Love's Will

by Meredith Whitford

“Maybe, maybe. That’s no comfort. I bore his children, I believed in him when he was a dream-starred boy, I helped him. We’ve been married thirteen years and more. We are friends and companions. But he loves this woman. Unhappily, perhaps, but it is still love. Of a kind. Harry, he’s written poems to her, about her.”

  “Has he.” Harry’s voice shook. “Love poems?”

  “Poems about love. Poems of lust, love, hatred, guilt. Fine poems, but of such misery and shame. I saw his copies of all the poems he wrote you, and I can tell you he loves you far more than he does this woman.”

  The silence went on for some time before Harry said dully, “Does he write you poems too, Anne?”

  “I’m only his wife, so no. Or only once, when we first met. To prove he could write.”

  “Oh, Anne. Well, to answer your question, the woman calls herself Mistress Leigh. A musician. An educated, travelled woman, a whore in all but name. She’s a Scot and I suspect her of spying for King James, or perhaps on the people who are for King James as our next monarch.”

  “Beautiful?” One of the poems had spoken of dun skin and wiry hair. Not at all a good poem, she’d thought.

  “In her way, she is beautiful sometimes.”

  It was like a sword through Anne’s heart, but she said, “Tell me. Make me see her.”

  “Black eyes and black, dense, curling hair. Skin that is sallow or like honey or like clotted cream. Of middling height with a slender waist and rounded hips and a bosom to cushion a man’s head. A low voice for a woman, and she sings very well, and plays. She has a mouth made for kissing, and for less proper things.”

  “Beautiful, then,” Anne said in a dead voice. “And plainly you desire her too.”

  “Yes. Yes I do. Most men would.”

  “And she has youth, I suppose, as well as Will’s heart.”

  “She’s not so youthful. No younger than you, I would guess. I doubt she has his heart. What she has is his prick and his balls in her tender little hand. She is a bitch in heat, and if Will thinks he’s her only lover he’s mistaken. Anne, it won’t last. He’ll sicken of her.”

  “He hasn’t yet, and he has had her for a long time, I think.” Her voice broke and she struggled against tears. “What do I do, Harry?”

  “Tell him you know. Put your foot down. Say you’ll leave him if he doesn’t give her up. He would, if it meant losing his family.”

  “Probably he would. But then he’d resent me, and she would be his lost love, the love of his life that he couldn’t have, for duty’s sake. I want to see her.”

  “What would that achieve?”

  “I don’t mean I want to confront her. Certainly I am not going to beg her to give me my husband back. I just want to see her. To see what she has that holds him in such thrall. Because none of his others have so held him.”

  Harry blinked. “He has had others?”

  “Of course he has. Did you really think...?. You did. What did you think, Harry? That he was a faithful husband until you made him recognise that part of himself that could love another man? Me for duty, you for love? And nothing else?”

  “Well...”

  Taking pity, Anne said, “I doubt any of the others were for more than convenience. But this woman I want to see. Just to see. Can you arrange it?” It didn’t occur to her that he would think it an outrageous request or that he would take offence at her asking. He had as much malice in him as any other man. As any other thwarted lover.

  “I can. I shall invite people, one evening soon. I shall hire her to sing. She has a lovely voice. It will not be a respectable evening.”

  “None of this is respectable.”

  “No. Well, I shall let you know when. I shall send someone for you. You can get away at night?”

  “My husband is not likely to notice that I am not virtuously at home, is he?”

  Four days later William mentioned in an off-hand way that he would be out that night, possible quite late. Theatre business. Of course, said Anne.

  Just after he had taken himself off to the playhouse, a man in the clothing of an upper servant but with none of the usual livery badges to show whom he served, brought Anne a message. Tonight. Ten o’clock. Dress finely.

  She asked Edmund to stay in to watch the children. A sick friend needed her, she said. Edmund was too young to wonder why she should wash her hair and put on perfume to nurse a sick friend. Nor did he notice that under her cloak she was wearing a new, very expensive and fashionable dress suitable for a party.

