Shakespeare's Lady

by Alexa Schnee

  Holding the two books against my chest, I went up to the door. I knocked on it five times. The world was still for a moment, and I waited to see his face. When there was no answer, I knocked again, this time only twice.

  The door opened slowly. A set of eyes peered out into the rainy, dark night. I could tell instantly that they were not William’s. I had not known whether his wife would still be living, but now she was before me.

  “Who is there?” a shrill voice asked.

  “I am the lady Emilia Lanier,” I said. “I hear your husband is very ill. He was a good friend of my husband, Alfonso.”

  She glared at me a little longer before letting me into her warm kitchen. It was shadowy in the room, and the only sound was something boiling in the kettle over the fire.

  “Sit down,” she offered, indicating a chair facing a round table.

  I obeyed, placing the books on the table and sitting as quietly as I could. I glanced around. The house had little furniture, but there was not a lot of room to put anything. The inside was well taken care of, like the outside. The fire cast shadows on the wall, and I could smell herbs drying.

  “Why couldn’t your husband come?” She stirred the mixture in the pot, which smelled like stew from where I sat.

  “He is ill,” I explained. “He is getting older than he would like to admit.”

  “My husband is dying, Lady Lanier.” She spoke sharply. She was of average height, her graying brown hair pulled back under her cap. She wore an apron around her waist, and her nose was wrinkled as if she had smelled something very bad, indeed.

  “Yes,” I said. “I am sorry to hear it.” I hoped that was the proper response.

  She sat down across from me, her hard expression unchanging as she studied my face. I could see her peering into every part of me—not only my appearance, but my very soul. She reminded me very much of Queen Elizabeth with her hawkish eyes.

  “Do not think I don’t know you,” she said. “You were his mistress while he was at court. Did you think I wouldn’t recognize your name?”

  “No.” I shook my head. “I knew you would.”

  She looked at me curiously. I had surprised her. She seemed confused, as though she could not understand why I had come. Her face became tight.

  “He still loves you, you know.” She leaned toward me. “How would you like to fall asleep by your husband’s side each night and wake to hear him saying another woman’s name?”

  She stopped and glared at me, daring me to speak.

  I couldn’t. What would I say? I had never thought of her when I was with William.

  “He wrote poems to this lady I had never known. He has not written anything for me,” she continued. “Not one letter, not one word. I would want to read what he had to say so badly, but he never let me. ‘Who is it for?’ I would ask. ‘No one,’ he’d reply. Yet I would read it when he didn’t know and find that not one word was addressed to me. How could you understand that?”

  She waited for my answer, breathing deeply.

  It hurt for me to look at her and speak the truth, because I wanted to lie to her. I wanted to tell her that my relationship with her husband was nothing like she’d thought, but lies always taste like sour milk—they linger long after you’ve spat them out. I did not want to think about the hurt I’d caused her.

  “I could not,” was all I could mumble.

  She nodded stiffly, as though she was still not sure she could believe me. Her eyes continued to watch me. She ran her hand over the table, feeling the bumps and cracks that came when wood aged. I scratched my palm.

  “And you?” she asked. “Do you still love him?”

  She surprised me. It was the last question I had ever expected from his wife. I wasn’t prepared for it. But the truth had been the best philosophy so far. I might as well say what was on my mind. She could scorn me if she wished.

  “I do,” I whispered.

  She didn’t look astounded at all. She nodded curtly, as if all she ever needed to know was in those two words.

  “You are different than I thought you would be.” She sighed. “You see his imaginings, don’t you?”

  “I used to,” I said. “But sometimes…sometimes I just wanted to see myself in his eyes.” I thought about how I always felt the struggle between me and his love of stories.

  She gave a little frown. “I have not known one soul who has understood him completely.”

  “Oh, I never could,” I added swiftly. “In some ways he is as much of a mystery to me as he was when I first met him.”

  She was quiet, her arms crossed in front of her chest and her eyes downcast. I could not read her expression. It was something between empathy and fury—I wasn’t sure which it was closer to.

  “I wanted to hate you…,” she sputtered.

  Her face spoke what she didn’t say. She loved him as well. I could sense her undying loyalty…and the pain of living every day and night knowing he did not feel the same way.

  She had always haunted me, yet I could see how confused and heartbroken we both were. Her face wore lines of sadness.

  “You probably want to see him now,” she said.

  It was all I could do to keep from crying. I nodded gently and gathered my books into my arms. I followed her up the tiny, steep staircase, my heart pounding in my chest. I had never been so lost and scared. What would I say when I met him again?

  He wasn’t sleeping, just sitting up in his bed with a pen in his hand, writing until the very end. His hair had turned a handsome silver-gray, which only made his olive skin glow even more than I remembered.

  Anne Shakespeare cleared her throat.

  “William,” she said gently, as if speaking to a newborn baby, “someone is here to see you.”

  He didn’t look up. “Tell them I cannot speak to them at the moment.” His voice was still musical.

  “But, my dear, it is the lady Lanier,” she said, her voice cracking slightly.

