Alchemy (20 page)

The theologs, for that’s what they must be, are ahead of me now as I deliberately dawdle. They said a polite ‘excuse me’ as they went past with lowered eyes like nuns are supposed to do. Inseparable from the other students in their uniform clothes; mixed colours, shapes and heights.

The chapel doors must be soundproofed since I hadn’t heard
a murmur from inside. Or perhaps the entire service, if you could use the word at all, was conducted in silence, just meditation like Quakers and Buddhists.

Suddenly I’ve had enough of my own pretence and the subtly oppressive atmosphere of the place, as if the very buildings are waiting for something only they can foresee. Was it always like this when the well-behaved Anglican girl teachers in training were here, I wonder, as I make my way out to the parking lot, get into my kit, release the Crusader and wheel her towards the gates. Then I’m astride, kicking her into life, feeling her throb under me. I gun the engine and roar off up the road, not caring if the CCTV picks me up as I feel the power of what, I’m sure, the denizens of Wessex would see as my devil’s machine. I laugh out loud inside the mask of my helmet at the access of freedom and the simple joy of speed.

My phone is ringing as I climb the stairs. It’s Galton of course, wanting to know how I got on.

‘I signed up with Daniel Davidson, history.’

‘I hope you weren’t swayed by any notions of political correctness.’

‘You mean because he’s brownish?’ The guy is irritating me already.

‘Exactly.’

I resist the impulse to point out that the alternative is probably brownish too.

‘If you have so little faith in my judgement, Dr Galton I suggest I abandon your case.’ I’m tired of having to use this kind of blackmail on him but there comes a point where however much he’s paying me it can’t compensate for his smug interference or faintly veiled suggestions that I’m incompetent. I smell the misogynist in him. I want to ask if he’s married but I’m pretty sure what the answer is. What woman would put up with his patronising manner unless she was desperate for a home and children and didn’t care what price she had to pay. She could always divorce him later.

‘So what comes next, Ms Green?’

‘I spend some days there. Suss the place out. See what I can dig up. Whether anyone’s prepared to be a witness for you. Meanwhile I’m preparing a brief and looking into the exact procedure for bringing a case before the relevant tribunal.’ I want to add: ‘Is that enough for you? Do you feel you’re getting your money’s worth?’ but I don’t. I’m mindful of the quarter’s looming rent day and the interest on the bank loan. The way we live now, hand to mouth as my parents would see it, with the kind of debts and insecurity that would have terrified them.

‘That all sounds excellent. So I can take it we have a contract?’

I can’t hold out any longer. It would be unrealistic since I’m taking so much of the guy’s dosh. ‘I’ll draw up a letter of agreement for us both to sign.’ This is how girls must have felt in Amyntas’ time when they were married off by contract to boost the family fortunes, to men they had to learn to love or rub along with, at least.

Suddenly I’m tired, too tired to turn out for the Gaos. I ring. Mary says the nephew will be glad of the money. I slip down to the corner for a mushroom pizza, open a bottle of red and settle myself with the memorial. I feel I’ve lost sight of Amyntas in the excitement of Wessex. Maybe he’s got something to tell me, a clue I can tease out, that will lift my spirits and set me back on the scent.

That Christmas we were merry again as we had been my first year in my lady’s service. All was as before. The country gentry came to pay their respects. There was feasting and dancing in which I led out my lady. The peasants came again with their play of St George and the Turkish Knight and sang us wassail. Dr Gilbert went as before to his own people in Devon so there was none to disturb my peace, and now I knew the customs of the great house I was able to avoid those occasions which might
bring danger. Besides I sat so easily now in my role as Amyntas that I could scarcely believe I had been born Amaryllis. The young lords and the Lady Anne were away, the earl being still in disgrace at Sir John Harington his house in Exton with his uncle Sidney, back for the while from his duties in Flushing. All seemed as if such a simple life might last for ever as my lady and I tended the sick, I continued with the electricals and with stocking of the dispensary and laboratory with all remedies we might need.

