We retired to the Great Watching Chamber when the play ended. Here we would dance until the musicians tired and the youngest pages grew sleepy. I had, of late, had a pull in my knee that pinched when I lifted it, but that would not stop me. Tonight I felt like dancing; perhaps the play had that effect on me—all those fairies tripping about, and Robin Goodfellow speeding here, there, in an eyeblink.
While we had watched the play, the Watching Chamber had been transformed into a version of the faerie realm to match it. Bare tree branches were, by magic of paper and wire, made to bloom; the mists of midsummer were replicated by gossamer silk draped upon them and hanging from the ceiling; perfumed candles, twinkling from sconces, mocked stars.
“Why do we need nature? We can copy her well enough!” said the master of revels. “If we want midsummer in deep December, we have only to ask.”
“If we have the money,” said someone standing by me. “Money can transform one thing into another; it is the only true alchemist’s stone.”
Francis Bacon. I should have known. I greeted him. “Sir, you are looking well. How did you enjoy the play?”
“Well enough,” he said. “Although I question whether even love juice could work so fast. Still, it was only to amuse us, and as such, it need not be true.”
“Francis, you are too serious,” I said. “I hope you plan to dance tonight.”
“I have a sore toe,” he said. “I would not want anyone to step on it.”
“What a pity. Perhaps a stately measure, then?”
He smiled at last. “Perhaps.”
I welcomed the gathering, and as I finished, the musicians struck up at one end of the chamber. They began softly, as if they wanted to capture the floating delicacy of the decorations. But as the guests talked and noise rose, they had to switch to livelier tunes.
I felt oddly bold tonight, as if someone had smeared a juice of audacity on my lids. I approached Francis Drake, who was standing stoutly against one of the tapestries, hands clasped behind his back, talking to Admiral Howard and John Hawkins. Beside them stood Catherine, trying to look interested.
“Ahoy!” I cried, startling them. They swung round to stare at me. “I say ‘ahoy,’ as I know you must be talking ships and the sea. What else would the admiral, Hawkins, and
El Draque
discuss?”
Recovering themselves, they bowed. Catherine laughed and said, “How well you know them! I was hoping that by joining them I could steer them in another direction—”
“Steer, woman?” said the admiral. “Now you speak as a helmsman, so what else shall we do?”
“Good Queen, the admiral envies the mission Hawkins and I are fitting ourselves for, with your generous patronage,” said Drake. “We would he could accompany us.”
“Drake, someone must remain here to guard us, while you cavort in the Caribbean.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Cavort? This is serious business! Dangerous business, to sail into the Spanish maw.”
“For you, danger is play,” I said. “If you are too long deprived of it, you wither in despair. Even with your lovely new wife at your side in Devon.” She did not seem to be at his side now, though. Perhaps she had stayed home.
He hung his head like a schoolboy caught out, then gave a roaring laugh.
But he was no schoolboy; his movements were slower and his figure stockier. He must be in his midfifties but looked older. Perhaps it was the sea air that had done it, weathering his face into hard lines. Beside him, his cousin John Hawkins, in his sixties, was thin and straight, but his years were upon him, no matter how lightly they sat. Was I foolish to let them embark on a treasure-hunting mission at their ages? They were the ablest seamen of the day, and Hawkins had designed the ships that gave England the victory in 1588, but they were ... old.
They were ... near my age. But dangerous voyages into inhospitable climes demanded more than my life at court, I assured myself.
“If I perish, I want to do so while firing at the Spanish,” said Hawkins. “And besides all the gold we have brought England, we leave our charities—the one for relief of sick and elderly sailors, the Chatham Chest, and the two hospitals.”
“Two?” I asked. “I knew of one, associated with the Chatham Chest.”
“Just this year, I opened the Sir John Hawkins Hospital,” he said proudly.
“Then I’ll have to open a Sir Francis Drake Warehouse for Spanish Booty,” Drake said. “But in all seriousness, our ships are being fitted, the supplies stored, and as soon as the Christmastide is over, we will set out.” He looked at me, as if reading my thoughts. “We will not fail. We are in our prime, John and I, and there’s not an enemy on land or sea that knows a trick we do not.”
