The Tutor: A Novel

by Andrea Chapin

  As if guessing her thoughts, he said, “All my letters to you have gone unanswered.”

  “’Tis all a shock,” Katharine said, avoiding his eyes.

  “The dreadful news thrusts the sorrows of this house to the zenith. My deepest sympathies. I’ve spoken with the two older sons, Henry and Thomas—they seem as deer cornered in a hunt.” Will took a package wrapped in gray paper from his table and handed it to Katharine. “For the New Year’s Day past,” he said. “Not gloves.” He smiled.

  An image of Lady Strange’s peacock gloves glittering across the dance floor flashed in front of Katharine. She opened the package and found two books. The first book was of buttery kidskin; embossed gold vined up its spine. Inside was a page with: the title, The Countesse of Pembroke’s Arcadia; the author, “written by Sir Philippe Sidnei”; the family crest; and “London, printed for William Ponsonbie—Anno Domini, 1590.” In a long and loving inscription to his sister Mary, the Countess of Pembroke of the title, the poet wrote:

  I could well find in my harte, to cast out in some desert of forgetfulnes this child, which I am loath to father. But you desired me to doo it, and your desire, to my hart is an absolute commandement. Now, it is done onelie for you, onelie to you: if you keepe it to your selfe, or to such friendes . . .

  She read on. A line resonated toward the end of his dedication: “You will continue to love the writer, who doth exceedinglie love you . . .” Was Will, by giving this to her, trying to convey what perhaps he could not say himself?

  “Your beloved Sir Philip,” said Will, “fresh from the London book-stalls.”

  “Gramercy,” said Kate, opening the second book, entitled The Arte of English Poesie by George Puttenham.

  “I gave my mother a New Year’s gift, a hat of velvet, silk and feathers bought at the milliner’s in the village here, a hat of elegance and taste.”

  Kate wondered why Will was telling her this.

  “She did not fancy it at all,” he said.

  “Did she say so?”

  “No. She did not utter a word, but her eyes were icy and the manner in which she pursed her lips spoke of her distaste. I went out directly and bought her a shawl.”

  “Did she fancy that?”

  “Her eyes were warmer. It gives me great pleasure to give gifts, but my mother is particular. I feared you’d taken ill when you didn’t respond to my letters yesterday, but then your sonnet arrived,” he said. “I thought your sonnet quite good.”

  Katharine placed the two books on the table in front of her and waited for Will to continue, for him to comment if not on the whole sonnet, at least on some of her lines.

  “Read what Puttenham has to say about our English language,” was all he said, tapping the book with his finger.

  Katharine nodded. In truth, she cared little about her sonnet at this moment. Writing served her—from last night until this morn—as a raft onto which she clung so she would not drown. She did not want to ask Will about her poetry; she wanted to ask him why he did not try to find her at the Stanleys’ during the dancing. Why? Where was he that night? And what about his circling of Ned as a hawk does its prey? What was that? She wanted to ask him all these things, but the words were strangled and did not issue from her mouth.

  “My pace has been slow with the poem.” He corralled her with his eyes. “I have in truth not written a word these last weeks.”

  He cannot write without me, Katharine thought.

  She was aware of his bed, of how close their bodies were in the small chamber.

  “’Tis a pity,” she said. “You were marking such fine speed. You were on fire.”

  “The festivities at the Stanleys’ stalled what heretofore was in motion,” he said.

  How long had Will lodged at Lathom House? While Katharine had pictured him steady at his verse in Warwickshire with his family swarming around him, he’d been but several leagues from her, partaking of the Stanleys’ abundant hospitality.

  “You seemed to have found your stride when writing at your home at Christmastide, even with a house in merriment,” she said. “Here, where solitude reigns, you should be able to advance your stanzas—unless you are off again with Lord Strange’s Men. I’ve brought the sheets you sent from Stratford. I’ve marked them.”

  He took his verse from her. “I filled in at Lathom, one of their regulars had taken ill. Did you enjoy Faire Em? Was my skill what you expected?” he asked.

