Dark Aemilia

by Sally O’Reilly

  We climb the stairs and reach our place, and I look around me. I had forgotten how grand the inside of a theatre can be. It is like entering a great cathedral before they stripped out the gold and daubed lime over the frescoes, but better, for there is no homily to endure. The main stage, set at the far end of the pit, has vast pillars on each side, painted in a swirling pattern to resemble marble. Above the stage is a canopy held up by two smaller pillars: the Heavens, decorated with the sun and moon and celestial bodies. Gold and scarlet hangings cover the back of the stage, hiding the tiring-house, and green rushes are strewn upon the stage itself. Running out into the pit is a long, narrow walkway, so the actors might dance among the groundlings.

  The musicians are already assembling on the balcony, blowing and strumming raggedly. A few young blades are taking their places on the edge of the stage, perched on three-legged stools, as eager to be part of the spectacle as they are to get a good view.

  ‘Well,’ says Anne, ‘this is pleasant. I do so love a play.’ She offers me a Seville orange, and I shake my head, nausea beginning to rise up in my throat. ‘I don’t for the life of me know what ails you,’ she says. ‘Why are you all on edge?’

  ‘I am not well.’

  She peels her orange with her squat white fingers. ‘What is the matter?’

  ‘I finished off a mutton pottage last night; perhaps it disagreed with me.’

  Just then, something digs into my back. I turn, thinking it must be Henry. ‘Keep still, child, can’t you?’

  But it is not Henry. It is a hunchback dwarf, bent over nearly double, so his head looks as if it is growing out of his chest. He is dressed well, like a prosperous guildsman. And yet this man does not belong to any guild. This is my landlord, Anthony Inchbald.

  ‘Mr Inchbald,’ I say. ‘Good day to you, I am sure.’

  ‘A pleasure to see you, as always, Mistress Lanyer. I suppose your husband told you I had called?’

  ‘Sadly, no.’

  ‘His mind seemed… occupied elsewhere.’

  ‘I trust your visit was successful?’

  He worms his way forward and settles himself next to me on the bench, legs dangling. He looks straight ahead, very calm.

  ‘This will be a fine production,’ he says. ‘Love, and blood, and tragic death. What more can you ask for from a play?’

  ‘What indeed?’ say I.

  ‘Though it’s hard enough for a poet to keep pace with nature. I went to the bear garden yesterday. Saw the great beast Harry Hunks kill off four greyhounds, with a few claw-punches and much assurance!’

  ‘Oh, sir!’ says Henry, staring at Inchbald, wide-eyed. ‘What joy!’

  ‘One landed in the lap of the lady next to me, with two legs missing,’ says Inchbald.

  ‘By Our Lady! There could be nothing finer,’ says Henry. ‘I wish I could go. Mother keeps me from everything, I may as well live in a dog kennel for all the sport I see.’

  ‘And there were rockets and fireworks, and hungry vagrants fighting for some bread and apples, and it all ended with an ape on horseback.’

  ‘What are words compared to that?’ I say, avoiding his gaze and staring into the crowd below, where I can see two cutpurses jostling their prey. One stuffs a purse into his doublet even as I watch.

  Inchbald squints round at me. ‘There was no success to be had.’

  ‘At the bear pit?’

  ‘At your house in Long Ditch.’

  ‘I am sorry for that.’

  He smiles. His two teeth are like twin pegs on a line. ‘Nothing, in short, to be had at all. The cupboard, in a phrase, was bare. And yet you have the money for the Globe! I admire this, for I share your passion. A woman who would sooner be homeless than miss the latest offering from the Lord Chamberlain’s Men. This I must applaud, even as I call the bailiffs to your door.’

  ‘She is my guest, Mr Inchbald,’ says Anne, leaning over me in a flurry of importance. Her house, too, belongs to him. ‘We are all good friends here this afternoon. Your business can wait for another day.’ She pats him playfully on the wrist. I am surprised she can bear to touch him.

  ‘We have no business,’ I say.

  ‘Oh, I think we have,’ says Inchbald. ‘As long as I have your house, then we have business.’

  ‘Ask my husband; he will pay you.’

  ‘Your husband has air for brains. And his promises are worth less than a strumpet’s virtue.’

