Dark Aemilia

by Sally O’Reilly

‘Why? Why? All the boys at my school have seen the midget unicorn! Why can’t I?’

  I don’t know why the thought of standing in a cramped booth, face to face with some freak – man-made or a slip of nature – makes me feel so weak and dizzy. I’ve seen it all before, and worse. So has Henry, come to that. He likes a good execution, that child; nothing lily-livered about him. Perhaps I’m pregnant again. My pregnancies ebb and flow in my body like the river tide. Few last more than six weeks. A good thing, as we live on next to nothing, and Alfonso is an idle dolt, barely able to put his doublet on the right way around.

  ‘Buy my fat chickens!’

  ‘Fresh asparagus!’

  ‘Any baking pears?’

  Now Henry’s face is winding up into a baby-scowl. His curiosity amounts to a disease.

  ‘You said I could come to the Fair, and now we can’t do anything!’

  ‘Henry!’

  ‘Termagant!’

  ‘Wherever did you – ?’

  ‘Whore!’

  ‘Obnoxious brat! How dare you!’

  He slips his hand from mine and he’s off.

  ‘Henry!’

  I look this way, and that. No idea which way to chase him. He has no money, will not go far. But I’m wrenched with fear. All I can see are the lurid banners: ‘Giant Blackamoor’… ‘Child Leprechaun’… ‘Neptune from the Deep’.

  ‘Henry!’

  How will he hear me? My loud cries are lost in a multitude of voices.

  ‘Posset for you, lady?’ A skinny lad with a tray hanging from his neck.

  ‘See the man who swallows fire!’

  A blind girl thrusts her pouch at me. ‘Sugar-pane fancies! Sweetest in Smithfield!’

  ‘Henry!’

  Then, the crowd pushes me forward till I am jammed hard against a wooden palisade. I can barely see through the spaces between the planks, but can just make out the back view of a fairground caller, dressed in scarlet like an alderman.

  ‘Upwards of ten feet high!’ he cries. ‘His consumption of hay, corn, straw, carrots, water is that of twenty men! The Oliphant, the human race excepted, is the most respectable of animals! He has ivory tusks, four feet long, as sharp as swords! His trunk serves him instead of hands and arms! He can lift a man with it, or a mouse!’

  The crowd surges forward behind me. Where is Henry? If the mob pushes at him as violently as this, he will suffocate in the crush.

  ‘He remembers favours as long as injuries: in short, if you aid him, he will repay you. If you harm him, he will never forget…’

  I have never seen an Oliphant, though I have read of them and seen a drawing. And at Whitehall Palace there was a monstrous tusk, among the Queen’s objects and treasures, which were brought from all the corners of the world. It was heavier than any sword or musket. I don’t believe this mountebank has an Oliphant in his tent – a great bull, perhaps, with an adder for its trunk, and dark hangings to keep the creature in the shadow. This is the Devil’s marketplace, after all.

  But Henry? Where is Henry? I turn, and begin to force my way out through the mass of people. And then a woman stands in front of me. Bars my way. Her face is almost touching mine. She is motionless; her face a mask. Looking into her cold eyes, I could not say her age, or type.

  ‘Tell your fortune?’

  ‘No. Go away. I’m looking for my little boy.’

  ‘Oh, he’s safe enough. For now, at least.’

  ‘Where is he?’

  ‘Tell your fortune?’

  ‘Where’s my son?’ I try to push past her.

  She sidesteps so she still blocks my way. ‘Cost you nothing.’

  ‘Where can I find him?’

  ‘Not a penny.’

  ‘I don’t want my fortune told! But I’d give you five shillings gladly if you told me where to find him.’

  ‘For nothing, I’ll tell you this. You’ve a whore’s past, and a poet’s future.’

  ‘Get out of my way!’

  I turn, but now face a much older creature, shrivelled and black.

  ‘Beware of slip-shod words,’ she says. She looks into me with unseeing eyes. ‘Words will make you, and undo you. You will aim too high, and fall too low.’

  ‘What are you – lunatics? Or purse-thieves?’ I look behind me. ‘Are there three of you, a third to pick my pocket?’

  ‘Beware of your own wit,’ says the first woman, her voice whispering in my ear. ‘Your human pride.’

