Love's Alchemy Read online

  Burr spoke off-handedly. “I saw him but a little in his most profligate youth, when I was in the Earl’s employ.”

  “Southampton. Yes, this Jack is just the sort of hanger-on Southampton would have about him.”

  “Just so, my lady, and no better than a hanger-on.” Perhaps she was beginning to see the danger. Yes, her attention moved back to the needlework. At length he ventured to ask, “Might I attend to the cook? I fear she will have the kitchen at sixes and sevens.”

  Lady Bedford ignored the request. “Southampton: an Essex man. This Jack Donne was of the Essex party at the rising, then?”

  “At the rising? I did not note him. But all was confusion that day. I think he fought under Essex at Cadiz, though.”

  “Ah. He is good with his sword, then.”

  Resolved not to take this bait, Burr said only, “So it is bruited about, my lady. I know not.” Burr waited, but she continued with her needle as if she hadn’t heard. No doubt she would make him stand there until he offered something more. He said, “If this Jack Donne was not at the rising, it was because he had read the writing on the palace wall. And if Essex thought about the man at all that day, it was only to think here was one more hanger-on that could not be trusted.”

  Lady Bedford put the needlework into its basket and picked up her book. After half a page she put it down again, turned to Burr, and said firmly, “But you know the man. Is there nothing to commend him?”

  “Nothing.” Burr’s tone suggested he meant what he said, but in fact he spoke too quickly, too emphatically; it was clear Lady Bedford could see there was something more.

  She pressed on: “Timothy, I would have you tell me what you know. You are in his confidence, are you not? An intimate.”

  “I tell you, my lady, I am not. I . . . I think he lets no man close to him.” No sooner had the words left him than he knew they were a mistake.

  Her eyes brightened. “That may be, Timothy, but a woman is not a man. I have read some of this Jack Donne’s poems. He needs but a woman who comprehends the heart that stirs beneath the words. The man is tormented. He longs for understanding, for . . . release.”

  Burr allowed a note of pain to play in his voice: “My lady—”

  “I tell you I need none of this pity.” With a glare she made him stand awhile before continuing. But she kept her voice calm: “What of his wife? Tell me what you know of her.”

  “Less, even, than I know of him.”

  “Come: you already said she gave up her fortune. You mean it became her husband’s when she married, do you not? You mean Jack Donne is a spendthrift.”

  Burr exhaled forcefully enough to quiver his mustache. “No, my lady.” She waited until he had no choice but to continue. “I think she had some prospect of a very favorable marriage, but while still little older than a girl she allowed this Jack to steal her from under her father’s nose.”

  “Did she? Whose nose was this father’s?”

  “Some . . . great man’s. My knowledge is imperfect.” She waited. “Some . . . relation of the Lord Keeper’s, it may be.”

  “Really.”

  “So I have heard bandied about, my lady.”

  “He had her with child, then, and Lord Keeper Egerton—or the girl’s father—or both—were angry.”

  “No. Or . . . I think not. Or . . . angry, yes. With child, no.”

  With a too-studied air of unconcern she asked, “Children since? Legitimate ones?”

  “Some two or three, it may be; I know not for certain.”

  “Pregnant now?”

  “My lady—”

  “Say on.”

  This would never do; the exchange had already gone too far. “Lady Bedford, I have told you all. That is the end of my knowledge, the whole of it, the sum of it from south to north, from start to finish, from alpha to zed.”

  “Omega.”

  “Omega, then, if you would Greek it. But I have told you all.”

  “Well.” She picked up the book again. “See to the cook.”

  As Jack passed the Savoy, with its usual collection of hawkers, cripples, beggars, half-wits, whores, and thieves gathered outside the gates, he stopped short at the sight of an old woman he recognized at a distance, her back bent and her hand stretched in hope of alms from a foppish young blood who knocked her arm out of his way as he passed, sparing only a sneer for the benefit of one of his three attendants.

  The light blow to the woman’s arm was enough to tip her off balance. Her cane waved feebly just off the ground. Jack hurried toward her but was too far away to catch her before she went down: not hard, luckily, but with a rolling fall that landed her in a skinned-over puddle of muck. Several of the onlookers laughed. Jack watched as the young man turned, saw what had happened, and joined in the laughter. But then the courtier stepped over to the frightened-looking old woman—she did not seem to comprehend what had just happened—and extended a hand to her. She took his hand, and he lifted her two or three inches, just out of the puddle, then released his grip. The old woman dropped into the muck again, splayed on her back, her legs spindled in the air.

