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- Herausgeber: Allison & Busby
- Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020
A remarkable life lost to history is brought into sharp focus England, 1575. Young Mary Sidney is bearing a devastating loss while her father plans her alliance to Henry Herbert, Earl of Pembroke. But Mary is determined to make her mark on the world as a writer and scientist. As Mary Sidney Herbert steps into her new life with the earl at his home, Wilton House, an unusual friendship is forged between her and servant Rose Commin, a country girl with a surprising artistic gift, that will change their lives for ever. Defying the conventions of their time, mistress and maid will face the triumphs, revelations and dangers that lie ahead together. 'An artful tale of spirit and courage ... Rich and engaging' Ruth Ozeki, author of A Tale of the Time Being 'A tribute to the strong women of the times ... I wholeheartedly recommend it' Margaret George, author of The Autobiography of Henry VIII
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IMPERFECT ALCHEMIST
Naomi Miller
5
For Chris, who completes the double ouroboros
6
7
Opus alchymicum is the alchemical process of transmuting base into precious metals or distilling liquid for refinement over three stages:
Nigredo (mortificatio): the initial, black stage, representing the plunge into chaos, darkness, ash; descent, dying.
Albedo (solutio/ablutio): the pure, white stage, representing cleansing, washing, purification.
Rubedo (projectio): the final red stage, representing completion and release, synthesis, unity of masculine and feminine.8
CONTENTS
PRELUDE: THE STILL-ROOM
Lady Catherine Herbert
Alchemy is no better than superstition. At best, a fond hope; at worst, heartbreak. Even when the goal is something less ambitious than turning dross into gold.
Catherine sets the lantern on the landing and places the fingertips of one hand against the oak door for balance. Her breath comes in short gasps, her chest tight with bands of pain from climbing the three flights of stairs to the top of the house, lifting feet that seem weighted with lead.
She has been disappointed so many times, she has all but abandoned the quest. Yet, once again, even as her head swims from the dizzy spells that now afflict her, she pulls a ring of keys – brass, silver and gold – from the muslin pouch hanging from her girdle. She turns the lock with the largest one, of brass, and with an effort pushes open the heavy door.
The still-room is bathed in moonlight at this hour, its shelves and tables edged with black shadows, bearing no resemblance 10to the heated hive of concoction and distillation that has occupied so many of her daylight hours. Now, its cool, eerie silence is forbidding.
She lifts the lantern and enters the room with unsteady steps, inhaling the musky odours of spices and minerals. Her shaky grip sends blades of light and shadow spinning around her until she places the lantern on the worktable that stretches almost the length of one wall. Glass bottles of herbal syrups and cordials, tinctures and balms line the shelves above it, alongside ointments and lotions in pewter pots. Dried herbs from her own garden rest beside costly minerals and spices from abroad, all carefully labelled and separated according to their potential to heal or harm. Stored along the wall beneath the table are chests of ingredients ready to be used once she is well enough to resume her work – if that day ever comes.
Her husband, Henry Herbert, Earl of Pembroke and master of Wilton House, has spared no expense in support of her activity in the still-room, where she has prepared and perfected chemical and herbal remedies for the health of Wilton’s large staff and that of the farmers and villagers in the Wiltshire countryside neighbouring the estate. But Lady Catherine has not made this nocturnal visit to obtain syrup for a servant’s cough or a tincture to ease a village wife’s labour pains. Nor to seek once more the elusive remedy for her own ailments. With such skill to treat others, why is she unable to heal herself?
For years now, her production of medicines has gone hand in hand with the chimerical search for a cure – not for her persistent weakness, but for infertility. Her husband hasn’t reproached her for her failure to bear a child, yet at twenty-two and still childless after nine years of marriage, she is all too aware that the absence of an heir to the earldom blocks his hopes for the Pembroke line. She 11herself is beginning to lose her capacity to imagine an infant in her arms. It is the child she longs for, not the line.
Impatient with these thoughts, Catherine moves purposefully to the cabinet at the far end of the room, past the open shelves holding all the alchemical vessels essential to her work: glass aludels and retorts, silver still pots and copper pelicans. The aludels, known by alchemists as ‘eggs’ for their ovoid shape, always make her think of her womb, empty and waiting to be filled. Setting the lantern beside the cabinet, she selects the small silver key, unlocks the inlaid door and inhales a muted medley of exotic fragrances. The lower shelves house an array of small bottles and flasks containing specialised tinctures and cordials. Another shelf bears pots of precious spices from faraway lands: cardamom, ginger and saffron from India, nutmeg and cloves from the Spice Islands, cinnamon from Ceylon. When she lifts their lids and closes her eyes, the distinctive note of each aroma mingles in complex harmony with its fellows, intoxicating her senses. The topmost shelf contains the rarest as well as the most dangerous substances, to be used only in small doses for extreme ailments.
The open shelf at the heart of the cabinet is lined with varied pieces of coloured stone, from crimson-veined marble to a large piece of crystalline rose quartz, the queen of her collection, attended by a handful of small gemstones cut from the same quartz – tumbled crystals, smooth and translucent in the flickering light. She rubs one between her fingers and slips it into the muslin pouch.
From the bottom of the cabinet, Catherine removes the object of her quest: a black walnut box, her husband’s gift for the safekeeping of her medicinal recipes. She runs her fingers over the alchemical symbols engraved in the lid and sides: crossed 12lines beneath a circle with horns for silver, a circle around a central dot, bearing a sideways crown, for gold. She never tires of touching these lines, which seem imbued with the power of the substances they represent.
Unlocking the box with her smallest key, of gold, she lifts the lid and fingers the sheaf of papers. She hopes to pass this precious box along to a daughter. But the collection of recipes is not yet finished. The most important remedy still eludes her. Despite her unending failures, her mounting scepticism of alchemy’s powers, she knows that if her strength ever returns she will continue the search, however hopeless.
Rosemary, sage, pennyroyal, angelica, juniper, rue. She whispers the names as if casting an incantation or calling upon spirits to fill her body – or naming the girl child she imagines instructing in the art of alchemy one day.
But now, to the task at hand – not a recipe, but a message.
