The Tutor: A Novel

by Andrea Chapin

  A month later, in April, with the sun lingering in the sky and the summer birds returning, Lord and Lady Strange were due to attend a banquet at Lufanwal in honor of Richard’s release from prison. Were it not for Isabel’s pestering, Katharine would have stayed up in her self-made convent. She had begun to wonder if perhaps she had erred, for as the days became longer, and with Ned still in the north, she found she missed Mr. Smythson. She’d seen a tall man in a black coat one day in town, and she’d run up to him, almost tripped, only to discover the man wasn’t Mr. Smythson at all. Katharine imagined his wife as all sorts of people, some of whom she approved of and others of whom she did not. She found some comfort in thinking that maybe he’d married the poetess Aemilia Bassano, whose bold verse still echoed in Katharine’s head. Such a cunning and bright woman would make a good wife for him.

  Tonight Katharine was amongst most of her kin, her folk, and she was alive, and for that she was thankful. Others were not. The casualties this past year had been great and wide. Sir Edward, Ursula, Harold, and they had received notice that Mary, whose case was to be tried in the summer assize, had died in jail. Before Mary died, she had made a confession, more a tirade, though she was too ill to stand, and what she had shouted was a scandal to all: her husband, Harold, she said, had Father Daulton killed, for he wanted Sir Edward to think the queen was coming after him. It was Harold who had Lord Molyneux’s priest murdered after the funeral. And it was Harold who had suggested exile and convinced Sir Edward of its urgency. Mary said that Richard’s arrest was of Harold’s doing also. First he was going to try to pin the poor priests’ murders on Richard, but then thought the plotting against the queen a better device, for Harold had wanted all the estates for himself.

  Katharine had not seen Will. She had refrained from asking if he still resided at Lufanwal, so it did not occur to her that he might be at the banquet, but there he was, rushing into the great room as if it were his. Will, being Will, had flattered someone into an invitation. Perhaps it was Lord and Lady Strange themselves who had requested his presence. However he got there, get there he did, and Katharine, upon seeing him, turned her back in his direction. He was across the great room where, she hoped, he would stay. But he did not. Her back still to him, she was aware at one point that he was but five people to her left. He was with Lord Strange—fawning, she supposed, toadying his way into the lord’s rarefied sphere. Katharine recalled how Will had invoked Lord Essex when he returned from London with those absurd red shoes. She remembered how pleased Will was that he used the same cordwainer as Lord Essex. Katharine imagined how Will would act if he ever met Lord Essex: she winced at the thought of the blandishments Will would spew to buff that lord’s luster.

  Would that her back were a wall, thick as stone, or better yet a mountain peak, but alas she was mere flesh and blood, and all she could do was turn herself on her own strings like a puppet, so as not to face Will. Katharine was talking with Nicholas Barlow, when she felt someone slam into her hip and slide his buttocks across her backside. The impact was so strong, she jumped and let out a yelp, and when she turned, she saw Will scurry away, disappearing into the crowd. What an odd and vulgar thing. Was this how the lads in Warwickshire treated the lasses? With a bump and a slam as rude and loutish as a stall boy?

  Katharine turned her back again. She would not react to his stable game. She resumed talking with Nicholas, who had seen enough of Will’s strange performance, and how the skin on her face was now drained of blood, to ask, “Everything all right, madam?”

  Before she had a chance to answer, she felt a tap on her shoulder, and she turned around.

  “Will Shakespeare,” he said, bowing with a flourish.

  He was wearing the most astonishing array of gold, his doublet and breeches the color of ivory, with shimmering gold silk that oozed from oversized slashes as though they were indeed gashes with gold blood pouring forth. His hose, too, glimmered with gold thread, as did his white ruff. Was this peculiar costume culled from his player’s trunk or from the patronage of some rich earl? And his hair. What had he done to it? It was longer, combed back and glistening as though he had poured a jug of oil onto it. Katharine was as taken aback by his appearance as she was by his bizarre courting of her.

