wife.’

  ‘No!’ I see myself, clear and sharp. A street-walker, a doxy, a common whore. I see my baby, a harlot’s brat, shrivelling in my arms.

  He whispers, ‘But if you want to keep your little house – with your little monkey in it – then I suggest that you sin a little and let me lie beside you.’

  ‘I would rather die, sir. Look upon me! Have pity on my state.’ The room is shifting; sweat is rolling down my neck into my gown. What can I do? What can I say?

  ‘Think carefully, Aemilia. They say you are a woman possessed of a fine mind. Well, use it.’

  Before I can speak, he has pulled me down so that I sprawl on top of him. ‘No, sir!’ I scream. ‘No, I will not do it…’

  He rips my skirts out of the way and, despite the swollen mound of my belly, he forces himself into me. His cock is a fire-poker and he is sucking at my sore dugs and then my senses are black.

  When I look up, damp and trembling, Will is standing at the doorway, holding a book in his hand. His eyes are fixed on me with such an expression of disbelieving horror that I cannot speak, nor even think, but only stare back at him, my thighs spread and my soiled shift clutched between my fingers.

  Wriothesley has his eyes closed. ‘Oh, foul Jezebel,’ he says. ‘There is not a whore in London who is a better fuck. Come, I demand you kiss me.’ He puckers up and points to his full red lips.

  I look at Will. His face is pale and thinner than when last I saw him, with shadows beneath his cheekbones, and his eyes are black-rimmed from stage-paint that has not been properly wiped off, and his beard is new-trimmed and his razor must have nipped his skin, for there is a stab of scarlet on his left cheek. He is speechless; he is stone.

  Wriothesley opens his eyes and looks at Will calmly. ‘Forgive us, dear Will,’ he says. ‘Such scenes as this are hardly to be expected in a library. Patrons should be more sedate than this. I have my… position to consider.’ He smirks up at me.

  I pull myself up, and his lordship’s limp cock flops down on to his white stomach. Will is gone. Liquid trickles down my leg. I pull down my skirts, pick up my slippers and run after him, tripping over my dress and sobbing without tears.

  The library opens on to a wide landing. Everything gleams and glitters. I can’t tell what is what, nor recall the names for things. Where is Will? Which way did he go? There is a stairway, sweeping downwards. He is not there. I run the other way, down a long gallery with sunlight sparkling through leaded windows. There is bright colour – Turkey carpet colour; there are high paintings of men with cruel faces. All are Wriothesley, sneering down. There is a doorway, between two carved chairs. There is Will, framed inside it, with his back to me, still as a statue.

  I go through the door and close it behind me. We are standing in a small chamber, stark and plain. There is a table and a chair, and a riot of paper. A window looks out across a stableyard.

  ‘Sit,’ he says, without turning to face me.

  ‘I’d rather stand,’ I say, but then sink down on to the chair. My sight is wraithed with black vapour, like smithy-smoke. Will stares out of the window.

  ‘Will …’ I begin. ‘This… thing. The thing you saw…’

  He turns at last, but remains silent. His eyes are cast down.

  ‘My love,’ I say. ‘My dearest…’

  He will not look at me.

  ‘I implore you, sir!’ I hold out my hand. ‘Truly, I implore you… Listen to me!’

  At last, he looks at me, arms rigid by his sides. ‘Listen to you?’ he says. His voice is hoarse. ‘Listen to you? What can you say?’

  ‘That I was… I was tricked…’

  ‘How did he trick you? Did he shape-sh
ift, so he looked like me? Did he wizard himself inside you, with the magic of his mighty phallus?’ He stares at me. ‘Well? Did he?’

  This time I am the one who is silent. I hang my head.

  ‘I have seen Hell. I have seen a Beast with two backs. I have seen everything I loved and honoured made vile and evil. That is the thing that I have seen.’

  ‘Listen, I –’

  ‘There are no words, Aemilia. There is no “listen”, and then some sentences that you can conjure which I will take into my mind, so we can be as we were. This is Death. This is the end of what I loved, and what I thought I knew, and what made my life bearable, for all its pain and sorrow. This fine woman, this great spirit, this mind beyond compare – a rutting strumpet!’