Placing the box beneath her arm and lifting the lantern, Catherine turns. Moving swiftly, she passes so close to the shelves of vessels that the sleeve of her gown catches on one of the glass aludels. The vessel slides over the edge of the shelf and shatters against the floor. She freezes. Then she closes her eyes and breathes out.
Not all accidents are signs.
Catherine moves to a desk facing the moonlit window and sets down the walnut box. She sinks into the chair fronting the desk, pulls a sheet of paper from the drawer and dips her quill into the inkpot. As she writes, her narrow shoulders relax and her breathing steadies. The words come slowly in the lantern’s flickering illumination, but now her hand is firm. At length she sets down the quill, rereads her words and folds the paper. Taking up the sealing candle on the desk, she lights it from the lantern 13flame, drips crimson wax onto the sheet. With assurance arising from long practice, her fingers find the small silver pendant, blackened with use, that hangs from a thong around her neck. She pushes the circlet firmly into the wax to complete the seal. As the image hardens in the cooling wax, she replaces the pendant around her neck.
She lifts the engraved lid of the box to place the paper inside, then pauses and, dipping her quill once more, writes with a flourish –
To the next Cleopatra 14
PART ONE: 1573–78
NIGREDO (mortificatio): the initial, black stage, representing the plunge into chaos, darkness, ash; descent, dying.16
CHAPTER ONE
Rose, 1573
My mother was a witch.
Or so they said when they dragged her from me. I knew only the truth that she was the centre of my world. But that was why she sent me away.
I was nine years old.
‘The lady in the great house will teach you what I can’t,’ she said. ‘Give you tools no one will question – reading, writing, making remedies. None can challenge her learning.’
She gripped my forearms, hard, her mouth twisting like she tasted something bitter, and I scowled to hide my dread.
‘Learn all you can, Rose.’ Her voice was urgent. ‘But don’t use it unless you have to. Special knowledge scares folks. That’s why—’ She broke off with a gulp. I could see her throat working as she swallowed her words. Her once-plump cheeks, that I so loved to kiss, seemed to have become thinner, but I could still breathe in the heady mix of herbal fragrances from her garden and the storeroom, sharp and sweet. 18
‘Mum, you can teach me all I need.’ My voice cracked with desperation as I tried to burrow into her chest. All I wanted was never to leave her. To stay home with Mum and Da and my little brother. Not to be shut away in the great house to serve a lady I didn’t know.
She shook her head, once, that was all.
There was no use arguing. And nothing else I could give her.
Mum was born a farmer’s daughter, but it was from her mother that she learnt her skills, like knowing the berries on the hedgerows – which to taste, which to toss, and which to press into cordials that could heal. It was her knowledge of herbs that made my father, Martin Commin, a cloth merchant with a market stall in Salisbury, want to marry her.
I loved that story, and asked Mum to repeat it so many times that I could tell it myself. ‘The word is that your daughter Joan knows herbs and grows in knowledge every season,’ Da told Mum’s father, a sheep farmer. ‘I believe there’s a market here for herbal medicines, which I can offer at my stall along with the cloth – to keep my customers healthy as well as clothed. I want your Joan for a wife.’ My father was never slow to get to the point.
Mum told me he dreamt big. ‘That’s what appealed to me when he came courting. He was eleven years older than me, but his dreams seemed as new as my own – to make his way in the world, just like I wanted to.’ I liked this part of the story, for already I had dreams of my own.
‘So we were married in the parish church and set up housekeeping here in Amesbury,’ Mum told me, offering my little brother, Michael, a biscuit and me the story, to keep us both satisfied. 19
‘I built up the herbal side of Martin’s business and trained his new apprentice – a lad named Simon. Folks soon came from all over Wiltshire for my remedies. At that time, the lord of the great house had taken a first wife he couldn’t abide. And she was no healer. When workers fell ill or came into harm’s way, his lordship sent them to me.’ Here she sighed and fell silent a moment, her sinewed hands smoothing a pleat in her skirt. ‘Simon loved the stars. He taught me the cycles of planets while I taught him the cycles of plants.’ When I frowned, Mum explained the difference between plants and planets. ‘Planets look like stars in the night sky.’ As I listened I scribbled pictures on the hearthstones, as I had ever since I was big enough to hold a stick of charcoal. I drew plants budding with starlight instead of flowers, and Mum smiled. My drawing during her stories kept us both happy.
‘Together, Simon and I, we made cures to sell that brought as much business as your father could handle,’ she continued. ‘Ah, we taught each other so much! And your birth during those years of learning brought me more joy than any cure I could make.’ When she fixed me in her calm, brown gaze, I knew no one would ever love me more.
But one day the storytelling stopped, and the happy pattern of our days was broken.
‘There’s been some trouble,’ Mum explained as she hurried into our cottage. Taking a deep breath, she fixed me with a steady gaze. ‘Your father’s not home until nightfall from the market, so I need you to listen carefully so that you can tell him what I’m telling you.’
I wondered why she couldn’t wait to tell him herself. But her voice didn’t sound alarmed, so I curled up at her feet, my cheek pressing into her sturdy wool skirts. 20
‘Last market day, when you were with your father, I spent the time with Sally Hutchins, helping to prepare her for childbirth. Sally had many fears about it, as she’d already lost a child. I brought Michael with me, wrapped in a sling across my chest, because I expected it would be hours before her baby arrived. It took until daybreak, but finally I brought that baby into the world. His left arm was withered, but his mother didn’t care, so long as he lived and breathed. Or so she said, weeping her thanks and pressing a shilling into my palm. But her husband blamed me.’
That was when I heard voices at the front gate, then pounding on the door. I sprang to my feet and Mum lifted little Michael into my arms. Before she opened the door, she looked back at me and said, very clearly, ‘Don’t be afraid.’
When the door swung open, I heard the gasp a crowd makes, for it was a crowd outside. Then one shrill woman’s voice, crying ‘Witch!’ What came next was like the shower of sparks when logs collapse in fire. The crowd sucked my mother away with them, leaving me alone with the embers, my brother wailing in my arms.