  She waited for him to say something, anything, about Ned. “You are well skilled, an excellent player,” she said finally.

  The fire crackled while he read what she had written.

  “A brilliant suggestion—to use Ovid’s tale of Salmacis and Hermaphroditus as a guide.” He put the pages down and added wood to the fire. Katharine waited—for what, she was not certain. He leaned against the table, gazing at her. Minutes passed. Then he said, “Full gently now she takes him by the hand. A lily prison’d in a jail of snow . . .”

  “Our Venus might beseech him once again.” Katharine did not want to involve herself in his lines, yet she couldn’t stop herself.

  “Once more the engine of her thoughts begins,” he said, smiling.

  The words were on the tip of Katharine’s lips: she knew she could without hesitation become Venus’s tongue. She pretended she had to think, that it took time. “Would thou wert as I am, and I a man, my heart all whole as thine, thy heart my wound . . .” Katharine offered slowly. “For one sweet look thy help I would assure thee, though nothing but my body’s baine would cure thee.”

  What am I doing? Katharine asked herself.

  “She wants something out of him, that he can’t give her,” Will continued. “He wants his horse back and he wants her to let go of his hand and he wants her to leave him alone . . .”

  “Then she challenges him to act more like his steed, to take advantage when presented with joy, to learn to love,” said Katharine.

  “Yes, yes,” said Will, pacing. “And then our fair Adonis launches into scorn. ‘I know not love,’ he says, ‘nor will not know it, unless it be a boar, and then I chase it.’”

  Katharine nodded.

  Will bowed. “’Tis like the old times, Kate!” he said. He leaned down to her, cupped her burning cheeks in his hands, and continued: “’Tis much to borrow, and I will not owe it: my love to love is love but to disgrace it, for I have heard, it is a life in death, that laughs and weeps, and all but with a breath.” He let go of her cheeks, walked back to his table, dipped his quill and, still standing, started writing.

  Katharine had been so resolute, but now her moat had dried up and her wall had fallen. She stood. There was an old legend that witches could enchant furniture, and now Katharine wondered if the joint stool in front of her, still warm from Will, had indeed cast a spell.

  “I must go,” she said.

  He turned to her. “I will write all through the night and send you pages and—”

  She was quickly out the door. When she reached her chamber, Molly was there.

  “Dowager Lady de L’Isle asks for you to come to her,” said Molly, helping Katharine out of her boots.

  “Did she mention why, Molly?”

  “No, mistress.”

  “I know why,” Katharine said. “She will reprimand me for my visit to Master Shakespeare’s chamber. I am no child! How this vexes me!”

  A few minutes later, Katharine was standing in Matilda’s antechamber.

  “Come sit, Katharine,” said Matilda. She still wore her widow’s veil in public, but in her chamber her face and head were bare. She was swaddled in a shawl, kid gloves on her hands. “I cannot seem to rid myself of a chill,” she said. “I suppose I should move around, but my bones want strength. Come sit by the fire, Katharine.”

  Katharine did as she was bade. Matilda seemed in the last year to have shrunk to the size of a child.
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br />   “Katharine, Robert Smythson came to speak with me.”

  Katharine’s face flushed red.

  “He said he had spoken to you.”

  “He has,” was all Katharine said.

  “And that you heard him graciously but spoke honestly that you could not return his affections.”

  “Yes.”

  “So if he were to make an offer in marriage, you would decline?”

  “Yes.”

  “Katharine, do you know that he is a master stonemason and that in the last years he has designed and built some of the most important houses in England?”

  “I suspected.”

  “And do you know his business is thriving and that he is a man with considerable means?”

  “I never thought of that.”

  “Of course you didn’t. I am speaking frankly to you, as frankly as I have spoken to my daughter Isabel, who has today accepted young Barlow’s offer of marriage.”

  “How wonderful,” said Katharine, who in truth had never heard Isabel utter one word of him. “Isabel must be very happy.”