  She crossed her arms, trying to keep from slapping him.

  “How art thou?” he asked, smiling, as though he had just seen her that morning, as though what had gone on between them were a game at court, and everything was fine.

  She thought him utterly mad. Was this some sort of a taunt?

  “‘How art thou?’” she said, stepping toward him. “‘How art thou?’” she repeated, so loudly and distinctly and with such edge that several people in the great room stopped talking and looked at her.

  She grew at that moment, felt herself growing, now a giant towering over him, reeking of scorn instead of worship, stinking of disdain instead of love. Perchance it was her giantness that scared him off, for he turned on his heels and ran out of the great hall. Gone. Katharine felt triumphant, as if she were an army and he the enemy and she had forced a retreat.

  The last time she saw him was a week later. She’d spent the morning with the tailor charting Isabel’s wedding dress, and there was more cause for celebration, for Matilda had announced Joan was betrothed to William Hesketh. Katharine decided on this beautiful spring day to bury the Agnus Deis she had pulled from Mercy’s neck. In the afternoon Katharine walked through the woods picking flowers. She stepped on stones across a full stream: with the spring rains came hope the drought would not return this year. She found the stand of trees where Father Daulton had breathed his final breath, and, kneeling on the ground, she dug at the earth, first with a sharp rock and then with a stick. She interred the Agnus Deis and set the flowers atop the fresh mound of dirt.

  With the thud of a horse’s hooves, Katharine looked up. The rider was tall, the horse big. She stood rooted in the spot where she had placed the flowers. Mr. Smythson reined in his horse and trotted toward her. What surprised her was that he looked at her with the same kind expression he’d worn in their previous encounters, and she felt that was wrong, since he had launched into marriage so recently and so quickly and should only in truth look that way at someone he loved. Was every man a Shakespeare, then?

  “Good day, Miss Katharine,” he said. He dismounted.

  “Mr. Smythson, I must offer you my congratulations,” she said, not bothering to return his greeting. His forehead was more furrowed than she remembered. What had Isabel said that day she was trying to persuade her to reconsider Smythson’s offer: Have you not had your fill of smooth faces and smooth voices?

  “Thank you.” He bowed.

  “I’m sure you will be very happy.” She tried to keep her voice steady.

  “Happy? Well, I don’t know about that, but it will surely be a lot of work.”

  She nodded, thinking this was an odd way to speak of marriage, but perhaps an honest one.

  “And my coffers will surely be fuller,” he added.

  Katharine was taken aback by Mr. Smythson’s brazen take on his wife’s dowry.

  “I brought something for you,” he said. He pulled a wooden box from a sack on his saddle and handed it to Katharine.

  “Mr. Smthyson, many thanks, but I cannot accept this—whatever it is.” She tried to give it back to him.

  “Why not?”

  “Because you shouldn’t go around giving gifts to women when you are already married.”

  “Married?” The creases on his brow deepened. “Married?” he repeated. “What gives you the idea I am married?”

  “I heard all about it.”

  “You, Miss Katharine, know more about my marriage than I do.”

  “Didn’t you?”

  “What?”

  “Wed?”

  “No. From whence did you hear this ill-gotten news?”

  “From a M
r. Barlow, whose house you visited.”

  “Bridgeton Manor? Lord Barlow?”

  “His son, Nicholas, who is to marry Isabel. Nicholas said you were off to your wedding.” And just as Katharine said this, she recalled how Nicholas Barlow said he had no head for details.

  “Ah,” said Mr. Smythson. He smiled. Then he laughed. “My brother’s wedding. My brother in London.” He dipped his head close to her face and looked into her eyes, which were brimming. Then he pulled a cloth from his pocket and handed it to her.

  “What were you talking of, then, with all the work and all the money?” she asked, wiping her eyes.

  “My new commission. Lady Shrewsbury has chosen me to build her a new hall on her Hardwick estates in Derbyshire. I have been drawing up the first plans. It will be a mansion of symmetry and light. She is a very smart woman with a very good eye for all things, and since her husband has passed on—they were verily on terrible terms—she has enough money to make something stunning. I cannot sleep, I am so thrilled with what we will be able to create.”

