Francis pulled back. “Death? Is Anne dead?”
Jack threw up his hands. “You just said she was.”
“Did I? No, I never. . . .”
“Wait.” Jack thought back. “You said there were some news I didn’t know: something that would be terrible to hear. What are these news?”
Wolley shook his head. “Jack, I don’t want to be the one to tell you. Maybe you’d prefer to think she had died.”
Jack took a step toward Francis, who took two steps back. “Tell me.”
“All right. All right.” Wolley took a deep breath, then said, “Anne has married Cecil.”
Jack stood stunned. “Married. But she’s married to me. How could she . . . ?”
“I tell you we thought you were dead. And in case you weren’t, Cecil got a writ from the King dissolving your marriage.”
“But. . . . No! I will go to the law. I will take this thing to the courts. Sir George already challenged the marriage, and I won the case.”
Francis said softly, “Jack.” He put a hand on his friend’s shoulder and eased him into a chair. Jack did not resist. Wolley continued, “Sir George is not the King. No court will deny the King’s will.”
“But. . . .” Jack sounded like a frightened child as he asked, “But did she consent to this?”
Francis took one of Jack’s hands and held it in both of his. He spoke tenderly. “She did. I am sorry.”
“But Cecil. That twisted little. . . . And Anne: how could she ...?”
“Anne was thinking of the children. You had died, she thought, or no longer cared about her if you lived. Cecil was a good match for her: an excellent match. She has wealth again, and he has given her scope to use her powers. She is to work on behalf of the kingdom to help the poor. Oh, Jack, I am sorry.”
“But none of this sounds like Anne. How could she love such a man?”
“You should see him with the children. He dotes on them.”
“Children! Did the third one live?”
“Oh, yes. George: his name is George, after her father. This new marriage has reconciled her to him.”
Jack rose, moved uncertainly toward the door, and muttered, “I will kill Cecil. They will put me to death, but first I will kill him.”
“Jack, don’t talk that way.”
“Thank you, Francis. I must go.”
Francis moved quickly, blocking Jack’s way to the door. “You cannot do this. Tell me you will not kill Cecil.”
“Oh, Francis,” he said with menace in his voice, “I will tell you no such thing.” He started to shoulder Wolley aside.
“Wait. Think, Jack. Think what this would do to Anne. She loved you, I am sure. But now she is happy. The children are happy. Let their new father live. And live yourself. You can stay with me in this house as long as you will.”
With a firm sweep of his hand Jack shoved Francis out of the way. He strode ahead, out of the house, making no reply as Wolley called to him. The crisp air braced his lungs. His horse snorted and smoked, eagerly shook her mane, and pawed the ground at his approach. He swung himself into the saddle and rode at a canter toward London.
After a few minutes he reined the mare to a trot. She had already travelled far that day, most of the way with two riders on her back. Not long after he had begun to clop along, hoofbeats came thundering behind him. He pulled his mare to the side of the road to let the horseman pass.
The wait was not long. Horse and rider galloped by in a flash of violet and white, a rush of flying mane, fiery eyes, and snapping velvet. Jack turned his head away as clods of turf rained about him, then turned back to see the horseman disappearing ahead. He recognized the animal: it was Wolley’s Andalusian stallion, all churning hocks and flashing hoofs. Wolley’s lush, purple cloak flapped behind him. Despite Jack’s troubles he sat still for a moment on his whinnying mare to admire the sight.
Well, there was no going to Cecil’s house now. Willing and strong as she seemed, his bay could never overtake Wolley’s Andalusian. Francis would soon be warning Cecil of Jack’s murderous intent. And why shouldn’t he? Anne, Wolley’s favorite cousin, was happy for the first time in years, and the marriage would prove advantageous to Francis. Wolley was fond of Jack, too; Francis would have no desire to see his friend hanged for murder. So, Francis would think, Cecil must be warned.
Despite this setback, Jack kept the mare on the road to London. Somehow he knew his alternative course; he would go to Nick Owen. The man would not likely support a murder plot, but he bore no love for Robert Cecil. Part of Jack knew he could not trust his own bloody intent, and so he needed counsel from a cooler, wiser head. Owen was just the man for that. And Jack knew the house where Owen stayed, having dropped him off there earlier that day.
