‘And my son?’
‘He is downstairs. He’s asked for the tooth, but I’m not sure it’s safe to give it to him.’
I rub my face, and stretch out my arms, which are stiff and painful. ‘Never saw such vileness, you say? I find that hard to believe. A man with your wide experience of all things unspeakable and horrid.’
‘I know you have a sharp tongue, Mistress Lanyer, but within a few days you would have been dead from this infection, and lying in your grave. I won’t take the conventional remuneration from such an old friend as you, but a little gratitude would be an appropriate payment, I feel.’
Joan looks at him, quizzical. ‘Gratitude? Isn’t her money good enough for you?’
‘Mistress Lanyer is well known to me,’ says the doctor. ‘I would rather have her friendship than her gold.’
Joan pulls a leather money-bag from her basket and holds it out to him. ‘Take this, and let us keep it strictly business. Gratitude smacks of debts that stay unpaid.’
‘Joan, let it be,’ I tell her.
She looks at me, her green eyes cold. ‘There is some magic which is better measured by a pile of coin. Or else the scent of it will linger, like a sick dog’s stench.’
‘Joan!’
‘It was a simple request for thanks,’ says Dr Forman, bowing stiffly. He stares at me. I had forgotten the strangeness of his gaze, withdrawn and mesmerising at once. Last time I saw him, he was as ginger as a squirrel. Now his beard and hair are grey. He wears both long, as if styling himself a magus or a necromancer. And his robes are both mystical and splendid – his coat and breeches are purple velvet. Magic and medicine must have made him a rich man.
I sit up and swing my legs down to the floor. ‘Thank you, Simon. I am sorry for my ill manners.’
‘And so you should be, mistress,’ says Joan. ‘We’d given you up for dead.’
‘You have skill in healing?’ the doctor asks her.
Joan folds her arms across her chest. ‘More than skill. It’s in my blood.’
The doctor bows again, and smiles his sweetest smile. ‘Then you have the better of me, most assuredly. What I know is merely the stuff of book-learning and weary application.’
‘Will you like something to eat?’ I ask.
‘Thank you, you are kind. It is so many years since we have spoken. I have often thought of you, wondering how my predictions served you.’
Joan leaves to prepare some food.
Forman settles himself back in his chair. ‘Well, well, Aemilia! If I were not a student of the constellations, I would call this a stroke of luck. As it is, I can see that the stars were in a most propitious alignment today. Which, if I may say so, marks a change where you are concerned.’
‘I have not been blessed with great luck, except that I have my dear son Henry.’
He takes my hand and spreads out my palm. ‘Dear, oh, dear. Hmm. What? You know full well the stars are not windows to the future, but perform a similar function to that which they fulfil on a dark night.’
‘They shine, and they are mysterious.’
‘Quite so, quite so.’
He looks at my palm again, frowning. ‘Still scribbling at your verse, I see.’
‘As often as I can. In the early morning, sometimes, or at the very dead of night.’
‘Make time for those scrawled words. Make time for your mind.’
‘I do, sir.’
He strokes his fingers across mine. ‘I was hoping you might visit me for a friendly halek, dear lady, a little knee-trembler for old times’ sake.’
I pull my hand away. ‘Even though I have never fucked you in the past?’ Forman is the only man I ever knew who had his own word for fornication: a clear sign of his dedication to that craft.
‘Did you not? Ah, then, it is just that dreams and memories can entwine in the most confusing manner. In honour of many a merry skirmish, then, shall we say?’
‘The answer is no.’
He sighs. ‘You are cruel. But now…’
‘Now, what?’
‘Now, I feel that our time would be better spent looking, as far as we may with such feeble instruments as I possess, into the future. The possible, probable, potential future, as we astrologists like to say.’
He produces a pack of Tarot cards from a pocket inside his cloak. They are of ancient and arcane design. The pictures show men with the heads of eagles, and strange nymphs with gold faces and serpents for hair.
‘Shuffle these,’ he says, and I do so. He lays them out before me, face-down and with their edges overlapping. ‘Choose three,’ he says. ‘Not in haste, but without too much thinking. Let your intuition lead you.’