  “Isabel is sensible. She is happy in knowing that her husband’s family hails from good and noble stock, and was first knighted, as ours was, by King William when he conquered these lands.”

  This was just the sort of speeching that made Katharine glad she had entered into adulthood without a mother or a father.

  “Katharine, I would hope, after our talk today, that you would reconsider Mr. Smythson’s offer.”

  “But he in truth did not offer . . .”

  “I realize that, but he knows you well, it seems, and did not press on with his offer, for fear you would shut him out completely.”

  “I will not shut him out. I am fond of him.”

  “Perhaps, then, over time, you could learn to love him.”

  Katharine rose. Her eyes were filling with tears. It was Will she loved, and it was with Will she wanted to be. She wanted to fling that in Matilda’s face. She was sure now she had misinterpreted Will’s staring at Ned. Katharine wanted to say to Matilda: Will Shakespeare loves me. Will Shakespeare desires me. Will Shakespeare said I am brilliant and beautiful and clever. Will Shakespeare pulled my body to his and kissed me after we danced the volta. He undressed my hair. He said I know him better than anyone else. He said we would know each other for forty years, that this year was just the start of our bond. Will Shakespeare has asked me to move to London with him.

  “Would you consider what I have said to you, Katharine? I don’t have to say, but I will, that the air has changed at Lufanwal. My dear Edward’s exile was the beginning of the end of a way of life here. Richard is still in jail. Ned has become a priest and thus forfeits his legacy. Young Henry is soon off to Rome, and it remains to be seen if he, too, will follow his cousin into the priesthood. The future of this house is, indeed, uncertain. I am old. My end will come soon.”

  “No, my lady, no. Do not speak thus,” said Katharine.

  The Matilda of Katharine’s childhood was strong and proud. The small woman sitting in front of Katharine seemed a parody of the towering woman who had presided over Lufanwal for so many years.

  “’Tis true,” Matilda continued. “Death is no secret. ’Tis God’s will. I have this small chest for you, Katharine. Do not open it until you have returned to your chamber. I have been a jailer of a branch of Edward’s spirit. ’Twas not gracious nor kind that I kept these, and that is something I must live with and ask for God’s forgiveness and for your forgiveness until my eyes close forever on this life. I have tried to love you, but in truth my envy has most often clouded my affections. I coveted the way in which you were a rich soil for him; he could speak and write to you in ways he could not to me. He never taught me to read or to write, but showered all his learning onto you. I’ll never know why he chose you, but he did. He chose you. I thought that by holding on to these maybe I could hold on to a part of him that I was never able to grasp, but that you seemed to seize easily and naturally.” Matilda handed Katharine a wooden box with ivory inlay. “Go,” she said, “and take this with you. I am tired and cold. Think on all I have said.”

  —

  When Katharine returned to her chamber, she sat on her bed and opened the box. Inside was a bundle of letters addressed to her from Edward—his seal broken. The sudden sight of his handwriting, the thick, stolid letters, brought tears to her eyes. It was as if he had entered the room and was sitting there with her. As she read, beginning with a letter that dated as far back as his journey, he came back to her in a rush of flesh and voice. Her tears dropped upon his pages. How she missed him. She had wondered why he had not written but had thought it not her place to ask if any letters had come for her. She drank his words, his descriptions of people and places. He was, she read, making the best of his plight. He greeted each new day without regret or woe but with energy and curiosity. He had never been on a ship, never traveled out of his beloved England, and the strange customs and languages entertained and compelled him.

  “Oh, Edward,” she said out loud. “I can hear you.” She wiped the tears from her face with her hands and dried her wet palms on her skirt. “Dear, dear Edward.” He must have thought her cold and unkind, for she had—thinking he had not written to her—not written to him. Katharine spent the afternoon and evening reading every word Edward had written to her. Nothing secretive or inappropriate hovered in his tone: he would have welcomed Matilda’s reading them. Katharine hoped someone had read them to Matilda. There was something about the warmth and honesty in the letters that made Katharine think of Robert Smythson. She’d never thought of it before, but there was a similarity to the timbre of their voices and the deep, clear tone with which they spoke.