  ‘As for your son…’ The crone’s flesh reeks of piss and sweet decay.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The plague is coming.’

  ‘The plague is always coming. No wonder your predictions cost nothing.’

  ‘Not like this.’

  And then – they are gone.

  I spin round, full circle, hemmed in by the throng of fair-goers, the tricksters and the tricked. Then, stop. Another face. Smiling at me, all rouged and painted. A face out of place and time.

  ‘Well, how delightful!’ it says. ‘Aemilia Bassano! I would not have known you.’ A dramatic and unnecessary curtsey, and I have time to work out who this is.

  ‘Lettice Cooper.’ We were Court ladies together, ten years ago. She is flanked by two servants.

  ‘Lady Lettice,’ she says, ‘to you.’ She raises her eyebrows in disdain so that her manservant smirks to oblige her (odious palace arse-licker). If I have changed, then so has she. Always careful of her looks, she has plucked and powdered herself out of existence. She has taken Her Majesty for a model, and to no good effect, having made herself a doll-face of false surprise.

  She hands her purse to her serving woman, and holds out her hand. I take it. Her fingers are silky, slippery.

  ‘You!’ she says. ‘Who was once so beautiful! I would never have thought it!’

  ‘Thought what? That I would turn out such a hag?’

  ‘Oh! My dear, have you quite lost your mind? Why would I say such a thing? They say the natural look will be in next year. In France, the ladies are letting their hair grow quite low on the forehead. You will be all the rage.’

  ‘Lettice…’

  ‘Lady Lettice…’

  ‘I have lost my son…’

  ‘He is dead?’

  ‘Only lost – mislaid…’

  ‘It comes as no surprise. I’ve heard you spoil that bastard boy and he runs wild.’

  ‘I had forgot the ways of Court.’

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘Common people have better manners.’

  A neat, malicious smile. ‘I see Alfonso, from time to time, of course. In the distance. Quite the merry thing, those tunes from Mr Tallis. Dear Alfonso. With his little pipe…’

  As she moves away, she seems to remember something. ‘Oh – Aemilia. Oddly enough, I met a man the other day who was asking after you. That jumped-up fellow who used to be with the Lord Chamberlain’s Men. With the awful accent, you know?’

  ‘No, I don’t.’

  ‘Face of a clerk, but wears an earring. Arrogant, for a provincial.’

  Arrogant is clue enough. And she would know his name in any case. He has been doing very well for himself of late.

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘Mmm… can’t quite think. Oh, well – it can’t have been important…’

  ‘If you see him again, tell him I hope he burns in hell.’

  ‘What, the author of those pretty sonnets? He pleases everyone, they say.’

  ‘Not all his sonnets are pretty, your ladyship, and he certainly does not please me.’

  She bows her head, seeming delighted with our exchange. ‘Do you know, I believe that his star may continue to ascend, even without your blessing?’ She walks on.

  Then, through a gap in the crowd, I see Henry, staring up at a sugar-plum stall. I catch up my dress and struggle through the mob, taking no notice of the shouts of annoyance as I elbow my way forward.

  ‘Henry, for God’s sake! I have been so worried! What were you thinking of, running off like that?’

>   He is crying. ‘I’m sorry, Mother. I said bad words to you. The Devil tempted me.’

  I hug him tight. His body is burly, already hard-muscled. He is growing up a manly man, the equal of anyone, if not their better.

  ‘I don’t deserve a sugar-plum, do I?’ he says. ‘Though they are so round and sweet to look at.’

  ‘No, you don’t.’

  ‘Not even one. You must punish me, so that my character will be built up strong.’

  ‘Not even one.’ I squeeze him tighter.

  ‘I’m a bad, rude, evil creature.’

  ‘Bad and rude, Henry.’ I bend down and kiss his hair. ‘But never evil.’

  The stall is heaped with sweets and fancies made from sugar and marzipan. There are animals, birds and tiny baskets. Wine glasses, dishes, playing cards and little flutes, all made as dainty and perfect as God’s creation. I’ve seen such craftsmanship at Court, painstakingly fashioned for royal banquets. But never outside the palace. Even there, they were not as beautiful as this luscious, lustrous fruit. The sugar-plums are piled head high, a rampart of dark pinks and soft purples, frosted with sugar like a fairy shroud. I look at the stall-holder. She is as lovely as her dainty wares, fair-skinned, with yellow hair plaited tightly back from her brow.

