The Tutor (16 page)

Katharine did not smile. She was stunned—as much by his presumption as by how thrilled it made her feel. As they stepped and hopped and turned, she continued to look at him without smiling and he continued to smile. Was this a game for him? Shuttlecock or Barley Break? The next time he positioned his body to propel her into the air, his fingers grazed her skin above her busk before he placed his hand there.

“Thou art my sonnet tonight,” he said as he brought her down after the leap. He lingered again, but this time pulled his head back, so their lips did not
touch.

11

hen Katharine awoke the next morning, she recalled strange and vivid dreams. In one, several of her teeth were loose. In another, she was riding a wild horse. Then she was being chased: by whom or what, she did not know. Molly had rekindled the fire by the time Katharine rose from her bed. She was still in her emerald velvet dressing gown when Molly brought her a package.

“From?” Katharine asked.

“Him, mistress.”

“Him?”

“Will Shakespeare.”

“Ah, gramercy, Molly.” When Katharine took the package she realized it was wrapped in pages of the sonnets they had worked on, with his writing and then hers.

Molly pulled back the sand-colored curtains and the sun came streaming in. “Miss Ursula was in her new gown, and they say she did dance with the duke,” Molly said. “And she looked beautiful, her waist tiny and her yellow hair all glittery. I helped put the stones in her hair.”

“Ursula looked splendid,” Katharine agreed.

“And Master Shakespeare,” continued Molly as she poured water from the ewer into the bowl. She dipped a cloth in the water and handed it to Katharine for her face. “No one expected he’d play King Henry. They say he played him so good that they didna see Master Shakespeare there at all, but saw a king. He had writ what he spoke. They say the words were so fine, miss, and his stature so proud, and the telling to his soldiers that to catch a wound in battle would be an honor, and to die in the field an honor, too, and that men who werena there would be in shame.” Molly eyed the package on Katharine’s lap. “They’re off to a hunt today.”

“I heard the horns in my sleep,” said Katharine. Perhaps it was a wild boar that had chased her in her dream—his large sharp curved tusks going for her heart.

“Word’s already come back they’ve killed a stag,” Molly said, “and the duke slit the belly himself.”

“I’m sure he did, Molly.” Katharine wondered anew what business brought the duke to the hall, for a man of that magnitude would never come purely for pleasure.

“Can’t hear the dogs na’more, so they must be far. They say the duke won’t rest till he’s got a boar.”

“Did any ladies of the house go?”

“No, my lady, since it’s boar they’re after, the men thought it too wide with danger. He’s gone, my lady.”

“Who?”

“Master Shakespeare.”

“On the hunt?”

“No. He took off on a horse before the hunt went out, before the light tipped the treetops.”

“Oh.” Katharine felt her heart shrink.

“He sits a horse passing fine. I heard he’s a passing fine dancer, too.”

“He is a good dancer,” Katharine said. “Thank you, Molly. You can go.”

While Molly hung Katharine’s petticoat next to the fire, she asked, “Some broth from the kitchens, my lady?”

“No, gramercy. I have a question to ask you before you go. Would you like to learn how to read and to write, so you can read Master Shakespeare’s verse before you deliver it to me?”

“I’d love to read a lot o’ things, and that, too.”

“Well then, I will teach you. We’ll start tomorrow. And best not let your tongue wag till you’ve mastered the words. Then when you have, you can surprise everyone and say you taught yourself.”

“Aye, my lady. I can’t imagine what it’s like.”

“A whole new world, Molly. Many worlds. It will change you.”

“I’m ready to be changed.”

“I know you are. You go along your way and do your chores quickly tomorrow, for after dinner, we start.”

Molly curtsied. “Gramercy.”

Katharine smiled and nodded. After Molly left, Katharine picked up the package and felt it: soft at one end, stiff at the other. She untied the string and found within the creases of Will’s pages the most beautiful gloves she had ever seen. They were made of white doeskin, the fingers long and slim and pointed at the tips. Folded inside each glove were new pages. Katharine slid the gloves on her hands. The soft leather flared at the wrists. The wide gauntlet was embroidered with silk and metal thread, and edged with silver-gilt lace, shiny flecks of metal and tiny pearls that trembled when she moved. The glove-maker had rendered the gauntlet a piece of art; a male peacock was emblazoned in the foreground of each glove, with a sweeping tail of purple, blue, green and gray thread.

Katharine carefully took off the gloves and unfolded Will’s new
pages. He had revised the beginning of his poem. He had followed Katharine’s advice and steered the sentiment further, moved away from Ovid and Spenser, made discord where there had only been tension. Now Adonis loved to hunt but scorned love, while lovesick Venus was set on wooing him. Katharine took the black quill Will had given to her, dipped it into the inkhorn, crossed out two lines and wrote:
Let Venus be the huntress, but not for stag or doe or boar. Let kisses be her prey. You say here that Adonis is “more lovely than a man,” describe how that is so. If he is “rose-cheek’d,” is he then like a flower?

She read on. The poem was better, certainly, and now began with a boldness that drew the eyes from one stanza to the next. The day passed with Katharine in her dressing gown at her table marking Will’s pages. She put down her quill as the sun dropped behind the trees, and the clamor of horses and hounds returning from the hunt clattered upon the stones.

