Mistress Shakespeare (11 page)

“Coward! Lily-livered, clay-brained, flap-mouthed coward!”

“Never!”

“Fie and curses on your devil-given talents!” I cried. “My talents lying with you when you had no right to my maidenhood? My dreams? I hate you and ever will—Will!” I screamed at the letter.

It was only when the horse sidestepped in alarm that I realized I stood in the front yard of our cottage hard by the main road of Temple Grafton.

The note was unsigned and might as well have been unwritten, as far as I was concerned. I was free of Will Shakespeare, free of country ways. I was going to live in London, to buy my own books at St. Paul’s, to see plays Will would never see and never write, to glimpse the queen outside her own palace.

I rushed around to the back of the cottage and grabbed my hand spade to disinter the small metal box holding Will’s ring. I’d just add this pompous, monstrous, wretched letter to it. Maybe someday, I’d flaunt it, blackmail him with it, I knew not. I only knew I suddenly could catch a glimpse of how poor Kat had killed herself over a wretched, bootless, selfish man and the families and rules that ruined lives!

But when I dug up and opened the box in which Da used to keep tobacco and saw the W.S. ring lying there with its lover’s knot, all wrapped in wool to fit my finger, I put the letter in the box and took it with me.

Act Two

CHAPTER SIX

Even in my dazed state,
London stunned me. From our view on the Hampstead hills above the city, everything seemed crammed between the wall and the huge silver snake that was the River Thames. So many houses and people, nearly two hundred thousand, so Stephen said, though how anyone could count them all, I know not. As daylight waned, our pack train passed St. Giles’ Church and a public water conduit just before we approached the city on Wood Street.

Oh, the smells and noises! I could barely imagine what it would be like in warm weather, for a ditch with partly frozen offal and refuse ran right down the center of the street. The sounds of horses, of course, I’d expected, but the clatter and calls of the vendors hawking everything from hot sheep’s feet to pigeon pies assailed me. “What do ye lack!” they shouted over and over as well as calling out their particular wares. Carters and carriage drivers screeched at those on foot to get out of the way, and our own carriers shouted at people to stand clear. Once in a while, a rough voice called out rude greetings I tried to ignore.

“Ho, then, that dark beauty for sale with yer goods, man?”

“If we be invaded by the Spanish, hope they look like that wench, eh?”

“Over here, Cleopatra! Look my way, and I—”

That voice too blessedly faded in the tumult and turnings. I had hoped that in London I would not stand out as being so different, but the old taunt of “Egyptian!” haunted me again. At least, I tried to buck myself up, Cleopatra was Egypt’s queen. Despite my fears and grief, I lifted my chin higher.

“What do you think of it all?” Stephen called to me as we passed through a redbrick, turreted city portal called Cripplegate.

All I could manage was, “I think I’m not in Stratford anymore.” But Will was. However hard I struggled to banish him from my mind, he would not budge. Would he ever come to London to follow his dreams? If so, I would somehow get even with him then.

The Whateley carriers headed our pack train down the street past inns, livery halls and ordinaries—alehouses that served food, Stephen explained. Tenements three stories high seemed to teeter over the busy thoroughfare. The huddled buildings blocked out the biting winds but dimmed the late-winter daylight. This area was stuffed with packers from the northern shires of the kingdom, Durham, Yorkshire and Worcester; their journeys ended at the sprawling carrier inns like the White Hinde, the Swan with Two Necks and the Castle. I glimpsed quieter side streets lined by craftsmen’s shops with wooden signs trumpeting their wares.

“That’s Silver Street,” Stephen called, pointing down one to our right. “Metalsmiths, goldsmiths even, ones to make pretty gifts for ladyloves.”

I just nodded and ignored his implication. Each night when we’d stayed at some rustic inn, he’d managed careful hints of his devotion. But Will’s ring bounced in its box within the heavy sack I wore over my shoulder, because I did not trust it to my saddle packs. Also there was my record book, Will’s sonnet to me—only saved, I told myself, as a piece of paper to muffle the sound of the coins I’d brought—and the fan that Kat’s parents had given me when she died. The plumed hat her father had made for me took up too much room in the saddle packs, but I couldn’t bear to leave it behind. Besides, should I ever go to Whitehall Palace to see the queen pass by, I shall wear it, I told myself.