  ‘I was reading him my poems and –’

  ‘Oh, Christ Jesu!’ He turns and throws open the window, as if the room is suffocating him. ‘Your wretched poems! They are no good, my sweet. They are just doggerel, my lovely one. You may be the equal of all comers in the areas of algebra and astronomy and what you will, but let me tell you, a poet is not a learned man who pens out his learned thoughts in comfort and complacency! A poet is a madman, who knows nothing, and makes a world of his insanity. And you, my lady, may be a scholar and you are certainly a whore, but you will never be a poet.’

  I can’t weep. I can’t think. I try to say, He blackmailed me, he was going to tell Hunsdon all about you – but I cannot see how to say this without making him even angrier, if that is possible. All I can think of is that I must go, away, and escape his burning eyes, and the hatred and contempt in his voice. I stand up.

  ‘Goodbye, Will.’

  ‘Goodbye? Jesu, is that it?’

  ‘You said there are no words. And you are right, there is none. I have sinned and we are done.’

  ‘Ay, we are done alright, for you have killed my soul!’

  ‘I love you, Will.’

  This seems to goad him more than anything I have said or done, for suddenly he is wild with rage and tears the pages on his desk and throws them round the room. ‘Love me! Love me! God’s blood, what do you do to men you hate? You are a witch – a witch; you have ensnared me and you are trying to destroy me!’ He runs towards me, brandishing the torn paper. ‘What can I say? What can I do?’

  ‘If you think I do not love you, this is false, and what I did today was –’

  ‘Oh – you say this is false?’ He is so close now that his spittle wets my face and I see the blue veins jumping in his forehead. ‘Look – I have a new phrase…’ He runs to the table, takes up a quill and scribbles fiercely on one of the torn pages. ‘Praise God – I am still a writer! Praise him, praise him, the poet lives! Look…’ He runs back to me. ‘See? See here? What I have wrote – you are still my Muse, Mistress Busycunt… see – “the bay where all men ride”! You see? I have made you into Art. That, that is poetry. Poetry is pain. Poetry is blood and hatred. D’you see?’

  As he gets angrier, I grow colder. I am a prisoner in this place, and can only stare, round-eyed, at what I have made him. ‘Will…’ say I. ‘Please, I beg you –’

  ‘What, will you contradict me? How dare you contradict me? You came into my bed straight from Hunsdon’s…’

  ‘How could I do otherwise, when –’

  ‘I saw the look upon his face when he arrived with you! Jesu, you whipped that old goat to a frenzy even as he edged towards the grave! As for Wriothesley – well, forgive me for my boldness! I just saw you, straddling the fellow, with your great-belly in your mother’s hands as he shafted up inside you! God’s balls, I’d sooner spit my own arse on Satan’s cock than witness such a thing again!’

  ‘I am no Jezebel. If you would only hear me!’

  ‘Jezebel! What did she do to deserve comparison with you? I need new words for sin, for you have torn up decency and thrown it to the four winds.’

  I stand at last, though I don’t know how my shuddering legs can carry me. The babe is kicking, and I fear all this torment might force it early into the world.

  ‘Farewell, Will,’ I say. I go to the doorway, and turn to look at him. ‘If you will not let me speak, if you will not understand…’ But he is sitting at his desk, writing, his body racked with sobs.

  Scene XII

  Sometimes I read so hard and so long that when I close my eyes I see a million dancing letters, formed of white light against my own darkness. Sometimes, when I examine my face in the looking glass, my eyes are sore and bloodshot. Sometimes I think I see words falling down my cheeks, mixed with my tears.

  My little house is made from seasoned Kentish oak, its heartwood turned outward to withstand the wind and weather. Thirty trees were felled to make it, sky-shifting branches fallen among wet fern. I first saw it when it was no more than a wooden skeleton, bare timbers sticking out of the mud, each one marked with a Roman numeral. It looked squashed and small, stuck between two older buildings. I could scarce believe that I was supposed to mark out my new life on so little ground. But within a week the carpenters added walls and floors and windows, like the lungs and belly of a man, and strangely it seemed to grow in size. Even so, my courage falters when I think of all the trammelled years I am doomed to spend inside it, a placid little Jill-in-a-box.

