The Alchemist's Daughter (20 page)

Opening her silk purse to present her invitation, Sidonie felt something smooth and round. The crystal. In the distractedness of getting ready, and the excitement of the boat journey, she had all but forgotten it was there.

Once indoors, Kit took off his winter cloak to reveal an elegant suit of moss green velvet, with sleeves of claret silk. Sidonie raised her eyebrows in mock reproach. “Fie, Kit, you put me quite to shame, you did not say you would be so modish.” Kit blushed. “On loan from my brother, at the Inns of Court,” he confessed.

Sidonie observed with faint surprise how handsome Kit looked in his borrowed finery, and with what careless grace he wore his embroidered doublet, its soft woodland green mirroring the colour of his eyes.

Kit smiled, as though reading her thoughts. “'Struth, we are a fine couple, are we not? Come, sweet sister, let us join the revels.” And he took her hand to lead her forward.

In the Great Hall of Greenwich Palace there was no end of things to be marvelled at, and she was glad that Kit was there to marvel with her. From the chandeliers hung tassels and fringes of gold foil that shimmered in the light, and everywhere were festoons of ivy, bay and laurel, and bright red clusters of holly berries. The walls were covered with tapestries, and all the gallery rails draped with embroidered cloths.

Because there was to be a masque tonight the vast room with its painted timber ceiling had been transformed into a theatre. There was a gilded stage of splendid artifice, and a scaffolding with rising banks of seats.

Kit and Sidonie wove their way through the chattering, jostling throng. The ladies' gowns were a vivid tapestry of emerald, ruby red and buttercup, topaz and violet and damson. The pervading scent of perfumes and pomanders made Sidonie want to sneeze. What coxcombs the gentlemen were, she decided, in their starched white ruffs, their fashionably slashed and pinked and scissored doublets, their puffed sleeves and padded trunkhose; and the ladies of the court, in their damask and Cathay silk and velvet, their Spanish farthingales and glittering ornaments and ostrich feather fans, made her feel like a milkmaid who had crept in uninvited to the ball.

Presently an usher led Sidonie away to sit with the other ladies in the seats near the dance floor, at the left hand of the Queen. It was still two hours before Her Majesty was to enter the Great Hall and the masque begin.

Seated among strangers, Sidonie turned her attention to the stage. On the left was a painted landscape of woods and meadow and near centre stage a pavilion of white taffeta with marble pillars, lamplit from within. On the right against a backdrop of battlements rose an ornately gilded and ornamented castle, with lights shining from its windows. (“Painted canvas and wooden frames,” she could imagine Kit saying. He was always more interested in the mechanics of things than in the final effect.) Over all hung a painted ceiling that was made to look like clouds.

All evening Sidonie had been haunted by a vague sense of unease. Until now she had put it down to anxiety, to nervous anticipation. But no, she decided, it was not only the unfamiliarity of the Court, the splendour of the occasion, that made her heart beat faster, her stomach knot itself into a fist. There was a wrongness here. Maybe, she told herself, it was because this was a night of masks and disguises, of feasting and tomfoolery, when all things were turned inside out and topsy-turvy.

And that reminded her of her troubling dream, when the Lord of Misrule, unmasked, revealed his zealot's face. There would be no King of Folly elected here tonight. In King Henry's day the Lord of Misrule had reigned over palace masques and mummeries just as he nowadays did in the country villages. But Queen Elizabeth's yuletide revels were statelier affairs, and her Master of Revels devised much less boisterous entertainments. All the same, this was a time of beguilement and deception, when nothing was as it seemed and ordinary constraints were cast aside. And when so many here were costumed, who knew what elaborate mask might conceal the face of an enemy, what cloth of gold or damask sleeve might hide a dagger meant for the Queen?

She felt for the purse at her waist, ever mindful now of the crystal's presence. What secrets might it reveal on this night of the Epiphany, when things hidden were made manifest?

Suppose it warned of danger — of a threat to the Queen, to England? What then? It was one thing to discover hidden treasure. But to see the future, and yet be helpless to alter it — that thought was more than she could entertain.

And yet her father had argued differently: if a man knew that his house was to catch fire, though the fire was pre-ordained, he still might act on the warning, and save himself.

