Dr Nicholas Shelby and his wife Bianca have removed themselves to the gallery, amongst the other palace chaff who don’t merit a place closer to the players. As a consequence, they have an uninterrupted view of the assembled courtiers bedecked in their late-summer plumage: satin peasecod doublets and venetians for the men, low-cut brocade gowns cascading richly over whalebone farthingales for the women – all striking languid poses around a raised dais covered in plush scarlet velvet. In the centre of the dais stands a gilded wooden chair emblazoned with the English lion and the Welsh dragon. Upon the chair lies a plump cushion covered in the finest cloth of gold. And upon the cushion, like a petite pharaoh perched on a ziggurat, sits a woman with the whitest face Bianca has ever seen.
‘She’s smaller than I expected,’ Bianca whispers into her husband’s ear.
‘Smaller?’ Nicholas answers. ‘What did you expect – an Amazon?’
The court has assembled tonight to enjoy a recital of excerpts from Master Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene, performed by the best actors the Master of the Revels has contrived to drag out of the Southwark taverns and transport – standing fare only – on the ferry from Blackfriars.
On the assumption that mirth at the expense of royalty is probably treasonous, Bianca stifles a giggle. ‘Has she let you see what she hides behind all that white ceruse yet?’
‘Of course not. I’m not allowed to actually touch the sacred personage of the sovereign.’
‘Then how can you treat her if she falls ill?’
‘That’s only half the problem,’ Nicholas replies. ‘What if I have to cast a horoscope before making a diagnosis? If it turns out to be inauspicious and I say so out loud, or write it down, I could be sent to the Tower for imagining her demise. At the moment, that’s treason.’
‘But you don’t believe in casting horoscopes before making a diagnosis, Nicholas. You never have.’
‘But the College of Physicians will insist on it. Otherwise they’ll accuse me of not doing my job properly. Remember what happened to poor old Dr Lopez? Being the queen’s doctor didn’t save him from his enemies.’
‘How can I forget?’ Bianca says, rolling her eyes. ‘I see his head on the parapet of the gatehouse every time I cross London Bridge. It’s been up there since before we went away.’ She pulls a face. ‘Except for the jaw, of course. That must have dropped off and fallen into the river while we were in Padua.’
Nicholas rests his elbows on the balustrade and turns his face very close to hers. ‘If you want the truth, I don’t believe she ordered Sir Robert Cecil to call us back to England because she wanted me to be her physician. She can call on any number of the senior fellows from the College. They’d stab each other with a lancet to get the summons.’
Bianca pushes a rebellious strand of dark hair back under the rim of her lace caul. Holding his gaze, she whispers mischievously, ‘Well, it wasn’t because she was in need of a good dancing partner, was it, Husband?’
Nicholas feigns hurt feelings. ‘It’s not my fault I can’t dance a decent pavane or a volta. My feet spent their formative years wading through good Suffolk clay.’
‘Are you telling me that we subjected ourselves and our infant son to several uncomfortable weeks aboard an English barque all the way from Venice just to satisfy the passing fancy of an old woman who wears whitewash on her skin?’ Bianca asks. Then, as an afterthought, ‘And if that’s her own hair, then I’m Lucrezia Borgia.’
Given his wife’s known skills as an apothecary – and the long line of Italian women on her mother’s side whose art in mixing poisons is still infamous throughout the Veneto – Nicholas winces at her choice of comparison.
‘She likes to hear reports from foreign lands,’ he says, ‘particularly concerning the new sciences. She was very interested to hear about my studies with Professor Fabricius at the Palazzo Bo. She understood everything I told her about the professor’s views on the mechanisms in the human eye.’
‘Mercy! Who could possibly have imagined such a thing: a woman – a queen – understanding the musings of a learned professor?’
Nicholas has learned not to rise to the bait. ‘Besides, I believe she’s grown weary of being nagged by her old physicians,’ he says. ‘It is my diagnosis that she has chosen to discomfort them by favouring someone they all hold to be a dangerous rebel – someone young; someone who still has all his teeth.’
‘You’re her plaything,’ Bianca announces with sly enjoyment. ‘My husband – an old woman’s sugar comfit.’
‘It hasn’t done the noble Earl of Essex any harm, has it?’ Nicholas counters, nodding in the direction of Robert Devereux, lying like a favoured greyhound at the foot of the dais. At thirty-two – four years younger than Nicholas – he makes an elegant sight, only slightly less pearled and bejewelled than the queen herself.
‘No, too thin in the calf for me,’ Bianca says, surreptitiously running the instep of her right foot along the back of Nicholas’s leg. ‘And far too primped.’
On the floor below, two slender youths in gleaming breastplates are striking heroic postures. One declaims as loudly as his adenoidal voice will permit, ‘Upon a great adventure he was bound, that greatest Gloriana to him gave, that greatest Glorious Queen of Faerie land–’
‘Tell me again, Husband: which one is the Gentle Knight?’
‘Him – the one with the broken nose.’
‘Why does he have that silly painted horse’s head between his legs?’
‘Didn’t you catch the line about his angry steed chiding at the foaming bit?’
‘Foaming bit? It looks to me as though someone’s stuck a giant painted wooden pizzle onto his codpiece. It’s the sort of thing I expect to see on a Bankside May Day, not at Greenwich Palace,’ Bianca says, making a play of fanning the embarrassment from her cheeks.
‘Just try to imagine it’s an angry steed, please.’
‘So, the other one – the one with the superior look on his face – that’s Gloriana.’
‘Correct.’
‘And Gloriana is really Elizabeth.’
‘You have it in one.’
‘And this fairy land they’re in – that’s really England.’
‘It’s an allegory,’ Nicholas says slowly, a hint of weariness in his voice.
‘It’s a delusion, that’s what it is – a woman in her sixties being played by a boy who’s barely plucked his first whisker.’
‘Edmund Spenser is our finest poet,’ Nicholas protests, not altogether convincingly.
‘I’ll take Italian comedy – Arlecchino and Pantalone – over your Master Spenser’s allegory today and every day, thank you, Husband.’
A portly factotum from the Revel’s office, lounging unnoticed against the wainscoting, leans forward. ‘Some people prefer to listen to quality verse,’ he mutters, ‘rather than the bickering of other people who are clearly devoid of any artistic appreciation whatsoever.’
‘Sorry,’ says Nicholas.
‘How long will this go on?’ Bianca whispers.
‘It’s a very long poem.’
‘Do you think anyone will notice if we sit down against the wall and take a nap?’
‘Don’t worry,’ Nicholas tells her. ‘Gloriana herself will have nodded off long before the end.’
‘Then we can all go to bed?’
‘Bed?’
‘That painted pizzle has given me an idea.’
‘The players will all pretend she’s wide awake. So will the court. You can’t escape Edmund Spenser that easily,’ Nicholas says despondently. ‘I fear we’re in for a long night.’