Love's Will

by Meredith Whitford

  William had never had more than one brandy at a time, but recklessly he held out his cup for more.

  “Good lad. What’s all this your mother tells me about you wanting to go to London?”

  “I don’t know what she has told you but it’s what I would like to do.”

  “Why? All this play-acting nonsense?”

  “Perhaps. Yes.”

  “Any money in it?”

  “I’m not sure, Father. Well, players are paid, of course. And if I could sometimes write material for them – plays – there would be money in that.”

  “Is it a matter of an apprenticeship? To one of these playing companies?”

  “Well, yes, I think so.”

  “But I suppose they don’t take just anyone.”

  “I suppose not.”

  “Your mother said you spoke to her of having done something of this kind at Sir Alexander’s house. Apparently you told her you’d met people who could be of use to you.”

  “One or two, perhaps.”

  Pushing away his work, his father refilled his cup and sat back, his legs stretched out. “We feel it, you know, that we couldn’t send you to university. That schoolmaster you had, Whatisname, said you were one of his cleverest pupils and could have a great future. The law, perhaps. Or some government position. But it wasn’t to be. Money is all, and I hadn’t enough. But none of your brothers shows much promise in that sort of way, although I admit it’s too soon to tell about the little boy. But Richard just plods through his schoolwork and Gilbert’s lazy and too keen on girls. By the way, have you got any particular girl?”

  Wherever William’s acting talent came from, it wasn’t from his father. He had never seen a worse pretence of casualness.

  “No, Father.”

  “Just as well, you’re too young yet. But you see rather a lot of Mistress Hathaway?”

  “We’re friends, yes.”

  “She’s a good woman from a good family. A very suitable friend.”

  “Yes, Father.”

  “But if, and, mind, I only say if, this playing company business seemed to have money in it…”

  “Yes?”

  “I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to make some enquiries. Your friend Dick Field, now, he’s in London, apprentice to a printer. He would know his way around London a little.”

  “I’m sure he would.” William felt breathless.

  “Not that I am entirely without friends, useful people, even now. Look, son, don’t tell your mother but I’ve a little put away that she doesn’t know about; a few pounds only.”

  “Sir Alexander left me a tiny annuity in his will, and I’ve some savings.” O please, O please…

  “Suppose we let you go to London.” Quickly, as William began to speak, he held up his hand. “Only to ask, for now. To make enquiries. You could lodge with Dick Field and make some enquiries. There’s a Mr Burbage, who owns the Theatre.” He saw his son’s face, and laughed. “I’m not entirely ignorant, and not quite as stupid as you think.”

  “Of course I don’t...”

  “Well, well… and the other one, the play-house, called The Curtain I believe. If you went to these people, asked about being apprenticed, found out what sort of costs are involved, well, then we could think again. After all, if it’s a paying business, you might as well do something you’re good at and enjoy.”

  “Like you with the glove shop and the wool dealing.”

  “Just so. I couldn’t wait to leave the farm and I see the same impatience in you to be done with all this. So I’ll go this far: you may go to London for, say, a month, to make sensible enquiries about work and lodgings and pay. If necessary you can lay down indenture money. But be sure you speak to a lawyer first. I’m no admirer of lawyers but they have their uses, I suppose.”

  “Father, thank you! Thank you. But what about Mother?”

  “I’ll deal with your mother.” He took another drink. “I am,” he said, “still master in my own household.”

  Anne was hanging out washing when someone behind her coughed and spoke her name. A young girl stood there, shifting from foot to foot. She had russet hair and hazel eyes.

  “Mistress Hathaway?”

  “Yes. And you’re Joan, William’s sister. You’re very like him.”

  “Everyone says that. Will asked me to bring you a message.”

  “Oh?” said Anne, annoyed to find that her first reaction had been delight. It was a week since she had seen him. Then she realized that Joan was holding out a folded paper. Anne wiped her hands on her apron, and took the letter gingerly. It was sealed, and she could see the clear imprint of his thumb in the wax. She hesitated then flicked it open.

