by Maeve Haran
‘A changing one, my son.’
‘I love him, Father,’ I said in a voice of humble submission. ‘He is my lawful wedded husband. And yet he languishes in a stinking prison cheek by jowl with death and pestilence.’
He turned his head away and I could see that he struggled between pride and anger and the love he bore me.
My grandmother, never one to lose an advantage, blustered onwards. ‘If this nonsense over keeping Master Donne in prison ends not, then I shall never return to Surrey.’ Her hawk-like nose, looming above us in the shadows, seemed twice its usual size, and the grim unsmiling line of her lips could swallow a man whole. ‘Indeed, if you persist in your usual blockhead fashion, George, I shall be as fixed as that oak newel post.’ She pointed to the solid block that formed the base of the banister. ‘And never shall you rid your house of me. The choice is yours.’
Next to God, I knew my grandmother to be my best ally, and while I helped her unpack her trunk that night, I thanked her for it.
‘I hope your father will see the light, yet he is a stubborn man and thinks too much of the world’s opinion.’
‘My lady grandmother, God bless you for coming here and for taking my part.’
‘Ann, mind this. I have opposed this marriage as much as any have, but life has taught me that it is idle to cry over milk that has been spilt. Since the deed is done, better that you prove it was worth the doing.’
‘I will, Grandmother, as soon as ever I am given the chance.’
Chapter 28
EARLY ON THE morrow I slipped out before the rest of the household awoke and took myself to St Bride’s Church to pray for my husband’s release from that terrible place. I could not but think of what had befallen his brother Henry in Newgate, and I pictured a similar fate beckoning to my own husband. If I by the end of this day had not changed my father’s mind, I would go to the Fleet myself, no matter what the risk.
Even at that early hour the churchyard seemed more like a market than a place of peace and penitence, bustling with vendors setting up their wares, at one side a tavern offering ale to busy guildsmen, right there in the sight of God, and at the other a printing shop where pamphlets and bills were being noisily prepared amidst a group of arguing writers.
I stole past, my vizor protecting me, and into the back of the church. Matins were halfway through and the familiar sound of voices raised in worship soothed my sorry heart.
For many minutes I knelt, my head bowed, begging God to have pity on our lot. We had committed a sin of the flesh, I knew, and yet was it so great a sin to love as we did and to sanctify our union in the hope of a true and loving marriage?
I know not how long I knelt there, head bowed, until the cold had overtaken me and I could no longer feel the life in the fingers of my hands. I looked up then to find an empty church, its worshippers departed.
And there, in the deathly silence, a terrible solution came to me.
‘Forgive us, Lord,’ I spoke aloud, my voice ringing out through the chill darkness. ‘Yet if you must punish us for our sin, punish only me. Release my husband from his prison cell before disease can ravish him and I will oppose my father’s wishes no longer, even though it means that he whom I love most on this earth is denied to me and that we will only be united in the next. Amen.’
Outside the sudden sunlight blinded me and I fell back into the shadows to make my way back to Charing Cross. And yet, if my father would do naught for us, why did I not appeal myself direct to my uncle the Lord Keeper?
I found him just rising from his own morning prayers and not yet departed for the council chamber. His kindly face wore the crease of annoyance and bad temper it had worn ever since he married the Countess of Derby. It was said she crossed him in everything, no matter how small, and that their angry words could be heard right down the Strand. How different from the sweet peace he had shared with my beloved aunt.
‘What can I do for you on this cold morning, niece?’ He shook his head sadly. ‘As if I knew not. It concerns Master Donne no doubt.’ He waved a letter at me. ‘I have received this missive from him this very morning.’
‘Then let me add my appeal to his. My lord uncle, his own brother died in Newgate of a plague.’
My uncle shrugged. ‘It is a common fate.’
‘Uncle, listen. If it saves him from sickening in that place I will renounce the marriage.’
He saw what this cost me, yet stared straight ahead, making no answer.