  The young man doubled over with laughter, then turned and continued walking. Jack picked up his pace, making a point of roughly shouldering the young man as they met. The man stumbled, uttered a cry of protest, and put his hand to the hilt of his sword. Jack was unarmed, but he had known men like this. He stared coldly at the sputtering courtier, turned his back, and continued toward the woman. He heard the command from behind: “Stop, miscreant!” The accent was Scots. Jack kept walking. To spurn, ridicule, and perhaps hurt such a poor old creature as this: a widow, a woman he knew to be kind, honest to the bone. Jack gently lifted her to her feet, made sure she could stand, and spoke to her in a soothing voice.

  Breathless, gasping, she put a hand to her chest as she leaned unsteadily on her cane.

  “Stop, slave, do you hear?” Jack ignored the Scotsman. “Whoreson bastard!” Mrs. Aylesbury—the very woman in whose house Jack had spent so much time during his days at Lincoln’s Inn—teetered on the point of a swoon. Jack heard the Scotsman’s rapier slide from its keep. The woman’s eyes grew wide, and she uttered a little cry. Something about that sound, that inarticulate sigh of dismay, froze Jack where he stood. The blood rose in his veins, and his hands flexed murderously. He made sure Mrs. Aylesbury could stand on her own, and turned.

  The Scotsman had removed his cloak, tossed it to one of his servants, and taken a few steps forward, his sword extended. Jack looked at him coldly. “Miscreant,” the man repeated. Slave. Jack began to walk slowly toward the Scotsman, who said, “I will teach . . . I. . . .” Jack picked up his pace. The man stepped back as his speech faltered, until he stood within inches of the stone wall of the Savoy. As Jack strode to within three paces, the Scotsman’s sword wavered. Now Jack moved within reach. The man lifted the blade to strike. Jack snatched the swordsman’s right hand in his own left. He heard the rapier clatter to the pavement, the snap of tendons or bones, the sudden howl of pain. A fierce backhanded blow cut the sound short. The courtier’s head jerked to the side and thudded against the stone. The man slumped to a heap. Jack reached to pick him up and hit him again, but two of the servants held him back. “Stop!” shouted one. “Y’have kilt him arready.” The young Scotsman lay there bleeding from both sides of his head.

  The other man holding Jack said sharply to the youngest of the three, a thin, freckled servant hardly older than a boy, “A constable, Rafe, find a constable. To it, now.” The young servant hesitated. “Avaunt!” The young man looked at the cloak in his arms, dropped it to the ground, and turned.

  “No constables,” said Jack. Something in his voice stopped the youth where he stood. Jack shook himself free of the other two, glanced back at the wide-eyed Mrs. Aylesbury, reeling as she leaned on her cane, and knelt by the bleeding man. He felt for a pulse, snatched a feather from the gaudy hat that had fallen a few inches away, held it under the Scotsman’s nose. Nothing. Nor any heartbea
t. Onlookers, some tattered and gap-toothed, some smug and oily, some eager-eyed and nattering, had begun to gather in the shadow of the wall. A plump, redfaced ballad-monger, a smirking fishwife, and the sweepings of the London streets—wastrels, beggars, and grit-faced children—jostled for a better look. But it was Anne whose image filled Jack’s mind, Anne as she would look when she heard the news. The sorrow in her eyes said he would never see their children again, said the law would make him pay the price of this murder, said she would love him nonetheless, even as he dropped from Tyburn gallows. He pulled his sleeve across his forehead to dispel the image.

  Jack took the man’s head in his hands and examined the wounds. They did not look deep. He thumbed open the eyes, but they were rolled too far back to show whether they held any life. Still kneeling, he grasped the prone courtier’s belt and lifted until only the man’s heels and the back of his head touched the pavement. An instant after Jack released his grip and the body thudded to the stones, a loud rasp of inhalation startled several onlookers into exclamations of their own. The courtier lay still for a moment, then began to sputter and cough.

  Jack rose. “Take him home,” he said. The three servants hastened to lift their gasping, wheezing master as if they’d been given a sudden reprieve. Jack picked up the man’s cloak from the ground, wiped his bloody hands on it, and tossed it onto the courtier’s sagging body as the servants hurried away with their burden.

