Watch the Lady (7 page)

It was the first truly warm day of the year and they were filing slowly out of the tiltyard stands with the crowd pressing behind them. The Queen was up ahead, arm-in-arm with Anjou—they looked like mother and son—surrounded by the French retinue. Penelope's hands were full of the Queen's possessions—her fan, her pomander, her drinking vessel, and a ferret on a gold chain, a gift from Anjou that was wriggling and attempting to hide itself inside her sleeve. She was trying to stay upright in the crush and turned to flash an angry look at Peg, who had just trodden on her heel again. Martha shuffled along at her side, chatting breathlessly about the spectacle they had just witnessed.

“Arundel in his crimson and gold cut quite a figure,” said Martha. “Do you not agree, Penelope? And Sidney . . .” she added dreamily, letting her voice trail off as if there were no words to express his allure.

“They were
all
quite magnificent,” Penelope replied, but she was truly thinking only of Philip Sidney too, though she would never admit it out loud. The other jousters, despite their good looks and finery, had paled beside Sidney when he cantered into the arena mounted on a quicksilver-grey gelding, his armor catching the sun, ostrich feathers bouncing, his retinue gathered behind him like an army. The grey, spooked by something, reared up, ears twisted back, whinnying in fear, causing a gasp to go up from the crowd. Sidney, firm in his saddle, seemed entirely unperturbed and calmed the beast with ease.

Penelope watched on in awe, hardly able to believe that this was the man her father had chosen for her. But since the banquet on the
Golden Hind
she had barely received a glance of acknowledgment from him and, though she was caught up in the excitement of court—the masques, the feasts, the hunting parties, all put on for the French visitors—her disappointment had begun to gather like dust in a corner. Just a smile her way would have sufficed but she felt invisible to him, as if she never was his intended, as if he had never stopped to carefully unhook her gown on the pier, had never looked at her that way.

“I think there is someone trying to gain your attention,” said Martha, indicating a page struggling through the crowd to get to them. “He is one of your stepfather's boys, I think.”

“By the livery, it would seem so.”

“My lord Leicester requires you in his rooms, my lady,” he said as the three of them stopped, forcing the crowd to skirt around them.

“I have to do something with this creature.” Penelope indicated the ferret, which was now burrowing about her neck, tickling her. “Perhaps you could take him to the stables and ask them to cage him somewhere.” She smiled the smile that usually had the effect of making young men do her bidding.

“My lady, I would like nothing more than to render you service,” he said, returning the smile. “But I am charged with taking a letter to the Queen.”

“Then you can help me by delivering these things to her.” She pressed the Queen's affairs on to him, glad of the opportunity to off-load them. He then reached out his free hand to stroke the long back of the ferret but it turned, quick as a snake, and sank a pair of yellow fangs into his thumb. He snatched back his hand with a cry. “Vicious little creature! Hardly an appropriate gift for Her Majesty.”

Penelope glanced at Martha, whose lips were pressed tightly together to stifle a laugh, taking a breath to suppress her own mirth. “And what does Lord Leicester want from me?”

“I would not know such a thing.” He was gazing at Penelope as if she were Venus appearing from the sea.

“Do you think I believe that? You pages always have your ears to the wall; you must have overheard something.” She tucked the wriggling ferret into the crook of her arm and, pulling a handkerchief from her sleeve, took the boy's hand and gently began to bind the wound.

“I believe the matter is to do with your marriage arrangements, my lady,” said the page at a whisper. “But I am not entirely sure. And I must . . .”

Her heart jolted. “Yes, go, you must take the Queen her letter.”

“But this.” He held up his bandaged digit.

“My handkerchief—it is yours. Go, go.” He looked astonished, as if she had given him her favor to wear.

