The Tutor
Authors: Andrea Chapin
Tags: #Fiction, #Historical, #Amazon, #Retail, #Paid-For
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Copyright © 2015 by Andrea Chapin
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Chapin, Andrea.
The tutor : a novel / Andrea Chapin.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-0-698-14506-1
1. Shakespeare, William, 1564–1616—Fiction. 2. Widows—Fiction. 3. Great Britain—History—Elizabeth, 1558–1603—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3603.H3588T88 2015 2014017322
813'.6—dc23
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Version_1
Saint Cathern favours learned men, and gives them wisedome hye:
And teacheth to resolve the doubtes, and always giveth ayde,
Unto the scolding Sophister, to make his reason stayde.
—Thomas Naogeorgus,
The Popish Kingdome,
translated from the Latin by Barnabe Googe, 1570
. . . for there is an upstart Crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his Tygers hart wrapt in a Players hyde, supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blanke verse as the best of you: and being an absolute Johannes fac totum, is in his owne conceit the onely Shake-scene in a countrey.
—Robert Greene,
Greene’s Groats-worth of Witte, Bought with a Million of Repentance
, 1592
For
David, Brandon and Carden
CONTENTS
1
LANCASHIRE, ENGLAND, 1590
lies were at him, but the larger animals hadn’t gotten there yet. Richard and his men were out hawking when they found the poor priest next to a clump of gorse. If he’d fallen victim to robbers, they were scared off, for the blood-smeared purse he clutched was swollen with gold. Field and vale, even the bosky banks of the river, were parched and rattling from weeks without rain. And now, word of the deed spread through the estate as quickly and willfully as a torch to dry scrub.
Mercy came running, eyes wide, fresh milk spilling from her pails. She tried to curtsy.
“Speak,” said Katharine. She held a basket of herbs and had just cut a sprig of thyme with her thumbnail.
“His throat is slit, my lady,” the dairymaid said, looking down at her milk-wet wooden shoes.
“Whose?”
“The sad fellow . . .” Mercy’s raspy voice sounded older than her years. Her russet hair was plastered to her sunburnt forehead. “Who
learnt the lads yonder,” she said, cocking her head in the direction of what used to be the family chapel but was now the schoolhouse.
“Master Daulton?”
Mercy nodded. “He’s on a plank behind the kitchens,” she said, then added, “Stabbed in the heart, too.”
If Mercy knew that Father Daulton was a priest, she was not letting on. That was the protocol at Lufanwal Hall. He was Master Daulton to the outside world and Father Daulton to the family.
By the time Katharine reached the courtyard, the men had covered his corpse with a cloth. She knelt, made the sign of the cross and placed the herbs she had gathered on the body. It was the fifteenth of August, Assumption Day. In the past, these sweet bundles of nature would have been blessed by a priest and then used as remedies and to ward off harm. But the blessing of the herbs and the feast to celebrate the Virgin’s ascension had been banned.
Richard approached on horseback. In spite of the heat, he wore a black cloak flecked with dirt. When he saw his cousin he frowned. “Nothing you need to see,” he said, dismounting.
“I came to pay my respects,” Katharine countered, still kneeling.
“Don’t worry, we’ll give him a proper funeral,” he said, stalking into the house through the kitchens and knocking into one of the scullery maids. A pot crashed to the floor.
Father Daulton had left that morning dressed as a schoolmaster in a white cambric shirt, black linen jerkin and large black-rimmed hat. He had said he would be gone less than a fortnight. He did not say where he was going, and Katharine had not asked, thinking perhaps he was on a mission for the Jesuits. While she’d watched him set out on his journey, she had prayed for his safety. Now she wished that weeks ago the young man with the chiseled chin had burned the forbidden chasuble and fled—that he’d gone to France, Italy, Spain or the Low Countries on the North Sea. He often said he wanted to live where he could hear the
waves, breathe the salt air, and she’d taken to imagining him in his life after Lufanwal, alone, reading, in a whitewashed cottage by the sea.
Katharine was tempted to pull the cloth back and place her lips on his forehead, but she’d seen too much death over the years, and she wanted to remember Father Daulton alive, not as he was now: a reliquary of bones and rotting flesh. She pushed herself up, wiped the tears from her eyes and brushed the dust from her skirt. On his last evening, the young priest had given her a copy of the New Testament in English, translated by a group of exiled priests. The inscription was in Latin . . .
date et dabitur vobis
. . . give and it shall be given unto you . . .
Dei gratia
. . . by the grace of God . . .
amicus usque ad aras . . .
a friend until the altars, until death; and below those words he had signed his name. Then as a postscript he had added,
Deus nobiscum, quis contra?
God is with us, who can be against us?