  ‘How many do we get for a halfpenny?’ I ask.

  She smiles. ‘Two pocketfuls, mistress.’

  ‘Go on, then, Henry,’ I say, pushing him forward.

  She fills his pockets and I give her the coin.

  ‘One for you?’ says Henry, turning to me with his best smile.

  ‘One for me.’ I choose a fat, mauve fruit. The sugar tingles on my lips as I bite into it. But my attention is distracted – I see the two witch-women, sitting on the ground just by the stall… I bite down, and my tooth cracks on the plum-stone. There is a sudden pain, a knife-jab in my gums.

  I grab my jaw. ‘See – there!’ I shout.

  Henry turns to look, mouth full. ‘What? Where?’

  They have disappeared. A trumpet band starts up. A troupe of acrobats is turning cartwheels. A bear begins to dance, its moaning growl like human words.

  I peer distractedly. ‘Nothing. Just… nothing.’

  ‘Did you hurt your mouth?’ says Henry.

  ‘I think so.’ I take the mush of plum, sugar and gore out of my mouth and look at it in my palm. There is a shard of tooth there. More than that. Half a molar.

  ‘So much blood, Mother!’ says Henry. He seems well satisfied. ‘Would you like another one?’

  Scene II

  At first the pain is a hot, tender spot in my mouth, nothing more. My tongue keeps searching for it, poking into the fiery hole which had once been filled with tooth. All about it, my gum is raw and swollen. At breakfast time, I soak my bread in weak ale and suck down the brownish porridge like an infant. In the evenings, even though it is summertime, I sit on a stool near the fire, warming my naked feet as if soothing one part of my body would bring relief to another. It does nothing of the kind, of course. I force myself to think about something else. There is no shortage of subjects to think about, after all. Money, motherhood, the uncertain future, and the business of being married to a flimsy and improvident musician. And that isn’t all. As well as the throbbing hole in my mouth, my day at the Fair has left me with a feeling of unease and dread, like a drunk’s dawn gloom.

  So I try to distract myself with reading. I once knew the great libraries of England: it is from these places that I have furnished the small library in my own head. And I have a few books still. I love to smell them and feel their pages beneath my fingers. They are kept in different parts of the house, so they come easily to hand when I have a moment to myself. I read with so much intensity that my head reels, for learning is there, and facts and a treasure chest of oddments of the world, trapped in ink. In the solar there is Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, of course, and in the kitchen I keep Job Hortop’s Travels next to the simples cupboard, being the tale of an old man who was press-ganged and sent on the Guinea voyage of 1567 and saw two of his company slain and eaten by sea-horses. And his ship captured a most monstrous Alligator, which had a hog’s head and a serpent’s body but was scaled in every part, each scale the size of a saucer, and with a long and knotted tail and they baited it with a dog and caught it with their ropes.

  As I stir the pot in the kitchen I feast my mind upon Hortop’s wild tales, of how he and his companions fell among the Indians and were cruelly treated, but then discovered good Christian Indians (for such a thing is possible, it seems), and later found a sea creature who was half-man, half-fish, and his upper body brown as a mulatto. Then he went from there to Spain, where he was put to torture by the Inquisition (for good Christian Spaniards conduct themselves like savages) and two of his shipmates were burned, but he was sent to the galleys, which he rowed for ten years.

  What I believe is that such a rollicking life of colour and calamity is the only kind a man should have, this life being a brief slit between two measureless eternities, and by ‘man’ I mean man and woman, for there would be no man alive today without the fairer sex and men are not half as clever as they think themselves and we are more than twice as strong as we let on.

  Oh, and in my bedroom, to distract me from Alfonso’s curtainlectures about his great importance at Court, I keep Harington’s translation of Orlando Furioso. Which tells the story of a man who – his wife being false – ranges over the whole of Europe looking for a good woman yet finds not one. This story so annoyed the Queen that she called Harington – who was her godson – to her Presence Chamber and gave him her harsh opinion. Of course, I agreed with Her Majesty that such stories are vile bawdy and not for Court ladies, yet, being no longer one of their number, I can both laugh at these naughty women and share a little of their forbidden lust, remembering my own misdoings and those little secret come-cries that we fist-muffle when we must. Such memories I will take as close to the graveside as I dare, and offer them up in exchange for Eternal Redemption at the moment of my last breath.