  She could read print well enough but had had little practice with hand-writing. Still, he wrote clearly, with care. She had no trouble making out what he had to tell her.

  …my father has given his permission… to London at once… dare not hope for too much but… nothing decided yet… no time to visit you before I went… always remember your kindness…

  “Joan, come inside, let me give you something to drink.” Chattering away, fetching the ale jug from where it hung in the well to keep cold, serving out the honey cakes she had made that morning, until at last she could say with seeming unconcern, “So your brother has gone to London?”

  “Mmm.” Joan’s mouth was full. “I was supposed to bring the letter yesterday but…”

  “But?”

  “Oh, well, it has been rather difficult at home. Mother didn’t want Will to go but Father insisted. They’ve been arguing. Mother’s made herself ill with it.”

  “A sudden decision, was it not? I thought your parents were against him going away?”

  “So we thought, but it seems it was Mother, not Father. And Mother was so upset that Father told Will to go at once, before it could be any worse. So he did.”

  “When?”

  “Thursday.”

  “And did he send any other message, anything more than the letter?”

  “No,” said Joan, looking puzzled. “It’s not for ever, of course,” she added. “He’s only to go and find out if he can be apprenticed. Although I suppose that if they said yes, he would stay there. He said it takes four days to get to London, so I don’t suppose he will come back unless he has to.”

  She left soon after, saying her mother would worry if she was away too long.

  Well, thought Anne. Just like that. He is gone. Half a page of glib remarks that could have been addressed to his maiden aunt or, come to that, to Davy Jones. I will always remember your kindness. She had listened to his dreams and his ambitions and made love to him seven times. Once for every year in the difference between their ages. She had been his first. Or so he had said. He had been hers. Now he had gone and he hadn’t even said goodbye.

  When she told her cousin, the old lady said, “At least he wrote you a letter. It’s more than most men would do.”

  6.

  Every country area had a woman like this. Wise woman; meddling old crone; daft old besom; witch; all according to your way of looking – or your need. Learned in the ways of herbal cures and the old lore of the Egyptians, with a deft touch for a sick animal or child. Yes, you would go to her, perhaps sneaking in the night, if you wanted warts charmed away or a potion to bind your beloved to you, if you couldn’t conceive or conceived unwillingly. Openly, by day, you’d give at least a nod of respect, a friendly greeting, you’d take her a gift when you killed a pig or put up fruit. Just in case.

  The cottage was ancient, a hovel whose walls stayed up only for lack of the energy to fall down. Inside it was surprisingly clean and orderly, but stank of unwashed old woman, herbs, the dog’s farts, the midden by the door, wood smoke and something else, indefinable but which always made Anne’s spine prickle.

  “So. Mistress Anne.”

  “Good-day to you.” Anne could hardly see the old woman through the smoky haze, and she nearly fell over the dog. “I baked today and thought to bring you a gift.�
� Briskly, although her hands shook, she unloaded her basket onto the table. A pie, two loaves, a cheese, a pot of honey, apples, a pair of thick, warm stockings. And two silver coins.

  “Generous o’ you.” The old woman’s chair squeaked as she rocked. “What do you want? Sit down where I can see you.” Anne obeyed, and for a moment the old woman leaned forward to peer at her. “So y’re in trouble.”

  “Yes. They say you can help. Please.”

  “Whyn’t marry the man?”

  “I cannot.”

  “Got a wife already, ’as ’e?”

  “No.”

  “Spread y’r legs for some nobleman bored wi’ summer in country, did you, an’ now ’e’s off back to London an’ laughs when you say y’r carryin’ ’is child?”

  “No. It is nothing like that. But I cannot marry him.”

  “An’ does ’e know? Did ’e send thee to me?”

  “No.”

  “Aye. Women bear their troubles alone. An’ their babes, when the man’s long gone. Tell ’im and mak ’im wed thee. Pride’s cold comfort.” The rocking of her chair was a rhythm that seemed to numb Anne’s mind. She felt queasy.

