Strange Devices of the Sun and Moon

by Lisa Goldstein

  The courtier he worked for, Sir Philip Potter, was a plump, ineffectual man from the north, come to court to ask Elizabeth for some tax monopoly or other. In all the time he had been in London, according to his accounts, Sir Philip had spent enormous sums of money on gifts, on celebrations arranged for the queen, on food, on the servants he had brought to attend him. And in all that time he had yet to see Elizabeth, or any of the men close to her.

  Philip Potter had been lodged in a suite of apartments at the palace. The suite was located a fair distance away from the queen’s Privy Chamber, which was, Christopher thought, a good indication of Potter’s standing at court. One of Potter’s servants had shown him to a room perched under a gable, quite possibly the smallest room in the palace; it contained a bed, a desk and a stool, and nothing more.

  Christopher looked at the letter on the stack Potter had given him, dipped his quill in the inkhorn and began to write. “The twenty-eighth of March. My dear friend …” His hand smudged the word “friend” and he studied the page for a moment, wondering if he should start over. Nay—best to ignore it and continue as though nothing had happened.

  He sighed. His friend Tom Kyd sometimes worked as a scrivener in order to survive in London; he wondered now how the man stood it.

  He looked away from the task before him and glanced out the window, at the roofs and chimneys of the city below him. Directly beneath him was a hedge maze, the shrubs only now beginning to put forth leaves. Two men walked through the maze, deep in conversation.

  From where he sat Christopher could see the turns leading out of the maze, but the men inside were clearly lost. As they came to the end of a path one man pointed left, but the other, shaking his head, pointed right. The first man insisted. Christopher watched as they went deeper into the maze.

  The first man’s bulk showed him to be Philip Potter. Christopher did not know the second man, but his fine clothes declared him to be someone very important indeed. If Potter had hoped to impress him he had taken a wrong turn, both literally and figuratively.

  Watching the two men below gave Christopher a strange godlike feeling. If God existed it would have been just this way that he had watched another two in another garden. Nay, don’t take that path, God would have thought, but it would have been too late, they would have already done it. And rightly, he thought. Who would want to spend all his days in a garden, however pleasant?

  He set his quill down and left the room. Potter might be all day getting out of the maze, and with his employer gone he could take a while to explore the palace. Poley would be expecting a report soon.

  He went down the great central flight of stairs, passing clerks, maids-of-honor, ushers, pages, musicians. Two men spoke a language he didn’t recognize; he thought they might have been ambassadors.

  Finally he came to a gallery overlooking a courtyard. Men and women crossed the yard, talking and laughing. He watched as two servants passed a statue, a winged representation of Mercury.

  He followed the long gallery with its windows and padded benches on one side, tapestries and displays of gold and silver plate on the other. Finally he came to a door. Guards in royal red and purple tunics moved to bar his way, and he realized he had come to the Presence Chamber. He turned and traced his steps back to the stairs, then continued on in the other direction.

  The gallery turned, forming a second side of the courtyard. This time when he went through a doorway no one stopped him. More apartments opened off the corridor here, whole suites of them, far richer than poor Potter’s were.

  He passed several doors, some wide open, some left teasingly ajar. Voices came from a few of the rooms, a man flattering a woman’s hands, another man boasting about his success in hunting the day before. Someone was talking about troop strength. Here’s where the real business of the court takes place, he thought; Sir Philip has no idea.

  At last he came to the end of the corridor. He had seen nothing that would help him. But surely, he thought, no one would plan a crime of state where he could be overheard so easily. Not for the first time he wondered what it was that Poley expected of him.

  Christopher awoke early the next day. Something had roused him, a loud burst of song, a sound that could have been a table being hit like a drum. Could Potter be entertaining guests?

  The light coming through the window showed him that it was still early morning. He stood and dressed and left his room, following the noises he had heard. Someone laughed, and then voices were raised in song.

