The Tutor: A Novel

by Andrea Chapin

  “Edward, my Edward, my dear Edward, is dead.”

  16

  atharine slept briefly that night, a sleep that seemed more a single breath, a gasp really, than true slumber. Outside her window, in the gray light of dawn, the first snow had fallen, and the hills and fields were now hidden under white. Where were the noises of the day? Had Edward’s death quieted even the birds? Silence, sad and still, rang through his house and his land. For death has come up into our windows, was writ in the Bible, in Jeremiah. And indeed it had.

  Her grief was twofold. She had lost sight of where she and Will ended and where Venus and Adonis began. She felt as if she were living within Venus and that, in a way she could not quite—or rather did not want—to grasp, Will was encouraging this metamorphosis, I should just take you here and now. At the dawn of such a dreadful day, she was shocked to find herself thinking of Will when she should have been praying for dear Edward, but she was having difficulty distinguishing between her loss of Edward and her longing for Will. How odd. How horrid. She was a ship, foundering; she had to find a way to buoy herself. With such sharp and unforeseen shifts in the current of the family, now was no time to drown.

  Katharine sat by her small window. With the sun behind the snow clouds, much of the land and the sky looked almost blue. What was out there, beyond the beyond? Endless white? Infinite loss? Eternal grace? Edward was one of God’s flock: he had been pious, he had been faithful, he had believed in life everlasting. If, at the evening of life, one was judged on one’s love, then Edward was now resting in peace. The Bible, in Hebrews, said: And as it is appointed unto men once to die, and after this the judgment. Katharine would pray for Edward, she would pray for his soul, but she had no fears for his final destiny—he was heaven-bound.

  A prior had posted a letter with the sad news an hour after Sir Edward’s passing. As Sir Edward was failing, with a fever that could not be quenched and his breathing loud and labored, he had asked for a cot at the nearby monastery, saying if he could not be at home surrounded by his loved ones, he would die surrounded by those who had dedicated their lives to God and His love. In the days preceding his death, Sir Edward had thrashed about and cried out, but on the final evening, the prior wrote, his body was calm, and with several brethren kneeling next to his cot he had prayed for many hours, his words slow, even and true—until his voice was spent. He had been alert but unable to speak when the priest anointed him with the sign of the cross upon his brow, gave him the Eucharist and performed the last rites. His eyes had been open and soft and full of peace. During the night’s watch, the priest at his bedside understood that Sir Edward had departed out of the miseries of this life into the joys of paradise. For his repose, the sacrifice of salvation was to be offered, and at a signal from the bell, the brethren entered his room, prostrated themselves in prayer and began to say masses and to offer earnest petitions in commemoration of the blessed Edward.

  “Whether we live or die, we are the Lord’s,” Edward had oft quoted from the Bible. He had been the Lord’s in life, and now he was the Lord’s in death.

  Katharine had expected Edward to return to Lufanwal within a year, that the tension with the queen would settle, that other battles would replace her Roman paranoia. In the months since Edward’s leaving, Katharine had thought him away but not gone, for Ned had been away much longer than Edward. She had not received one letter from Edward, but she supposed his duty in writing was to Matilda and their children. Katharine had not written to him, thinking it proper to wait for a letter from him and then to reply.

  In Edward’s library was a German book called Totentanz, Dance of Death. When Katharine was a child she pored over the macabre woodcuts. The whole of society from the Pope down to the common laborer was represented in this work; grave subjects led captive by grotesque and mocking Death. Sir Edward, ever steadfast in his faith, had been preparing for death his whole life. From the prior’s account, it seemed that in Edward’s final hours he was not among the reluctant followers of the jig-maker Le Mort. Noble Edward, kind Edward, was at the end accepting and in harmony with God.

  With Advent scarce begun, there would be no need to force a fast this season, for sorrow and lamentation would kill off all appetite. Katharine planned to spend the morning praying in the secret chapel. Surely no priest from a neighboring estate would venture forth; the last time one did, he was slaughtered and his head stuck on a pike.

