Mistress Shakespeare (9 page)

“Richard Burbage told me the play had been much amended for the performance that night. They removed apurpose the shipwrecked character who was a minister and wed the two couples. They cut the role of a sea captain who rescued the shipwrecked souls and took them back to London to tell their story to their great and glorious queen.” He shrugged. “It seems they often change their lines to suit their own—no doubt, Walsingham’s—objectives.”

“I see.”

“And, I surmise,” he added, his eyes glistening, “they did not want to alarm my father. They want me in their troupe that much.”

“And rightly so. But do they think you will go along with their true intent? Or would you? Would you go with them, even if you disdain their methods or their motives?”

He looked away, out into the distance. “I need to hazard all. I must have my chance. Once I have a foot in the playhouse door, I can change companies, maybe start my own.”

“If you joined the players, would your father let you go?”

“He won’t like it, and I don’t truly come into my majority until I’m twenty-one. But I cannot always live to please him. As you can tell, I feel desperate sometimes, as if I will burst if I must stay in Stratford. I used to look for diversions—I grapple with despair in the night and can’t sleep . . .

“Besides,” he went on, “there could be more money with the players, and the Shakespeares need such, make no mistake about that.” He reached up to stroke my wind-tossed hair, then wrapped the length of it in his fist. “I won’t give up this chance!” he cried, tugging my face close to his. “I will choose where I go and what I do and that includes having you!”

“You do have me, my man, and I refuse to lose you again.”

“Never! I swear, as soon as I can make some sort of living, I will send for you, but can we not be married first?”

“I could hardly go on the road with players,” I protested as he loosed my hair. Actually, I’d have liked nothing more, to be with Will and to see more of England, especially London.

“I could not take you on the road, but you could join me in London for most of the year,” he went on as he laced his shirt. “Could you not keep your father’s records for him there? We must be wed here when we can manage, then go to London.”

“Yes. Yes, of course. I’m sure I could convince my father to let me go to London if we were wed. But if we had the banns read here, they would try to stop us. Will, they wouldn’t even let us be friends before, and now this . . .”

“I would not leave you to pursue my dream without your promise to be mine, not with that Dench fellow sniffing about.”

I hooted a laugh. “I never mentioned him at all.”

“You did not have to. I’ve seen him look at you—that day last week you came into town while your father’s carriers were unpacking.”

“And is there no fond maiden who gazes on my Will that way?”

“Oh, no doubt. Legions. Entire battalions of them I must beat off. But whatever they may think or do, I am now yours alone. What would you say to our speaking to Father Berowne about a troth plight in private first, so they cannot pry us apart?”

My head jerked up. I’d never fathomed that. “A handfast marriage?”

He nodded wildly and seized my hands again. “I’ve studied it all at the lawyer’s. Such an alliance could turn our family’s rancor to acceptance. I know your cleverness and beauty would win them over, Joan and Gilbert, my parents too.”

“Your father—possibly . . . but your mother?”

“All! Now listen to what I’ve gleaned. The Church of England no longer considers marriage a sacrament. It’s the spousal contract and the recording of that—a license—that counts, not the formal solemnization of marriage in a church. Let us speak plain. The queen is the child of an illegitimate second marriage, so the secularization of the act is fine with her.”

I nodded. That made sense, at least.

“A couple only has to make a vow and marry before a witness, then consummate the union,” he went on, speaking faster. “There should be hand-clasping and ring-giving. Anne, my seal ring,” he said, turning his hand so I could see it. “When we wed, I shall give it to you until I can buy you one of your own someday. An unsolemnized and even an unwitnessed union, though irregular, can be fully binding. We must only take each other’s hands as man and wife, using these Latin words:
per verba de praesenti
. Or canon law recognizes spousals in words of the future tense,
per verba de futuro
, a contract to marry, rather than a contract of marriage.”

My head spun faster, faster. I tried to hold to each thing he said, to cling to reason as well as the rapture that swept me. “I would want to vow it in the present and for all time,” I told him.