  Prompt at ten the manservant returned. He had brought a horse, for they had to go clear across the city to Holborn Hill. Without a word he helped Anne into the pillion seat, as if escorting cloaked woman to secret assignations was all in the day’s work. Perhaps it was. At Southampton House he took her to a back gate and showed her through a garden to a door and then up a stair to a room that held nothing but two chairs and a table on which stood a wine jug. From the other side of the house she could hear music, laughter, the sounds of voices.

  After nearly half an hour, so close as Anne could judge, the door opened and Harry came in. “They are both here,” he said without preamble. “Are you ready?”

  “Yes.”

  “Put this on.” It was a mask, a feathery bird’s face. “It is that sort of party. Not everyone is masked, but many find it convenient. Take your cloak off.” She did so, and he nodded approval of her dress and handed her a short satin cape. He himself was dressed very finely, more elaborately than she had ever seen, in blue and cloth of silver and velvet, with diamond buttons, a sapphire earring, two sapphire rings on his hands. It made her aware of his rank and wealth and of how thoroughly she was out of her depth in every way.

  “That woman is about to begin her performance,” he said. “We’ll go down and mingle. Best if you stay with me, but if you need to go away, come back up to this room and ring the bell. The man who brought you will take you home.”

  “You are taking good care of me. Thank you.”

  “Somehow,” he said, “it seems the least I can do.”

  It was not at all a respectable party. Anne recognised a few of the more raffish theatre players, and several men she had seen at Court or who were famous men of Harry Southampton’s rank. Anyone in London would have known them. A lot of the women and the prettier boys were obviously prostitutes, here with clients or lovers or plying for hire. Incense and chypre hung heavy in the air, blending with the smoke from candles and torches, tobacco smoke, the smell of wine and food. A red-haired man, his arm around a louche boy whose eyes were blank with drink or some sort of drug, spoke familiarly to Harry and ran his eyes in automatic appraisal over Anne. Safe behind her mask, she eyed him boldly. Harry flung his arm about her waist and muttered something that made the other man wink and go away.

  “Come through,” Harry said softly and took her hand to lead her into the next room.

  A woman was playing the virginals, singing to her own accompaniment. A lovely voice indeed. An odd face, not beautiful at all, too dark and scornful, all eyebrows and rouged lips. Her dress was ice-blue satin, expensively trimmed and cut very low over enormous breasts. She was not very young, not very anything.

  Harry thrust a glass of wine into Anne’s hand. “Look to your left.”

  Sipping, smiling falsely, she did so.

  William was one of the twenty or so men listening to the music. He stood against a wall, leaning back, looking half-away from the woman at the virginals, beating time with his fingers and drinking wine. Just another of the crowd appreciating good music. But Anne had been married to him for so long that she knew every tiny shift of his stance, every trick of his eyes and line of his body, of his mouth. She knew desire and hope and self-disgust when she saw it in him. She was glad about the self-disgust. She wondered if he knew that the woman didn’t love him.

  The song ended. There was a polite patter of applause, and the woman took out a new sheet of music. She said something Anne didn’t quite catch, something about a new song
, written especially for tonight, and as she spoke her eyes moved around the room until she saw Harry. She smiled, for him alone, and Anne saw that she was beautiful after all. William saw that smile and stiffened. Harry gave him a cheerful wave, and after a moment he too smiled. Not very happily. His eyes moved over the dark-haired, green-clad woman in the bird mask beside Harry, and narrowed in something close to recognition, then he shook his head as if laughing at a ridiculous idea. Then he looked back to the woman at the virginals.

  Halfway through the song Anne moved smoothly away. Harry followed her, back up the stair to the room she had first come to. Glad of the mask, she said, “I have seen enough. I shall go home now.”

  “I too have seen enough. Odd that I did not really know until now.”

