The Lady and the Poet (28 page)

‘My own sweet Ann, I miss her also.’ He folded me into his embrace. Since I was a maid it had been the safest place in all the world, to be within his arms.

And then he started back with shock, and I turned to find Hope, no longer able to contain her curiosity, had pulled back the curtain so that her small face was peering out. ‘Ann! Who is that child sitting in the coach?’

‘Ah.’ I breathed in deeply. ‘That is Hope, Grandfather, and her brother Stephen. I have undertaken, as a work ordained by God, to teach them their letters, that they may have a better start in life and can later find some gainful employment.’

My grandfather’s eyes narrowed and his voice lost some of its welcoming note. ‘What right have you to do such a thing, Ann? Have we not enough vagrants’ children of our own to deal with in the county?’

‘They are not vagrants! They have a sister who is for the moment ill. They will return to her when she has recovered her rude health.’

‘Surely the parish, not you, should be their guardian in such things.’

‘The parish would split them asunder and send them to different masters. There are so many children in London, Grandfather, whom no one cares for or wants even to feed or clothe. They are like vermin, plagues of locusts to be swatted away. These children have spirit and wit. They are as sponges of the sea, or flowers of the desert, eager for
every mouthful of knowledge or learning. You, who love learning, would not turn them away, surely?’

‘Ann,’ his tone was harsher than I had looked for, and his smile had set like the sun, leaving sudden darkness, ‘there are ways and means in which the world works. The Mores have been given much—because they earned it. They were loyal and hard-working in their service to the Crown. Yet we come from a certain stock. And that stock is the base of England’s greatness. To try and raise the poor beyond their expectations will be like shaking the walls of the temple. Dangerous and foolhardy.’ He looked at the children, who peered fearfully out of the coach, hearing voices raised. ‘I am not content with this arrangement, and it was wrong in you to foist it upon me.’

I yearned for him to smile, as he often did after he had cause to discipline me, but this day there was none.

Brusque as a tax collector, he turned away. ‘You had best find somewhere amongst the servants’ chambers for these children until we arrange their return.’

‘Ann! Ann! You are come at last!’ My sister Frances came tripping out over the great stone threshold, holding up her heavy embroidered skirts to save them from the mud. Like all children we had worn such clothes, those of adults in miniature, since we were babes, but only Frances had relished it. Frances, my sister Mary often pronounced, was born a woman not a child. She looked in astonishment at Stephen and Hope. ‘But who are the ragged children in your company?’ She shied away as if they stank or were verminous, which, I suppose, they may have been.

‘Frances,’ I put my arm about her small waist, ‘you are a Godfearing girl, are you not?’

‘I would hope if my Saviour asked me to do his bidding I would not shirk it.’

‘Excellent. I believe Almighty God has bidden us to help these children come closer unto Him through knowledge.’

Frances looked at them with sudden zeal, as if a vision had bidden her to ease their path to godliness. ‘Then I will do my duty to help them.’

The great oaken front door was thrown open again for the arrival of my grandmother, with Prudence in her wake. My sister Frances,
sensing she had been the unwilling victim of one of my unsuitable devices, was determined to have the last word. ‘Come, Grandmother,’ she smiled with saintly sweetness, ‘here is Ann come back from London—and still no sign of a husband!’

My grandmother, on sight of the two children, was near as angry as my grandfather. ‘Ann, Ann, we have enough mouths to feed in this great house already. Had you not thought that your goodness and generosity might bring hard work and inconvenience to others?’

I felt a little shame at this for there was truth in it.

‘You are right.’ I held out my hand to Hope, who clung to it desperately. ‘Perhaps my grandfather is right that they must return to London and their sister.’

My grandmother clapped her hands. ‘For now, at least we can feed and clothe them. Prudence take these brats off to the kitchens, and before he says there is naught for them, remind the clerk there remains both beef and venison in the pantry and a honey cake I had put aside to take to Goody Frobisher. Since she knows naught of it she is not like to miss the treat.’

Prudence looked as if she would protest but Hope, with an instinct born of hunger and self-preservation, held her hand out and it would have been a soul of iron that could have resisted taking it.

