1592: Duke of Mallard
To Her Most Excellent Majesty, Elizabeth, Sovereign of Suns and Tempests, Keeper of the World’s Sweet Tooth,
Most Illustrious Cousin and Mirror of all Majesty,
It has pleased Fortune, that languorous jade, to turn her silken face again towards my ventures across the salted vast. The Saint Audric, last month presumed lost to the tantrums of Poseidon, has most unexpectedly returned to my private dock at Yarmouth swollen with the toothsome spoils of the Indies—chiefly those golden grains the Africans call sukkar, bred in the heat of Jamaica’s hissing gardens and baptised in blood so red it glitters. The yield this season surpasses every expectation, as though the soil itself had conspired in flattery of Your Majesty’s appetite.
I have therefore commanded my steward to reserve a full tenth of this saccharine wealth expressly for Your Majesty’s table—sugar so fine it breathes. Each particle dissolves at a sigh, leaving upon the tongue that particular sensation of tender sovereignty which even angels, methinks, covet. Its virtue exceeds the common sweetness of mere luxury: for in every grain lies the crystallised obedience of nations unnamed.
Nor have I been idle in the curiosities of colour. Among the tinctures procured through Arab intermediaries I have obtained a black dye of uncommon depth—of which the Venetian chemists whisper that it is made not of charcoal but of the shadow of night itself, gathered from the hour before dawn. A few delicate brushings of it upon the royal enamel will darken that which already dazzles, turning brightness into command. For how shall the Queen rule if she must share the sunlight? Majesty, like the moon, governs best when others dwell in reflection.
I confess I am unskilled in these softer artifices of visage—being more accustomed to the crisp arithmetic of estate and embargo—yet I would not deny myself the delight of imagining Your Majesty’s celestial lips encircling that darkness which alone declares the light. True empire begins in hue. The common teeth are pearls; Yours must be obsidian.
During the unloading of my holds another small miracle announced itself: a pair of emeralds, each girth enough to shame a pigeon’s egg, so green that the very eyes of envy grow pale beside them. The sailors claim they were found lodged within the belly of a monstrous grouper speared off the Morant Keys—a tale too absurd not to conceal some truth. They please me little; they are restless gems, fit for subtler settings. Shall I dispatch them to Your Majesty’s chamberlain? Unless, perhaps, they may find better employment wrought into a clasp or coronet—something discreet, a signal understood only by those who know how much the sea must yield to sweetness.
Let it not be imagined that I boast of this abundance as though Fortune had singled me for any affection beyond her habit of using men as her arithmetic. I serve merely as her instrument, a vessel through which she measures Your Majesty’s plenty. Yet if, by such reckonings, I might secure a share—howsoever minute—in those private privileges reserved for the few who hold Your Majesty’s favour nearer than confession, then the chart of my existence would not seem altogether empty of divine ink.
It occurs to me, though I dare not think it aloud, that sovereignty resembles sugar: both melt when too openly exposed to the weather, both are preserved by refinement. Your Majesty, whose every gesture converts desire into governance, understands this alchemy better than your alchemists. Thus I send these trifles not as offering but as equation—an exchange between sweetness and shade. If they please, remember that Mallard House remains the Queen’s most faithful confectioner, if by “faithful” one means “profitable.”
I await, as ever, Your Majesty’s smallest inclination, which to men of my inferior clay must suffice for revelation. The emeralds await command, the sugar embalms itself in readiness, the dye broods in its glass phial like a secret untold. There is beauty in anticipation; but danger too—for anticipation, when starved, turns to appetite.
Ever Your Majesty’s debtor and cousin in both fortune and secrecy,
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