The King's Daughter (21 page)

‘Of course!’ Her eyes told me that I had asked a foolish question.

I climbed into the bed turned back by my chamberer and pulled the covers up to my chin. ‘Then you had best decide.’

She shook her head. ‘Don’t mock me. You know it’s not my choice.’

‘At this moment, here in this room, it is.’

She gave me a long look. ‘In truth?’

‘Do you call me a liar?’

She smiled thinly and avoided my question. ‘The queen has not assigned me a place to eat in her household mess. If I want to eat, I believe I’m still yours.’

I leaned back into the shadows of the bed so that she could not see my secret gratification.

Her fingers now began the melody of an old French lullaby while she spoke over the music. ‘We must all pretend that a Mr Daniels is the author, who seems to be her majesty’s tame poetaster.’

‘You never answered my question,’ I said. ‘Why does the queen take this risk?’

‘I believe,’ said Thalia carefully, ‘that no poet would agree to write what her majesty wants.’

Anne returned with my posset. ‘Do you speak of the queen’s new masque?’ she asked eagerly. ‘I have been asked to sing in it, as well as Mistress Bristo. And Frances Howard, and the Other Elizabeth.’ She offered me the warm, foam-topped mug of milk, egg, sugar and sherry. ‘My aunt is pleased with me. It’s an unexpected honour!’

I bent my face to my drink. I understood. My mother meant to act as if I were already gone from England.

‘This new masque is to be a reply to the masque we missedwhile we were still at Combe,’ Anne went on happily. ‘Do you remember, your grace? All that excitement about the Gunpowder Treason and the marvellous bonfires that followed it? It was that same year, but much earlier.’

I did remember. For Twelfth Night, 1605, the beginning of the year that ended so badly for me, my mother had commissioned her first masque at the English court.

‘On Twelfth Night.’ Anne rambled on, undressing for bed in her turn. ‘Her majesty’s first court masque in London.
The Masque of Blackness,
it was called. The queen and all her ladies blacked their faces and bosoms and arms with soot.’

Thalia stopped playing.

In
The Masque of Blackness,
my mother, six months pregnant, had played the chief Nymph and Daughter of Niger.

‘But the transformation scene, when they were all to be washed white and cleansed of their sins by the power of the king of Albion… Albion meaning “white” of course’ – Anne’s head reappeared through the neck of her sleeping smock – ‘as well as “England”… it failed disastrously. Frances says that the greasy blacking paste would not wash off on stage. It clung to their faces and came off only when scrubbed hard with soap and warm water. Master Jones had to rewrite the ending without the happy transformation. Now her majesty has been inspired by the arrival of Mistress Bristo to try again.’

‘She means to call it,
The Return of Niger to Albion,’
said Thalia in a flat voice.

‘Lucy, Countess of Bedford, says that the queen has six apothecaries working day and night to make a blackening paste that will easily rinse away.’ Anne climbed into bed beside me.

I now attended the rehearsal when the Daughters of Niger were to try the new blacking paste for their skins. The ladies had stripped to their smocks and under-petticoats baring their shoulders and arms.

My mother, Lucy, Countess of Bedford, Lady Arbella Stuart,and two others retired to a neighbouring antechamber to black themselves in private. I watched them leave.

My quiet, older, distant-cousin Arbella always made me uneasy. She had attended my mother for as long as I could remember. Her father had been the younger brother of my grandfather, Lord Darnley and her hand had often been offered by my father in his political manoeuvring, but never given. I had heard rumours that he once intended to marry her himself instead of my mother, to strengthen his dynastic claim in England. I sometimes wondered if she ever dreamed of being queen in place of the woman whose train she carried on state occasions.

When the queen was gone, the rest of the ladies laughed and jostled at the three watery looking glasses hung on the wall for the occasion, as they began to sponge onto their faces, bare arms and bosoms the queen’s new paste of soot, borage oil and water.

‘Mistress Music!’ Frances Howard called to Thalia, who waited quietly on a stool with her lute in her lap. ‘We all try to look like you today. What do you think?’

She did not reply. But I thought that she shone more strange and mysteriously beautiful as the others grew blacker and more like clowns.

‘Are we not lovely?’ The ladies shrieked with laughter and rolled their eyes. There was a mock fight to look in the mirrors. Bare blackened shoulders and knees gleamed like obsidian.