Thinking of what he had said about her marriage caused a thrill to reverberate through her but it was abruptly muted by the thought of wedlock, even if it were to one so splendid as Sidney, for in her mind it meant leaving the whirl of court to run a household and birth infants—suffocated by domesticity before her life had even begun. She thought of the dour countess at home, each day a strict round of prayer, overseeing the kitchen staff, stitching shirts for the poor, quiet discussions about theology and begging forgiveness for each small misdemeanor, with her husband coming and going as he pleased. That life seemed airless, like being buried alive. She didn't want to think beyond tomorrow. She would have liked to enjoy the pleasures of court awhile longer, to watch the young men compete to gain her hand for a dance, to sing and act her part in the masques, to play cards, to make-believe, to enjoy the frivolity of it all; she wanted to be courted, not married—not yet. It had been drummed into her time and again by the countess that these pastimes were vanities and that the road to hell was paved with such false pleasures, but there was time enough to atone later. She had the sense of her youth and beauty as of only a moment's duration, like a mayfly, born in the morning, dust by dark, and could not bear the idea of wasting an instant of it.

“So soon,” Martha was saying, echoing her own thoughts. “You have only just joined us and you will be leaving to wed.”

“These things can take some time.” She didn't really know if this was true.

“Who do you think they have in mind for you?”

“I cannot imagine.” She didn't want to say it was Sidney, not even to Martha, who hadn't an envious bone in her. They would all find out soon enough. The ferret had begun to struggle once more, so she grabbed it tightly by its collar, taking care to keep her fingers out of range, struck by a sudden affinity with the little creature who also had no say in its own destiny.

Once out of the stands the crowd dispersed and Penelope made her way to the stables. She saw Cecil, stopping a moment to watch his hunched figure scuttling, beetlelike, up the steps to the great chamber. As he passed a group of young men one of them broke away from his friends, hobbling along in jeering imitation of Cecil's awkward gait. The others laughed. Cecil kept moving, his eyes adhered to the flagstones, but they formed a circle around him, ribbing and joking. One of them snatched a book from his hand and threw it to another. It flew back and forth but Cecil refused to react so they eventually tired of their cruel game, leaving their quarry to continue up the steps. Penelope supposed Cecil must have been used to such handling to have responded in so sanguine a manner and wondered momentarily if her brother had treated him that way when they lived together as boys.

Just as Cecil reached the doors he bent to pick up his book, which had landed there, and as he stood he turned, locking his gaze onto Penelope with a look that seemed filled to the brim with contempt. She wished she'd had the courage to say something to those jeering fellows and wanted to explain herself, demonstrate her sympathy, but his look unsettled her and then he was gone, anyway, into the dark interior.

The stables were a hubbub of activity with all the grooms rushing about dealing with the horses from the tilt. She spotted Sidney's mount being led off at a distance, less impressive without its accoutrements, the artifice of the pageant dismantled. A pair of pages walked beside with Sidney's armor, in several pieces. One was larking about, had put the helmet on and was playing with the visor, flipping it open and shut. Penelope went into the nearest block. The smell in there was pungent and she trod carefully around the heaps of steaming dung and damp straw, feeling ill shod for such a place in her embroidered doeskin slippers.

She called over a lad heaving two buckets on a yoke and proffered the ferret, asking whom she might give it to. He seemed quite startled by her presence, putting his buckets down and hastily pulling his cap from his head with a trembling hand. He was just a boy really, not much more than twelve by the looks of his milky skin. She smiled, in an attempt to appear less intimidating, but it only caused him further embarrassment.

“Perhaps you could take me to your master,” she said.

He nodded, seeming quite lost for words until he managed to spit out, “I will fetch him, my lady,” before disappearing through an inner door and leaving her stranded. Beyond the door she could hear a prolonged and heated discussion about the ferret and whose responsibility such a thing might be. Just as she was considering attaching the creature to a hook by its leash and leaving it, Sidney himself appeared, seemingly from nowhere, disheveled and wearing little more than his shirt, hose, and boots.

“Goodness, my lady,” he said, dipping in a small bow. “What on earth are you doing in the stables with a ferret in your arms?”

It was her turn to be lost for words.

