The Tutor: A Novel

by Andrea Chapin

  “I hope it read as though it poured from my heart.”

  “Thou art, now, master of your art,” she said.

  “Ahhhhh!” he exclaimed, rising and walking to the fire. He bent down and warmed his hands, then stood. “Kate . . .” he said, turning to her.

  She was part thrilled, part terrified. “Yes,” she said.

  “I crave your pardon for making you wait here in the cold. I took my horse, fine Bess, yonder into the hills and the forest where the drifts are still deep. We jumped a fallen tree, a frozen creek, a pile of snow-covered stones. Bess is swift and sure of hoof. I took the whip to her and urged her on and on, faster and faster. Then I let her go, let her discover the pleasure of the speed. She met no resistance from the reins. She did not falter. She did not slip. Bess finally stopped on her own accord, then headed back to the barn. I was surprised when the sun started to drop, for I had not realized we had been out so long.”

  “Is she so named after our queen?”

  He bowed his head in acknowledgment. “She is my queen.”

  “How fortunate for you to have a Bess you can subject, whilst being the subject of a Bess,” said Katharine.

  “Both are beasts, methinks,” he said with a chuckle. “In sooth, you think this work my best?”

  “In sooth, you let go the reins of your rhymes and found pleasure in the speed, for you wrote these many words with such alacrity. My quill did mark a word here and there, but I did not drench your pages with circled words or whole lines cut or questioned.”

  “Thou art no longer the surveyor perched upon a rock?” Will stood before her.

  “I have not, quite yet, relinquished my mapmaker’s quill.”

  “My sweet Kate, I would still be on the first line, perhaps the first word, of this humble poem if it were not for you.” He was down on one knee. “I am, like Mars to Venus, your servant. You have mastered me.”

  He was a suitor looking up at her from below. “I will write a sonnet for you,” he said, jumping up. “Verse will be my next gift to thee.”

  Katharine smiled.

  “Let us look at what you found,” Will said, pulling open the pages. He sat next to her on the bench. He leaned over her arm, looking at his verse. “What’s this?” He pulled the page with the stanza she had written in front of him. “’Tis verse, Katharine.” He called her by her given name. He read it aloud:

  “Is thine own heart to thine own face affected?

  Can thy right hand seize love upon thy left?

  Then woo thyself, be of thyself rejected;

  Steal thine own freedom, and complain on theft.

  Narcissus so himself himself forsook,

  And died to kiss his shadow in the brook.”

  He looked at her, puzzled.

  “’Tis only a thought I had for Venus, that she touches on Ovid’s Narcissus, in her quest for Adonis’s . . .” She stopped.

  “Adonis’s what?”

  “Lips,” she said.

  “’Tis well done, Kate.” He had lost his smile. “’Tis most well done.” His tone was stiff.

  She wanted to make him supple again. “You may have it,” she said.

  They were silent.

  “Will,” Katharine began, “I have never waded in such waters before.” Her words sounded solemn. She wanted to reprise them in a lighter tone, but it was too late. She could not look him in the eyes, but focused on a dark burl in the table.

  “The waters of verse-writing?” he asked.

  “No,” she said. “Of us.”

  “Oh,” he said. “‘The tale of us.’”

  “I have never waded in such waters before,” she repeated. “I have had a husband. I have had suitors. But I have never had this. My mind is most confused. I know not what to do. I beseech your help in navigating this . . . this . . .” She worried she would lose him further by her admissions but forced herself to continue. “I know not how to say this . . .”

  “Say it.”

  “I desire you.”

  “And I, you,” he followed.

  She felt her heart unfasten. Will was sitting but an arm’s length from her. He did not rise, but she saw his whole body sigh, as if he had been waiting for these words, as if they were a release for him, too. When she saw his smile, her eyes filled with tears.

  “Kate,” he said. His most gentle yet. “Such attraction is in our blood, ’tis our nature.”

  “I am but a novice in these arts,” she said.

