Her Last Assassin (18 page)

As his brother stirred sleepily in the back, Will jumped down from the cart, not quite sure whether to expect a cold silence or a greeting from his wife.

But Anne held out her hands as cheerfully as though he had only been away a few days, saying softly, ‘Welcome home, husband.’

Deep in the night, Will turned away from his wife and covered his face with his arm. A moment later, he felt her hand on his hip, smoothing his heated skin, and had to bite back a curse.

‘You are tired,’ Anne whispered, ‘that is all.’

He closed his eyes. Guilt had overwhelmed him as she undressed, her back turned to him in the candlelight as though hiding her body, no longer as slender and beautiful as when they had wed. He had been away from home too long, and had given his heart and body to another, caring nothing for his wedding vows. How could he make love to her with this guilt gnawing away at him inside?

He had watched her undress, and tried not to compare her body to Lucy’s dark magnificence, still strong and firm, a body made for pleasure in a man’s bed. The children Anne had borne him had left fine white lines across her body, rounding out her belly and thighs. Yet none of that mattered.

He had taken her in his arms as they lay in bed, intending to kiss away the hurt he had caused her, to show Anne he still desired her as a woman, not merely in duty as a husband should. But as his wife had moaned beneath him, her hips rising wantonly to meet his thrusts, he had suddenly lost his desire and rolled away, too ashamed to face her.

Perhaps it was the thought of Edward, the younger lover she had once taken, that haunted him still.

Anne had sworn never to see his father’s apprentice again, and it had been several years now since the lad had left their house and married. Yet he could not help wondering if she had preferred the younger man, suspicious that Edward had possessed skills to arouse her which Will lacked, for in recent years he had found her more, not less, responsive in their marriage bed.

‘By tomorrow night, your body will be rested and all shall be well,’ she reassured him gently. ‘We will take wine and lie together, you’ll see. Do not be uneasy in your mind.’

She kissed his shoulder, then turned away and was soon asleep, her breathing deep and steady.

He lay miserably in the darkness, unable to sleep, listening to the Watch as they called the hour in passing. Soon he found himself aroused by memories of Lucy and their last energetic coupling. Her naked beauty came unbidden into his mind and he tried to banish it, but in vain. It had been too many months since Lucy had escaped from court to visit him in secret at his lodgings, or backstage at the theatre, her appetite for love as keen as his, ready to couple with him even in the smallest of spaces. She loved to ride him in bed, her breasts moving freely, her strong thighs astride his hips, working him up and down until he exploded with sharp joy.

Not here, he told himself fiercely, feeling his desire rise. Not in my marriage bed!

But his arousal would not be ignored. An hour or so later, tortured and half out of his mind with longing, he turned and lifted Anne’s nightrail, whispering, ‘Open for me.’

Sleepily she parted her thighs and let him take his pleasure urgently inside her, her hands stroking down his back. This time when he reached his peak, Will took care not to cry out but stifled his groans in her long fair hair, fearing to speak the wrong name with Anne, as he had once done with Lucy.

Rising early the next morning, Will breakfasted and strolled out into the garden where he could hear his children helping their grandmother in the vegetable patch. The earthen path was dry and cracking, but water had been brought up from the well to moisten the soil where the vegetables still struggled towards harvest.

Susanna, his elder daughter, curtseyed when she saw him, and wiped her dirty hands on her apron as though embarrassed to have been caught at work. Her blue eyes rested on him seriously. Her hair, so dark at birth, had softened to long fair strands, the colour of fresh-laid thatch, and she had her mother’s chin, raised proudly as he took her in his arms.

‘My sweet Susanna. How about a kiss for your long-lost father?’ he asked, kneeling to look at her face to face. ‘What, too coy, young Mistress Susanna? I have a remedy for that.’

She giggled when he tickled her, her dignity dropping away. ‘Don’t, Papa!’

He grinned and turned to the twins, stout Judith digging in the dirt with a wooden trowel, and Hamnet, watching him with cautious eyes from behind a bay tree. The boy was more slender than his sister, his too-large blue smock belted tightly at the waist. His big dark eyes were his own, neither his nor Anne’s, a hint of melancholy there which left Will feeling guilty as he called the boy forward.

‘How now, young Master Hamnet, are you well?’ When the boy just stared, unspeaking, he ruffled his hair and looked at his mother, Mary. ‘Does the boy not speak yet?’