  My space is this: six rooms in all, with the main door opening into a hallway, which is like a little version of the great hall in a great house, and is two storeys in height. A wooden staircase ascends from its centre. At the back of the hall is a door which leads to the kitchen, with its open hearth and cupboards, which Hunsdon has filled with the finest pewter. Around the fire is a fine array of pots, grid-irons, coal rakes and toasting irons, and from the ceiling hang pots, saucepans and frying pans. On one side of the kitchen is a low door, leading to the garden, such as it is, and the privy. At the top of the hall stairs is a handsome solar, an oak-panelled sitting room with a grander fireplace than the kitchen hearth, some heavy carved chairs and a long oak dining table. And on the floor above are two bedchambers, also brightly painted and well furnished with curtained beds and solid old chests. All are gifts from Hunsdon.

  The gift I value most is the pair of Flemish virginals which have been placed in the hall. The elegant instrument takes up the most part of one wall. Most beautiful, its soundboards painted with flowers, birds and moths, all within blue scalloped borders. The natural keys are covered in bone, and the sharps are chestnut. The inside of the lid is embellished with a Latin motto: Sic transit gloria mundi. The notes it makes are soft and plangent and take me far away, back into a world of long galleries echoing with music and private laughter, of lush gardens overlooked by mullioned windows, of feasts and opulence and the giddy knowledge that the furled papers on my lord’s table will govern the lives of earls and paupers, scribes and burghers, pimps and haberdashers, all across the realm.

  At the very top of the house is a little garret, with straw-stuffed eaves coming down almost to the wooden floor. This is the servant’s room, and has in it just a truckle bed and a three-legged stool. If I stand on this – though it wobbles badly – I can put my head through the window in the thatch, and see as far as the City with its Roman walls and mess of roofs and smoking chimneys, and above these the pointing fingers of a dozen churches, and the mighty Ark which is blasted, spireless St Paul’s.

  Act II

  Prophecy

  Scene I

  Smithfield, August 1602

  My hectic son is hardly able to breathe with the wonder and wickedness of it all. His eyes are everywhere: Bartholomew Fair, the greatest Fair in England. Such a press of people that you can barely work out where you stand. And what people – half the underworld is here: cutpurses from Damnation Alley, tricksters from Devil’s Gap, vagrants from Snide Street. Everything muddled: stalls and sideshows, fops and ladies, apes and peacocks. As big a hotchpotch as the filthy warren of London itself. You can buy anything – oysters, mousetraps, gingerbread men; a hobbyhorse, a songbird or a bale of cloth. Pay to see a cockfight or a puppet s
how or join a game of dice and thimble. Everywhere is bother, jostle and noise. High fashion and foul breath, all pressed together: children and dotards, dogs and chancers, pigs and prostitutes. And the two of us – Henry leaping at my side, desperate to be off to buy a cheese-cake from Holloway or a Pimlico pie. Rattles, drums and fiddles rip into the air. The smell of roasting pork rises up from the eating-houses. One step too quick and you will fall upon a sweetmeat-seller or topple on the side-rope of a dancing tent. Here – a great, pockmarked head, ducking out of the crowd and leering at my chest. There – a glimpse of putrefying tumour, sprouting from a beggar’s shoulder, tattered shirt turned down so the passers-by can get an eyeful and toss a halfpenny his way. ‘Show! Show! Show’ calls the crowd, all about us, pushing and shoving, careless of a small boy and a slight woman.

  We are smack-bang in the middle of it all: besieged by every kind of mountebank and con-man, bawdy and punk. I try to side-step one way, thinking I see some open ground to my left, in front of the fish-scale virgin’s stand, but a giantess blocks my path, stinking like Hound’s Ditch and with a back as wide as a cart. So I twist another way, Henry’s hand gripped in mine, but up loom three pissed prentice-boys, arm in arm, faces running sweat, eyes rolled back in their heads.

  Henry is nearly ten. A boy who likes to throw himself to the ground, run, yell, eat. Hell-bent on everything. Big-boned, but pretty, with his flushed cheeks and fuzz of gold hair. Nothing like Alfonso, but we don’t speak of that.

  ‘Mother! Over there – can we see the baby with two heads?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why?

  ‘I’ll be sick.’

  ‘The bearded mermaid?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘The pig-trotter man?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘The midget unicorn?’

  ‘No.’