CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Then wilt thou speak of banqueting delights, of masks and revels . . .

— Thomas Campion, “When Thou Must Home”

The autumn wore on. As she pickled and preserved for winter, sorted apples in the garret, dried the last of the fresh herbs, Sidonie gave little thought to invitations from the Queen. But then November came, and before long it was the seventeenth, when all England celebrated the anniversary of Elizabeth’s accession to the throne. Bells rang out across the country, bonfires were lit in every town and village. And still there had been no message from the court.

One December evening when her day’s tasks were finished and her father had withdrawn into his library, Sidonie set aside her book and instead unwrapped her scrying crystal. To look into the glass no longer frightened her — she had come to see it as a device, no more — but she could not have explained what odd impulse now drew her to it.

In the heart of the glass there was, as always, a swirl of mist, a captured glint of candlelight. And for some moments, nothing more. Then, just as Sidonie, smiling at her own foolishness, was about to put away the crystal, a blurred image took form: not the letter that she had half-hoped for, but a vessel of some sort, a cauldron or a bowl. And she wondered what there could be about that familiar round-bellied shape that made her throat tighten, gooseflesh rise on her arms, so that she thrust the crystal away in alarm.

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On the afternoon of Christmas Eve Emma rushed into the back garden where Sidonie was cutting holly to decorate the hearth. “Come quickly, Mistress Sidonie, the master has gone out, and there is a fellow at the door, who says he is sent by the Queen.”

Startled, Sidonie set down her holly cuttings. “Mercy, Emma!” She had spent all morning cooking, in an old pair of house slippers and her shabbiest gown. She glanced down and saw a large smear of cherry preserves across her apron front. “I am in disarray, go ask him to sit in the parlour while I put myself to rights.”

She smoothed her hair as best she could, straightened her cap, put on a clean apron, gave a quick stir to the wheat she was boiling for frumenty. Then, flustered and breathless, she hurried through to the parlour. If the messenger who waited in his scarlet livery was surprised by Sidonie’s humble circumstances, his solemn young face gave no sign. With a bow and a flourish, he handed her a letter from the Queen.

As soon as she had seen the messenger out, Sidonie retreated to her bedchamber and shut the door. Her mouth had gone quite dry, and her heart was racing. She broke the royal seal, and unfolded the parchment.

It was an invitation, signed by Lord Burleigh on the Queen’s behalf, to the Twelfth Night revels at Greenwich Palace.

She had scarcely time to read as far as Lord Burleigh’s signature when Emma shouted up the stairs to announce another visitor. Sidonie folded the letter carefully and put it in her pocket. When she came downstairs and looked out she found Kit by the front walk stamping mud from his boots.

He called out, “The invitation has come, has it not? I met the messenger in the road.”

Sidonie nodded. Her heart was still beating hard. “To Twelfth Night at Greenwich, Kit. And you are invited as well.”

“What, I?”

“Yes, truly, Kit. Do you come in, I will show you the letter. It is addressed to the both of us.” She reminded him, half-teasing, “Have you forgotten we are brother and sister?

It would be unseemly to invite one without the other . . . ”

“Then for your sake I must keep up the pretence a little longer.” Kit finished scraping his boots and stepped over the doorsill. “But sister, have you thought how we are to travel to Greenwich?”

“It is all in the letter. Lord Burleigh will send a boat to fetch us. But Kit . . . ” She stopped short and gazed at him in sudden dismay. “The Court at yuletide, the palace revels — everything will be so splendid. What can I wear?”

Kit glanced with amusement at the faded bodice and mended skirt that Sidonie wore for housework. “Perhaps not that,” he said, smiling. “But what of the gown that Lady Mary gave you, that you wore home in the coach?”

Sidonie thought about the dress — a heavy mulberry silk embroidered all over in a silver leaf-pattern, with flowing ivory sleeves. Though it was a finer garment than she had ever thought to own, was it grand enough for Greenwich Palace? Undoubtedly not. But then, what pretensions had Sidonie Quince to grandeur? “I warrant it will do well enough,” she said.

“Marry, it will indeed,” Kit said, and added gallantly, “I will be as proud to have you on my arm, as if you were wearing cloth of gold.”

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When she went to her bedchamber to fetch Lord Burleigh’s letter, she saw that she had left the crystal on her writing table. She picked it up, intending to hide it away, then stood with it cradled in her palm, considering. Surely her work was finished now? Or might the Queen still have need of her? She hesitated for a moment, then put the crystal in her purse along with her invitation.

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Another river journey. Of a sudden, how adventuresome my life has become, thought Sidonie, as the Queen’s boatman rowed them downstream through the still, frosty night. She shivered a little under her heavy cloak, as much from nervousness as from the cold.

