The Lady and the Poet (39 page)

‘Thank you, Master Manners,’ I breathed, my teeth chattering.

‘Here, have my cloak. I would not wish to sacrifice you to the sea.’
His blue eyes widened. ‘Think of all the pleasures we would miss if you became Neptune’s bride.’

I flushed at the implication of his words and stared shorewards.

My sister’s future husband, Sir John, awaited us on the cold quayside when we finally negotiated the harbour mouth. I have rarely been more grateful to see dry land. He stood, waving and jumping so he almost dropped the nosegay of bright blooms he carried in his hand. He was not a handsome man, yet he had so much exuberance he put me in mind of a setter dog my grandfather once owned, who could never be trained, and yet whom, despite his stern warnings in public, my grandfather secretly loved. Had Sir John Oglander a tail he would now be wagging it.

Sir John was of middle height, aged about twenty, with what looked a tendency to plumpness, but his face was so eager and welcoming it took all attention away from any other deficiencies he might have.

As he helped us out of the boat his gaze alighted first upon me, a questioning look in his face, as if he wondered if I were his betrothed. Yet the uncertainty lasted no more than a moment for Frances, her piety forgotten, pushed past me demanding, ‘Are you Sir John? I am your wife-to-be, Frances.’

He bowed, looking somewhat taken aback by her youthfulness, though surely he must have known her age, yet he covered it by handing her the flowers. ‘Welcome to the Isle of Wight. I hope you will find it a veritable paradise, as I do.’

Frances simpered at that. ‘Anywhere containing you, Sir John, would be a veritable paradise.’

Master Manners exchanged a mocking smile with me at these extravagant words, and I laughed behind my fan, deciding that the couple would be well matched.

And so it seemed, though Sir John adopted the manner with my sister more of the jovial uncle than the intended husband, which brought out Frances’ best side.

‘My house at Nunwell is not too long a ride from here.’ He summoned the horses his grooms were holding. ‘I would have brought the coach but the roads are rutted and full of mud.’

I was grateful for the chance to ride, for I had not been on horseback
for a while and loved the freedom of it. As I rode my coif slipped back and I felt the wind whipping at my hair.

‘So,’ Master Manners came to ride alongside me, ‘what think you of your sister’s betrothed?’

‘He seems a kind man. I think they will be content together—unless he lets Frances get the better of him.’

‘And you, Mistress Ann, what do you look for in a husband?’

The question threw me into confusion. Master Manners’s eyes were upon me, questioning and assessing, yet teasingly so.

‘Kindness. Respect. A sense perhaps of adventure.’

‘You ask much. And what would you give him. Obedience? Deferring to him in all things?’ He laughed at that, but gently. ‘I think the man for you must be one who relishes the chase.’

Before I had the time or wit to answer he jumped a wall and galloped off, hallooing the while. And what must I do, being one that acts before they think, but jump the wall after him and race up the hill until we halted on the summit and looked down upon the others.

And then his mount was alongside mine, so close that I could smell its sweat. ‘There are other adventures in life besides upon a horse,’ he said softly and spurred his horse on to join the others.

A few miles outside the village of Nunwell we spied Sir John’s ancestral home, a pleasant brick house of three storeys built round a central buttress with a wing stretching out each side. Its long windows had a grace and elegance I warmed to immediately. Indeed, much though I loved Loseley for its stern grey beauty, Nunwell had a welcoming look to it as if it might stretch out its wings and embrace you. It was of a manageable size also.

For a fleeting moment I envied my little sister her amiable husband and her cosy house, and even more the straightforwardness of her situation when my own was so difficult and byzantine.

While Sir John showed the others proudly round his grounds, I felt the need of air again to calm my alarm, and stepped beyond the garden from where there was a fair view across the Solent.

‘My father’s house is thrice the size of this,’ murmured a voice at my elbow and I found Master Manners had followed me out. ‘He is a great age already and will not long grace this earth.’

‘Master Manners,’ I chided gently, ‘you would not wish your father dead before his time?’

‘And there is a great park around it, not piddling gardens such as these.’

‘I like the gardens here. They are on a human scale, and could be tended without too much care and effort.’

‘If you wish for piddling gardens, Mistress More,’ Master Manners bowed extravagantly, ‘then piddling gardens you shall have.’

‘You are very persuasive, sir.’

‘Am I?’ He raised my hand suddenly to his lips. ‘Indeed I hope so.’

