Watch the Lady (3 page)

Penelope catches herself staring and quickly pulls her gaze away, picking up her redundant needle, making busy with it.

“Get up, man,” says Essex. “No need to stay on your knee on my account.”

Penelope thinks she can see the hint of a smile play at the edge of her brother's mouth. She knows only too well how he likes a show of humility. “Get our guest a drink, and I'll have one too.”

Meyrick pours two cups from the flagon of wine on the table, handing one to his master, the other to Blount, who raises his cup, saying, “Pax?”

“Pax,” replies Essex, and they drink back, he a little more reluctantly than the other man. But etiquette demands that to rebuff Blount's chivalry would occasion another duel.

Penelope's eyes have wandered back to Blount, taking in his halo of hair, dark as an Arab's, and the fine proportions of his face and the warm dark eyes. He is better looking than she'd thought. He doesn't wear a ruff, just a flat lacework collar and a notched satin doublet, quite beautifully understated. He has clearly chosen his garb carefully so as not to outshine Essex. So he is a diplomat too. But a single earring hanging from his left ear adds an appealing touch of dash. She is thinking this man might be a good ally for her brother, makes a mental note to talk to Essex about it later, to make him understand that it is not men like this who are his enemies. It is men like Cecil and Ralegh, who have powerful allegiances and the Queen's ear, men who would see him ousted, that he must be wary of. Besides, she would like to see more of Blount at Essex House. He glances towards her at that moment and she feels herself blush as if he can divine what she is thinking.

“Do you know my sister?” asks Essex.

“I am honored to make the acquaintance of one who has inspired such poetry.” He is back on his knee now, and reaching out for her hand.

She wonders if he isn't spreading it a little too thickly, the charm, which he clearly has in abundance. She can see why the Queen has favored this one. But he looks up at her and she can find nothing but sincerity in those eyes of his.

“Sidney's sonnets are unparalleled, my lady. They have transported me at times.”

“And what makes you suppose me to be the subject of Sir Philip's poems?” She has wondered often at the fame that arose from being the muse of a great poet, how it seemed to have so little to do with her and so much more to do with Sidney. What is a muse anyway? she has asked herself many times—no more than a cipher.

Her brother laughs. “Everyone knows that you and Stella are one and the same.”

“ ‘When Nature made her chief work, Stella's eyes, / In color black why wrapped she beams so bright?' ” recites Blount quietly. “I recognize your likeness from his words, my lady.”

“Now there is
real
poetry,” says Essex, causing poor Constable to shuffle uncomfortably.

“None surpasses Sidney,” exclaims the embarrassed poet.

“Enough of this,” declares Essex. “Meyrick, fetch me my sword. Indeed, it is the very blade Sidney gave me.”

“And I'm sure he didn't intend that you use it for dueling,” says Penelope, trying to remain lighthearted, but all this talk of Sidney is churning up painful memories, forcing her thoughts back to the girl she was eight years ago. She remembers arriving at court, imagining it to be nothing but romance and cheerful intrigue. The woman she is now, restrained, secretive, political, is as different from that girl as an egg from an oyster.

The man removes his cap and makes a hunched bow, his eyes darting about, giving him the look of a rodent. He must have been on the road, for he is spattered with mud to his waist and his shoulders are dark with wet.

Cecil watches him from his desk, where he adjusts his affairs, the ink bottles each exactly an inch apart, his ledgers stacked from large to small, and he turns his quills in their jar so their feathers all face the same way. He is seated with the window behind him so his features are difficult to make out. The desk is positioned thus deliberately, to put visitors at a disadvantage. Cecil is well aware his person is not sufficiently imposing for the job he is called to do but has learned various tricks over the years to compensate for this lack. “Shut the door.”

The man does as he is bid.

“I hope you were not seen.” Cecil offers him the seat opposite. The rain must have cleared, for a beam of bright midday sun falls over the man's face so he has to raise a hand to shield his eyes.

