‘Oh, Lord…’ But this time I can think of nothing else, excepting only, ‘Why?’
I open my eyes and look around me. The silence in the high church, with its sunlit windows and its soaring stonework, is complete. That Hills and Valleys, dale and field, and all the craggy mountains yield. If my passion could have found its true expression, I would conjure Will now, and bring him here before me. Solid flesh. Ink-stained fingers. Leather doublet. And his questioning, relentless gaze. To see him, to feel the weight of him, to sense his fingers touching mine. My hand flinches, as if he has reached out from my mind.
The pews gape. Empty, empty, empty. I feel my feebleness and littleness as I never have before. You are old, Aemilia, I think. You are weary.
And then I think, Will. Come. I summon all my passion, all my woman’s power, and wish him, wish him to come before me. I close my eyes and plead with him, so hard that my head aches. He has slandered me, and dishonoured me, but that was long ago. Can I forgive him? I don’t know. But I yearn to hear his voice.
When I open my eyes, for a moment I think that someone is standing in front of me. I look up. ‘Will?’
But there is no one. I can conjure evil spirits, but I cannot conjure my lost love. Yet… I do notice something, lying on the raised shelf at the bottom of the huge sarcophagus. A book – a little book, prettily bound. With a strange feeling of apprehension, I pick it up. It is a collection of sonnets. The title reads Sonnets to the Dark Lady. I stare at in horror. I know full well who this Dark Lady is. And I now know why Will was suddenly so eager to talk to me. He has a guilty conscience. He knows of the existence of this vile thing. He probably commissioned it himself. I open it, and look at the title page, and sure enough: his name is on there. Oh, Will. As if you hadn’t done enough. Is this the ‘love’ you spoke of, when you called after me? My God, what duplicity! You even believe your lies yourself.
Turning the pages, I read one of the verses, one I already have by heart, and which is now for sale in this foul City, for anyone to see.
Past cure I am, now reason is past care,
And frantic-mad with evermore unrest;
My thoughts and my discourse as madmen’s are,
At random from the truth vainly express’d;
For I have sworn thee fair and thought thee bright,
Who art as black as hell, as dark as night.
Then I notice that the book fell open at this page because there is a marker in it. A letter. I unfold the single sheet, and read these words:
Aemilia –
You did not come. I told you that I could not bear this, which is the truth. I will not be tortured by your lies, and double-ways, and cunning. My desire, my dreams, my waking thoughts have been distorted by your image for too long. I have a life, a wife, a place, a future, and no space for you within it.
I tried to apologise to you, seeing that Wriothesley was lying when he bragged about his conquest of you, and that the sight I had – which haunts me still – was not all that it seemed. But you would not forgive me. You are too proud. Perhaps your pride is all you have. Your pride, and little Henry.
These poems are my finest work. I see no reason why they should be hidden from public view, as you have spurned me and still spurn me, and keep me from my son. You have him. I have my Art. To spare him, your name does not appear in this little book. There are those who will speculate about your identity; there are some who know. It is an ending, in any case. An end to my last hopes that we still loved each other even slightly; that there was something left to say. I wanted to warn you, but I have given up hope of any kind of commerce between us. So there you have it.
Do me one last service, if you will, madam. Do not come to me, or tempt me, or beguile me with your look. Do not bewitch me with your words. Do not think of me again, and I will not think of you.
Will
I fold up the paper, this way, that way. Again. And again. Dry sobs rack my body. I feel hatred and anger roaring through me; my veins are boiling with bad blood. Now the letter is shaped into a point as sharp as any dagger. You can kill with poetry. You can murder with a pen. I have been grievously injured, in the past, and in the present moment. I have been cast out, and ridiculed, and made invisible. My gender is nothing of itself – we are sought by men, loved by them, fucked by them; we are made pregnant with their seed, we mother them and then we die. In these functions, we may be solid. In any other, we are insubstantial as thin air. Give me the crow-scragged garb of witchcraft any day. Give me a witch’s power; give me her ill-wishing, her night-spells, her terrifying potency. Give me the work of Hecate and of Lilith. As black as hell, am I? As dark as night? Well, I will take him at his word.
