“We won’t wear bathing suits, even when we’re very old.”
“And no shoes. All summer long.”
Once upon a time they were as different as night and day, but that had changed. Each had what they’d wished for most. How lucky they’d been to be raised by women who taught them what was most important in this world. Read as many books as you can. Choose courage over caution. Take time to visit libraries. Look for light in the darkness. Have faith in yourself. Know that love is what matters most.
All the way home they held hands, exactly as they had when they were little girls who had taken a plane through a storm to reach Massachusetts. It wasn’t so long ago. It felt like only yesterday. They had worn black coats and patent leather shoes as they walked up the bluestone path to the house on Magnolia Street, with no idea of what might come next.
Then and there, their lives had begun.
HISTORICAL NOTE
AMELIA BASSANO
In my novels, Amelia Bassano is the author of the imaginary Grimoire, The Book of the Raven, a text containing a collection of left-handed magic, what has been called the Dark Art. But she was also a very real woman, known as Emilia Bassano Lanier, whose life spanned the years 1569 to 1645, and who was the first woman in England to publish a volume of poems, Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum. She was a feminist who wrote a defense of Eve, blamed as the originator of sin, a crime for which all women were then accused. Bassano lived through the plague years in London and the riots that followed, and although fate made the best of her, she did what she could to make the best of fate.
There are those who believe Amelia Bassano was the Dark Lady of Shakespeare’s poems, and still others who are convinced that she was much more. It was well known that Shakespeare stole or “borrowed” his plots, and perhaps he did so from Bassano, for she was well versed in issues and ideas arising in Shakespeare’s work, subjects it seems unlikely he would have known about from personal experience or from readings. Her depth of knowledge covered themes and issues Shakespeare wrote about, ranging from falconry （she was mistress to the royal falconer）， to Italian geography that would likely be known only to native Italians, to Jewish history and references to the Kabbalah and the Talmud, including a surprisingly compassionate attitude toward Jews in general （If you prick us, do we not bleed?） in a time when Jews had been exiled from England from 1290 until 1656, and, even upon their readmittance, often lived hidden lives. Bassano was familiar with the Italian stories that were referenced in the plays, and had traveled to Elsinore, where Hamlet takes place, and knew the castle intimately.
There are some who believe that she wrote the plays, and never received credit for doing so due to her gender.
Bassano was born into a family of Jewish Italian musicians from a town near Venice who came to be in the court of Elizabeth I. At the age of thirteen she became the mistress of Henry Carey, Lord Hunsdon, aged fifty-six, said to be the son of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, and first cousin of Elizabeth I, who was the royal patron of all theater, including theaters producing Shakespeare’s plays. Bassano also was said to have had an affair with Christopher （Kit） Marlowe, who perhaps was her teacher in the world of writing for the theater. Bassano’s cousin wrote songs for Shakespeare’s plays, and another family member was said to design sets and also create music for the plays. As a girl, she was taken up as a ward of Susan Bertie, countess of Kent, and in this way the royal world opened to her. She was also involved with magic and with the court astrologer, Dr. Simon Forman, well known as an occultist and herbalist.
Amelia Bassano struggled for her voice to be heard at a time when women’s voices were silenced, no matter how brilliant they might be. In the world of the Owens family, her imagined Grimoire, The Book of the Raven, and her clear belief that words are the most powerful magic, have affected every generation.
For further reading about the life of Amelia Bassano:
Grossman, Marshall, ed. Aemilia Lanyer: Gender, Genre, and the Canon. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1998. A collection of essays concerned with Bassano’s life and work.