  ‘If he pays you, then who cares about his useless promises?’

  ‘He has paid me nothing but promises all year.’

  I look away, my face hot. What has my husband been up to now? Alfonso does not earn much, but it is enough to pay our rent. As long as he doesn’t spend it first. But he can be trusted with nothing. I am like a widow with two sons, not a wife with one child. Lucky I keep a stash of Hunsdon’s gold hid from him, to insure me against the debtors’ clink.

  ‘What can I give you? I have no money of my own. All I have is the idea for a pamphlet.’

  ‘Words pay no debts. Give me deeds, Mistress Lanyer, give me money.’

  ‘It’s about the subjugation of Eve.’

  ‘Hardly a subject to keep a roof over your head!’

  ‘I also have a poem, a ballad, in the voice of Mary Magdalene.’

  ‘Who will buy a ballad by a woman? I am as likely to purchase the tale of a tortoise, or the confessions of a crow.’

  ‘Hush!’ says Anne. ‘The play is starting!’

  Just as the trumpets and hautboys call us to order, there is a commotion in the pit. A fight seems to have broken out, somewhere near the stage.

  I peer down, trying to get a better look. ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘Some kind of disorder,’ says Anne, standing up and shading her eyes with her hand.

  ‘It’s that freak Moll Cutpurse,’ says Inchbald. ‘They should lock her up for lewdness.’

  There’s a loud shriek, laughter, and then a figure seems to surge up out of the assembled mass, like a homunculus emerging from the mud. A young man is lifted on to the stage.

  ‘Moll? A Molly-boy, from the stews?’

  ‘A woman, if you can call it that,’ says Inchbald. ‘A blot on nature.’

  The figure is sitting crookedly upon the boards, flat upon its arse with its legs splayed wide, face hidden by a wide-brimmed hat. Someone is calling from the crowd.

  ‘A song, Moll Cutpurse! Give us one of your sweet songs!’

  ‘An air, a dainty air to set the scene!’ yells another voice. One of the law students on the stage gets up and gives her something. It is a lute. At the back of the stage I see a Fool, arms folded, laughing.

  ‘Who’s that?’ I whisper to Anne.

  ‘Robert Armin,’ she says. ‘Now, he’s a saucy fellow!’

  Moll Cutpurse sets the lute down with deliberation, then struggles, with great difficulty, to her feet. She throws down her hat and picks up the lute. She has a round, peasant face, and a huge red mouth, so that she is clown-like even without paint. Her hair is cut short like a boy’s. In spite of this, and in spite of her doublet and breeches, there is something in the set of her shoulders and her way of strumming the lute which is pleasing. She bows, very low, as if she has already concluded a great performance. The audience claps and cheers. Some oranges are thrown on to the stage. She picks up two of these, and puts them in her shirt.

  ‘You are most kindly, ladies, boys and men,’ she shouts, bowing again. ‘I shall repay this richness with some little ditty which I have made, adapted from thin air and the drunkish songs of bawds. If you are of a fribbling, foul-faced disposition, then close your ears. If not, kindly open them.’

  ‘What else will you have us open, Moll?’ shouts someone.

  ‘Your purses, sir,’ she calls back. ‘Pull ’em back widely, at the lip.’

  ‘Have you a sword, to entertain us?’

  ‘No, sir, but poke me with yours and you’ll get a shock.’

  ‘I’ll poke you any time!’

  ‘Th
en you are in for fine sport. For I’m more wit-worm than wanton.’

  Lots of screeching and guffawing at this.

  ‘A wanton worm!’

  ‘A worming wanton!’

  ‘Wriggle-me-ree, Moll!’

  ‘Wriggle with me!’

  Then the shout goes up: ‘A song, a song! Let’s hear the bashful lady’s song!’ So she begins to sing, in a strong voice:

  ‘There were three drunken maidens

  Come from the Isle of Whyte

  They drank from Sunday morning

  Didn’t stop till Saturday night.’

  Another bow, and she begins to play her lute, not badly, though the notes do have a habit of sliddering around the tune. And then she goes on with her pretty ditty:

  ‘When Saturday night did come, me boys,

  They wouldn’t then go out

  These three drunken maidens

  They pushed the jug about.’

