Mistress Shakespeare (42 page)

“Anne Whateley, do you swear before God and man to tell the truth, the entire truth?” he asked. His voice boomed out like Burbage’s on the stage. I told myself I must not shirk, that I must play my part with calm and courage.

“I do, sir.”

I locked my knees and resisted the urge to grasp the high railing for support but stood erect, keeping my hands lightly clasped before me. I did not look at the Shakespeares, though I longed to draw strength from Will. When we were still in London, we’d rehearsed what I might be asked, that I must tell the truth and add nothing on my own. Still, as I’d said to Will, it was my outwitting and standing up to the judge at the hearing on Kat’s death that had saved the day.

But this man was hardly a bumbling bailiff, nor was this Stratford’s little Guild Hall, however grand that had seemed to me more than thirty years ago. Then my desire was to have my dearest friend buried in hallowed ground; now my task was to have my dearest enemy saved from shame, a huge fine or worse. I’d been appalled to hear that an ecclesiastical court such as this, charged not only with judging but punishing immorality, could order huge fines and public floggings.

One woman, I’d been told, had been found guilty by this very chancellor of similar charges and ordered to be stripped to the waist, tied to a cart and whipped three times around her town church and twice around her marketplace. The picture in my mind of Susannah being so abused in the Rother Market while Rafe Smith and all Stratford watched sickened me.

“Mistress Whateley, I must recount for you that Susannah Hall, nee Shakespeare, is in this consistory court to sue Raphael Smith for accusing her of adultery,” the chancellor told me, as if I had not a clue as to why I was here. “Are you familiar with that?”

I could have cried at the way he’d worded that question, but my insides cartwheeled. Susannah might be suing Rafe Smith, but she was being charged with precisely what Will and I might be accused of if something went wrong here. And then, ruination, shame and—worst of all—separation.

That terrified me. Will had been ill of an unnamed debilitating disease off and on of late, and Dr. Hall had told him he could not promise him many good years left. One would think the fact that his brothers had died at younger ages would force Will to stay calm, but it had quite the opposite effect. He refused to rest and went back and forth between Stratford and London to pursue his interests in both places—and in both places managed to see me.

Now two memories assailed me in that instant before I answered the chancellor. Years ago when we were but children on Henley Street, a neighbor of Will’s, a William Wedgewood—why that name came back to me I knew not—was charged with bigamy and drummed out of town. And I recalled why I always avoided passing Bridewell Prison in London, however near it lay to Blackfriars: before its grim facade were held public whippings of women for various crimes, including adultery, and I could not stand the sight and sounds of such cruelty, no matter what they had done.

I began to shake; my stomach cramped. And yet I answered steadily and strongly, “Yes, sir, I am familiar with the charges.”

“Then I must admonish you that, though you are here to testify for Susannah Hall, the plaintiff, what you say may be also of use in the adjudication concerning the not-guilty plea of the defendant Raphael Smith. For in deciding the case of the plaintiff, I will also decide the validity of the original charges against Mistress Hall and mete out justice to both sides. Therefore, will you now recount for the court what you observed the day that Raphael Smith publicly implied that Susannah Hall was guilty of adultery with him?”

“I will,” I said and explained how Rafe Smith had mocked and accused Susannah before her mother, me and many others.

“Then,” the chancellor said, “since he in turn accused her of such behavior publicly, he was publicly admitting to the same behavior, which few would do if it were not true or were he not in the throes of a humiliating rejection by a lover. Did he indeed seem humiliated that day?”

“Not humiliated, sir, but wanting to humiliate Susannah at any cost.”

“Angry, like a spurned lover then?”

“No, but a resentful man who for years had been envious of the rising social circumstance and the conduct of Susannah and her mother, that is, the fact they have not been familiar but aloof to him, as I said, for years.”

“Indeed, for years? You have known the defendant for years?”

“In fact, I observed his spite and malice twice, once in the time I have just recounted and once nearly ten years before.”

