The Tutor (4 page)

“Will you read to me?” she asked.

“A changing of the guard,” he said, smiling, for several days a week Katharine read to her cousins’ children. She was neither nurse nor governess, but reading was what she could offer.

“Lege, domine,”
she said. Read, master.

She crossed her arms on the table and laid her head down. And Edward began to read.

3

atharine sat on a stone bench in the orchard, mopped her brow with a kerchief and swatted at flies. “But, for the Sunnbeame so sore doth us beate,” complained the sunburnt shepherd in Spenser’s
Calendar
, “Were not better, to shunne the scortching heate?” Scorching, indeed, thought Katharine. Ned had sent her an
ombrello
from Italy, but the midday hour was sultry, and the pigskin no shield for the pounding heat. Was this unnatural summer an augury? More death? More destruction? Would the drought be followed by forty days and forty nights of rain? She plucked a gnarled apple from a low branch and pitched it at a pear tree. The day before, she’d taken the children down for a dip in the water that wound through the three-thousand-acre estate, only to discover the river had shrunk to a trickle.

As she lifted her skirts above her ankles to let in air, she heard the strumming of a lute and singing.

“When I was a bachelor

I led a merry life,

But now I am a married man

And troubled with a wife . . .”

She rose and walked toward the music’s source. High-pitched laughter rang through the air, and cries for “another, master, another!” The old chapel door was open. Katharine paused at the threshold and peered in. None of the boys were seated at the table: their hornbooks were dormant, their quills likely dry. A stack of books lay unopened on the old pulpit. The boys had gathered round the balladeer, who was standing with one foot on a bench and a lute in his arms. Six-year-old Robert, Ursula and Richard’s youngest son, had climbed onto the table and was dancing to the hoots and hollers of his kin.

The rude fellow she’d found lying on the wooden table now tipped his head at her and smiled, but did not put down his instrument. He shoved his foot from the bench and started walking around the room, embarking on another tune.

“If ever I marry, I’ll marry a maid:

To marry a widow I’m sore afraid;

For maids they are simple, and never will grutch,

But widows full oft, as they say, know too much.”

He stepped this way and that in what looked like a jig.

“A maid ne’re complaineth, do what so you will;

But what you mean well, a widow takes ill;

A widow will make you a drudge and a slave,

And cost ne’ so much, she will ever go brave.”

Katharine snapped her umbrella shut and marched through the door. He bowed so low his knee almost touched the floor.

“What is this?” she demanded.

“Why, ’tis school, madam.”

“You are . . . ?”

“The new tutor.” He bowed again.

“I meant, what may I call you?”

“A rogue, a rascal. I pray not knave or a cur.”

The boys tittered.

“Your name!”

“Will Shakespeare.” He bowed once more. “We met. You tutored me on a breed of horse that can never be mounted.”

“I did nothing of the sort,” Katharine said, wondering if the steward Quib was responsible for hiring this jester, who seemed to mock her with every bow.

“Forgive me, a breed of horse that can never be broken.”

“Master Shakespeare, you dissemble. Not of the equestrian trade as you led me to believe, but a lesson-monger.” She shook her head, looking directly into his moss-colored eyes, and continued in a voice not quite her own. “Is this what the lessons are now? Pipers and fiddlers and filthies?”

“No piper here, my lady, and filthies . . . well . . .”

“These hours are for you to teach these precious young minds Latin, Greek and mathematics, not to regale them with your musical cunning.”

“The orders issued me were that these
precious
young gentlemen must sing their part sure and at first sight and be able to play the same on a viol or lute.”

“And these ditties will suffice?”

“Madam, next you’ll catalogue dancing a plague and piping a pox. Singing is a knowledge easily taught and quickly learned where there is a good master and an apt scholar. The exercise is delightful to nature and good to preserve the health of man. The better the voice, the better ’tis to honor and service God therewith. Whom God loves not, that man loves not music.”

“I see no music sheets here,” Katharine said, sounding much the sheriff, even to herself.

“’Tis here, my good Minerva.” Shakespeare tapped his temple. “When I was a child I lived music—I did not have to learn it. The barber in our town drew teeth, bound wounds, let blood, cut hair, trimmed, washed and shaved, but a lute and a cittern hung on his walls and virginals stood in the corner of his shop. Every day I went and played, while the other poor sots sat in their chairs and brayed.”

Katharine glared at him.

