The Lady and the Poet (26 page)

NOT TWO PACES
behind me, a sardonic smile lighting up his eyes, stood the original of the painting.

‘Master Donne, I…’ For the first occasion in my life I stumbled for words. ‘… I came to thank you for your great kindness shown to my sister and my brother-in-law…’

‘It was not your sister or your brother-in-law I sought to help,’ was his simple reply.

‘You took a great risk. Not one I ought to have asked of you. Thank you.’

‘Perhaps now you will steer your brother-in-law clear of his pernicious habits. You seem to me to be a straightforward young woman,’ he smiled faintly, ‘perhaps too straightforward for your own good, who has no difficulty speaking her own mind. There is a clearness of purpose in you that he is bound to respect, for even I am humbled by it. Tell him straight what risks he leads others into.’

‘I will.’

‘Besides I have reasons of my own to be grateful to you.’

My breath quickened to hear that. Was he about to admit I had rescued him from the lures of depravity?

‘Wat.’

‘Wat?’
I was so startled I repeated his name.

‘My servant. A boy of thirteen. Dark hair. Blue eyes. Somewhat given to cheek.’

‘I know who Wat is.’

‘I feared he might be a burden and have found him instead an object of delight. He has greatly increased my standing among my peers. Indeed some have tried to lure him to their service, others content themselves with copying his dress and manners.’

‘I see.’

His smile widened. ‘Thought you that there were other reasons I should be grateful to you? Useful criticism of my verse, perhaps? Maidenly ideas on how I might improve my morals? I am very grateful for both, I assure you.’

‘I am sure you do not need such from one so young and inexperienced as I.’ I tried to keep the annoyance from my voice for I feared he toyed with me, as a cat does with a mouse.

Despite his tender words to Master Wotton, he had clearly seen the rashness in acting on them. Perhaps he had even recovered his equilibrium.

And then, when I was least expecting it, he took my hand in his.

Quietly, gently, he overturned the palm and kissed the tender flesh so that, without warning, I quaked throughout my whole being as if some deep volcano had erupted within me like unto distant Vesuvius.

I know not what might have happened after, whether all my maid’s modesty could have quenched the fire that suddenly raged through all my senses.

Yet I was not to discover, for the door of his chamber opened and Wat stood there, his look telling of the dog that fears its master’s displeasure, and informed Master Donne that he was needed on the instant by the Lord Keeper.

At that I gathered my skirts over my arm, looking at neither Master Donne nor Wat, and ran towards the great staircase and from thence back into the hall where, to my great agitation, Master Manners stood lounging against the oaken table. At sight of him my face flamed up, and as he looked at me his eyes narrowed.

‘Good even, Master Manners.’ I held my head high and told myself to be calm, that he possessed not the powers of the Devil to see the sin in our hearts. I asked the first question of him that flew into my head. ‘Have you seen my father for I must needs talk with him?’

He bowed low. ‘No, Mistress More, I have not had sight of Sir
George this day. Perhaps like all in Parliament and Council he concerns himself with the crisis in Ireland.’

‘Yes, yes you are right. I will find a boy to take a message to him there.’

‘If it would please you, I would take such a message myself,’ he offered, staring into my eyes with so penetrating a gaze that I had to look away.

‘No, no. I am making too much of a trifle. I will speak with him later.’

As I left the hall I felt his eyes follow me and hoped with all my heart that Master Donne chose not this moment to make his appearance.

Thankfully he did not.

‘Ann, Ann,’ my aunt’s voice was as welcome as the angels’ from heaven, ‘the very one I need to help me brew a remedy on the morrow for Thomas the steward’s palsy. What was that herb my lady mother bade you find in the gardens?’

The next morning as I heated up the herbs for the healing brew, my mind pondered on quite another and far more perplexing fire. What was the explanation of my deep confusion? Was it but the promptings of the flesh, so unknown to me before now? In the words of my sister’s sampler, were my senses erring and leading my reason astray?

‘Ann! Take care!’

My aunt’s advice could be against a far greater threat than any she suspected.

I found the brew had boiled over the top of the phial and scalded my fingers.

