Watch the Lady (9 page)

“Soft, you see.”

“When I shot my first hart, I cried with grief when I saw the despair in its eyes.”

“What kind of ninny weeps for a dead animal?” Peg said.

“Perhaps it shows character to feel tenderness for the lower orders of creation. They feel fear, do they not, and pain?” Sidney was defending her but she sensed there was more to it than that. It was a rare shared affinity. “You know what the French King enjoys for sport?” he said, looking directly at Peg. “He takes pleasure in watching live cats tied into a sack with a fox and suspended over a fire. Little fluffy kittens, like the ones I have seen you playing with in the privy chamber. He enjoys their terror, savors the moment the flames bring the bag down, when they screech as they burn.”

“How could you describe such a scene?” cried Peg. “That is disgusting.”

“It
is
disgusting,” said Sidney. “Degrading and disgusting and inhumane. And there is a little of that in the excitement of the hunt. If you cannot see that then you are—”

“Then I am what?” interrupted Peg, bristling with indignation.

“Then you are heartless,” Penelope said. Sidney had squeezed her hand, unseen.

“A penny for your thoughts,” Jeanne said, through a mouthful of pins.

“I dread this wedding,” Penelope confessed.

“Why did you not refuse?” asked Dorothy, positioning her sister's necklace and standing back to survey her work.

“You know how it is.”

“But Mother—couldn't she have . . .” She didn't finish, remembering, Penelope supposed, that their mother had less say than anyone in such matters.

Penelope
had
gone to her, begged her to do something, try to influence Leicester, try to dissuade Rich. “But I love another,” she had pleaded.

Lettice smiled. “Of course you do, that is the way of the world and it will pass. Besides, love and marriage are not always happy bedfellows. I did not think I could care for your father when I married him. I thought I loved another too, but affection developed between us. Children create a common bond. You will grow fond of Rich, I am sure, my sweet.”

“But
you
love Leicester.”

“And look how low that love has brought me. I am ostracized for it and
she
keeps my husband in her thrall, offering preferment, his debts paid off, honors bestowed, as long as he remains by
her
side and not mine.”

“I hate her. I hate the Queen.” Her mother gasped and Penelope slapped a hand over her mouth, but the words could not be unsaid.

“It is not the Queen who makes you wed Rich.”

“No, but it is she who has tried to destroy
you
, and she who destroyed Father; you said so yourself: ‘He would still be alive if she had properly funded his campaign in that godforsaken isle.' That is what you said.” Penelope had never fully understood how her father's death came about. There were so many stories, the servants stifling their whispers as she entered a room. All she knew was he left to lead the army in Ireland—a great honor, it was called, that would bring him glory—and he never returned. “The Queen is a wicked woman, and if it wasn't for her, I wouldn't be marrying a man like Rich either.” Lettice opened her arms and Penelope fell into her embrace, breathing in her scent, closing her eyes tight as she tried to imagine herself back into the safety of childhood, far away from the woman she had become—eighteen, and on the brink of wedlock.

“Whatever thoughts you hold in your heart,” whispered Lettice, “you must never say such things about the Queen, even in private. You never know who may be listening. Mark my words. Think of the family, it will serve us
all
if you keep your favor with the Queen. Do that and you may well find yourself in a position one day to secure the future of the Devereuxs. Keep your wits about you, Penelope, for the Queen will not always be there and we must pin our hopes onto her successor or we will not survive.”

“But who will succeed her?”

“Ah, that is the question. Stay close and keep your influence; all will become clear at some point.” Penelope felt like an infant thrust into a grown-up world for which she was unprepared—the survival of her family, how could
she
possibly shoulder that? Lettice added, “Your brother and sister will join you at court before long but you are the oldest. It is your job to pave the way. I don't doubt you will become a formidable force.” She paused and a spark of something resembling anger lit in her face. “And one day you may find a way to have—”

Her mother never finished for the nurse arrived with the baby. “Look, your new brother!” Lettice took her son from the woman—“My noble little imp”—holding his round face up to hers and cooing in response to his wet gurgles.

