Love's Will

by Meredith Whitford

  People gossiped about that. Walking to market, going to visit friends, Anne saw people murmuring behind their hands, looking slyly. Thought she was so grand, going off to London, and don’t tell me she’s back only because her husband’s busy with the players. I always knew, I always said. Gives herself airs now she’s got money, but what’s a married woman doing home without a husband. No smoke without fire, you know. Yet these same people deferred to her because she had money and her husband was famous in London and had even met the Queen.

  Yet when all was said and done Stratford was home. Probably she’d never go to London again, or anywhere else. Probably William would never come back. So, then, she had better start making something of life in Stratford.

  She spoke to Hamnet’s schoolmasters and, although they were unused to dealing with a woman, they knew enough of her husband’s connections to go warily with her. Yes, they agreed, Hamnet was a clever boy who must go to university. He was eleven now, time to start making such plans. Money was not a difficulty? Just so. Oxford, then, in four years’ time and, meanwhile, he must press on with his Greek.

  The girls? Well, they might not make grand marriages here in Stratford, but dreams of their marrying above their class were just that, dreams. So long as they married good men. Preferably not actors. Judith was happier at home, she had her grandparents and cousins, her uncles and aunts and the farm, and as long as she had Hamnet she was content. That meant problems ahead, perhaps, when Hamnet went away to university, but Anne would cross that bridge when she came to it. Susanna pined for her father but she seemed not to miss London.

  And as for me, Anne thought, I have my friends, I have my family. And now I will have a house.

  She was careful not to ask around too openly on her own behalf. Women ran households and farms and businesses – a woman ran the country – but a woman doing business of this kind, no. So, discreetly, she asked a few questions, she kept her ears and eyes open. And one evening, when she’d been home two months, Joan knocked on her bedroom door and came in with a sparkle in her eyes.

  “News! Maybe only gossip, but you should ask around. Anne, they say New Place is to be sold.”

  Anne sat up and put her book aside. “What have you heard?”

  “Only that, that it’s a chance. People were talking in the market today. You always liked New Place, didn’t you.” Perching on the bed, she sat on Anne’s book. “Sorry,” she said vaguely, turning it over and losing Anne’s place. Then looking at in curiosity, she said, “This is Will’s?” She could read a little, enough for everyday life, but the idea of sitting down and reading a book bewildered her. “The Rape of... of...”

  “Of Lucrece. A classical tale. Yes, Will wrote it.”

  “Oh. I thought it was Venus he wrote of.”

  “That was his first long poem, the one that made his name. This one came the next year and many people think it the finer.”

  “Do you?”

  “I’m not sure. I don’t even know why I was reading it, Joan. New Place? Yes, I always liked it.” Anne clasped her hands around her knees, thinking. The largest house in Stratford. The grandest house. But, “I’d heard it’s in a bad way?”

  “Aye, so they say. It’s been neglected. But perhaps that means Will would get it cheap?”

  “Perhaps. But if it needs a great deal of work it’d be a poor bargain. And there have been murders there. Still…” She had always shared the management of their money. It was her thrift and careful budgeting, as much as William’s determination never to go the way of his father, that saw them with money in hand. She had a hundred pounds free and clear of coming expenses. William was making money hand over fist these days and, together or apart, he would never see his wife and children need for anything. And she deserved a house. Yes. The best house possible. William, too, had talked longingly of New Place.

  “Do you think we could go and see it? New Place. Let’s not tell anyone just yet, but we could look.”

  “Let’s.” Joan gave her a companionable grin. “After all, there’s nothing says we can’t look. And Anne.” Her smile faded into a look of mild discomfort. “I wondered… say no, of course, be frank with me… but I wondered… if you and Will had a house of your own, could I live with you?”

  Afraid of a blunt rejection, afraid she’d gone too far, she wouldn’t meet Anne’s eyes. But Anne was thinking, Why not? She loved Joan. They were friends. The children adored her. And, the only girl in that family of boys, Joan had never had much of a life. She’d known little interest or affection from her mother, who frankly preferred her sons.

