Mistress Shakespeare (8 page)

And so the weeks, months, nearly two years, slipped by like water in the Avon until the month I would turn eighteen. For on the sunny, windy day of September the ninth, 1582, just after noontide, Will Shakespeare passed my cottage heading west through Temple Grafton. He stopped apurpose and leaned on the stone fence as if twenty-one months had not passed since Kat’s death.

I’d been pulling onions out of my garden to ward off coughs and cold this winter and had just straightened to arch my aching back when I saw him. Like a statue, I stopped and stared, frozen in time, however fast my heart began to beat. When he spoke, somehow all the long days we’d been apart fell away—as did my better judgment, the loss of which got me all too soon in water way over my head.

 

 

 

“Anne, it’s been a long time,”
Will called to me over the stone fence as he doffed his cap, then held it in his free hand. “How beautiful you are.”

I managed to loose my tongue from the roof of my mouth. I had expected I would cry if we ever acted out a reunion scene I’d rehearsed forever in my heart. But I was shocked at what I said.

“It’s the beautiful day that’s thrown you, Master Shakespeare—or something has addled your brain in these few months or so since I’ve seen you. My, but time has flown like a bird.” I was pleased with that rejoinder. Polite but tart and clever, but how my voice shook.

“I realize,” he said, frowning in the sun, “I do not deserve to stand in your good graces, but you do look lovely. Indeed, you have blossomed into—”

“Into a sharp-tasting onion like these I’ve been yanking up by their roots,” I said and tossed one in his direction. It sprayed soil and just missed him, but he didn’t budge. “You’re no doubt merely passing by,” I went on. “Forgive me, but I must return to my petty tasks, and I don’t want to keep you.”

But I did want to keep him. He looked fine with his auburn hair gleaming in the light and his hazel eyes clear and piercing. His face and form had filled out in manly fashion; muscles molded his loosely laced shirt and swelled his breeches. And tall—so much taller. He was quite well dressed for a rural walk, surely, not for me.

“Anne, you did a remarkable thing the day you testified on Kat’s behalf. I swear, it was your brains and bravado that kept them from daring to rule her a suicide. I thought of you as Lady Tongue that day, sharp with your thoughts and words—even as today.”

“It was the least I could do for a dear lost friend, in truth, the dearest I’ve ever had and lost.” I could tell he took that barb four-square. He didn’t even try to smoothly change the subject, but jumped topics like a frog, holding up a packet in his hand. “I am to deliver gloves to a Percy Berowne here in Temple Grafton, a former priest. I believe you know him.” His own bravado seemed to be slipping; he looked both uneasy and annoyed.

“Ah, you simply stopped at random for directions. Then, here they are. Keep going.”

“I—I had to promise my sire I’d stay away from you. He said if I didn’t, he’d make it hard on you and your father. I regret our long separation too.”

“Too?
Too
is a synonym for
also
, Master Shakespeare, and there is no one else here rues our brief separation. How long was it now—ah, a week or two at least, I wager.”

“Anne, please—”

“I am pleased with my life, thank you. But am I to believe that poor old Father Berowne walked clear into Stratford to order gloves? The dear soul’s gone senile, you see.”

“My father is sending them to him
gratis
.”

“If that is true, your father has gone senile too, forgetting that those wretched Whateleys live but a half mile from the old man. That way!” I declared again, pointing toward Oversley Wood to the west.

“Is Father Berowne yet your tutor?” he inquired, as his eyes examined me, bare toes to the windblown crown of my head and lingered at all the stops between.

“Unlike your eyes, his are so bad that I read to him now,” I said. “Not long and he’ll be resting them forever in St. Andrew’s churchyard.”

As I crossed my arms to keep from hugging him over the thick stone fence and frowned to keep from exploding into tears, Will added, “I’d forgotten the name of the little church where the old man used to pastor. So you live in the shadow of Saint Andrew’s. I’ve read he was the patron saint for unwed women. ’Tis said if one such prays to him and sleeps naked on St. Andrew’s Eve, she’ll see her future husband in a dream. So if you have not had a good dream lately, I pray you will have one tonight. I hear it really works.”

