‘Tell me what?’ Sir George said, coming over to them. ‘What ought I to know about?’
‘Stephen Hoby, sir,’ said Edwin. ‘At court, in the employ of Lord Robert Dudley. How did he manage that?’
‘By forging a reference from me and being well dressed, I suppose,’ Sir George said, laconically. ‘He certainly doesn’t lack ambition, does he? You’ve seen him there, Etta?’
‘Yes, Uncle. But I’d rather my husband didn’t hear of it, if you please.’
‘If I can be sure you’re safe from Hoby, then I shall make sure Somerville doesn’t. Now, you three, you’ve idled long enough. Back to your duties. Etta, Aphra, come over here and take a look at this pair of sleeves and tell me if you’ve ever seen finer embroidery.’
Etta would like to have found a way to speak to her uncle about Aphra’s safety, about the way Stephen Hoby had looked at her, about what she herself had seen of his activities in the passageways of Whitehall Palace, and about the possible grudge he might bear Sir George himself. But Aphra was there and Sir George appeared to have enough to do without concerning himself further, so no more was said. Nevertheless, the first thing Sir George did when Etta and Aphra had left was to pen a letter to Lord Robert Dudley, which he dispatched that same day by personal messenger. Dudley was not the kind of man to take kindly to being deceived by a young wastrel like Hoby.
The contact between sisters and brothers was a welcome, though brief, diversion that morning at the Royal Wardrobe, picking up the gently teasing manner of their childhood when they had spent much of their time together. Being the natural offspring of Lord and Lady Raemon, the twins shared none of Etta’s volatile characteristics. But Aphra and her brother Edwin were alike in many ways, which had allowed him to ask her without fear of offence whether their parents had suggested a marriage partner for her yet.
‘Oh, they made noises about it before I left to stay with Etta, but they know how I feel. Perhaps it’s as well I’m not at home.’
‘Why, love?’ he whispered. ‘You’re not...is it Ben...do you still...?’
Aphra shook her head. ‘No, course not. Dr Ben will find himself a clever wife of his own age. And I, well...who knows?’
‘So who’s this Master Leon who lives at the shop? Ben’s assistant. What’s he doing in London? Making eyes at you?’
‘Silly!’ Aphra said. All the same, she blushed as she turned away. ‘He’s with the apothecaries and getting a reputation. He knows Dr Dee and he’s...’
‘Ho-ho! I see how it is,’ Edwin laughed. ‘Say no more.’
‘Hush. It’s not like that.’
‘No?’
‘No. Give my love to Mother.’
‘Give it to her yourself.’
‘When?’
‘Tomorrow. Take the amazingly reputable Master Leon with you. I’ll tell her to expect you.’
‘If he’s free.’
‘He’ll be free. He’ll probably fall over himself to meet the parents.’ He strode past her, laughing, pretending to stumble as she gave his back a gentle shove.
As a very private person, especially concerning her emotions, Aphra was bound to wonder how much she had unintentionally revealed to Etta and her husband about her growing friendship with Master Leon. She had always known that her affection for her uncle, Dr Ben Spenney, was rather more than the usual warmth between close relatives. In his wisdom, Dr Ben had done nothing to encourage this except to share some of his knowledge with her. He had studied in Italy and London, and had returned to his home at Sandrock Priory just as Aphra had reached those impressionable adolescent years, tanned, self-assured, handsome and recognised as a leader in his field. And now, his assistant had followed on his heels with similar attributes and the additional attraction of being free and open to all Aphra’s many qualities: her quiet intelligence, her gentle beauty and compassion.
* * *
The stillroom was situated at the back of the premises away from the noise and smells of Cheapside where the air was cooler, sweetened by bunches of herbs drying upside-down from racks above Aphra’s head. When Leon passed the open door on the way to his room, she was standing in one corner with her hands cupping her face as she looked up in some anxiety. Leon stopped. ‘What is it? Can you not lower the rack?’
Aphra pointed. ‘A thrush,’ she said. ‘Up there. It can’t find the way out.’