‘Is your Master Donne so dear to you that you would give up all for love—family, position, even your good name?’ The Lord Keeper turned away, staring out at the cold grey river. ‘Love can be an illusion, Ann.’
I wondered if he thought of his new wife, so harsh and shrewish.
‘Ours is not such,’ I said simply. ‘It can also, as you well remember, my lord uncle, be the greatest solace and delight God gives to his creatures on this earth.’
‘Aye.’ His sigh was deep enough to launch a fleet from Tilbury. ‘I will release your Master Donne.’
I gasped, unable to keep in my delight.
‘Yet, niece, I cannot reinstate him in his former place here.’
I bit my lip, knowing how hard that would go with John, how difficult it would be for him to get another place. Our future together would be a lean one.
Yet I cared not for that.
He would be released and I thanked God for it.
‘Remember, Ann, I will have him freed, yet I can do no more. Your father is your father and I will interfere not in family matters. I lend no approval to this marriage.’
‘Yet it is a step to our reunion. If he is freed I ask naught else.’
His face softened into a wintry smile. ‘Ah, the optimism of youth. I have always valued Master Donne’s talents, though his ambition sometimes makes him blind, and while I would have wished you another husband, yet I can see the merits of this one. You will have a rough road, if ever you are allowed to walk it together.’
‘Yet each will have the other to watch and guide them. It is enough. Thank you!’
‘Then go and good luck. I will have him released to his lodgings this day. The rest is up to your father. And the decision from the Court of Audience.’
Though the weather was now foul, and the stinking mud caught on the hem of my gown, and my best red shoes were spoiled, yet my soul soared. He was to be freed this day! The road to our reunion might be long and hard but at least it would be possible.
I judged it better not to tell my father I had been behind his back to visit the Lord Keeper.
When Wat arrived with the good news of his release I pretended ignorance along with my joy.
Wat stood, his face beaming like a cat at Christmas when it is given its share of festive goose. ‘I bring you word from my master,’ he announced. ‘He is confined to his lodging, yet that is so great a change for the better that it is not to be complained of.’ He dropped suddenly to his knees and grasped my hands tightly. ‘Oh, Mistress Ann, I did truly fear for him, so sharp was his decline in that dire place. Yet now he is released, the Lord be praised.’
All day I bided my time and played the dutiful daughter, yearning to see him, yet knowing I must not if I were to win round my father, agony though it was. Instead I bid Wat tell him God had blessed us and that surely now it would not be long till He smiled on our reunion.
I was surprised when my father returned early from Parliament and asked if I and my grandmother wished to take the air abroad with him at Whitehall.
In the Whitehall Gardens we felt the first feathery fingers of spring dance across our faces and although it was madness, for I knew him confined to his chamber, I yearned to catch a sight of my husband. Many fine gentlemen promenaded through the gardens, dressed as he would be in lace collars and deep black hats, yet none was he.
Next to the gardens stood a small graveyard where, to my surprise, we spied the Countess of Derby, the Lord Keeper’s new wife, contemplating tombstones.
‘S
ir George!’ She greeted us like long-lost kindred. ‘A pleasure to see you! I am glad indeed to hear of Master Donne’s release. He is a man of myriad talents. Indeed I intend to commission some verse from him to mark my daughter’s wedding feast.’
My father, ignorant of the speed of events, looked as if struck by a bolt of lightning that had deprived him of his speech.
‘Has the thought struck you, Sir George,’ the Countess mused, ‘that Master Donne’s verse might live on long after the rest of us have spun our last thread? That it may be his tombstone future generations seek out?’
My father fell quiet at that, not even railing against the Lord Keeper allowing his release.
My grandmother nudged me in the arm. ‘Your father has been struck by the notion of immortality, and whether having Master Donne as his son might offer it more securely than a month of mumbling paternosters.’