I choose them, and he turns them over, one by one. In the centre is the glorious figure of an Empress, clothed in scarlet. On her left side are two Lovers, arms and legs entwined. And on her right hand is the mounted figure of grim Death.
‘What does this mean?’ I ask.
But he is silent again. Then he picks up the card which shows the Lovers, and puts it down in front of me.
‘This is a most auspicious card. When you came to see me… before… there was a certain poet in your stars.’
‘That was a long time ago.’
‘He loves you still.’
‘Now I know there are limits to your magic. He does not love me in the least.’
‘We are speaking of the same man, I take it?’
‘We are speaking of one who wrote me the most vicious, evil lines I ever saw.’
‘That cannot be!’
‘Some poets write pretty sonnets to their lady-love. Not he. If there is such a thing as a hate sonnet, then I have been presented with that very thing.’
‘A passing mood, perhaps? He feared he couldn’t have you.’
‘A very sheaf of loathing. I am, in his eyes, such a Muse as you might encounter in the fires of Hell.’
He stares at the cards, eyes half-closed.
‘So you are wrong,’ I say.
‘No. There is no mistake.’ He pats my shoulder. ‘Oh, my dear Aemilia. What travails you have had. I wish that I could tell you that they are over.’
I look at the Death card and shiver. ‘So, what does it mean?’
‘You must be brave, and resourceful, and bold, to cope with what is yet to come. Yet I have faith in you. And there is brightness, too, if you will only see it. There is love.’
From the same pocket which had held the pack of cards he draws out a pamphlet. The title reads ‘Malleus Maleficarum, Maleficas, & earum haeresim, ut phramea potentissima conterens.’
‘The Hammer of Witches,’ I translate. ‘Which destroyeth witches and their heresy as with a two-edged sword. This has nothing to do with me! Why are you giving me this book, of all books?’
‘Not a particularly romantic gift, I fear, but you may find it instructive. And… well. There is something that you must do – of an urgent and peculiar nature.’
I look at the pamphlet, puzzled.
‘What is done cannot be undone, but what has come in consequence… Well. I can say no more. There is no time now to do a proper reading. Let me just say that there is much to know in this field, much you do not understand, and that there is something evil here. Something beyond ill-wishing. Come and talk to me again.’
‘I am not a fool, Dr Forman. And I have had my fill of aged lovers.’
‘My dear! You quite mistake my meaning. I would like to help you.’
‘Very handsome of you.’
He bends closer, and I see a glint of something like fear in his eyes. And yet, what is there to be afraid of? ‘Aemilia, you have a good mind, and more than enough curiosity. I asked you once what you knew of magic. Do you know more now?’
‘A little.’
‘From that servant of yours?’
‘She’s taught me a few remedies, and I can make a potion or a poultice for most of the common ailments.’
‘Yes, yes. That is useful enough – but what you need is something whi
ch goes beyond the household skills of women. Something to help you in the most severe and terrible adversity.’
‘What sort of something?’
‘There is no time to tell you now. If I am not mistaken, I hear your serving-woman’s footsteps on the stairs. But be sure of this: there are dark days ahead of you.’
Scene IV
Today I rise early, with the words of Dr Forman in my head. What are these ‘dark days’? Can they be avoided? There is no doubt that the old lecher knows what he is about. Not only has he cured the infection, and not only is there barely a scar to show where the cursed tooth has been – all my other little aches and torments have gone. Those besetting symptoms that all of us in London must put up with: soot-wheeze, ale-runs, head-gripe, back-ache, lassitude and dread-belly – not to mention sundry scabs, carbuncles and lesions of the skin – all such ailments have vanished.
I get up and sit at the little table by the window, and look at the books and pages that are stacked in order there. I have little money for paper, so I have taken to scribbling in the margins of my books, adding my own thoughts to those of Hortop and Plato. What was Forman’s advice? ‘Make time for those scrawled words. Make time for your mind.’ Make time – now there’s an exhortation! If only I could. I would spin it, the way that other housewives spin their wool, and I would fill the house with it, the product of my labours. I would weave sheets of genius and sheaves of golden poetry, the harvest of my hours. Standing up, I stretch my arms upward, letting my mind’s attention dwell on every inch of my body. Every inch is free of pain. My body is well; my mind still rages in its skull. If I wish to be well in my mind, then I must write, and there is no cure for my ambition, and thank the Lord for that.
