The Tutor: A Novel

by Andrea Chapin

  When Katharine thought of the meeting in the library to which she had not been invited, she realized that Sir Edward’s kindness had shielded her from the fact that she had never been fully accepted by the rest of the family. In truth, the years spent trying to appease and to please those to whom she was related by blood or by marriage caused her much strain. If only she could, by some miracle, leave Lufanwal. But how, when she had no riches, no estates of her own?

  With help from Molly, Katharine removed her simple charcoal-gray mourning gown, replacing it with a silk partlet and matching sleeves, embroidered with gold fleurs-de-lis and couched with gold cord that Isabel had given to her the previous New Year’s. She wore a black velvet bodice with gold silk stripes Ned sent from Italy and a black satin skirt open in front so the lace of the petticoat peeked through.

  Katharine knew she was wildly overdressed for meeting Will; she wanted to glide into the cold, varnished old chapel as though she were a lady of wealth and nobility. She sprinkled rosewater liberally on her petticoats. She rubbed distilled lilac on the inside of her wrists and on her neck. She even let Molly dust her cheeks with cinnamon powder.

  “’Tis so much gold in your bodice and blouse I would leave go your hair, for you have natural strands that match the golden threads of your cloth,” offered Molly.

  “I seem with the years to have grown a mine of silver strands as well. If all the silver and gold in my hair were coins in a purse, well then I’d be rich, wouldn’t I! Put a few more pins in my hair, dear Molly, and then wrap me in my cloak and I will go down.”

  The house, with all the recent calamities, would think her mad, glittering from head to toe. She could quite possibly cause a riot if they caught her swathed in gold, but Katharine wanted to look lavish; she wanted to glow. She had expected after his last flood of verse Will would have sent her more, but nothing had come, so Katharine arrived at the old chapel empty-handed.

  The sun was strong, even though winter had descended; a cascade of colors spilled through the stained glass. The fire was lit, and Will’s papers were strewn across the table. Katharine removed her cloak. She knew she looked ready for Lord and Lady Strange’s banquet table, not for sitting midday on an old oak bench with the children’s tutor. She picked up one of Will’s pages—the ink was not yet dry. She placed it back on the table. She stood next to the fire, walked into a beam of gemlike light from the windows, then walked over to the table again and peered at one of the boys’ hornbooks.

  Will burst through the door and she looked up. After their long kiss the last time they’d met, she felt they were almost lovers. She blushed. “Did you not take fright?” she asked. “When the men hauled you hence?”

  Will pitched wood into the fireplace and fanned the coals. He gazed into the flames as he spoke. “My father was taken away after Campion was caught, scores of men were. I was living up here, in the employ of the De Hoghtons. My mother called me home, for fear I was in danger. After a short while, they let my father go. My mother’s kin Edward Arden was not as fortunate. He was taken to the Tower, tormented on the rack and hanged at Tyburn in front of the morning crowd; his head was set upon a pole at London Bridge. He died protesting his innocence at every charge, declaring his only crime was the profession of the Catholic religion. The wife and daughter were released but the son-in-law was hanged and piked on the bridge along with Arden.”

  “And where do you stand?” Katharine asked.

  “Why, next to you, my lady.”

  “What side do you take in this war?”

  “I decided in my youth to step away from that game. The religion of our nation changed three times in twenty years. I quite like my head and see no reason to lose it.” He paused. “Thou surely art the sun, Kate,” he said, bowing low. He walked around her, appraising. “The prettiest Kate in Christendom.”

  She smiled and nodded as if she were the queen and he Lord Essex.

  “Come,” he said, sitting on the bench and looking up at her.

  She sat next to him. They were close but not touching.

  “I have brought something for you,” he said.

  She thought perhaps it was the sonnet he had promised, but he dropped a kidskin pouch, not folded paper, on the table.

  “Open it,” he said, pointing to the pouch.

  She untied the silk string and turned the soft brown pouch upside down. A blue-green stone set in silver and strung on a black silk cord fell into the palm of her hand. She had never seen a stone of such a brilliant hue; it was opaque, not clear. The shape was not perfectly round, nor perfectly oval.

  “’Tis beautiful,” she said. “Many thanks.”

  “You are most welcome. ’Tis for your lovely neck.”

  “What is it?”

  “Turquoise, mined in the Americas. I found it in a stall in London when last there.”

  “I have never seen anything like it. The color is so bright, so rich, ’tis almost unnatural.”

  Katharine put the stone round her neck and tried to tie the ends of the silk cord but could not. She blushed. “Prithee, kind sir, might ye help me,” she said, mocking the accent of a wench. She turned her back and handed the ends of the cord to him. He touched the nape of her neck lightly as he tied them. There was such intimacy in the moment—she thought he might kiss her neck, or the scars that ran down her back.

  “Let me gaze,” he said.

  She turned to face him. She felt a courtesan and she liked it. She did not want a match; she did not want to marry; she wanted to be his mistress.