  Some of my books have been wrote by women, too. I wish I could say these are the best of them, but this is not so. Compared to Hortop’s terrifying journeys, reading the Countess of Pembroke’s Ivychurch and Emanuel (translations from Mr Tasso) is like walking with a prelate in a country garden. Though her hexameters are handsome and there is no such thing as a book which is worthless. I have read her works with close attention, schoolboylike, and they are all excellently rhymed.

  I pick up the Martyrs, and then Hortop, but cannot lose myself in them as is my usual custom. I am on the outside, and the worlds inside their covers are locked in. And I can’t evict the memory of Lettice Cooper from my mind. Her talk of the poet and his sonnets disturbs me. My old lover has remade the form. He sent me a bundle of verses, written out in his own hand, full of bile and hatred for me and everything that we’d done. My only comfort is that they have not been printed. I have never thanked him for his poisoned gift, and prefer to think him dead. I should have burned them, but could not. In any case, each one has lodged itself in my mind, which keeps them stored neatly and for all time. I am the victim of my fine memory. All of them retain the power to hurt me, but there is one which is stuck fast, and goes round and round my head, day after day.

  Stuck it is, stuck as a pig in dung. I sit in my room, and my head is full of it. The casement window has a high view of Long Ditch, and Camm Row beyond.

  Th’expense of spirit in a waste of shame

  Is lust in action, and till action lust

  Is perjured, murdr’ous, bloody, full of blame…

  This is the present moment, respectable. Actual. To the east, I can see the towers of Whitehall Palace; beyond that is Charing Cross, where Cockspur meets the Strand.

  Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust,

  Enjoyed no sooner, but despised straight,

  Past reason hunted and no sooner had…

  ‘No sooner had’! Oh, you had me, sir, right enough; you had me for a h
arlot and a fool. To the north are the fields of Haymarket and St Martin’s, to the west, open country.

  Mad in pursuit, and in possession so,

  Had, having, and in quest to have, extreme,

  A bliss in proof, and, proved, a very woe,

  Before a joy proposed, behind, a dream…

  ‘And, proved, a very woe’. That’s me, the proven woe, the peerless whore, only enticing when unfucked; once fucked, I’m beastly, loathsome, ugly. A sly witch in a tale. You cannot see the river from this chamber, but if you stick your head out of the window you can hear the shouts of the wherrymen touting for business at the water’s edge.

  All this the world well knows, yet none knows well

  To shun the Heav’n that leads men to this Hell.

  You had me, Will, and you had no pity for me, and you have me still.

  It is two days since my accident with the sugar-plum. Alfonso is standing in the downstairs hall, practising his monotonous tunes. His lips are pursed and his childish pipe trills out its familiar fluting patterns. The highest notes bore inside my jawbone.

  ‘Alfonso?’ Against my cheek I hold a linen bag, filled with burned and powdered rosemary wood. It has been prepared with great care by Joan, our old serving woman.

  My husband lowers the recorder, a patient expression on his face. ‘What, dear Aemilia?’

  ‘When are you going to give me some money?’

  ‘Quite soon, my love.’ Off he goes again.

  ‘How soon?’

  An even more forgiving expression, worthy of St Peter. ‘I’m a musician, not an alchemist, sweet chuck…’

  ‘I don’t expect you to make gold from base metal; I expect you to earn it.’

  ‘When the concert is over.’

  ‘Which concert?’

  ‘The concert for the Queen’s birthday. We get five shillings extra, apiece.’

  ‘So till then we starve.’

  He starts again, the notes in beautiful order, his life a mess of debt and deceit.

  Joan is making her slow way down the staircase with a pail of rainwater. She is a narrow scrawn of a woman, and as she grows older it seems the years are scraping the flesh from her bones. Now Joan is a common name in London, but this is the very same Joan Daunt who owned the apothecary’s shop in Bucklersbury. It was burned down by a mob the night that I summoned her to help at Henry’s birth. And all its precious contents went up with it: the jars and vials and herbs and potions, the tinctures and the spices and rare ingredients from Turkey, China and beyond. Henry was a breech-baby. Born backwards, and would have died if it had not been for Joan.