That was the old Will, stubborn and shrewd. And newly naughty. Again, especially when he prated of sleeping naked, his eyes bored into the very depth of me, and I felt that down to the pit of my belly. But I wasn’t going to give in yet.

“On the other hand, Master Shakespeare, I’ve heard ’tis said if a man tries to amble and jig his way back into a woman’s life after he’s let her down, she’s a ninnyhammer and he’s the greatest fool in all Christendom!”

He made no retort but walked along the fence to the gate and pushed it open, then came slowly through it as if he feared another blast of onions and rebukes.

“Is your father home?” he asked. “I would pay him my respects. Anne, my father’s feelings are not mine, though I owed him respect too and help at home.”

“Yes, my father’s here but he’s sleeping,” I lied. He kept coming closer. He obviously didn’t credit that and was intent on his purpose no matter how I protested.

“I can’t fathom,” he said, “there has not been a parade of suitors through this gate, but is there someone special, some swooning swain?”

“Indeed there is, one of my father’s fellows in the trade, quite acquainted with London, he is too, which we shall visit when we’re wed. And you, of a certain, have a list of maidens in line to woo.”

“Quite a few, but never one like you,” he rhymed, just the way we used to toss couplets back and forth. But this time, I held my tongue. To my surprise, he swept me a courtly bow. I blinked back tears that prickled behind my eyes.

“Anne Whateley, queen of my thoughts and, even after all this time, my heart,” he said, straightening to his full height but a body length from me. “I have failed to be a good friend to you, but circumstances were my foes, the arrows of sad misfortune. No!” he cried, holding up his hands when he saw I would answer, “don’t browbeat me further, but let me have my say. Then if you ask me to go and waste another twenty-one months shy ten days away from you, I shall at least consider it.”

I stared agape, with nothing else to say. He spoke so well, in such finely measured, moving tones and sweetly selected words. His presence emanated confidence and manliness. I studied his strong mouth, the slight stubble of the buckskin-hued beard that shadowed his chin. At the side of his strong brown throat a rapid pulse was beating—beating for me.

“Your friendship and encouragement in my younger days were shining stars to me,” he went on, his gaze holding mine. “Our times together were precious, even to a foolish, addlepated boy. But that boy has become a man.”

“I can see that, and—”

“Shh. I must tell you that I have written sonnets, several to you without ever the hope I could share them, but I could stay away from you no more. You are soon to be eighteen, a full-fledged woman. I had to see you—and to speak. Listen to this poem, I pray you, the start of it, at least, and then you may judge my sincerity and my art:

 

“There’s more,” he said, “but I’ll write it out for you, if you’ll but let me return to your friendship and your arms so that I might court you and—”

I nearly knocked him down when I ran to hug him.

 

 

 

Father Berowne did get
his gloves when he arrived that evening to sup with me and listen to me read. I fed and read to both him and Will from my new book from London,
The Writing of Artful Poesie.
Will was totally entranced, and not only with the book. However much Father Berowne’s old mind wandered, I thought he was surely a good enough chaperon when my father was away.

All that first afternoon we were reunited, Will and I had rambled about the meadows and through a woods called Alcock’s Arbour, holding hands we swung between us. I did not ask him when he was going home; I never wanted him to leave. We picked up the threads where we had cut off our relationship, talking of everything and nothing.

With a fine, sweeping view toward the Cotswolds, we sat on a lofty slope of land where wild thyme and oxlips grew and the scent of woodbine and musk roses seeped into our souls. We lay on our backs in tall meadow grass and stared up at the sky ’til Will changed everything when his enraptured face blocked my view and we drank deeply of each other’s kisses. Then the whole world spun faster, and I believed in enchanted isles and castles and rushing streams that did not drown a maid but only swept her away to find herself again.