Scene V
The Tragedie of Macbeth rules all of London. There is talk of it everywhere, in the streets and taverns, at the docks and cook-shops. Prentice-boys run wild along the riverbank, affecting to be Macbeth in pursuit of Duncan. A chap-book is printed, which apes the play and puts King James in Macbeth’s garb. A quick-thinking pie-man has starting baking Macbeth pies, pricked with an ‘M’ for Macbeth and for Murder. The streets seem transformed into the Globe’s dominions, so each corner rings out ‘I come, Graymalkin!’ and every window shouts, ‘Out, damn spot, Out I say!’ The worst of it is that Henry’s head is quite turned with it, and, far from thinking that this has anything to do with the play I have written, he is entranced by the Globe and the players and the genius of Mr Shakespeare. It is madness. It is Bedlam. It must stop.
And now I have a plan. Simple in its conception, though not in its execution.
For the plan to work, I must have solitude and secrecy. So one balmy day, I set out across the river. The water laps and gleams in the fitful sunshine. Flimsy clouds hasten across the sky. The waterman sets me down just by Deptford Creek, and I look around me. I am standing between two worlds. Down the river are the flags and cupolas of Greenwich Palace. Across the water is the Isle of Dogs, where thieves and cut-throats lurk among great banks of mud and stranded river-filth.
After asking the way, I walk along a dirt road passing through Deptford Strand. Much of the land is taken up with sheds and store-rooms, but open fields still stretch away to one side. At last I reach the place I am looking for. It is a sturdy, stone-made building, most unlike the top-heavy wooden houses that line the London streets. Sheep graze on the sward of smooth grass before its front door, and next to it is a pretty garden, dense with medlar and rambling rose-bushes and bordered with sweet william. Beneath the trees there is a row of straw beehives, sheltered by a stout roof. No one knows me here. No one will comment on my coming, or wonder at my going. I can wreak revenge in peace.
I have taken an upper chamber in this quiet inn for one night. It is a small chamber, but large enough for my purpose. I set my bag down. My hands are trembling, but I know what I must do. First I take out my Geneva Bible, noting its holy weight. Heavy to carry, but I dare not be without it. Next comes an equally weighty book, Cornelius Agrippa’s grimoire. And a piece of chalk, taken from Henry’s toy box. Last of all, a vial of holy water. I range them on the long oak table, in a tidy row. My heart is jumping in my chest and my throat is dry.
I cross to the window and look out. Fragile rose petals drift past the window in the quickening breeze. The sun lights up the patchwork view of roofs and fields, paths and dock-sides, stores and timber yards. Shaking violently, I lie down on the bed. After a while I doze, and dream of Simon Forman. He is following me down a steep stairway into Hell. I wake with a jump, as if I have missed my footing on the stair. The room is growing dark, so I light a candle and open up the grimoire.
Sweat is sliding down my neck as I sprinkle holy water and make a sign of the cross. It is so dark I cannot see beyond the flame.
I wait. There is more noise outside: men are shouting at the fighting dogs. I hear a woman’s gurgling laugh. A cart rattles past, wheels squeaking unevenly. I lick my lips, wondering how long to leave it before I give it up, read some good words from the Bible and tumble into
bed.
The night is growing colder. Though I would not have thought it possible, the darkness deepens, and with it comes a weird silence, muffled by a thickness that was neither mist nor solid. I hug myself, trying to quell my ague of trembling. I can barely remember how it was when I summoned the demon before. I remember Joan’s voice: was that my imagination, or did she really help me? I listen hard, trying to hear her. But there is silence. Before, I was fevered, desperate: Henry was dying in front of me. This time I am fuelled by cold anger. Yet one thing is the same: I have no choice. I must do this thing if I am to keep my sanity.
Lilith is the female demon of the night. Lilith was Adam’s true equal, his twin soul. This was how we started – man and wife; woman and husband. Lilith was cast from Eden because ‘she would not lie beneath’. She demanded that Adam should treat her as his equal: in their sexual dealings and in their life. She demanded this because she was his equal. If there is any demon, in any firmament, who will understand my plight, it is this evil Lilith, this snake goddess. The one who wanted me to write this turbulent play.