“You can recollect an incident ten years before? Why so? What made it so stand out in your mind?”

“I believe we all know where we were and what we were doing when something dreadful or awesome occurred, such as where we were when we heard the Spanish Armada had been defeated or Sir Francis Drake had sailed around the world—or when we heard the queen was dead.”

He nodded. “Say on, Mistress Whateley.”

“I remember exactly when the defendant insulted Susannah and her mother ten years ago, though not to their faces that day. He spoke words I overheard—”

“Hearsay, worshipful sir!” Rafe Smith’s lawyer interrupted.

“Objection denied,” the chancellor cut him off. “I have asked her to tell what she heard, and so she shall. Say on, mistress.”

At his last word, I heard Anne Hathaway cough. Without turning my head, my gaze darted to her. She was glaring at me, which I supposed could pass to an observer as her simply listening intently, but I knew better. Had this woman coughed or pretended to do so when the chancellor addressed me as mistress? Did the woman not want me to help her daughter? Did she not have one kind thought for me, at least for that? Or would she let her daughter suffer if she could get her long-tended revenge on Will and me?

“The defendant’s words of disparagement toward Susannah and her mother”—here I slanted a stern look at Anne—“were spoken to John Lane from whom I was buying cheese in the next market stall. That scene is stamped in my mind because it was then that Stratford’s town crier announced the queen was dead and King James was king.”

“Then can you recount for us what Raphael Smith said or did at that time, in March of 1603?”

“He referred in a bitter tone to the Shakespeare mother and daughter as thinking they were local royalty and said he’d like to bring them both down.”

“Them, but not the father?”

“I supposed he referred to the two women because they are the ones he saw, the ones who came to market daily.”

“Because the father was oft away from Stratford, making his living in London?”

My pulse, already racing, pounded harder. “I warrant that is true.”

“Yes, well, granted the defendant’s father is a well-known person, playwright and poet of amorous subjects. I recall private copies of his
Venus and Adonis
being passed about when I was at school in Oxford. And now, they have been published for all to read—but back to business.”

How I wanted to look at Will. Damn, but this man was biased against him, so probably against Susannah too. I had wanted to trust his judgment would give justice, but now I was not sure. Was he implying that because Will wrote amorous poems, his daughter would be of an overly amorous nature too?

“In your own observation, Mistress Whateley, what was the public demeanor of the Shakespeare mother and daughter, as you put it?”

Years of resentment at Anne Hathaway surged through me. Will was mine! He had always been mine, and it was Anne Hathaway’s pregnancy with Susannah that took him from me. If I ever thought to be an actor, it must be now.

“The other cheese seller, the John Lane I mentioned, told me that they put on airs, at least the mother did.”

“In what way?”

“Have you not asked John Lane, sir?”

I knew I’d said the wrong thing when I saw the chancellor grit his teeth so hard his jaw bulged. He cleared his throat and asked, “Do you know Anne Shakespeare well enough to judge if she were putting on airs, as you say?”

“I do not know her well, sir.”

“So your testimony here today is not out of friendship with her or with her daughter, the plaintiff?”

“Susannah indeed asked me to testify but only because she knew I’d seen the entire confrontation between her and the defendant, not because we are friends. Rather the opposite.”

“Ah. How would you describe your relationship to the Shakespeares?”

“I have been in their house but once and that years ago. I did introduce Susannah to Dr. John Hall, whom she later married, and I believe she loved him from the first.”

“Yet you claim you do not know her well and you hardly know that from continued observation of them.”

“I know love when I see it, sir.”

Amazingly I saw him almost smile at that, but freeze the expression before it widened. “So you are not friends with the plaintiff, Susannah Shakespeare, but are here to testify to help her?”

“I admit to the court I would like to help her, for it is unjust for any man, however jealous or resentful, to spread lies about a woman who only loves and has always loved one man.”

“I see,” he said. “I see you speak passionately and firmly. The court excuses you and calls Mistress Anne Shakespeare to the dock. That is all, Mistress Whateley.”