When Da got home, I told him what Mum had said. In my haste, I jumbled the facts, but he left at once, white-faced and shaking with fury. ‘Ungrateful scum, these villagers take what they need and bite the hand that heals them.’
My aunt Judith, a chunky woman with loving arms, soon arrived to look after Michael and me, her face as pale as Da’s.
‘Trial by water, they call it,’ she said. ‘But you’re not to worry, Rose, for your mum’s innocent. Any babe can have a bad arm. They’ll learn soon enough what fools they’ve been. And that’s the last of Joan helping Wiltshire villagers, shilling or no shilling.’
Aunt Judith explained that they would row Mum into the middle of the river with a rope around her waist and throw her 21overboard into the depths. I gasped. I knew Mum feared the dark grasp of the water.
‘If she floats, they name her guilty.’ Aunt Judith’s voice trembled then, and I started to shake.
To keep my mind off my fears and keep Michael happy, I drew pictures for him upon the hearthstones – scary shapes that turned into familiar creatures after all: sparrows and kittens and butterflies. Drawing calmed me, comforted me, gave me a place to change my nightmares into hopes. Michael laughed and pointed to the cat, gurgling, ‘Muggie!’ – baby talk for ‘Mugwort’, our yellow kitten, golden as a clump of mugwort flowers.
I shivered on my hay mattress that night, bringing Michael beside me when he whimpered, and promising him, with a confidence I didn’t feel, that all would be well. Lying in darkness, remembering Mum’s instruction, somehow I kept fear – and tears – at bay. But once I finally slipped into sleep, the cry of Witch! haunted my dreams.
CHAPTER TWO
Mary, 1575
They shared everything: books, dreams; hopes, disappointments; adventures.
Wherever they lived – from Ludlow Castle on the Welsh border to Penshurst Place in Kent – the Sidney sisters plotted their future together. Their mother, Lady Mary Dudley Sidney, described to her daughters both the delights and dangers at the court of Queen Elizabeth – the colourful social whirl, but also the constant palace intrigues among the courtiers, back-stabbing and jockeying for favour.
And there were accidental, unanticipated dangers as well. Lady Mary’s own face was disfigured by the pox she caught while attending the Queen when Mary was only a baby. A healer herself, she nursed the Queen back to health, but had no remedy for the terrible scars that marred her cheeks after she recovered from her own bout with the disease. The cosmetic creams and powders that she prepared from her own recipes inspired her 23daughters to ‘play alchemist’, mixing ‘curative’ potions as gifts for their mother, to no avail. She regularly used a mask or veil at court to hide her disfigurement.
‘Not every ailment has a cure,’ their mother warned.
Still, to Mary and Ambrosia the world seemed full of possibilities, each challenge a puzzle to solve together. The first Sidney daughter, Margaret, had died before Mary was born and Elizabeth, the only sister they had known, died when Mary was six years old and Ambrosia only three. The two remaining sisters invariably formed a threesome for games with their middle brother, Robert, while their adored older brother, Philip, was away at school in Shrewsbury, and their younger brother, Tommy, was still in the skirts of a baby. But they spent more hours with each other than with anyone else. Mary and Ambrosia studied under the same tutor, played and embroidered together, and shared secrets only with each other.
Until the year Mary turned fourteen.
Ambrosia’s illness struck with no warning. Even when she was forbidden to leave their bedroom, wrapped in warm woollen shawls against the chill air that seeped through the windows punctuating the thick stone walls of Ludlow Castle, their parents insisted there was no need to worry. The family physician would identify and treat this ailment. Even when Ambrosia was confined to her bed, coughing and shuddering, Mary chose to believe her parents.
Putting on a bright face so as not to worry her sister, Mary treated Ambrosia’s illness like a passing winter snowfall that would surely vanish come spring.
The most beautiful morning of the newly budding season dawned almost too bright to be believed, the March sky promising a cerulean blue. After slitting their window open a crack to taste the 24air, cool as spring water, Mary closed the casement, returned to the bed they shared, and kissed her sister’s damp forehead. Ambrosia’s eyes flew open and she fixed her gaze on her sister.
‘Today is the day?’ But it wasn’t really a question, and her pale lips curved in a smile when Mary nodded, smoothing her sister’s straight, dark hair, such a contrast with Mary’s own unruly red curls.
Less than three years apart in age, the sisters had always devised each day’s adventures together, well or ill. Even now, when Ambrosia could no longer rise from her bed. Especially today.
‘Where?’ Ambrosia’s voice was faint but insistent.
‘At the top of the Great Tower of the Gatehouse Keep, where he watches from dawn.’
He was Jake, the bailiff’s son, sixteen and newly promoted to the Ludlow Castle guardsmen. Mary and Ambrosia had known him since childhood, sharing games of marbles and hopscotch during the months the family lived at the castle, while their father oversaw the border counties as President of the Council of the Marches of Wales. Now, Mary had decided to taste her first kiss, and had chosen Jake to bestow it. He didn’t know this yet.
‘When I arrive at court next season, once Mother finally deems me ready, I’ll be readier than she knows.’ Her chuckle sounded bright, bravado masking her qualms about joining Her Majesty’s circle. Her little sister couldn’t guess she was nervous if she wouldn’t admit it to herself. And Ambrosia needed something to lift her spirits, now more than ever. They both did.
Ambrosia’s violent coughing interrupted their murmurs, until Mary held a cup of water to her lips. ‘Promise me you’ll come right back and tell me all!’ Mary leant close to catch the breathy whisper as Ambrosia sank back upon her pillow and closed her grey-green eyes. 25
‘Promise me you’ll wait patiently and listen to all of it,’ Mary demanded softly. ‘I’m not going through with this unless I have an audience who matters.’ She was rewarded with the glimmer of a smile.
As Mary rose to go, Ambrosia was seized with another paroxysm of coughing. ‘I’ll stay. Jake can wait.’ Mary’s offer carried genuine relief. But Ambrosia shook her head.
‘You must live the story … before you can tell it,’ she murmured.
‘I’ll be back sooner than you think.’ Suddenly, Mary just wanted to get it over with.
