The Lady and the Poet (37 page)

I pulled in my breath sharply at the cruelty of his words.

‘Go now, Ann. Unless you would I kept you under lock and key.’

This time as I climbed aboard a boat for Mile End the steady beat of the wherryman’s oars tolled out only the sentence of my banishment.

‘Ann! Ann, thank God Almighty!’ My sister Mary fell upon me before even I turned the lock. ‘Where have you been for so many hours? I have told Nick he may not go to the Rose Theatre but must comb the streets for you!’

In my despair I had not even thought what reason I might give her for my disappearance. Yet I had not the heart to lie. ‘I met our father. I told him I looked for a remedy for your fever.’

‘Where is it, then?’ She raised a mocking eyebrow, knowing I had no such thing. ‘I take it our father did not believe you. Did he see who you met?’

I shook my head, too tired and heartsore to deny it.

‘All’s well then?’

‘If banishment to Loseley is well. I may even be kept from your confinement.’

At that, she pulled my head onto her now ample chest, stroked the springy curls of my chestnut hair. ‘Ann, sweet sister, heed. I know this punishment breaks your heart. I too felt the promptings of illicit love, and it was a stronger, headier draught than any I had ever tasted.’

‘For whom?’ I asked, for I had forgotten there had been any other for my sister before Nick. ‘The gentleman to whom you wrote the letter?’

She nodded. ‘Ann, I know your heart breaks, but mayhap it is because the truth is painful. You know in your true soul that Master Donne is not for you, that our father would never accept him as a suitor for your hand. Go home. Forget your dangerous poet and think of Richard Manners. He is a handsome man, of reasonable wealth and more to come when his father dies. You will live in easeful luxury and have a row of tow-haired children whom you will love and they love you in return, far more than any man will.’

‘And what of you, Mary? Took you your own counsel? Or did you follow your own heart?’

Mary heaved a sigh. And I had to admit there was a whole ocean of regret in it. ‘Yet did I the right thing? Where is he now, but out cocking and at plays again while the servants lack their pay?’ Her spirited
face at once looked careworn. ‘I am no great example, sister, of the road to happiness.’

‘Oh, Mary.’ A sob escaped me, even though I wished with all my heart to be brave. ‘I will miss your childbed.’

She stroked my face. ‘Think of your own, Ann. Marry Richard Manners and you could be cradling your own babe a year hence.’

She smiled, thinking she was winning me over to this thought. Yet Mary knew not my deepest secret: that I had given my heart to one who had no manor of his own, nor titled father, nor any expectations but of his own wit or pen.

Next morning I wrote a message to Master Donne and bribed my sister’s groom to take it to him, then packed up my belongings and mounted the horse my father had already sent from Loseley.

Unlike my arrival in London, full of anticipation and delight, this was a journey of despair, every hoofbeat reminding me of all I left behind me.

I had not even had the chance to say farewell, for my sister watched me now. Whereas before she had been almost kind to me, she was now of my father’s party.

My only consolation was the joy on the face of the child Hope when I rode up the long avenue towards Loseley. She sat atop a pillar like to a small stone angel, and waved both arms to me, before jumping a full five feet to the ground and running towards my mount.

I leaned down and pulled her up onto the saddle where we rode the last few yards together. Her brother Stephen was in the yard, clutching one of my grandmother’s chickens.

‘She broke her leg escaping from a fox that killed all the others. I made this splint for her,’ he told me proudly. He showed me the small length of wood attached to the chicken’s leg. I had to hide my smile at so comical a sight. ‘Now she can run if the fox returns.’

I wondered how he had persuaded my grandmother of such a course when, if I knew that practical lady, she would have sentenced the chicken straight to the pot.

Not two minutes later my grandmother herself appeared, yet I did not ask her, for her face was sterner than I had ever seen it.

‘Well, Ann,’ she shooed the children off to their appointed tasks, ‘I hear you are in deep disgrace. Trolling the streets at night, alone and
unattended. Your father says it is God’s mercy you are not the talk of the town.’

‘I am indeed sorry for it and will mend my behaviour.’

