P. Chisholm - An Air of Treason

Damn, damn, damn him, he was playing hard to get because there was a clear admission of guilt in his humorously raised eyebrow and the sparkle in his so-blue eyes.

Jesu, what an annoying man. Her stomach was fizzing again; she was lusting after him like one of the stupid provincial girls. That was not at all the way to do it. He was supposed to be hot for her, not the other way around. However there was no question that she wanted more of what he had so scandalously and lustily given her in Scotland. She definitely wanted him. When they danced, her whole body had risen to him, trout to a lure. Goddamn him.

She smiled again with particular lasciviousness at the next man to spin her round, a willowy youth in pearl-grey satin. And then she quite consciously stopped herself. She had to bank her fires so they could work where they were really needed. But she still needed that valuable introduction to the Earl of Essex. Her satisfaction for the guns would have to wait. It was lucky she had a secret contact here.

She paced forward and back and sideways again and found herself dancing with the Earl of Essex himself, now in white satin and white velvet, sparked with diamonds, trimmed in gold. He blanked her completely. Should she dare to ask? No, the music was too loud and the Queen would see. She had to take the normal route, through Carey or another follower of the Earl. Damn. Of course, that was why Carey was playing hard to get, he had been ten years a courtier. He knew his worth.

She let the moment pass. At the last measure, cleverly timed, the Queen and Essex danced together. The Queen was a good dancer, light and brisk on her feet. Then Essex expertly played the part of a man in love and leaned solicitously over a woman at least thirty years senior to him, who giggled and flirted and Holy Madonna, had her stays scandalously low and her hair uncovered by a cap, as if a maid of fourteen. Disgusting!

The two bowed and curtseyed to each other-the Queen not very much and the Earl a great deal from his great height and the other dancers all clapped.

Emilia’s feet were already sore and pinched in their borrowed dancing slippers and much-darned silk stockings. What could she bribe the Deputy with if not herself? She had only received one good necklace so far from Cumberland and it looked as if she would have to say goodbye to it now.

Hmm. She moved toward the broad-shouldered lad whom Carey had had at his back when he came in, instead of the lanky dour-faced man he had in Scotland. This one had a square raw-boned face and seemed only quarter-witted, but was wearing an Edinburgh cut doublet. He had been hanging around near the musicians, who weren’t bad at all, considering. Now the youth was at the back, near the bowls of wine and mead, watching for the signal from his master.

It came-Carey caught his eye and made a move with his hand. The youth bowed slightly, turned and poured wine into a plain silver goblet he was holding. He took a quick mouthful, surprisingly well-trained to Court ways, then brought it over to his master, a small towel on his arm and offered it with a bow. Carey drank it off.

Then he turned to bow to the Queen, who said something to him that made him tense. Emilia was getting used to English after becoming quite proficient at the barbaric tongue of Scotch-the two languages were brothers after all. She was sure the Queen had said something about singing. Carey bowed again and moved through the crowds to the musicians where the men of the chapel were lining up to sing. Carey stood at the end of the row, took a sheet of music and squinted at it. He looked very odd there, gaudy in his pearls next to the plain chapel men with their black robes and white collars.

The fat music master was explaining the music, Emilia thought, saying something about writing it that very afternoon and would Her Majesty care to hear his poor rough first attempt sung for the very first time? The Queen inclined her head, said something which caused sycophantic titters of laughter among the courtiers.

Carey smiled like a man accepting a challenge to duel, opened his mouth, waited for the beat, and sang the opening, perfectly on the note. The boy-sopranos speared their way into his line and the bassos, other tenors, and altos came in. It was a Spanish air, newly set in the modern Italian way, but she hadn’t heard it before. It was somehow both sprightly and wistful.

The words were English and didn’t quite fit…she didn’t understand them. Emilia closed her eyes. It had such a sound of the South, of the Mediterranean, you could almost smell the olive trees and dust in it, the hot dry sun in it. Ah, the sun.

Something made her look at one of the musicians at the back of the group. He seemed transfixed, a handsome greybeard, he had stopped playing his viol. A tear was tracking its way down his creased cheek.

Emilia turned away at once as the music casually knotted her throat. She had to catch a tear out of the corner of her eye with the corner of her handkerchief before it caused her kohl to smear. What had she seen there in that old man’s face? Shocked surprise, then something raw, something full of longing. Did the air remind him, too, of olive trees and sunlight like a golden knife? Or perhaps of something else, a lover? Her tear had come from her longing for her children, not any stupid man, of course. They were lost to her, locked in their convent, unless she could bring off the coup she needed. Bonnetti didn’t care because he was a man, he could get more. She would not.

Someone was singing solo now. The tune was complex but he had support from the pipes. Someone with a very fine strong voice, a clear tenor that allowed the notes to flow like water.

It was M. le depute again. There he stood, sight-singing the complex tenor line and the bassos coming in again now to wind about the stem of his voice like dark green snakes.

There was another damned tear in her eye. Again! Because his voice did bring the blue blue sky of the South with it, somehow, the vivid intense lapis lazuli that you never saw in the grey North and she missed it and she missed her children.…

She could not even cough. She had to stop breathing. She caught that tear, too, no more please, M. le depute, my heart will not stand it and in any case it’s all your fault that I’m still here in the Northern wastes.

Thank God the boys were singing now, one of them sharp from nerves, the men, too, weaving and parting and finally coming in sequence to an end against Carey’s sustained note.

Just a little silence afterward, that heartbeat of silence the people needed to bring themselves back from the land of music, the highest compliment any audience could give. Then ordinary applause, the Queen smiling and clapping her embroidered gloves as well.

The adult musicians were grudgingly approving, the boys staring up at the Courtier. The senior chapel man shook Carey’s hand. The Queen said something that sounded complimentary about her cousin at which Carey promptly stepped forward and went down on two knees to her, his lips moving although Emilia couldn’t hear what he said.

The Queen laughed and gave him her hand to kiss which he did and stayed on his knees. Again his lips moved and the Queen tapped his nose playfully-but possibly quite painfully-with her new Chinese fan. He rose, bowed, stepped back, bowed again as the Queen too turned aside to speak to another person on his knees, looked wry and rubbed his nose, sneezed.

The Queen was now talking to Essex again and the chapel men started singing once more to the chapel master’s nod, a song that only needed one tenor and was easy. Emilia started manoeuvring toward Carey through the crowds now sweating in the heat from the candles. Such a very fine piece of manflesh, she thought coldly, what a pity to kill him. But still, it had to be done. First Essex, though.