Constant Heart (14 page)

That set my maids to chattering. And so loud were their voices that I was obliged to leave my chair and place myself closer to the earl so that I could understand him.

“Am I to go as well?”

“You would rather stay, then?”

“Nay! I had been given to understand, however, that when you returned to court, my lord, I would be staying here.”

“You may stay if you like. It makes no difference to me.”

Looking into his eyes, I knew him to be speaking the truth. But it made a very great difference to me. I would go where he went and in time, if heaven granted my wish, he might learn to seek my presence too.

14

I
returned to London, if not with high hopes, then at least I with anticipation. My four maids were atwitter the whole way with thoughts of the glittering society they would soon enter. Though they would not be presented at court, they would, in time, certainly be presented to those who called on us at Lytham House.

If
any chose to call on us at Lytham House.

When I made my return to court, it was if I had never been away. No one looked at me. No one spoke to me. No one paid me any mind. I was granted a sort of invisibility even as I listened to the conversations around me. My days continued, one the same as the next, until one day I had a visitor. Lady de Winter announced her presence in my chambers at Lytham House with a stomping of her foot.

“Girl, I have not seen you!”

I rose from my chair and curtsied, caught unawares. “And I have not seen you.” I dismissed my maids, gesturing to them with my hand behind the skirts of my gown.

“You look . . . the same. Did you not understand what I told you?”

“I did, but then, before I could see you again, the earl took me away to Brustleigh Hall.”

“Brustleigh Hall. But you have returned. And have you nothing to say to me?”

“Above all else, I desire your help. I would . . . retreat.”

Her eyes fastened upon mine and she smiled. “Splendid. Then you must first become more pale.” Paler still? “And how might I accomplish this?”

“You will want a paste of flour or the whites of eggs.”

“I would be the most pale of ghosts.”

“We could bleed you. That always achieves a paleness in skin, although it has the unfortunate effect of inducing a faint.”

I could not keep myself from shuddering. “I want nothing to do with blood.”

“Then you will want ceruse.”

She directed her attentions to Joan. “Do you know how to paint, girl?”

Joan lowered her eyes and shook her head.

Hoping to rescue Joan from the lady’s attentions, I answered before she could reply. “I have never had need to paint. Not ceruse.

For vermillion, one of the chamber—”

“You have the need now. And a chambermaid will not do. Send to the apothecary for ceruse and vermillion. Tomorrow I will bring my woman and have her show your girl how to paint.”

The next morn, before dinner, Lady de Winter and her woman were shown to my chambers.

Joan and I rose when they entered.

Lady de Winter walked toward me and did not stop until the hems of our skirts met. Then she held out a crooked finger and lifted my chin toward the light, turning it as her eyes inspected my face. Her head trembled slightly and so did her finger as it pushed against my chin.

“The eyebrows will need to be plucked.”

“I have never—”

“I had thought you in need of help, but if you will not listen, I will not aid you.”

“Do not think me ungrateful.”

“Then do as I instruct you.”

As I sat in a chair, Lady de Winter’s woman proceeded to rid me of my brows. Every last hair of them. It did not take many pluckings before my eyes had begun to spill tears.

“Had you done this in your youth, it would not prick so badly.”

I would have nodded, but her woman was brandishing the instrument before my eyes. I clenched them tight so I could not see her.

After my brows had been erased, Joan held a looking glass out to me.

In the reflection, Lady de Winter appeared by my side. “Much better.”

I ran a finger across the skin made smooth by the absence of hairs. The lightest of touches drew pain.

“It will not hurt long.”

“And the reddening of the skin?”

“We will render it pale with the ceruse.”

Joan returned the mirror to its coffer and stood behind me while Lady de Winter and her woman stood before me. The woman dipped a brush into the white paint, then applied it to my face. Again and again, she drew the brush across my skin. As the paint began to dry, it tightened the skin beneath it.

“Should it itch?”

“If it does not itch, there has not been enough applied.”

The woman paused and looked at Lady de Winter.

“Close your eyes, girl.” Once I had done as she had said, she turned her attentions to Joan. “You, girl. When you paint the eyelids, take care not to brush the paint into the eyes. It would not go well for your mistress. Nor for you, I would warrant.”

After having painted my eyelids, Joan held the looking glass once more before me.

“The paint must be thick and it must be even to cast the illusion of youth.”

“I am not so very old.”

“I do not wish to be reminded. And neither does Her Majesty.”

“My lips?”

“We paint them with vermillion.”

“But should they not be white to start?”

Lady de Winter looked at them for a moment, then tilted her head. “If that is what you wish.” She stepped back so her woman could continue to paint. When it was done, Joan held up the glass again.

I was as pale as a corpse. Paler still.

“You will want red for your lips. Do you want it for your cheeks as well?”

I looked at my reflection, captivated by the stranger who stared back at me. “Nay. Nay, I think not.”

“Then I have supplied what was lacking. Do you not forget it, Marget the knight’s daughter. That country maid is heretofore banished. I never wish to meet her again.”

The time at Brustleigh had been a good diversion, but being back at court in London was stimulating. There was news to be had and power to be gained. Sir Walter Raleigh’s influence as one of Her Majesty’s favorites was on the wane. The Earl of Essex’s was on the rise. There was so much to be heard and to do that I had nearly forgotten Lady de Winter’s curious offer to help the girl. But then, the girl began to paint.