Leon stepped inside. ‘Open the window wider,’ he said.
‘I have done. It won’t go. It’s frightened.’
The softly speckled thrush tried again, hurling itself against the window with a clatter before coming to rest on the bent curve of a basket, its eyes round like beads. ‘There,’ Aphra said. ‘Now it might allow me to catch it.’ She cupped her hands in readiness, but Leon stopped her.
‘No,’ he said, quietly. ‘Let me.’ Moving very slowly towards it, he stretched out his forefinger and placed it just in front of the thrush’s feet until he touched the claws. Aphra could scarcely believe it, for the bird was quite calm, hopping on to the finger and sitting there as Leon carried it to the open door, lifted it and let it fly away.
They faced each other, smiling. ‘That was wonderful,’ Aphra said in admiration. ‘Does it always work?’
For an answer, he held out the finger to her, sideways, as if inviting her to hop on to it. ‘I’ve never tried it on a human bird,’ he said. ‘Will la bella donna come to me, do you think?’
Aphra hesitated, looking from the finger to his eyes to see if he jested. But the expression was one she had noticed before when he had not thought she was looking, when she had wondered if he would ever take the next step and speak to her. She hooked her hand around his finger and gave in to its pull until she was close enough for him to raise her hand to his lips. From there, it was only a short distance to her mouth for a kiss as light as the wing of a moth, lingering over the lovely fullness, exploring the contours and tasting the fresh sweetness of a first love. The prolonged touch of his skin upon her face was a new experience for her, one she thought she could get used to with its woody aroma of rosemary and rose water. And when his arm stole softly around her shoulders she sighed, laying her head upon him for a deeper kiss that sent all thoughts skittering away into the folds of her body. His warmth, his firm physique and strong embrace were things about which she had recently allowed herself to think before sleep, when she summoned to memory all their contacts during the mornings and evenings. Would they now begin to take on a more substantial meaning?
‘Aphra,’ he said. ‘You’ve come to me, have you? At last?’
‘I don’t know what this means. Tell me what it means, Master Leon.’
‘It means, my lovely bird, that I need to speak to your parents. I shall ask their permission to woo you. Is that how it’s said in England? To woo? It sounds rather like the noise an owl makes.’
‘To woo, yes. Or to court me? But they will want to know what you have in mind. What do you have in mind?’
He threw back his head, showing his white teeth in a soft laugh laced with masculine mischief that made Aphra blush for the second time that day. ‘Really?’ he said. ‘You want to know what I have in mind? I don’t think I dare go into that kind of detail. But, no, I shall tell them that I want you for my wife and that I cannot live without you. Do you think they will allow it?’
‘Perhaps, sir. But then they will want to know what I think of the idea.’
‘Ah, yes. What do you think of the idea, my bird?’
‘I think, sir, that you have not yet asked me for my hand.’
‘Have I not? I thought...’
‘No, not yet.’
His hard kiss was not entirely unexpected, intended to persuade her. ‘There,’ he said. ‘Now you must say you’ll have me as a husband, if you please.’ Then, for good measure, he kissed her again until she was breathless and laughi
ng. ‘Say it,’ he demanded.
‘Yes...yes, I will...now please stop...I need to breathe.’
‘Brava! Then I shall speak to your parents, yes?’
‘My brother suggests we should go tomorrow.’
Holding her at arm’s length, he studied her face. ‘How so?’ he said.
‘He seems to think...’
‘Your brother has not seen me.’
‘No, but he’s seen me. Apparently, it shows.’
Shaking his head, he laughed down at her. ‘We shall get on well together, your brother and I,’ he said. ‘So it shows, does it? Well, I like that very much. We shall go and see them tomorrow, together. What were you doing in here?’
‘Mixing a love potion,’ she said in mock seriousness.
‘You need a love potion?’
‘It was not for me.’
‘Then throw it away. I don’t need it either.’
‘I’ll give it to the washerwoman for her hands. It will do just as well.’