I felt exhausted as we turned into the sprawling Maiden Head Inn, the one we midlanders used. Will was married to two maidens now, my thoughts tumbled on, wed to both of his Annes. A pox on the man, for our union had been binding! Instead of vacating the field of battle, I should have marched to the center of Rother Market to declaim to all Stratford that Will had two wives. Then, like that Henley Street neighbor years ago, Will would have had to leave, and if he’d come here, I’d tell him exactly what I thought of him!

What if I too were with child? Would Fulk Sandells and his ilk hunt me even here to tell me to keep clear of Will, the Hathaways and the Shakespeares? Would I then be forced to marry Stephen Dench to keep my child from being a base-born bastard?

Before I could dismount in the central courtyard of the inn, Stephen jumped off his horse and helped me down. This area was cobbled and swept quite clean. Boys ran everywhere to help the men unsaddle and unpack. My knees almost buckled; my side and back hurt from riding without a proper sidesaddle. I walked my aches off, staring up at the three tiers of railed balconies above, realizing as I saw the square of sky that I’d fulfilled one of my great desires: though God’s great heavens seemed so small here, I’d set foot in London. Yet I could summon up little joy at that, and it was all Will Shakespeare’s fault.

I saw I was drawing stares again. Because a woman rode in with a pack train of men? Because I looked exotic and different? Or because word had spread that Silas Whateley was newly dead and his daughter didn’t look one whit as if she were in proper mourning, but had come to town to take the reins of his business?

When I heard Stephen send a boy for a Mistress Davenant, I recalled that Da had mentioned that name when he’d tried to get me to wed Stephen with the promise of a visit to London. What else had he said about her? It was so hard to believe I’d never hear Da’s voice or see him again; he’d been away enough that it seemed he’d soon be coming back, that he—unlike my past with Will—was not dead.

Stephen had another boy fetch me a pewter mug of something. “Good small beer,” the boy said. “Not that dragon’s milk or mad dog ale.”

Ordinarily, I would have laughed at those names. Was I entering a world where they spoke with a foreign tongue, even if it was the queen’s English?

The man who kept our accounts here, Thomas Kingery, introduced himself, and I found I could at least make sense to him. I explained that Stephen would hire a bookkeeper for Stratford, but that I would see to the records here now. He was not pleased, though I know he served other carrier companies.

Then a vision appeared, one of the most beautiful women I have ever seen, like an angel, I thought. She was fair with hair like sunlight and had clear, blue-green eyes framed by golden lashes. Her skin was flawless, her slanted cheeks burnished by the winter air above her dark blue cape. Her nose was reddish, though she must not have come too far to fetch me. I decided she looked like a Venus rising from the sea, one worthy of greeting the queen on that floating platform years ago at Kenilworth. The men around, who’d been eying me, swiveled their heads toward her and parted to make a path as if she were Moses at the Red Sea.

“Mistress Anne Whateley?” Her smile showed perfect teeth, a rarity among those with missing or yellowed ones. “I’m Joan Davenant, a friend of your father, and you must call me Jennet, as everyone does. My husband John and I live nearby, and Silas spoke oft of you. I am so sorry to hear he has left us.”

She took my cold hand. Mine were bare, for, despite the weather, I’d refused to wear gloves Will had made. Her warmth almost made me burst into tears.

“I am shocked to hear of Silas’s departure,” Jennet said as if she too thought he’d be back soon.

“It was so sudden. I had to get away, and I needed to see to things—see things here,” I stammered as if I were a child. My lower lip quivered.

“Come with me, for we oft spoke of your staying with us should you visit. And as for wanting to escape when there’s a dreadful loss—I do know whereof you speak. Master Dench,” she said, turning toward the hovering Stephen, “will you then be so kind as to see Mistress Anne’s things delivered to our door on Lilypot?”

“I will and be there myself afore we turn about and head back on the morrow.”