From time to time I sent my results of electrical experiments to Dr Gilbard, still on my father’s behalf and he wrote back when his duties allowed him, glad that my father was eager to pursue those matters he no longer had time for as one of her majesty’s physicians.

If my lady was weary of this life she did not show it but seemed entirely content. Little did I know that the hourglass was almost run out and such days would never come again. Then came more evil news from her castle of Cardiff that had us hurrying to furnish horses and carriages for the long journey on foul ways and in foul weather. No sooner had she set out than the wind changed to the northeast bringing such bitter frost and snow as none remembered before. I had no time to grieve for my lady’s absence for I was kept busy ministering to the whole house where almost everyone was sick, with none but a boy, Robin, to help me, for Dr Gilbert could not stir from Devon. Robin was willing enough yet he knew little more than to stir the fire or the pot when bidden.

When the weather grew kinder I rode into Salisbury for the ingredients to make antimony which in small doses may be efficacious against rheum and flux. In the market I bought a broadsheet with an account of the splendid audience at court which her majesty had granted to the new ambassador from Venice, the first that had come to our country in all the queen’s reign, she being then at Richmond and dressed for the occasion as
rich as any empress in the history of the world for, as the paper told it, she was arrayed in silver and white taffeta trimmed with gold, an imperial crown on her head and her person studded all with gems, as rubies, diamonds and great pearls the size and smoothness of small birds’ eggs, which jewels threw back the light from a thousand candles. The paper also told how she had reproached their ambassador for his tardiness in paying his respects, saying that it could not be her sex that had fathered this discourtesy: ‘For my sex cannot diminish my prestige, nor offend those who treat me as other princes are treated.’ And by this I understood her to say that it was not the sex that made a prince but the prince who might honour her sex and that we might all be what we will if we have the skill and strength to command the world.

This I sent on also in my next packet of letters to Cardiff as I waited for news of how the countess did in this bleak weather and if her spirits held up as well as her majesty’s. Yet the next news that came to me told a different story in a letter from my lady’s sister at Richmond. The queen’s cousin, the Countess of Nottingham, had been struck down by the continuing bad weather and the queen who had loved her and leant upon her, could not be consoled. Ill humours let in sickness in their turn. Had I been present in such a case I would have tried to lift the spirits with physic, as syrup of fumitory or viper’s bugloss yet it was said that her majesty would take none. She was feverish and could not sleep but lay upon her cushions in deepest melancholy. Her heart, she said, was sad and heavy.

Now she began to refuse food, yet even so her coronation ring by which she held herself wedded to her people had to be sawn off for it had grown into the flesh, betokening perhaps a dropsy as her father King Harry died of, some said. My lady’s sister wrote that all at court were in fear that she could not live and some were eagerly making court to King James of Scotland as if she were already cold, and hastening north. When I took
myself again to an alehouse in Salisbury city I saw nothing but long faces, men sitting silent or speaking in whispers of what might come upon us if the queen did not rally. Yet we knew she was mortal and must die like all mankind since the world began. Then I wrote quickly to my lady and sent word with a groom on our fastest horse in case the news of the queen’s decline had not come to Cardiff.

Every day I rode into the city for news. Rumour was everywhere. The queen was already dead but none would say so while men jostled for the throne. The queen had rallied and danced a coranto. The archbishop, ‘her black husband’ as she was said by those at court to call him, had told her she was dying and must turn her thought to God. Still she would not eat and refused all physic as if eager herself to hasten her going.

Then at last about noon on the 24th of March I heard the cathedral bell begin to toll the dead knoll as I rode towards the city and knew all was indeed over. The next day came a messenger from my lady saying she was already on her way to London to her house of Baynard’s Castle and that mourning weeds should be sent in haste to her there. The duenna who had stayed behind in Ramsbury, saying she was too old and infirm for a journey to Wales in rough weather, helped me to pack up those clothes my lady had last worn for the late earl, her husband, and send them off in a coach while I rode beside in much sorrow for the queen her death but eager for this chance to see the great city where I had never been in all my life.