‘You will have no choice. We are all to guard you closer than the Queen of Scots.’ For once there was no smile to soften her words. ‘I blame your grandfather. Filling your head with Latin and Greek and such other nonsense. What need hath a young girl for such learning? And as for that French priest and his Reverend Mother behaving like the beasts of the field…’

I tried not to smile. ‘Mean you Abelard and Heloise, Grandmother?’

‘I know not and care less, but that their influence has corrupted you.’

I tried to steer her to less troublesome topics. ‘At least you have one dutiful granddaughter. How does my sister Frances in her betrothed state?’

‘Speak not to me of it.’ My grandmother shook her head. ‘She has stitched her bride clothes betimes, and now embroiders sheeting.’

As we walked through the great front door into my childhood home I felt as if the door of a cage was closing behind me. Gone were the freedoms of London. Here I would be watched closely. The truth hit me with the force of a landslide. There was only one way out of the trap and that was marriage to one of whom my family approved.

At least my grandfather seemed pleased to see me. I had always been his favourite and even now he found it hard to see the bad in me that others described.

‘So, Ann,’ he said gently as I went to find him in his library, the room I loved best in all of Loseley, ‘are you going to follow your father’s wishes and marry the man he has chosen?’

I looked down at my hands. ‘Grandfather, I have already found the man I wish to marry.’

‘Wish!’ My grandfather’s face darkened. ‘Ann, you are no child! You know marriage is not a question of wishing. Marriage is a matter for your family, not your heart. If we had married the people we wished to marry, the Mores would still be petty yeomen, with three poor acres and a cow. How do you think we attained our current wealth and position? By strumming madrigals about our beloved’s bright eyes? No, by marrying to our advantage.’

‘Did you wed my grandmother just for advantage?’

‘Her father was a man of wealth and standing. It was a good match for the Mores.’

‘Yet you cared for her!’ I knew there was too much of passion in my voice, but I could help it not. ‘There is tenderness between you, and respect. You are the pattern of a loving marriage!’

‘The love and respect we bear for one another has been built up brick by brick, cemented with duty and love of God. The kind of love of which you speak has no place in marriage, Ann.’

The pain in my heart was fit to burst that even he, my beloved grandfather, gainsaid me.

‘And what if I could never respect nor honour Master Manners?’

‘Since he is the husband chosen for you by your family then you had best learn to try for he comes back soon to continue negotiations. And if you consent not, your father may take sterner measures against you. And for the sake of our family, I will support him.’

There was no sign of the tender grandfather I trusted so much. All, it seemed, were against me. Even Mary.

At that I ran from the room, smarting sorely at his severity, and took myself to my chamber, forgetting that here at Loseley I must now share with Frances.

There I wept bitterly into my pillow. Here I was, twenty-five miles from the man whom I had grown to love, and my family hardening their hearts against me. And still there was no word from him. I knew it would not be easy to get a message to me, yet still I longed for one.

Though I wished not to, I recalled his words of farewell before my aunt’s funeral, and how they had spoken of finality. Had his friends, as my family had, discouraged him from any thoughts of loving me?

Frances stood at the foot of the bed, a bunch of bright flowers in her hand. ‘Ann, I have brought you a nosegay from the garden.’ She knelt down on the floor beside me. ‘I have not yet met my betrothed, Sir John Oglander, yet I greatly believe I can like him. Can you find no place in your heart for Master Manners?’

‘I cannot.’ I turned my head to the wall and wished I could add, ‘For there is one installed there already.’

To my great relief Master Manners did not come to Loseley for
some weeks and I was able to enjoy the summer. Except that there was still not one word to me from Master Donne.

I reminded myself of all the reasons why this might be: his industry, the difficulty of getting word to me, even his fears that it would anger my father to the detriment of our future chances. Yet I still yearned and looked up each time a messenger came to the great oak door.

One glad day in August a messenger did indeed come, to tell us that Mary’s babe had been born and that they both did well. I looked up hopefully at that but my hopes were soon dashed. My father would not relent an inch: there were to be no visits to my sister, babe or no babe.

