Dark Aemilia

by Sally O’Reilly

  Alfonso is at home, listless and charmless, not wanted by the dying monarch. Nor by me, the hale subject. He plays his neat tunes, or goes off curled and oiled to the gaming-house, to gamble with money he doesn’t have. While he goes about his business, Joan teaches me her craft. She takes me out walking in the fields and among the hedgerows, and tells me tales of faeries and hobgoblins, of the ways of spirits and the living demons who inhabit the air around us, and who watch us as we go about our daily round. Though I say it myself, I am a ready pupil. It reminds me of being a child again, when I was taken in hand by Susan Bertie and taught my Greek and Latin. Winter is not the best time to gather herbs and flowers, but we walk by the water meadows and Joan tells me all about them: how no two meadows are alike, how farmers will give each of them a name, just as they name their cows; and how pits and ponds have their own spirits. And how everything in nature has a name, a place and a purpose. She talks of beard grass, cat’s tail and cock’s foot, of crowflowers and salt marsh grass, which can grow underwater for many months. What I once saw as a barren place is full of life. And London, to me a place of wonders, is to Joan a brute invasion of the ancient land.

  She teaches me about her apothecary’s art: where each plant grows, the time to harvest it according to its governing planet, and when it can be pressed and stored. Nightshade grows under Mercury, and is an antidote to the power of witchcraft in men and beasts alike; cottonweed cures head-aches and infestations; while fleabane is the remedy for snake-bites and for gnats and fleas. Indeed, there is not a plant or simple growing in a single meadow in any corner of our land which is not a cure for some ailment, canker or distemper. I marvel that everything Joan knows is carried in her head, for she reads a little, but not easily, and prefers to store her knowledge in her memory.

  I do not tell her about the witches: I fear to tell anyone what they said about my father. The meeting had the strange quality of nightmare, and the queer dreams I have when I walk in my sleep.

  Joan’s remedies mean that a trickle of money comes into the house, and we live frugally. Each morning, when the chores are done, I work on my cross-gartering pamphlet. This is proving an arduous task, as I have no interest in it. I have written some poetry too, but guiltily, knowing it will earn us nothing.

  One night, long after curfew, when the streets are dark and only watchmen and spirits walk, there is a fearsome knocking. I sit up in bed, alert and listening. Was it our door, or the next one? Could it be carousing players, come for Tom? Alfonso, at home for once, is whiffling next to me, too drunk to snore wholesomely. There is the knocking once again. I kick him in the balls.

  ‘Husband, stir yourself!’

  He yelps like a drowning pup and rolls away from me.

  I kick his naked arse this time. ‘See who wants us down below!’

  Waking with a grunt, he looks around him, oiled hair perpendicular. ‘Whassis?’

  Bang, bang, bang. The whole house echoes with the sound. ‘Who’s within?’ shouts a man’s voice. ‘I have a message from the Queen.’

  Alfonso leaps up then, all right, lights a candle and goes running down the stairs half in his doublet, naked from the waist down. ‘Yes, yes, yes! I come, I come.’

  I follow him, shivering in my chemise, wondering who could want a drunken pipe-player at this hour. He pulls back the stiff locks and opens the door. A pale youth is standing there, thin-faced and blue-eyed with tiredness, wearing the Queen’s livery and carrying a flaming torch.

  ‘Her Majesty demands your presence,’ says the youth, bowing. ‘There is a boat on the river, ready to bring you to Richmond.’ His rasping breath clouds the frosty night.

  Alfonso stands erect, proud as a soldier. ‘I will come now. Let me dress myself.’ He turns to me in triumph. ‘Aemilia, where is my best wool caster? And my mended doublet, and my…’

  The messenger bows again, and begins to cough. Recovering himself, he says, ‘Forgive me, sir, but it’s Mistress Lanyer who is wanted by Her Majesty. Commanded to wait on her, this very night.’

