But what am I now?
Remember. It’s her truth she wants, not yours. Yours is no affair of hers.
I must hold my nerve.
Don’t even look over there or it will suck you back. Wherever you end up, it must not be there.
The following day, to my surprise, the Countess of Bedford presented herself and asked to speak to me alone. We went to stand in one of the window niches of the gallery, overlooking the orchard.
There would be no further rehearsals for
Niger in Albion,
Lucy told me.
I thanked her for taking the trouble to bring this news to me herself. I had no doubt that the queen’s intended masque would never be mentioned again.
‘There is another matter,’ she said. ‘Even more delicate.’
I gestured for her to continue.
‘Has your blackamoor musician recovered?’ She cleared her throat. ‘What happened was unfortunate.’
‘It was beastly,’ I said. ‘I credit you with being the first to see as much. I have apologised to her for taking so long to cry halt.’
She nodded. ‘When even wise men debate the natural character of the different races, I suppose we must try to tolerate the beliefs of the ignorant.’ She straightened as if to go. ‘You dismissed Frances Howard.’
‘Word travels fast.’
‘She’s doing what damage she can before she’s sent home to wait for her husband to claim her. Forgive me, your grace, and try not to detest the messenger…’
‘I’m happy to place the entire blame on Mistress Frances,’ I said, feeling suddenly chilled. ‘Please continue.’
‘She’s saying that her dismissal is unfair. That Thalia Bristo is a witch, who charmed you into preferring her and giving her rich gifts. That perhaps, she also charmed the queen.’
For a terrible instant, I hung over the gulf of doubt.
‘She cites the king’s own investigations into witchcraft blames the girl herself for what happened to her – claiming that she set a spell even on the unsuspecting ladies to turn them into wild Maenads. As proof, she claims that Mistress Bristo felt no pain, having remained silent even though she bled.’
‘Has she complained to the king?’
‘Not yet directly. But I’m sure she counts on rumour reaching him.’
My doubt about Tallie vanished as quickly as it had come. Lucy raised a calming hand against my surge of rage. ‘I think you’ll find that most people would agree with me that Frances is a false, dangerous little cunny.’ The fine pink lips smiled demurely.
Yes, said her amused eyes. You heard me right.
Then I remembered that this was the young woman said to have killed two horses under her, racing to be first to meet the new queen.
‘I thought you should know.’ She dropped me a graceful curtsy. ‘And while I’m making you hate me, you should be aware that she’s following her family’s tradition of seducing monarchs. As she can’t seduce the king, she has set her cap at your brother.’
I watched the fair hair and slim back of my mother’s chief lady as it dwindled down the gallery and glided through the door. I could not decide whether her embassy had been an act of friendship, or not.
No act of friendship for Frances Howard, for sure.
I prayed that my father’s restless mind had left the subject of witchcraft behind. On the other hand, he would be flattered to hear his authority cited. As for Henry … I remembered how he had watched Frances Howard dancing. A married woman. My poor brother could easily find himself enmeshed in a scandal that he would not know how to handle. I tried to think how to warn him against those knowing cat-eyes and that insinuating smile. But I could not think how to rescue him without either angering or humiliating him.
Protecting Tallie was a little easier. Here, I could use my position. I was not the only person at court who was alert to the tiniest signs. I ordered a new gown to be made for her, of deer-coloured satin with a brocade panel let into the front of the petticoat.
My ladies had begun to complain, on behalf of fathers, brothers and husbands, that my father’s favourite, Robert Carr, was already controlling who gained access to the king and who did not. Although I had no real power in Whitehall, people would recognise my chain and the gown as marks of royal favour from the third in line to the throne. It was the best armour I could give Tallie against the malice of Frances Howard.
I lay awake considering how to protect her from the king and his past interest in the legal prosecution of witches. Being careful not to disturb the dogs sleeping on my feet, I turned restlessly, listening to Anne’s gentle snores. In spite of my care, Belle woke and crept up to nestle against my chest. As I drifted towards sleep at last, soothed by the softness of her fur against my chin, the answer slipped into that fertile gap between reason and dream. A way to protect Tallie and also alert Henry to his danger.