Clutching her skirts in her fists, she walked quickly across the courtyard from the household quarters to the Great Tower that topped the Gatehouse Keep of the fortified castle. She climbed the twisting steps quickly at first, then more slowly as her calves started to ache, marvelling that Jake mounted these steps every day. Rounding the last curve, she could hear the wind. Then she was blinking against the bright sun, catching her breath. The novice guardsman turned, surprised to see her, and smiled.
‘Come see the beauty of Wales, me lady,’ he urged, spreading his arms and wheeling in a half-circle to face the western horizon. The Shropshire countryside rolled westward into the Welsh hills in a vast panorama, alive with spring green. Jake’s voice was warm with the Welsh lilt Mary had come to love once she had learnt to make sense of it. It was the sound of his voice that had decided her choice, more than his floppy dark hair or startlingly blue eyes.
Suddenly, looking into those eyes, Mary felt unsure. To give herself a moment, she gripped the cold stone parapet and peered over the edge, her coppery hair flying out behind her in the brisk wind. The landscape seemed more like a tapestry from the Great Hall than a real place, threaded with thin silvery streams and dotted with trees. No people that she could see, but then it was just past dawn. 26
‘Stop calling me lady, Jake. We’ve known each other for years.’ Mary tried to laugh, but shivered instead. ‘I didn’t expect the wind.’
She felt a rush of vertigo – from looking over the lofty parapet, or from fear of looking at Jake? Swallowing once, she used the giddiness as a spur to action. Turning to him, Mary reached up, pulled Jake’s face to hers, and planted her lips on his.
Startled, he began to pull away, but Mary’s grip was insistent and his mouth fixed upon hers like a bird dropping into a nest. When he closed his eyes, Mary kept hers wide open. She had promised Ambrosia to remember everything and report back. Her lips opened reflexively, and she tasted his tongue, darting towards hers. Abruptly, she released him, smiling stiffly to conceal the confusion that now flooded her. Her cheeks blazed.
‘Thank you kindly,’ she murmured, already considering how to describe for Ambrosia the oddly mundane sensation of two pairs of lips meeting.
‘You owe me no thanks, me lady,’ Jake’s face, too, was flushed, his expression quizzical, then anxious. ‘Are you all right?’
‘I’m fine.’ With a final glance over the Welsh hills, now bathed in morning light, Mary turned and started down the curving stairway.
That was when she noticed the wind carrying a disturbing sound. It was the high keening of maidservants.
CHAPTER THREE
Rose, 1573–74
Mum returned home the next day, soaked in filthy river water but alive. When I ran into her arms, she knelt and hugged me, hard, and finally my tears burst forth, streaming down my cheeks and mixing with the water still dripping from her hair. Even Da wept dry sobs, while Michael bawled in Aunt Judith’s arms. But after Mum had bathed and dressed herself in dry clothes, we sat down to the midday meal Aunt Judith had prepared, as if all was well. The sharp cheese, the warm buttery griddle cakes and the tangy-sweet apple slices were comforting. I savoured the flavour.
My parents sent me to bed early with Michael, but I could hear snatches of their speech.
My mother, her words like a prayer: ‘Healing is my gift.’
My father’s raised voice: ‘Witch is a name that lingers … You must never practise healing again, Joan, or … seal your fate and break this family for ever.’ 28
My mother again, too low for me to hear her words, but insistent, like the distant calling of geese across the autumn sky. Then my father’s voice like thunder, rumbling ominous warnings.
When I brought Michael down for breakfast the next morning, the calm mother who had told me not to be afraid was gone. Now Mum couldn’t stop trembling. But not from cold. Nor from fear. My mother was the bravest woman I knew. It was anger that flared just behind her eyes. I could feel its heat.
At my insistence, she reluctantly told me what had passed. She had been locked overnight in a farmer’s cellar, then taken down to the river at dawn in a procession headed by leaders of the angry mob. Two men, one of them the father of the child with the withered arm, rowed her out to the middle of the stream and threw her in. When she sank, she was drawn back to the surface by the rope they had bound her with and pronounced innocent.
‘I want you safe,’ she murmured now, stroking my wispy hair gently, although her voice was tight. ‘And I want you free of taint. The lady in the great house will teach you what I can’t.’ Her voice was low, but I could hear the flames burning her hopes to ash. And she wouldn’t look at Da.
A fortnight later, I was sent to Wilton House – ten miles and a world away from Amesbury – to serve the Lady Catherine Herbert.
By the time we reached the outer gates that crisp autumn afternoon, the cart that carried me from my home village had jolted over too many holes to count. The westering sun cast netted shadows over everything that passed beneath the towering trees that bordered the long drive. At the end of the avenue, Wilton loomed high and wide, no ordinary house but a great stone building that seemed to straddle the horizon. The cart finally stopped beneath a vast 29stone arch. My body ached as I clambered down and reached out my arms to catch the lumpy sack of belongings tossed my way by the burly carter my father had hired to deliver me. Catching his sympathetic smile, my eyes stung and I rubbed them hastily. As I shouldered my sack I felt its contents shift – the substance of my old life, now broken up and gathered piecemeal into a cloth bag.
An imposing man was waiting for me, standing as erect as a soldier, dressed in blue and red livery trimmed with gold braid. He didn’t bother to introduce himself, just sniffed and led me from the entryway through a maze of corridors and down a flight of stairs to the servants’ hall.
‘Here’s the new girl,’ he snapped as we entered the kitchen, a stone-walled room with two huge, roaring fireplaces. Then he turned on his heel and was gone.
A short, vigorous woman with plump cheeks athwart a prominent nose hurried across the room and took my bag from me. ‘That’s Master Wilkins, the steward. He’s more bark than bite. Sit down, lass, and have some supper. Cook Corbett has left a plate for you.’ As I seated myself at one end of the long table running down the centre of the room, she continued briskly, ‘I’m the housekeeper, Mistress Roberts, and I’ll have you settled in a trice. You’ll sleep in my room tonight. Cicely, she’s one of the chambermaids, will show you round the house tomorrow. She’ll introduce you to the folks who keep this grand place running. Once you know your way about, you’ll be ready to meet the mistress.’