  Richmond! It was always the Queen’s favourite palace. While it lacks nothing of Whitehall’s grandeur, it is removed from the hurly burly of the town, and its magnificence seems all the greater amid the surrounding woods and fields. It is the greatest palace in the kingdom, high-walled and turreted, with a thousand chimneys and dozens of Arabian minarets. There, the Queen would receive foreign guests, flirt and fool us all, and then sweep off to the hunt. I remember how I used to watch the cavalcade departing. Elizabeth was always controlled, always cunning. She laughed hard, rode fast, and would return blooded and wet. What memories. They seem more actual than the icy wind that freezes my face as I sit huddled in the cushioned barge; clearer than the sound of an ale-house brawl that comes drifting across the water. In the boat, all is darkness. The sky is black and starless beyond the torch that flickers on the prow. But in my mind it is bright day, and I am at Richmond in a fine silk gown, looking down from the battlements across a landscape that is like a vista of the afterlife. The pale heavens are infinite, and clouds trail and shift above the distant oak forests.

  As the oars dip into the freezing water and the barge slips quietly along the Thames, I feel as if it is taking me back to my youth. I remember the first time I was summoned to play for the Queen. There was a long walk from room to room; the scent of ladies and candle-wax and lavender. There were faces, all twisted and polished for looking at. And then a door opened, and there she sat, a blur of red and gold. I climbed on to the seat beside the virginals, and the keys were my friends and gave me courage, so I began to play.

  When I had finished, she said, ‘You are too clever, for such a little scrap of person.’ (I think I was eight, or perhaps nine.)

  Not knowing what to reply, I looked over at Mother, and she nodded to me to say something. I got down from my seat and curtseyed as my mother had shown me.

  ‘I am not clever, Your Majesty,’ I said. ‘I work hard and…’ I broke off, not sure if I should go on.

  ‘Yes?’ The Queen’s smile was slightly colder. She found my hesitation irksome.

  ‘And I wish to know things.’

  She seemed to like this.

  ‘Ah, child,’ she said. ‘We are the cleverest of all, those of us who have a love of study. The curious mind seeks nourishment. Our curiosity will make us wise.’

  The messenger is silent, snuffling into his handkerchief. In front of us, a boatman rows, impassive. They seem no more inclined to talk to each other than they do to speak to me.

  ‘How does Her Majesty?’ I ask, at last.

  The messenger sneezes again. ‘Badly,’ he says, seeming to do badly enough himself, since I hardly think this is a fit way to discuss the sickness of the monarch. He blows his nose. His face is ghastly in the torchlight. ‘She is like to die within the week. She has seen no one but Robert Carey, and a few favourites. She has asked for the Archbishop.’

  ‘Does she fear that she is dying?’

  ‘So it seems. Richmond is a house of rumour. Some said she died weeks ago, we had seen so little of her. She keeps to her chamber, and will do nothing but walk and walk, never sitting, as if she could outpace Death himself. She will not go to her bed, but rests on cushions, on the floor.’

  ‘I cannot imagine it.’

  ‘She cannot imagine it herself, I believe.’

  There is silence for a moment. Then, in a sudden passionate rush, the messenger says, ‘Just a few weeks ago, she gave an audience to the Venetian ambassador. She was dressed in a taffeta dress of silver and gold, and a thousand gemstones. She was witty, spry, easily a match for him. Everyone said so. He came out of the throne room saying she had kept her beauty yet.’ He sneezes again. I look at his sickly face in the flickering torchlight. Then, he points. ‘Look, there – you see? They are waiting for you.’

  And there is Richmond, a beacon in the darkness. I can see the windows of the state rooms dazzling bright, an earthly copy of the stars. Even the doors stand open, and I can se
e light inside, a gilded stairway, and darkly silhouetted soldiers, standing guard.

  Scene II

  Inside, all is blazing light. Torches are racked on every wall, lamps flame, and glittering candelabra burn above my head. Once I took this moon-dimming brightness for granted, and the world beyond it seemed a place of shadow. Now I have returned, blinking and stumbling, from the outer darkness.

  I am still blinking when we reach the Presence Chamber and Lettice Cooper sets down her sewing and comes over to me. She is done up in black velvet and seed pearls, hard-faced in the midst of this abundance.