The dance called the volta was named after the Italian term for “the turn” or “turning.” The turn at the end of a sonnet, which signified the jump or shift in the direction of the emotions or thought, was also called the volta, and that was just what had happened to Katharine when Will set her down after her last leap in the air. Something had shifted. The volta had vanquished boundaries, and as surprising as Will’s lips on her hand at the banquet, he had opened his body to her at the dance and brought her to him, his lips on her lips. She’d let him take her hand after the last chord and lead her. As they walked from the center of the room Katharine had turned toward him, and without saying a word he had drawn her to him again, right there in the crowd, and held on to her, his lips light on her neck. Perchance no one saw it. When she had left him at the door, left the room with all the music, the torches and the people, her body had felt an instrument, with strings so taut that each step was a pluck, a vibration, a sound.

But now he had left, Molly said, before the sun rose, before the hunting party had gathered in the mist. He had gone. But where? And why
hadn’t he spoken to her of his leaving? Katharine sat, still in her dressing gown, her candle lit now. The sounds rose from below of tired revelers drinking after their hunt. She was unable to move, yet filled to her brim.

Will was like a gem, sparkling and bright, but on someone else’s finger. It was not that he was married, because he rarely spoke of his wife or his children. He had, until last night, held part of himself away, aloft, and now she worried that when she saw him again, he would return to that island. He was never remote with his words, but his body told a different story, one that confused and intrigued her. She wondered if his wife felt that, too, if that was why she didn’t mind that he had spent the last years away from Stratford, in London, working in a theater, and now up here in Lancashire, at Lufanwal. Perhaps even when he was at home, part of him was in exile.

Will had written to her at the bottom edge of his last page:
Gentle Kate, I am off to weather business in London. I will miss you. Will
.

The “I will miss you” pushed at her heart. She read over those four words and remembered how his hands felt when he pulled her to him after the dance. For that brief moment when he’d embraced her, he’d been her glove. Their bodies had fit together perfectly. He was so quick, so sure, so deliberate, his lips grazing her neck in the middle of the crowded floor. Katharine had thought: This is the beginning. She sat back in her chair by the fire and gazed into the inner light of the flames. The image of Will’s slender fingers wrapped around a black quill came to her—the fine hairs on the back of his hand, his fingernails clipped and clean. She would miss him, too.

She had not eaten all day. The smell of braised meat from the hunt rose from the kitchens. The duke was to leave before All Souls’ Day. The house would return to its normal rhythms, though in truth the rhythms had not been normal since Sir Edward had left. Katharine supposed she should show herself for the meal below. It would be improper not to say good-bye to the lively band of Frenchmen.

She wore her old green gown down to supper. The noise in the great hall was loud and raucous, an unwelcome change to her day, which had been delicious in its solitude. She sat with the younger folk, for she had grown tired of the duke and his party. Their presence seemed one long performance, though she was unsure who was the audience and who the players.

Katharine learned from her tablemates that the hunt was a success—they had caught two stags and a boar—but they had sidestepped disaster. The dogs were running crazy as the hunting party cornered a boar. The boar, startled by the dogs’ frenzy, had charged at the duke, who lost his footing and fell. Henry had stepped in front of the duke and run his sword through the boar’s neck.

“But the duke was swift and back on his feet in no time,” said Henry, “and he dealt the beast the final blow.”

“They say Henry was like a soldier in battle,” Isabel chimed in. “They say he was so calm and brave.”

“Oh, our dear Henry, how you’ve grown,” exclaimed Katharine.

“’Twas nothing,” Henry said.

“Henry, you saved the duke’s life!” cried Isabel.

“And he thanked me for it,” added Henry.

“And thank goodness the duke was able to kill off the beast. At least he kept his honor even if he lost his footing,” Katharine said.

Isabel leaned toward Katharine. “Did you enjoy your dance last night?”

“Which dance?” Katharine said.

“The dance with the king!”

“The king?”

“The man who played the king? The player who played King Henry.” Isabel looked at Kate. “That king married a Kate, and she was his queen.”

“She was French. And this king has a wife.”

“I’ve heard things.”

“What sort of things?”

“Talk from the scullery . . .”

“Ah, there’s a deep well of gossip.”

“But you were only having fun, weren’t you, Kate?”

Katharine forced a smile.

“He is handsome,” Isabel continued. “Though, in sooth, there’s something shiny about Master Shakespeare’s eyes and his words—a glint like a shilling that on the ground attracts.”

Katharine wanted to say:
You do not know him the way I know him. He is a man of substance, for how could a poet write such words without feeling them?
But she kept her mouth shut.

Henry stood up from the table. He seemed to have sprouted an inch since he’d sat down to supper. His mother, Mary, came to his side, put her hands on his shoulders—she was shorter than he was now and had to reach—and said, “You have made me very proud, my son. The duke has spoken highly of your actions today, and we may rejoice with God and thank Him for your safety and for the duke’s. That which we call fortune is nothing but the hand of God, working by and for causes we know not. By God’s grace my hands are upon your sturdy shoulders.”

“It was you who made them sturdy, Mother,” said Henry.

Out of any other mouth this sentence would have sounded like idle flattery, but Henry meant what he said. He looked down at his mother with a sweet smile. She pulled him to her and he dutifully held on to her in an awkward embrace. Henry had grown into a strong young man, but he hadn’t arrived at the knowledge of what to do with women—of any age, even his mother.