  Many people in the audience seem to know the words quite well, for there is much singing along and waving of caps. The song becomes a great roar:

  ‘There’s forty quarts of beer, me boys

  They fairly drunk them out

  These three drunken maidens

  They fetched their sweet dugs out!’

  Wild laughter and hooting follows, and coins shower on to the stage as well as oranges. Moll scoops these up quick: I see that she is not too drunk to forget her business, nor to sing while she gathers up her fee.

  ‘O where are your feathered hats

  Your mantles rich and fine?

  They’ve all been swallowed up

  In tankards of good wine.’

  Now, the crowd goes quiet again, and Moll sings sweetly, seeming to have got her voice properly now, and she sounds like a perfect angel, sitting on a heavenly cloud:

  ‘And where are your maidenheads

  You maidens brisk and gay?

  We left them in the ale house

  We drank them clean away.’

  Here is Armin, strutting his way along the walkway, smiling this way and that, his feet beating like drumsticks on the boards. He whirls Moll round, arm in arm, faster and faster, dancing around like a shittle-cock, till finally she flies off the stage and falls back into the crowd, roaring as she goes. (Though whether in sport or anger I can’t tell.) So many arms are raised to catch her that she falls upon a feather bed of groundlings. She marches away, still singing. I watch her go, wondering if she is the first free woman I have seen in all my life.

  The play begins. It is called Othello, the Moor of Venice. It is the worst and most lamentable tale, which makes you want to climb up on the stage and bang the players’ heads together to set them straight. Othello, all talk and no sense, has the music of the language but no understanding of its hidden meanings. He chooses his wife wisely: she is a good and virtuous woman. (Though not sharp enough to keep her man in order.) His deputy, Iago, is recruited from the gates of Hell, being more or less a devil. Othello seems proud, but does not love himself well enough to trust his wife, and so he kills her. Murders her flat-out, in her nightgown. The thing he loves above all else, more than himself.

  Well! There is no need. He is a Blackamoor, so it’s a play to set the talk going, and he is mad in love with his fair wife. Could such a man exist? He is not half-beast, but demi-god. And his words have more tune in them than the oboes, lutes and viols that play between the acts. I know it is only Burbage who marches upon the stage, his face blacked, his voice mellifluous. But I believe he is the Moor. Then, my breath leaves me.

  On to the stage comes bold Aemilia, serving maid to Desdemona, wife to Iago. Anne clutches my hand. ‘Oh, Tom! The naughty baggage!’ she says. Her boy is beautiful in his vivid scarlet dress (there is one of exactly that colour, hid away in my chamber in a cedar chest). His wig is black as a raven’s wing, corkscrew-curled like Medusa’s. (I touch my own black hair, as if to check it is not stolen.) He turns to Iago, hands on hips, saucy with indignation. I know enough of myself to know this is my own manner. He is an actor all right, this pretty boy! No wonder the company was so eager to take him on.

  ‘He’s good,’ I hiss to Anne. But her hand is clutched over her mouth in disbelief.

  Now Tom speaks, in his soft girl’s voice.

  ‘But jealous souls shall not be answered so;

  They are not ever jealous for the cause,

  But jealous for they art jealous; ’tis a monster

  Begot upon itself, born on itself.’

  My skin goes cold. Oh, Will, what treachery, that you would not believe me when I told you what was true! Your fine earl forced me; your jealousy was the making of your mind. ‘Begot upon itself, born on itself.’ I had not put it quite so well, but the scene burns in my head. Wriothesley kissing me, seeking my screaming mouth and kissing me again, wet and slippy as a prentice-boy. How he grunted as he pushed his fat cock up inside me, and shrieked in ecstasy as he bounced and grafted.

  The play holds us all; we are in its time and place, Othello is a grand fool, and his fear will be the finish of him. Aemilia, for all her spirit, will not save her mistress. And these words, too, are taken from the life.

  ‘Why should he call her whore? Who keeps her company?

  What place? What time? What form? What likelihood?’

  In this play, it is the honour of the virtuous Desdemona that these lines defend. In reality, it was my own honour I sought to protect against the spite and jealousy of the poet himself, using, if not these very words, then something very like them. Will has retold another tale, it seems, as well as some old story by Cinthio.