That night I shared my bed again with Frances, though I would have given all my earthly hopes and goods to share it once more with my sweet Bett.

Outside our window the silence was so deep it was as if a sudden fall of snow had surrounded us. I saw that, without remarking it, I had become accustomed to the nightly noises of a great city, and found I missed the sound of bells and raucous laughter as men tumbled out of the alehouse, the bellman calling the hour, the rumble of barrels on cobble, the clank of shop signs in the wind from the river and, yes, Master Donne’s cry of the costermonger. In the darkness I grinned at that.

‘What makes you smile so slyly?’ asked my sister who, it seemed, had amongst her other powers, that of seeing through night. ‘Mary says your Master Manners has not yet persuaded his father to offer the settlement for you that Father is asking.’

‘Frances,’ I corrected piously, ‘talk not so crudely as if I were some lump of beef to be haggled over in the Shambles marketplace.’

My sister turned and pulled up the covers.

‘We are all lumps of beef, sister, yet some of us are pure bred and worth the more. I hope my price is not so high as yours, that I moulder on the slab as you are doing.’

In the morning I broke my fast with my sister and grandmother, nursing a heavy heart. I knew Wat could not care for his brother and sister and without my help their future would be uncertain indeed. I found an unlikely ally in Frances, who announced that until they returned to London they could help with the hens. My grandmother might be too stubborn to admit it, she whispered, but keeping the management of the hens solely to herself was taking its toll.

As luck would have it, my grandfather was too busy with the business of the County to notice. He had passed many of his duties on to my father, such as muster commissioner in charge of raising reluctant men for the Irish war, yet he did what he could while my father sat in London at the Parliament.

‘None wishes to go to Ireland,’ he grumbled. ‘There is no chance of treasure or glory as in the Spanish ventures, only cold and hunger and the fear of death in a land of barbarous Papists.’

I wrapped up well, for though it was warm there had been a night-frost, and went to see how Hope fared with the hens. Being a Londoner born and bred, she might scream at the mere sight of them.

Yet there was a stillness about the child, born perhaps of lurking under tables and in shadows, never wishing to attract attention, that the hens took to. I prayed that she dropped no eggs, nor failed to lock up the henhouse so the fox came in and ravished all.

‘These hens are my friends also,’ I confided, holding out some corn for the silly straggle-legged bantam who was my grandmother’s best layer. ‘They have helped to pay for my grand London gowns.’

‘Come, Ann,’ my grandmother corrected me sternly. ‘If the child stays, she works. And where, may I ask in God’s name, is the boy got to?’

Stephen had been set to cleaning pewter with horse-tails from the garden by the clerk of the kitchen which he did silently and with enough diligence to satisfy the clerk, without so much that he would cause resentment to the scullion, who might fear his job being threatened by too obvious an industry. Stephen, I noted, had the same
watchful look about him as the girl. I saw how he jumped when the usher of the ewery clanked down a great metal urn onto the stone of the kitchen floor.

Both children, it seemed, had a talent for survival, blending quietly in. Wat had been luckier, for Master Donne seemed to value his humour and amusing tongue.

No firm decision as to the children’s staying seemed to be made, yet the horses were sent back to London and the two allocated a place for taking their meals at the kitchen and scullery table next to Sampson Ashley, the coachman’s man, John Haite, groom of the stranger’s horse, Marfidy Snipt, deputy cook, and Soloman the bird catcher.

I kept my peace and helped in the house and still room. The following week my grandmother sent me off to the attic to hunt out some lost receipt for bisket bread, and there, under dust and spider’s webs, I came upon the hornbooks with which our grandfather had instructed us in our letters when we were little children.

These were just as I remembered them, with the lessons written on parchment tacked onto wooden paddles, an illustrated alphabet, a list of vowels and consonants, together with the first ten numbers and a copy of the Lord’s Prayer, which I had learned by rote as had every child in dame or petty school.

Each paddle, just as I recalled it, was fitted with a leather thong that we might tie it to our belts and not face caning for its loss.

My sister Frances, with her pious nature, had revelled in being taught her alphabet through scenes from Scripture with ‘A for Adam’s fall, B for Boaz, C for Christ crucified, D for the Deluge… J for Job who feels the rod, yet blesses God.’ The rest of us preferred Apple, Ball and Cat.

