Chapter Three

December 1600

Wilton House

Musical Codes, Vanishing Ink, and Other Secrets

A knock on the library door startled Mary. “I never seem to get a moment’s peace,” she muttered. “Come in.” A servant entered, bowed low, and announced that her guests had arrived.

“Mercy o’ me! They are here already? Time has devoured my morning.”

She had forgotten that she was entertaining members of her family and close friends for the next several days. Any communication of Anne’s latest “illness” would have to wait. Lady Mary Sidney had company to feed, house, and entertain. She checked her sleeves to see if any ink had spattered on her silk gown or smudged her sleeves above the removable cuffs. Normally she did not go to her library to write just before visitors were expected, but today she decided she needed to edit a scene in a play. She reread the lines scratched on the top page. Before her was a comedy about wives outsmarting a man. Her husband’s theatre troupe was to perform it in a few days’ time and the actors needed to have their lines memorized.

She leaned back and hit her head on a large tome sticking out from its perch. She reached behind her, pulling the book off the shelf, and ran her fingers over the smooth brown leather cover of Tarlton’s News Out of Purgatory, which she had been using as a source for her next play. No wonder that she had not put it back properly. There was no room on the shelves since every space was crammed with books from all over Europe, some written in Latin, Greek, French, Italian, Spanish, and Welsh, all languages she had studied as a young girl. There were over three thousand books on literature, history, science, religion, and medicine, some which had come from her parents’ library after their deaths in 1586.

She shuddered. What a horrible year that was. First my parents and then my brother, all dying within months of each other. Ah, poor Philip! Only thirty-two years old but already known as a literary genius. His passing was the hardest to accept. His death from injuries in a stupid war with Spain still angered Mary, but after a two-year period of mourning for him, she vowed to pick up his mantle, and to write the literature that he would never complete. But what he was allowed to write and publish was not permitted to her, a woman. Her abilities and desires were hemmed in by traditions and laws that made no sense. Sometimes she deeply regretted being born a female.

A voice interrupted her reverie.

“Excuse me, M’Lady. Where shall I ask the guests to wait?”

“God’s me. I am distracted this morning. Show them to the corner room, Albert. Tell them I will be there shortly.”

Gathering up her papers, Mary looked them over and put one aside. I will bring this poem to show them, she thought. I am sure they will have brought some excellent verse as well. As she left her library, her worry about Anne’s future was pushed aside and she breathed deeply as she made her way down the long hall and into the corner room. That was a delightful space in which she enjoyed entertaining her special guests, mostly members of her literary academy known as The Wilton Circle. The walls were covered with red and gold damask paper, over which hung numerous religious paintings by Italian and Dutch masters. The ceiling was bordered by thick white cornices with classical scenes filling in the area overhead and large glazed windows looked out onto a formal garden. Everywhere the eye gazed there was beauty.

She had invited many of her favorites: Ben Jonson, poet and playwright; her brother Robert, now the Earl of Leicester; Walter Raleigh and Sir John Davies, noted authors; Samuel Daniel, poet and tutor to her children; Nicholas Breton, poet; John Florio, writer. Lady Anne had joined them as well, loving poetry as much as her mother did.

The men stood up and bowed while the ladies curtsied. Mary took her seat at the center of the gathering and after exchanging gossip, she took up her violin and bow and said, “Just this morning I composed a melody and have sent it to Lord Beaufort. Let me play it for you.”

As Mary played her violin, her audience listened with rapt attention. When she finished, the room resounded in applause.

“Madam, that piece is the loveliest music I have ever heard,” Mr. Daniel gushed.

“It is nothing, just a short composition.”

“Anne tells us,” Mr. Daniel continued, “that you have recently completed a musical code where each letter of the alphabet is represented by a particular measure and the code can only be broken by reading the written score and using the key to decipher it.”

“Yes, it’s just a way to amuse myself.”

Ben Jonson broke in.

“Now you are mimicking some of my sonnets, in which I give double meanings to words. But you do it in music. I fear you will outwit us all. What other tricks do you have up your sleeve?”

“No doubt you have heard about my disappearing ink that can only be seen when the manuscript it is written on is put over a flame.”

“How clever. I swear you would make a first-class spy. So many secrets!”

Mary blushed and lowered her eyes. If they only knew, she thought.

“Some secrets must remain hidden, at least for a while.” Then looking up, she said, “I do spend many hours in my greenhouse experimenting with plants and chemicals. Adrian Gilbert is there now, assisting me. Tomorrow you must all come and see my potions.”

“You are a woman of many talents. And what is it that you are writing now? A sonnet, perhaps?”

“A short poem, but I have just received a new play for Pembroke’s Men to perform when they arrive on Saturday. It is about women who get the better of men. You are all invited to come and see it performed. Mr. Breton, what have you been writing?”

“I have brought you a gift—a poem in praise of flowers that I dedicate to you.”

“Please, Sir. Read it to us.”

“As you wish.”

“On a hill there grows a flower,

Fair befall the dainty sweet,

By that flower is a bower

Where the heavenly Muses meet…”

And so each guest present offered a creative piece of writing to be enjoyed and judged by the others. Mary thrived on such an assembly of learned, artistic, and inquisitive confidantes. She, along with the others, enjoyed their position in the world and knew enough to keep each other’s secrets, if only to protect their own.

The next day Mary and her guests gathered in a long room with south-facing windows along its entire length. To have that many windows in any room was very expensive but, to Mary, very necessary for they allowed in enough light for plants and flowers to germinate and bud under controlled conditions.

“Come, everyone, and gather around this table. As you can see, my greenhouse is also a laboratory where Mr. Gilbert and I experiment with chemicals and minerals. We have been attempting to change base metal into gold, but so far, we have failed.”

“Let us know when you succeed, and we will come with wheelbarrows and chests to help you dispose of it,” whispered her brother, in a conspiratorial manner, loud enough for the others to hear.

“I am sure you will, Robert, along with everyone else in England.”

Mary saw one of her maids carrying in a large bag.

“Take care, Susan, that you do not spill the bismuth. Bring it here. Now I want you to watch as I mix in some salt with this bismuth and there! Disappearing ink. It has many uses, especially in war and in secret trysts. Let us go into the house to play a game I invented. I will teach you how to remember long lists of numbers forwards and backwards. It will amaze your friends as long as you keep the method a secret.”

A cry came from outside, along with the barking of dogs.

“Oh, it is almost time for a hunt. Another day then. I will remain in the house in case my husband is in need of me. The butlers and maids will show you to your rooms so that you can change into proper attire. I will await your return and join you for dinner.”

After her guests left for a hunt, Mary, whose husband had been bed-ridden for many months, felt duty-bound to keep close by and retreated to her sewing room where her maids were engaged in needlepoint and embroidery. She checked each girl’s handiwork, and then picked up her own cloth. As she stitched, she instructed them.

“Make certain that the threads are pulled with the same dint so the piece will look regular and flat. Priscilla, have your children learned their prayers?”

“Not yet, M’Lady. They are still young.”

“You must say a prayer out loud with them morning and night. They will learn quickly that way. All children repeat what they hear, whether good or evil, so we must make them hear good thoughts.”

A servant entered the room, flushed...