  He turned to Mrs. Aylesbury. She stood there dazed and pale, hand to wizened lips. He gently took her elbow and led her away from the crowd, which parted before them as if he had issued some silent command. She looked to be on the point of a swoon, so he held her up. At last she heaved a great breath and leaned against him huffing until she could say, “Master Donne! Lord help us, I thought that gallant was like to strike you dead, I was that affrighted.” She fidgeted with her shawl.

  “Noooo,” he said soothingly. “No harm done. No harm.”

  “But he drew his blade! And there I stood astonied, watching.” She looked at him out of her creased eyes as if he might have missed the point: “Astonied.”

  He let her breathe awhile, then asked, “But what brings you to the Savoy?”

  “Well, there’s the bread and cheese they gives out at the ’spital, but it don’t always go around, does it, and with all the deal of shoving and shallying at the gates and the urchins tugging at the loaves—worse than the cutpurses, they is—well, it’s a pity but a poor old woman has to beg alms betimes, Lord help the wicked.” She looked at him not, as he might have expected, with shame or defiance or expectation, but with wonder.

  “But Mrs. Aylesbury, what of your money? What of your house? Have you no lodger?”

  “Oh, yes, same house as you’ve visited often enough, Master Donne, back when you studied the law, and a lodger I keep still, though I think this young man you wouldn’t know: a commoner sort than Master Goodyer what lived there in your time. My, didn’t that Henry Goodyer cut a figure! And didn’t you all look handsome as peacocks, and as proud, when you wore your finery! But a decent man, a workaday man, my young Jeremy Jakes, and like to make a good husband when he’s put by a bit more against his marrying day. And a pretty lass she is.”

  Jack nodded. “He pays his rent, then, this Jeremy Jakes?”

  “Oh, yes, Master Donne. Without fail, somethin’ wonderful. You know I would not have it otherwise.” She chuckled.

  Slow as she was to see where all this was leading, he would work her around to it. “But Mrs. Aylesbury, if you have your rent, why do you beg?”

  “Lord help us, Master Donne, I cannot ask Jeremy for more than rent, not for alms-money. He needs to save, as I said, against his marrying day.”

  Jack seemed to ponder this deeply, then said, “You are right, Mrs. Aylesbury, not to burden him.”

  She added in a whisper, “He doesn’t know I come here.”

  Jack felt himself strangely troubled, as if some dark herald of sorrow had half-appeared, then begun to withdraw. “Is there . . . no one else?”

  “No one,” she said quietly. “All dead and buried, down to the last.”

  He shivered, and the act seemed to shake away the apparition’s lingering shadow. “Yet you have just said you have your rent. Why do you not use it to buy food? Have you borrowed from someone who demands payment? Does someone steal your money?”

  She tucked in her lips and nodded, then said, “Aye, more’s the pity.”

  “Which is it?”

  “Ah, the pity of it.”

  “And the money your husband left you. Is that gone too?”

  Mrs. Aylesbury shook her head. “Gone. All, all gone. The last farthing.” Then she brightened a little. “But Father Gerard is a great comfort, back again from the north country. Have you heard Mass from him? He—” Her fingers shot to her lips as she made the realization: “But I forget myself! I forget that you left the Church. . . . Oh, what have I done? What have I done to Father Ger—” She hesitated for a moment, a look of horror in her eyes. “Palmer! His name is Father Valentine Palmer, not. . . . Oh, did the Lord ever see such a fool as me? Oh, Master Donne, please don’t. . . .” She clasped her burled hands together.

  Jack held her lightly by the shoulders and said, “Listen to me.”

  “But what have I done?”

  “Listen! I care not one whit who is Catholic and who is Protestant. Not one whit, do you hear? This Father. . . .” He knew well enough she had called him “Father Gerard.” He had never met the priest but knew of him and knew of his doings: John Gerard was a man to be loved, feared, hated, worshipped almost by some. But Jack thought it best to say, “Father . . . whatever his name—I have forgotten it already—is safe. What I want to know is this: who is taking your money?”

  “Why,” she said as though it had been clear all along, “the pursy-wants. Twice fined, I’ve been. Did I not say so plain as a pikestaff before? Fined, I’ve been, for going to Mass instead of the heretic ch—” Her chapped fingers went to her lips again. “Oh, Master Donne! I mean no disrespect for your heresy, rest yourself sure of that.” She crossed herself. “When tongues went wagging after you took the oath of disallegiance to the Holy Father, I said to them, bold as a game-cock I said, ‘Master Donne is a good man and must have his reasons for turning heretic, or he wouldn’t do it,’ I said, bold as a game-cock I said it. And I’d say it still.” She lifted her dewlapped chin in proud assurance of Jack’s heretical virtue.