‘He’s shy, that’s all,’ Will’s mother said shortly, and handed the child a woven basket laid with neatly clipped herbs, the blue tips of lavender on top still shining from their recent watering. ‘Take that in to your mother, Hamnet. You’ll find her in the kitchen.’

The boy trotted inside, the basket too big for him but struggling manfully not to tip it up. Will watched him with troubled eyes. If only he could be sure the child was his. For while he was uncertain, he could not seem to love the boy as he should. Nor his other daughter, Judith, though in truth he could have accepted another man’s daughter into his household more readily than a son.

He crouched to embrace Judith, who seemed nonplussed by this kiss from a stranger, perhaps not remembering who he was from his last visit home. ‘And you are my younger daughter, and as sturdily built a girl as ever I saw!’

‘Aye, Judith has the broad frame of an Arden,’ his mother said proudly. When he looked up at her, Mary met his gaze without flinching, adding significantly, ‘And her father’s stubborn nature.’

Will looked away without replying. He broke off a sprig of rosemary and crushed it between finger and thumb, bringing it to his nose. The sharp, sun-baked fragrance almost overwhelmed him. He held it out to little Judith to sniff, and laughed at her amazed recoil.

‘Rosemary,’ he murmured, dropping the sprig into the muddied lap of her smock, ‘for remembrance.’

It was clear his mother understood the reason behind his reserve where the twins were concerned – no doubt his father had spoken to her when he dismissed his too-familiar apprentice – but Will was not interested in discussing such a delicate matter with any but his wife. The doubt was in his own heart, and none but Anne could ever remove it. So far she had not convinced him that the twins were his. And perhaps she never would.

‘I must get these young ones cleaned up, and then walk to the market to buy a few items for tonight’s supper,’ his mother said gruffly, bending to take Judith’s hand. She hesitated, looking back at him. ‘Will you come with me? Perhaps you may find a gift for Anne at the market. She has missed you sorely this past year, and might appreciate a little attention.’

He resented his mother’s interference, but shrugged. It was true that a gift might lighten Anne’s spirits.

‘Why not?’

Accompanying his mother to the market, Will found his father already behind his stall. A new apprentice stood by his side, a thickset lad named Tom who barely spoke while he was there, except to recommend a pair of gloves to a passing farmer and his wife.

Will eyed the boy with some misgiving, but since it soon became apparent that Tom was already enamoured of a local girl, he dismissed the threat from his mind. He could not be forever doubting his wife and seeing potential rivals in every man and boy who entered his father’s house. If he was a more honest man, he would admit to being more guilty of the sin of adultery than Anne. But his honesty would not stretch that far. For if he admitted his guilt to Anne, spoke openly to her of his love for another woman, she might take that as an excuse to seek out a new lover herself. And that would break the fragile trust on which their marriage was now built.

‘He’s a fine boy,’ his father remarked drily, seeing his interest in Tom, ‘and a good worker, if somewhat shy of strangers. I was glad to get another boy apprenticed after Edward left, for it’s been hard work on my own, and it seems your brothers have no interest in following me into the glover’s trade.’

‘You had better watch the boy, and be careful to give him his due. Some of the apprentices rioted in London this summer, their pay was so low.’

‘So we heard. But this is Stratford, Will. The apprentices would get short shrift from our town council if they tried to riot here.’

Will glanced at him curiously. His father had sat on the town council for many years, but debts and a growing reputation as a recusant, one of those who failed to attend Protestant mass every Sunday, had seen him asked to leave.

‘Do you miss being a councillor, Father?’

‘No more than you miss being a husband,’ his father replied sharply, then called out to a passing gentleman and his family, ‘Sir? Forgive me, sir, but may I interest you in a new pair of gloves for your daughter? No, the weather is still fine, but autumn will come soon and I can see your daughter’s gloves are a little worn.’

Will bowed, and followed his mother, who had begun inspecting the food stalls in search of cheese and fresh meat, a linen-covered basket over her arm. ‘So there you are, Mother! I thought I had lost you.’

‘Not yet.’ She glanced at him, smiling. ‘I saw you looking at young Tom. Your father has been more content in his work since gaining a new apprentice. You do not regret missing the chance to become a glover like your father?’