  25

  ou have heard my news,” said Isabel. Katharine and Isabel were sitting in Isabel’s chamber. They had their shawls around them, and their stools pulled close to the fire.

  “Your mother told me, dearest.” Katharine put down her stitching and gazed at Isabel. “I recall sitting next to him at dinner on Saint Crispin’s Day. Are you pleased?”

  “I am pleased that Mother is pleased,” she said.

  “Is there goodness in this Nicholas Barlow? I could not bear to have you married off to a man without goodness.”

  “Time, I suppose, will teach me if he has goodness. ’Tis good in the match, even if there is no goodness in him.”

  They were quiet.

  “I cannot imagine you not here,” Katharine said.

  “I cannot imagine me not here,” Isabel said. “I will not be far away. Three hours by horse.”

  “Well, I’ll drop by several times a day!”

  “Mother told me of Mr. Smythson’s offer.”

  “Yes, we women are like goods and chattels. Or perhaps slaves is more apt.”

  “Kate, he was not offering to buy you.”

  “No?”

  “No. He may not be exactly of our . . . well . . . he is not . . .”

  “Of our kind?”

  “Well, no, but he has a business that is surely growing, Kate. That he designs those beautiful houses as well as builds them—is remarkable. He has the hands of a sculptor.”

  “And the face of a rock,” added Katharine.

  “Kate, have you not had your fill of smooth faces and smooth voices?”

  “And smooth verses?”

  “Yes.”

  “I do not mean to poke fun at Mr. Smythson,” said Katharine. “He may have the face of a rock, but he has a very warm heart. He is a nice man, and in truth the mansions he builds are breathtaking.”

  “And you turned him down.”

  “Tell me more of Nicholas Barlow.”

  “You will meet him again, for Mother is giving a small banquet in our honor.”

  “And I will have a chance then to quiz this Nicholas Barlow on his goodness
,” said Katharine, kissing Isabel’s cheek.

  —

  Back in her own chamber, Katharine sat in her high-backed oak chair with her cloak still on and stared out the open window. The air outside was frigid, but she sat there, letting the cold seep into her skin and questioning if heaven was indeed beyond the clouds. Maybe God was finally granting her His love in the form of this love with Will, a love that only felt mutual sometimes—and it was therein that the confusion, the canker, lay. She could not eat tonight. She could not concentrate. She was not able to keep anyone’s company. She felt weak, almost ill. Finally, she shut the window and lay down on her bed, fully clothed, with her cloak still on. She rested her head on her pillow, stared up at the ceiling and watched the shadows of her candle flame dancing on the wood. Mayhap he thought her too old, not fair enough, not rich enough, too clever. Tears filled her eyes and slid slowly down her cheeks.

  She had Molly fetch Ned—he, his fellow Jesuits and Henry were to depart from Lufanwal after Candlemas.

  “My dear,” Ned said when she opened the door. “My dear, you are ill, return to your bed with haste.”

  “I am not ill, Ned, but ’tis true I am stricken. I have to know, Ned. I must know. You have to, if you love me, pray be honest. I will not fault you. I will understand, because he is so . . . he is so charming, so cunning. I will not fault you. I must know. Please, I beg of you . . .” Katharine, in her smock with her hair down, pulled Ned to sit next to her on the bed. She was holding him by his collar. “I beg of you . . .”

  “What, my dearest? What?” he said, gently taking her hands from his collar and holding them.

  “Did you . . . did he . . .” The tears were streaming down her face. “Are you with him? Have you been with him? In secret? Has he seduced you, too?”

  “Who?”

  “Will?”

  “Will Shakespeare?”

  “Yes, he.”

  “No,” Ned said simply. “I barely met the man but a few days ago at the Stanleys’.