When she looked down into the dark water she could see glints and spangles of light from the windows of the great palaces along the northern bank. They glided past the Palace of the Savoy and the Temple. The boatman pointed out the Rose Theatre, newly built across the river in Southwark, though in the early evening darkness they could only guess at where it stood. Perhaps for Sidonie’s sake he made no mention of the bear gardens, nor the ill-reputed taverns that lined the southern bank.

Then came the Tower and the grim red walls of Bridewell Prison. Ahead lay London Bridge, so weighted down with shops and houses projecting out over the water, that Sidonie wondered it did not collapse. Just before the bridge at Old Swan Stairs the waterman turned the boat into the bank and bade them alight while he shot through the piers. Too many boats had capsized with all their passengers, he told them, in the torrent of water rushing through the nineteen arches. They went by foot along Thames Street past the bridge to Billingsgate, where the boat was waiting for them at the bottom of the steps.

And there at last on the south bank was Greenwich Palace with all its windows ablaze, overlooking the Thames from a rise of land.

Sidonie clung to Kit’s arm as they made their way up the waterstairs and into the glare of torchlight. Kit elbowed his way determinedly through the crowd milling round the palace gates — acquaintances and minor relations of noblemen, many of them in elaborate costume, all hoping to brazen their way past the royal guards, or slip in unnoticed with an invited group.

Opening her silk purse to present her invitation, Sidonie felt something smooth and round. The crystal. In the distractedness of getting ready, and the excitement of the boat journey, she had all but forgotten it was there.

Once indoors, Kit took off his winter cloak to reveal an elegant suit of moss green velvet, with sleeves of claret silk. Sidonie raised her eyebrows in mock reproach. “Fie, Kit, you put me quite to shame, you did not say you would be so modish.” Kit blushed. “On loan from my brother, at the Inns of Court,” he confessed.

Sidonie observed with faint surprise how handsome Kit looked in his borrowed finery, and with what careless grace he wore his embroidered doublet, its soft woodland green mirroring the colour of his eyes.

Kit smiled, as though reading her thoughts. “’Struth, we are a fine couple, are we not? Come, sweet sister, let us join the revels.” And he took her hand to lead her forward.

In the Great Hall of Greenwich Palace there was no end of things to be marvelled at, and she was glad that Kit was there to marvel with her. From the chandeliers hung tassels and fringes of gold foil that shimmered in the light, and everywhere were festoons of ivy, bay and laurel, and bright red clusters of holly berries. The walls were covered with tapestries, and all the gallery rails draped with embroidered cloths.

Because there was to be a masque tonight the vast room with its painted timber ceiling had been transformed into a theatre. There was a gilded stage of splendid artifice, and a scaffolding with rising banks of seats.

Kit and Sidonie wove their way through the chattering, jostling throng. The ladies’ gowns were a vivid tapestry of emerald, ruby red and buttercup, topaz and violet and damson. The pervading scent of perfumes and pomanders made Sidonie want to sneeze. What coxcombs the gentlemen were, she decided, in their starched white ruffs, their fashionably slashed and pinked and scissored doublets, their puffed sleeves and padded trunkhose; and the ladies of the court, in their damask and Cathay silk and velvet, their Spanish farthingales and glittering ornaments and ostrich feather fans, made her feel like a milkmaid who had crept in uninvited to the ball.

Presently an usher led Sidonie away to sit with the other ladies in the seats near the dance floor, at the left hand of the Queen. It was still two hours before Her Majesty was to enter the Great Hall and the masque begin.

Seated among strangers, Sidonie turned her attention to the stage. On the left was a painted landscape of woods and meadow and near centre stage a pavilion of white taffeta with marble pillars, lamplit from within. On the right against a backdrop of battlements rose an ornately gilded and ornamented castle, with lights shining from its windows. (“Painted canvas and wooden frames,” she could imagine Kit saying. He was always more interested in the mechanics of things than in the final effect.) Over all hung a painted ceiling that was made to look like clouds.

All evening Sidonie had been haunted by a vague sense of unease. Until now she had put it down to anxiety, to nervous anticipation. But no, she decided, it was not only the unfamiliarity of the Court, the splendour of the occasion, that made her heart beat faster, her stomach knot itself into a fist. There was a wrongness here. Maybe, she told herself, it was because this was a night of masks and disguises, of feasting and tomfoolery, when all things were turned inside out and topsy-turvy.

And that reminded her of her troubling dream, when the Lord of Misrule, unmasked, revealed his zealot’s face. There would be no King of Folly elected here tonight. In King Henry’s day the Lord of Misrule had reigned over palace masques and mummeries just as he nowadays did in the country villages. But Queen Elizabeth’s yuletide revels were statelier affairs, and her Master of Revels devised much less boisterous entertainments. All the same, this was a time of beguilement and deception, when nothing was as it seemed and ordinary constraints were cast aside. And when so many here were costumed, who knew what elaborate mask might conceal the face of an enemy, what cloth of gold or damask sleeve might hide a dagger meant for the Queen?

