The Tutor (11 page)

“How fortunate you are. What are their names?” she asked.

“Susannah, Hamnet and Judith.”

“How lovely.”

They were silent for a moment.

“How came you to Lufanwal?” she said finally.

“I traveled on horseback from London,” he said.

“I meant, by what reference?”

“The De Hoghtons’. I was with them when I was scarcely out of grammar school. My old schoolmaster brought me north when my father’s affairs took a tumble.”

“Are your parents still living?” she asked.

“My father has been on his deathbed twenty times. ‘Will, my son, Will, my end is nigh.’ He said this to me when he was still a young man. He has been dying since I was born. ‘Will, get me the priest . . .’ Ah! You did not hear that . . .”

“Surely you know this household is not afraid of priests.”

He winked. “‘Get me the Archbishop of Canterbury, my end is nigh.’” When he spoke in his father’s voice he spoke from the back of his throat in a thick Warwickshire accent.

Katharine laughed. “Is he still a glover, then?”

“He has been everything and nothing. He’s never been a king, but he’s been a trader of corn, wool, malt, meat, skins and leather, a glover, yes, a husbandman, a butcher, a plaintiff and a defendant in suits, a creditor, a debtor, a debtee, an ale-taster, a bread-taster, a burgess, a petty constable, an affeeror, a borough chamberlain, an alderman, a bailiff, a chief alderman, an overseer, a litigator, ah, and yes, a father.”

“Your father is an ambitious man, and you are your father’s son, for you are as ambitious as he.”

“You have that wrong: he is as ambitious as I. My father tried to buy a coat of arms and failed. I will have one.”

“I never knew a coat of arms was a thing bought and sold.”

“In your world, no. In mine, yes. Mark you, I will sell my work as my father sold his gloves.”

“’Tis a good plan,” she said.

“I will make more pounds of silver in one week than my eternally dying father has earned in one month, a year, perhaps in his whole life. I will buy the largest house in town, a house with glass windows, not air, with tapestries, not cloth.”

“Your words will bring you riches?” She’d never heard of such a thing.

“To stay solely a player would mean a life of wanting. ’Tis not by mouthing the words of others my coffers will be filled. Yet ’tis not from writing a play that fills the purse, either, my lady—for many a poor wretch watches his words strut across a stage but has neither bread nor sack at home. There are other ways: poets have patrons, players can share in a company and make a tuppence cut from every penny made.
Mark you, my work shall be published and my work shall be performed before the queen.”

“Well then, the riches await you.”

“Are you mocking me?”

She did not answer.

“Will you be my patron?” he asked.

“Now you are mocking me,” she said.

He bowed. She nodded. They stared at each other.

“Can you keep a secret?” he asked.

“I am skilled at that.”

“The company of players I was with in Shoreditch disbanded. I slipped out of London. My peers think me in Stratford.”

She wondered if his family in Stratford thought him in London.

“I don’t confide in many,” he continued, “but I feel I can confide in you. I trust you. I am so searingly envious of all the young poets who are producing pages that are in print or performed—I cannot stand myself anymore. Until these last nights, I had never even written to the end of a sonnet. You have cast a spell.”

“I am no witch. It is you who dipped the quill into the inkhorn.”

“‘Then do it,’ you said. I heard your words in my head long after I left you. These may not be perfect, but I have finished seven sonnets because of you.”

Even though the sun was hidden and the sky overcast, Shakespeare’s eyes glinted. The leaves started to swirl. A drop of water fell from the sky, and then another and another.

He moved his shoulders close to her, brought his hand to her face, and in one swift movement wiped a raindrop off her lower lip. She was so startled it took all of her control not to jump.

“Your kindness today encourages me,” he said. “I thank you most humbly. I do not know you yet, but I will know you.” He bowed. “Will you read my verse again?”

“Yes,” she said. The rain was coming down faster. “How many months we have waited for this!”

“Blissful dew from heaven,” Shakespeare said.

He gathered up his pages and stuck them in his doublet. She rolled up the linen, and they walked toward the house.

“No one need know our business,” he said, “for I am a novice. Others knowing would only bring me shame. ’Tis our secret, one of our secrets.”

“No one will know,” she said. One of their secrets?

“You may call me Will,” he said.

“And you may call me Katharine. Will, you are dressed very . . .” she began.

“Taffety?” he said.

“Yes, a taffety gentleman. Why the boisterous apparel?”

“Do you think scarlet suits me?” he asked. “I was sitting for a portrait.”

It was pouring now. The smell and the feel of the rain seemed foreign after so many months—it was a cleansing, a baptism of sorts. The ground was drinking the water in, and the perfume from the plants and the soil started to rise from the earth. Will held the leather umbrella over her head.

“Who is painting you?” she asked.

“Ursula,” he said.

“Ah, she’s a portraitist now. Your finery is getting wet.”

“Play clothes from my trunk. When on tour . . . I borrowed them.”

“And what character were you in these borrowed flaunts?”

“A duke from Italy.”

“Well, Duke, your doublet is bleeding.”

The downpour was making the red dye run down Will’s dove-gray legs. The rain had attacked his ruff, too—the starch was dissolving and the ruff looked like a limp rag around his neck.

“You’ve descended from a duke to a clown, I’m afraid. Poor Ursula. I
do hope she was finished,” Katharine said. “You may keep my umbrella for now. It’ll need stretching after this rain, and who knows, it, too, may be ruined.”

At the door, she ducked in front of him. “Continue on,” she said.