Anne sat in an apricot-colored dress, nursing little George in Cecil’s library. A handwritten volume bound in calfskin lay open on her lap. The book was a gift from Cecil: a volume of Petrarch’s love sonnets written in the poet’s own hand nearly two centuries before. The book must have cost Cecil more money than Anne and Jack had seen in their marriage. Her mind, though, was not on the book itself or its price but on the poet’s lovely Italian cadences. Restrained in form but heartbreaking in feeling, the verses reflected perfectly Petrarch’s unrequited desire for Laura. “You are my Laura,” Cecil had told her the night he gave her the gift, “but our story has a happier end.”
“After he first met with you,” she had replied, “Jack told me of a sonnet you wrote for me. He called it a cri de coeur, a poem worthy of Petrarch. I have longed to read this poem. Do you have it still?”
“No. When I learned of your marriage I burned the poem.”
She let out a little cry of dismay. “It is lost, then?”
“No. I remember the words. How could I forget them?”
She took his hand. “Might I hear it?”
He nodded, then closed his eyes, breathed deeply, and began:
If but thy lightsome footfall might but pause,
While, halting, limping, I made up the pace
To take thy side; if thou wouldst turn thy face
To mine and not recoil despite just cause,
And were thy touch a balm to mend my flaws,
Or would thy beauty’s gentle force new-trace
Some faintest shadow of thy soul’s sweet grace
Upon this visage bent from nature’s laws,
Then, then, dear Anne, my upright noble form
Which never in this life was blessed before
Could smile on tempests and could laugh at storms.
Thy whispered prayer, enriching one most poor
In spirit, breathing godly strength, ensures
Though trembling still, I dare to ask for More.
Tears had gathered in her eyes as she kissed his hands and said, “Will you write those words for me? I desire nothing so much as that.”
“Of course,” he said. “How could I deny you anything?”
Now Anne had the poem, penned on fine parchment by Cecil in his own hand, rolled into a green-ribboned scroll in her pocket. Constance and Little Jack played with brightly colored wooden blocks on the floor nearby: red, yellow, and blue cubes of finely sanded and painted wood. Walnut, the craftsman who made them had told her. Some of the cubes had one color on one face, another on another.
A patient, smiling, quiet-voiced servant girl named Judith sat with them. Cecil had offered a wet-nurse as well, but Anne had declined. She smiled as Little Jack held up a shining blue block for her to see. When the child turned back to his playing, Anne read another of Petrarch’s poems, switched baby George to the other breast, and turned a page.
The sound of the Andalusian’s hoof-beats had hardly faded when the wind picked up, swirling fallen leaves before it along the road. A jagged flash of lightning. Jack’s mare turned back her ears in anticipation, and a thunderclap split the air. She leapt into a gallop. Jack reined her in, slowed her to a walk, and patted her neck. He leaned forward and told her not to
worry, speaking soothing words to calm her frightened eyes. Then the storm arrived in driving sheets of cold rain, drowning out his voice. His wide-brimmed hat held out the rain for a while, but before long it was soaked and sagging. Gradually the rain faded to a steady drizzle.
Jack plodded along on the mare. The water collected along the road in muddy channels clogged with twigs and the soggy remnants of brown-veined leaves. In the last hour he had arrived with ardent heart at Pyrford Place, discovered his wife had left him, and gathered his resolve to kill his rival. Even this last, desperate hope now felt threadbare, tattered.
And what hope lay with Owen? What counsel could he offer, when Wisdom herself had fled the world, leaving in her place the mere thrusts and counter-thrusts of Power? It now seemed he had set his course on Owen simply because he had nowhere else to go. The dismal day perfectly reflected the soddenness within him. The world’s whole sap had sunk, and he was at one with the God-forsaken earth. The mare’s hoofs sucked the mud with every step.