But now there was an excited stirring in the crowd, and then a sudden hush. Trumpets sounded a fanfare, and all heads turned. First came a procession of court dignitaries — gentlemen, barons, earls, Knights of the Garter — and finally the Queen herself, resplendent in pearl encrusted tawny-orange satin trimmed with lynx skins. Close at her side was the royal dwarf Thomasina, in yellow velvet overlaid with copper gold.

The Queen took her place in her high, canopied seat.

Drums rolled, more trumpets sounded, and the revels began. The torchbearers entered, to the accompaniment of drum and fife, with courtiers and ladies-in-waiting costumed as gods and goddesses and heroes of romance. They glided across the boards in flowing robes of ivory and sea-green and azure, in damask and lawn and taffeta richly embellished with gold and silver lace, in elaborate headresses with sweeping white plumes. Then came the hired actors, the Queen's Men, who took the roles of fauns and nymphs and satyrs, shepherds, clowns and soldiers, ogres and sorceresses.

A courtier in silver and crimson came out to pay extravagant tribute to the Queen, and to explain the meaning of the action. With all the excited conversation in the audience, Sidonie had only the vaguest idea of what he had said, but as the masque unfolded she was caught up in the music, the blaze of light and colour, the clever devices and rapidly changing tableaux.

A live bear emerged from a painted cave and to loud laughter was chased offstage by a comic soldier. An alchemist with a tall, pointed hat, straggling white beard and hair down to his feet stumbled wild-eyed across the stage, mortar in one hand and pestle in the other. He was a figure of absurdity, mocked and taunted by a band of small boys, and Sidonie, distracted for a moment, wondered sadly if this was how the world would come in time to perceive her father.

Clouds parted to reveal the golden dazzle of the sun. The Goddess Athena with spear and helmet descended from the sky, and by means of a hidden trapdoor, Aphrodite rose in white-robed splendour from the foam. Apollo played the panpipes as he and his muslin-draped attendants rumbled and creaked their way across the boards in a flower-garlanded wagon. Then the scene changed to nightfall, and the painted sky above the stage was aglitter with stars. In the intervals there were songs, and verses were declaimed, and the musicians in the gallery played lively airs.

It was as though the players feared this might be their last performance, and they meant to bid farewell with every extravagance of spectacle, every ingenuity of invention.

As the tableaux grew to a close, eight of the Nine Muses — who as Kit would have been quick to point out, were really men — entered in skirts of cloth of silver and embroidered waistcoats, their hair hanging long and loose over cloaks of crimson taffeta. They danced in and out of the white pavilion, presumably seeking their lost sister, and then, moving down from the stage, they invited eight court ladies from the audience to begin the general dancing.

Now there was a murmur of pleasure and a burst of applause as the Queen descended from her seat to join the revels. Light-footed and agile as a girl, she danced a lively galliard. And then one of the actors, a tall black-masked figure in a sorcerer's black robe, bowed low before the Queen, and swept her away into a pavane.

At that moment a shudder of premonition crawled down Sidonie's spine, and the hair prickled along her arms. There was something ominously familiar about that faceless player: something in his way of standing, something perhaps in the stiff-spined, formal way he moved through the figures of the pavane. Behind that velvet mask, the hard knot in her stomach told her, was a gaunt, deep-furrowed face and eyes as cold as stones.

In an agony of indecision Sidonie rose from her place and went to stand at the edge of the dancing floor. Should she cry out a warning? But what if she were mistaken? To shout false accusations at one of the Queen's Men, to bring the dancing to a halt, to have the whole court turn as one with anger and astonishment to stare at her, what then? At best embarrassment, humiliation, the Queen's furious displeasure; at worst — well, she would not dwell on what the worst might be. She drew a long, sobbing breath.

And then the moment had passed. The pavane had ended, the Queen, laughing, returned with her ladies-in-waiting to her seat. The musicians struck up a
volte
, the dancers leaped and stamped themselves to breathlessness, and Sidonie, feeling sick and faint, leaned against a pillar until Kit came and drew her, unwilling, onto the floor.