I cross to the mirror. Has Forman’s art restored some of my lost beauty? I see that I am not, as Lettice claimed, a woman old before her time. My hair is still black, without a single streak of white; my skin is unlined. My eyes, so much admired in the past, are dark, watchful, unblinking. When I look into them, I cannot tell what I am thinking. Perhaps I am still beautiful. Perhaps I might triumph over other matters. What is there to be afraid of? The plague? We have always lived with its comings and its goings. Fogs and dunghill odours bear contagion. Some say that Death is trapped in rugs and feather beds, and cover their faces when they pass a woollen draper’s shop. Alfonso stuffs his dainty nose with herb-grace. Joan, with her store of soothing cures and potions, greets each new outbreak by hanging the house with rue. God will protect us, surely, until it is our time to meet Him. After all, there are ten thousand ways for Death to cut you down.
And so, in the days that follow I think, Let God’s will be done. I can write my words, cross-hatched and cramped sideways in the margins of the works of great and famous men. I can gnaw at a chicken leg, delighting in the taste and texture of the meat, the greasiness of the bone. I am alive and well. The sun has forgotten us, the skies are dark and the streets and lanes are torrents of rainwater.
Yet what do I care if the sun shines, or the rain falls? I must go to the baker’s, and the chandler’s, to the cobbler and tailor, with my basket over my arm. And the mud and summer drizzle make me smile, even though my skirts are smeared with pavement mire, and I must barter for cheat-bread.
Do I think of Will? I will confess I do, for I see him every time I look at Henry, and even the touch of my own face reminds me of Will’s skin. The Greeks knew far more of emotion than we do, and there is no English word for the feeling that I carry with me, shamed and rejected by the only man I ever loved. The Greek word is pothos – milder than wild eros but longer-lasting: a longing for someone unobtainable or far away. The nearest word we have is ‘yearning’. I yearn for the Will I’ve lost, the Will who loved me, and who will never come again. But I can make my mind blank, keep memory in a little box.
A fortnight after my meeting with the doctor, there is a loud knock on the door. Anne Flood is standing there, dressed in her usual absurd splendour, head trussed in a new style of starched ruff – French, I dare say – which seems fit to throttle her. I let her in and return to my task: I am marking out a pie crust, pressing my right thumb in a firm pattern round its edge.
‘Aemilia!’ she says. ‘I have an invitation for you.’
‘An invitation to what, Anne?’ I have a feeling this will be an event I would rather not attend.
‘Oh, it’s Tom’s first big performance! He is in a new play at the Globe. We are off tomorrow afternoon, and should be so delighted if you would come.’
My thumb jerks and rips the pastry, but I don’t look up. ‘Alfonso is at Court.’
‘Come yourself! Bring Henry. And Joan, too. You should be there, not only because you are my good neighbour and have known Tom since he was an infant, but because of the very part he is playing.’
Graymalkin, as if curious to hear more, unfurls himself from his position next to the smouldering fire, and comes grandly over, blinking and stretching.
‘The very part? He is the leading lady?’
‘Oh, no, he is too green yet for that. Only fifteen, you know, for all he is so tall! No, he is a second-ranking character, but one essential to the plot. Or so he tells me. I have only seen the pages with his lines.’
‘I fear I am –’
‘But wait, wait till you hear! His character is you!’
A coldness in the air, a north breeze. I put the pie in the oven and slam the door. ‘How is it me?’
‘Aemilia!’ Anne looks triumphant. ‘He is a serving lady called Aemilia! It must be you. A friend of Mr Shakespeare’s as you were. And I doubt he knows many Venetians, and the play is set in Venice. It’s about a Moor.’
‘Anne, I’m not a Venetian, I was born at Bishopsgate…’
‘Yes, but your father was. And he named you. And this “Aemilia” is cynical and worldly, and has a speech making little of men! You! To the very life!’ She seems to think that I should share in her delight.