Yet what caused the wind truly to change was the rumour that our marriage was to be declared valid after all. Mary came to visit and said that, since we were to be husband and wife after all, all the talk now was that my father had behaved rashly and to his own disadvantage, and seeing this my father had asked the Lord Keeper to reinstate my husband.
For my own part, I dared not hope, but played the dutiful daughter, as quiet and obedient as my sister Frances, and I prayed.
Easter came early, with its penitential stations of the cross, which suited my sombre mood. My grandmother, restless and eager to be back with the chickens she had left in the care of Hope and Stephen, grumbled, ‘Will he never unbend yet stick as stubborn as some old-fashioned schoolmaster to the rules others have long since abandoned?’
And then, on the twenty-seventh of April my father called me into his closet and, looking up from his parliamentary papers said, ‘Daughter, there is one below who wishes to speak with you.’
Slowly, lest the dizziness in my head should send me sprawling, I descended the steep staircase towards my father’s small library.
A man stood in it, alone, his face hidden by a large black hat.
He turned at the sound of my step.
And there, after so many long months apart, a smile of joyful longing lighting up his features, stood my husband.
Chapter 29
AFTER THE PAIN and the uncertainty, even the fear of death in that dank cell, when the limits of my courage and resolve had been tested, I had thought this moment would have been our crowning glory.
Yet now my spirit deserted me and I felt a sudden shyness.
We had overturned so much convention, and angered so many who were close to us, caused such scandal and gossip, risked so much for love, that the prize must be worth the cost we had paid for it.
What if he found me wanting, regretted the loss of his ambition or feared our fate would be too narrow and impoverished?
He stood before me, his beloved face more careworn, wearing a borrowed doublet for the occasion in thread of gold, his familiar black cast away.
And yet I found no words to speak to him.
Indeed I felt a strange relief when my father came into the room, strutting as usual, and no smile to bid us good luck on our way.
‘Well, Master Donne, you have your Ann. Be good enough to let me know your situation when you are settled in lodgings for I take it you have no property of your own?’
Even now, at this late hour, my father could not but twist the knife. Graciousness was not his way, especially in defeat, and he would do all he could to sour our joy.
To me, he reached out a hand as if I were for all the world a yeoman or a groom of the household leaving his employ.
‘Farewell, Ann. I have done well with my daughters, have I not? Mary married to a noble spendthrift and you to a penniless poet?’
I shook the hand, though I would rather have dashed it away from me. ‘Farewell, Father. I am sorry I am not the daughter you wished for. Yet you have a goodly wife in Margaret and Frances may yet prove the cream of us all. Perhaps she may still speak to you in your dotage.’
At that I turned and walked from the chamber. I had not even readied my possessions for my new life, yet I could not wait another moment in that mean and narrow house. My grandmother could send on all I needed.
Yet there she was, waiting in the hallway, a look of tender sadness softening the fierceness of her features. ‘Pay no mind to your father. He confuses love with blind obedience. He cares much now, yet his rigidness will soften when he hears the good things I know will be spoken of Master Donne.’
‘He may relent. I am not sure that I can.’
She pressed a bag of coins into my hands. ‘A wedding gift from my poor hens. They wish you very happy.’
At that I felt my throat close over, and tears begin to sting my eyes.
Prudence appeared behind her, with a basket containing a few of my possessions. She delved into her apron pocket for a small bundle which she handed to me with humble apology. ‘For your new home. Tis not much, mistress. A pillow slip I have worked with your initials and your husband’s.’ I looked down at the letters ‘A M’ entwined forever with ‘J D’ in scarlet silk, and the truth of my new situation enveloped me.
‘Thank you, Prudence. You have been a good friend.’ The tears began to run down her face at that, for servants rarely felt their employers’ kindness.
‘Thank you, mistress. We will miss you sorely.’
And then we were out in the muddy street. I was grateful that he had hired a coach for our departure, even though we could not afford it, for I wished to leave the house in Charing Cross, and my father in it, with all speed.
A thought struck me and I turned to John.