  “I cannot,” she whispered. “Please. They say you’ve helped other women. A potion. Pills. Anything.”

  “’Ow far gone is thee?”

  “My... my last flux was at the start of August.”

  The wise-woman laughed, and Anne wondered if she practised that witchy cackle to awe the credulous. “Left it late, din you. Nigh on three months.”

  “I was not quite sure. My flux is not always on time. And my cousin has been very ill.”

  “Aye, so I’ve ’eard. An’ you waited for y’r man to speak of love an’ marriage.”

  “Yes,” Anne whispered, feeling tears prickling her eyes. “But he did not, and I am in trouble. So please, we cannot marry and our families are respectable. Please help me.”

  “I can,” the other woman said slowly, “but three months is late… Gi’ me y’r ’and.”

  William had said that, in such different circumstances. Afraid, Anne laid her clean, shapely hand palm-up in the old woman’s filthy, hook-nailed one. The silence held and stretched until, at last, the wise-woman stirred and said, “Three children. Marriage. Deaths and journeyings. Great want, then money. A man you’ll love, who’ll break y’r ’eart; but bide an’ ’e’ll come back to you and love you at the end. Another love. Rivals. A golden man; a woman dark as night.”

  For the first time her voice lost its drone, and with it the rustic blur. She sounded puzzled. “I see kings and queens and lovers dying. And your name will never die.” Abruptly she folded Anne’s fingers back against her palm and tossed the hand back in her lap.

  Is that all? The common fortune she probably tells everyone? Money, love, a journey. A few vague warnings. Your name will never die – such stuff for fools! Not much for my silver coins. She must do a brisk trade with country simpletons, no wonder they say she has money put away.

  Then the old woman said, still in that new voice, “Marry your boy, Anne Hathaway. Marry him, comfort him, let him go when it’s time. He’ll always come back to you.”

  “I...”

  “And don’t whine at me that you cannot. But if you will not, you can try this.” She stood up and went to the shelves that crowded one wall. Word was that the village carpenter had built those shelves for her, in exchange for – what? In her chair the old woman seemed all warts and knobs, her body twisted as an ancient tree. Standing, she was revealed as tall and straight and lithe of movement. Anne wondered how old she really was.

  Almost contemptuously she dropped a screw of paper into Anne’s lap. “Pills. Put ’em up y’r cunny, one at nightfall, one at dawn, for three days. And drink this each mornin’, twelve drops in wine.” A tiny stoppered bottle followed the paper.

  “Will they work?”

  “I make you no promises. If they do it will ’urt, but not as bad as child-bed. You can pass it off as a bad flux. But y’r a fool, Anne ’Athaway. Y’r boy will love the child and ’e has need of you.”

  “Love the child – perhaps. Need of me – I doubt that. Thank you, ma’am.” She bobbed a polite curtsy and took her basket. “Good-day to you.”

  She was at the door when the wise-woman said, “’E’s an ’andsome boy, William Shakspere.”

  Anne whirled about, her spine prickling again. “How did you know? Did you see it? In my hand? In a glass?”

  The other woman laughed; not the witch’s cackle but a clear, ordinary, almost girlish laugh. “No, but I guessed and you just told me. I seen ’im. Comin’ and goin’ to Temple Grafton, eager in goin’, grinnin’ and whistlin’ in comin’ away again. You pleased ’im in bed, you know.”

  Anne could have smacked her grinning chops. “So all that nonsense you pretended to see in my hand was simply that – nonsense. If you know of Will, you know of his ambitions, and you made it all up.”

  “No. I saw true. Not all was clear, but I told you true.” Then, laughing again, she lapsed back into her crone’s manner. “If them pills and the nostrum doan work by the end o’ this week, you’ll no get rid of that child. It’s a girl, if you care. Marry young William.” The cottage door slammed shut. She was still laughing.

