Wyatt and the Tudor Anxiety
A Short Story
– Mihir Nedungadi
Imagine you are the average Tudor noble, invited to the nearby Duke’s place for a week. Not filthy rich, but well up enough into the ranks to dream of climbing the ladder further. You dream of the ladder of love as well, but those ambitions seem mighty lofty, especially when every noblewoman is going after any Thomas, Dickothy or Harryford who pretends to be a poet. You decide to yourself, ‘Let’s see what all this fuss is about’, as you wait till night to borrow a copy of Wyatt’s latest works from your noble mate, who you think is having an affair with the duke’s wife. Poor guy, probably going to be on the chopping block next week. Oh well.
The house is silent and cold as you make your way to his chamber to conduct academic research, a noble motive, something the commoners wouldn’t understand. As you turn the corner, you nearly collide into the duchess. She returns an unreadable smile, not an apology or greeting, but a default expression, with seemingly nothing behind it. You bow and try to save your dignity, while your brain screams at you that you just bumped into the person who caused your friend’s treason.
She vanishes past you as you enter your fellow noble’s room, trying to pretend that it doesn’t feel like a fresh crime scene. He’s nowhere to be seen, probably off drunk with the duke. You snatch the loosely bound bundle of pages, carefully inked and assembled for the reading pleasure of nobles like you, and walk out onto the balcony, inhaling the air. You open a random page with a poem on it, expecting flowery nothings and descriptions of landscapes.
Unstable Dream
– Sir Thomas Wyatt
Unstable dream, according to the place,
Be steadfast once, or else at least be true.
By tasted sweetness make me not to rue
The sudden loss of thy false feignèd grace.
By good respect in such a dangerous case
Thou broughtest not her into this tossing mew
But madest my sprite live, my care to renew,
My body in tempest her succour to embrace.
The body dead, the sprite had his desire,
Painless was th’one, th’other in delight.
Why then, alas, did it not keep it right,
Returning, to leap into the fire?
And where it was at wish, it could not remain,
Such mocks of dreams they turn to deadly pain.
You wait for the romance to hit you, a breeze of nauseously sweet wind to assault your senses. It does not. Something else bothers you instead. Not only do you have to be careful of your words careening out of control into career-ending rumours, but now your own unconscious body could betray you as well? Who knew that human feelings were so volatile that one isn’t safe from mutiny, even from one’s own sleeping figure?
You remind yourself to import a thicker blanket whenever you get the chance. Best to disguise the body’s movements than risk its mishaps. Maybe you’d get one of those fancy fabrics from that one city, what was it called? Benitz? Venezi? Something like that. You flip the page for some reprieve, maybe the kind of words bards use to distract from politics, that would be nice.
They Flee From Me
– Sir Thomas Wyatt
They flee from me that sometime did me seek
With naked foot, stalking in my chamber.
I have seen them gentle, tame, and meek,
That now are wild and do not remember
That sometime they put themself in danger
To take bread at my hand; and now they range,
Busily seeking with a continual change.
Thanked be fortune it hath been otherwise
Twenty times better; but once in special,
In thin array after a pleasant guise,
When her loose gown from her shoulders did fall,
And she me caught in her arms long and small;
Therewithall sweetly did me kiss
And softly said, “Dear heart, how like you this?”
It was no dream: I lay broad waking.
But all is turned thorough my gentleness
Into a strange fashion of forsaking;
And I have leave to go of her goodness,
And she also, to use newfangleness.
But since that I so kindly am served
I would fain know what she hath deserved.
Great. Exactly what you didn’t need right before bed. An extra dose of paranoia and scepticism. Not only are the women of the land difficult to please and impossible to read, but it seems the men are vengeful and prone to tantrums as well. Is nothing safe in King Henry’s jungle? This poem wasn’t courtly romance; it was an autopsy of it. Is Wyatt warning you of fickle lovers or of his own kind after all? You shiver, imagining the shame of a publicly sloppy affair, maybe even the cold steel of the executioner’s axe. Your neck twitches.
The cold wind snaps you back to reality as you realize you really, REALLY, shouldn’t be caught dead reading a manuscript like this, not unless you want to broadcast to the courtly world that you’re a romantic, easily manipulatable chump that’s looking for love. You tiptoe back into the room from the balcony and try to place the manuscript on the table exactly as you found it, adjusting it down to the millimeter. No one saw you, no one thinks you’re guilty. Not God, and hopefully not King Henry.
You “perform” the you of an hour ago with every step, like a drunk teenager walking past their parents. Past portraits of ugly dead men and pretty dead women. Past walls that had hours of peasant labour poured into them. Past banners, banisters and painted shields with lions that seemed to snarl at you. Was the corridor always this long?
You try to make your next step look as natural as possible, but stretch it a bit too far, and you fall flat on your face. You jump back up, ready to justify yourself to whoever just laughed at your fall, but all you see is a lack of a mocking face or even a person. Or maybe the mockery is there still, just painted onto the empty darkness of the hall. You run, any facades of normalness on the floor with your face-print. You slam the door to your room, making doubly sure to lock it.
Sitting on the edge of the bed, waiting, uselessly, for your breathing to slow, you notice that the room feels larger for all your loneliness. Not the kind of loneliness where no one is there to be seen, but the kind where someone is there to not be seen. You wonder, somewhat self-destructively, how many other men would have sat on beds like this one, convincing themselves of their intelligence to keep at bay their fear.
You lie back, pulling your blanket over yourself, tucking into yourself in a somewhat childish manner. Part of you wants to hide, to give your body no ground to expose itself with emotion or movement. The loneliness seems heavier than the blanket, almost as heavy as the cold. No one is here to reassure you, no one is there to talk of some passing matter to convince your flailing mind that it is not being watched. Only the cold trying tease a shiver out of you, an admission of fear, an admission of guilt.
Oh, this infernal cold. You rise out of your bed, annoyed at the world for provoking you into action. You would close the window, close the curtains, and shut out the night’s anxieties once and for all. That’s when you see a flash of white cotton, there, across the courtyard.
The duchess stands, framed sharply by moonlight and shadow. She turns towards you, looking you in the eye. Or did she just look in your direction, not even noticing your presence?
For a moment, there is relief, reassurance, for the night might not be this villainously cold with company by your side.
You think to yourself, “I wonder which of Wyatt’s lines will coax her to my chambers tonight?”