The Tutor (19 page)

“And now you’ve got them.” She looked from his red shoes to his green eyes, but he was not looking at her. He was looking down at his new shoes. She wondered about his family back in Stratford and how they got by. She supposed his wife’s family helped, because she had heard Will talk of his own father’s debts, so she imagined not much help came from him.

“They’re very fine, indeed,” she repeated.

Will strutted around the library, pulling books off the shelves and then putting them back. “Latin, Latin, Latin,” he said. “Italian, French, Greek, Latin. Where are the books in our native tongue?”

“Sir Edward has been buying them these last years.” She had never seen Will thus. He had lost his joy. She wondered what she had done wrong.

“Perhaps I will hire that fellow Smythson when I buy Sir Clopton’s fine house on Chapel Street in Stratford,” he said.

“Yes,” she said.

“New Place,” he said.

“’Tis new, then?”

“No, ’tis old, but ’tis named New Place.”

“Ah.” She smiled.

He still did not smile. “Sir Clopton’s house has ten fireplaces.”

“Ten!” she said. She waited. She felt he wanted her to respond differently, with more enthusiasm perhaps, but she knew not this Sir Clopton, nor his fine house.

He was walking back and forth, his movements sharp, his body all edge. He had a book in hand when he stopped behind her; she felt his hand on her back. This is it, she thought. This is it. He dragged his fingers from the nape of her neck down to the rim of her bodice. Her shawl had slipped and he had followed the line of her scar. She held her breath. She waited, not turning. He did not say anything but left her and walked back to the wall of books.

“How was London?” she said finally. It took all the effort she could muster not to swoon.

“London was jolly.” His voice was ice.

“Spenser calls it ‘Merry London, my most kindly nurse,’” she said, trying to fan him.

“I was invited to a banquet. My patron brought me as his guest. The hostess was my sort of beauty, a goddess, long-limbed and lusty, with almond-shaped eyes, ample bosom, honey hair. And she was with child. She stood in the doorway of her lord’s mansion, and she gazed at me and I gazed at her.”

“How lovely,” Katharine said, her eyes beginning to smart.

“She comes from much wealth, speaks many languages and has a
most elegant chamber full of books. I believe her collection surpasses your noble Edward’s. She was a delightful woman of great wisdom and learning. We talked the evening through. She was a heavenly creature, who disposed me to mirth. I was her captive knight, her bondslave, taken by the force of her beauty and her wit.”

Katharine was silent, yet Will continued. “She found me pleasing, and told me so, and said that when I return to London, I must come see her straightaway.” He paused, looking at Katharine. “What?”

Katharine had said nothing.

“’Tis not as though this lady and I are bedfellows . . .”

Katharine waited for Will to finish the sentence, to say
yet
. But he did not. He left the sentence cut off midway. She rose from her chair by the fire. She turned her head away from Will. Her eyes were full of tears. All she could bring herself to say was, “Fare thee well,” as she walked out the door.

13

atharine could not sleep. She was in bed but did not snuff her candle. She lay motionless on her side, with her eyes wide open, staring at the flame. Through the night, she watched the wax turn soft and slide down the sides. By morning, when the light was lifting over the trees and the cocks began to crow, there was a puddle of wax where the wick had been. The scent of bath oils was still on her skin. Her night without sleep had drained her: anger adjusted to sorrow. Katharine rose with the sun, stirred the coals, then dipped the black quill he’d given her into the inkhorn.

Dear Will,

I pray you have rested from your travels, your pupils are happy to see you and you have returned to your verse. I believe it best if we cease our conferences. The winter is nigh, the days have shortened and my duties to the family have increased. The time has come for me to step back. It pleases me to think that my participation, these last weeks, has been worthwhile and spurred you onward. The great and good thing is you are launched. You have finished sonnets and set the stage for ‘Venus and Adonis.’ You have the conceit, the argument, the characters and their destiny—’tis all there and ’tis wondrous. Your Venus is not the goddess in Ovid or Spenser; your Venus is unto herself. We need not meet in the future. It has been a pleasure, a pleasure, indeed, and I treasure the time we have spent together. I think ’tis natural for such relationships to shift and to settle, much like the earth does over time.

Fare thee well,

Kate.

She folded the paper, melted wax, stamped the seal, and handed it to Molly. “I’ll not be down today, Molly. Prithee, carry this to Master Shakespeare.”

“Thou art tallow-faced, my lady. Mayn’t I bring a bit of ale and bread?”

“I am dulled,” said Katharine.

“Broth?” offered Molly.

“I have no stomach for it.”

Molly peered at Katharine’s face.

“Molly, I beseech you. Do not measure me.”

“Your humors are off, miss.”

“Yes, I suppose they are.”

“Your spirit has gone out.”

“I had a night without sleep.” Katharine’s voice was quavering; she tried to keep it level but was afraid if Molly stayed one more minute she would fling herself into her maid’s arms and cry. “I will stay in my chamber and rest awhile,” she said.

“Rest, then,” Molly said.

When Molly was out the door, Katharine lay on her bed, placed her
head under her pillows and burst into tears. She had not sobbed this heavily since she could remember. She did not understand why he ran hot one moment and cold the next. She had misread the situation. His talk of the gazing and the pleasing and the lady in London had been purposeful, instruction—he was tutoring her as to her place in his world, lest his attentions make her think otherwise.

She was still gasping when there was a knock.

