Juliet Landon - LIBERTINE in the Tudor Court

‘Your reputation, mistress?’ Maybelle said, giving the full pink skirt a shake. ‘Well, everyone has some kind of—’

‘Oh, don’t hedge, Belle. Just tell me what you’ve heard.’

Maybelle sat on the carved pine linen-chest, deflating the pink silk like a balloon upon her knees. ‘Well, you know what the Court ladies’ maids are like.’

‘And?’ She waited for Maybelle to verify what she herself had already heard.

‘And, yes, they say that you’re hard to catch. But,’ she added hastily, ‘it could be much worse. Better than being easy to catch, isn’t it?’

Adorna had no ready answer to that as she pondered yet again on the apparent ease of her capture by a known master of the art and then, to crown it all, on her capture by default by the one she had been trying to avoid. There was no comparison, Peter’s amateurish goodnight peck being nothing like the earlier sensuous experience from which she had not, at the time, recovered. In that moment, as Maybelle watched for her seemingly artless observation to filter through, the question itself seemed to crystallise Adorna’s dilemma more quickly than all her nightly cogitations. She did want to be caught. She wanted, more than anything in the world, to be crushed against him and to feel his hard arm across her back, his lips touching hers, making her taste his and forget how to protest. And so my love protesting came…

‘Yes,’ she said, finally. ‘I suppose so.’ With one finger, she traced the sinuously entwined frond embroidered on her coverlet.

Maybelle, aged eighteen, prettily dark-eyed and as sharp as a knife, placed the pink bundle to one side and came to sit next to her mistress on the bed. ‘You suppose so?’ she whispered with her neatly coiffed head on one side. ‘Look, if you’ve discovered he has something you want, you can still have it and give him a run for his money at the same time. Why not slow down a bit and let him think he’s caught up with you? Then, when you’ve had enough of him, you sprint off again. You’re good at putting on a show when you need to, mistress. You can act your way through that, easy. You take what you want and then you can go back to Master Fowler. He’ll always be there to help you out.’

‘But that would be, well, asking for a different kind of reputation, wouldn’t it?’

‘Who’d notice? He’d hardly be likely to brag about the fact that you’d dropped him before he could do the same to you, would he? Bad for his image.’

The conversation had rested there, with just enough of an idea to keep Adorna’s thoughts occupied all that day while employing herself in her father’s Revels Office with Hester who, they discovered, was more than content to assist with the embroidery. Before supper, they rode together across Richmond Park with friends, Hester surprising them once again by her excellent horsemanship.

Like words that turn up on a daily basis after an absence of years, Sir Nicholas and some of the men from the Royal Mews were seen in the distance studying the paces of some large greys. Although her party watched them awhile, Adorna trotted off smartly in the opposite direction as soon as Sir Nicholas approached. It was, she told herself, too soon for unrehearsed pleasantries.

She was still unrehearsed when she was presented with another chance on the following day while keeping her promise to Master Burbage, principal actor with Leicester’s Men, the ones who had caused such merriment at the dinner party.

For almost a year, Adorna’s brother Seton had been one of their members, chiefly as a writer of plays, at which he excelled, and more recently as an actor, at which he did not. It was one thing to cavort about at home when all of them were equally inept, but it was quite another to perform professionally when all of them except him were very good.

At seventeen, Seton Pickering was so remarkably like his elder sister that some said, in private, that he ought to have been born a girl. They had the same colouring, the same classic features, the same willowy grace, but Seton’s ability to write plays had brought him, through family friendships, to the attention of James Burbage, who instantly recruited young Seton to write for his company under the patronage of the great Earl of Leicester, no less.

Unfortunately for Seton, the unknown side-effects of his acceptance concerned the company’s constant shortage of suitable young men to play the female roles, a tradition that for reasons of modesty were never allowed to women themselves. So, as one who knew the whole cast’s lines by heart and who had a head start when it came to disguising as a woman, poor Seton was exploited in a direction he would have preferred not to go, having no wish to perform the way his younger brother did. At thirteen-and-a-half, Adrian was rarely not performing.

Adorna’s decision to visit the specially built playhouse at the sign of the Red Lion at Whitechapel did not meet with Seton’s immediate approval, in spite of her promise to Master Burbage. ‘You won’t like it,’ he told her, pettishly. ‘It’s noisy. Hester won’t like it, either.’

‘But it’s you we want to see,’ Adorna said. ‘And Master Fowler will be there to see to our safety. I know you’ll be good.’

‘I won’t,’ he grumbled. ‘I never am.’ All the same, he gave her a hug and a watery smile.

They made the journey on horseback from Richmond to the city, and it was two hours after noon when they were eventually allowed into the building with the eager crowds paying their shillings for seats in an upper gallery supported by scaffolding. Hester, already uncomfortable, was unsure about the wisdom of the whole venture, but Peter’s protective instincts were already alert, for this kind of place was well known to swarm with pickpockets. He shepherded them into a shady corner and did his best to divert Hester’s attention from the press of bodies.

‘Look down there,’ he shouted, pointing to the stage. ‘If we’d paid more we’d have been allowed to sit on the stage itself, as those gallants are doing. I hope they don’t stop the performance.’ The clamour made any attempt at conversation quite impossible, and it was Hester’s nudge that made Adorna turn to where she was looking, not at the stage but to the gallery at one side of it.

A group of fashionably dressed people had just entered and were arranging themselves along the benches, laughing and chattering with excitement, one of whom Hester had already recognised. The sunlight fell on him as he waited to be seated, dressed elegantly in dark green and red, his small white ruff open at the neck to accentuate the strong angle of his jaw. Sir Nicholas Rayne.

Holding her breath, Adorna pulled herself back from the edge of the gallery wondering why, of all times and places, they would be obliged to sit within sight of each other to remind her of a moment she was trying to forget. The trumpets sounded for the start of the play, the audience turned to face the stage, but Adorna was sure that, if she could hear the beating of her heart, then surely everyone else could. She would not, could not look at him.

‘He waved,’ Hester said as the din settled.

‘Did he?’ said Adorna. Indirectly, she had scrutinised every one of his companions, two other men and three young, pretty and vivacious women whose chatter was unaffected by the arrival of the first actor. But then, nor were others until at least five minutes had passed by which time the words could be heard. All the way through, there was a continuous upstaging from the rowdy group of young gallants who had paid well to sit on stools within reach of the actors, and when Seton made his entrance as a lovely young woman, their loud comments would have made a sailor blush.

Adorna’s glance across at Sir Nicholas’s group showed that some of them thought it was hilarious while she squirmed for her brother’s predicament, having to suffer that kind of thing each day in a different role. Though his acting was not quite as bad as he had told her it was, it became clear to her, knowing him as she did, that this sensitive young man was enjoying the performance even less than she was. She applauded loudly and enthusiastically at each of his speeches, ceasing to care whether Sir Nicholas was watching her or not, determined to make Seton aware of her support.