For the next two days, I wrote at the table in my little closet, cursing my ignorance of how such things were properly done. I had to rely on my own ability to think clearly and use reason. Carefully and coolly, I recorded exactly what had happened during the rehearsal for
Niger in Albion.
When it was done, I rode across the park and showed my work to Henry.
‘"A True Account of the Happenings",’
he read aloud.
‘"Set down by her grace, the Princess Elizabeth…”
What is this, Elizabella?’
‘A precaution.’ I explained what the Countess of Bedford had told me of Frances Howard’s threats to Tallie, leaving out the rest. ‘I need you to read it and tell me whether it could serve as evidence, should an open accusation ever be made against my musician. It would be an account set down while memory was fresh, against old hearsay. I want to show that Mistress Bristo behaved in every way like an ordinary woman, never as a witch.’
I saw his face colour as he read it. ‘If you truly fear for your woman, it’s just as well to have this account,’ he said when he had finished. ‘The Howards are powerful, even now.’
‘But would it help?’ I asked.
He returned the paper to me. ‘It might be wise to have the signature of another witness.’
He said nothing about the behaviour of Frances Howard. I could only hope that he had been a little warned against the ‘false, dangerous little cunny’ who might be setting her cap at him.
A week after I gave Tallie her letter of manumission, she came into my little closet, where I was reading by the window, to show me the new gown I had ordered to be made for her.
‘So?’ she asked, holding her arms stiffly out to the side in their heavy embroidered sleeves. ‘I confess, I don’t feel like myself any longer.’
I set aside my book. Looking at her standing defiantly inthe deer-coloured silk, with the gold chain of the Diana medallion around her neck, and her cloud of black hair, I wondered how someone so strange could be so familiar at the same time. Although the clothes fitted her perfectly, they looked to my eyes like a masque costume, turning her into something she was not.
She should be dressed in silk slippers with curled toes, I thought. And veils, like an exotic princess living in a distant land where turquoise-tailed peacocks shrieked, red and gold birds hung in trees like singing fruit, and people rode about on lions and elephants.
‘Forgive me,’ I said.
‘I’m used to stares. Yours is friendly, at least.’
‘I’m sorry you feel uncomfortable in your new gown,’ I said.
‘Don’t mistake me. It’s just that I’ve never before had one so fine.’ She curtsied. ‘Just listen to that sound of new silk. No old gown sounds so crisp.’
She straightened with a rustle and hiss like falling sand. In reply, I curtsied in a sigh of velvet. She grinned in acknowledgement and sank rustling down again while I straightened.
‘A duet for taffeta and velvet,’ she said.
Laughing, we see-sawed up and down, listening to the delicate music of our clothes.
‘If I called Lady Anne to put on her best satin, we could play a concerto for gowns,’ I said with delight. Our eyes met in shared pleasure. ‘Where are you really from, Tallie? There’s no danger in telling me now.’
‘You don’t give up, do you?’ She stopped smiling and gave me a look with eyes suddenly turned as opaque as burnt-out coals. ‘Like I told you. Southwark.’ She laid her pink palm over Diana’s fierce sardonyx face on her breast. ‘The truth, whether you like it or not.’
Curbing my impatient curiosity, I pushed her no farther. I did not want to risk closing off the new space beyond theopening door. We would grow to know each other once we were safely there.
‘Tell me something I don’t know, that only you can tell me,’ I challenged her. ‘Not too safe.’
I stood still under her scrutiny and watched her decide to let me win this time. ‘White-skinned people,’ she said at last. ‘Use their hands differently. More closed. Not opened up like flowers. Not letting go.’ She raised both hands with her fingers extended, as if releasing a bird.
I looked down at my own hands nesting curled inside each other, then back at hers.
‘Their hands are always balled up into fists,’ she said. ‘Holding on. To themselves. To power.’ She looked away for a moment. ‘To the belief that they’re always right.’
She slapped her palm onto Diana again and waited. Perhaps I hadn’t won after all.
I had asked for it, however. I opened my fists. ‘Here’s a more dangerous question. What do you hear being said about Sir Robert Carr?’
‘Oh Lord!’
‘Eyes and ears,’ I reminded her. I waited to see how much more she would risk for me.