Penelope was left wondering what her mother had been about to say. One day you may find a way to have what—Peace? Power?
Revenge
?

Lettice then thrust the boy into Penelope's arms. Penelope wanted to hate him, this child who had stolen the Leicester inheritance from Sidney, but he looked at her with an irresistible gummy smile and she couldn't stop herself from stroking a smooth fat cheek and lifting the little cotton cap to kiss the milk-scented down on his head.

“You will have one of these soon,” her mother said. “They will grow up together.” That thought skewered into her, for her children would be Rich's.

“You are miles away,” said Dorothy, breaking her reverie.

“I was thinking of babies. I saw our half brother the other day. He is almost good enough to eat.” She smiled, trying to push that unsettling conversation with her mother to the back of her mind.

“Turn around so I can comb your hair,” said Jeanne, smoothing a hand over her head. “Like woven gold.”

Penelope's heart started; those were the very words Sidney had used once, in the gardens at Richmond. They had lagged behind a walking party and stopped by the river where the rushes grew high, affording enough privacy for a stolen moment together. They had come upon a pool with a lone narcissus growing beside it, upright and proud, its face the color of egg yolk. It reminded her of that story from Ovid and they talked of those myths, of Echo, Callisto, Icarus, and the cruelty of those pagan gods. Then he had unpinned her hair, letting it fall about her shoulders, buried his face in it, and whispered, “Even Venus could not have had woven gold locks such as these.”

“I am to wed Lord Rich,” she told him, wishing she could take the words back, for she had ruined a perfect moment. What she wanted was for him to tell her he would not allow it, that he would petition the Queen, that he wanted her for himself. She imagined telling him that his loss of the Leicester inheritance was an irrelevance; what did she care for wealth?

But his reply was, “I know it. Let's not talk of that.”

She felt as if he had slapped her, and as time wore on the realization dawned that he had only been playing, as grown men do with gullible girls.

Thank God I didn't give myself to him, she thought as Dorothy attached her ruff to her collar, a great stiff thing that scratched against her neck, and then tightened her laces a little more. But a part of her wished she
had
given herself, and damn the consequences, because the idea of Rich being the one to claim her maidenhead was too much to bear.

Sadness had crept up on her over the following weeks as Sidney grew ever more distant, seeming to avoid her, spending more time away from court. He'd look away as others jostled to partner her in dances, it was no longer his hand proffered to help her out of the royal barge, and when she hung back while out riding or hawking it was always another who would edge her way for idle conversation—he had slipped to the far reaches of her world. Her heart had opened too fast and it was made tender like a muscle unused to action. But she was driven by hope and invented ever more convoluted explanations for his behavior, until one day he sought her out. It was high summer in the orchard at Nonsuch and the trees were so burdened by fruit their branches drooped to skim the tops of the tall grasses. He had taken her by the hand and led her there without a word.

He picked a peach for her. Its sweetness invaded her senses, a gluey trickle running down her wrist, which she caught with her tongue. He had got down on his knee and taken her hand, as if he were a storybook knight about to propose.

“I led you on. I shouldn't have wooed you. It was wrong, since I knew we could never wed. And for that I am deeply sorry.” He couldn't look her in the eye. “I hope you can forgive me.”

She had smiled as if her life depended on it, and chirruped, “No matter,” then turned before he could notice the hurt smear her face. All the poetry in the world cannot prepare a person for her first broken heart, the relentless yearning, the inner devastation, the utter absence of joy and hope. November bore down on her and she enclosed her heart in a membrane, like a baby born in the caul, so it was inaccessible, even to her.

“Is it true,” asked Jeanne as she pinned a long string of pearls to Penelope's stomacher, “that you . . .” She hesitated.

“That I what?” asked Penelope.

“That you are . . .”

“Spit it out,” said Dorothy.