  “Kate, I’ve had wenches of one sort or another since I was a lad, but those days are past. And I have a wife. But what we have is most different.” He paused. “You know me better than anyone else.”

  He rose from the bench and came round the table to her. When he held out his hands, she took them, and in one agile movement he pulled her to her feet. Then he drew her in close so she could feel his heart beating. She felt ease in the embrace and was surprised, after all the weeks of skimming his skin, she had found home. He lifted her chin so she looked him in the eyes, and then he gently placed his hands on her neck, slid them back into her hair and removed the ivory pins one by one. At the pull of each pin, she felt as though his fingers were on her bodice, and he was undoing one lace after another with tender care.

  Her hair fell to her shoulders. His gaze never left her eyes. He leaned into her, hovered for a moment without contact and then kissed her on the lips. The kiss was slow and deliberate. Lips on lips. She had never felt such a passion before, and gave herself to him utterly in the kissing, until they both heard something outside the old chapel. Katharine pulled herself from him, turned and saw a shadow at the window. The colored glass made it impossible to see clearly. They separated. The specter could have been a child, a servant or a spy.

  Will helped Katharine on with her cloak and was at her side when she opened the door. They heard a strange sound—a song, a sad song that hung in the air like mist. Katharine thought of the three witches. How had such hallowed ground become so haunted? They followed the melancholy tune until they came to its source. Ursula. Ursula, wearing only a white smock, was on her knees under a tree with her parrot in her hands. The bird’s bright plumage was barely visible in the dim light. Katharine took her own cloak off and wrapped it round Ursula.

  “She’s dead,” Ursula said. “I’ve come to bury her.”

  The earth was frozen and still covered with patches of snow.

  “’Tis no time to dig a grave, Ursula. You’d best wait till the morrow and have one of the servants tend to it,” said Katharine. She felt as if she were talking to a child.

  Will went to Ursula and stood over her. “Hand me your bird, my lady. We will find it a home.”

  “’Tis not a home she wants, ’tis a grave.”

  “We will dig her a grave, then,” he said.

  Ursula’s hair was unbound and unkempt, and it framed her face like a wild halo. She relinquished the bird to Will.

  “Come with me, Ursula,” said Katharine, and with unusual meekness, Ursula acquiesced. When Katharine helped her to stand, she saw Ursula wore no shoes, that her feet were bare.

  Ursula stared at the bird in Will’s hand, funneling all her concentration toward it, as if her focus would breathe life into its flesh and resurrect it. “I prithee place a stone atop the grave, so I will know where ’tis,” she said.

  “I will, my lady.” Will bowed.

  Katharine was impressed by Will’s gentleness, by his ability to read the thought-sick Ursula.

  “Gramercy,” Ursula said. She moved her gaze from the dead bird to Will’s face. “Thou art a sugar’d lad. Dost thou think me fair?”

  “Thou art fair, my lady.”

  “Dost thou think me wanton?”

  “If wanton means a lively creature, then aye, thou art a wanton.”

  “Dost thou think me tainted?”


  “If tainted be a condition of thy heart, not thy soul, then anyone who hath ere been in love is tainted, so aye, thou art tainted, for I have never yet met a man or woman ov’r the age of twenty who hath a pure, unspotted heart.”

  Ursula burst out in high-pitched laughter.

  “Let us go in, Ursula. The cold wind will o’erpower your skin,” said Katharine.

  “My pure, unspotted heart was doomed from the first second I crossed the threshold of this ill-erected hall!” said Ursula, then she laughed again.

  Katharine looked at Will. He nodded his head slightly. Then she took Ursula’s arm and steered her toward the hall. Ursula seemed even thinner than before: there was neither meat nor muscle the length of the poor dear’s arms. Ursula sang while they walked.

  “Ah poor bird

  Why art thou

  Singing in the shadows

  At this late hour?

  “Ah poor bird

  Take thy flight

  High above the shadows

  Of this sad night.”

  She sang the same two verses over and over again and was still singing them when she entered the house. As they climbed the stairs to her chamber, she asked, “Do you think my voice good?”