‘I might paint myself up like this for dinner and give them all a fright!’

‘I swear that my soul feels more wild and savage already,’ said Frances Howard. ‘May I have a bite of your arm please? I begin to feel hungry.’

‘How do I look, your grace?’ Anne stood shyly in front of me. Or I believed that it was Anne. Her face was a comical mask of thick black paste around the white rimmed patches of her eyes.

The rehearsal itself began with the now-black Nymphs of Niger singing their music while they walked through the more-or-less correct positions.

‘Great Albion, again we come.

Once more we beg your healing powers…’

As was usual in a court masque, the chief parts were sung by the court ladies, while the court musicians filled out the sound and anchored the tune.

I watched Thalia, now waiting on a wood and canvas rock while the black-faced queen and her ladies, half-clothed in fragments of their eventual costumes, went over and over the more difficult passages of their opening song. Though a mere musician, Thalia had been given a solo.

When her turn came to sing, I understood why she was the reported inspiration for the new masque. The hall fell silent when she began her lament. In her husky voice, she expressed, most movingly, her deep sorrow at having to remain behind, black and still impure, while her sisters sailed for Albion to try again for the purification that had eluded them before.

Unlike that of her sisters, her blackness would never be washed away.

There was a hush when she finished, then applause.

If I had not been so unhappy at being left out, I might have wondered how she felt about her role. At that moment, however, I hated her for being the one in the masque, for singing so beautifully, and even more, for earning a ‘well-sung’ from the queen.

I was not the only one to notice the queen’s praise. I saw Frances Howard exchange looks with another young gentlewoman above a fixed smile.

The queen, Lady Arbella, and two of the other older ladies again retired to wash in private. Only Lucy, Countessof Bedford, who was closest to the rest of us in age, remained.

‘Ladies…!’ The Master of Revels tried to call them to order. ‘We will now attempt the libation scene – that troublesome transformation. In the performance, of course, your chosen gallant will help to wash you, but today, these grooms will assist.’ He pointed to a group of red-faced boys standing-by with water jugs. ‘Please go now to your positions beside your seashell ship on the shore of Albion.’

Dash not our hope but let us bloom

As snow-drop white as vernal flowers…

They held out beseeching soot-blackened hands. The grooms poured water from the jugs. There was a burst of hilarity and shrieks. ‘That’s too cold! I freeze!’ Water splattered and spread in puddles on the stone floor. More shrieks.

‘My ladies!’ cried the Master of Revels. ‘Please attempt the lines again.’

With shameful satisfaction I watched the song dissolve into chaos. The new blackening paste did not appear to rinse off much more easily than the original one had done. The Daughters of Niger were soon streaked black and white, their gowns sodden and smeared with the soot. Fabric clung to wet skin. The odd breast was exposed. A string of pearls broke and bounced across the floor. I leaned sideways and picked up one that rolled as far as my skirt hem.

‘Back to the beginning, I beg you,’ prompted the Master of Revels.
‘Great Albion
… ’ He was wasting his breath.

‘Whoops!’ High-heeled shoes skidded. Grooms frantically wiped up water from the floor and ran to fetch more jugs of water. With helpless dismay, a tailor watched the ruin of his silk shawls and sashes.

‘I vow, Frances, the more pure you become, the more lewd you look!’ I could no longer recognise the speaker.

‘All the better to attract a man!’ cried Frances Howard. ‘I know who I want to wash me clean.’

‘But you’re already married, you wicked creature!’

Frances ignored her. ‘It’s not coming off this time, either! It’s like the old saying. “As soon wash white the Ethiop".’ She glanced up at Thalia.

Thalia sat unmoving, as if she had not heard. I felt the first quiver of apprehension invade my misery.

‘Who has ever tried to wash an Ethiop?’ someone demanded.

‘Not I!’

‘Nor I.’

‘We must seize the chance!’ cried Frances.

Dripping and laughing, they all turned to Thalia.

I opened my mouth, then closed it again.

‘Your turn, Mistress Music,’ said Frances. She took a jug of water from a groom. ‘Yes, you! Come down here. Don’t be shy!’

After a moment, Thalia climbed down from her rock, leaving her lute behind.

I looked away. In truth, I was still a little afraid of Frances Howard.

‘Hold out your hands.’