  His head shot up, and he saw me. His lips curled into his small smile, his expression jovial but wise, wiser than he had been before. And his eyes—they were the same as when I had first seen them.

  But he was frail, I could tell. Still as handsome as ever, but sick. He looked so very tired, as though he could not take another step. I supposed that was why he was in his bed. I noticed how his hands shook and how thin he was.

  “Hello, William,” I said softly.

  “Emilia? Is that really you?” He spoke as if I was a ghost from another lifetime.

  “Yes, it is.”

  Anne left us alone. I walked over to his deathbed with a smile on my face and a tear in my eye.

  “My God,” was all he said.

  He patted the bed for me to sit down next to him. Still holding my books, I sat carefully. I did not want to disrupt anything or make him uncomfortable.

  “Oh, Emilia,” he said. “Look at you. You are as beautiful as ever.”

  I smiled. “He that loves to be flattered is worthy of the flatterer,” I said, before laughing.

  “Not so, my lady. Did you ever see me flatter any other woman besides yourself?”

  I just kept smiling. He was still the same wonderful man I had fallen in love with long ago…and was still in love with after all these years.

  He took my hand and held it like a gift. Then he laced his fingers with mine, and the old familiar feeling leaped out of my heart, having been dormant all the time we were away from each another. It was as if we had never left the other’s side.

  “I bring friendship from Alfonso,” I said. “He regrets that he could not make the trip himself. He misses you. He has always missed you.”

  “Please tell him I have missed him as well. And what is his reason for not coming to see me?”

  “He is old. Grows more unlike himself every day.”

  “If he grows more unlike himself every day, he should be getting better, correct?” He gave a crooked smile.

  I laughed, nodding.

  “He has be
en. You were right all along. There was some good in him after all.”

  “And Henry?”

  “He has taken over the family business and is doing a marvelous job.”

  “I bet he is.” William grinned fondly. He touched my cheek with the fingers that weren’t holding onto mine.

  “And Margaret?”

  My heart sank. This was the news I most dreaded telling him.

  “She passed on, earlier this year,” I replied.

  His face dropped, for he knew how much Margaret meant to me.

  “Oh. I am so sorry.”

  “She wouldn’t want apologies. She was so happy to return home. I wish you could have seen her. And her daughter has grown to be the loveliest of women.”

  “I can imagine how much it hurt you,” he said.

  I nodded, tears once again welling in my eyes. She had been my best friend all those years, caring for me when I needed her and giving me advice when I didn’t. I had felt dead myself for days after I got word about her passing, not eating or sleeping. Only time and fond memories had begun to heal my heart.

  “Yes, but I know she would not want me to grieve. She lived a full life and will no doubt live happily in the afterlife as well.”

  William smiled once again. It wouldn’t be long before I would have to face death yet another time.

  “You cannot know how much I have missed you,” he said as he tucked a stray piece of hair behind my ear. “I always believed we would be together.”

  “We are together.” I smiled reassuringly. “We always have been.” I showed him one of the books I had brought, the more worn of the two.

  It was his sonnets. The pages were tattered, and the cover looked as though it had gone through a war. It had been a fairly nice copy, but that was not evident, the way it was damaged now.

  He smiled even wider. “You read it.”

  “Of course,” I said, my words an understatement.

  “What is the other one?” he asked, pointing to the next book in the crook of my right arm. I pulled it out and gave it to him.

  “Your own book?” he asked, taking his hand out of mine only to hold my work.

  “I am a published woman poet without your help, Master Shakespeare,” I said.

  “I never doubted you would be.” He laughed. “This is incredible.”

  “Oh, I think you doubted me,” I gently added. “Why else would you take A Midsummer Night’s Dream?”

  His brow wrinkled. “It was one of the queen’s favorites. Did you read the reviews?”

  I had indeed. It was the play that brought William back into the favor of Her Majesty, so much so that he was allowed back at court and had received more funding for his work. While I remained exiled, William had regained her respect and trust.

  “I did,” I said. “I am only joking, William. I honestly didn’t care what you did with it. The greatest loss when you left me wasn’t that play.”

  His brow smoothed and he turned to my book in his hands.

  “Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum,” William read the title aloud. “Hail, God, King of the Jews. Incredible.” He flipped through the pages, his eyes following them and measuring the length. “What is it about?”

  “You will just have to read it,” I said.

  “I will,” he agreed, and I knew he would.

  He looked through it one more time before he set it aside and his fingers reached again for mine. He wasn’t an old man, and that was why it was so difficult to see him in such a state. He was fifty-two years old. But I recognized the signs, the weakness, and the way he glanced at me. He knew this was the last time he would ever see me.

  We talked through the night. Every few hours I would urge him to fall asleep, but he refused. He spoke of our times together, times I had forgotten and times I remembered better than my own name. We talked of Henry Carey, of Margaret, of the queen. We talked about his theatre, the Globe, which had done so well.

  I couldn’t tell him of his daughter, Odillya. It would have been too much for him, I believed. Even on his deathbed I would not tell him about the child who had graced this earth for such a short time.