The thought returned: all his troubles were God’s perfectly just punishments for Jack Donne’s own doings. God had given him chance after chance, and he had rejected them all. His youthful fire to serve the Church, a fire fanned by his Jesuit uncles, he had suddenly doused upon his brother Henry’s death. Reluctantly, with reasons in plenty but with lukewarm faith and feeble embrace, he had turned to the Church of England. There he had proved an unproductive servant. Meanwhile, the loving family of his youth shunned him as an apostate. Only by lying had he now regained his mother’s faith.
The pattern went back ten years and more. He had joined the Inns of Court but left without a law degree. His service in the wars had gone unrequited, and afterward he had spent his time seducing young women rather than fighting for his rightful place with Essex or Raleigh. Then at last the Lord Keeper had seen his talents. But Jack had stolen the man’s niece from under his nose, and in the theft had ruined his young wife’s fortunes along with his own. And Lady Bedford. Despite all his lust for her, Jack had not seduced her; she had seduced him. What Machiavellian purposes she harbored, he could scarcely guess. No doubt she would soon make them known. Finally and most terribly, the love of his life—the dear wife he had neglected even before being cast into prison, even before committing adultery—had thrown in her lot with Lord Cecil. Anne was gone, and so were the children, including a son Jack had never seen. Even Constance and Little Jack would forget altogether the man who had begotten them, always thinking of the twisted little schemer as their father. A few months ago Jack had been sure he could outwit Robertus Diabolus. But Cecil had utterly defeated him. All Jack’s boldness had proved foolishness, all his confidence the Devil’s own snare, all his prayers empty wind.
He stopped his horse, dismounted, and fell to his knees in the mud. At first he did not pray but simply waited. Horsemen, oxcarts, and foot-soldiers passed him by, some of them laughing or muttering, but he paid no mind at all to what they said. None of it mattered. He simply knelt in the mud and waited. At length words began to form within him. It was not as though he heard a separate voice. But he sensed that he was not alone, and the words arose without much effort on his part:
Batter my heart, three person’d God; for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend.
That I may rise, and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend
Your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurpt town, to another due,
Labor to admit you, but Oh, to no end,
Reason your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captiv’d, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,
But am betroth’d unto your enemy:
Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again,
Take me to you; imprison me, for I
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.
He staggered to his feet, aware for the first time of his stiff joints and cold limbs. Whether God had decided to break him down and make him new was not clear, but he felt chastened if not chaste, unfettered if not free. He pulled himself onto the mare. She was cold too, and no doubt hungry. Well, London was not far away, and she would soon be warm, dry, and fed.
Half an hour later the rain had let up. Jack crossed London Bridge and doubled back along the Thames toward the house where Owen stayed in a rented room above a chandler’s shop. He found a stable for the mare nearby. The shop stood just across the palace yard from Westminster Abbey. The towers of the abbey loomed overhead on one side of the yard and the old palace on the other, its grounds sprawling with shops, houses, and inns. Bills advertising this or that performance besprinkled the posts, lean-ribbed dogs sniffed the ground for scraps of food, and dirty children chased one another in their shrill-voiced games. The blind, the half-witted, and the crippled sat here and there against the palace walls, their clack-dishes for alms before them in the dirt. Most of the dishes were empty. Tinkers, bawds, and ballad-mongers hawked their wares.
Before he stepped onto the curb to climb the set of stairs beside the shop, Jack heard someone call his name. He looked around but could not find the source. It was a voice he knew from somewhere, an old woman’s voice. She called again, and this time he looked up. It was Mrs. Aylesbury, his old landlady from his time at the Inns of Court. She leaned out an open window and waved an arthritic hand. “Master Jack! Come up, come up.”
CHAPTER 17
The same set of stairs served for Mrs. Aylesbury’s room and Owen’s. An odd coincidence, unless. . . . Well, Jack would find out soon enough. The two doors at the top of the stairs stood directly across from one another on either side of the narrow landing. Jack had lifted his hand to knock on the door to the left when he heard the thumping of canes and the shuffling of feet on the floor within. He waited. The sound stopped, and the latch slid. The door creaked open. Mrs. Aylesbury stood hooped over two canes supporting her burled hands. A red, tightly woven mantle hung around her shoulders. She tilted her head and looked up at him, a merry smile on her sparse-toothed, wizened face. He embraced her gently, unsure of how much pressure her fragile bones could take.