Thalia cupped her hands as the others had done. Frances poured. Thalia rubbed her hands with the offered towel.

‘It’s no good. You must rub harder.’ Frances glanced at the other young women, then at me. ‘Try again.’

‘My skin is black all through,’ said Thalia. ‘You won’t find white no matter how hard you wash!’

‘Then you’re a sinful she-devil who can’t be washed clean!’ Frances glanced around at the others. I felt Lucy look at me.

This is my mother’s doing, I thought. Nothing to do with me.

‘We can’t leave her soul to black damnation! To the field, ladies! We must try to save her!

“It’s no use,’ protested Thalia. She put both arms behind her back.

‘Are you confessing to resolute wickedness then?’ demanded another dripping black mask. ‘See how she stares like a witch!’

‘Surely not!’ said Frances. ‘We won’t tolerate a determined sinner in our midst! Hold her whilst I save her soul!’ She seized Thalia’s wrist. The others pressed close around, pinning Thalia with their bodies in wet, skimpy clothing, netting her with their hands. They forced her left arm out in front of her. Only Lucy held back.

I wanted to tell them to leave her alone, but part of me muttered that she should not have been there in the first place.

‘I don’t find this amusing,’ said Lucy. When the others ignored her, she went off after the queen. After a moment, a figure that I thought was Anne also stepped back from the mêlée.

‘Don’t loose her!’ Frances Howard tore a flap of canvas from the corner of a rock and began to scrub at the back of Thalia’s hand.

Thalia set her teeth. Then she began to struggle. She made no sound.

‘Harder! You must go deeper. She’s still black!’

Her head began to twist wildly from side to side. I stood up.

‘Now she’s black and red.’

Thalia pinched her lips against a scream. Silently, she twisted and heaved, but the nymphs held her tightly with their own bodies.

‘Scrub a little harder. Her sins must surely wash away!’

‘Look! She bleeds like an Englishwoman…’

‘Stop!’ I shouted.

‘But, your grace, we’re just having a game.’ The women fell back, even as Frances Howard protested.

‘… all in fun,’ added another.

Thalia hid her arms behind her. I heard her panting.

I seized her elbow and pulled her arm from behind her back. ‘This is not in fun!’

‘But they don’t feel pain as we do,’ someone murmured. ‘See! She doesn’t turn pale at the sight of her own blood!’ There was an uneasy giggle.

‘Rehearsal is done!’ I said. ‘Go! Now!’

‘But your grace…’ A male voice spoke behind me.

I rounded on the Master of Revels. ‘They’ve learned all they need to know today!’

He turned to look for help from the queen then remembered that she had gone.

I led Thalia back to my lodgings and into my little closet, where I made her sit down. I examined her injury. Seven inches of skin on her wrist and hand had been rubbed away, exposing the raw flesh beneath. Tiny deep red wells of blood rose in the dark pink flesh. When I wiped, I saw the white of an exposed tendon. A violent tremor shook her arm.

She tried to pull away. ‘It will heal.’

‘How can you not cry?’

‘And give them the satisfaction?’

I reared back at the cold fury in her eyes. ‘But doesn’t it hurt?’ Perhaps that woman was right, and she didn’t feel pain in the same way.

‘Of course it hurts, you fool!’ Thalia clapped her other hand over her mouth.

There was a long silence.

‘I don’t think you’re meant to speak to me like that,’ I said.

Thalia stared mutely at the floor, her mouth tight. ‘Are fine ladies meant to behave like beasts?’ she asked at last.

‘No.’ In silence, I found a clean handkerchief in my cupboard. ‘This will hurt.’ I wiped gently at the worst of the blood. Then I took a small stoneware jar from a chest my chamberer kept. ‘Marigold, beeswax and other things. I believeit will ease the pain.’ Gently, I applied the unguent to the raw skin of her wrist and hand. She squeezed her eyes shut in pain but stopped trying to pull away.

‘Will your playing be affected?’

She shrugged. ‘You’re not a fool,’ she said between gritted teeth. ‘I apologise.’

We both watched my finger gently smoothing the salve onto her wrist.

‘I’m sorry I didn’t stop them sooner,’ I said.

She nodded.

I fetched another clean handkerchief and wrapped it around her wrist. I could have called someone else to tend to her but found that I was enjoying it. I so seldom touched another person, or was touched, except when I was being dressed.