The Dark Lady's Mask Read Free Page A

poor Toms peering back at them through the barred windows.
    â€œAngels live amongst us, too,” he whispered, turning to smile at Aemilia’s sister and mother. “Look to the angels and they will look after you.”
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    O NE SUCH ANGEL was their neighbor, Anne Locke. In the parlor, Aemilia read aloud from the Geneva Bible while Papa looked on and Mistress Locke listened, clearly impressed that he had taken such care to educate his daughter.
    â€œWhen I was your age,” Mistress Locke told Aemilia, “the mere thought of young girls reading the scriptures was heretical. Why, it was my great patroness, Catherine Willoughby, the Duchess of Suffolk, who first petitioned King Henry to read the Bible for herself. But you, my dear, are the daughter of a brave new world!”
    The Widow Locke might have appeared severe to some in her plain dark gown, her hair pulled back beneath her starched white cap, but her smile was as wide as her heart. Aemilia would have turned somersaults in a tempest to please her. Anne Locke was a poet, the first to write sonnets in English. Papa said she was one of the best-educated women in the realm. During the reign of Catholic Queen Mary, Mistress Locke had fled to Geneva with John Knox and there she had published a volume of her translations of Calvin’s sermons. Here in the Bassano parlor stood a great woman of letters. Mistress Locke beamed at Aemilia, as though she were her goddaughter.
    Hope beat fast in Aemilia’s heart. Might she not tread in Mistress Locke’s own footsteps, become a poet just like her? Trembling in awe, she recited from Mistress Locke’s own sonnets.
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The sweet hyssop, cleanse me, defiled wight,
Sprinkle my soul. And when thou so hast done,
Bedewed with drops of mercy and of grace,
I shall be clean as cleansed of my sin.
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    Yet even as Aemilia uttered Mistress Locke’s pious words, Papa’s secret reverberated inside her.
Hell is empty.
What deeper mysteries did her father conceal? Surely in time he would reveal them to her when he judged her to be old enough.
    Glowing in the warmth of his gaze, Aemilia told herself she was heir to his magic. Weren’t she and Papa both born under the stars of Gemini, the Twins? This meant they had two faces, like the moon. One they showed to the world while the other remained hidden like a jewel in its case, only revealed to those they loved and trusted most.

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    APA WAS OFTEN ABSENT , his life itinerant, for court was held wherever the Queen happened to be. As royal musicians, Papa and her uncles traveled in Her Majesty’s train from one palace to the next. When he returned home, Aemilia devoured his tales of the grandeur of Whitehall, Hampton Court, Greenwich, Richmond, and Saint James. Elizabeth’s household moved every few weeks, Papa said, because with so many hundreds of bodies in one place even the most luxurious palace would soon stink like a cesspit if they tarried there too long.
    A rare thing it was to accompany Papa to court. Aemilia was beside herself in excitement to learn that she and her sister were invited to Whitehall on New Year’s Day for the annual exchange of gifts.
    Mother had awoken before dawn to dress Angela and arrange her hair. In her garnet-red gown cut in the French style, her sister appeared to Aemilia as a goddess. Every garment Angela wore was borrowed, for Mother and the girls’ aunts had ransacked their wardrobes in search of the most splendid things they owned. Aemilia merely wore her best Sunday gown—as a child of seven, her appearance was of lesser importance. Papa wore the red livery provided him by the Queen. But Mother, having sacrificed her finery to Angela, was obliged to stay home.
    This was Angela’s day of days, her chance to shine like polished crystal in the Queen’s presence. Fortunes could be made at court, fates transformed in an instant. What if Angela made such an impression with her beauty and her