A Court Affair. Emily Purdy

sinister henchman, Sir Richard Verney. “Yes”—Mrs Owen nods as she continues her tale—“the Devil himself, in human form, by moonlight at the crossroads last night, out looking for desperate souls to sign their name in blood inside his big black book; it’s all ignorant country folderol of course, but just the same, I should not like to tempt fate by going to the fair today …”

      I pale at her words, and my knees buckle and shake, and Pirto has to put her arm around my waist to steady me.

      “I don’t think it was the Devil at all,” I say after Mrs Owen and Mrs Oddingsells have gone, as I sag weakly against her. “I think the Black Man is Death, and He is coming for me, mayhap even in the guise of Sir Richard Verney.”

      “Now, now, pet,” Pirto gently chides, “’tis no such thing at all, merely superstitious nonsense, just like Mrs Owen said. But are you sure you would not like me to stay with you? I don’t like to leave you alone when you’re so distressed,” she adds as, rubbing my back, she shepherds me back into my room and helps settle me in my chair again. “I’ve been to enough fairs in my lifetime, so ’tis no sacrifice at all.”

      “Dear Pirto.” I reach out and stroke her wizened cheek, so like the faces of the poppets we used to make from dried apples when I was a little girl. “Thank you, but I want you to go; I want you to enjoy this fair for me. I want one more fair before Death closes my eyes forever, but I have not the strength to go myself, so you go, for me, for both of us. Let your eyes drink in every detail, and bring me apple cider and cinnamon cakes, and ribbons for my hair, and sit here with me tonight when you come back and tell me all about it.”

      “Aye, that I will, though I hate to leave you even for a day, love,” Pirto says, stroking my hair and pressing a kiss onto my brow before she leaves me.

      “I’ll bring you a bit o’ gingerbread back as well, love,” she says brightly, just before she closes the door. “That’ll tempt your appetite—you always did love it so—and the ginger’ll settle your stomach and keep the nausea down.”

      I breathe a sigh of relief when I hear the heavy front door close behind them all, followed by the clatter of hooves and wheels in the courtyard. With a deep, shuddering sigh, I let the pretence fall away from me as I lean back in my chair, holding tightly to the arms, digging my fingers into the embroidered flowers, gasping, with tears rolling freely down my face, as a pain, like a lance driven all the way through me, pierces my breast and rings like a shrill, echoing bell up and down my spine and across my ribs, and Death gives my heart a little warning squeeze, toying with me, teasing me, like a braggart showing me what he can do. I wait until it has passed; then slowly, carefully, I raise myself from my chair and go to the shelf where the medicines are kept, all except the ones my husband sends.

      A pain shoots along the length of my arm as I reach up for the bottle I want. A sunbeam streaming in through the window catches it as I lift it down, causing the dark liquid to glow like the richest amber, agleam with honey and crimson lights. When he sent his last letter to me, Dr Biancospino also sent this. If I choose to let my illness 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,