I carried them down together with the receipt and showed them to my grandmother, who laughed at their reappearance. She even made no objection when I asked to give the children some instruction.

So I filled my days at Loseley with playing teacher, being careful that they also did their tasks in the kitchen and the henhouse.

One morning, when the sun shone and the birds sang so loud we could no longer stay indoors, we walked from Loseley’s great park to the meadows beyond.

Stephen found a small brook and, as boys do, began to dam the stream. Hope chattered happily alone, whispering to imaginary friends and I, without knowing it, fell asleep in the long grass under a tree.

And there I had the strangest dream.

I was lying in the great childhood bed I shared with Bett, the curtains pulled around us, as we often drew them, creating our own private universe. Outside the sun shone, and on the window sill a lazy bee drummed restlessly. And yet, all was not well. Some great threat I understood not had come down upon me, filling me with black terror so that I felt myself tumbling down and down towards eternal darkness. Yet at the very moment of darkest fear a hand reached out and pulled me back towards the light and of a sudden I knew the greatest peace and contentment I have ever known, as a soul might feel on the Day of Judgement as it wings its way to certain paradise. I turned to Bett to find that it was not she who lay beside me but a face I could not see.

And then I awoke to find there was indeed a figure standing over me, dressed in fine London clothes, the face hidden by the shining of the sun, and it was so like to my dream that I gasped.

‘Mistress More, I came upon you in a private moment, forgive me.’

Still quaking I scrambled to my feet.

‘Master Donne,’ I shook my head as if I knew not whether I waked or slept, ‘am I dreaming still or are you standing here in Loseley?’

‘I am indeed.’

‘I thought you were some blessed being. A good angel who had bargained for my black soul.’

He laughed at my words. ‘I have rarely been called that.’ Yet he saw I trembled still and his voice became serious. ‘Your soul is not black I am sure.’

‘No.’ I shook my head again, suddenly shy at speaking of things so strange and intimate. ‘I had not thought so but the dream seemed real enough. And frightening.’

‘Dreams are the release of the unquiet spirit. I have seen it amongst men in war. Yet is yours so unquiet?’

I glanced at him, wondering. Young girls of my estate did not talk of things so deep, but of accomplishments and household skills. To
betray a troubled soul such as I had would be held against me by most. And yet I would hazard that Master Donne would not judge me harshly. He too was an outsider, as I often felt myself—though not by virtue of my upbringing and family, but because I seemed always to be at odds with others’ expectations.

‘My sister’s death weighs upon me still. I tried to help her and she died withal.’ I had spoken of this to none before. ‘The midwife laid the blame at my door.’

‘You did your best while others dared not. It is in your nature. I have seen it.’ He smiled gently, remembering Master Freeman. ‘Even when it may be wiser sometimes to temper it.’

I hung my head. ‘I wish it were not.’

‘No, Mistress More.’ There was sudden passion in his voice. ‘Your soul shines out of you, let none destroy it! Think not of this midwife. Midwives fear to be blamed themselves at such times. Your sister had the sacrament at the end?’

I nodded.

‘Life on this earth is uncertain. We can none of us ask for more.’

I closed my eyes and silently said, ‘Amen’, feeling lighter in my spirit than I ever had since that dark day. When I opened them Master Donne was watching me. ‘Yet what brings you here so unexpectedly?’ I asked.

‘Some business of your aunt’s at nearby Pyrford. Her tenants dispute a boundary and your aunt would have it settled speedily.’

He saw the children playing in the stream. ‘Wat’s siblings? They have a look of him.’

I nodded. ‘I have undertaken to teach them their letters.’

‘You are generous indeed.’

I decided to confess the truth. ‘Master Donne, I needed some occupation.’

He smiled at me, much amused at my candour. ‘Yet I thought the call of the countryside had you in its thrall? Have you not had your cuckoo to charm you?’

‘Spoken like a true city dweller. Tis too late in the year for the cuckoo, she has long laid her eggs in the nests of other birds, where they have hatched and, truth to tell, may have devoured the chicks of any rivals for their sustenance.’