‘Shameless woman! What kind of apothecary’s wife will you make?’ Kissing her again, he thought she possessed every attribute an apothecary’s wife would ever need, and more. Dr Ben had certainly not exaggerated. ‘I love you,’ he whispered. ‘From the moment I first met you, little bird, I loved everything about you. Marry me, dearest Aphra? Be an apothecary’s wife?’ He could tell, from the way she returned his kisses, that she was by no means averse to the idea.
* * *
For Etta, the day had held nothing like the joy of her cousin’s, this being the second day away from the royal court and nothing to show for all her efforts. The sumptuous gowns and accessories remained in her chests except for the few she had worn, and her husband had not been able to do much, so far, to further her cause. It was true that he’d made no promises, but her own expectations had not seemed unrealistic, nor could she see any valid reason for the Queen not to recognise her own half-sister when she had a half-cousin in her household. That was all she wanted. Recognition, for she was not as sure as she had once been about living there for part of the time. The things she had witnessed had shocked her and left her feeling unsafe. Worse than that was the way the Queen was monopolising her husband, unashamedly flirting with him and keeping him at court as if there were not enough men, like Lord Robert for instance, to flatter her. That had come as a shock, too. Nor had she ever experienced such pain after discovering that it was love she felt. Love, that all-consuming emotion with neither rhyme nor reason that came without invitation and made one bleed with helpless longing, making one say the wrong things, behave irrationally, pretend a pride that had long since disappeared and feign hate as she had last night. She would not demean herself by asking him what the Queen’s attentions meant to him, nor did she think she wanted to hear it. It might be more than she could bear.
So it was a combination of the new and painful love with the more familiar Tudor caprice that prevented her from welcoming her husband as a wife ought on his return home after a busy day at the warehouse dealing with hard-bargaining merchants. He let the strained manner pass without comment, the monosyllabic replies to his queries about her day, the failure to ask him about his and the compressed lips instead of a smile when he related an amusing incident. Aphra and Leon supplied the innocuous conversation, but failed to draw Etta into it, except to say that nothing of interest had happened to her, nor was it likely to.
She excused herself from their company using tiredness as an excuse, hoping and yet fearing that Somerville would follow to disclose the real cause, which she did not know how to explain with courtesy. He did, goading her into a response with an unhelpful, ‘All right, let’s have it. What’s the problem this time?’
Removing her French hood and throwing it aside, she found that the net caul holding her hair had snagged into a tangle that tightened as she wrestled with it. ‘This time?’ she said. ‘I would have thought you’d know by now. Oh, damn this thing. Where are my scissors?’
He strode over to her, prising her wrists away. ‘Leave it to me. Merciful heavens, woman, you cannot take your temper out on your hair, surely?’
‘There’s nothing the matter with my temper, my lord. It’s my patience that’s coming to an end. How much longer must I wait, I wonder?’
‘Wait? Wait for what?’
‘You know for what. What must I do to make her see me? She sees enough of you, heaven knows, so why not me? I shall be old and grey before...’
‘Etta, you’re being unreasonable. There’s nothing you can do about it.’
‘There must be.’ Taking the gold net from him, she threw it aside, rounding on him in a flare-up of frustration that had simmered for days. ‘There has to be. I won’t accept that there’s nothing to be done.’
‘Listen to me,’ he said, angrily. Taking her wrist, he drew her to the end of the bed where the wooden panelling was solid enough to sit on. Roughly, he sat her down, keeping hold of her to make her attend to him. ‘Listen. It might take some people months to get as much as a nod from her, so if you’re finding a few days too long, I suggest you stop thinking about your close relationship and occupy your time with something more interesting. So far, this business has dominated every waking moment of your life. To what avail? I’ll tell you. It’s making you into a shrew. We’re all supposed to organise our lives around you and this pointless obsession of yours, and that’s what’s so unreasonable. Now, you either learn some patience or forget it. Not even you can make the Queen do what she doesn’t want to do.’