  “’Tis wondrous with your eyes,” Will said, “that’s why I chose it.” He sprang from the bench and started walking round the room. “My poem is with me always now—a second skin. I sleep with it at night and wake clutching it like a pillow. It started, Kate, as such a lonely seed, but with your watering, with your sunlight, it has grown sturdy and strong. I am eternally in your debt.” When Will stopped beneath a stained-glass window, the tinted light seemed to anoint him. He ran his fingers along one of the walls and leaned in close, examining the surface. “What lurks beneath the white?”

  “The wall wore pictures of Saint George and such but was painted over when we closed the chapel,” said Katharine.

  “Before I was born, my father was elected chamberlain of the borough of Stratford,” Will said. “My parents came from papist stock, and the daily edicts against the faith into which many were born and baptized caused much stress and strain. The town council decreed the paintings on the walls of the Guild Chapel be plastered and the storied stained glass smashed and replaced with clear. My mother was with child at the time—me—and my poor father was much conflicted over having to deface what he thought sacred. One of the murals was a portrait of Saint George killing the dragon. I was born on Saint George’s Day—the same day the mural was smothered in white. A strange coincidence. The townsfolk tried to storm the church, and my father had to stand guard at the door and protect the poor men who were plastering.

  “Years later my mother, who never plastered over her own papist beliefs, blamed that day on my father’s blighted ambitions—though verily his star brightened for a time before it dimmed. My mother also maintained that her kin paid for the original paintings, so it was not only blasphemy and sacrilege against her church but against her family as well, and in our house my mother’s family was as much esteemed as the Pope!”

  Katharine could listen to Will talk all day and through the night.

  “How art thou, my dear Kate? How weighs your grief now?” he asked, sitting next to her again.

  “For months I have expected to walk through the library door and to find Sir Edward in his chair in front of the fire with a book in his hand. I still oft imagine him thus. But never again.”

  “’Twas the same when I lost my sister Anne,” he said. His eyes filled with tears.

  “I am so sorry,” said Katharine, recalling how Will
had shown her his skill at making himself cry. But she dismissed such an idea, for who would feign lamentation at losing one’s own sister?

  “She was a bright thing—grasped subjects like a boy—sitting next to me laughing one minute and then dead and buried the next. I will never forget the moment what we had feared became truth. One always prays . . .”

  “Yes, one does, always,” she said.

  “What thought you of the lines read by that pebble-headed scut?” asked Will. “Forsooth, I never expected such an audience. What thought you of my portrait of Venus’s forestry?”

  “Venus’s venery, more like. I thought it lewd and churlish.”

  He laughed. “Good. I sat this morn and wrote. I lost track of sun and time. I thought I might read to you, and you might gloss upon what words sound feeble and where the portrait I have drawn lacks strong lines.”

  “I am sure,” said Katharine, “that every syllable is perfection.”

  “The day you tell me that, is the day I have no more use for you!” Will laughed and stood.

  Her blood, so warmed, ran cold. Is the day I have no more use for you! This was what she feared most. She was on the verge of asking him what he meant, when—with one foot on the bench and his arm resting on his thigh—he launched into reading his freshly inked pages. Then he stood in front of Katharine. “Bestow upon me one word, my goddess of wit, or I shall faint right away at thy pretty little feet.”

  “Brilliant,” she said, captive once again.

  “Marry!” he said. “’Tis what I prayed for! My mad black quill did dash across the page this morn. It would not let me stand or take refreshment, but bade me sit upon this bench without a break.” He smiled. “God-a-mercy. I never know.”

  “You must have a sense.”

  “Sometimes I do, when ’tis horrid, but that is not the work you see. That is never shown to you. There are words I’ve cherished, loved, and then I bring them to you, and you . . .”

  “What?”

  He sat down next to her. “You wince.”

  She laughed. “I wince?”

  “It’s as if I’ve inflicted some sort of pain on you . . .”

  “A wound?”

  “Yes,” said Will, still beaming, so relieved she liked what he’d written.

  “You have writ: ‘For men will kiss even by their own direction,’” she said, touching the bright blue stone around her neck.

  “Words that show how male desire is by nature unyoked and inherent,” he said.

  “Where is the instinct then from which you write?” She was baiting him. “You display it, my love, in words but not in deeds.”

  He smiled, his eyes on hers.

  She waited for his action. She craved his lips, his hands, his skin. She felt the beautiful blue stone on her neck. Then why not lips on lips, and skin on skin?

  There was a thud outside, then one scream followed by another and another, until it became waves of women wailing. Katharine dashed out the door. By the time she reached the cobblestones in front of the scullery, Joan was on her knees cradling her mother in her arms. An image of Ursula on her knees pleading with Harold flashed in front of Katharine. The servants crowded round, as did the family. Joan was not weeping, nor was she wailing, but her mouth was turned down at the edges and her eyes were wide with sorrow. Her face was ancient, and she seemed, in the winter-gray light, older than Katharine, older than Matilda, even. Joan did not look down at her mother, but stared straight ahead while the bright red blood flowed through Ursula’s blond hair, over her white skin, into the dark folds of her white smock and onto the icy stones beneath.