It were tedious to rehearse our journey, only that at every place where we lay to change horse, King James was proclaimed, bells rang and bonfires were lit as men rejoiced at they knew not what, as it seemed to me, but only for the newness of a king when they had known just a great queen for forty-five years. So after three days of hard riding we came to the city of Westminster, passing through Richmond but not staying. We rode along Tothill Street by many fair houses of the nobility some still in building,
past the great Abbey of Westminster and the Palace of Whitehall where the queen now lay in state, having been brought hither by horse, up the Strand, past several mansions where lawyers in their gowns were coming and going, which I supposed to be the Inns of Court, and into Fleet Street where we were stopped at Temple Bar to pay our toll for entering the City of London. At once we were surrounded by a myriad of people all shouting and thrusting, and a myriad more poured out of every narrow alley like emmets from their holes. Then we rode up Ludgate Hill and into Casde Baynard Ward where I first smelt the stink of the river, for the castle was situate beside the Thames which I thought must be dangerous to the health of all that lay there for the noxious effluvia rising up therefrom as one might perceive simply by the nose. Also the house was old and damp from the same cause of nearness to the river so that even as we entered I longed for the sweet airs of Ramsbury and that my lady should not linger there long for the health of her body and mind both their sakes. The streets round about stank too with such a press of people, trades of every kind, smoke of fires and furnace, horse piss and dung and the rancid stink from cookshops and ale houses.

Her majesty’s funeral was to be soon for the new king was already on his journey south, divers having gone to meet him along the way hoping thereby to be first in his favour, and at Burleigh House the young Earl William himself, the countess her son, freed from disgrace and the queen’s disfavour by her death, paid his court, and was said to be well used by his majesty before hastening south again to London. Some said that a multitude of rude Scots would descend upon the court and that all the English would be put out. Others that the king liked young men about him that were handsome and did not care where they might come from. Others that the new queen loved masques and jousting and that the court would be merry now as it had not in the old queen’s time, so quick were men to forget the
debt they owed to her who had kept the country safe for so long.

My lady had told me more of the queen’s dying as it had been told to her, how some of the foolish women about her in the palace of Richmond had cried that she was bewitched and that one had claimed to see an apparition of her majesty in several rooms distant from where she lay in her bed in the privy chamber. Once she rose and sat upon a stool for three days. Once she would be pulled up and stood upon her feet for fifteen hours but then being put to bed again she had said that she did not wish to live longer but desired to die. At this the council was called and she signified by putting her hand to her head when he was named, that King James of Scotland was to succeed her. Then, after she had heard the prayers of the archbishop, all left her except her women and she, turning her face to the wall, fell into a deep sleep, drifting away until she came at last into the land of continual brightness, of the sun shining clearly upon the huge and mighty sea.

‘Women are very apt to see witchcraft Amyntas, where there is none’, my lady said, ‘especially when they have watched many hours without sleep. And there is a sacredness about a prince that conjures up strange fancies in the death of a sovereign as if there must be more cause thereof than age and infirmity.’

Her majesty lay in state for many days with ladies watching over her as if we could not bear to let her go. Then at last on the 28th of April was the day of the funeral that she should be carried to her rest in the cathedral church of Westminster. I was got up in a window in Whitehall to see the procession pass through so great a throng as had never been seen before, all sighing, weeping and groaning at windows and doors, on the very roofs and clinging to the gutters. When her painted image laid upon the coffin, borne on a chariot, passed, showing her in all her robes with the crown, orb and sceptre, a great groan went up.

First came the knight marshal’s men to make room through the press of people, then fifteen poor men and two hundred and sixty poor women, four by four. Then followed her household in order: grooms, yeomen, children, clerks, sergeants and between them banners, heralds, trumpeters, horses caparisoned in black, the gentlemen and children of the chapel singing all the way.

At last came the guard, five by five, their halberds pointing down, and the twelve banderols of her ancestors carried by twelve barons. My lady with other countesses marched with the Lady Countess of Northampton, as chief mourner, while the Lady Anne, her daughter, came further back in the procession with other earls’ daughters. The young earl himself assisted Lord Howard to carry the great embroidered banner of England while his younger brother, Sir Philip, carried the standard of the greyhound.