  Molly was at the door early, with kind words of sympathy and also with a note from Will. He again asked how Katharine fared, but now the news of Sir Edward’s death was upon his page. Katharine could feel Will’s urgency, yet she advised Molly to make no response. For her heart was overflowing with chaos.

  Katharine sent Molly off with a note to Isabel, asking if she would meet her in the hidden chapel to pray. Then she sat down to write a letter to Will. She usually wrote letters easily, but today she wrote, crossed out, rewrote, then tore up the paper. She started with a description of how she was taking on the inmost life of Venus; then she changed the beginning to how her grief over Sir Edward’s death, combined with the peculiar nature in which she felt she inhabited Venus, or Venus inhabited her, made continuing with Will impossible. If there was any bewitching going on at Lufanwal, she wrote, it was his poem that was casting spells, not the poor hags who’d spent the night. She tried to write without emotion, without passion, from the outside of her heart, not from within. She tried to sound like a man.

  You are an exceptionally talented and clever writer, a diamond of brilliant cut, and you must write, you must write forever, for eternity. You are beyond nimble in word and thought, and now is the time for the poets of our land to be as brave and daring as Drake, Raleigh, Hawkins and Gilbert sailing the waters of the globe. Our poets have embarked on a wondrous expedition—to fare forth in our own language that which has heretofore been the terrain of other cultures. Our dearly departed Sir Edward once told me that the library at one of our great universities holds thousands of books but only thirty of them are in English! You have a grand future of exploring worlds and charting tales in our native tongue.

  Minutes before the end of our last time together I came undone, and I am still trying to comprehend it. To be more precise, I felt I had turned into one of those porcelain figures traded from the East, and that I might, given the lightest tap, shatter into a thousand pieces. I wept for hours and this weeping came upon me before I heard the sad news of our dear Edward’s passing. As you go deep into your writing of ‘Venus and Adonis,’ I seem to be diving deep into another tale, the tale of us. Must I, I ask myself, take on the feelings that live within the walls of your story? Do you know the Latin word vulnerabilis, from vulnerare, “to wound,” and vulnus, “wound”? As you become more vulnerabilis in your writing, more open, more able to penetrate your characters, I seem to become more vulnerabilis in my attachment to you . . .

  In the final draft of her letter, she did not call for a termination of their meetings—for she had already done that once and capitulated quickly. This time she simply told him of her twisting spirit, and then sealed the paper with wax for Molly to deliver.

  Katharine dressed in a simple dark bodice and skirt and pulled her hair into a black caul. After Molly went off clutching the letter, Katharine sat back down on her bed. She wondered if the family’s faltering faith had failed Edward. The snow had stopped falling, but winds stirred the crystals into a white swirl. Then, out of nowhere, a large flock of blackbirds fell from the sky. A blizzard of birds. Crows or starlings, she could not tell. But it was not the rooks returning. The air was thick with black flapping wings. The flock grew and grew until hundreds, maybe thousands, of black birds started to settle on the fresh snow—trimming the white-lined branches with black and carpeting the white meadow in darkness. They made a roar. What mythic gusts had brought these strange guests to this stopping place? Were they messengers? Be ready for you do not know at which hour the Lord will come, the
Bible said in Matthew. Be ready.

  In the old days, if one’s kin died, the head of the house would have ordered the ringing of the bells before the funeral. Katharine waited for the chimes, for the message to be rung from their hill to every hill and valley in the region, but that clarion call never sounded. Lufanwal seemed enveloped in the strange silence of forgetting. After Sir Edward left, the secret chapel was rarely used. Katharine herself did not frequent the inner chamber, for the cramped windowless space felt more a coffin for the dead than a sanctuary for sacraments.

  Built between the great hall and a stairway, the chapel was indeed well hidden. What seemed the back of a grand fireplace was in truth a large movable stone that led to a short passage and a door, then a second door inches behind the first. The doors were Katharine’s height; only the taller members of the house had to stoop to pass through. She expected to meet other family members going into the chapel or already in there on their knees in prayer. Had the scant months of Edward’s absence truly extinguished the family faith? Was it so flimsy it could float away so swiftly—paper rather than stone?