“I am just as glad you are not going, Charles,” said Catherine to her husband, embarrassing him.
I left them still hugging the tapestries and turned to find Hunsdon waiting patiently for me.
He was beaming. “Did you like the play? Did you?”
“Indeed I did.” I did not have to pretend. “It was ... It is ... odd, but I find it still captivating me. It seems to invade the senses.”
“We were proud of it. Let me present William Kemp, the most important actor in the play.” The man playing the rustic who had sported an ass’s head bowed.
“Your performance charmed me,” I said. “I will look forward to seeing you in other productions.”
“I will never have another part like this one,” he said. “Perhaps just as well. It was difficult to breathe inside that head.” For emphasis, he brayed.
“I see you have met our ass,” said Southampton, hurrying up. He was, as always, fashionably attired, and the faint perfume he favored announced his presence.
“Only one among many in a chamber of this size,” said Hunsdon gruffly. “The court abounds with asses!”
Southampton smiled indulgently as if to signal,
Grumpy old men, what a bore they are
. “The ass in the play is a comic genius, and only an actor of your skill could have made him sympathetic as well as funny.”
“I thank you, my lord,” said Kemp.
“The man who wrote the play is to be congratulated. I am, you know, his patron,” he said proudly. “And tonight I was as nervous as a parent, hoping his talent would resonate with the audience.”
“I think, Southampton, you can relax now.” Beside him a dark-haired man spoke, who had come up so quietly in the dim light I had not seen him. “For, if I am not mistaken, Her Majesty smiled throughout the play.”
“May I present William Shakespeare, the man who gave us tonight’s entertainment?”
The man bowed, his gold earring flashing as he bent his head.
“I am pleased to receive you,” I told him. “And I am still emerging from the dream you created on the stage with your words. Pray, keep writing; give us more of your fantasies. What is next?”
“I am working on several things,” he said. He had a soft voice that made me want to bend closer to him rather than asking him to speak up. “Another comedy set in Italy, a love story also set in Italy, and then good old English history.”
“You have done Richard III and Henry VI. Are you working your way up to our times?”
“I have a long way to go,” he said.
“Oh, but he works very fast,” Southampton said. “He can turn out several in a year, if he’s not distracted.”
Shakespeare shot him a glance. “What man lives who is not distracted? The trick is to write through the distractions. Or to incorporate them into the work, so all is one.”
“You are young,” I said. “At this rate, you will reach my coronation in only a few years. Mind that you portray me flatteringly.”
“In you, Ma’am, the truth needs no flattery, as it stands alone in its own glittering raiment.”
“Oh, my, you cloak your own flattery in such glittering words,” I replied. He was certainly nimble with them. I would have to read the
Venus and Adonis
more carefully to see what gems I had missed.
He and Southampton bowed and removed themselves.
“Poets! Playwrights!” snorted Hunsdon. “I’d hate to see either of them defending the marches up north.”
“Then I am fortunate that I don’t have to rely on them for anything but words,” I assured him. “After all, I have you to direct the northern defenses.”
Admiral Howard, having detached himself from the other seamen, came up behind Hunsdon. “I must salute you. Your acting company was superlative tonight. However, we are not beaten yet.”
“Ah, you are a man who likes to fight a war on two fronts—the sea and the theater,” I said. Howard was patron of the rival company the Admiral’s Men.
“You should surrender now,” said Hunsdon, “before you put on any more embarrassing spectacles like the last Marlowe revival.”
“The more plays presented, the more likelihood one might be substandard. But it keeps our name before the public and buys my wife her jewels.”
Catherine, who had followed her husband, fingered her ruby pendant. “Ah, what a hard choice it is, between the Lord Chamberlain’s and the Admiral’s Men, especially as one is my father’s and the other my husband’s.” The admiral put his arm around her and Hunsdon grunted.
“Admiral, you have Edward Alleyn as your chief actor, whereas you, Henry, have Richard Burbage.” I turned to Hunsdon. “It would be illuminating to have them play the same part in succession so I could compare them.”
Hunsdon grunted again, dismissing the idea. “We have Shakespeare, and your Marlowe is dead,” he taunted the admiral.