He seemed to remember suddenly then that he was not properly dressed. “You must excuse me for . . . for, my lack of suitable attire.” He stumbled over his words a little, revealing a surprising awkwardness, which emboldened her. “I've just removed my armor.”

“I have often wondered what a man wears beneath his armor,” Penelope said, immediately regretting it. She hadn't meant to be lewd. She had truly wondered what was worn beneath those rigid plates that looked so uncomfortable, whether men wore padding to prevent the sharp metal edges from rubbing at the joins.

Unlike some other young men she knew, who might have replied with something suggestive, Sidney just said, “Let me take that animal.”

She handed over the ferret and, holding it at arm's length, he strode over to the inner door, flinging it open, bellowing, “What is the meaning of this, leaving one of the Queen's maids alone in the stables, while you argue about the fate of this beast?”

Through the open door, Penelope saw the boy flinch as if preparing himself for a beating and she couldn't bear the thought of his being punished simply for happening upon her in the stables. Without thinking, she stepped forward and grabbed Sidney by the shoulder. He turned abruptly, his face filled with fury, as if surprised by an enemy.

She slowly retracted her hand. “Leave the lad be. He was only trying to render me service. No slight has been done.”

The rage dropped from Sidney's face as suddenly as it came. “So there is a kind heart packaged in such a wrapping,” he said quietly so only she could hear.

“What do you mean by that?”

“I have usually found that the more beauty on the outside, the less within.”

Penelope was not accustomed to being called kindhearted, even delivered in such an inverted manner. Beautiful was something she had become used to hearing, but beauty required nothing more than a coincidence of chance; she would rather people scratched beneath her surface. She looked at him then, and he seemed entirely unfamiliar, nothing like the person she had conjured up in her mind from their previous brief encounters. Yes, they looked alike but her invented Sidney spoke only in silly romantic banalities like a knight in a ballad, and this one—well, she didn't know quite what to make of his backhanded compliment, but somehow managed to find a little mettle to form a worthy retort. “Do you speak from personal experience?” she replied. “What is the state of
your
heart?”

“Well,
I
am no beauty.” He ran a hand over his blemished cheek. There was that spot of ink on the inside of his index finger, a reminder that he was a poet. He then turned brusquely away, as if he didn't like talking about himself, and back to the men in the room beyond, who were standing to attention, awaiting his orders.

She wanted to contradict him but didn't and it occurred to her that most men with marred skin would grow a beard to conceal it and that by being clean-shaven he was making some kind of statement. “The animal was a gift for the Queen. House it accordingly, if you please,” is what she said, managing to take control of the situation.

“Yes, do as the lady says,” Sidney added, handing over the animal and closing the door, leaning back against it. “I seem to find myself rescuing you quite regularly. Was it not you caught up on a nail at Deptford?”

“I would hardly call it either ‘rescuing' or ‘regular.' ” She was realizing with a surge of indignation that he, this man who had inhabited her thoughts since before she could remember, didn't even know who she was. “If our acquaintance is so intimate, then what is my name?”

He stared at her, wrong-footed, for what seemed an age, his mouth twitching minutely, as if trying and failing to think of a response.

“The poet is lost for words.” She meant her voice to sound light and playful, but it carried her resentment quite plainly. Turning away from him to leave, she wondered how it could be possible, if her family were discussing her marriage, that no one had even so much as pointed her out to him. Did he not talk amongst the other men when they compared the various qualities of the Queen's maids? Had he not even noticed her sufficiently to wonder in passing who she was?

As she made for the exit she felt him grasp her upper arm and pull her to him. “I confess you are right, but please . . . tell it to me.”

She could smell him, had never thought of how he might smell—it was a pleasant scent, surprisingly clean and dry and summery, like hay.

“What is your name?” He sounded so forlorn, her upset seeped away and she allowed him to prevent her from leaving, wanting to prolong the moment, caught up in a tangle of contradictory feelings.

She thought of the horror on the countess's face, were she to discover them thus, so very close, close enough for her to feel his breath beside her ear, he improperly dressed and still clasping her arm as if he would never let go.