He seemed to be awaiting a response to his little speech and, not getting one, he paraded on. “I crave your pardon, my lady, time passes and we must launch into Latin, for if we do not, then you’ll have to sit through several rounds of ‘Hey, nonny, nonny, nonny, noes,’ and perchance even a ‘Sing willow, willow, willow.’” Shakespeare hung the lute on a peg on the whitewashed wall. “Back to the benches, you louts!”

Little Robert hopped down from the table, and Master Shakespeare picked up the leather-bound books from his pulpit-turned-lectern.

“Come, my gentle jade. Now that you have charged into my school, why not graze in the pasture of the ancients and regale us with your learning?”

Her cheeks flushed. His eyes were fixed on her: they had changed color, seemed a lighter green now, like fresh grass.

“Art thou cunning in Latin?” he asked.

Katharine nodded. The children were staring at her. She was trapped in this man’s volubility. “My good Minerva” was one thing, but “my gentle jade” was an utter insult.

Shakespeare held up a dark brown leather book, with gold tooling on the cover and down the spine.

“William Lily’s lovely
short
introduction to Latin grammar, which always seemed to me too long.
Amo, amas, amat
.” He put the book down on the pulpit without opening it, then held up another book.
“
Sententiae Pueriles
. I pray, madam, you approve of this volume. No ditties here, I assure you.” He placed
Sententiae Pueriles
on top of Lily’s grammar book.

Katharine had studied both books.

“Ah, but my heart is tender for this.” He held up a book. “Ovid. Pray, my patroness of heavenly harmony, be seated.”

My patroness of heavenly harmony?
From where did he pluck these words? He had a calling, surely: not as a schoolmaster but as a court fool. He riffled through the pages of a worn copy of Ovid, muttering, “We might read this. Or this. Or this. Aha, this, yes, this. ‘Pygmalion.’” He addressed his pupils: “I will read the Latin, repeat after me, then try to pen its equivalent in English. Those who are not as proficient, try a word or two you recognize.” Then he turned to Katharine: “Will you join us, my lady?”

“No, gramercy. My duties at the hall await me.”

He bowed and began:
“Quas quia Pygmalion aevum per crimen agentis . . .”

Katharine started to leave. When he finished the fourth line, she stopped, turned and translated out loud what he’d read: “Pygmalion had witnessed the wicked ways of the women, and, disgusted by their sinful and deceitful nature . . . offended by their shameful conduct . . . their life of vice, he had forsworn all women.” She glowered at the tutor. “Ah, a lesson in the wantonness of womankind. Was this an order issued you as well, Master Shakespeare?” she asked, and, not waiting for his response, she trotted out the door.

After supper she hunted down Ovid’s
Metamorphoses
in the library. She hadn’t read “Pygmalion” in years. With two candles lit, she read the original Latin. Pygmalion takes no wife. To pass the time, he carves a maid out of ivory. His skill is so great, when he kisses the statue it seems to kiss him back. He fears that if he holds her hard, there will be bruises where his hands have been. He caresses her, whispers words of love and
lavishes her with gifts. He drapes her with rich robes and gives her rings with fine gems. He hangs pearls from her ears and sets her on his couch, her head on feather cushions.

At the feast of Venus, Pygmalion prays at the goddess’s altar, and Venus hears and understands him. He has wished for a wife of flesh like his maid of ivory. A flame leaps forth from Venus’s altar three times, darting high into the air. He races home and kisses his ivory lover. Under his lips, there’s warmth. He puts his mouth to hers again and touches her breast. The ivory becomes soft, like wax beneath the sun. With his hand, he satisfies his wishes, again and again. Her pulse throbs under his thumb. He presses his mouth to the maid’s: lips on lips, she blushes, then raises her timid eyes to him.

The words warmed Katharine right down to her very loins, and she worried the tale was too lewd a conceit for young boys, with the kissing, the touching
again and again
, the hard ivory turning into pliant flesh. “Pygmalion” was surely a lesson of Eros, with all its tantalizing passion. The new tutor seemed determined to shock and to make his mark at every occasion.

By the time Katharine replaced the book on the shelf and made her way to her chamber, the grand house was dark and mostly quiet—though she could hear singing and laughter coming from down in the buttery or maybe from out in the barns.

4

he hour was hot, the house hushed. Even the servants hid from the sun, staying within the cool confines of wood and stone. No pots clanged in the scullery, no dogs barked in the courtyard, even the stables were silent.