I was led into her chamber where she was seated against the window so that when I looked at her I was dazzled by her beauty, for the light beaming through the lace of her ruff she was as it were haloed, and at every point winked sparklets of crystal from the pearls and precious stones that adorned it.
‘Come here child,’ she said. ‘I could not have your father. Shall I have you instead?’
‘As my lady pleases,’ I answered.
‘My lady does please then. I shall keep you here or Dr Gilbert may be jealous to have you underfoot at Wilton. Do you know Dr Gilbert child?’
‘My father spoke of him madam. And sometimes they would meet at the Pheasant to talk of chemical matters.’ I did not say my father had called him very sarcastic and a great buffoon but that his relation to Sir Walter Raleigh, he was his half-brother by the same mother, gave him the licence of speaking his mind to all, both great and little.
‘What do they call you child Boston?’ I hung my head and did not answer. ‘Come now child, you must have a name. What did your father call you?’
‘Sometimes one thing madam, sometimes another.’
‘Shall I lose patience with you? What things?’
‘Sometimes Amyntas madam and sometimes…’
‘Yes?’
‘Amaryllis.’
‘He was not such a great philosopher as I supposed then, since he did not know the sex of his own child.’
‘When he was engaged in the Great Work madam, he was forgetful of all else.’
‘Come closer and let me look at you.’
I did as she commanded and as soon as I was near enough she took my chin in her white hand and turned my head first to the right and then to the left. I could smell her scent which I recognised as a distillation of roses with some other sweetness such as jasmine admixed. ‘How old are you?’
‘Near sixteen madam.’
‘And yet there is no sign of hair upon your lip or chin. What is the mystery of these names? What did your mother call you?’
‘Nothing madam. She died in giving birth to me, and my twin brother who died with her.’ I paused.
‘Go on.’
‘He was christened Amyntas.’
‘And you are Amaryllis? Yet you dress as your brother were he alive. Do you always so?’
‘No madam. When visitors came to see my father’s house I dressed in female attire to attend my father.’
‘But were not the neighbours and his friends puzzled?’
‘He had no family madam. And the neighbours believed there were still two of us.’
‘And you, what do you believe?’
‘Sometimes when I look in the glass I do not know who looks back at me. Whichever I am carries the other inside.’
‘Such confusion we find in dreams or in the fancies of the play, where boy plays girl playing boy. Which would you choose?’
‘I cannot say madam.’
‘One day the choice will be forced on you. For now we will continue with the game. Do you bleed child?’
‘No my lady.’
‘Strange. I bled at thirteen. Well you shall be Amyntas, my page and assistant, when we are alone here at Ivychurch, or even in Ramsbury, but at Wilton, the great house, or in London if we should go there, you shall put on your woman’s clothes and not be noticed among the press of other maids. Shall you like this game child Boston?’
‘If my lady pleases.’
‘As she does. Can you read aloud child?’
‘Yes madam. I read often to my father, both in our own tongue and from the Latin works of the chemical masters as Paracelsus and Nicholas Flammel.’
‘Then you shall read to me. I have a humour to hear my brother, Sir Philip Sidney’s Arcadia. Do you know his book? It is many years since I have opened it, when last I closed it for the printer, at the end of my labours to restore his work to the world in full. I have a mind to visit it again now that I am alone and my time is my own.’
‘My lady is still young. She may marry again.’
‘I am the age now the earl was when he married me but it is not the same for women. A ripe man may marry a young maid who will give him children as I did. And you are the age I was when I was espoused to him after two years at court in her majesty’s service. Sir Philip, my brother, wrote of passion between young lovers but I have never known it. Only duty. Yet a woman must marry, and not be too picky in her choice, for without marriage she has no domain, no power. When he was away the earl left all things in my hands. I have had, you could say, my own little court far removed from London. All this will change now, changes already, and will change more when I am just the dowager and mother of the earl and my son takes a wife to be his countess. Enough of sighing, come my young Amyntas-Amaryllis let me hear you read to judge whether your voice and your understanding be good enough for my brother’s words.’
So began my new life in the lady’s household as it moved here and there between her domains, now in London, at Barnard’s Castle or at her three country estates in Wiltshire or in Wales at Cardiff Castle. The young earl was still in disgrace with the queen for he had got her lady-in-waiting, Mistress Fitton, with child yet would not marry her. It was said Mrs Fitton had tucked up her clothes and gone out from the court disguised as a man in a white cloak to meet her lover. The child was born dead and Earl William, after a stay in the Fleet, banished to Wilton, where he moped about the house. His mother could not forgive him and kept herself apart while he wrote begging letters to Sir Robert Cecil to be taken back into her majesty’s favour and given some small posts which his father had held, and be freed of the royal wardship he suffered rather than enjoyed. I was glad not to go to Wilton in my maid’s clothes at this time, for the young earl was said to be immoderately given up to women.
In the mornings my lady prayed privately and read from her own book of psalms which she and her noble brother had made together. Then when we had breakfasted on milk, white bread and honey we went to our work in the laboratory where we made medicines from all kind of herbs, seeds and minerals, both salves, cordials and other potions.
I would chop and grind the ingredients with pestle and mortar, then transfer them according to her instructions to the limbec for distilling into the liquors that gleamed bright as gemstones, sapphire, emerald, ruby or the garnet yellow of sulphurous emetics from her own receipt ‘The Countess of Pembroke’s Vomit’ for purging.
There were many little drawers with clay boxes of substances such as I knew from my father, already powdered: saltpetre and opiates, poppy and St John’s wort, saffron, and spices from the East, sandalwood, spikenard or our own meadowsweet that brings a merry heart.
After, her patients would come to her with all manner of complaints and sicknesses: ulcers, wounds, bruises, ills of every member and part of the body and we would apply the salves, plaisters and dressings or mix up fresh remedies to cleanse the insides, or wash the skin or eyes, and to dispel melancholy. When she had attended to her own family there would come those from the town and the villages round about because of her reputation for skill and kindness.
All this I helped her in and also was at her side when she wrought at the business of the household and her estates, writing letters and paying bills and keeping her diurnal of instructions and accounts for food and drink, bed-linen and clothing, tutors’ and stewards’ reports, for her hand was in everything, great and small. Sometimes she would sigh and regret the days of her