“No, sir, I took the greatest care to ensure I wasn't followed. I changed horses at Ware, from there took the London Road and doubled back—”

“I don't need the details,” Cecil interrupts, noticing how the fellow's other hand grips his cap in a fist as if his life depends on it. “I sincerely hope Walsingham is not aware of our meeting?”

“But I was under the impression that Walsingham was with us.”

“Listen to me; there is no ‘with' or ‘against,' nor is there an ‘us.' It is simply a case of making sure I know what is going on. My father and I serve the Queen's interests and it requires”—he pauses, adjusting his ring so the large emerald faces forward—“the utmost discretion.”

“Of course, sir.”

“Now, in your letter you intimated there were some goings-on at the Scottish court. Is the King's marriage properly sealed with the Danish princess? There were no problems with the”—he clears his throat—“consummation?” James of Scotland's proclivity for young men is no secret, and there have been moments when Cecil has thought that might be the very thing that would conveniently set James's claim on the English throne adrift. There are other candidates for the crown who Cecil and his father have had their eye on—ones who might be more amenable.

Cecil notices the man is staring intently at his hands; he folds his arms over his chest, tucking them out of sight. His hands are small with ugly spatula fingers; he has always felt they give the wrong impression. As a youth he longed for the kind of hands that could wield a broadsword, hands like those of the Earl of Essex.

“No indeed, sir. That all seems to have been as it should be. The Princess, well, Queen now, I suppose, appears besotted. I saw the blooded sheet with my own eyes.”

“So you traveled to Oslo for the wedding?” Cecil is impressed, wonders how this weasel of a man, who has such a small ration of charm, managed to inveigle himself upon the royal wedding party.

“Yes, I attached myself to—”

“I know,” interrupts Cecil. He doesn't know, but is aware it will keep the man on his toes if he feels he is being watched.

“But there is another matter.” The man has leaned in close and is talking very quietly now.

“Another matter.” Cecil sifts through the possibilities. “Regarding?”

“Regarding Essex's sister.”

Cecil cannot hide his surprise. He doesn't like being wrong-footed with information he has not had so much as a sniff of. “What has
she
to do with James of Scotland?”

“She has made overtures—written letters of friendship to the King.”

“Friendship?”

“It may be more complicated than that. She used coded names.”

Cecil's curiosity is further pricked. “Go on.”

“She has a florid style but the general impression I have gained—you see, I had a moment alone with the letters—is that she was suggesting that, should it come to it—those were the words she used: ‘should it come to it'—James can count on her support and by implication her brother's too.”

“Sounds like silly games.” Cecil is careful to remain steady, affecting nonchalance, but he feels his skin prickle, and imagines himself as a hound catching the first whiff of a stag. “I suppose she remained ambiguous?”

“If you mean, did she incriminate herself by mentioning the demise of our monarch, she did not.”

But the code names speak of something underhanded, Cecil thinks. “And who was her messenger?”

“The poet Henry Constable, sir.”

“Ah, Constable, he worked for
me
once. Poets seem to cluster about that lady like flies on filth. It is a mystery to me. He did it for
love
, I suppose.” His disdain is apparent. Cecil is not a man given to love. But he is being disingenuous, for there is something beyond that lady's obvious beauty that impresses him. He has watched her over the years—they are the same age; have risen at court together. She is a woman with a canny instinct for being in the right place at the right time and has the pragmatism more usually found in a man. She would be perfection had she not that brother, Essex.

The mere thought of Essex raises Cecil's hackles. After the death of the first earl, the boy had been raised in the Cecil household. He has a memory of the young Devereux's arrival, the way he dismounted, leaping to the ground before his horse came to a halt. Essex barely gave Cecil—half his size, though more than two years his senior, and crooked as a set of steps—a second look.