  “Well, our clever wordsmith could explain that and, indeed, has done so. So true a fool is love that in thy will, though you do anything, he thinks no ill. One of his poems. I’m sorry, Harry.”

  He made an indeterminate sound and, before she could move away, he reached out and very gently took off her mask.

  “I thought you were crying.”

  “No. I knew already, you see. All that’s new to me is what she looks like. I can see that she has beauty but she’s nothing. Nothing. And I still cannot compete. But I knew that. And do you know, it would be easier to bear if she were a true beauty or very young. But then, of course, he might truly love her.”

  “You think he doesn’t?” he said, with hope springing in his voice.

  “It is what you said the other day – lust, and guilt, and love of a kind, but nothing true or good.”

  Harry stared at her. The room was lit only by two candles and the light glittered on his eyes, making them as vivid as the jewels he wore.

  “What will you do?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Pay him back in his own coin. Settle for revenge. Take a lover.”

  Anne stared at him incredulously. “Oh, a fine sensible idea, exactly what I’d expect of a man. Who in the wide world would want me? No, I have a better idea. Harry, my lord, seduce that woman.”

  4.

  The door was latched but unbolted. It was the usual arrangement. In went William, smelling his mistress’s perfume in the air. He heard her voice in the bedroom and was pulling off his clothes as he went to her. She was sitting up in bed, naked, her back to him. She didn’t turn to greet him. She often didn’t. Talk was for later, in the act of love, for the lewd demands and praise of lust. He dropped his doublet and breeches on the floor and slid up behind her, admiring the lovely lines of her back, sliding his hands around to clasp her breasts.

  And saw the man under her.

  A man whose auburn-gold hair spread across the mattress, unpillowed, for the pillows were underneath his hips. A man whose long, slender fingers clasped the woman’s hips, moving her upon his shaft. William had seen that hair spread like this so many times, had felt those elegant fingers clasping his body.

  “Harry!” Standing like a fool in his shirt, his engorged prick wilting, his heart breaking.

  And Marian-Maria-Mara turned her head and smiled at him and said, “There is room enough for three, Will.”

  “No.” But he had never seen other people coupling, and he began to rise again.

  “Yes,” she said and reached for him. This was the nadir of lust, the expense of spirit in a waste of shame, moving onto that bed, knowing he wanted to and sliding down beside them, touching them where he could, kissing where and whom he could and taking his mistress where and how he could, and taking Harry, being taken, all in a tangle of limbs and hands and mouths. Hating it all but powerless to resist.

  Afterwards he was the first to leave the bed. He dressed in silence. The woman was sleeping. Anyone else would have pretended to be, out of shame, but he knew she had simply fallen asleep like a child after play. Harry lay there, watching him.

  “Was this the first time, Harry?”

  “No.” With something close to pity he said, “I had only to ask, Will.”

  “I’m sure. I loved you, Harry.”

  “I know it. And I love you. It’s not in the past, for me. When all’s said and done, she’s only a woman. A jade for common hire.” He stretched out his hand, and to his own surprise William took it, desperate for the warm, familiar clasp.

  “I love you still,” he said uncertainly and kissed the boy’s lips. “But for now this is farewell.”

  “Make it au revoir. For we do love each other, my dear.”

  “I know. Just now I wish it were otherwise,” said William, and left.

  He went home. There was nowhere else to go. Home. To his wife. To Anne. To his children. To Anne. He resolved to tell her everything and beg her for forgiveness. Anne would understand. She always did.

  But at home he found Edmund sitting alone in the parlour, eating bread and cheese. Seeing his brother, he stood up and strode angrily across the room.

  “If you’re looking for your wife, William, she is not here.”

  “What?”

  “You dare ask ‘what’ in that mincing tone!” Edmund gripped him by the collar of his shirt. He was shaking with rage, and William noted, bemused, that the boy was now as tall as he. “You rutting swine. And you with a wife like Anne!”

  “Where is she?”