  ‘Her Majesty is not well,’ she says, somewhat needlessly in my opinion.

  I curtsey, in the Court style, to remind her I am not some common housewife.

  ‘Which circumstance requires that we do her bidding, even whilst we fear that her requests may not reflect her wishes when in her right mind.’

  I curtsey again. After all, I can’t spit in her eye.

  ‘So I would ask that you do not take up more of her time than is needed.’ She hands me a little silver bell. ‘And you ring this when you are done.’ Then she points to its companion, a larger bell, of solid gold, it looks like. ‘Likewise, we will ring this if we fear that you outstay your term. Is that understood?’

  ‘Of course,’ I say, tinkling the bell, to test it.

  She frowns. ‘Hush. All our nerves are a-jangle.’

  Another lady looks up. It’s young Lady Guildford, who was a girl last time I saw her. ‘They are jangled indeed,’ she says. ‘The world is upside-down. The dead speak, and the living haunt us.’

  ‘Hush, my dear,’ says Lettice. ‘We will not speak of this.’

  But Lady Guildford takes my arm. She is a wisp of a woman, with a child’s high voice. ‘Her Majesty has been lying in her withdrawing-room these ten days,’ she says, staring intensely into my eyes as if to make sure I understand the full import of her words. ‘She is much afraid. She will not get into her bed, not even at the dead of night. She said to me, “If you were in the habit of seeing such things in your bed that I do, you would not ask me to go there.”’

  ‘What does she see?’

  ‘She did not say. But there is witchcraft afoot.’

  ‘Why do you say so?’

  ‘Yesterday, I sat with her so long, praying and thinking, that my legs were stiff and cramping, and I went out to take a little air. I came out, through this chamber, and the throne room, and the next room, and came out halfway down the Long Gallery. You know it?’ Her eyes are full of terror.

  ‘I remember it.’

  ‘Well. I walked along there, all distracted, thinking of the poor Queen and all her sufferings, when I heard a noise behind me, in the passageway, and I turned to see if someone called me back…’

  She hesitates.

  ‘And – did they?’

  ‘At first, I could not see clearly. The candles were guttering, and the place was half in darkness. Then, I saw it was Her Majesty. I thought she had risen, feeling more herself. I thought she must have followed me. You can imagine my joy to see her so much improved. I went towards her, but then she vanished.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘In terror, for I knew something was strange, I ran back to her room. The ladies were all as I had left them. And the Queen lay in that same motionless slumber that I had seen before leaving her. I had seen an apparition, a spectre. Her spirit had left its place.’

  Lettice frowns. ‘That is more than sufficient,’ she says. ‘We are all sorely tired. There is likely nothing in it. These are heavy, dangerous times. Let’s keep our wits about us.’

  ‘My wits have not deserted me,’ say I. ‘Much else has been taken from me, but my common sense remains.’

  Lettice frowns again, and proceeds towards the grand door to Elizabeth’s withdrawing-room, the inner sanctum of her suite of private chambers, and beckons me to follow her. Her hand resting on the door, she speaks to me with quiet disdain.

  ‘You are to enter her room alone, Aemilia.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘You are to speak calmly to her, and take care that she does not become alarmed.’

  ‘I shall do as you say.’

  ‘You will find her changed.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Remember, she is still the Queen, and in one thing she is as she always was. She will not submit. She will not die until she chooses to. She commands; she does not obey.’

  The Queen is propped up with velvet cushions, half-upright like a wooden doll. Her eyes are cast down, and she sucks one finger. Her face is a mask of white ceruse, with a clown-mark of vermilion on each cheek. Below her chin hangs a great wattle of loose flesh, and this too is daubed with white. And she is wearing a splendid gown, a stiff and glistering carapace, encrusted with a multitude of gem-stones.