  “Aye,” said Katharine.

  “I have always wanted to sing for the family, but Richard says my voice has too much breath and that I wobble in and out of tune. Dost thou think I wobble or warble like a thrush?”

  “I must hear more to make a proper diagnosis,” answered Katharine.

  “You are a doctor now?”

  Katharine laughed. “I suppose I am.”

  “Doctor, might you play the virginals while I sing to the family?”

  “I will,” Katharine said.

  “I know my voice is beautiful,” said Ursula, standing at her door.

  Katharine squeezed her arm in affection. “Get to bed, Ursula, for your limbs are quaking from the cold. I will send your maid up with something hot to drink.”

  “Your cloak?” said Ursula.

  “You wear it until you are tucked in. I’ll send Molly round to fetch it.”

  Ursula placed her hand on Katharine’s arm and leaned very close to her. “Beware of his words,” she said. “Beware.”

  Katharine tried to smile but suddenly she felt as cold as Ursula appeared. “Good night, Ursula,” she said, and turned away.

  Ursula’s warning seemed to carry such caution, as though words were poison and could kill a person. Actions could kill, that Katharine knew, actions drew blood, but words? Nay, she said to herself, nay. She realized with her hair down from her moment with Will that she likely looked as unkempt as Ursula. As Katharine hurriedly made her way to her chamber, she couldn’t get Ursula’s silly ditty out of her head.

  18

  our eyes, dear Kate, are far away,” said Joan. “But not from grief.” Joan was a keen watcher of moods, having grown up with a mother whose humors changed by the hour.

  A fresh square of linen lay on Katharine’s lap, but the cloth remained without the first stitch: she was staring at a bare branch outside the window. Ever since meeting with Will the day before, she was ashamed she felt so light, so airy, when the whole great house was deep in mourning for the beloved head of the household.

  “There are rumors, dear Kate,” Isabel added.

  “Rumors?” Katharine turned her gaze to the girls.

  “You must know,” continued Isabel. “You meet a fair fellow almost daily, whose tales precede him. Tongues wag in this warren. Walls have eyes, as do windows.”

  “Tales?” Katharine repeated. The tale of us. She wanted to remember forever how welcome it felt when he held her in his arms. If this was how it felt when they were fully clothed, well—she sighed—how wonderful skin on skin would feel.

  “He’s a lewd lad, they say,” said Isabel.

  “‘The fictions of idle tongues,’” Katharine quoted Ovid. “Master Shakespeare is married! Her name is Anne.”

  “He’s a lewd lad that one, all the same,” countered Isabel.

  “The blush of damask is upon your cheeks,” said Joan.

  “You can be sure our tongues are still,” said Isabel. “But come, give us a little sugar, for our day is most bitter.”

  “I know not what to say, nor how to say it,” said Katharine.

  “Kate, you always know what to say and how to say it,” said Isabel. “He hath struck you dumb. What do you do with him in that chilly old chapel?”

  “’Tis now a schoolhouse,” corrected Katharine.

  “What do you teach the tutor, then?” said Isabel. “Or what does he teach you?”

  “What love scenes do you play, for they say he’s been in London, a player at the new playhouses,” said Joan.

  “The players upon those stages are all men, so his love scenes would have to be with boys,” said Katharine. She wished she felt like laughing, but the topic of Will seemed to offer neither comedy nor satire.

  “You are bereft of speech,” said Isabel. “Come, dear Kate, we are only trying to make mirth on this dismal day, to speak of something other than our loss. I have been hoping you would use the wondrous wit God hath bestowed upon you to cheer our tearful countenance.”

  “I am in love,” Katharine said, wondering how the words sprang from her lips before she could trap them. Where was her dignity?

  “Oh, Kate,” the two girls chimed in unison. They left their perches and, like bright-eyed sparrows, gathered round her.

  “’Tis serious,” chirped Isabel.

  “’Tis wondrous,” sang Joan.