Will bowed slightly, then turned and left her standing at the door. His lodgings were on the way to the stables. She watched him walk. With head held high, even with the rain-stained pigskin above him and the dripping clothes, he carried himself well—more duke, truthfully, than clown. She went into the house. She’d meant “continue on” with the sonnets but was worried he might think she was dismissing him. She brushed the wet off her sleeves and skirt and went to find
Molly.

9

he first thing Katharine noticed when she rushed to the table was Ursula’s dainty white hand on the Duc de Malois’s plush thigh—her fingers strummed his puce velvet hose as though she were playing a lute. The duke was Ursula’s cousin on her mother’s side. Though Sophie, the duke’s flame-haired mistress, was sitting farther down the table, the duke was gazing at Ursula—not into her light blue eyes, but lower. She had rubbed something between her breasts, rose oil perhaps, and her skin glistened in the candlelight.

“How honored we are you have decided to join us, Katharine,” Ursula announced, forcing an edge into her voice.

Katharine reached for a goblet. As she brought the cold metal to her lips, she noticed the person sitting next to Sophie. Will. Katharine had learned that along with Will’s duties as the schoolmaster, he had agreed to take part in theatricals at the hall. Wasn’t he supposed to entertain guests, then, not laugh and dine with them? With whom had he curried favor for a seat at this fine table? Matilda? Richard? Harold? Most likely Ursula.

Will had sent more sonnets, and they’d met. Katharine lent him books, even
The Faerie Queene
. Then thrice he sent word for her to meet him, and thrice he sent word he could not come. Finally, he had come to her in the orchard with the beginnings of longer poems. She marveled at Will’s skill. He had not gone to university, yet his mind was strong and quick, perhaps the strongest and quickest she had ever encountered. From where did his hunger for words issue?

The sound of Ursula rang out through the great hall. Recently, Katharine noticed her laugh had become loud and high, and tonight she sounded like the parrot she kept in a large gilded cage at the foot of her bed. She claimed the parrot came from one of Drake’s or Raleigh’s voyages. Now when Katharine passed the doors to her chamber it was not clear who was laughing—the poor parrot trained by Ursula or Ursula herself.

Ever since Sir Edward’s departure, a dimming had begun, even during the day when sunlight streamed in the windows or at night when candles lit the tables and torches ringed the walls. Katharine could feel the shift, as if throughout the great house brightness of spirit and honesty of heart were systematically being snuffed out. Matilda sat next to Edward’s empty chair at the head of the table. How could Matilda bear Ursula’s brazen attempts at becoming mistress of the manor? Every time Ursula laughed, Matilda—with her broad shoulders and towering height—seemed to shrink.

Edward’s empty chair presided over the feast—a show of constancy, a sign to all he would return. Katharine remembered Edward holding forth at banquets: the sovereign of his castle. Matilda refused to allow the chair’s removal and yet forbade either of Edward’s sons, Richard or Harold, to sit there. The chair, more a throne, was made of walnut; a dragon was carved at the center of the back with a crown hovering over its head. Urns and face masks flanked the dragon, and a carving of acanthus
leaves ran down the arms and legs. The seat and back were covered in orange-red silk that glowed in the candlelight like a harvest moon.

The Duc de Malois’s entourage numbered more than two score, but no one would go thirsty at this banquet. Flagons of cider and ale and bottles of wine crowded the side tables. When the servants finished bringing ewers, basins and cloths to each of the guests, the parade of fine meats from the kitchen began: a quarter of a stag, a whole boar, choice cuts of a doe, a loin of veal dripping with pomegranate sauce, stuffed capons laced with sugarplums, and herbed and roasted hare. Next came a procession of steaming pies with pigeon, gosling, minced lamb and rabbit enclosed in crusts.

The chief usher, whose chins spilled out of his white ruff like bread dough, swept past Ursula and Richard. With theatrical flair, he motioned for the platters and dishes to be set in front of Matilda. Ursula, who had not yet learned the art of concealing, gasped, for apparently she thought the food would be set in front of her. Richard’s scowl deepened. Matilda, a gracious smile on her lips, bowed her head and proceeded with a lengthy prayer thanking God for their meal. Katharine wondered what largesse Matilda had bestowed upon the usher to secure his fawning performance. Matilda was no fool, but her privilege within the house had always been easy, and now, with her husband far away and her stepsons too close, the waters were suddenly rough.

A tall man, hat in his hands and dust covering his jerkin, came running to the table, bowed and then whispered into the Duc de Malois’s ear. A smile spread across the duke’s mustached face. “
Grâce à Dieu
,” he said, making the sign of the cross on his chest. He stood, glass goblet in hand.

“I have just received word of the birth of my son,” he bellowed in thick-accented English, then drank the wine in one gulp and called for more from the servant standing by his side.

The group erupted with cheers and whistles and the pounding of pewter tankards on the long wood table.

“To the duchess,” the duke continued. “My beautiful Emilie, who has brought our fourth child and our second boy, Henri Emanuel, into this world. Mother and child,
grâce à Dieu
, are robust.”

Richard rose, also with goblet in hand. “What a great honor, sir. What a blessing to have the esteemed duke at our table, at this great and blessed moment. We thank our lord God . . .
à votre santé
 . . . to the health of son and mother.”

Richard walked over to the beaming duke and stiffly embraced him, while Ursula squealed and waved to a servant to refill her goblet. In the flickering light, the new dress Ursula had bragged of was indeed impressive—elaborate both in fabric and in style. She wore no partlet, no ruff or collar, but a cross with emeralds rested just above her breasts. Her low, square white bodice was trimmed with lace and embroidered with tiny colorful butterflies that matched the silk that peeked through the split in her gown. Her silk sleeves were woven with gold and silver thread, the shoulders and cuffs lined with pearls.