  I stand just inside the door to her bedchamber – a room I have never entered before – not sure what to do next. It is hard to believe that we are quite alone. Every time that I saw her, in all my years at Whitehall, even when she had summoned me to speak Latin to her or play my virginals to soothe her mind, there were others present. Hunsdon, Cecil, Dudley, a clutch of ladies, a couple of ambassadors. She moved around in a throng of obsequious advisors and hopeful acolytes. Now, there is no one. Breathless, I look around the cavernous room, lit by silver sconces. After my little house I feel I am truly in the land of giants. A fire – great enough to roast an ox – crackles in the stone fireplace. The high bed, carved and gilded and hung with cloth-of-gold and silver, looms high in the centre of the room. It is as big as a stage; its closely patterned curtains remind me of the heavy drapes before the Globe’s tiring-room. The valance is cloth-of-silver, heavily fringed with gold, silver and silken threads, and decorated with the shapes of beasts. The canopy is set off with feathered plumes. Beyond it is a painted mural, showing Our Lord as a child talking to the elders, then as a grown man preaching to the crowd, and finally kneeling in the Garden of Gethsemane. And above all this is the carved ceiling, vari-coloured in the flame-light, embellished with the likenesses of deer and boar, pursued by leggy hounds among the twisting trees and leaves. It is as if all the Queen’s old joys and pastimes are here to taunt her.

  Only Christ is left to her. But she is not looking at Him. She is looking at the floor, as if she made a study of the finely patterned Turkey carpet on which she lies. I stand for so long that in the end I think I must withdraw. What if these are her final moments? Or if she is already dead? I am not the right person to be present.

  But just as I am about to leave the room, she speaks, though hoarsely and not in her familiar voice. ‘Is that really you, Aemilia Bassano?’

  ‘It is, Your Majesty. Except…’

  I was never good at speaking with enough care for the Court.

  ‘Except?’ She takes her finger from her mouth, and looks at me.

  ‘I am Aemilia Lanyer now. Your Majesty.’

  ‘Oh, indeed. Married off for colour, with your misbegot.’ She coughs and shifts her body. ‘Come close, come closer. I want to look at you properly.’

  I approach her. Her eyes, once shrewd and mocking, are faded and tired. She has a rank, rotting smell about her. Her shimmering dress with its armour of jewels seems to imprison her where she sits, in her awkward position. She is quite still. Only her eyes move, studying me. ‘Aemilia,’ she says, finally. Her hand comes out, fingers swollen now, no longer elegant, the cracked nails vermilion like her cheeks. ‘You are the most welcome sight, most welcome. And still beautiful, for all you are dressed like some village drab.’

  I bow my head. ‘Thank you, Your Majesty.’

  She sighs, and pushes my arm away. ‘Not “Majesty”, please, not now. Be sparing in your language. My own words tire me, but so do those of other people. There is so little time.’ She stretches out her left hand, and shows me her wedding finger. ‘Look. I am bone-thin, but my hands are swelled! They had to cut my coronation ring right off me – see? My wedding band is gone
. I am divorced from Albion. I am lost.’

  I can’t think what to say, so I kneel down beside her on the floor.

  We sit in silence for a moment, staring at the fire.

  ‘Are you wondering why I have asked to see you?’ The Queen shifts slightly in her robe.

  ‘I – hardly thought it my place to question anything, madam. I am grateful that you have called me here.’

  ‘No, Aemilia, no. I don’t believe that this is true. You are always seeking to know the reason for things, and I have rarely seen you grateful. You know your own worth; I always liked that in you.’

  I smile in spite of myself. ‘I thought, perhaps, you wanted to talk to me because I am better-read than your ladies, and their Latin is somewhat poor.’

  She nods. ‘You understand more than most, Aemilia, and I learned from Hunsdon’s good opinion of you that you are true, and loyal, and a keeper of secrets.’

  ‘Thank you,’ say I, sounding unlike myself.

  ‘I see myself in that fire,’ she says. ‘My little person, burned by flames, but never consumed. I see myself burning in Hell.’

  ‘No! It cannot be so. They are waiting for you in Heaven. They will have prepared a throne right next to God Himself.’

  ‘I shan’t get into that great bed,’ she says. ‘Death is in there, you know. I saw him, staring round the drapes at me.’