“But not his plays,” said the admiral. “We can continue performing
Doctor Faustus
,
Tamburlaine
,
Dido
,
The Massacre at Paris
, and I need not remind you that
The Jew of Malta
has been revived, to great success.”
“Pity you can’t revive Marlowe himself, for his repertoire is so limited people will soon tire of it.”
“Your Shakespeare is still an unknown, as far as what he will be able to produce, and for how long.”
“Gentlemen, gentlemen, that is the glory of the theater—the suspense!” I wanted to bring this friendly squabbling to a close. I felt keenly the loss of Marlowe, both on the stage and in the shadows for the work Walsingham had trusted to him. I did not accept the story that he had died in a brawl, accidentally stabbed. His companions, all involved in spy work for various masters, were not gathered by chance in Deptford, where he was killed. I was convinced they were given a mission to kill Marlowe. But by whom? Walsingham would have been able to ascertain the truth of it. But Walsingham was gone and his replacements poor shades of himself. I shuddered in remembering the debacle of the so-called Lopez Plot, exposed by inept and biased agents.
The slow music stopped, and the musicians began to play a coranto, a lively beat that required quick steps. By all the gods, I would dance tonight! No more conversation!
Where was Essex? He had yet to speak to me tonight. I had seen him down in front at the play, but now he hung back in the dim corner of the chamber, his back to everyone, but recognizable by the very way he stood, draping his tall frame in a graceful slight
S
curve of the spine. It made his short cloak hang provocatively over his right hip, thrust out.
He was deep in conversation with two of my maids, both Elizabeths: Southwell and Vernon. One was tall and light haired, the other small, dark, and intense. I suddenly realized they could have perfectly filled the parts of tonight’s play, Southwell being the tall and stately Helena, Vernon the emotional Hermia, “a vixen when she went to school,” as she was described.
“Now there shall be three Elizabeths,” I said, startling Essex, who had not seen me approach. He whirled around.
“There is only one Elizabeth, ever,” he said, dropping to one knee and taking my hand to kiss.
“Nay, you insult these fair ladies, lovely and young Elizabeths,” I said, nodding to them.
Now they both bowed, but as they rose there were messages in their eyes: Southwell tried to avert her gaze, but Vernon’s was bold and direct, like the assertive perfume she wore. Her large eyes, which an unkind person might describe as bulging, were erotic, suggesting illicit pleasure to be found in her.
“May I borrow your company?” I asked them. “I would like to lead Lord Essex out in a dance.”
His face flushed with pleasure, as I liked to see it. He gave me his hand and together we went to the center of the room. All the others fell away, leaving us in a circle of our own making.
The music for the coranto was loud and thumping. I had not danced it for a long time, but tonight I longed to. Had the play infused me with hunger that I thought myself past? The merry lovers trooping through the moonlit woods, seeking their partners, made me feel more alone. The lines they spoke echoed in my head. “Swift as a shadow, short as any dream, brief as the lightning in the collied night” ... “So quick bright things come to confusion.” We must snatch what dangles before us, before it flies away.
Essex, my boy, here before me, a man now. A boy changed into a man, swift as a shadow, to be sure. Myself, once a maid as young as Southwell or Vernon, now “withering on the virgin thorn,” as the play would have it? No! I was a virgin, but not withered, not yet. I looked into his eyes, searching for recognition that I was a woman still, not a queenly nun. I saw that confirmation, that assurance, in them, in a gaze of such hunger it could not have been false.
I spun, I saw the winking lamps mimic stars all around me, I reveled in his adoration and the knowledge that I could still inspire unabashed passion in a man.
The dancing went on and on, until the musicians tired and the sky faintly lightened. I was determined not to show fatigue, and indeed, I did not feel any, for the excitement supplied all the stamina I needed. We drifted away to the royal apartments, and I led him through the ever-more-intimate chambers, from the large audience chamber to the presence chamber to the privy chamber and hence, finally, to the innermost one, where my bed and desk and private dining table were. We halted. He leaned forward to kiss me, as he had in dimly remembered dreams I had. But as in the dreams, I pulled away, lest he discover the pretend youth of my real flesh. I did not wish to reveal it. Let all be moonlight and artifice, as in the play, fantasies and fairies.