Constant Heart (41 page)

I placed my hand to his shoulder and fixed my lips into a smile. We stepped into a turn, leaping first onto our outside feet and then lifting our inside feet forward. Together. One long graceful step and then I sprang into the air.

Lifted high by Lytham’s arms, supported by his thigh, I yearned to take flight and fly beyond the confines of the palace, but then my feet touched the floor once more.

Again and again, caught in the turns, I was lifted into the air, then brought back down. Though my heart longed to weep, I could only smile. But by the last lift, my emotions were no longer under my command and I stumbled as my feet touched the floor.

“Here, here!” The musicians halted their music at Her Majesty’s word.

She pushed away from her cushions, gained her feet and came to stand in front of us.

We made swift reverence.

“What ails your wife, Lytham? Rise then, girl. You must not land so heavy on your feet!” She dismissed me with a wave of her hand and gestured for music with the other. And when the music began, Lytham danced with her around the chamber.

I awoke on the morning after the dance, filled with good cheer. The Queen had chosen me as her partner the previous night. Perhaps
this
was the way preference would find me. Perhaps it was the sign of a changing of fortunes.

A summons to court that day for an audience with Her Majesty did nothing to diminish my optimism. I chose my best cloak and my best doublet. I had Nicholas place a gold chain around my neck, and then I galloped off to meet my destiny.

“Good Earl of Lytham!”

I bowed and approached the chair where Her Majesty was engaged in correspondence in her Privy Chamber. “Your Grace.”

She did not ask me to sit, but she did wave away her clerks and set aside the letter she had been reading. “It has been too long since we have spoken of monopolies.”

“Your Majesty.”

“I have become enamored of your ideas. Though why you should be so interested in a monopoly for starch . . . ?”

“My greatest interest is only ever of your greatest interest, Your Grace. Ruffs continue to grow in size. You can obtain nothing but profit from granting such a monopoly.”

“But do you not find the ruff tiring, Lytham?”

I hid a smile by bowing my head. My ruff was only a trifle compared to the size worn by Her Majesty. Though she was wearing only a simple robe, she wore a ruff no one could ignore. “Not when wearing one reminds me of your vaunted . . . person . . . Your Majesty.” It was said her ruffs were meant to disguise her time-ravaged neck. If that were so, it worked. Admirably. Beneath its folds stretched only pale, unblemished skin.

“Well. We shall see. I will take it into consideration.” She motioned her clerks forward.

I bowed. “Your Grace.”

As I stepped back, she spoke once more. “Your gypsy wife must be such a disappointment to you.”

I could not think what I should say.

“It is not seemly for those to dance who have no grace.”

It is not seemly for those to dance who have no grace
. That was the real reason for the audience. She did not wish for Marget to be noticed. Of all the unjust . . . ! My wife had the lightest foot of anyone I knew. She might not be able to leap as high as the Queen, but what she lacked in strength, she made up for in grace.

Those who have no grace.

So what was I to do? Praise God that she had not told me to retire Marget to the country! I did not wish to live without my wife.

But still, we would have to be very careful. I had gained Her Majesty’s favor. Now I only had to keep it.

First, an upgrade of apartments at court and then a waiver from taxes was given to Lytham. And then he heard Her Majesty was considering the possibility of granting a monopoly for starch.

He was exultant. Jubilant. And completely enamored with his Queen.

He could not seem to decide, in my disgrace, whether I was an asset or a liability. And so he vacillated on my attendance at court. One day commanding me to go, the next leaving me at home.

And so I made friends with my thoughts. But thoughts such as those were vagrant friends. The worst kind of friends. They were enough to drive me mad. There was only one thing I knew with certainty: that I was not made with a faithless heart. I could only pray that in his success, he would remember me. And so I did. For long hours. Days at a time.

The days that followed were filled to overflowing with activity. There were politics to be discussed in the mornings, advancement to be discussed in the afternoons, and dances to be danced in the evenings. And all of it done within the circle of those closest to the throne. If I did not dance with Her Majesty, then I danced with one of her maids-in-waiting.

Finally, I had access to everyone with the ability to influence the Queen. I had only to decide who it was I wished to speak to her on my behalf. I had already laid my case before her for the starch monopoly. Now it needed only a push from the proper direction. Essex, of course, was not an option. Neither was Cecil, her secretary; he was too bent on strengthening his own sphere of influence. In short, I did not trust him to have any interest in strengthening mine. The choice fell, finally, to one of Her Majesty’s maids. For a price, I knew I could get one to speak for me. So I sold some of my plate and chose not the most beautiful, nor the most merry, but rather the most grave, though, in truth, one could not long remain solemn in Her Majesty’s court.