He shook his head. ‘The theatre is a better life for me. I am free there, not bound by the rules of a small market town like Stratford. It is good to come home and see my family safe and well, but I would not wish to live here. Not now that I have discovered London.’

‘When you are older, perhaps you will change your mind.’

‘Perhaps,’ he murmured, not wishing to distress his mother by arguing with her, though he could not imagine a time when he would wish to live in the country again.

‘Ah,’ she exclaimed, laying a hand on his arm as she pointed to a couple ahead of them. ‘It is Christopher Dun and his wife. Do you remember Christopher? He was at the grammar school with you. The two of you were good friends as children.’

‘I do indeed,’ he agreed, and stopped to shake his friend’s hand and bow to his wife, Sally, a pretty girl with a rounded belly, who said nothing but looked at Will with a shy smile. ‘Mistress, it is good to know you. But I had not heard that you were married, Christopher. I wish to God I had not missed such an occasion.’

‘It was but two months ago, and undertaken in haste.’ His friend laughed, indicating his wife’s belly. ‘We were a little forward of the wedding ceremony, I fear. But you would know all about that.’

His mother looked away at that last remark, her face stiff and disapproving. ‘I must buy some cheese from Mistress Clovelly before the best is all gone,’ she said coldly, and excused herself.

‘I have been too frank and offended your mother,’ Christopher said ruefully, watching her go. ‘Forgive me, Will. That was not my intention. My tongue is too loose.’

‘As it ever was,’ Will agreed, but shook his head when Christopher offered to go after Mistress Shakespeare and apologize for his coarseness. ‘Wives and mothers are easily offended. I would not pay it any mind. But here you are, a married man like myself, and soon to be a father! Are you still hoping to take over your father’s farm out on the London road?’

‘My father died last winter,’ Christopher explained, holding up a hand at Will’s hurried apology, ‘no, you were not here, how could you know? I run the farm now, with my new bride’s help, and hope to borrow enough to buy another property not far from town, out along the river Avon towards Shottery. Then we will have two farms, and two incomes.’

‘And will you have four pairs of hands, to take on so much work?’

‘In a manner of speaking, yes. My younger brother will run Home Farm for me, so Sally and I can live nearer town.’

‘A good idea.’ Will was amused but taken aback by Sally’s steady stare, wondering why his friend’s new bride seemed so fascinated by him. ‘I almost envy you this pastoral existence, waking to soft rising mists in the mornings, hearing the cattle lowing at sunset, the Warwickshire fields alive with birds and darting hares—’

‘Aye, then stumbling out in a frozen dawn to call the cows in for milking, or waking to find all your chickens have been killed by a fox in the night.’ His friend shook his head. ‘For a country-born man, Will, you seem to have forgotten the harshness of our lives here.’

‘Oh, the city can be harsh too,’ Will told him frankly. ‘What with the recent rioting, the horror of the plague, and the strange weather we have been suffering this year, it is a wonder so many survive. The days are dry enough now, too dry indeed, but there was a fierce rainstorm a month back over London that nearly drowned us all in our beds. So when the apprentices are not looting shops and murdering innocent citizens, you can see coffins floating open in the Thames where the graveyards have been flooded, or thousands of dead flung into one pit, with only rue and wormwood to stave off the disease for those who must handle the corpses …’ He caught Christopher’s frowning glance at his wife, and hesitated. ‘Forgive me, such tales are not for a woman’s ears.’

‘No, don’t stop, Master Shakespeare.’ Sally suddenly spoke, her brown eyes wide with fascination. ‘I wish to hear of life in the city, however cruel it may be. And the theatre. What is it like, a proper theatre like they have in London? They say thousands can squeeze inside on feast days to hear a play or watch a spectacle. Is that true, Master Shakespeare? I should dearly love to visit London one day and go to the play.’ She caught her husband’s frown, and bit her lip. ‘But I should not rattle on, master. I promised Christopher so faithfully that I would hold my peace if he let me meet you, and now see, I have broken my promise.’

‘As soon as I pointed you out to my wife across the square, she nagged me to introduce her to “Master William Shakespeare”, for she knows your wife, Anne, and has heard all about your reputation in the theatre,’ Christopher said sharply, and pinched her cheek so that she squealed. ‘You are not staying long, I hope, Will? For I do not trust my own wife not to sneak off to you in the night, famed London playwright that you are.’