First I draw the chalk circle on the ground. Then I pour the holy water into a glass and place it by me, for my protection. I know the rules – the demon must stay within the circle. The circle is a place outside creation. If the demon stays within that place, then all should go well. I open the grimoire and turn to the summoning pages that I used before. I read them loudly, then shut my eyes and summon all my courage. ‘Lilith!’ I cry. ‘Lilith, I call on you!’
There is silence, but I feel it listening. I feel the evil more sharply now. There is no plague in me, only fear.
I screw up my courage once again. ‘Lilith, I call on you to do my bidding!’
A rustling now, fainter than my own breathing. A change in the layers of the air. Someone laughs, far, far away. A thick band of pain begins to grip my head, just as it did before, but this time it is stronger and my nausea is overwhelming. And this time there is a shifting and heaving within my belly, a movement of my innards that causes me to lose my breath with sudden shocks of pain. The voices and screams that gather come from outside me – from cold air, from distant stars, from the riverbed. But they are also deepening and thickening and strengthening inside me, and I let out a mighty scream and a flying shape vomits from my mouth. It is as big as a dragonfly. It has landed in the middle of the circle, and the night air seems to feed it, and it grows and grows and grows. It is assembled from bone and shadow, from the webs of spiders, from my own saliva, from the sex-cries of the people in the next room, from a catfight in the street, from the keening of a beaten child, from the night-sounds I cannot hear. And yet, it is like a blurred reflection, steamy and half-seen. There is a vastness in front of me; the circle is filled, but the Entity is vapour and vacuity. This is the best description I can find for something that has never, I think, been fixed with Christian words.
Then I hear a voice, cold and distant, like the memory of ice.
I clench my sweating hands.
‘Who calls Lilith?’
It is a physical voice this time – not human-sounding, but my ears can sense it.
‘I do – Aemilia Bassano Lanyer.’
‘Mother of the plague-child?’
‘Yes.’
‘Daughter of the recorder player, he who bartered his soul for greatness, then turned back to God at the last, defaulting on his blood-sealed bond?’
I feel a chill go through me, top to toe. The truth I have sought, revealed. ‘Yes.’
Silence. I am straining so hard to hear the demon’s strange unvoice, and make sense of its murky shadow-tones, that I feel myself swaying and try to control my movements: I must not fall into the chalk circle.
‘We have done your bidding,’ says the voice. ‘Why call Lilith twice?’
‘I have been wronged.’
I listen again. I can hear a cruel sound now, many-voiced and violent, like a great crowd shouting at a bear baiting.
‘We asked you for something,’ says the voice, a little louder now. ‘There was a bargain. Are you an equivocator like your father?’
‘No! I wrote a play. I wrote down all the odd things that I had written in my… my malady. In the madness of the quest to help my son. Lady Macbeth and the witches and all the rest of it. I wrote it all down, and I made it into something, and they stole it from me.’
The figure in the circle is now full size, and looks as solid as the nightstand by the bed. Lilith’s yellow eyes are fixed on mine, and their black slits look like the cracks of Doom. I don’t want to look into those eyes, but I cannot look away. Her voice is so loud in my ears now that I wince when she says, ‘Who stole it from you? Who did this?’
I lick my lips. ‘It was Shakespeare – William Shakespeare and the King’s Men… Dick Burbage and – Tom Flood.’
‘Men,’ says Lilith. ‘Men took it from you.’
‘Yes.’
‘It was ever thus,’ she says. ‘And so it shall be for many years to come. But they shall pay. We shall have revenge.’
‘I…’ My words must come, even faced with an agent of the Beast. ‘I don’t want… I just want you to unmake the play. To stop it. You helped me write it; I wanted to call you so that you would stop it… To see if you would end it.’
Lilith’s eyes seem to have swelled up to the size of the circle, to the size of the room. Through those snake-cracks I can see Hell now, and the people in it. Little ant-ish figures, consumed in flame. In Hell, there are no half-measures. ‘We shall have revenge,’ says Lilith, beginning to shrink again. ‘Have no fear of that. The play is cursed.’