  “Of course,” she said roundly. “I’d like it if you did. It would please me to have another woman in the house, a companion.”

  “You wouldn’t mind? You wouldn’t find me dull?”

  “Never.” Anne took Joan’s hand. “I’ve never found you dull, how can you say it?”

  “Well, you’re different now. You’re... you’re...”

  “Lonely,” Anne said, the word bursting out before she realised.

  “Ah. I have wondered. Things aren’t right between you and Will, are they?”

  “No. That is, I’m not sure.” She would have given anything to spill out the whole story, but Joan was William’s sister, and too innocent to hear this story.

  “I’ve seen Will’s plays performed,” Joan said tentatively. “And sometimes I’ve wondered how much is made up out of his head and how much is, well, experience.”

  “Oh, some of each, Joan, some of each.”

  Blushing, Joan stretched her own imagination to the limits. “He’s had another woman? Sorry, that is not something I should ask, is it. I know things are different in London, but…”

  “I really can’t tell you about it, Joan. Let’s say you’re not far off the mark. I think he fell in love.”

  “Men do that, I suppose. Even when they’re married.” Joan fiddled with the ends of her hair. “No wonder you’re unhappy. Is that why you left London this time?”

  “It is. Perhaps I’m making too much of what happened. Perhaps it was nothing but a passing temptation.”

  “Perhaps,” Joan agreed, clearly relieved. “He loves you, Anne, I know that.”

  “Yes he does, in his way. And why did you say that just now, ‘Men do that, even when they’re married’? Why did you say it like that? Joan?” For her sister-in-law had bent her face down against her knees, her shoulders shaking. “Joan? Is there a man? Someone’s hurt you? Let you down? Ah, come here, love, tell me.” She pulled the younger woman against her shoulder, stroking her hair and wiping away the miserable tears.

  “Yes,” Joan said. “There’s a man.”

  “Oh God, he’s not married, is he?”

  “No. No, he’s… You won’t tell Mother?”

  “Of course not,” said Anne, by now really worried. “Joan, are you pregnant? Is there real trouble?”

  “Nothing like that. We’ve never... I would not. It’s just that I love him and he’s gone away.”

  “Forever? He doesn’t care for you?”

  “I don’t know. No, not forever. Probably not forever. I don’t know if he cares for me. But I love him, Anne.”

  “Who is he?”

  “William.” She stopped to blow her nose. Anne stared at her. William? Well, the world was full of Williams. Too full.

  “You don’t mean my brother?” She nearly added “Or yours?” but stopped herself in time. Things like that went on in the country, but they decidedly did not happen to people like the Shaksperes.

  “Willie Hart.” Joan blew her nose again then seemed to see Anne’s complete incomprehension. “I forgot you hadn’t met him. He was here last year. He was here through the winter. He’s a hatter.”

  “And?”

  “And he has fair hair and blue eyes and he’s the handsomest man I ever saw.”

  Shying away from the thought of handsome men with blue eyes and fair hair, Anne asked for more information. Through Joan’s alternating tears and rhapsodi
es she gathered that Master Hart had drifted to Stratford a year or so ago looking for work, had found it, lost it, drifted off again. Leaving Joan broken-hearted behind him. No, they’d never talked of marriage – of anything to the point, so far as Anne could discover – but there had been something. He had said he would come back. He was off to London to look for work. (London again, thought Anne.) But he would rather live in the country. He had said he would come back. He sounded a good-natured, likeable, useless fellow, and Anne looked down an uncomfortably clear vista of years of supporting Joan and this handsome drifter, and the no doubt enormous horde of children they would have.

  “I can see why you love him,” she lied. “But you can make a good marriage, Joan. You’re a handsome girl, your parents have position, Will has money and he’s well-known. Is this passing hatter suitable for you?”

  “I’m twenty-seven this year and no one’s ever offered to marry me. And I love Willie Hart. Though Mother and Father would say what you said. They’d say he’s not good enough for me. But he’s the only man I’ve ever wanted to marry. Oh, Anne, what am I to do?”

  “Wait and see if he comes back. If he does, well, we’ll see. If he doesn’t, then face it, Joan, he doesn’t care for you.”