I drew the girl from the Presence Chamber one forenoon on the pretense of viewing the monthly roses in the pleasure garden. “I hear their beauty rivals only your own.”

“Then I shall have to see them. And if their loveliness is everything you say, then I shall have the gardener cut them . . . and give them to you.”

“I would press them between the pages of
Astrophel and Stella
. I have ever been a lover of stars. Particularly those which glitter closest to the moon.” The moon had long been used as a symbol for Her Majesty’s Grace. I was certain the girl understood exactly of what I spoke.

She smiled. “Sometimes I can be persuaded closer to the earth.”

“Nay, my dear, do not bend too close to this dusty sphere; your beauty is greater appreciated from afar.”

We paused in front of a bench. I took my cloak from my shoulders and draped it over the bench so that she could sit upon it.

She sighed. “It costs dear to remain so long suspended.” She extended a hand to me.

I grasped it and knelt before her on one knee.

“Sometimes, I long for my feet to touch the ground.” She drew her hand from mine and pressed it to my cheek.

I removed her hand and kissed it. “But if you leave your orbit for the earth, then how are you to sing my praises to the moon?”

“It would only have to be a fleeting stay.”

She was offering me everything, for nothing. She was a courtier’s fantasy: a girl who wanted but a brief moment of time abed for which she professed herself quite willing to do anything. And I ought to have agreed right then to her terms, but oh, for the love of Marget, I could not. The love between us, our constancy, may have been sweet, but it had just become quite costly.

I might be able to explain away a dance or two, but a prolonged flirtation? That, Marget would never understand. And the fact that I had been propositioned? Regardless of my response, it would be the death of everything between us. I could not be about my business and worry over Marget’s perceptions as well. There was only one thing to do.

48

S
oon Lytham’s vacillation about my role at court turned to resolve and he dismissed me. It was one thing to excuse me from attendance day-by-day, but another thing altogether to bar me from going. I ordered the household back to Holleystone. What else could I do? But I retired there with much relief, even in my disgrace. I meant to stay until I was recalled. And it was not I who would do the asking.

I had been spurned for the Queen. But had that not been my goal? Had I not been trying, for years, to push Lytham closer to the throne? Well, I had succeeded!

Oh, bitter victory. My success had robbed me of a husband.

For what sin was I being punished? For stumbling during a dance? It was my error that had catapulted Lytham into the Queen’s lap. And
I
was being banished? Were I to rend my heart from my chest, it could not have ached any more than it did.

Life without Lytham was dull. There was no laughter, no diversion to separate the morn from afternoon and the night from day. But then, there was no need to take great pains in appearances. My ladies and I went about in our night-robes until dinner. I had no need for paints. After several weeks of restless activity, I began to settle into a country routine. The window seats wanted new cushions, so I set to work selecting designs. Then I ordered up the colors of wool and put my maids to work. As they stretched out the canvas, I read to them from a new play.

One of them had clumsy fingers, and one day, with impatience, I took the canvas from her hands, picked out the stitches and then reworked them myself. It was only later that evening as Joan helped me into bed that I realized what I had done.

“My hands!” I held them out in front of me, wiggling my fingers. Clenching them into fists and then loosing them.

“Aye. And these right here, these are toes.”

“Joan, look at them.”

“Aye. You’ve ten of them even.”

“They work! They are not swollen.”

She grabbed at them. Turned them over. “Hold them out in front of you.”

I did as she asked.

“They do not even tremble!”

I lay back into the pillows, pulled the coverlet up to my chin. “ ’Tis Holleystone. The country. I like it here.” Even though I did not like my reason for being there.

“Nay: ’tis the paints. You are not painting.”

Whatever it was, my health improved. The constant knots in my belly were loosed. I was less irritable. Less tired. But the new energy within left me with a desire to do more. To be more.

I consulted first with the Clerk of the Kitchen and then the Chief Cook on ale, ordering the bushels of malt to be ground, having it brewed thrice over a furnace, and then seeing to the barreling. We tried a new receipt for metheglin, a drink made of fermented honey, water, and herbs. With some of the orchard fruits in the storehouse, we also tried our success with brandy.

In a visit to the stillroom, I noted a dwindling of supplies. I also noted a complete absence of simple tonics for healing wounds. And so I commanded a supply of mineral water and oversaw the restocking of the herbs.

There were babes born among the people. And several deaths. There was the distribution of flax and wool to the poor for carding and spinning.

As long as I kept myself at some worthy task, my thoughts were not able to wander. But abed, at night, they either spun into the knot of Lytham’s desertion or they unraveled, leaving me staring into a void of space.

And as the weeks passed, the staring happened all too often.

“Marget?”

I started and took up the book on my lap. But I could not hide myself from Joan.

“You are too pale. You have kept yourself inside too long. You should go hawking. Falconer would take you.”