That first month we were reunited swept past too, and we lived only to see each other. When Will was sent on errands, he came posthaste to Temple Grafton; if he had less time, I took one of the pack train horses and rode anywhere to meet him. We had a special trysting spot along the Avon, though not where the eddy still swirled. When we could, we met under the oak tree at the edge of the Forest of Arden where we’d walked the first day we were together nearly ten years ago. Time was more precious than gold; we snatched at its nuggets of minutes and moments.

We talked of marriage, though we knew it must be a ways off. As the trees turned scarlet and gold and leaves pelted all around us, our caresses and kisses flamed to passion. More than once we threw our garments aside and caution to the winds. When it came to coupling, I didn’t quite know what I was doing, but Will seemed to. I knew it was a risk, but he was worth it all. It was common for those promised to each other to share a bed, and what was better than one filled with drifting golden leaves? Because I lived close to others in the village, we dared not stay long within my cottage unless the former priest was with us.

“We’ll be found out again,” I warned Will as we lay in each other’s arms in the aftermath of loving on a strangely warm day in mid-November. My skirts hiked up and his breeches unlaced, we yet lay spoon fashion on our sides as if I sat in his lap. “We must tell our parents,” I rushed on, “petition their support, but if they will not give it, stand up to them.”

When he did not answer, I sat up and straightened my bodice and petticoats as my skin quickly cooled. I still tingled everywhere his hands and mouth had touched me. His beard stubble had rubbed my breasts and belly to a delicious ache.

“Not until I settle something,” he said, lacing his codpiece back to his breeches. He’d seemed rushed, almost harsh in his loving that day. If not for his pretty words of adoration, I would have thought he was actually distracted.

“What is it you must settle?”

“A debt I owe—not money. Just a proper explanation and change of plans.”

“Are you going to leave your trade as scrivener?”

“I long to leave both that and glove-making. I’ve had an offer to go on the road with the Queen’s Men the next time they come through these parts.”

Ah, I thought, so that was the big change he was considering. He looked as if he’d lost sleep over it too. Will was, above all—even above his passionate self—very ambitious. Or, as I would come to learn later of him, his chief passion was his ambition.

“Tell me all about it,” I prompted.

“They’re led by a James Burbage. His son Richard’s with them. They are distant cousins to the family that owns the Red Hart on Bridge Street. I long to go with them, but the truth is, I still want to try my poor, cramped hand at poetry and playmaking as well as acting. Only, here’s the rub. I fear the Queen’s Men are not out and about the countryside only for their art or even profit.”

“What do you mean? They are recruiting new players?”

He took my hands hard in his. “They were founded by and are subsidized by the queen’s spymaster, Sir Francis Walsingham.”

I gasped and floundered for words. “But, you mean, that’s kept quiet because he fears no one would want to see the plays if it was known he is their patron? I warrant that could be true in these parts.”

“No—I wish it were so simple. They spread Protestant propaganda and feed intelligence to him and the queen, probably to the Earl of Leicester around here too.”

“About rebels, about covert Catholics and recusants,” I reasoned aloud, my mind racing. “But then why would they take you on, a kin to Edward Arden and one who has a recusant as a father?”

“I hope it would not be to get inside information on my family, but I will be wary. I’d like to think they want me because they see such promise in me—that’s what they say. At the Red Hart, I’ve read through scenes with them. They were astounded at my memory and facility with words, and of a certain I can learn their emotive gestures and tricks.”

“You would be a fine actor, Will! I’ll never forget that time you convinced all those people staring at us near Kenilworth that you were my brother. Even with the chaos of the ruined tent—and ruined leg of that horrible Italian man—you talked our way out of there.”

“I’d have liked to convince them that the rutting jackanapes should have been hanged on the spot for trying to ravish you. But to get a foot in the door with the players—any players, and ones who also act in London when the theatres aren’t closed by plague or Puritan decrees—’tis my fondest—no, my second fondest—desire.”

I smiled as we clasped hands even tighter.

“But the play we saw them put on,” I said, still thinking, “about the island of Atlantis had no Protestant propaganda in it.”