Free The Lady and the Poet by Maeve Haran Page A

girl, ‘I would go back to my chamber and summon my lord father to come and take me home.’
    ‘Will not the Queen forgive her if Lady Mary were to throw herself onto Her Majesty’s mercy?’ I enquired.
    My aunt shrugged. ‘Her Majesty says mercy is something a Queen cannot afford to show. It is too costly and dangerous. Come, Ann, let us return to York House. We will present you another day, when the Court is a happier place.’ She stared at Lady Mary angrily. ‘Now it will be weeks, months mayhap, before the Queen will take on another lady to wait on her. At present, thanks to this silly wench with her pretensions, she wishes them all damned to hell.’
    I smiled at Lady Mary, trying to convey my sympathy at her plight, yet I had no choice but to follow my aunt towards the river stairs. As the barge rowed upriver my mind teemed with many things, faster than the mill race under London Bridge at high tide. I felt the power of Her Majesty in all her glory but also a sense of shock that so great a Queen should be thus reduced to spiting her rivals for the love of the young earl when she was almost the age of my grandmother.
    For I could not picture my grandmother Margaret being chased after by young gallants, their codpieces scented with musk (for that is the scandalous fashion at this Court), nor playing cards with them until the birds sang in the trees as the Queen did.
    At York House all was humming with busyness. Messengers came to and fro between the palace of Westminster, where the courts now sat, and the Queen’s advisors at Whitehall. The Lord Keeper had fingers in many pies, sitting in the Privy Council, dealing with the Parliament, overseeing the courts of Chancery and Star Chamber and, so I had heard, beginning an investigation into lawyers and officials at Chancery for charging extortionate fees from their petitioners.
    Since my aunt wanted to be sure the Queen’s humour had softened, it was many days before she came to me once again to suggest we try our luck with another audience at Greenwich. In that time I had had the peace to think and even to pray; kneeling at the foot of the great bed overlooking the river, I asked the Lord our God for His guidance. By the time my aunt bid me go to Greenwich again I had made up my mind and screwed up all my courage to tell her, knowing my words would mightily displease her and all my family with her.
    ‘I am sorry, Aunt, for you have shown me so much kindness, but I have come to see that I am not suited to the ways of the Court.’
    ‘What nonsense is this! You will do as you are bid!’ I had never seen my kind aunt so angry, even with the hapless Lady Mary. ‘We have been to much trouble on your behalf. Half the young women in the realm would trade their portion to be in your position!’
    ‘Indeed, and I thank you for it. But it is not a world whose air I could ever breathe. I am blunt, while a courtier needs to be subtle. I feel things deeply and could never learn to hold my tongue and dissemble. At Greenwich I saw clearly how a lady in waiting needs two faces, one to show to the Queen, and another in private. I heard what those ladies truly said, and thought what a brittle world the Court is, built on fear and rivalry.’
    ‘You are not a maid in short coats, Ann.’ My aunt’s eyes were as cold and forbidding as a winter sea. ‘You are a woman. You must learn to rein in your emotions, to be discreet. Do you think I, too, do not feel anger, fear, resentment? Yet I keep them to myself. You have a choice, niece, and it is high time you accepted it. Learn the skills of a courtier, as I have learned them, or take whatever husband your father deems suitable for you.’ This time there was no softening of sympathy in my aunt’s manner. Her back had become like a ramrod, and her voice deepened with a strong and harsh reality. She seemed a different woman from the one who had given me my mother’s locket. ‘Ann, remember this. The Queen is the sun who brightens