She glanced out into my sleeping chamber and dropped her voice. ‘Carr has already been given Sir Walter Ralegh’s manor of Sherborne and profits from traffic in honours and commissions…’
I nodded impatiently. I knew about Sherborne from Henry, who continued his close friendship with Ralegh even after the king imprisoned the former adventurer in the Tower.
‘Carr’s knighthood may be followed soon by viscount… Do you want more?’
I nodded.
‘I hear that he’s the king’s he-whore.’
My ears filled with pounding blood. The dark landscape she had opened up was vast and terrifying, filled withmonstrous, hungry, prowling shapes. But she had been willing to go there with me.
‘Did I survive your test?’ Tallie asked.
I ignored her question, not wanting to admit the hit. ‘I’ve something else to give you.’
‘Another way to command my obedience? Like this goddess?’
I held out a small ring of keys on a ribbon. ‘For my lodgings,’ I said. ‘Including my bedchamber door and this closet. Your lute will be safe in here. None of the other women has this key, not even Lady Anne.’
She put out her hand slowly. ‘Your grace is trusting,’ she said. ‘How do you know that a girl from Southwark is not a thief?’
I put the keys into her pink palm. ‘I hope that you are an accomplished thief,’ I said. ‘Thieving is very much what I have in mind for you.’
Her hand jerked back and her eyes hardened.
‘Don’t be a fool,’ I said. ‘I’m jesting. I know you’re not a thief.’
‘How can you be sure?’ I heard a new coldness in her voice.
‘God’s wounds! I just know! How does a dog know at whom to bark? How does a cat choose a lap to sit on? Don’t ask me to give you a reason – I just know! Please take the damned keys without a catechism.’
She wiped her palm across her mouth. ‘Forgive me,’ she said. ‘I’ve learned the habit of self-defence.’
‘With good reason, I’m sure. But I beg you, not with me. Not any longer. Always having to be so careful of your feelings is wearing me out.’
‘What?’ Tallie looked astonished.
‘When you first arrived, you claimed you were trying to be agreeable,’ I said. ‘But I promise you, it was like conversing with a hedgehog. And sometimes, it is still. I never knowwhat will upset you and what won’t. We’ll be in perfect accord, or so I think, then suddenly I’m faced with all these bristling spines warning me to keep my distance. Like just now. It makes me feel like weeping.’
‘Well,’ she said. She looked down at the keys for a long moment. ‘I see.’ She still did not look at me while she carefully tied the ribbon on the key ring to her girdle. Then she tucked the keys out of sight somewhere in the depths of her gown. She nodded to herself to conclude some internal debate. ‘No more hedgehog, then.’
Then she looked at me directly, her large eyes no longer cold. ‘I thank you for the keys, your grace… my Lady Elizabeth. And for the gift of your trust.’ She sank into a grave curtsy. ‘I shall try to be as generous with mine.’
The door was open at last, I thought. I felt my breath grow unsteady.
Then she straightened. ‘Whose pocket shall I pick for you first?’
We became accomplices in crime.
‘Sweet Lord!’ she exclaimed when I told her my first task. ‘So long as we’re hanged together.’
‘Copies of letters,’ I said. ‘Even reading and reporting the contents will serve. I shall lend you to the king’s musicians…’ I had a sudden thought. ‘Forgive me,’ I said carefully. ‘I must risk arousing the hedgehog.’
‘I’ll do my best to control the beast.’
‘You can read and write?’
‘You saw me read my manumission.’ She kept her indignation in check, but I felt it.
‘But people sometimes pretend.’
‘That’s true,’ she said quietly. ‘They do indeed.’
I studied her for a moment, wondering where in Southwark she had learned, not only to read and write, but to play the lute and sing in three languages.
‘I must also see a portrait of the Dauphin of France,’ I said.
‘How large is it?’
‘I don’t know even that much.’
With stolen words, written or remembered, overheard or secretly read, Tallie helped me begin to track down the knowledge my father had forbidden me. At her suggestion, I gave her a purse of gold coins to help loosen further any indiscreet tongues and to pay for the work of secret scribes. Though I trusted her with the money, she insisted on giving me a detailed list in her nightly report, of exactly where each coin had gone and what it had bought us.