‘I…’ But, before I can think up my excuse, Henry is here, all bounce and frenzy. He falls over the cat, who runs away, furious, to lay waste to some rats.
‘Mother! You are in a play! How good! Can we be at the front? Can we be groundlings? Please! I want to be a groundling. John Feather and John Dokes have both been groundlings, and they saw a whore suck a –’
‘We are busy, Henry; we must –’
‘We are not busy, Mother. You were going to make me swot my Latin.’
‘It is most historical,’ says Anne, seeing how to play it. ‘Based on the Decameron, says Tom. Mr Shakespeare translated it himself, he’s quite the linguist. Though not as handsome as Mr Burbage, I have to say.’
‘Please, Mother!’ Henry grips my arm and squeezes tight. ‘One afternoon of Latin is not going to make me an Oxford man. And Tom is my very best friend. I shall be heartbroken if you say no.’
I count it a small victory that I have not set foot in the Globe for ten years. Nor have I been to the Rose, nor the Curtain, nor the Swan, nor the Fortune. All London might be in thrall to the theatre, but not me. And yet. I can’t lie: as we come up to the great entrance gate to the play house, part of a dense London throng, I am as curious as Henry, who is leaping and dancing and singing like a Bedlam boy. Joan has him by the arm, a grim set to her smile (she has no love for a play). I, meanwhile, am borne along by Anne, who is twenty times as giddy and talkative as my cavorting son.
‘You see there?’ She gestures at a portly nymph ahead of us in the line, with tight-curled hair and a tavern laugh. ‘Breasts quite out – it’s all the thing, they say, at Court. And yet, look, she’s straight off to the pit, for all her gown is of silk taffeta.’
‘A whore, Anne, as any fool can see.’
‘Whore? Where, Mother?’ comes from behind.
‘Never mind that, Henry, you are here to see the play,’ says Joan.
‘What great big nipples has she, though! Half the size of her dugs! Mine are tiny beside hers.’ Anne is frowning at the sight.
‘Oh, y
es, I see them now!’ says Henry. ‘Big as conkers!’
‘Enough of this, in front of the child, Anne!’
‘I quite forgot myself, forgive me.’ But her expert eye has distracted her again. ‘Is that Mr Burbage? Over there, with the gold and silver girdle? I am sure it must be him! Look at his actor’s bearing – a true player, wouldn’t you say?’
‘That isn’t Burbage. He will be in the tiring-house, waiting to go on.’
‘It’s him. Mr Burbage! Over here!’
‘Not if he is the lead, which it says he is, on the playbill.’ I flutter the bill before her face. ‘Why would he be out here, gawping at the crowd?’
But Anne looks vague. She does not like me to draw attention to the fact that I can read.
Through the gate ahead of us, I can see the afternoon sun tilting down on to the pit, gilding the crowd that is gathering there. Eight-sided, the great Globe, like a Roman amphitheatre for our own day, the centre open to the air, the surrounding walls and galleries thatched. I have my pennies ready, to pay for a gallery bench, but Anne will have none of it: she pays for each of us. We push our way along, past the doorkeeper and into the bright ‘O’ beyond. Henry bouncing up and down, no matter what Joan does to try and quiet him.
The crowd is an unruly mix, with only beggars and the drunkest fools kept out. While all of London, and of England, may be divided in rank and importance, with attention to each man’s smallest difference in wealth or status or the opinion of his peers, here is a place where no one quite knows where he stands – excepting only that he should have a good view of the stage. Court folk and well-bred dandies might dance around each other, puffing pipes and opining on the latest works of Dekker, Middleton and the rest; but they are perilous close to all who seek to fleece them; the knaves and tricksters, cozeners and coney-catching foists. And there are also plenty of the middling folk among them: cheery shoemakers, solid burghers and prentice-boys, daft with youth. The finery of the rich is half-hidden in the crush of sallow kersey, dun coats and rough-sewn jerkins, so that here you might see a flash of bright velvet, there a yellow ruff, so big it blocks the view of those behind, and there again an azure ostrich feather, nodding prettily above the rollicking crowd.
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