“I heard talk”—she had partially covered her mouth and was speaking through her fingers—“that your mother's mother is half sister to the Queen rather than just her cousin. Does that mean the eighth Henry is your great-grandfather?”

Penelope swapped a look with her sister. She was wondering if that was why the Queen had drawn her into the fold so readily—it hadn't occurred to her before. “It
is
said we have Tudor blood, but we are not supposed to talk about it.”

“But many
do
speak of it,” said Jeanne. “And your mother resembles the Queen greatly.”

“I'm sure Rich has heard it too,” huffed Dorothy. “He will like the advantage it brings him.”

“It didn't bring much advantage to Mother,” said Penelope. It had dawned on her then that Lettice's marriage to the Queen's favorite was twice the betrayal, given her proximity of kinship, and with that came the realization that such a proximity can be more curse than blessing. But she didn't want to think about that, for it made her feel trapped in a web woven from her illustrious lineage.

“What is Rich like?” asked Dorothy.

“I don't know. I have met him only once or twice; he barely spoke. If
you
stood beside him at the altar, I swear he wouldn't tell the difference.” Penelope clapped her sister on the back and expelled a sour laugh.

“But you two are so alike, even
I
sometimes cannot tell you apart from behind,” said Jeanne.

For an instant Penelope was filled with an intense sense of the separation to come, to think that her sister would return to the Huntingdons so far away, and that nothing would ever be as it was.

“All I know is that he has more money than he can spend,” she said, beginning to laugh, with the others joining in. “I will be the rich Lady Rich.” Dorothy snorted at this, and they were all subsumed by guffaws. “With estates all over Essex.” Penelope stood on the bed as if delivering a speech in a masque. “And a town house in Smithfield, most convenient for burnings, if we are lucky enough to have any. My gardens will be filled with exotic fruits so rare they will need a battalion of men to guard them from thieves, there will be fountains of wine springing from the mouths of marble cupids, and there will be goldfish in my ponds made of real gold.”

“But how will they float?” Jeanne was sputtering helplessly. “And you shall have parties and banquets and dancing and music.” They collapsed back onto the bed, helpless.

“I fear I will have none of that.” Penelope's laughter dropped away. “For Rich does not approve of the ‘sinful pleasures.' He is a Puritan.”

“But you love music and poetry. You sing like an angel. How will you bear it?”

“I don't know.”

Dorothy's face looked stricken, as if someone had died. “Will you have to live at his house in Essex?”

“Not straightaway. The Queen has asked that I remain at court for the meantime. And Jeanne will be with me there.” She reached out her fingers to touch Jeanne's sleeve.

They were interrupted by a knock and her brother's voice calling out: “Are you dressed, Sis? May I enter?”

“Robin,” she cried, rushing to open the door, finding her brother, whom she hadn't seen for the best part of a year, smiling from beneath a tangle of inky curls, his right cheek furled into a dimple. He opened his arms and they embraced tightly. “I am glad you are here—so glad. And look.” She stood back to appraise him. “Your clothes, they are so fine.” She fingered the plum-colored velvet of his doublet, which was slashed to reveal some kind of golden fabric beneath.

“It was a gift from your intended. A whole outfit, down to the silk stockings.”

“From Rich? Have you met him?”

“He came up to Cambridge to take me out. We visited his tailor, took a boat out on the river, dined at an inn.”

“How did you find him?” she asked, puzzled as to why Rich would be courting favor with her brother, reminding herself that of course Essex was the head of the family. It was the liaison with the Devereux tribe and their lofty connections that were important to Rich.

“Generous.”

“He is currying your approval already.” She pinched her brother's cheek. “Barely sixteen and already wielding influence.' Beneath his fine clothes he still carried the gawkiness of youth and his face was smooth and soft-angled, though there was a faint downy shadow on his upper lip.

“He is a good enough fellow. A little sober, but good enough.”

“You know him better than I.” She could not hide her bitterness.