She appeared for supper one day, looking the very picture of a courtier. Except for her hair, of course, which was still as dark as midnight. Gone was the knight’s daughter. Banished was any trace of provincial innocence.

“You were saying, my lord?”

It took Nicholas several attempts to turn my eyes from the girl to his own. And even then, I could not remember what it was that I had been saying.

“She is trying, my lord.”

“I can see that for myself.” Would wonders never cease? She
was
trying. And perhaps she might prove herself to be useful after all. I left Nicholas for the girl. Bowed and then took her hand, escorting her into the hall for supper.

The application of the paints was tedious and trying and Joan did not want to do it.

“But I cannot do it myself,” I pleaded.

“Then do not do it at all.”

“I need you.”

“To turn you into a corpse?”

I tried a different tactic. “I command you to.”

“Then I shall go home.”

“Please, Joan!”

“Marget, you are asking me to take your beauty, take something God has given you, and turn it into some sick, diseased, dying mockery of loveliness.”

“This is what I have to do.”

“You do not have to. And I do not trust that woman.”

“I do. She knows of what she speaks. You have not stood in court for weeks . . . months . . . with everyone pretending they do not see you. You have not been laughed at. Made fun of . . .”

“Aye, but I have. Who in King’s Lynn has not made fun of my father, Humfrey Hybby? Who has not laughed at the Green Griffin Tavern? And who has not mocked me? Poor Joan Hybby of Ratten Row.”

“You do not—”

“I
do
understand! I understand what they do not, and that is that you can only do with what you have. With what God has given you. If you try to be anyone else, then that is the worst that can happen, because you cannot ever be them—and then you give up being you. And then, Marget, you are nobody at all. If you cannot be who you are, then who can? I may be whey-faced Joan Hybby from King’s Lynn, but at least I am somebody. And at least I am who I have a right to be.”

“Joan, please.”

“I fear for you. I truly do. This is not right. ’Tis not right to paint a dead person’s face onto the living. And if I do it, then who knows but that it will come true.”

A shiver crept down my spine at her words, but I shook it off. I took up the brush. “If you will not do it, then I will have to.”

She watched my poor attempts at painting for several long minutes, then sighed and took up the brush. “I will do it.”

After scrubbing the paint from my face the night before, Joan needed several attempts to fix it adequately to my face anew. The previous day’s application had left my skin rough and dried. But eventually we declared her work satisfactory and I went, as was my habit, to court.

It was a day unlike any other, for it seemed that in assuming the mask of the paint, I had assumed some other identity. I had become a person upon whom it was permitted to look. The circles that had never opened to my presence on previous days contained women who wished, this day, to acknowledge me. The Lady de Winter first among them.

She grabbed my arm and pulled me as close as my skirts would allow, right into a conversation she was having with another lady.

I saw that woman give my gown a swift glance. And I also saw her eyes linger on my jewels, especially on my brooch of bees.

“You cannot have heard the news about Essex.”

I blinked. “Essex? The Earl of Essex?”

“Which other? He has married.”

“Whom?” For certain though it was that he was the Queen’s favorite, he was also notorious for his debaucheries.

“Guess.” A smile played with Lady de Winter’s lips.

The other lady named several among the Queen’s maids.

“Nay. Frances Walsingham-Sidney.”

The other lady gasped. “He has not! How could he and still retain Her Majesty’s attentions? She is the spymaster’s daughter— his liaisons will be reported direct to her father’s ear!”

Even I, in King’s Lynn, had heard the name of Walsingham. And it had been spoken, always, in a whisper. In fear. For Walsingham had eyes everywhere. And he knew every man’s business. I tried to convey the same shock as the other woman, but the paint allowed my face no emotion. My absent brows had no strength to raise themselves against the ceruse. My lips found difficult work turning, in any direction, beneath that white mask.

Lady de Winter’s eyes gleamed bright. “Might that not be the point? But perhaps I misspoke. To all of us, he is indeed married, but to Her Majesty alone, he remains unencumbered.”

“Her Majesty does not know? He lies to the Queen? It must be by omission . . . ?”

“At the moment. But should she ask him, he would swear he had not done it.”

“What can he hope to gain? For certes she will find out the truth.”

“Hope to gain? Nothing. To prevent? The axe of Her Majesty’s wrath. And he may yet for some weeks. Watch and learn how one can lie to one’s sovereign and still come away with head attached to shoulders. I predict after a show of rage and an explosion of rhetoric, Essex will be back in her good graces.”

“You cannot think so.”

Her lips folded themselves together. “I know so.”

It happened just as Lady de Winter had predicted. Many months later, when Her Majesty discovered the news, she exploded. When her rage finally cooled, she welcomed Essex back toward the throne with open arms. His wife, however, was another matter. Essex’s reconciliation with the Queen had everything to do with his wife’s permanent retirement to the country. Out of court, out of mind.

Gradually, as Lady de Winter began to show her favor toward me, I became a member of her group. A part of court. And for a while it seemed there was a fashion for bees. Every lady had a piece of jewelry fashioned in that image from amber.