“You are stronger than anyone I’ve ever known.” He stood, pulled me to my feet and grappled me full length to him. I laughed, insanely happy, linking my hands behind his neck and leaning back from him, which only melded our hips closer. We spun around a bit as if we would dance. Will Shakespeare might be a man of thoughts and words, but he was ever ready for action too. I could feel his urgent need for me again.

“Stop that,” he teased as I moved my hips against his. “Stop that by the time we have been wed forever and a day. Man and wife, two bodies and hearts and souls as one—that is our future. Let’s hie ourselves to Father Berowne to have him see our license is registered in Worcester.”

“And then in this land and in God’s eyes, William Shakespeare and Anne Whateley will be linked officially and eternally.”

“Amen, my love,” he whispered with tears in his eyes. “Amen.”

 

 

 

Just over two weeks later,
on November 27, Will arranged for the bond for the grant of a marriage license for us to be recorded in the Worcester archives by the scrivener there, a friend of Father Berowne. He told me our names would read in Latin,
Wm Shaxpere et Anna Whateley.
On that same day, in the old church of St. Andrew’s in Temple Grafton, Father Berowne let us in through the side door at mid-afternoon.

Sunlight spilled in through the plain glass windows and the remaining stained glass one with Adam and Eve and the serpent. It was the only one in St. Andrew’s that King Henry VIII’s men had not destroyed, and it cast colors on the stone floor and even on Father Berowne’s old prayer book.

I had worn my hair loose and stuck in late-November blooms of goldenrod and marigold I had foraged for. We joined hands and plighted our troth, speaking the legal Latin words Will had said we must and listening to a meandering blessing from Father Berowne, who was so shaky that day that I believe he thought at one point he was marrying my father to my mother.

No matter. We were ecstatic, giddy with it all. Will put his ring on my finger; it was huge and I would have to wrap it. For the first time I noted that between his initials was a decorative knot—a lovers’ knot, I silently decided. I gave him
The Writing of Artful Poesie
I’d read him the first day of our reunion. We kissed before the bare altar and smiled into each other’s eyes. And we had plans—oh, we had plans.

But we had to move quickly, stay apart for a few days, until my father, who was due back with the pack train tomorrow, would set out again. We planned to tell him just before he left next time. If he would agree to find the Queen’s Men in London to give them Will’s agreement to work with them, we would go there the next time with the carriers. Will’s family we would tell either before if Will thought the wind blew favorably; if not, he might write them a full explanation from London and we would win them over later.

“Parting is sweet sorrow,” he told me, as he made ready to leave me at the church to hie himself back to Stratford for his daily duties. “We must both be the best of players until we can proclaim our love and union publicly.”

I smiled through my tears as he left me. At least I’d had a premonition when we were separated the day after Kat died, for I had not the slightest hint that the devilish destruction of all my dreams would soon befall.

CHAPTER FIVE

That afternoon I wrapped
my wedding ring in yarn so it would fit my finger and hummed about the house for an hour, lost in reveries and hopes for a wedding night and lovely life yet to come. I hugged myself and spun about, dancing with my dreams. Will was going to tell his folks he’d promised Father Berowne he’d come to read to him and spend some time so that we could have an entire night together. That would surely work since John Shakespeare was tenderhearted toward the old clergy who had lost their place. Then Will and I would have a night together here on my narrow bed and plan how best to break the news to both our fathers.

I gasped when a loud knock rattled the front door. The cottage was small with only a front room and two tiny back ones, the latter which we used as bedchambers. I rushed to answer, praying it was Will at the door. He must have gotten nearly home, then come right back. He could not stay away. He wanted another kiss and caress or all of me. He would insist I go home with him to tell his family our news now.

I flung open the door with his name on my lips. At first, I could not place the two men standing there; then I remembered the taller one. Fulk Sandells, the Shottery farmer who had found Kat’s body and told my father to keep me away from Will. The other man I did not know.

A chill wind blew in past them. My insides cartwheeled, for I sensed they were harbingers of doom. I was so terrified that I blurted out what I should have kept silent—

“Will—is he all right?”