‘But where will our home be?’ I had sudden visions of us thrown onto the street with our meagre possessions around us. ‘Will Master Haines allow a wife to share your lodging?’
He shook his head.
‘Your cousin Francis bids us come to live at his house in Pyrford. It is not far from Loseley and your grandmother, and Francis promises there are many spare apartments. I will have peace and quiet for my writing and can help him with his accounts and any tasks needful of doing around the estate. Perhaps he is being kind, yet he says we will be the greatest help to him and Mary.’
‘Poor John.’ I touched his face gently. ‘You who hate the country so, and see it as the root of all boredom and all evil.’
‘That was without you. Now I shall gaily walk the meadows, adorning the cows with ropes of wildflowers and writing verse to sing the praise of farmyard fowl.’
I laughed at that, relief flowing through me that I appreciated his company as much as I had done before. ‘Mock not farmyard fowl.’ I chinked the bag of coins. ‘For they may be paying for this coach we ride in! Do we go to Pyrford now?’
At that he smiled a secret, lazy smile. ‘On the morrow. Tonight shall be our bridal night, so long awaited.’
‘And where will we spend this long-awaited bridal night?’
‘Wait and you shall see.’
I looked out of the window as we passed down the busy thoroughfare of the Strand and into Fleet Street up towards Ludgate Hill. I could see him shudder at the nearness to the Fleet Prison and was glad when the coach turned away towards Smithfield, drawing up at last outside the Rising Sunne, a quiet inn in Cloth Fair, hard by the church of St Bartholomew the Great.
I felt a certain disappointment at surroundings so modest and discreet for our first wedded night, yet told myself our luck was in being together at all.
The innkeeper, a decent-looking man, answered our knock and led us upstairs to our chamber. As he opened the door I almost gasped aloud, for the chamber was one of the most beautiful I had ever beheld, panelled in wood from floor to ceiling and everywhere I looked were Turkey carpets in bright shades of indigo, blue and crimson, not just on the walls but on the floor also. The curtains were of great swathes of silk in russet and green, tied back with thick knotted ropes as if we were for all the world in a playhouse.
And everywhere were st
range and unfamiliar objects, a pipe attached to a silver stand on which incense or some other spice burned; a spinning globe with all the new world marked upon it; and all round the bed hung small lanterns, their sides of coloured glass, with star-shapes cut from their silver holders so that all the room was jewelled with coloured light.
Yet the eye was caught most of all by the vast canopied bed, adorned with rich brocades and glowing velvet coverings edged with ermine and white fox.
He saw me look and then my eyes shyly turn away.
‘The chamber belongs to a sea-captain who stays here only between voyages.’
‘I have never seen aught like it before.’ I felt suddenly the need to chatter, to postpone the moment when, at last, we two would be truly man and wife. Instead I picked up a huge shell in dazzling iridescent blue.
‘From the Indies. The room is full of such treasures.’
My eye caught something familiar laid out upon the bed and then I smiled, my fear departing, for it was my own white linen nightgown.
‘Your tire-woman Prudence summoned Wat and sent it on before us.’
‘Yet, Master Donne, if I remember your verses aright, I should not need such a garment. Is it not full nakedness that is required to taste whole joys?’
He laughed and took my hands.
‘Was there ever such a one as you, my Ann?’
‘No, never. And I am sure if there was you would have found her, since you seem to have undressed every lady in London. And some, I fancy, who were less than ladies.’
‘Tut tut, such boldness in one so young. Sir George is well rid of you, I think. No wonder he relinquished you so easily in the end.’
I stopped laughing then, remembering the fear and the loneliness of these three long years. ‘No, John, he did not relinquish me so easily. I had to fight him every step of the way.’
‘My sweet Ann, I know that. And now after all your struggles I have transported you to a meagre fortune.’
‘No, say not that. Our fortunes will be joined together from this moment hence. No such future could be meagre. Indeed it will be rich beyond imagining.’