  20

  hen Harold returned from Lancaster, he found Richard hauled off to jail and Ursula dead. The servants were washing and straightening the poor woman’s broken body as best they could. Ursula would be interred as quickly as possible. By flinging herself from the parapet she had committed the most profound of sins, though there was a chance her madness would soften the charge. A priest would have refused her burial in consecrated ground, but Katharine hoped that, without a priest to give the mass, Ursula would be placed near the old chapel in the earth that was consecrated long ago by Father de La Bruyère.

  Katharine, Isabel and Grace sat with Joan late into the night and tried to console her. Katharine reassured all that she was ready to assume a stronger role in Ursula’s younger children’s lives. And there was, of course, the tutor, who would keep the boys, at least, occupied in the mornings. All eyes, when Will was mentioned, turned to Katharine.

  Katharine expected Molly would be asleep when she finally returned to her chamber. But the poor girl’s eyes were wide.

  “Might there be a letter for me?” asked Katharine.

  “No, my mistress, nothing from him,” answered Molly. Her lip was quivering, and she was wringing her skirt.

  “Molly, dear, what ails you?”

  “’Tis what ails this house, should be more the question! The rest of them in the scullery and the stables and such are talking now that ’tis verily bewitched, this house. First the leaving of the rooks. ’Tis an ill omen. Foretells the downfall of a family. Then the hags put a spell on the hall the night they were chained in the cellars. ’Tis topsy-turvy, with all the family dying or being dragged off as traitors!”

  All did indeed seem topsy-turvy. “’Tis more the time, Molly, than witchery,” Katharine said finally. “’Tis our burden, our lot, the path of suffering God has set for us.”

  Molly nodded, but her eyes were filled to the brim, and she did not seem the least convinced. Katharine, in truth, was not at all sure she was convinced herself. She took Molly by the shoulders and hugged her.

  “You are right to weep, Molly.” Katharine started to cry as well. “This house is filled with sorrow. But we shall get Richard back, and it was Ursula’s time to go, we just did not know it yet. She had been disappearing before our very eyes and we were blind to it. She wished to vanish.”

  “They say she didna eat more than a bite or two a day for months,” added Molly, wiping her eyes with her skirt.

  “She was stricken,” said Katharine.

  “I never heard of such a thing. Stepping off a roof.”

  “’Tis, we must assume, God’s work,” said Katharine.

  “Or the work of the devil,” said Molly.

  “Not that, I do not believe that.”

  “And now my lord Harold has taken ill,” added Molly.

  “He was riding for days and perchance the cold has taken hold of him,” said Katharine.

  “’Tis not an illness of the throat or lungs, they say, but deeper down. The pains shoot through his stomach.”

  They were quiet for a while.

  “If there is a letter,” Katharine said, “even if ’tis very late this night, prithee would you slip it under my door?”

  “Yes’m.”

  Molly helped Katharine out of her bodice and her skirt. When Katharine was sitting in her smock, Molly began to brush her hair. “Might I be so bold as to ask you something?”

  “Yes, Molly.”

  “’Tis not my business, nor my place . . .”

  “Charge ahead. I am captive beneath your brush.”

  “Have you lost your heart to him?”

  Katharine sighed and was quiet. “I have,” she said finally.

  Katharine expected Molly to be thrilled by the mention of love, for she was a young girl, her head probably full of such thoughts, but she was not.

  “I worried you might’ve,” Molly said gravely. She was braiding Katharine’s long tresses now.

  “Molly, do not worry about me, and pray do not worry about the house. Ned will be here. Ned will make this house strong again, bring this house right.”

  Katharine was not certain of this, but she wanted to say something to comfort Molly. Ned had, in the past, been more inclined
toward merrymaking than management of his own affairs. Perhaps his years in Italy had reined him in, brought wisdom where there had been frivolity.

  After Molly left, Katharine checked twice before she snuffed her candle to see if a letter from Will was under the door, but the wooden floor was bare. She got into bed feeling bereft. She remembered the day when Ursula was on her back in the grass staring at the sky. She had said she wanted to be free, and now perhaps she was. Ursula might have, with time, become sane again. Yet, she was gone now. And Richard. Was Richard involved in a plot against the queen? That prospect seemed as unlikely as Katharine herself being involved in such a scheme. The house had lost its rhythm. She couldn’t remember the last time she had read to the children. When the women had gathered around Joan that night, they spoke of Harold going into exile now, too. Katharine had grown up immersed in the ancients and now felt she was living in their world: Ovid exiled; Seneca exiled, too, and then forced to take his own life for a supposed conspiracy; Lucretius, driven mad by a love potion, had also committed self-murder.

  —

  Ursula’s burial was unadorned, without the pomps and vanities she had come to display while upon this earth. Harold was not present because Harold was in bed writhing in pain. His stomach had worsened. The pains that attacked him after supper had sharpened, becoming deep and frequent. In another time, when their religion was not against the laws of the land, a priest would have been called to Harold’s bed to perform unction with oleum infirmorum, the oil for the sick that had been blessed by the bishop. But there were no oils and no unctions. Harold refused to eat. Mary was stuck to his side, they said, silent, unmoving, a fly gummed in pine resin.