“He will be soon,” Sandells said, “once his father and us is done with him.”

They knew? We’d been found out!

“This here’s John Richardson of Shottery, ’nother friend of the Hathaways and the Shakespeares.”

I feared a trick or a trap. “The Hathaways?” I asked.

They exchanged quick looks with each other. “The Hathaways be farmers from Shottery, a good family and friends of our’n,” Sandells said. He seemed to be the spokesman. Richardson just frowned; he was built like a barrel, stocky with no neck.

“But what are you saying about Will?” I demanded.

“Same as afore, mistress,” Sandells said. “We heard last week from Stephen Dench that Will been sneaking off with you, so we’re warning you to stay clear—forever.”

Stephen! That traitor! But they were too late to keep Will and me apart now.

“And Will Shakespeare,” Sandells went on, crossing his arms over his chest, “must needs wed with Anne Hathaway next week, and we’ve put up forty pounds—”

“Forty pounds!” Richardson repeated.

“—as assurance bond to be sure we get him to the church to be wed or else!”

Though shocked and trembling, I had the strangest urge to break into hysterical laughter. Will and I had outfoxed them all! Forty pounds assurance bond or not, these two enforcers or not, Will was already wed. Our license was registered, no doubt, in the same record book where they would not dare link his name to any other. Anne Hathaway? I could not place her, but I’d only been quickly in and out of little Shottery, which lay a mile north of Stratford.

Though I had to sidestep to avoid the men, I went outside. “Where you think you’re going?” Richardson said with a grunt.

“I’m showing you off my property,” I told them, pushing wider the gate they’d left ajar. “Will cannot marry Anne Hathaway, for he’s—”

“He’s a two-faced, bootless, codpiece blackguard, that’s what he is!” Sandells shouted. “Tupping two maids at once, I wager, the young varlet. He’ll wed Mistress Anne Hathaway in a proper church with a proper minister, or he’ll rue the day he was born—his family too. Her father was a good friend of our’n, and we’ll see the Shakespeares sued for every cent they’re worth if the lad don’t make right what he’s done.”

With utter horror, I saw the ramifications of it all. No one would credit a senile, rambling former Catholic priest who had married us by sneaking in the side door of a backwater church. Worse, Will was not of age to fight his father on this, and family reputations mattered in Stratford. John Shakespeare no longer mingled with men in high places. He was struggling to stay solvent and respectable. How blind we had both been to think we could win our parents over.

At least Will did not wed me just to possess me. Oh, no, I’d given myself to him gladly, fool that I was. Another woman! That must have been what he was stammering about the day he proposed: he’d said he had something “to settle . . . a proper explanation and a change of plans.” He’d been missing sleep and agonizing not just over me, but over how to end his courting of Anne Hathaway. But then— then—my frenzied thoughts stopped to snag on what else Sandells was saying.

“They been courting, and she’s carrying his child. He’ll be a father come spring, and he’s got to make it right. The law says so and the queen’s church does too!”

I grabbed the gate for support, but it swung out, taking me with it. I sat down hard on the ground, hitting the back of my head on the corner of the stone fence. Lights pulsated before my eyes. I was certain I would be ill.

Sandells’ voice droned on while the other man helped me up. “We’re friends a Mistress Hathaway’s deceased father and, with John Shakespeare, we’ll see justice done. Will’s parents are giving him what for right now. Anne Hathaway and her brother’s there too. Got a pass on the reading of the banns, we did, happens oft enough,” he added, taking my other arm as they propelled me back toward my cottage.

The wind blew cold. Richardson lost his hat, and my skirts—my best petticoats that had been my wedding gown—were now sullied from the soil. My head pounded with pain.

And I could have killed—killed with my bare hands—my once beloved husband, William Shakespeare.

I shook the men off and staggered toward the door, trying to seize hold of my thoughts, to rein in my agony and temper. I had Will’s precious seal ring, and he never would have given it to me had he not intended to wed me. All our plans of London and a life together. Had he been so clever an actor with me? And this other Anne—he had lain with her—too.