‘Silly wench!’ my aunt berated me. ‘Here am I come to cure the sickness of my steward and my niece adds her injury to his!’ She made me dip my fingers in cold water.

‘I am sorry, Aunt. Here, the brew is finished now.’

My aunt took the phial from me and sniffed it, which made her cough heartily. ‘Excellent,’ she pronounced. ‘I find with many ailments the fouler the draught, the sooner a cure is affected. With a foul potion, I fancy the sufferer remarks the treatment more and so feels the benefit.’

She poured the mixture into smaller phials and added a stopper to
each, as I tried to be helpful and dutiful and think not of my present difficulty, at which point our purposes were interrupted by the arrival of her servant Mercy.

‘Mistress Ann! A pair of ragged children have arrived asking for you and the steward is all for sending them away. He asked me if I knew aught of their arrival.’ Mercy sniffed her disapproval. ‘I said that knowing yourself, mistress, a troop of one-legged vagrants or a pack of stray dogs might have been bidden to sup with us.’

‘Thank you, Mercy,’ I answered her loftily. ‘I shall come and talk to Thomas myself.’ I picked a phial from the still-room rack where my aunt had been ranging them, adorning each with one of her beautiful labels, written in her own hand, illustrated with plants and leaves in green and gold leaf, works of art in themselves. ‘And I shall give him this to ease all the suffering I cause him.’

‘Ann, Ann.’ My aunt shook her head as I skipped from the still room. ‘Remember to tell Thomas they are not to annoy him or they will be sent away forthwith.’

‘Yes, Aunt.’

I found the two, a boy of about ten and one small maid, quaking under the towering gaze of my uncle’s steward, who was a huge man near six feet tall, dressed from head to toe in black like some giant crow. They both stood staring up at the gilded ceiling and the statues, as if wondering whether they found themselves at the gates of Heaven or of Hell.

‘Welcome.’ I dipped down to my knees. ‘Now you must each tell me your names.’

‘I be Stephen,’ announced the boy. ‘And this is my sister Hope.’

‘Hope,’ I took the maid’s small hand in mine, ‘what a very excellent name to be sure.’

‘The midwife gave it to me,’ Hope announced with a touch of pride. ‘She said that with my mother dying I was like to need it.’

Behind us, Thomas grunted.

I heard no more of the children for the rest of the day, and deemed it safer not to ask. I was sure, if there was a problem I would soon be called on to solve it.

Instead I fulfilled my other duties, walking in the garden, down by the river, to take some air and stock up my aunt’s store of herbal
remedies. Here I spent a busy hour amongst the agrimony and the feverwort, admiring the flowers of the deadly nightshade and picking the clary sage and a bunch of cinquefoil which my grandmother swore was the best remedy she knew against the night sweats. I wondered then about Wat’s sister Sarah, and whether there was aught I could do to help her fever. At that the thought of Bett came into my mind and how I had not been able to aid her for all my learning about herbs and potions.

Before I knew it, the supper bell sounded and I ran up and threw on the nearest gown, hardly thinking how I looked, my hair all blown about, my cheeks whipped into colour by the sharp evening wind. My uncle was just beginning grace when I arrived and I saw with mixed emotions that my father sat at his left hand and the Countess of Straven on his right.

I sensed, rather than saw, the presence of Master Donne, and willed myself to look not in his direction, lest the memory of that encounter, and the fires it stoked, made me give away more than I intended. My eyes strayed in the other direction and found those of Master Manners regarding me intently. He reached out and found a wild strand of my hair that had escaped from the wire of my headdress.

‘Have you ridden abroad today, Mistress More?’ To my great confusion he added, ‘What think you, Master Donne, is not Mistress More’s colour as fresh as if she had hunted the hart all afternoon long?’ What had he noticed passing between we two that made him thus question Master Donne?

‘I cannot answer, Master Manners, for I hunt not,’ was his calm reply.

‘Then you miss much. Hunting adds spice to life as cinnamon does to a hot codling.’

‘Yet it is too dangerous for my taste,’ replied Master Donne. ‘And the outcome over-bloody.’

‘Yet does not danger make us feel alive, think you not?’

‘Do you hunt a great deal, Master Manners?’ I asked, to fill the deep trench of silence that suddenly surrounded us.

