The Tutor (26 page)

Though Katharine knew the tale’s end from Ovid and from Spenser, as she read Will’s new lines she found herself wondering, What will
happen in this battle of desire? Who will prevail? Venus entreated and implored Adonis to love her. The repetition of the word
lips
did, like seeds upon the fertile ground, make the passion grow. “‘Touch but my fair lips with those fair lips of thine . . . The kiss shall be thine own as well as mine . . . Look in mine eye-balls, there thy beauty lies . . . Then why not lips on lips, since eyes in eyes?’”

Katharine sent a note with Molly that she would meet Will. An hour later, hooded, cloaked, gloved and booted, she took the stairs two steps at a time, chose not the course through the house to the old chapel, but pushed the oak door open and ventured across the icy courtyard.

Richard was coming through the gate on horseback. Katharine scurried down the path so he would not see her. Will had told Molly he would be there, but the schoolroom was empty. Katharine lit one lamp and then another, poked at the logs in the fireplace and sat on a bench. The fire awakened, the shadows shifting along the whitewashed walls. She sat and started to read his verse again. She dipped a quill into an inkhorn, adding to her notes:
fine
and
lovely
and
perhaps a different word.
Dipping the quill once more, she began to write lines of verse along the margin of a page. Engrossed in her writing, she did not hear Will enter. She had never written poetry before, and she had not even known when she put the quill to the page that a stanza would spill out of her. Indeed, when she looked up at Will she stared at him, trying to place him.

“Hast thou seen a ghost?” he said, coming toward her.

He was beautiful in the shifting lamplight.

“It seems we have been apart for ages,” he said.

“’Tis been but a few days,” she replied.

He shed his cloak and sat across from her, a schoolboy.

“How sits your sorrow now, Kate? Does grief still guide your day?”

“’Tis too sad to believe that Sir Edward has left this mortal earth.”

“Your loss is heaven’s gain. Look to your family this day, dearest Kate, not to me,” said Will.

“Sir Edward’s eldest daughter is coming down from the north, and dear Ned, the youngest son, is returning home from across the sea.”

“The prodigal son,” said Will.

“Ned will provide succor,” Katharine continued. “’Tis hard not to feel a feast when he is around, even in the midst of famine. Our bond is blood, yes, but ’tis something of magic, too . . . ’tis hard to explain.”

Her hands were clasped and resting on the table. Will reached across the table and covered them with his.

“I have made some marks,” she said finally. “I was much impressed by the quantity.”

“I hope the quality impressed as well,” he said.

“’Tis your best work yet,” she said. “It seemed to pour from your pen.”

“I hope it read as though it poured from my heart.”

“Thou art, now, master of your art,” she said.

“Ahhhhh!” he exclaimed, rising and walking to the fire. He bent down and warmed his hands, then stood. “Kate . . .” he said, turning to her.

She was part thrilled, part terrified. “Yes,” she said.

“I crave your pardon for making you wait here in the cold. I took my horse, fine Bess, yonder into the hills and the forest where the drifts are still deep. We jumped a fallen tree, a frozen creek, a pile of snow-covered stones. Bess is swift and sure of hoof. I took the whip to her and urged her on and on, faster and faster. Then I let her go, let her discover the pleasure of the speed. She met no resistance from the reins. She did not falter. She did not slip. Bess finally stopped on her own accord, then headed back to the barn. I was surprised when the sun started to drop, for I had not realized we had been out so long.”

“Is she so named after our queen?”

He bowed his head in acknowledgment. “She is my queen.”

“How fortunate for you to have a Bess you can subject, whilst being the subject of a Bess,” said Katharine.

“Both are beasts, methinks,” he said with a chuckle. “In sooth, you think this work my best?”

“In sooth, you let go the reins of your rhymes and found pleasure in the speed, for you wrote these many words with such alacrity. My quill did mark a word here and there, but I did not drench your pages with circled words or whole lines cut or questioned.”