  “Congratulations.” Katharine tried to smile but felt like weeping.

  He bowed again. “You were distressed at the thought of my marriage,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  He waited.

  “Because I realized I made a dreadful mistake,” she said finally. “I found myself thinking of you, heard in my head different things you had said. You stayed with me in a way I cannot quite articulate. And I saw with your son—”

  “John?”

  “Yes.” She paused. “That you indeed know how to love. And I thought maybe I’d missed a great opportunity”—she wiped her eyes again with the cloth he had given to her—“to learn from you.”

  “Open the box,” he said gently.

  She did. Inside was a crystal ball, a shewstone, like the one he had broken that day in the library.

  “Gramercy, Mr. Smythson.”

  “Robert.”

  “Robert, am I to be like Dr. Dee and use this to peer into the future?” she said in a mocking tone.

  He stooped down next to her to look into the orb. Then he took it from her hands, held it up to the light and examined it. “I see Mrs. Smythson in there.”

  “Your late wife? ’Tis a strange shewstone that lets one look into the past.”

  “No. ’Tis the future. ’Tis you, the future Mrs. Smythson,” he said, handing it back to her. “Take a look.”

  “I am not the stuff good wives are made of, Robert,” Katharine replied, handing the stone back to him without peering into it. “My own father said I would never be tamed, and it has come to pass he was right.”

  “I know,” said Robert.

  “I am not landed, have no riches, no grand houses, no leas of wheat.”

  “I know.”

  “I’ve had a horrid experience of late. And I am terribly afraid of . . . of love.” She couldn’t stop herself. She wanted to tell him.

  “I know,” he said.

  “You know?”

  “Would take a blind man not to notice.”

  They were silent for a moment.

  “Is it over, then?” he asked finally.

  “Aye,” she said. “And I am surely past the age—”

  “You are young. You will always be young, even when you are old. And need I repeat, Lady Shrewsbury wed at seven and forty, and my own aunt Peg had a child at two and forty, and you are a mere one and thirty—”

  “Two and thirty in two weeks.”

  “A mere two and thirty in two weeks, then. You have a life in front of you,” he said. “With me, if you accept.”

  And so she did.

  —

  That evening after Robert left, she went out into the orchard after the rain shower and strolled in the lilac breeze under the moonlight. He had described how she could spend summers at the cottage near Poulton and winters in Wollaton, while he was back and forth these next years from Hardwick Hall. She was so focused on her own thoughts that she practically bumped into Will before she noticed him. He was a short ways from her, the light of the moon so bright upon him that it was as if he were standing under a torch. He had his arms wrapped around a young maid no older than Mercy. Katharine thought for a moment she had conjured the image.

  “Ho, Will,” she said, hoping it was a trick of the moonlight and the couple would vanish.

  Will and the lass looked up at Katharine as she walked by.

  “Good-den,” he said, as if she were a mere acquaintance.

  “Good-den,” she responded without breaking her stride.

  She walked on, not stopping, not turning. She drifted back to the hall, opened the heavy oak door and passed through it, as if she were a spirit floating from one world to the next.

  28

  he grasses bowed with each gust of wind. The week before, an end-of-summer storm had stirred the bay into such a frenzy that Katharine laughed with delight as the waves leapt over the dunes. This room was so different—with its walls washed in white and floors the color of sand—from her turret high up the endless stairs at Lufanwal. She never needed a lamp during the day here; even when the sky turned gray the light poured through the windows and touched everything. How uncanny that she lived by the sea, not Father Daulton, when he was the poor soul who had envisioned such a life.

  In the month since her marriage, she had not missed Lufanwal. She had asked Matilda for a hundred books from Sir Edward’s library for her dowry. The books were now safely in shelves Robert had built at the house in Wollaton. Her wedding had been small and quiet and a month after Isabel’s. Sir Christopher de Ashton had offered his stunning new house for the occasion. In his will, Sir Edward had kindly provided a sum for Katharine with no stipulation that she must marry. She’d taken her virginals and her unicorn coverlet from Lufanwal when she left. And she’d taken Molly.