Despite the mutinous expression, her eyes brimmed with angry tears, her voice husky with emotion. Forget it? What could he mean? ‘It’s all very well for you to say that,’ she said as tears overflowed on to her cheeks. ‘It cannot possibly mean the same to you as it does to me. You knew it before you married me, my lord. And now you’re asking me to forget it when you must know how impossible that is. Elizabeth is my flesh and blood. She is half of me. I need her to recognise me. Can’t you see that?’ She felt the dull thud of the words between them. She is half of me. His hand loosed its grip on her and she knew by his silence that he had been hurt. Impetuous words spoken in haste. It was he, not the Queen, who was half of her, yet she would not unsay it.
‘What I can see,’ he said at last, ‘is that your parents did you no favours when they told you of your parentage, for everything you’ve done since then has been working towards that connection, hasn’t it? Everything. Even the marriage you didn’t want, unless it was on your terms. It’s not an attractive trait, Henrietta. It’s making you manipulative. Self-obsessed. And it’s a waste of precious time when you could have been putting your mind to more profitable things.’
‘What profitable things? How could this connection not profit you, too?’
‘That’s not why you’re pursuing it, is it? You would go ahead anyway, whether it was for our mutual good or not. I never wanted to spend time at court. I could not have made that plainer to you, my lady. It’s a den of vice, and greed, and malice. I wanted to spare you that.’ He stood up and walked over to the window, withdrawing his comfort so that she felt the coolness along her side.
Tears poured freely down her face while the conflict inside raged out of control, fanned by his rebukes which she knew were not without foundation. She longed to tell him of her love, how her romantic ideals of court life were already becoming sullied and shabby, how she needed him to be near her and how, while she wanted to please him, she found it impossible to let go of this all-consuming ambition, fostered for too long to abandon now.
‘There’s no need to spare me,’ she retorted, pushing the tears away. ‘I am a Tudor and I can hold my own in any company. If you cannot protect me, there are others who will. All I need is another day or two at court. I’ve not come all this way to give up now.’
‘“Pride goeth before a fall”,’ he quoted under his breath.
> ‘I shall not fall. When do you return to Whitehall?’
‘Tomorrow,’ he said.
‘Then you’ll take me with you?’
For some moments he looked at her without answering, the tearstained cheeks, the pleading eyes, the proud tilt of her head and the cascade of hair rippling over her shoulders. ‘On my terms,’ he said. ‘I have a reputation to maintain.’
It was the first time he had ever mentioned his reputation to her, seeming to emphasise her selfishness. Self-obsessed, he’d called her. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I understand that. I’m sorry, but I need another chance. What terms?’
‘That you remain with my sister and wait for me there. I believe she wishes to paint your likeness.’
It was better than nothing. ‘I will wait for you with Levina,’ she said.
‘Then I bid you goodnight, my lady. An early start tomorrow.’
‘You’re not coming to bed?’
He walked to the door without looking back. ‘I have work to do,’ he said.
The candle flame had burnt down to the last inch before Etta summoned Tilda to help her undress and prepare a rich gown for the next day.
* * *
‘Mistress Aphra?’
Aphra turned at the sound of her name. She had thought she was the last one to retire. The cat rubbed itself against her skirts, waiting for its last milk of the day. ‘My lord? I thought you had gone up.’
‘A few words, if I may? Just a concern. A rather delicate matter.’ He indicated the bench, inviting her to sit while he placed himself on the opposite side of the table. Pewter dishes had been laid out for the morning’s porridge and a single candle burned low.
‘I think I know what it is you wish to say, my lord,’ Aphra said, seeing an unusual hesitation in Somerville’s manner. ‘If it’s about Master Leon...?’
He raised a hand to stop her, smiling at her concern. ‘No, my dear. It has nothing to do with that. Master Leon will always be welcome here as long as you wish it. No, this is about Etta.’ He glanced at the door to the stairway. ‘I need to know...well...things that I am apparently failing dismally to understand.’
Taming the Tempestuous Tudor Page 17