CHAPTER
T
WENTY
-F
OUR

Between the acting of a dreadful thing

And the first motion, all the interim is

Like a phantasma or a hideous dream.

— William Shakespeare,
Julius Caesar

After the masque and the dancing came the Tournament of Hobby Horses. The riders pranced forth with small neat steps, heads and chests jutting absurdly out of cloth-covered horse-bodies, false legs dangling down in stirrups. For half an hour or so, cheered on by the crowd, they flailed wildly at one another with wooden swords, until at last a winner was declared, and received his prize from the Queen's own hand.

But it was past midnight now, and time for the Queen to lead the way to the Twelfth Night feast. The tables in the long banqueting room were laden with all manner of dulcets, dainties and sugary confections: florentine custards, feathery almond biscuits, jewel-coloured jellies, candied violets, marchpane molded into fantastic gilded shapes. And there was sack and mead, claret and muscadine set out in Florentine decanters.

Kit and Sidonie found themselves at the edge of the crowd that milled round the tables. Sidonie leaned close to Kit so that he could hear above the din of voices. “I feel a little dizzy,” she told him. “Nay, do not be troubled,” she added, seeing Kit's look of alarm. “It is nothing, only the heat and the excitement. Do you stay here. I will find some quiet corner to sit down.”

Before he could protest she slipped out of the banqueting room, retreating into the now-deserted hall. One of the palace guards shot her a quick glance, then, seeming little interested, looked away.

She took refuge in a small wainscotted alcove, half-hidden behind a pillar and a screen. There was nowhere to sit, so she folded her legs beneath her, wide skirts billowing, and set the crystal on the floor. The Queen was in danger. Sidonie could feel it in the prickling of her scalp, the knotting under her ribs; it was like a shrill singing in her ears, a sourness in the air.

She was better practised now, and the vision in the glass came quickly.

There was mist at first, then a gleam of silver. Once again, what emerged was the image of a bowl: no longer blurred but clearly defined, a graceful, curving shape that captured and held her gaze. And as before, the sight of it made her stomach clench, her heart race, so that she knew it for a warning. Remembering that strange night in the Abbey tunnel, she thought, for a fleeting moment, of the Grail. But that was too fanciful a notion. This vessel, she felt oddly certain, was no mystical object, but something earthbound, tangible, a thing of ordinary use.

But there was something else, a second, vaguer image, hovering above the bowl: a thing she had not seen before. She focussed her gaze until gradually it came clear. A bracelet? No, it was smaller than that, and narrower.

A ring. And beneath the ring, a bowl. But then those shapes vanished, and the glass was crowded with scores of masts and bellying sails. They were English ships, the Queen's ships — Sidonie knew that as surely as she knew that she herself was English. But as she watched, stricken, the masts splintered, the proud sails crumpled in the midst of smoke and flame. And then there was nothing to be seen but tentacles of black smoke, and a fierce red glow.

Sidonie wrapped the crystal, put it away in her pocket, and with a sick, empty feeling in her stomach she returned to the banquet room.

Now servants were entering with candles, followed by musicians and trumpeters. Then came various dignitaries of the court, and after them servers and ushers, bearing in triumph the Twelfth Night wassail bowl. The musicians struck up an exuberant tune as the immense green-garlanded vessel, with its heady fragrance of nutmeg, cinnamon and cloves, cider and brandy and roasted apples, was marched round the room and set down steaming on the festive board.

There was still a great crush around the other banquet tables, as courtiers, ladies of the court, invited guests — and a few, Sidonie supposed, who had contrived to slip in uninvited — helped themselves to the rich delicacies. Tonight, it seemed, most rules of protocol were cast aside. Now the players, still in costume, descended on the table: nymphs and shepherds, fairies and fauns and monsters, all intent on snatching up their rightful share.

Some of the Queen's gentlemen had gathered by the high table, and presently they broke into song:

Our cup it is white and the ale it is brown

The cup it is made of the good ashen tree

And so is the malt of the best barley
. . .

And it was then, in the midst of that jostling confusion, when all eyes were on the singers, that Sidonie, alert and watchful, saw what no one was meant to see: a hand all but concealed in a drooping black sleeve, lingering for a heart-beat too long above the wassail bowl.