  Katharine pulled the second door open. The candles were lit and incense sweetened the air, but the scene before her was not what she had expected. Ursula, her blond hair down, her bodice open, her smock undone or maybe torn, her breasts bare, was on her knees holding on to Harold’s legs, sobbing and crying out to him. Harold was dragging the tiny Ursula with him as he moved toward the door.

  “You cannot cast me away,” she pleaded. “I love you, Harold dearest, I love you and you love me, you love me, Harold! You told me again and again and again how you loved me. I am your little La. I am your pet. I will be good, I promise. I will be perfect. You are my king. Pray, my love, say you will not leave me. I cannot live within this house without you. It will be a prison without you. I will perish . . .”

  When Harold noticed Katharine, he shoved Ursula with all his might and strode toward the door. “I came to pray for our dearly departed Edward and she has preyed upon me. She is stricken. Quite possibly mad,” he said. “She has always been fragile, as everyone in this house knows. These spells are coming upon her with haste and frequency. My brother would do well to keep her confined to her room.”

  “’Twas the witches have cast a spell on you, Harold! Curse the day I gazed upon their foul faces. First Guinny, then Sir Edward and now your love! All dead, dead, dead.”

  Harold was out the door before she finished repeating the last “dead.” Ursula, half naked, was trying to stand and go after him. “Harold,” she yelled. “Harold!”

  Ursula looked bloodless and pale, her chest sunken, her cheeks pinched. Katharine rushed to her and wrapped her own silk shawl around Ursula’s bony shoulders. Ursula was silent, tears sliding down her face. She lifted her gaze to Katharine.

  “I have come unmoored,” Ursula said evenly, her usual singsong voice gone. “I have come unmoored,” she repeated, her eyes wide with fear.

  “You’ve had a scare,” said Katharine.

  Ursula allowed Katharine to pull her to her feet. “I am a whore,” she said.

  “We have all been staggered by the news of Sir Edward. Let me take you to your chamber.”

  “The news of Edward did not stagger me,” Ursula responded quite frankly. “The man thought me a fool, and he was right.”

  “Do tie your smock and hook your bodice,” said Katharine.

  “I am a fool and I am a whore,” said Ursula. And those were the last words she spoke to Katharine that night. She would not fasten her clothes, so Katharine adjusted the shawl around her. Ursula was silent, her eyes dry, as Katharine led her slowly up the stairs.

  —

  Molly found Katharine as she was leaving Ursula’s chamber and handed her a note without saying anything. She didn’t have to; the slant of the lettering announced the author.

  “Gramercy, Molly. Have Matilda or Isabel been down?”

  “No, my lady. Isabel is with her mother, but they have not come down.”

  Katharine could not return to the hidden chapel, she had no stomach for it. She called for a servant to light a fire in the library. When she reached the room the air was chilly, the wood just lit. Edward’s old tattered robe still hung on the wall, as if he were indeed returning any minute, as if he were entering the room, putting it on and settling with book in hand by the fire. Katharine had witnessed him thus hundreds of times, and as the years passed, the gold and red brocade had worn smooth in patches, loose threads dangling from the hem, and there he sat—his hair gone white, his cheeks the color of apple skin, his eyes minerals carved from ancient rocks. Katharine took the old robe off the hook and pulled it on. After all these months it still smelled of Edward, of earth and moss, of drying leaves. She went to her favorite chair by the window and sat, wrapped deep within his cloth.

  The blackbirds of the morning had departed. The sun was now burning through the clouds, melting the newly fallen snow. Katharine listened to the dripping from the gutters and the eaves. Mourning would displace merrymaking this coming Christmastide: melancholy would displace mirth. The snows had arrived early, before the first of December. Sir Edward had breathed his last breath on November 17, Accession Day, the holiday that commemorated the queen’s succession to the throne. Edward always said that part of him had died the day Elizabeth took the scepter, for there was no doubt of her plans to advance her father’s church, not the religion from Rome of her half-sister Mary Tudor or her cousin Mary Stuart.