  The sounds grew louder as he went. He saw that a door to one of the rooms off the corridor had been left ajar. A group of men and women inside the room sat in a circle, singing merrily. One of them looked up and motioned with his hand to come in.

  He stepped inside before he could get a good look at them. Someone closed the door, laughing. The room had no windows, but a pale light continued to come from somewhere. He backed away, toward the door. “Oh, there’s no need to fear us,” a woman said, grinning, and that set them all to laughing again.

  “Who are you?” he asked.

  “Ah,” said a man. “Who are you?”

  The men and women laughed as if that had been a great stroke of wit. Christopher looked at the circle, thinking that every one of them had something odd about him. The man who had waved him in, for example: his palm was as long as most men’s hands. The woman who had spoken to him had a grin that nearly reached her ears. Another woman nursed a child hidden from him by its swaddling clothes; he wondered a little fearfully what the child might look like. Even sitting down these folks seemed far too short; some of them might have been four feet or less.

  “I’m Sir Philip Potter’s secretary,” he said.

  “Aye, that too,” the woman said, disconcertingly, he thought. How much did they know?

  “Are you courtiers?” he asked.

  “Aye,” the man said. “We’re here to—to—” His invention seemed to fail him.

  “To see about our ancestral rights,” another woman said.

  All around the circle men and women nodded in agreement. “Aye, our ancestral rights.” “Aye, that’s it.”

  “What ancestral rights?” Christopher said. “Where are you from?”

  “Have a drink,” the man said, holding out a bottle shaped like a squat face.

  It was far too early to drink; it had to be seven o’clock or even earlier. But before he could decide how to refuse another man snatched the bottle and drank from it, then passed it along in a graceful movement that might almost have been a dance. A pipe began to play somewhere. When the bottle came back to the beginning of the circle the man who had offered it to him held it out again.

  “Have a drink,” he said.

  Were they all mad? The queen would never have allowed these folks in the palace, of that he felt sure. How had they gotten past the guards? And how did they eat? He had not seen them at dinner the day before; he would certainly have remembered them if he had.

  “Nay, I thank you,” he said, moving toward the door. To his relief no one stopped him. (But why relief? Surely, as the woman said, he had no reason to fear them.) He opened the door and headed back to Potter’s apartments.

  He had intended to wake early the next day, to listen for the voices again. But the sun shining in through the windows showed him that it was late morning, at the least. He cursed softly; he had probably missed them.

  Loud laughter came from beyond the corridor. Someone sang, and there was a great crash that sounded like a table or chest being turned over. Suddenly everything fell silent. He waited for a long moment but could hear nothing. Curious, he rose and went down the corridor to the room he had visited the morning before.

  He was in time to see a man come out of the room and close the door behind him. Christopher could not be sure, but he thought the man was the one who had offered him the bottle yesterday. And now, as the other man set off down the corridor, Christopher noticed that he carried the same squat bottle with him, tucked under his arm.

/>   Christopher followed, careful to stay out of sight. They went down the stairs and into the gallery, and then the man turned toward the apartments Christopher had seen before. The man knocked once, paused and knocked again, and the door opened to let him in.

  The door closed before he could see inside. He stayed a while, listening, but he could hear nothing and finally turned to go. Then someone laughed loudly. “I say, ‘The weather is fine for April,’” a voice said.

  Christopher wondered if he had heard correctly. Had the man given some sort of password? He eased back against the wall near the door and listened cautiously.

  “Nay,” another man said. “The servant comes with our supper. He pours the wine—”

  “Aye. I pour the wine, then return with salad and mutton.”

  “I say, ‘This mutton is excellent.’”

  Christopher listened in disbelief. This surpassed even the lunacy of the day before. They seemed to be rehearsing a play, but it was a play so tedious that audiences would rise up in a body and revolt if he tried to put it on the stage.

  “Then I say, ‘The weather is fine for April.’”

  “Aye. And your wife comes into the room, and you say, ‘Good evening, my lady.’”