She felt for the purse at her waist, ever mindful now of the crystal’s presence. What secrets might it reveal on this night of the Epiphany, when things hidden were made manifest?

Suppose it warned of danger — of a threat to the Queen, to England? What then? It was one thing to discover hidden treasure. But to see the future, and yet be helpless to alter it — that thought was more than she could entertain.

And yet her father had argued differently: if a man knew that his house was to catch fire, though the fire was pre-ordained, he still might act on the warning, and save himself.

But now there was an excited stirring in the crowd, and then a sudden hush. Trumpets sounded a fanfare, and all heads turned. First came a procession of court dignitaries — gentlemen, barons, earls, Knights of the Garter — and finally the Queen herself, resplendent in pearl encrusted tawny-orange satin trimmed with lynx skins. Close at her side was the royal dwarf Thomasina, in yellow velvet overlaid with copper gold.

The Queen took her place in her high, canopied seat.

Drums rolled, more trumpets sounded, and the revels began. The torchbearers entered, to the accompaniment of drum and fife, with courtiers and ladies-in-waiting costumed as gods and goddesses and heroes of romance. They glided across the boards in flowing robes of ivory and sea-green and azure, in damask and lawn and taffeta richly embellished with gold and silver lace, in elaborate headresses with sweeping white plumes. Then came the hired actors, the Queen’s Men, who took the roles of fauns and nymphs and satyrs, shepherds, clowns and soldiers, ogres and sorceresses.

A courtier in silver and crimson came out to pay extravagant tribute to the Queen, and to explain the meaning of the action. With all the excited conversation in the audience, Sidonie had only the vaguest idea of what he had said, but as the masque unfolded she was caught up in the music, the blaze of light and colour, the clever devices and rapidly changing tableaux.

A live bear emerged from a painted cave and to loud laughter was chased offstage by a comic soldier. An alchemist with a tall, pointed hat, straggling white beard and hair down to his feet stumbled wild-eyed across the stage, mortar in one hand and pestle in the other. He was a figure of absurdity, mocked and taunted by a band of small boys, and Sidonie, distracted for a moment, wondered sadly if this was how the world would come in time to perceive her father.

Clouds parted to reveal the golden dazzle of the sun. The Goddess Athena with spear and helmet descended from the sky, and by means of a hidden trapdoor, Aphrodite rose in white-robed splendour from the foam. Apollo played the panpipes as he and his muslin-draped attendants rumbled and creaked their way across the boards in a flower-garlanded wagon. Then the scene changed to nightfall, and the painted sky above the stage was aglitter with stars. In the intervals there were songs, and verses were declaimed, and the musicians in the gallery played lively airs.

It was as though the players feared this might be their last performance, and they meant to bid farewell with every extravagance of spectacle, every ingenuity of invention.

As the tableaux grew to a close, eight of the Nine Muses — who as Kit would have been quick to point out, were really men — entered in skirts of cloth of silver and embroidered waistcoats, their hair hanging long and loose over cloaks of crimson taffeta. They danced in and out of the white pavilion, presumably seeking their lost sister, and then, moving down from the stage, they invited eight court ladies from the audience to begin the general dancing.

Now there was a murmur of pleasure and a burst of applause as the Queen descended from her seat to join the revels. Light-footed and agile as a girl, she danced a lively galliard. And then one of the actors, a tall black-masked figure in a sorcerer’s black robe, bowed low before the Queen, and swept her away into a pavane.

At that moment a shudder of premonition crawled down Sidonie’s spine, and the hair prickled along her arms. There was something ominously familiar about that faceless player: something in his way of standing, something perhaps in the stiff-spined, formal way he moved through the figures of the pavane. Behind that velvet mask, the hard knot in her stomach told her, was a gaunt, deep-furrowed face and eyes as cold as stones.

In an agony of indecision Sidonie rose from her place and went to stand at the edge of the dancing floor. Should she cry out a warning? But what if she were mistaken? To shout false accusations at one of the Queen’s Men, to bring the dancing to a halt, to have the whole court turn as one with anger and astonishment to stare at her, what then? At best embarrassment, humiliation, the Queen’s furious displeasure; at worst — well, she would not dwell on what the worst might be. She drew a long, sobbing breath.

And then the moment had passed. The pavane had ended, the Queen, laughing, returned with her ladies-in-waiting to her seat. The musicians struck up a volte, the dancers leaped and stamped themselves to breathlessness, and Sidonie, feeling sick and faint, leaned against a pillar until Kit came and drew her, unwilling, onto the floor.