  The play is over. Desdemona, who was dead upon her bed, now parades before us in her white robes, hand in hand with Tom/Aemilia. We all stand to shout and cheer. Anne weeps. Joan grins – a rare sight, this. Inchbald dangles over the rail, waving his playbill, so fiercely that I think he’ll fall and do us all a favour. And Henry whoops and yells, as if he were at the bear pit, dancing on the spot. Love, and blood, and tragic death. There is nothing like it.

  ‘Oh, Mother,’ he cries, ‘what a miserable end! Can we see it again?’

  ‘Once is enough,’ I say. ‘Wait till a new play comes; it won’t be long.’

  ‘And shall you bring me then?’

  ‘I don’t know. Perhaps Alfonso will come with you next time.’

  ‘And shall we go to the tiring-house now, and see Tom?’

  ‘It’s no place for women,’ says Anne.

  ‘Or children,’ says Joan. ‘Unless they are players.’

  ‘It’s time to go,’ say I, and, true to form, he’s gone. ‘Henry!’ we cry, but off he runs, down the wooden stairs, nearly tripping an eel-man in his flight.

  Inchbald, still leaning dangerously far over the balcony, says, ‘There he goes, the young demon. Straight for the stage. Do you never think to beat him, Mistress Lanyer?’

  I take no notice, but hurry down the stairs in pursuit and rush across the pit, weaving in and out of the boisterous crowd, till I come to the ladder at the foot of the stage.

  ‘Henry!’

  I hesitate. I should not, for form’s sake, take another step. And yet, I cannot leave my silly son. I begin to climb, ignoring the cat-calls of the prentice-boys who stand behind me, and the shouts of disbelief from other, more respectable members of the crowd. At the top of the ladder, I look around. The people, down below, seem like one mass of watching faces. The pillars rise up on each side of me, like the gateway to Old Rome. In front of me, just a short distance across the stage, is the gold and crimson curtain of the tiring-house. A small foot – that of my son – disappears behind it.

  ‘Henry, I shall whip you for this!’

  More cheering. I can’t go back; I must go on. I run across the stage, to escape those watching eyes as quick as I can. I hold my breath, screw up my courage, open the curtain and step inside.

  Such a whirl of legs and arms and spinning bodies I never saw. All the cast are still in costume, and wearing the black masks of Co
urt ladies. They are leaping and laughing, cloaks flying, skirts lifting, so I could not say how many there are, or who is who, except for Burbage, with his smudged and blackened face, and Desdemona, now wigless, in his gown. Stepping forward, hoping for a sight of Henry or Tom, I cast my eye around at the properties: there are banners and pikes propped against one wall; before them, baskets and a coffin; beyond these, a table laden with books and platters and severed heads. But then my arm is caught and I am pulled into the middle of the spinning dance.

  ‘Ho, mistress, step lively,’ says one player, taking me by the waist.

  ‘Fine ladies find themselves in strange places,’ says another, spinning me round and passing me to his neighbour.

  ‘No lady this – she’s nearly as dark as the Moor,’ says a third, turning me on my heels so I face yet another dancer. It’s Burbage, the Moor himself.

  ‘Aemilia, forgive us!’ But he is laughing too, with an ale pottle in one hand. ‘Nothing more sweetly comical than what’s appalling, cruel and tragical. Oh, that poor, misbegotten Moor!’

  ‘My son is here, hiding among –’

  Then he is gone, too, so that I hardly have time to feel surprise that he recognised me after all these years. I am at the centre of a blurring circle, like the pole in May. I’m grasped once more, pulled through the crowd, the room dark and fast all round me, all men and boys, disguise and chaos. Then, suddenly, there is a voice in my ear. A breath on my neck.

  ‘God’s blood, I thought it must be you! Mistress Alfonso Lanyer, I can scarce believe it. What do you mean by coming here? I thought you loathed us players.’

  I close my eyes. The sound of the players fades, seems to come from faraway. He is here. I knew he would be, but am still sick to hear his voice again.

  I swallow, my eyes still shut. If I don’t look at him, then perhaps I will be safe.