‘I do.’ His eyes fixed onto mine. ‘And always on horses that I have broken myself, the wilder the better.’

His meaning was so clear that I had to look away.

‘My lady Straven,’ I enquired swiftly, ‘do you hunt also?’

‘Whenever I may. I have found that hunting is the second best pastime I have yet discovered.’

At this all the table laughed heartily and my aunt, ever the diplomat, swiftly returned the talk to modesty by praising the Queen’s prowess on horseback and how she could stay all day in the saddle and jump fences greater than those of all her courtiers.

As the repast unfolded, I fell silent until I sensed the eyes of all upon me and saw that my lady Straven had asked me a question.

‘Is it true,’ she repeated, ‘as the Lord Keeper’s steward informed me, that you have picked up brats from the gutter and given them a home?’

‘Until their sister is recovered, yes,’ I replied as calm as I could. ‘Their brother Wat is the new servant to Master Donne and is doing very well, is he not?’

‘Excellent well,’ replied Master Donne with a bow. ‘He is a thousand times better than my last boy, though he was of gentler breeding. Mistress More has an excellent eye.’

I thought of how it was not my excellent eye but my guilt at my own good luck that had made me rescue Wat the day he came careering into me, and, in truth, I welcomed not having his brother and sister foisted upon us also.

‘I hear you are given to rash acts, Mistress More,’ the Countess commented, ‘which later you may come to regret.’

My gaze darted anxiously to Master Donne at that, wondering if he had vouchsafed my secret over our encounter upstairs or, worse still, the episode in Southwark.

Yet his gaze was steady, looking staunchly forward, giving naught away.

I breathed again that there were to be no more eruptions tonight; but my relief came too soon, I realized, when I heard the next words from my father.

‘I have had the ill fortune to come across one of your satires, Master Donne,’ he announced, pulling from his sleeve a piece of parchment from which he began to read aloud to the company in a disparaging voice.

‘So, Master Donne,’ demanded my father, his colour rising, ‘am I one of these “raised men” that you speak of so scathingly in your verses? Or mayhap you do me greater honour and I am among the number of your “puffed nobility”?’

Master Donne bowed. ‘Sir George, I thought not of you, nor any hard-working member of Parliament when I penned those words but rather the idle courtier or the scheming Court official.’

‘Yet though you despise so many of us, you have a goodly notion of your own consequence, I warrant, since Truth chooses only to be
your
mistress.’

I could hear the cold fury in my father’s voice and knew that in his eyes Master Donne, poet and scholar, trusted employee of the Lord Keeper though he might be, was nothing but a jumped-up servant and a troublesome meddler in the ways of his betters. And his witty verses, esteemed and valued by his contemporaries, were to my father merely harsh, discordant and, worst of all, critical of the current social order. To stoke up his ire still further I feared he suspected a dangerous quickening of interest in me.

I longed to say my piece at this criticism, to cry, ‘Father, you are wrong! It is the canker of corruption Master Donne seeks to root out not to pull down honest nobility!’ And yet I knew to challenge the authority of my father thus, and express opinions that were the prerogative of men in front of this great assembly, would do naught but damage to myself and to Master Donne himself. So I stayed silent.

‘I wish that Truth were indeed my mistress…’ Master Donne began.

‘Truth! You know naught of truth in your seditious verses!’ ranted back my father. ‘The bishops wish to burn all satires such as yours and I support them with my whole heart! If it were myself I would burn them into ashes to stop them from poisoning godfearing people’s minds!’

My eyes flew to Master Donne’s, silently apologizing.

Hoping to clear the air, my aunt suggested we adjourn to the chamber
in the tower and leave the servants to their clearing. But first she requested that I fetch another phial of medicine, this time for her ailing husband.

I was but halfway down the great passageway, all around me bustling servants carrying wine and ale, and bearing trays of sweetmeats towards the withdrawing room in the tower when I heard a voice call to me.

It was the Countess of Straven.

‘Mistress More, stay one moment.’ To my surprise, she took my hand and led me to an alcove behind the statue of Julius Caesar. With our great hooped dresses there was hardly room for us both and she had to list towards me like a ship in a storm to speak privately.