  The voices beyond the door continued to trade commonplaces back and forth. They seemed less giddy than the day before; he thought that this time they were engaged in a matter that concerned them deeply. Could it have something to do with what the woman had mentioned, their ancestral rights? He imagined the strange folks quietly acting out some mad ritual, passing the bottle back and forth among them.

  The phantom supper ended. A new voice said, very quietly, “Another week, then.”

  Christopher had heard that voice before. Who was it?

  “Aye,” said the man who had spoken most often—the leader, probably. “April, with his showers sweet.”

  These were literate madmen, Christopher thought. The leader could quote Chaucer, at any rate.

  “I’m certain this play will not be necessary,” the new voice said. Christopher had to strain to hear him. “… will revolt against her, or so I’ve heard.”

  Against whom? The queen? Had he stumbled on a conspiracy after all? The voice was tantalizingly familiar. Could it be one of the men he had heard the day before? Nay—he was almost certain that it was not.

  Christopher searched his memory, trying to put a face or a name to it, and nearly missed hearing the men rise and bid each other good day. They were leaving the meeting, he realized, and he slipped into an empty room just in time to avoid them.

  “Did you see that?” a man said from the corridor. “Someone was here, listening.”

  “Nay—I saw no one. You’re too fearful.”

  “He’s probably still here. We should search—”

  “Stay and look if you want. I’m leaving. Don’t forget your part.”

  The men’s voices diminished as they went down the hallway. They had apparently decided not to stay. By the time Christopher left the room he could see no one.

  He hurried back to the stairs, hoping to catch them. Who were they? What had they been doing? And what on earth could he say to Poley?

  He was stopped by a group of well-dressed people milling about at the foot of the stairway. Those at the back, near where he stood, were laughing and pointing at something he could not see. He strained to look past the brilliant colors of the court, gold and purple and peacock-blue. A woman in front of him raised a feathered fan, blocking his view entirely.

  Then she moved. “Oh, God,” Christopher said. Two people stood on the stairs, the woman tall and red-haired and imperious, the man stout and flustered, his clothing nearly coming undone. The man was obviously his supposed employer, Philip Potter. The woman, just as obviously to everyone but poor Sir Philip, was not Queen Elizabeth.

  Potter attempted to bow, probably an awkward business for him at best, now made even more difficult by the stairs. His leg came out clumsily in front of him. The crowd laughed again. Philip looked around him uncertainly, and the woman, her voice deeper than Elizabeth’s said, “Rise.”

  Christopher studied her carefully. The actor was a man, he saw now, his face heavily made up, his fine red hair a wig. Probably some courtier or other had planned a masque for an afternoon’s entertainment, complete with a queen. The actor had been caught outside the tiring-room and had seen an opportunity for amusement.

  Philip attempted to say something. “Not now, my sweet man,” the actor said. Surely Potter could not be so witless that he still believed this person Queen Elizabeth. But Potter murmured something in reply, and the actor gave him an answer that seemed to satisfy him. Potter bowed again and continued up the stairs.

  What now? The courtiers began to talk excitedly among themselves; probably they had not been so entertained by anything in a long time. Christopher pushed his way through them to the stairs. He thought that the actor had promised Potter an audience, and he had to see to it that the appointment was not kept. If this foolish man met the queen, full of some story about her promises to him, his own employment as Philip’s secretary would come to an abrupt end.

  He found Potter in his bedroom, gazing into a full-length mirror. He entered without knocking. His reflection appeared in the mirror and Potter looked up quickly, startled. “Who are you?”

  “Who? I’m your secretary.” He sat, uninvited, at the man’s writing table and looked around him. Potter had been as ill served in his furnishings as in everything else. Besides the writing table the room held only an empty row of bookshelves and a bed with a sagging canopy. A faded tapestry hung between two windows, something bloody and classical, Actaeon or Adonis being torn to pieces.