  “I suppose so,” Joan said sadly. “But he said he’d come back at the end of summer or write to me. Mother met him, you know, and she was spiteful about him. Called him a wastrel. He’s not, Anne, she only said that because she knew I want him. So I thought if I told you… I thought, when Will comes home next, if I told him…”

  Oh yes, thought Anne, he’s going to be enchanted at the thought of his pretty, carefully reared sister throwing herself away on some itinerant hatter with, no doubt, not a penny to his name. And at the thought of finding a dowry for Joan to marry this fellow. But, tactfully, she told Joan that talking to William about it was certainly the thing to do, but to put it carefully. “Not that I know when he’ll next come home,” she couldn’t keep from adding.

  “Anne, I’m sorry, I’d forgotten, talking of myself. Anne, is it really that bad? He might not come back?”

  “Oh, he’ll be back, to see the children, see his family. Back as my husband? Well, let us wait and see. Both of us, Joan, waiting on men called William. But meanwhile, let us see about a house. Tomorrow you’ll come with me. We’ll try to see New Place.”

  “Yes,” said Joan, and managed a smile.

  Brisk talking having failed to persuade the New Place housekeeper to let them in, Anne tried the London method: bribery. A shilling changed hands and they were in. Joan was scandalised. A whole shilling! But Anne thought it money well spent. For she had fallen in love with New Place the moment she stepped inside its iron gates.

  A courtyard at the front. A deep porch. Room for a garden. Ten chimneys twisting up from the slate-tiled roof. Large, glassed windows at the front, more above.

  Inside, however, things were less good. Plenty of rooms, yes, almost too many for their needs, but what a state they were in. Peeling plaster, damp, worm-ridden timber, a kitchen Anne honestly mistook for a pigsty. Filth of every kind wherever one looked. And the tax on ten chimneys would be enormous. And yet… and yet… Clean the whole place, scrub out that kitchen, sweep the chimneys, mend the stairs and the floor-boards, fix the roof. A parlour, a dining room, a servants’ hall, a buttery and dairy, a wash-house, a still-room, a pantry, two more rooms. Upstairs, a room running the width of the house and holding an immense, elaborately carved bed with tattered crimson hangings; what a guest chamber it would make. And at the other end, another large, airy room which Anne’s fancy immediately furnished with a carpet, tapestries, the green silk coverlet she had been embroidering for two years, their faithful bed, the clothes presses they had bought in London, the silver, the looking-glass. She curbed her imagination. All very fine, for a woman living alone. But why not, after all those years of one room in his mother’s house?

  A room for Hamnet, one each for Judith and Susanna. That was grandeur for you, a room for each child. And one for Joan, with or without the famous Master Hart, and other guest chambers, servants’ bedrooms, a storeroom, a room for sewing, a room William could use for books. A family house at last. A gentleman’s house. A house for guests, a house from which to marry one’s daughters.

  And in the garden, mulberry trees, apple trees, walnut and almond trees, a well, peaches growing against a wall, a kitchen garden and a herb garden, a struggling grape vine. Add some brick paths, clear away the undergrowth and cut the grass. Stables and outbuildings. Repair that tumbled wall. Roses…

  “It needs a great deal of work,” Anne said as she and Joan walked home.

  “More than I’d imagined. I’m sorry, Anne. Not such a good idea of mine after all.”

  “Oh but it was, Joan. Indeed it was. I am going to buy that house.”

  “But Anne...”

  “A hundred pounds should cover it. I wonder if they’d take less.”

  “A hundred?”

  “We shall offer sixty and see what they say.”

  “But Anne...”

  “I’ll... we will go up to a hundred, but hope to get it for less considering all the work it needs.”

  “But Anne, what’s Will going to say?”

  “Do you know, Joan, love, I don’t care.”

  Anne confided in her friends the Sadlers about New Place, and although they warned her of the expenses in buying a run-down house, Hamnet Sadler opened negotiations for her with the owner. Nothing was settled as yet, it was all in the manner of vague enquiries, for Anne didn’t want to drive the price up by seeming too eager, but the owner grudgingly agreed to give Master Shakspere first refusal if the house was actually to be sold.