The room is colder than ever. I fold my arms, shivering, as Lilith begins to fade from sight. But then I notice that the holy water is red and bubbling in its vial. Then I see for the first time that the ground around her feet is strewn with tiny corpses – the bodies of babes and little children, still and rotted and wormy-eyed. I scream and stagger, and I lose my balance. Then I fall into the circle.
Scene VI
Henry is playing chess with Tom by the fireside, their faces drawn and intense. Tom’s joined twins sleep beside them in their cradle. I am washing my face in a pail of water. The cold liquid seems more real than demons, and is washing away the black mist that is blurring my brain after my night in Deptford. Then, for an instant, I see Lilith watching, sitting in the shadows.
‘Out – spectre!’ I cry, and the two boys look at me in surprise.
‘Mother?’ says Henry. ‘Whatever is the matter?’
‘Nothing!’ I say, turning away. And indeed, there is nothing there. Only Tom’s cast-off jerkin and plumed cap.
‘You will wake them,’ warns Tom, pushing the cradle to a gentle rhythm with his foot. ‘Hush now, Mistress Lanyer.’
‘Hush now. Hush now,’ says another voice, inside my head. Lilith’s voice. ‘I will do your bidding. Never fear it. I am to Silver Street, this night, to fix that thief Will Shakespeare for good.’
The house is ordered and familiar. The pot simmers on the skillet. The goose hangs, waiting to be plucked. There is dust on the mantelpiece and the milk is on the turn. These are ordinary things with actual substance. The spirits haunt my mind, not the dinner table, nor the haberdasher’s, nor the cowshed. But then I recall that voice, that nausea, the folded succubus before me. My own ignorance of these matters makes me more afraid. I do not know what I have done, or what the outcome might be. Like Lady Macbeth, I have rushed to action, and must now deal with the consequences. But Lilith’s voice and promise make me ill with fear. I called her once to save a life; this time I only wanted to save my feelings. This was wrong. I must go to Silver Street, and warn Will.
I slip through the Wall at Cripplegate just before the trumpets sound the curfew. As darkness falls, I make my way along Silver Street and towards St Olave’s Church – a neglected, lichen-covered building – which is close to Will’s lodgings at the Mountjoys’ house. I still have the set of keys he gave me. Should I go in? Or should I knock, a
nd ask to speak to him? My legs are heavy, and my heart thumps. I sit on a stone bench, my mind chasing round in circles. I can hear the calls of children playing in a nearby garden, and the shouting of the watch as they begin their patrol of the City streets. A fox slinks between the gravestones, with a chicken clutched in its black muzzle. The stone bench chills me through my skirts, and the grass beneath my feet begins to dampen with night-dew.
At last I stand up stiffly, and make my way across the street, taking the keys from the pocket inside my skirts. This must be done. As I approach, I see that the windows are dark, and not a chink of light shows anywhere. I knock on the door, and the sound echoes in the dark house. There is no one in. Still, I knock again, harder this time. Shall I return home? The curfew has sounded and the watch are doing their rounds. No, I will go in and wait.
I unlock the door and step inside. It opens on to a costume workshop. Of course, this is his landlord’s trade. I light a wick-lamp and stare around me, distracted, in spite of myself, by the bales of satin, taffeta and gauzy lawn, each glowing with bright colour, the piles of silvered silk. When I came before, they had fled the plague and all this was packed away. Lifting my lamp higher, I see baskets of seed-pearls, glimmering on the shelves around the room, and golden gauze like fairy wings. Oh – what’s this? A dark mass of human hair spilling across the workbench? It looks like Lilith’s snaking tresses. But it is only a headpiece, set upon a workbench, made of coloured beads and pitch-black feathers.
Protecting the lamp-flame with my hand, I tiptoe up the stairs, and cross the solar to Will’s room. I enter, and close the door silently behind me. I look around his chamber, breathing sharply. It is quite empty, and exactly as I remember it. In the centre is the great curtained bed, its heavy velvet hangings drawn shut. Piles of books sit on the desk, and on the floor around it. There is a walnut chest by the fireplace. I raise the lid, wincing as it creaks. It is filled with neatly folded shirts, and two doublets, arms crossed.
Dark Aemilia Page 33