“Thou art no longer the surveyor perched upon a rock?” Will stood before her.

“I have not, quite yet, relinquished my mapmaker’s quill.”

“My sweet Kate, I would still be on the first line, perhaps the first word, of this humble poem if it were not for you.” He was down on one knee. “I am, like Mars to Venus, your servant. You have mastered me.”

He was a suitor looking up at her from below. “I will write a sonnet for you,” he said, jumping up. “Verse will be my next gift to thee.”

Katharine smiled.

“Let us look at what you found,” Will said, pulling open the pages. He sat next to her on the bench. He leaned over her arm, looking at his verse. “What’s this?” He pulled the page with the stanza she had written in front of him. “’Tis verse, Katharine.” He called her by her given name. He read it aloud:

“Is thine own heart to thine own face affected?

Can thy right hand seize love upon thy left?

Then woo thyself, be of thyself rejected;

Steal thine own freedom, and complain on theft.

Narcissus so himself himself forsook,

And died to kiss his shadow in the brook.”

He looked at her, puzzled.

“’Tis only a thought I had for Venus, that she touches on Ovid’s Narcissus, in her quest for Adonis’s . . .” She stopped.

“Adonis’s what?”

“Lips,” she said.

“’Tis well done, Kate.” He had lost his smile. “’Tis most well done.” His tone was stiff.

She wanted to make him supple again. “You may have it,” she said.

They were silent.

“Will,” Katharine began, “I have never waded in such waters before.” Her words sounded solemn. She wanted to reprise them in a lighter tone, but it was too late. She could not look him in the eyes, but focused on a dark burl in the table.

“The waters of verse-writing?” he asked.

“No,” she said. “Of us.”

“Oh,” he said. “‘The tale of us.’”

“I have never waded in such waters before,” she repeated. “I have had a husband. I have had suitors. But I have never had this. My mind is most confused. I know not what to do. I beseech your help in navigating this . . . this . . .” She worried she would lose him further by her admissions but forced herself to continue. “I know not how to say this . . .”

“Say it.”

“I desire you.”

“And I, you,” he followed.

She felt her heart unfasten. Will was sitting but an arm’s length from her. He did not rise, but she saw his whole body sigh, as if he had been waiting for these words, as if they were a release for him, too. When she saw his smile, her eyes filled with tears.

“Kate,” he said. His most gentle yet. “Such attraction is in our blood, ’tis our nature.”

“I am but a novice in these arts,” she said.

“Kate, I’ve had wenches of one sort or another since I was a lad, but those days are past. And I have a wife. But what we have is most different.” He paused. “You know me better than anyone else.”

He rose from the bench and came round the table to her. When he held out his hands, she took them, and in one agile movement he pulled her to her feet. Then he drew her in close so she could feel his heart beating. She felt ease in the embrace and was surprised, after all the weeks of skimming his skin, she had found home. He lifted her chin so she looked him in the eyes, and then he gently placed his hands on her neck, slid them back into her hair and removed the ivory pins one by one. At the pull of each pin, she felt as though his fingers were on her bodice, and he was undoing one lace after another with tender care.

Her hair fell to her shoulders. His gaze never left her eyes. He leaned into her, hovered for a moment without contact and then kissed her on the lips. The kiss was slow and deliberate.
Lips on lips.
She had never felt such a passion before, and gave herself to him utterly in the kissing, until they both heard something outside the old chapel. Katharine pulled herself from him, turned and saw a shadow at the window. The colored glass made it impossible to see clearly. They separated. The specter could have been a child, a servant or a spy.

Will helped Katharine on with her cloak and was at her side when she opened the door. They heard a strange sound—a song, a sad song that hung in the air like mist. Katharine thought of the three witches. How had such hallowed ground become so haunted? They followed the melancholy tune until they came to its source. Ursula. Ursula, wearing only a white smock, was on her knees under a tree with her parrot in her hands. The bird’s bright plumage was barely visible in the dim light. Katharine took her own cloak off and wrapped it round Ursula.