I was too nervous to eat much, but managed a few mouthfuls of bread and cheese before Mistress Roberts brought me to a flock mattress tucked into a corner of her chamber, warmed by a cosy fire. Crawling under the blanket, I curled into a ball around my fears, but dropped asleep at once. 30
I awoke the next morning to an unfamiliar silence. At home the cocks’ crowing always roused me. Suddenly I missed those roosters more than I could have imagined. How could people sleep in such deafening silence? Mistress Roberts greeted me briskly and handed me a russet smock and kirtle, ‘to be getting on with’. A knocking at the door interrupted her description of the proper garments I’d soon be supplied with. ‘That’ll be Cicely!’
She opened the door to a broad, sturdy girl a few years older than me, with a snub nose and eyes as blue as cornflower petals, startling under strong dark brows. Her face broke into an enormous smile when she saw me. ‘Thou’rt smaller than I thought, but no matter – ye’ll grow on Cook Corbett’s fare for sure. Come with me now, and we’ll get thee started on breakfast afore I show thee round, for thou hardly ate last night.’ Her warm voice was coloured with an unfamiliar lilt. At my puzzled look, she explained that marked her as a Yorkshire lass. ‘Don’t worry if tha miss owt I say at first. Ye’ll catch on soon enough.’
I wondered how Cicely knew what I’d eaten, until I arrived at the kitchen on her heels. Cook Corbett, a tall, bony woman of few words but deft fingers, clearly knew who ate what and made sure that nothing was wasted from her stores. Wiping her hands on an impressively stained apron, she plumped me down before a plate piled high with golden fritters – apple slices dipped in batter and fried in butter. Suddenly, I was ravenous.
That day, as my ears slowly grew accustomed to Cicely’s Yorkshire burr, she led me on a tour of Wilton House, introducing me to so many servants that I felt I had moved into another village, not just a house. ‘Two hundred, we are,’ she told me proudly. ‘Bigger than any other great house hereabouts.’ As we passed through the grand entry hall, I bobbed a curtsey before Master Wilkins, the steward, 31whose keen gaze still terrified me. We greeted the housekeeper more than once that day – she seemed to be everywhere. ‘Mistress Roberts may seem a bit starchy, but she’s the kindest housekeeper ye’re likely to meet in a lifetime of service,’ Cicely observed, moving me on as quickly and efficiently as, I soon learnt, she did everything.
We made our way through the warren of Wilton chambers. ‘Follow the doors,’ she explained. ‘In one side, out the other, then all tha need learn is the order of the rooms, and ye’ll not be so flummoxed. I arrived only last year meself and had to learn right quick. Me mum knows Mistress Roberts, as she grew up not far from here, afore she married me da and moved north. So she sent me from Yorkshire all the way here, to earn me wages in service. Treat Wilton as a game, and ye’ll learn thy way in no time.’
I hoped she spoke true. I tried to fix the rooms in my mind by the views from their windows – the long drive and alley of trees on the east side, to the west formal gardens with ornamental flower beds and sculpted hedges, a kitchen garden of vegetables and herbs off the north wing, wide lawns rolling down to the River Nadder to the south – but despaired at ever being able to move from one corner of the house to another without getting lost.
Crossing in front of the stables that afternoon, on our way to pick some herbs from the kitchen garden for Cook Corbett, we ran into a sturdy young man whose hearty greeting lit Cicely’s face with delight. ‘Me brother, Peter,’ she explained. ‘Best lad in the household!’ His body, like his sister’s, was more compact than tall, with a core strength that suggested industrious labour. He nodded a bashful welcome, his eyes a darker shade of blue than his sister’s, but his smile just as bright.
‘No need to meet all the footmen and grooms, of course,’ Cicely explained earnestly as we passed through an oak-panelled room lined with imposing portraits. ‘Except for Toby Saunders, Sir Henry’s new 32valet,’ she added, as a young man in the now-familiar blue and red livery came into view. ‘Toby joined us only two months ago, after training in the household of milord’s brother, Sir Edward, and I must say he looks after milord very well.’ A blush rose in his pasty cheeks and his hands fiddled awkwardly with his cuffs. ‘And this here’s Rose,’ she told him with a smile, ‘just arrived in service.’ The young man barely nodded at me as his eyes slid away to fix on the chambermaid. Not that I minded. But those eyes troubled me – dark and unblinking in their focus on Cicely – and the smile on his face, so tight it seemed one tap would break it apart.
Cicely continued her bubbling account of the various tasks of the household staff we encountered as we walked briskly along the passageways that connected the lofty Great Hall, a velvet-curtained library walled with floor-to-ceiling bookcases, too many bedchambers to count, and the solar, whose south-facing windows flooded the cosy, wood-panelled chamber with afternoon sunlight. Finally I covered my ears with my hands and groaned. ‘I’m happy for the introductions, I’m sure, but I’ll never remember all of this!’
Cicely squeezed my shoulders reassuringly. ‘More fool me! ’Tis only thy first day – of course tha needn’t keep it all in thy head. Sit down with me in the kitchen, Rose.’
It was a relief to sit at the worn oak table with Cicely and Mistress Roberts, as Cook Corbett set a plate of biscuits before us, crisp with such buttery sweetness that I closed my eyes happily. When I opened them, I saw that I was fixed in the unfriendly scowl of the scullery maid scrubbing the pots. ‘That’s Sarah,’ Cicely explained when we left the kitchen, ‘Sarah the Sour, we call her, cause – well, ye’ll see.’
Before I knew it, Cicely was bidding me goodnight at the end of what felt like the longest, and busiest, day in my life. 33My last thought before sleep was that I was lucky to have Cicely for my first friend at Wilton. My first friend ever.
The next morning, Steward Wilkins took over from Cicely. Without offering a greeting, he led me from Mistress Roberts’ chamber, my cloth bag of possessions clutched in my hand. Already I missed Cicely’s reassuring presence. If only I could have more time. But he was pushing open the door to the library.
Seated beside a tall, arched window was an elegant lady with dark hair, pale cheeks and sad eyes. She stood when the steward announced me, and her shiny green skirts rustled like the whispering leaves of the black poplar tree outside our cottage. I could see what looked like pearls stitched to the toes of her fancy slippers. I kept my eyes on the floor.