So Frances and I had to content ourselves with sewing tiny nightdresses. Of course Frances’ was far superior to my own, but—oh!—the love I poured into every stitch!

At last the day came when Master Manners was due to come for his official visit. I tried to act as if it was of no importance, yet even the children knew and hung around the stableyard when his grand coach drew up one late September morning.

At my father’s insistence I was dressed all in white like some sacrificial virgin. He himself was not yet here since he had been delayed by some business in London.

‘Master Manners.’ I dropped him a curtsey, looking down modestly.

Yet there was something about the expression in his eyes today that forced me to glance up. It was the look of one who has hunted long and hard and whose quarry is finally in his sights.

‘Good morning, Mistress More. I have looked forward for many months to the moment when our fathers might finally come to an agreement.’ He kissed my hand.

Behind us Hope giggled with one of the maids.

Master Manners had dressed in all his finery. He was a handsome man, I had to admit, with his thick brown hair and blue eyes like the haze on some distant hill, and his fresh complexion. For one who spent much time in London he had the beam of ruddy health upon him.

My grandparents made great state of him at supper, seating him at my right hand, with my grandmother next to him on the other side. My father had been detained by some important act of Parliament and would not be here until tomorrow.

And still there was no word from Master Donne to comfort me and keep my faith alive. That night, lying in bed, I took out the verses he had sent to me so long ago.

Yet this night they worked not their usual magic.

It had been six months since last I had word from him. How long could I fan the faltering flame of my love? Once again, in the dark throes of midnight, I asked myself if I had indeed been led astray, and had given my heart to a man who valued it not.

I was woken by the usual commotion that attends my father when he arrives. A clamour of grooms, whinnying horses, my father shouting, all the stir of a small man who likes to stand on consequence.

My brain began to hunt feverishly for ways out, as if I were in the maze of some great garden, which I could by ingenuity and resource—like Ariadne using her thread—find my way through, and emerge safe and sound the other side.

I dressed slowly, never having less reason to want to look my best, dragging a comb through my unruly hair, wishing myself in any corner of God’s earth, save here.

I had barely finished when Frances, happy as a cork bobbing on a turquoise sea, informed me that my father required my presence in the withdrawing room.

I had ever found this a forbidding room, in thrall to its great white chimney piece carved from one single piece of chalk, its columns, its huge figures and ugly evil faces peeping out from it to ward off bad spirits. It was never more daunting than it was today.

My father and Master Manners stood in front of a huge fire, whose logs spat and hissed.

I was about to enter when I saw that they were quarrelling loudly about some matter, and instinct told me to stop on the threshold to listen.

‘I heard talk in London which troubled me greatly,’ Master Manners asserted.

‘What talk is that?’

‘About your daughter and the Lord Keeper’s Secretary.’

I stopped short and hung back, my stomach lurching.

‘What idle gossip is this? I am surprised, Master Manners, that you listen to such empty chatter.’

‘Except that it was from a certain gentleman, an intimate of the secretary’s, and he had it direct from Master Donne.’

At that my throat tightened over, and I ground my nails into my palms so hard I near drew blood.

‘And what is this gossip you speak of?’

‘That he and your daughter have been intimate, and on one more than one occasion.’

My father held fast to the back of a chair as if he might fall else. ‘God’s wounds, man, it is a wicked lie!’

‘Know you also what the wags are whispering about her in the Inns of Court?’

I felt as if I had wandered with no warning into some strange and brutal nightmare.

‘That where one has broke the ice,’ accused Master Manners, ‘others may have followed.’

I longed to rush in and strike him for his foul imputation. In agony I waited for my father to defend me, and insist that he leave our house forthwith.

Yet my father did not do so. Instead, without a word in my defence, he returned to the negotiation.

‘In the light of this unfortunate disclosure I will increase her portion. You may tell your father he may have the five hundred pounds so dear to his heart. On one condition. The betrothal must happen soon. My daughter is impetuous and until this contract is agreed, God Almighty knows what she might do.’