  Potter frowned. “Ah, my secretary. I’m going to have to dismiss you soon, you know. Can you find other employment? I’ll give you a good reference, of course.”

  “I—” Christopher said. He felt an odd stirring of pity and admiration for the man, who had taken the time to worry about his secretary at the moment he considered his greatest triumph.

  “I’m going home, my business here nearly finished,” Potter said. “The queen has as good as promised me the monopoly I asked for.”

  “That person—” Christopher said, but the other man did not hear him.

  “And I’m anxious to get back. I’ve just received a letter from home—my wife’s given birth to a girl. Not an heir, of course, but still a pleasant thing. A very pleasant thing. What do you think I should wear for my audience with the queen?”

  “Listen,” Christopher said, almost savagely. The more Sir Philip spoke the more Christopher felt bound to protect him. The man would never survive among the wolves of the court. Look at him now, preening about his daughter as though it weren’t just any man who could father a child. “That person was not the queen.”

  “Not the queen?” Potter laughed. “Why, man—”

  “He was an actor got up to look like the queen. You’ve been played for a fool.”

  “An actor?”

  “Aye. You’ve heard of such things, surely, even in the north.”

  “But this—this is treachery—”

  “Ah, then you’ve heard of that too. But treachery, like acting, is subtler in the south. No one plotted this, I assure you. The court saw a chance to be entertained, nothing more.”

  “What—what should I do now?”

  “Do what many another courtier has done—keep silent and dress like a gentleman. They’ll expect you to be there for your appointment, and they’ll expect to hear all about your embarrassment as well. Stay in your rooms for at least a week, until all this is forgotten. And for God’s sake, don’t go to the masque. You’ll give them greater entertainment than the actors will.”

  “Will the queen hear of this—this incident?”

  She had already heard of it, of that Christopher felt certain. But he could not bring himself to say so to this innocent. “Nay—the queen has more important matters on her mind.”

  “Well, I—
I thank you. You’ve proved invaluable to me.”

  Once again Christopher felt a grudging admiration for Sir Philip. Anyone else would have been humiliated by what the court had done, but Potter seemed to have come through with all his flustered dignity intact. “One more thing,” he said. “Don’t wear that doublet again.”

  “This?” Potter said, looking past his chins to his stomach.

  “Aye. Do you know what that color’s called?”

  “White? Dirty white?”

  “In London we call it Isabella. After Queen Isabella, who vowed never to change her petticoats until the Moors were driven from Spain. You don’t want people to laugh when they see your clothes—and you don’t want to remind Elizabeth of another queen, and a queen of Spain at that.”

  “Ah. Ah, I see. It’s all far more complicated than it looks, isn’t it?”

  “Aye,” Christopher said, and left before the man could call forth more pity from him.

  Christopher sat at his desk again later that day, staring absently at the confusion of paper in front of him. He had gone back to the stairs after his talk with Potter, hoping to see the actor again, but the man had disappeared. Someone there told him that the masque would not take place for another week, that the actor playing the queen had been so taken with his costume he had gone wandering through the halls against the advice of the other players.

  Were the strange men he had overheard rehearsing a masque? It seemed unlikely. If that was the sort of performance given at the queen’s court then he should hasten to offer his services; he could do better in his sleep.

  Thoughts of the masque reminded him of the play in his travel bag. He took it out, pushed aside Sir Philip’s correspondence and read over what he had written so far. Someone knocked on the door.

  He covered the play with a book. “Come,” he said.

  To his surprise Geoffrey Ryder entered. “How did you find me?” Christopher asked.

  “I asked. It wasn’t difficult.”

  Christopher looked at him in amazement. The man hadn’t the faintest idea what he was doing; not for the first time he wondered why the earl of Essex had chosen him for this sort of work. Anyone who could reason logically would realize now that Christopher was no mere secretary but a friend of Geoffrey’s, who was in turn a friend of Essex’s. If enough people became suspicious he might just as well go home.