‘Welcome to Wilton, Rose.’ Lady Catherine’s voice was kind. The stones that had been lurching about in my stomach started to settle.
‘Yes, milady,’ I replied as Mum had instructed me, not daring to meet her eyes.
‘I was happy to take you when your mother sent word that you needed a place,’ she explained. ‘Joan and I joined paths as healers many years ago. I was only newly the mistress of Wilton House, and I needed another hand in treating some of the labourers when a course of pestilential fever swept the village. I know your mother’s skills.’
At this my mouth dropped open and I looked up at her face without meaning to, then quickly lowered my gaze. My mother’s skills? That meant she must have heard the charge of witchcraft. Even worse, what if she hadn’t heard? Would she be angry at Mum for sending me once she found out? I started to shake, and my homespun bag slipped from my hand, spilling its contents 34across the richly patterned carpet. Flushing, I sank to my knees and began to scoop them up, the keepsakes I’d brought from home – an old rattle of Michael’s, new mittens knitted by my mother, the tiny bell I used to fasten to my kitten’s collar and a few sheets of paper. Lady Catherine interrupted my frenzy with a hand on my shoulder.
‘Don’t be afraid,’ she said. The reminder of Mum’s words and voice was too much, and tears started to slide down my cheeks. As if she weren’t facing the most laughable excuse for a serving maid that she had ever seen, Lady Catherine extended an open palm.
‘Might you show me those papers, Rose?’ I heard courtesy edged with curiosity.
‘They’re nothing, milady,’ I apologised, my voice trembling. ‘Just my scribbles from my mother’s garden.’ When the weather was fair, Mum encouraged me to use the back of my father’s old account papers to sketch her prized herbs: delicately forked leaves of common wormwood, used to treat ailments of the stomach; cheery skirted petals of chamomile flowers, for wakefulness and muscle aches; beaded clusters of bayberries, dried to brew in an infusion or crushed to seal an open wound. So I drew what I saw using sharpened charcoal, allowing plants to unfurl and blossom in delicate lines, while my mother instructed me on their uses. My favourites were fuzzy balls of pennyroyal blossoms mounting their stems and frothy sprays of fennel curving downward.
As she leafed through them, Lady Catherine caught her breath. ‘These are good, Rose. No wonder your mother sent you to me!’ I beamed and felt the shame over my clumsiness lifting. Maybe what the villagers thought of my mother didn’t bother her.
‘We’ll go over your work tasks on the morrow, Rose,’ Lady Catherine promised. ‘I know you’re still getting acquainted with the people and the house. There will be plenty of time for you to 35learn your duties. But having seen what you just showed me, I want to start with something else.’
She crossed to her writing table and held out a large, heavy book.
‘I cannot read, milady!’ I blurted, hunching my shoulders in dismay.
‘Open it, Rose,’ was all she said, putting it in my hands. And so I did. Beneath large dark letters appeared the graceful curves of a plant.
‘Wormwood!’ I whispered, my pulse quickening. I turned the page, and then another, on each one an image of the flowers, leaves and roots of a different plant. Some I’d never seen before, but – ‘Garlic?’ I murmured, my voice getting stronger. ‘Chickweed! Amaranth!’ The names rolled off my tongue and Lady Catherine patted my back.
‘This book is A New Herball by William Turner. It identifies the medicinal uses of common plants, each one illustrated to prevent confusion.’ Her voice quickened with delight. ‘You think you cannot read, but once I teach you your letters, you’ll find that you already know the plants named by these words.’
‘Thank you, milady.’ To be allowed to draw – and learn to read! My heart was racing.
‘One more thing, Rose.’ She patted the stool beside her chair, inviting me to sit. ‘I know what happened in the village. Too many false accusations spring from ignorance and fear – more every year. I’m deeply sorry your mother had to suffer for her learning.’ I twisted uneasily on the stool, but she squeezed my hand. ‘In my household, you needn’t ever worry that your gifts will bring you under suspicion – or into danger.’
I released the breath I hadn’t known I was holding.
‘Meanwhile, I shall be delighted to teach you to read and write. In return I’ll ask you to illustrate my own notes on herbal 36remedies. I can give you quill pens and paper, chalk for colour. As for household responsibilities, you can spend time with different servants, learning their duties and getting a sense of how the household works’ – she paused, taken by a sudden thought – ‘starting with my own maid, Mabel.’
My eyes felt like they would pop out of their sockets. I had much to learn, but I vowed to myself I’d learn everything I could and be the best servant she had ever had. Lady Catherine explained that I would eat the food of the household and wear the clothing provided me, but not receive wages until I was given a formal position. ‘I hope to keep you with me for many years,’ she added, ‘and intend that we shall both profit from your time at Wilton House.’
The next morning, I was roused by sharp-nosed, brown-eyed Mabel. She had attended to Lady Catherine’s clothes and belongings for seven years now, she told me. She had been tasked with taking me in hand as I became acquainted with the doings of the great house. For now, I was to assist her in looking after Lady Catherine.
I readied myself quickly, washing my face from a small pail of water, then scrubbing a coarse linen cloth over my limbs. The russet smock and kirtle Mistress Roberts had given me were too big, but I reassured myself with Cicely’s promise that I’d grow. Then Mabel walked me upstairs to my lady’s bedchamber, showed me the small truckle bed along the wall that I would share with her, then pulled back the long curtains and awakened her mistress.
Mornings, I soon learnt, were the busiest times. After Lady Catherine washed her face and cleaned her teeth with a cloth scented with cloves, Mabel rubbed her entire body with linen cloths. The dressing process involved more pieces of clothing than I had ever seen. First on was a freshly laundered linen smock and silken hose, followed by embroidered petticoats, resting on an 37underskirt of wire called a farthingale that gave an upside-down tulip shape to the gown itself. Mabel then attached the farthingale to a bodice, laced at the back, followed by satin skirts and a pair of matching sleeves.