  There was a knocking. Molly was off to town. Robert and John were at work in Derbyshire. Katharine rose from her chair to see who’d come, but it was only the breeze, pushing the door against the large white stone that held it open. She shifted the stone with her foot to stop the rattle.

  Will had gone to London with Lord Strange’s Men before Isabel’s wedding. He’d not come to Katharine before he left. He’d stayed away. Though he was too lowborn to be a courtier, he could play one and would figure how to get on in London, for certainly it was a place that favored such cunning, such desires, such brilliance. Katharine still thought of the poem every day. She had learned many of the lines by heart and recited them—sometimes to herself, other times out loud. She wondered if the poem would ever be published, if she’d see it in a bookstall, open the leather cover, see his name, read the words.

  Across the bay stretched an island with beaches, fields and forests of ancient pedigree that had been given to Robert’s first wife’s family generations ago by the lord of the manor for some deed well done. There the island sat, untouched. For Katharine it was a beacon; she checked it daily. She would, she knew, never make it to the Continent, but next summer she would ask Robert to take her to that island, and eventually, maybe, they would build a house there.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Katharine and the De L’Isle family at Lufanwal Hall in Lancashire are from my imagination, though my great-grandfather Wallace Torrey Chapin built a Norman-like castle on the Hudson River in New York State at the beginning of the last century and named it Lufanwal. I have, throughout my novel, interwoven historical figures with fictional characters and would like to provide some context for the two main real-life characters here.

  It is not known when William Shakespeare arrived in London, but it is assumed that the “upstart crow” whom Robert Greene chastised in print in 1592 was the actor-turned-playwright from Stratford. Several of Shakespeare’s early plays had already been staged, but not published—plays ra
rely appeared in print at that time. Records show that Henry VI, Part I was performed at the Rose Theatre by Lord Strange’s acting company in the spring of 1592. That September the city council ordered the closing of all the theaters in London because of a severe outbreak of the plague. Nine months later, in June 1593, Shakespeare’s narrative poem Venus and Adonis was published in an elegantly printed volume, dedicated to his wealthy and influential patron, the nineteen-year-old Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton and Baron of Titchfield. The book was an immediate and enormous success; it went through at least ten editions in Shakespeare’s lifetime. His second narrative poem, The Rape of Lucrece, followed within a year and was even more popular.

  Shakespeare had, by age thirty, achieved every Elizabethan poet’s dream: acceptance into the rarefied sphere of the university-educated poets, praise by critics, a respectable and dedicated publisher, multiple printings of his books, and a wealthy patron whose deep pockets guaranteed a lifestyle far more glamorous than the rough-and-tumble world of the theater and the scant pounds a playwright earned when he sold a play. Shakespeare’s two narrative poems had brought him far more literary fame at this point than his dabbling in texts for the theater. He was launched, on his way to the cushioned life of a court poet.

  But he never wrote another long narrative poem, and he never offered his well-established publisher another manuscript. He let his prized relationship with the Earl of Southampton run fallow. He published the short poem “The Phoenix and Turtle,” in a collection titled Love’s Martyr in 1601. He is thought to have continued working on his sonnets but did not seem particularly interested in publishing them, and indeed, they were not printed for the public until 1609.

  When the London theaters reopened in the spring of 1594, Shakespeare dove back into the very collaborative art of writing plays and acting in them—apparently shutting the door on the social and literary aspirations that must have so fiercely driven him when he started Venus and Adonis. It was unique, if not unheard of, for a young poet of his standing to abandon what had brought him great success and to dedicate his life to the theater—yet that’s just what Shakespeare did. It was as a playwright that he learned to make his fellow actors the mediums through which he reached the emotions of the audience, and it was as a playwright that he developed his genius for creating rich and varied characters who defied the bounds of time.