Jennet took me through the moving maze of horses being led away to stables; we went out a side door of the courtyard. “About your loss—knowing whereof I speak,” I said as we traversed an alley into the very teeth of the wind, “did your father depart this life recently also?”

“My little babes,” she said as we turned down another street. Her voice quavered. “Three of them, one each in the past years.”

I did cry then, as if a stuck millwheel had now loosed a torrent of tears. Surely, so much worse to lose babes in arms! And three in three years? Jennet tugged me in the front door of a tall house and let me cry, leaning close, holding me by my shoulders, or so I thought, until I realized I was propping her up too.

I knew then we’d be fast friends, this stranger and I. I’d had no one since Kat and never would have Will again. Finally, we both blotted our faces and blew our noses. I looked about to see we were in a room where small kegs and bottles, all lying on their sides, lined the four walls. The glow from a glass-paned lantern on the counter in the middle of the room was reflected in the bottoms of the bottles like an audience of eyes upon us.

“My husband imports wines,” Jennet said, walking behind the counter and hauling up a half-empty bottle. “And we’re both going to have some before we go upstairs to greet him.”

 

 

 

I soon saw the contrast
between Jennet and John Davenant was day and night. He was of a grave countenance and demeanor, which, I learned, had naught to do with the loss of their three infants. Though he was devoted to his lively wife, his was an inherent melancholy. He was quiet and, though industrious, seemed to me just bland—brown eyes, brown hair, brown clothes, brown, or mayhap gray, personality. Jennet, despite her tragedies, could be all sparkle and smiles. She did everything at a hectic pace—movement, words, tasks. I was so grateful when she vowed she would take a day away from their shop to show me some of London.

The Davenants rented me a cozy, sparsely furnished chamber at the back of the third floor of their large, three-storied house. I insisted on paying them, despite their kind offer I could stay as a guest. My room had a charming, crooked floor under the slanted eaves that reminded me of my Temple Grafton cottage, which, I told myself, I did not miss. Even mice scratchings I could hear in the thatch over my head at night did not disturb me, but were a familiar sound among all the strange ones of the city.

The views out my two mullioned windows, when they were not thwarted by frost, were, to the west, more roofs, busy Noble Street and the city wall, and to the north, more roofs, some tiled, to the steeple of a church called St. Mary Staining, which had a mournful bell that tolled for funerals. It was where my hosts, and so I too, attended. Though the Davenants had no servants, there was an outside, covered servants’ staircase I could take up or down to my chamber to keep from walking through their wine shop, dining parlor and kitchen, but I took most of my meals with them in those early days.

It seemed to me that John and Jennet’s wine shop was doing well, for it was a busy place during daylight hours. Yet the third full day I was in London and somewhat rested, Jennet and I bundled up and set off to visit places I told her I would like to see and those she insisted that I must.

Though I learned she could only write her name and do numbers, she let me wander the bookstalls at St. Paul’s where Da had bought me gifts. I had often wondered why my mother had been ropedancing on holy ground, but I soon saw the so-called sentinel of the city was hardly hallowed as a patron-saint church. It looked as forlorn as I felt, for its steeple had perished in a fire more than twenty years before and had not been replaced. A lottery was held at the west church door to raise funds for repair of the kingdom’s harbors, but I thought the money should go to renovate the church.

I was also astounded to see traders had set up stalls to hawk their varied goods among the tombs and baptismal font. Had not the Lord thrown the money changers out of the temple? I kept my eyes peeled for Richard Field. He was apprenticed to a printer in the area, and I was sure I could find him if I but inquired. Yet I could not bear to face him—not after what he’d done—and then I’d have to tell him what Will had done too.

Besides booksellers stuffed in cheek-by-jowl, lawyers received their clients at St. Paul’s, for the Deanery could no longer afford to maintain the building just for worship. A veritable parade of fancily garbed youths called gallants with long, crisped and curled hair walked up and down the nave, chatting and laughing—preening like peacocks, truth be told. Jennet said they whiled away the time ’til eleven of the clock, went to tobacco shops and spent two or three hours over dinner and then returned to St. Paul’s for the rest of the afternoon.