‘Sometimes milady lets me choose the sleeves,’ she added unexpectedly, and Lady Catherine smiled. While Mabel fastened these layers together, I cleaned my lady’s slippers, polishing the pearls edging the embroidered silk, tidied the pots of creams and powders that she used on her face and tucked fresh lavender into her bedding. Mabel dressed her hair, drawing an ivory comb through her rich brown locks, before binding it up with silk ribbons. Finally, she attached the stiffly starched ruff that topped the gown and fanned out behind Lady Catherine’s head in the shape, it seemed to me, of a fully blossoming flower.
Over the following days, Lady Catherine kept me close. I trailed after her as she went about her daily tasks of managing the estate, responding to workers’ petitions and prescribing cures for ailments with remedies she had concocted. Knowing how much labour it took my mother to distil a small amount of essential oil from fresh herbs over boiling water in the kitchen, I wondered how my lady produced all the cordials and elixirs that she prescribed for the staff and the many villagers who sought her aid.
At the end of my first week, as she had promised, my mistress summoned me to the library to begin teaching me my letters, using the illustrated New Herball as a primer. I worried that learning to read and write might take me so long that she’d tire of the task, but soon discovered that she had been right – my knowledge of herbs would help me, not just to learn, but to want to learn.
On afternoons when the weather was fine, Lady Catherine gave me a sketchbook and sent me into the garden to draw. I filled 38page after page with rough sketches in charcoal or chalk and perfected them with greater detail using the quill pens and ink pots my lady had supplied. She taught me how to sharpen the nib of a quill with a small knife, shaving off the edge against a hard surface. ‘Look closely, and draw slowly,’ she encouraged me. As I drew, finely cross-hatched leaves appeared in ink alongside softly smudged petals in chalk. Herbs that I had drawn first in my mother’s garden took on details I hadn’t noticed before. Unfamiliar plants unfurled more gradually, revealing their special markings without my planning or intent. Line by line, the natural world budded, bloomed and withered on the pages of my sketchbook, as if drawing brought its own seasons.
‘You capture the essence of these herbs,’ remarked Lady Catherine, stroking my miniature sketches of the fluted openings of the betony blossoms with admiration, almost as if my drawings were precious. ‘Your work reminds me of the healing process itself. Just as tinctures of betony alleviate aches of the head, so resting my eyes on your drawings of betony achieves the same end.’
Once completed, I handed my drawings to my lady to include in her collection of herbal remedies. Each day, as well, I watched her during our hours together, then let my pen capture what I saw, drawing by the window in the last hours of daylight or at dawn before the start of my duties, while my lady slept. But these sketches were not true to life. When I drew my lady’s face, my pen slipped over the paper swiftly, capturing her features alive with health rather than illness. Someone seeing these sketches might have thought them portraits of a younger Lady Catherine, not yet worn by care and wasted by illness. When I tried to include the lines of weariness and pain that etched her face, I found myself drawing herbal blooms along 39the margins of the paper instead, twining leaves and blossoms that framed my lady’s face with life. On one page, I filled the space around her head with whimsical whorls of betony flowers, brushed softly with rosy chalk, while in another I adorned her hair with red clover blossoms.
These drawings I did not share with her. I hid the sheets in the bottom of the trunk my lady had given me for my few belongings.
I could tell from the start that Lady Catherine wasn’t well. I had learnt from Mum to recognise the signs of sickness, and my lady’s were unmistakable – shortness of breath, lack of appetite, dizzy spells, yellow cheeks, trembling fingers. But I didn’t know what the signs meant.
One bright morning near the end of my first month at Wilton, I sat with Lady Catherine beside the River Nadder that meandered past the estate near its confluence with the River Wylye. Suddenly she raised her hand to her forehead and pressed as if to push away pain. ‘Do you know what ails you, milady?’ I ventured. At her sharp glance, I shook my head regretfully. ‘I haven’t the gifts of my mother, but I know what’s not right.’
‘Ah, Rose,’ she sighed. She looked out towards the river for a long moment. Then, ‘I wanted to believe my spirits were failing from the failure of my womb.’ She regarded me thoughtfully. ‘Although you’re young yet, surely you know of women’s cycles. My monthly flowers continue, but still I have no child to give my husband. Eleven years is too long, but for all my studies of herbal and other remedies, I cannot heal myself.’ She passed one thin hand before her face. ‘Now my courses come and go unevenly, and I fear that whatever ails the rest of my body has overtaken my womb as well.’ Her eyes glistened. I wanted to throw my arms around her, but knew I had already overstepped my station. Instead, I 40picked up A New Herball and started to sound out the words I was learning. It was slow going, and I stumbled over more words than not. She stopped me halfway through the page. ‘Please, Rose,’ she said, ‘show me your drawing of hyssop flowers.’
I sorted through the sketches from that week and plucked the one she wanted from the pile. To my surprise, she folded it in half and wrote a name atop the fold, before setting it aside. Then she bade me continue my reading, though it was almost time for her to join Sir Henry for the midday meal.
When her eyes closed in weariness, I fell silent, set down the book and picked up my pen and paper. Where words failed me, drawing remained my most trustworthy practice. If I could have drawn Lady Catherine into health, I wouldn’t have stopped until she was well. Already, I loved this mistress I hadn’t wanted to serve. And even had I known the dangers of loving too well too soon, I couldn’t have changed what came next.
CHAPTER FOUR
Mary, 1575
Her chest heaving from her dash down the tower stairs and across the keep, Mary pushed past the maidservants moaning in the hallway and burst into the chamber she shared with her sister. Ambrosia lay motionless on the bed, her eyes closed, her cheeks as white as the sheet drawn up below her chin. Standing beside the bed, Mary’s mother met her eyes, then bowed her head.
‘She’s gone, dearling.’
‘No!’ How could Ambrosia be gone? ‘She told me she’d wait for me to come back – she promised! I need to tell her the story.’ The ache in her side bound her lungs like a bodice of chain mail, making it painful to draw breath. ‘You told me she would get better!’
Her mother’s silent acceptance of responsibility for that fiction scorched Mary with her own complicity, never admitting the possibility of another truth.
‘You lied to me, Mother.’ 42
Tears ran down Mary Dudley Sidney’s cheeks.
‘No – I hoped.’