  “He is a player, Kate,” said Isabel. “A poet perchance. A tutor when necessary. ’Tis not the right match. He is married. He has, they say, children, several. His father is a glover. He is years your junior. And this ‘Will,’ as you call him, is too . . . too glossy, for he is used to wooing spectators with his words and wit. He wooed my dear father before he left. This man you say you love has never been to university and my father hired him! Never, in the history of this house, has such an unqualified, unschooled man taught the children. He is no match for you, dear Kate. I would not trust my weight in what this Master Shakespeare says. Has he spoken of his love?”

  “You sound as though you are my sister, Isabel, my elder sister, and in truth you are not yet twenty,” replied Katharine. “I hold no interest in matches.”

  “You have never held any interest in matches, Kate! They used to flock around you and you hardly noted them. You dismissed them!”

  “I did nothing of the sort.”

  “’Tis what Father said.”

  Katharine recalled the years after her husband died, when she was a young widow with no children and no dowry. “Perhaps I did dismiss them,” she said. “None of them had true intelligence. Some had wealth. Some had age. Some had property. But none had brilliance.”

  “So this Will, this Shakespeare, has that?”

  “He is the most brilliant man. He has pieced together a good education in an independent way. He has taught himself much . . .” Katharine paused and then tried a new tack. “There are certain human beings who are born with minds so quick and so curious they create kingdoms in whatever sphere they tread. The ancients, the philosophers, the poets we now read—”

  “He does not seem on the road to kingdom come, I daresay,” Isabel interrupted. “’Tis said the playhouses in London are worse than the bear-baiting pits! Where are his riches, Kate? Where is his gold? Where is his property? Where are his books, his plays, his poetry? He is six and twenty, Kate. He has a wife, for whom, from what the tongues say, he cares little; he has children he has abandoned. And you believe, my dear Kate, that he loves you? He may love himself, but you? You? Who in truth deserves so much. Does he love you, Kate? Hath he said so?”

  Isabel was no serpent, but her words had such strengt
h that Katharine, old enough to be her mother, was close to tears. Perhaps it was Isabel’s father’s death that moved the girl to such force.

  Isabel did not stop. “Perchance the brilliance you see is on him, not in him,” she continued. “Perchance, like a shilling, it is his shininess that attracts. He does know how to put on the polish. He was most buffed up after his performance on Saint Crispin’s Day. You had left the dance floor when he applied himself to Lord and Lady Strange. To watch your Will court them, well, one would think he believed Ferdinando and Alice were alchemists who could change his silver to gold! I love you, Kate. And so does Joan, and we do not want to see you pained. Perhaps you are still blind to men who love you or could love you. You are not out of wooing range yet. The queen still woos.”

  “The queen,” said Katharine, “is the queen! She truly has the kingdom from which to woo. Do I? I think not! You two girls will marry with wagons of gold—that is why our dear Edward fled! To save all these riches, these beautiful hills, forests of timber, bountiful fields, mineral mines, for all of you! But I have few true connections and no true claim. When we hear dear Edward’s will, I will be but a pebble at the most, a grain of sand at the least, while the rest of you will be boulders!”

  Katharine had stood during her speech and was horrified to find she had shouted the last lines. She had never wanted to blurt such things to these sweet young women. Why had she routinely dismissed her opportunities? She had fed on words and ideas and enjoyed her bookish company with Edward, and, with no children and no gold of her own, she was minutes away, seconds perhaps, from the poor scorned hags dragged through the cold currents or from those poor wretches dragged into cages and burned at the stake.

  And, now, for the crown: she had fallen in love with someone whose goal was to hawk verses the way his father had hawked gloves.

  “I am so sorry,” Katharine said.

  Isabel and Joan stared at her, their eyes soft with concern. Katharine had never seen such a display of pity directed toward her. She had brought this illness upon herself.

  “Forget what I have said, I beg of you. I am overcome with grief for Edward’s passing, and have lost counsel with myself. Forgive me, my dears.” She placed a hand on each of their cheeks and held them for a moment, then snatched her bare linen and hurried out the door.