I was shocked. I had been so certain he was going to ask me more about my relationship to the Shakespeares, and that would be a slippery slope. Relieved, I stepped down and brushed skirts with the other Anne as she passed me. I could almost have fallen flat on the floor when she whispered in passing, “For Susannah—my thanks.”

Was she thanking me for defending her daughter today or for introducing Susannah to John Hall, I wondered. Maybe Will would know, but we’d kept a wide berth around each other today.

I went outside and walked through the old graveyard at the side of the cathedral, waiting while the rest of the trial went on, wishing I could hear, wondering if the chancellor had asked Anne Hathaway what she thought of me, or her own husband for that matter.

As people began to spill out the front of the chapter house and I waited for Kate or the Davenants to come tell me what happened, I saw the chancellor’s aide come out the back door and motion to me. Perhaps he saw me pacing and realized I would want to know what the verdict had been.

Gathering my skirts close, I hurried to him. “His worshipful self,” he said with a cryptic, wry smile, “has a gift he would give to the playwright, if you would be so kind as to deliver it to him when you can.” Puzzled, I stared at him, for I saw he had no gift in his hands. Back in London it was not unusual for someone to send Will a letter of praise or a small gift if they liked his plays, but here—and from the chancellor?

“Will you see to it, Mistress Whateley, and tell no one else?”

“Oh, a spoken message? Yes, but how did the trial come out?”

“The young woman was acquitted and the defendant fined, berated and excommunicated.”

I felt a rush of relief. I would have burst into tears of joy had not this stranger stood before me. “Well, do you vow it?” he prompted.

“I vow it, if the chancellor is certain I am the one to tell.”

“A spoken but partly written message,” he said, producing from up his sleeve a small, folded piece of paper he thrust into my hand. “Please tell the poet that the chancellor has adored his
Venus and Adonis
and later his sonnets and has always wondered who the Dark Lady of his inspiration was, and whether she was real.”

“You know how poets are,” I stammered as he stared at me. “All imagination and speculation.”

“The chancellor hazards a guess that you would understand. You see, his vocation is this, but his pastime is solving crimes, puzzles and whatnot. And he mentioned this trial to his elderly father, who has kept the record books in the cathedral for years, and the old man recalled a very strange thing. Some years ago, someone in Stratford named Shakespeare—not the most common of surnames—had registered for a marriage license to one woman, and then the very next day was registered to wed another, and a great deal of money and pressure was put up to get the second registration to another Anne, no less. Is that not strange?”

My heartbeat thudded harder than it had inside. “Yes—strange.”

“That paper you hold is a copy of the way the first entry was worded. He thought you could pass it on to the poet should he want inspiration for more poems or plays—amorous, even erotic ones—though you must tell no one of the source for that idea but Shakespeare.”

“Probably just a slip of the pen—a coincidence,” I managed, though I was breaking out in a sweat while I was yet tingling all over.

“So the chancellor believes. Oh,” he said as he turned away then back again to speak partly over his shoulder, “he also said he might send a packet of his own poems for Master Shakespeare to read, if he would give him his opinion.”

He let the door close behind him. Did the trial today really go in Susannah’s favor, or had the worshipful sir slanted things her way to amuse himself and find a way to get Will to read his own work? Sometimes big things in this world hang on such personal pursuits.

As I saw Kate and her parents and started toward them in all haste, I opened the small piece of paper from the chancellor to Will. The short note was headed, “To Whom It May Concern” and contained only these words:

 

Well, I thought as my tears blurred the words and one plopped on the paper, the old registrar might not spell well, but he had an amazing memory. I looked up just as Kate got to me and hugged me hard.

“You were wonderful!” she cried, and soon Jennet and John had their arms around both of us.

“Will said he’ll see you later,” Jennet told me. “I’m afraid despite this victory, he still has his hands full, for Susannah and her mother are going at it like cats and dogs outside the church.”