  The first step, Anne thought in satisfaction.

  2.

  After two months at home, Anne moved out to Hewlands Farm with the children. Nothing had yet happened about buying New Place, and she had had enough of people called Shakspere. Besides, she discovered, when your life is falling apart you want the old certainties, the reminders of more innocent times. It was good for the children, too; fresh air after London, healthy exercise, Bartholomew’s four children for company, Bartholomew and his wife as well, out from Stratford where they now lived, to lend a hand. Also good for Anne. As summer wore on and harvest time approached, she worked out in the sun with the rest of her family, and twelve hours a day of hard physical work meant that she fell into bed tired enough to sleep.

  Her family knew something was wrong. They never asked, for they were not people much given to talk, but as summer wore on Anne felt them closing around her, forming a protective rank. She was their daughter, sister, aunt. She belonged to them. They liked William, but if he had done her wrong he would not find her defenceless.

  The day-labourers hired for the harvest took their noontime meal and, with luck, an hour’s snooze under a shady tree, or wandered into the Forest of Arden. The Hathaways and their employees ate indoors. When the bell rang Anne rounded up her children and trudged back to the house with her brothers. The men stopped to sluice themselves under the pump, as much because Mrs Hathaway was fastidious as because they were keen to wash off the sweat-stuck chaff dust. Hamnet joined them, for at eleven he was old enough to want the male camaraderie of work and physicality. Had she married a farmer, Anne reflected, an eleven-year-old son would probably be a fully-fledged farm worker. Missing some school didn’t matter. This summer with his uncles and cousins was doing Hamnet good. He had filled out, he was as brown as a nut and he was healthy. They were all brown. Hot, Anne wished she and the girls could shuck off their clothes and leap under the pump’s cool gush. A wash, in decency, at the basin, would have to do. But tonight, she thought, perhaps we’ll go to the river.

  The meal was ready. In his Puritan way Bartholomew made much of the blessing, until at last everyone could fall to, niceties of service reduced to “Mustard,” or “Pass the salt.” Anne was wondering why her children had to eat as if they were gardening, when the door opened an
d her husband came in.

  He appeared so unexpectedly and was so outlandish in that setting that he could have been some cunning artificer’s apparition from a play. They all jumped and Bartholomew dropped the pipe he had begun to fill with tobacco.

  “Marry come up, it’s Will!” said Mrs Hathaway.

  “Yes, Mother, and good day to you all. Anne, my dear.” He bowed. Hemmed in at the end of the table, Anne couldn’t rise to greet him. But to be cool would look too odd. She smiled rather stiffly, and to her annoyance he blew her a jaunty kiss. Then the children were all over him and Mrs Hathaway was telling the maid to bring fresh plates and more food and everyone was talking at once and no one noticed she didn’t return the kiss.

  How like him, she thought. How very like him to turn up without warning, so sure of his welcome. With a rush of good solid anger she looked him over. He had dressed plainly to come into the country, but next to the other men in their homespun and russet, his sober dark blue suit with its edging of satin was a gorgeous as a courtier’s. He was neat, sleek and expensive. Master Shakspere the playwright and theatre-owner. Master William the adulterer and sodomite.

  She had not until now seen the theatre’s boy, Nol, hovering by the door, still clutching Will’s bags.

  “Nol, how good to see you. Are you well? You look hot. Come, a mug of ale.”

  “Good to see you, Mrs S. But I’ll take me ale in the kitchen, I reckon. Master Will, ’ere’s your gear.”

  “Thanks, Nol. Did someone mention ale? But I must wash first.”

  “Yes indeed,” said Mrs Hathaway. “Hamnet, love, take your father... well, you know where everything is, Will. As for you, boy – Nol, is it? – you are very welcome to my house and you shall have a good dinner, but first we’ll have you out under the pump, thank you very much. Fleas, in my house! Come along.”

  “Weren’t expecting him, eh?” Bartholomew murmured to Anne as they went out.

  “No.”

  “And not too pleased to see him?”