  Everything had changed, but then again, nothing had. Our experiences had changed our lives, but they hadn’t changed the people we were. And I found myself as deeply in love with him as I had ever been.

  Finally, as the morning light began to shine through the upstairs window, William drifted off into a deep, uneven sleep. I had exhausted him, and I could only pray that nothing I had done would change the pace of his decline.

  I knew I needed to leave, yet I waited until the sun was rising steadily. It was morning, and William Shakespeare—the greatest writer the world has ever known, a wonderful actor, a remarkable man, my lover—was leaving this world to join the next.

  I kissed his cheek, breathing in his scent for the last time. He did not stir, but his unsteady breathing told me what soon would be no longer. I gently placed a neatly folded letter in his hand. I took one last glance at him and then left.

  I found his wife asleep in a chair in the kitchen, her face distraught even in her sleep. I hoped that one day she would find the happiness she had searched for all her life. Quietly, I pulled off Henry Carey’s ruby ring that I’d worn all those years and set it on the table next to her so she could not miss it when she awoke. It would help to pay for her life when William was gone. It was the least I could do, for she had done what I never could have: forgive a woman for loving the man she had wanted for her own.

  When I stepped out into the morning light, I saw that the flowers reached their faces toward the sun, straining to feel the warmth it provided. I too turned my face to the rising sun.

  William’s death wasn’t the end. It was a gorgeous beginning.

  I closed my eyes and imagined the day I had first seen him. It had been a wonderful beginning, a moment of quiet beauty, and I felt that today was as well. Death was not the end; it was the start of something better, something that truly mattered.

  A great playwright once said, “Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more.” I knew the world would never remember me or what I had done, but it would never forget the man I loved.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  EMILIA BASSANO LANIER WAS a real person who frequented the court of Queen Elizabeth I. It is true that she was mistress to Henry Carey, the Baron of Hunsdon, and when found to be pregnant, she was unhappily married to one of Her Majesty’s favorite musicians, Alfonso Lanier. She is also one of the first Englishwomen to publish her own volume of poetry. Yet the world seems to have forgotten her. I hope this story will bring more attention to her name.

  We know that Emilia Lanier was a favorite of Queen Elizabeth. No one seems to know why she disappeared from the scene at court, so I have created my own reasons for her departure.

  I found two dates for Alfonso Lanier’s death. I chose the later date in 1616 in order to tell this story, but it is more likely he died earlier, in 1613. After her husband’s death, Emilia was said to have opened a school for children. It did not remain open for long. However, from this and other business endeavors, she survived until her death at age sixty-seven.

  There is no proof that she was Shakespeare’s mistress, but there is no doubt that they would have known each other. As Henry Carey’s mistress, Emilia would have met the young William Shakespeare, and they would have been in close proximity to each other often. I imagined a romance between the striking Emilia and the passionate William, but all other events in Emilia’s life are true—including her relationship with Henry Carey; the birth and death of her daughter Odillya; her son, Henry; her friendship with Margaret, the Countess of Cumberland; and finally, her published book of poetry, Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum (Hail, God, King of the Jews).

  I have tried to remain as close to historical fact as possible. William Shakespeare was said to have journeyed to London between 1585 to around 1592. He, too, would have been at court promoting h
is work and meeting with patrons. All the facts of his life, from his beginnings as an unknown playwright to his development as one of the greatest writers of all time, are faithful.

  There is no evidence that Emilia wrote A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Some scholars have argued that Emilia might actually have been the author of Shakespeare’s plays, but there is no decisive proof to support this.

  Scholars have long debated the identity of Shakespeare’s “Dark Lady,” or whether she was only a literary device. Shakespeare dedicated twenty-five sonnets to this mysterious character. Many consider them to be his best, filled with heartache and longing. Shakespeare historian A. L. Rowse felt certain that the Dark Lady would have been Emilia—and that he named one of his characters Emilia (Othello) was no coincidence. The Dark Lady, whoever she is, will forever live on.

  Emilia Bassano Lanier was a fascinating woman in her own right, whether or not she was a mistress to William Shakespeare. Though there are things we can never know about her life, I hope I have remained true to the essence of Elizabethan history and William Shakespeare’s important place in it. As a famous playwright once said, I hope “my words express my purpose.”

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Ackroyd, Peter. Shakespeare. Anchor, 2005. Print.

  Asimov, Isaac. Asimov’s Guide to Shakespeare. New York: Avenel, 1978. Print.

  Bate, Jonathan. Soul of the Age: A Biography of the Mind of William Shakespeare. New York: Random House, 2009. Print.

  Dunn, Jane. Elizabeth and Mary: Cousins, Rivals, Queens. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004. Print.

  Greenblatt, Stephen. Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare. New York: W.W. Norton, 2004. Print.

  Honan, Park. Shakespeare: A Life. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1999. Print.

  Jenkins, Elizabeth. Elizabeth the Great. New York: Coward-McCann, 1959. Print.

  Lanyer, Aemilia, and A. L. Rowse. The Poems of Shakespeare’s Dark Lady: Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum. New York: C.N. Potter, 1979. Print.