“Oh, Master Donne,” she said, “it’s wondrous good to see you. I’d know your walk anywhere, as I’ve said often enough before. But how strange you look! Come sit, come sit. I’ve two chairs by the window. One for you and one for me. But you’re wet and cold. And the insides of your belly must be knocking together for want of a supper. But there’s plenty in the larder. The Earl has seen to that, bless him forevermore. He’s seen to it something wonderful. But look at you! It’s a blessing to my old eyes to see you here. I’ve heard all about your time in that prison, you know. The good father told me, and told me all you did to help him escape them pursy-wants. And the Earl! The Wizard Earl himself sought me out at the Savoy and brought me here. His very self. Back a year ago, it must be. Paid for the room, paid for the food, and his man still brings me money, more than enough to live on, as the good Lord knows. Often enough have I tried to send some of the money back, but the Earl won’t have it, says his man. So when I go down to the yard two times a week as I try to do, I give what’s left to the lorn and the lame there. But Master Donne: it’s all ’long of you I live in plenty! The Earl himself told me so, told me it’s all ’long of you. Told me you asked him to look after me, back last winter it was, as I said before. No, this is your chair here, on this side. I’m to sit by the magic glass, as the Earl asked me to do. It’s easy enough to sit here, I’ll warrant you that, and it gives me somewhat to do. And the glass is wondrous magic. It brings people close, all in the instant, as if they stood before you in the air. But how fare you?”
She paused long enough for Jack to say, “Well enough. It’s good to see you.”
He waited for her to sit. She propped one cane against a table, put her hand on the low windowsill, and slowly lowered herself into the chair. On the table,
which Jack saw had been nailed to the floor, stood one of the Earl’s optic glasses. Its base had been fixed to the table with screws, and the brass tube with lenses inside had been mounted in such a way that it could swivel, slide along a rail across the table, and move up or down a vertical rod. Jack smiled at the Earl’s ingenuity.
“This glass, now,” Mrs. Aylesbury said. “There’s magic in it, but Father. . . . Oh, Master Donne, Father told me you came back! Back from your heretic ways. Back to the Old Faith. It’s God’s own doing, it is, as I told Father when he said it to me. It’s Father has told me of your coming back from your heretic ways, same as it’s Father has told me of your time in that prison. And damn the eyes of the pursy-wants that sent you there, and I don’t care a jot who hears me say it, in heaven or hell or earth.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Aylesbury. But—”
“We prayed for you, every morning and every night, you know.”
“I much appreciate that, Mrs.—”
“And the Lord has answered our prayers, and here you sit before me: looking strange and hollow, somehow, though your body seems hale and strong. I misremembered to ask the Lord to send you as your old self. But no matter. I trust the Lord knows what’s best, as I said before.”
“I thank—”
“The prayers of the three of us: Father’s prayers, and mine, and yours, all mingling together, like. Streams joining to make a river. And it’s our prayers as freed you.”
“I thank you for your prayers. You prayed when I could not.”
The old woman looked puzzled. “But why could you not? Did the pursy-wants have your mouth bound?”
“No. These lips could speak, whether in sorrow or attempted prayer. I tried, Mrs. Aylesbury, but at times the words would not come. Or not from the heart, such was my misery and confusion.”
She scoffed and waved a gnarled hand at him dismissively. “You were ever over-precise, Master Donne, like a Puritan o’ Sunday. Why, there’s no trouble to praying. You just . . . pray. You say the words. Or even if you’re struck mute, you think the words, for the Lord can read thoughts. Though I’m of the mind that words is best, for there’s such a deal of thinking in the world nowadays, it must be a great trouble to the Lord to sort it all out. So I’ll warrant words is best. Though I have to say there’s a deal of words about, too. And there’s some folk as do more talking than what they do thinking!” She cackled at her joke.
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