Her mother wrapped both arms around her so tightly that Mary could feel her trembling. ‘We wanted the two of you to share the joy of each other’s presence without fear for the future.’ What future? There had never been a future awaiting her sister.
‘If I had known, I could have—’ Mary broke off, choking on her own words. Could have what? She hadn’t been willing to admit her own deepest fears to herself, let alone to her sister. How different was that from her parents’ reluctance to speak what they dreaded to acknowledge?
At the very least, she could have put off that visit to the guard tower, instead of losing the last precious morning of Ambrosia’s life. Never kissed Jake at all. Her stomach roiled at the memory of that foolish kiss. An idiot, that’s what she was. Who didn’t deserve the moments she had cast away.
She couldn’t blame her mother for that. Sinking to her knees beside her sister’s body, she let black guilt engulf her.
‘Your father wishes to speak with you.’ Her mother’s voice was calm, but with an undercurrent of urgency that struck Mary like the off-kilter dissonance of a lute string out of tune. What could be urgent any longer?
Two weeks after Ambrosia’s death, a semblance of daily life had returned to Ludlow Castle. But to Mary this forced semblance was almost worse than death itself. Worse, certainly, than the death she longed for every day – her own.
‘Go to him, my dear.’
Mary found her father in the Great Chamber, gazing out a mullioned window into the castle’s inner courtyard, darkened by an approaching storm. He turned and led her to a chair beside the 43stone fireplace where a log crackled against the spring chill.
‘Her Majesty has sent for you.’
Henry Sidney paused, perhaps to allow his daughter to respond, but Mary was stunned into silence. Her Majesty? Her father’s expression, patient and steady, was the one that accompanied his most challenging chess lessons, intended to hone her skills in the strategic thinking required to control the board. A pawn on the seventh is worth two on the fifth.
Suddenly, she felt dread. Her father pulled a folded parchment from his doublet and gave it to her. She saw the Queen’s script, dark and firm.
The formal opening, Right trusty and well-beloved, had been crossed out, replaced by a simpler and more personal salutation:
Good Sidney – We comprehend your grief as parents whose daughter has been taken by Almighty God, and we would have you know we take part of your grief upon us. But God has yet left you the comfort of one daughter of very good hope, whom if you think good to remove from those parts of unpleasant air, and send her to us before midsummer, be assured that we will have a special care of her.
Mary handed the Queen’s letter back, still without speaking a word.
‘Her Majesty’s invitation is a great honour and a kindness.’ Henry Sidney looked intently at his daughter. Mary took a deep breath and exhaled sharply, but couldn’t breathe out the panic. Instead, she focused her attention on the rain that was now pelting the windows that framed stormy arches of sky.
‘I have no desire to go to court, Father, great honour or not.’ Beneath her stiffly spoken words swelled a silent scream. ‘All I want 44is to remain at home and grieve in private – with no audience – to give my sister the honour she is due.’ The imagined glories of court life that she had turned into stories to share with her sister now seemed no more than dreams. As for her future – she was but a solitary pawn on the chessboard of the court.
Ambrosia had been buried with full ceremonial honours in the parish church of St Laurence in Ludlow, its tower overlooking the bustling market town like a serene stone sentinel. For two weeks, Mary had left the grounds of the castle daily to visit her sister’s tomb. Kneeling on the smooth stones behind the altar, she stared up at the gilded family arms above the tomb’s inscription – bright gold letters marching across a dark blue background:
Here lieth the body of Ambrosia Sidney, 4th daughter of the right honourable Sir Henry Sidney and of the Lady Mary his wife
Each time, her eyes locked on that first cold phrase and filled with tears. Each day, bowing her head to pray for Ambrosia’s soul in heaven, she added the prayer that she might join her sister soon. For if God had taken Ambrosia, surely He could take her as well. She only wished He would do so quickly.
But her father was shaking his head, more silver in his pointed beard than she had noticed before. ‘Mary, my child, we’re all grieving. But the Queen speaks true – you’re our one daughter of very good hope.’ He straightened his shoulders. ‘Your mother could not bear such another blow, having lost three daughters now. Our family will go to court together in the summer, and you shall remain with the court once we depart.’ His tone was final, brooking no protest. A pawn indeed.
Mary flung her arm across her face and shook her head so sharply that her neck cracked. Then she scrambled to her feet 45and fled the chamber to her own quarters, bolting the door to the bedchamber she had shared for so many years with Ambrosia.
An hour later, Mary still couldn’t bring herself to respond to the entreaties of her mother, spoken softly yet clearly through the door. She was ashamed that her selfish grief had pulled her mother from her own mourning to attend to this daughter of good hope. What hope? The pouring rain outside the windows drowned Mary’s whispered responses, intended solely for herself.
Only when she heard Philip’s deep, calm voice did Mary finally slide back the iron bolt. Comforted by the dear familiarity of his face – the slightly quizzical gaze beneath perpetually arched brows and a tall forehead surmounted by a ginger thatch of hair – Mary dived into his embrace. Ever patient with her moods, Philip had always been able to console his closest sister by listening, above all, and not hesitating to share his own hopes and disappointments.
Countering his years of absence at the Shrewsbury School and then Oxford, when he was at home Philip regularly made time to talk with Mary about the pursuits that engaged his passions, from poetry to politics. Seven years apart in age but sharing a love of reading inherited from their parents, they had devoured many of the same books, from Aesop’s Fables to popular Continental romances. Philip liked to ask his sister how she would change the stories if she were their author, and readily offered his own story ideas in turn.
In the best of earlier times, they had shared a dream of future collaboration as writers, although Philip had recently been too much abroad for that dream yet to be realised. Now twenty and the Member of Parliament for Shrewsbury, Philip had been travelling to Europe to meet with other politicians and was creating quite a name for himself as a diplomat. But in this worst of times, he was once again her big brother and protector. 46
In the safety of her brother’s arms, Mary let her sobs escape. ‘I cannot bear to attend the Queen and mingle with the ladies-in-waiting without Ambrosia, when we made plans to enjoy the court together – and now she never will.’
Philip held her close and didn’t try to speak until her sobs turned into muted whimpers. ‘I understand,’ he said softly. ‘I miss her too.’
