A Court Affair. Emily Purdy

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СКАЧАТЬ take its natural course, he wrote, when the end is nigh and the pain at its most excruciating, this will ease me into the arms of Death, and I will think Him merciful then, not cruel to take my life away when I am only eight years past twenty, with my hair still gold instead of silver. I should never have doubted Dr Biancospino; he was, I think, the only one who ever told me the truth laid bare, ugly and naked, not falsely painted to make it look pretty. And what if this bottle does contain one or more of those deadly ingredients described in his book of poisons? It was not given me out of malice, and it was meant to be saved, to be used only to drive pain away from my deathbed; it is not a tonic to sip every day like the lime and orange water Mrs Owen recommended.

      Boldly, defiantly, I uncork the bottle and take a sip, grimacing at the bitter, burning taste. It should be mixed with wine, or have sugar added, to make it more palatable and sweet, the pasted paper label says, written in Dr Biancospino’s elegant script, but, yet again, I am deaf to reason and ignore good and sound advice, acting again as if I alone know better. Mayhap I do, and mayhap I don’t. Today I’m too tired to care and quibble about it. Just a sip to ease my pain and prove my trust; what harm can it do? If I fall down dead, it is just the inevitable come sooner rather than later.

      I turn to my altar, thinking I would like to pray; it is Sunday after all, and it seems only right that even though I am not in church that I should talk to God just the same. Every day I pray for Him to deliver me from my desperation. I jump and nearly drop the bottle, my heart beats fast, and the familiar pain impales my breast, for there is the grey friar who haunts Cumnor Place, kneeling before my little altar, his head solemnly bowed, hidden deep in the dark shadows of his cowl so that I cannot see his face, his hands clasped tightly, wrapped with a dangling rosary of polished wooden beads and a swaying silver crucifix upon which Jesus Christ hangs in perpetual mute agony, nailed to the cross and crowned with thorns.

      Slowly—I am in a defiant mood today—like one warily approaching a dangerous beast, like a wounded lion or slumbering tiger, I go to the phantom friar and carefully ease myself down to kneel beside him. The air about him is icy and pierces through my many layers of clothes, making me feel as if I were wandering naked and lost in a world made entirely out of snow. But I defy the icy blast. I have been afraid of him for far too long. I accept his presence now and no longer scream or try to evade and hide from him.

      “Have I drunk Death?” For the first time I speak to him, my voice faint and all aquiver, like lute strings plucked by nervous fingers, as I set the bottle down upon the altar, like an offering. It glows and gleams in the candlelight as if it were lit from within by a fiery ember that, defying all reason, continues to emit a red glow even though, submerged in liquid, it should have gone right out. But the friar gives no answer and goes on with his prayers as if he has not even heard or noticed me kneeling beside him.

      “Who were you in life?” I persist, though he continues to ignore me. “What was your name? Did you struggle with the desires of the flesh that bedevil most men? Or did you embrace the cloistered life? Was it something you came to willingly? Did it bring you peace? Were you happy? Or was it a struggle to honour your vows? Did you rebel and fight against yourself your whole life long or meekly accept and resign yourself to your fate? Was your life a success, or a failure like mine? There must be a reason your ghost still walks! Were you walled up alive for some grievous sin? Did you love a nun, or a great lady, or a peasant girl perhaps and plant your seed inside her? Were you caught trying to abscond to France to start a new life with her? Or did you take your own life? The servants tell such wild and lurid stories; I don’t know which, if any, to believe. Did you do something so terrible, so unforgivable, that the gates of Heaven are barred to you, and your spirit is damned to walk the earth forever? Is there no absolution, no atonement, that will bring you rest?”

      But the ghostly grey friar is not inclined to divulge his secrets to me, and, intent upon his prayers, he ignores me, but I am used to that.

      “The Queen wants my husband, and my husband wants the Queen, and to wear a golden crown and call himself King Robert I of England, and only my life stands between the fulfilment of all their desires,” I confess to him. This is no lurid fancy; this is fact all England knows, and only those who wish to be kind and comfort me lie and say it isn’t so.

      Our lives—Elizabeth’s and mine—are a strange reversal of Fate. Usually it is the mistress’s lot to live hidden away in the shadows of a man’s life, while the wife walks proudly in the sun in a place of honour at his side. But Robert’s mistress rules the realm and basks always in the glorious, bright sun of pride and adoration, while I, his wife, languish forgotten and ignored in rustic obscurity, consigned and banished to oblivion, in one country house or another owned by those who wish to ingratiate themselves to Robert and the Queen.

      Housing Lord Robert’s ailing and unwanted wife has become a coin to barter for and pay back favours. Sometimes I wonder which one of these “gentlemen” who house me will be the one to betray me, to ensure my death beneath their roof, that this inconvenient guest does not survive their hospitality, and bravely bear the stigma and the scandal and suspicion that will darken their character, and their doorstep, forever after, like Judas for thirty pieces of silver, with the Queen’s profile minted on each coin and doled out from Robert’s coffers. Sir William Hyde? Sir Richard Verney? Sir Anthony Forster? Just lately Robert has written to say that the Hydes have agreed to have me back again. They were so glad, so relieved, to see me go before; I wonder what he has promised them. I’m to leave Cumnor and go back to lodge with them for a spell, then back to Compton Verney, before I return to Cumnor again. Thus has Robert ordered my life. I’m to go back and forth like a shuttlecock between these three houses. Whose doorstep will be stained with my blood? Whose threshold will be forever shadowed by that black, funereal pall? Which one will the Judas be?

      If not one of them, there is always Robert’s minion, his poor country cousin, sweet young Tommy Blount, with his freckled face, mass of ginger curls, and shy but ready, endearing smile, always so eager to please and bursting with a young man’s zest for life and tireless, unflagging vigour. He seems to spend all his time on the road as Robert’s courier, galloping hither and yon, back and forth between the court and wherever Robert sends him on one errand or another. He reminds me so much of the boy my husband used to be, only without Robert’s cocksure confidence, elegance, and bold sophistication. But I dare not trust even Tommy, a young man who looks at me with desire obvious in his eyes and words poised on his lips that he dare not say. Time has taught me that a sweet nature can be false or fade, especially when a man bows down to the golden goddess of Ambition. And Tommy, honoured to be favoured by such a great lord, is my husband’s loyal and trusted servant and kinsman, so I dare not trust him; succumbing to that temptation could very well be fatal for me.

      How will my husband set the deed down in his accounts ledger, I wonder. What innocuous expense will disguise my death? Will my blood be covered up with fluffy white wool, or will my corpse be hidden in a barrel of apples?

      The candlelight catches my betrothal ring, causing the golden oak leaf to glitter, and the amber acorn glows like a dollop of honey flecked with shifting glints of rich red, fiery orange, and shimmering gold, just like the memory of a beautiful sunset we once shared standing under the mighty old oak overlooking Syderstone, imprisoned inside this amber acorn. Sometimes nowadays it feels too heavy for my hand, like my end of the shackles and chains of the wedlock that hold Robert and me together. Sometimes I want to just undo the lock and let the chains fall and set us both free. I’m so tired of it all, the pain and misery and living in fear. Pride goeth before a fall, the Scriptures say; now I want to let that obstinate pride in being Lady Amy Dudley, Lord Robert’s wife, fall from me before I myself fall, pulled down by a weight I can no longer bear. I just want to let go of it all, even though I’m afraid of falling, but I’m also tired of holding on, and tired of being afraid.

      “O My Father,” I pray, “if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as Thou will.”

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