  He felt a little stab of shame but hardly attended to it after that talk of the pursuivants. The mere mention of them made the afternoon mist hang heavier in the air and the sewage kennel along the street smell even fouler. The pursuivants were no better than the tax collectors of New Testament times. Jesus may have found a way to love such bloodsuckers, but Jack hated their latter-day incarnations. True, he was no papist. Not anymore. But the throne’s fear-mongering, its painting the Catholics as some vast army of enemies to English freedom, its licensing of these leeching pursuivants to bleed the life from the honest Mrs. Aylesburys of the realm for but going to their secret Masses instead of the required services, made his hands heavy with vengeance. He looked at his palms, lined with their runic traces of the Scots courtier’s blood, as if his hands bore through all the generations of men the indelible mark of Cain. Almost he could feel his fingers, crooked and hard and tight around a pursuivant’s neck.

  As so often before in his vexation, sometimes even in his rare moments of peace, words came to him unbidden. Visiting from some ancient realm just beyond the threshold of hearing but plain and insistent nonetheless, they took dark, prophetic soundings in his dreams, and they redounded as he lay awake. At times they penetrated to his very bones. Other times they skimmed along as innocent diversions, mere trifling puns—like gamesome children with a spinning-top. Or maybe at those times they only seemed innocent, as might befit some witty daemon in disguise. Cain/Cane/Abel/Able. Here he stood able-bodied but not Abel-souled. He stood the apostate, the outcast, bearing in
his soul the murderous curse of Cain, and these pursuivants he would murder were his brothers in Christ—Protestants, members of his own adoptive faith—while here stood bent-backed Mrs. Aylesbury, surely an Abel whose sacrifices were pleasing to the nostrils of God. A Catholic Abel who was not able-bodied but in need of a cane, a woman who could do no murder to save her own life. He turned the conceit this way, that. A poem one day, perhaps. Or not.

  Maybe, the old suspicion came to him once again, all his versing was but a cheapening of prophecy into poesy: a hopeless attempt to evade the horrors within him, to busy his mind with pretty conceits when he should attend to the word of God. Maybe he was called to be not a Jack nor even a John but a Jonah, and all his hauntings foretold the coming of the leviathan that moved all its vast, slow bulk beneath the waters, ever nearer, the sea-beast that would swallow him up and belch him forth on the coast of some forsaken Nineveh. God was calling him to a fearful, holy work—to martyr himself, perhaps, not gloriously before admiring throngs but in a darksome corner—while here he sought to mince clever phrases for one vain patron or another at a corrupt and godless court. He wished he knew.

  In his childhood all had been simple. The old faith was the true one, and he was ready to follow the examples of his daring Jesuit uncles, men who would face down the Devil himself to defend the Church of Rome. Uncle Jasper had told Jack of his most glorious great-great-grand-uncle, Sir Thomas More, who had defied the hellhound, the eighth Henry, and had joked with the henchman on his way to the block. Such was the strength of More’s faith, and such was the faith of Jack’s uncles and his pious mother. The uncles he would not see for weeks or months, for their business was secret and dangerous. But when he saw them they told him stories of the miraculous lives and glorious deaths of the saints of long ago, of the Jesuits’ own adventures in Protestant England, of the souls they had brought back to the true faith from the heretic church, of the saving Masses they had offered in secret, of the priest-holes made by the lay-brother they would not name (but he thought he heard his Uncle Jasper say “Owen” one night when Jack lay awake long after midnight), holes and ingenious secret closets where they had lain hidden for hours or even days while the pursuivants had torn asunder a Catholic nobleman’s house. One day, they said—and young Jack himself prayed—he would join the ranks of the Jesuits. He would take the vows of poverty, chastity, obedience, and the Jesuits’ special vow of allegiance to the Church and the Holy Father. If Father Jack saw a matter as white and the Holy Catholic Church said it was black, then it would be black. If all went well, he would save many souls, then die—perhaps die sweet Saint Sebastian’s death, pierced by a hundred arrows for the love of the Blessed Virgin.