“She’s dead,” Ursula said. “I’ve come to bury her.”

The earth was frozen and still covered with patches of snow.

“’Tis no time to dig a grave, Ursula. You’d best wait till the morrow and have one of the servants tend to it,” said Katharine. She felt as if she were talking to a child.

Will went to Ursula and stood over her. “Hand me your bird, my lady. We will find it a home.”

“’Tis not a home she wants, ’tis a grave.”

“We will dig her a grave, then,” he said.

Ursula’s hair was unbound and unkempt, and it framed her face like a wild halo. She relinquished the bird to Will.

“Come with me, Ursula,” said Katharine, and with unusual meekness, Ursula acquiesced. When Katharine helped her to stand, she saw Ursula wore no shoes, that her feet were bare.

Ursula stared at the bird in Will’s hand, funneling all her concentration toward it, as if her focus would breathe life into its flesh and resurrect it. “I prithee place a stone atop the grave, so I will know where ’tis,” she said.

“I will, my lady.” Will bowed.

Katharine was impressed by Will’s gentleness, by his ability to read the thought-sick Ursula.

“Gramercy,” Ursula said. She moved her gaze from the dead bird to Will’s face. “Thou art a sugar’d lad. Dost thou think me fair?”

“Thou art fair, my lady.”

“Dost thou think me wanton?”

“If wanton means a lively creature, then aye, thou art a wanton.”

“Dost thou think me tainted?”

“If tainted be a condition of thy heart, not thy soul, then anyone who hath ere been in love is tainted, so aye, thou art tainted, for I have never yet met a man or woman ov’r the age of twenty who hath a pure, unspotted heart.”

Ursula burst out in high-pitched laughter.

“Let us go in, Ursula. The cold wind will o’erpower your skin,” said Katharine.

“My pure, unspotted heart was doomed from the first second I crossed
the threshold of this ill-erected hall!” said Ursula, then she laughed again.

Katharine looked at Will. He nodded his head slightly. Then she took Ursula’s arm and steered her toward the hall. Ursula seemed even thinner than before: there was neither meat nor muscle the length of the poor dear’s arms. Ursula sang while they walked.

“Ah poor bird

Why art thou

Singing in the shadows

At this late hour?

“Ah poor bird

Take thy flight

High above the shadows

Of this sad night.”

She sang the same two verses over and over again and was still singing them when she entered the house. As they climbed the stairs to her chamber, she asked, “Do you think my voice good?”

“Aye,” said Katharine.

“I have always wanted to sing for the family, but Richard says my voice has too much breath and that I wobble in and out of tune. Dost thou think I wobble or warble like a thrush?”

“I must hear more to make a proper diagnosis,” answered Katharine.

“You are a doctor now?”

Katharine laughed. “I suppose I am.”

“Doctor, might you play the virginals while I sing to the family?”

“I will,” Katharine said.

“I know my voice is beautiful,” said Ursula, standing at her door.

Katharine squeezed her arm in affection. “Get to bed, Ursula, for
your limbs are quaking from the cold. I will send your maid up with something hot to drink.”

“Your cloak?” said Ursula.

“You wear it until you are tucked in. I’ll send Molly round to fetch it.”

Ursula placed her hand on Katharine’s arm and leaned very close to her. “Beware of his words,” she said. “Beware.”

Katharine tried to smile but suddenly she felt as cold as Ursula appeared. “Good night, Ursula,” she said, and turned away.

Ursula’s warning seemed to carry such caution, as though words were poison and could kill a person. Actions could kill, that Katharine knew, actions drew blood, but words? Nay, she said to herself, nay. She realized with her hair down from her moment with Will that she likely looked as unkempt as Ursula. As Katharine hurriedly made her way to her chamber, she couldn’t get Ursula’s silly ditty out of her
head.

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