His father had primed him not to get on the wrong side of the cuckoo in their nest. That was when he first learned that Essex had royal blood. Not just the pedigree that runs back in four straight lines to Edward III, but Tudor blood—for it was said that Essex's great-grandmother, the whore Mary Boleyn, bore the eighth Henry a child and that child was Lady Knollys, Essex's grandmother. Cecil's father had it from his own father, who was Groom of the Robes, and had the King's confidence. “When royal blood flows from two sources into a single son, it can mean danger,” his father had said. “So you keep on his right side, but watch him.”

Cecil
has
watched him, has watched him wrap himself about the Queen like a vine, has watched the Queen soften towards him, favor him like no other since Leicester died. The rumormongers call him her lover, but Cecil knows better—he is no bedfellow, he is the son she will never have; and a mother will indulge a son where she will not a lover.

But he cannot erase thoughts of the sister. He is thinking of the first time he set eyes on Penelope Devereux, on the day she was presented at court. How her beauty took his breath away. He could think of little else for months, fumbling with himself at night over images cast of her in his mind. She smiled at him that day—he remembers as if it were yesterday the shameful, throbbing flush that smile induced—and what a smile, the kind that would light up the shadows of hell. She had smiled, when every other maid he had ever encountered looked at him with barely concealed disgust. But in the years since, Cecil has come to admire more than that generous smile, for behind her celebrated charms hides a formidable perspicacity. Some might call it a dangerous quality in a woman.

When Nature made her chief work, Stella's eyes,

In color black why wrapped she beams so bright?

Would she in beamy black, like painter wise,

Frame daintiest luster, mixed of shades and light?

Or did she else that sober hue devise,

In object best to knit and strength our sight,

Lest, if no veil those brave beams did disguise,

They, sun-like, should more dazzle than delight?

Or would she her miraculous power show,

That, whereas black seems beauty's contrary,

She e'en in black doth make all beauties flow?

Both so, and thus: she, minding Love, should be

Placed ever there, gave him this mourning weed

To honour all their deaths who for her bleed.

Sir Philip Sidney,
Astrophil and Stella

When she had first been fitted for the dress she would wear to be received by the Queen, it had seemed an infinitely beautiful thing, but there in the long gallery at Whitehall it had transformed into something wrong—too plain, too Puritan.

The countess was listing instructions as they walked. “Stay on your knee until she indicates you may rise; do not stare; do not speak unless she asks it of you.”

Penelope wanted to stop and listen to the singing, which she could hear faintly coming from the chapel where the choir were practicing. They had worshipped there on the previous day after their journey and Penelope had felt the music burrow deep inside her, expanding until she could no longer tell where she began or ended. She had never heard such a choir. Forty voices—she counted them—each singing a different part, yet marrying as if they were one. That must be the sound of heaven, because nothing on earth can draw itself tight about your heart like that until you might gasp for the sheer joy of it. The Earl and Countess of Huntingdon did not allow music in their chapel; they said it distracted from private contemplation and communion with the Lord.

“Don't dawdle so, Penelope.” The countess's hand was clamped on her wrist, so tightly she feared it would leave a bruise.

They walked swiftly past the line of portraits, too fast for Penelope to see if she could find her family amongst them, the countess barking at the dawdlers to step aside. The women's gowns were cut in a way Penelope had never encountered, waspish pointed stomachers embroidered with flowers and birds, skirts flaring out so wide two could not pass in a corridor without negotiation. Some wore gossamer structures curving up behind their heads, like the wings of dragonflies. She wanted to take a closer look to see how they were fashioned, whether it was wire that held them up, or magic. The countess favored plain garb and the dark-green velvet gown Penelope wore was testament to that. Finely tailored though it was, it had nothing of the splendor of those other dresses, and even the crimson satin sleeves, a delight only hours ago, failed to make it seem less drab. “The Lord does not appreciate excessive luxury,” her guardian liked to say.

Penelope yearned in that moment for a flowered stomacher, dragonfly wings and a jeweled, feather fan, rather than a prayer book, hanging from her girdle.