“My lady—”

“Molly, you can leave the food by the door.”

“He wanted me to convey these words to you.”

Katharine sat up. She was not expecting to hear from him with such haste. With her note, she had let him off gently. She assumed he would go away, his dalliance with her done. She wiped her eyes and pulled her covers up to her chin. “Come in,” she said.

Molly rushed in. “He broke the seal on your letter when I was scarce out the door. I was down the path when he beckoned me back. He looked very black. Mistress, your eyes are red.”

“Did he send a note?”

“No, he stomped around a bit, and I waited. Then he said, ‘Tell your mistress that I want to see her.’”

“Verily?”

“Aye. Then I said you were taken with a spot of illness.”

“Gramercy, Molly.”

“And he said he would come to your chamber himself, then. Fetch you himself.”

“He dare not.”

“He dare.”

“Tell him I will see him in the library when the sun has set.”

As soon as Molly left, Katharine regretted weakening. She would avoid him. Lufanwal was large, and she would take the back stairs and stay locked in her chamber all winter if necessary. She had written the
letter as a stonemason, to build a wall. Why did Will desire to see her? She tried to imagine him stomping around as Molly had described; he seemed a man too much in check, not the stomping sort. And now she had agreed to meet him.

—

The first thing
that caught her eye was an earring in his left ear. She had not noticed it in the firelight the night before, but now with sunlight streaming through the leaded windows the gold ring glinted. She was sure when he had departed for Stratford there was no hole in his ear. How strange, she thought. She had heard adventurers like Raleigh and Drake wore earrings, the gold brought back from foreign lands, but a player, a poet, a tutor? Will did, indeed, look the rake today rather than the dandy. His flat linen collar was open at the neck and he wore no doublet. His fine red shoes had been replaced with rough leather boots. Though it was she who had not slept the night before, it was Will’s complexion that was pallid: his hair askew, his beard neglected, his sleeve untied, his polish off.

He was sitting in Katharine’s favorite chair in the library gazing out the window when she walked through the door. She examined his profile: nose prominent like the Romans, rounded at the tip; brow a presence, shiny; hair gone at the temples, long in back; and now the earring, glinting, gold, new.

He turned when he heard her step, and she stopped her advance. She had never seen his face so serious. His eyes, she was shocked to see, held tears.

“I must speak with you,” he said.

“Why? Methinks you spoke enough last night!” Katharine burst out. “If you were trying to sharpen a point, you have succeeded. We need not continue here.”

“You have been too hasty in your decision,” he said. “Kate, I—”

“I have brought the pages you enclosed with the gift.” She had marked his “Venus and Adonis” verse that day when all seemed so hopeful, a future brimming. She walked to where he sat and held the verse and the gloves to him. “These gloves are a thing of beauty, but I cannot take them.”

“
You
are a thing of beauty, Kate.” His voice had none of the steel of the previous night; it was soft and slightly broken.

“I am a thing of beauty now? Where is the lady from London whose beauty so bewitched you? How could the statue you carved so fully and so real last night vanish so quickly? Or perhaps your golden goddess is not flesh and blood at all, for in truth she holds a strange likeness to Dante’s
donna gentile
!”

The tears, no longer lodged in Will’s eyes, now dwelt in hers. She turned from him and wandered the room, finally sitting in front of the virginals, her back to him. The spark that had prompted her to play them had been snuffed out. He came to her and sat down on the bench next to her. She could feel the warmth of his body.

“Give me your hand,” he said.

She glared at him without speaking, her hands still on her lap.

Will had said that when a man sees his maid with another man he assumes they have couched together. She had thought the comment silly. Yet had he turned the brief unplanned moment she’d shared with Mr. Smythson into a sharing of a different sort? How utterly odd. And his anger. Was that because she had praised Mr. Smythson’s drawing? Was Will the only male allowed to circle in the orbit of art? The peacock again. The stallion.

“Kate, your hand,” he demanded.

She looked away but held out her right hand. He pushed his fingers between hers to spread them apart, as though the two hands were part of
the same body and had come together in a clasp. He kept his hand thus entwined with hers, and at this moment she felt utterly naked; every tip of her tingled. He withdrew his hand.

“Be still,” he said. He held one of the soft white gloves and gently, using both hands, pulled the glove onto Katharine’s fingers, as though he were dressing her, then urged the soft doeskin up over her hand. The spangles glittered, the peacock on the gauntlet shone.

“Give me your other hand.”

She took a deep breath and gave him her left hand. She still did not dare face him, for he was too close.

“There,” he said. “My father made these gloves.”

She put her gloved hands back on her lap.

“Your letter put us at an end,” he said, “whilst methinks it marks a beginning. Kate, look at me.”

She turned to him.

“I may be married but that will not prevent us from joining together.”

Katharine nearly fell off the bench. She was not expecting these words.

“What we have is rare, precious, a pearl. I cannot deny it. You cannot deny it,” he added.

“And your wife?” she asked. “Is your bond with her a rare and precious pearl as well?” As far as Katharine knew, Will was married to a woman he rarely saw. She pictured his wife, stoop-shouldered and coarse, with ruddy cheeks and rough hands, a survivor of her sex, with an absent husband whose dreams of art had bewitched him. Could Will’s wife read his words? If she could, Katharine reckoned, wouldn’t he have stayed in Stratford and at this very moment wouldn’t he be dashing to meet her, showing her his verse?