  Katharine opened Will’s note: How fares my noble lady? he demanded.

  Tell me. If I were not the lowly sometime tutor sometime player of this great house, I would rush the doors, much as a knight in battle, find you, sweep you up and ride off with you. Your note resounds in my ears, your line “the tale of us” still fresh upon my lips, for I have oft repeated it since my eyes first landed upon it. I have stayed separate this morn, aloof, for I know you are behind that stone and timber, embedded within walls of grief. How I wish I could come to comfort you, Kate. I am, on this still and saddled morn, at my table, quill in hand, with Venus and Adonis, limbs linked, stretched upon the grassy mead before me. I am but a dry cloth, yet with your clever comments, I mop and shine, and try my best to bring out the luster of my frail and humble verse. You, Kate, give me the strength to continue with my poesy, make my bones feel sturdy when they do falter and creak. You must use that might now to support what is surely crumbling, a noble family made old and weak by such young sorrow . . .

  Her heart, burdened by the news of Edward, was at the same time brimming. She was thrilled by Will’s words. Here finally was proof of his feelings for her. Was this not love? She closed her eyes and rested her head on the back of the chair, continuing the story he had begun, of his sweeping her up and riding off with her. Where did they go? To a cottage deep within the wood, where the snowdrifts reached past the windows, the smoke from the chimney curled endlessly into the sky and their footprints scratched a trail, like ink on paper, through the snow. After all the tilting of touch these last months—they finally set their lances aside and, as when he embraced her after the dance, he embraced her again in the snowcapped cottage in front of the fire, and this time there was no haste to part.

  Will was, Katharine imagined, as precise and powerful in his movements with her as he was with his words. She had no qualms about giving herself to him. She was surprised but not troubled by her lack of guilt. Her feelings for him transcended her beliefs. Giving her body to him was neither lewd nor a sin: the only sin she could foresee was not to give themselves to each other. With the same hands she had watched countless times dip a quill and dash a line of words across a page, he did finally unlock her: take the cloak from her shoulders, unhook her bodice, untie the silk string of her smock. Will’s fingers lightly circled her, his lips on her skin, his tongue on her skin. His warm hand reached under her skirt, under her petticoat. Was her back against the door? A
wall? Or were they lying down now in front of the fire? She had these years been forgetful of her body, but now she felt lush, her juices ready.

  She felt his fingers meet her moistness, and she gave a little cry, but he did not stop until he hit the mark again, and this time she groaned. Then he pulled off his doublet and his breeches, or maybe she pulled them off, and he pushed into her, invaded her, for now every muscle, every limb, every inch of her skin, felt him inside her, rocking and thrusting, and she loved the invasion, the occupation; she loved his army, all of it . . .

  She opened her eyes quickly as the door swung open, and she sank farther into the chair, hoping whomever had entered would be blind to her.

  “I beg pardon. I thought the room empty at this hour.” Mr. Smythson bowed. “On this sad day,” he added. He stayed close to the door, a leather bag full of rolled parchments slung over his shoulder. He still wore his riding cape; his breeches and boots were wet with mud and melting snow. His dark curls were longer than before, but they were as untamed as ever. There was nothing coiffed about this man, but he was not exactly careless in his form, either.

  Katharine could think of nothing to say. She stayed in her chair, wrapped in Edward’s robe. She imagined she appeared slumped in a swoon from grief.

  “I was sorry to hear the news upon my arrival, very sorry,” Mr. Smythson said. “I lost my father a year back and I still recall his voice every day. I understand.” He had not moved from his spot by the door. He pulled his bag off, then changed his mind and threw the strap over his shoulder again.

  Katharine was surprised by Mr. Smythson’s candor. She felt oddly mute and tried her best to pull herself from her imagined scene with Will into the present moment.

  “I lost my wife fifteen years back when John was born, and she comes to me, even now, not when I try to conjure her but in the midst of the small details of the day. I might be sipping a mug of ale or stamping a seal or measuring stone or . . . I know not . . . walking across a courtyard, and there she is.”