  Perhaps it was too late. Perhaps the wise-woman had cheated her. The pills and potion did nothing except to make Anne rackingly sick. In fact, the child seemed to flourish on the witch’s brew, for in that week Anne’s body suddenly burgeoned. Her waist spread, her breasts swelled, her belly rounded. And with these changes she became weepy and tired. Soon there would be no disguising her condition.

  Her cousin noticed, of course, and in the course of one chilly evening she had the whole story out of Anne.

  “He must marry you.”

  “But...”

  “But nothing. Do you want your child born a bastard?”

  “No.”

  “Probably neither does he. He need not live with you, but marry you he must. He’s a decent boy from a good family. He’ll want to do what is right.”

  “But he is only eighteen.”

  “Old enough to play the man in bed. Old enough to know that you pay for your pleasure. Why should you be the only one who pays?”

  “True. But he’s in London.”

  “Then go and see his parents, tell them to fetch him home. Or… can you write?”

  “A little. Enough, I daresay. But how do I send a letter to London?”

  “That’s easy. Ask someone who’s going there; a carter taking goods, someone visiting. Pay them to take a letter. Or simply hire a man to go, someone from the livery stables.” She reached over and took Anne’s hand. “Don’t think of going there yourself,” she said quietly. “It’s too far for a woman in your condition and in this weather. And if the news of the child doesn’t bring him home, then your pleading with him yourself won’t do it either. In that case, better no father at all. And if worst comes to worst you can live with me here.”

  Yes, then, she would write. But, another problem; her cousin could neither read nor write and had no ink or paper. Nor would she find such things at home, any more than she would find any sympathy for her plight.

  She went to her other cousin, to Frances Jones, Davy’s wife. They were astonished, shocked and disapproving, but they gave her paper, ink, pen and sealing wax, and Davy knew someone who would take the letter to London. He also knew, on the Stratford grapevine, where William was staying with his friend Dick Field. Anne paid two shillings for her letter’s carriage.

  Then all she could do was wait. It was November, she was nearly three months pregnant, and marriages were forbidden after Advent.

  7.

  He came. Ten days after she had given the letter to Davy Jones, he knocked on her cousin’s door and walked straight into the kitchen. Anne, who was sitting at the table tiredly stuffing a rabbit for supper, simply stared at him.

  “Your letter reached me. As you see.”

  “Will… I… I’m sorry.
”

  He shrugged. “It takes two.”

  “Yes, it does. Won’t you sit down? Would you like some ale?”

  “Thank you.”

  She tossed the rabbit into a pan, then rose and washed and dried her hands. She poured the ale and sat down again. Across the table they looked at each other. She knew what he was seeing: a plump, untidy housewife whose hair needed washing and whose condition unbecomingly showed in the way her dress strained across her breasts and waist. He, on the other hand, looked suave and elegant in a new dark green doublet. He’d had his hair cut and a small line of paler skin showed at the back of his neck.

  “How was London?” she asked inanely.

  “Enjoyable. I went to a lot of plays. No one was in any hurry to take me on as a player.”

  “I see.”

  “Which is just as well, isn’t it.”

  “I suppose it is, but still I’m sorry you didn’t find your dream. Or will you go back and try again?”

  “How can I? You are having my child and we must be married.”

  She had a brief thought of what it must be like to tell a beloved husband you were carrying his child; to see his joy, to be kissed and congratulated, to go together to tell your families.

  “Yes, I think we must. It is yours, you know.”

  For the first time he smiled. “I know. I’ve no doubt about that. And although I had no idea of getting married, there’s no one I’d rather marry.”

  “Kind of you to say so.”

  He leapt up and took three fast, striding paces up and down the room. “It is not particularly kind of me. I wanted to stay in London, for I think I could have made my way there, there are all sorts of things I could have done.”

  “And perhaps still can,” she cut in.

  “What?”

  “You have to marry me for the child’s sake, but you don’t have to stay here. I can live at home or here with my cousin. You can return to London or do what you like.”

  His turn to stare blankly at her. “Is that what you want?”