  Edmund hit him very hard across the face and dropped him contemptuously into a chair. “She’s gone home. And who can blame her? She’s found out, William. She knows what half London’s been trying to keep from her. About your mistress.”

  “Oh Christ. Oh Christ.” William sank his head in his hands, trying not to cry.

  “She left a letter,” Edmund said. “Which is more than I would have done in her place. You piece of shit, Will. She was crying – or no, she was trying not to cry. So as not to upset the children. Your children.”

  “Where’s this letter?”

  “In your room, I believe. I’m going out now. I only waited in to have the pleasure of telling you. I’ve nowhere else to live yet, but I daresay I can lodge with one of the other players. I think I prefer not to stay under your roof. Convenient, eh? You can bring your tart here whenever you like now. Fuck her in Anne’s bed, why don’t you?”

  “No. No. Edmund, don’t go. Come back.” But he was speaking to a closed door and an empty room.

  He sat there for a long time then wearily climbed the stairs, throwing off his clothes as he went. In the bedroom he poured cold water into the basin and washed. Then, naked, he went slowly across the room to the table under the window. Anne’s letter lay there, folded twice and with his name written across it. Beside it were all the poems from his lock-box. Anne had laid them out in order, from the first he had ever written Harry, to the latest, the one written two days ago when he’d thought he knew was misery and self-hatred were.

  At last he unfolded Anne’s letter. She spelt by guess, but her message was admirably clear. She knew of his affair with that dark woman and could no longer bear to live with him. She had gone home to Stratford, taking the children, who knew and must know nothing of why she went. She would prefer not to see him while he was in thrall to that woman. Divorce was impossible, but they could live apart. She trusted him to send money for the children. If he wished to come home it must be on her terms now.

  She had signed it, Anne Shakspere.

  Part Seven

  1596

  1.

  Anne had gambled, and as spring became summer she knew she had lost. She never heard from William. He sent a gift for Susanna’s thirteenth birthday in May, and money, but no letter, not even a verbal message. Night after night Anne lay awake, knowing she should have gone about things differently. William loved her as best he could, and she should have been content with that. She should have turned a blind eye to his affair with that woman. She should have stayed and waited for it to end. After all, she had swallowed his affair with Harry, so why should she choke on his loving a woman? But that was exactly the point. His love for Harry might have had i
ts element of desire but it was outside the realm of man-woman dealings. That woman was a rival, as Harry was not. She had made Will into a stranger. All I have, Anne told herself, is my dignity and our children. But the better part of dignity might have been to ignore the whole matter. I didn’t have to make enquiries about her. I didn’t have to force the issue. And if it comes down to mere adultery, well, there are worse sins. Yet it seemed important to draw a line and say, “This I will not take.”

  And in clinging to her dignity – or was it only hurt? – she had lost her husband. Probably he was with that woman all the time now. Perhaps they shared a house as well as a bed. Perhaps he and Harry shared her. Perhaps he and Harry laughed together as Harry revealed their little plot. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.

  She had no one to confide in. Her friends were William’s friends too. And she had not quite realised until now how much she had changed in these last few years. Stratford was home, and she loved it, but it was a little, provincial country town and few of its inhabitants had ever been more than five miles away. Or wanted to. Here in Stratford, the people Anne had met and known in London were merely names, unreal people held in awe for their position and wealth. Government and politics were mystifying things that went on far away, affecting ordinary people only if a monarch died or there was war. Here, people rose at dawn and went to bed at nightfall, and if that was the life Anne had once accepted without question, now it was different. She was different. She was a woman of the world now.

  Oh, there was fornication, adultery, drunkenness, feuding, in Stratford. London held no patents on sin. Country men raped their daughters or sisters and, in one notorious local case, their sheep. They sodomised each other. Women beat and hurt their children. But after London, even these vices lacked a certain spice. Yet spice was something Anne felt she could do without. She had surfeited on spice, and look where it had got her. Back where she started, but with the aftertaste of wilder things on her tongue. And with no husband.