Voices interrupted us. It was our host and his betrothed approaching together with my father, who smiled upon them both as if in appreciation of a bargain well struck. ‘I intend to give you twenty pounds a year, my dear, for your apparel and all your necessaries,’ Sir John explained to my entranced sister. ‘I am not a rich man, and yet I keep a better table than any other on the island. You shall have salmon and musk-melon and any other things that delight your heart.’ He turned to Master Manners. ‘Like you London, sir? For myself I hate it. Nothing but dice and whores—pardoning your presence, mistresses—and they have brought many a man to beggary.’

‘Have they indeed?’ Master Manners answered with pretended seriousness. ‘I try to spend my time on learning and religion.’

‘Do you, sir? Then God has smiled on you. If they are ever to go to London, young men need a vocation, some modest calling, think you not? Or they reckon themselves too gentle and high for honest work.’

‘I cannot say that honest work has much appealed to me.’

‘That is because you are a gentleman, sir. My point entirely.’

‘Do you not want our sons to be gentlemen?’ Frances enquired, scandalized.

‘Certainly. Yet gentlemen who have a profession.’

‘Is that not a contradiction in terms?’ asked Master Manners.

‘I agree with Sir John,’ seconded my father. ‘Too many young men spend their inheritance trying to win favour with friends.’

‘Ten pounds will do more for you than most men’s love, I always say,’ Sir John pronounced just as supper was announced.

‘I think your father, Sir George, has met a man after his own
stamp,’ confided Master Manners as he led me to the parlour chamber.

The meal we were served was an excellent one of pigeon followed by swine’s flesh and roast mutton, finished with a cheese from Sir John’s own cows. He then took us on a tour inside his house, pointing out to my great amusement the very bed they would sleep in—not to mention the excellency of its feather mattress—and assuring my sister she would have her own gentlewoman to meet her every need. Yet I liked him much.

‘You are fortunate indeed, Frances,’ I whispered to her later. ‘Sir John is a good man, I believe.’

‘I know,’ Frances replied, glowing with glee. ‘I am going to be a happy woman.’ She smiled at me angelically. ‘Above all in that feather bed!’

‘Frances!’

‘Well, it is my betrothal we celebrate. I do know what happens in the marriage bed, sister. Remember Bett and her Sir John?’

We both held each other a moment at that, remembering how soon it was afterwards that Bett had left this world. ‘Though I think my Sir John will prove a better bargain than hers did. You know, Ann…’ she put her arm round my waist, ‘you could have as happy a home and hearth as I will.’

‘With Master Manners, you mean?’

‘Who else could give you what he offers,
and
make your family happy? Ponder on it, Ann.’

‘Have you been enlisted by our father in this cause?’

‘No, sister,’ she replied, all seriousness and concern, ‘it is because I wish you to share the happy prospects I look forward to. Besides, you cannot truly consider going against our father’s will. Such a thing is not possible. Even bold and fearless Mary did not do so.’

We were called outside at that. Sir John wished to show Frances his henhouse before inviting us to sit down to a game of Glecko.

By the time we left three days later I could picture the years of great content unfolding for Sir John and my lady Frances and the many children who would no doubt fill up this happy home. She would be the best housewife a husband could dream of, and he an amiable, loving husband, who would chide her continually to make small economies,
then spoil it all by purchasing some great gift for her of jewels or silver whenever he had to go away.

I sighed as I packed up my bag, and gave Sir John a great kiss that took him by surprise as we stood outside in the chill of the morning waiting to leave.

‘I hate this damned weather,’ complained my father. ‘Already I have the flux and fear I shall suffer it worse on our way back to Loseley.’

Despite the cold and wet the return crossing was far pleasanter, the sea being as calm and grey as a stagnant pond. Even so I greeted the sight of dry land with relief.

Portsmouth town was even fuller with soldiers than when we passed through on our way out. ‘The townspeople complain roundly about being billeted with them,’ my father admitted. ‘And in time of war it is far worse.’

I thought suddenly of the expeditions to Cadiz and the Islands, when Master Donne had been a soldier, and how he had written so vividly in his verse of all the smart young gentlemen, dressed in their gold lace and feathers, signing up as voluntaries to protect their Queen and make their fortunes, only to find that war was nasty and brutal before returning, shocked and impoverished, their lace torn, their feathers drooping and deep in debt.

‘What find you in all this uncouth soldiery to make you smile?’ asked Master Manners.

‘I had not known that I did so.’

He raised his brows, a look of suspicion clouding his handsome features. ‘Come, I have promised your father we will visit the apothecary to find him some relief from the flux he suffers. I spied an apothecary’s sign behind the town near to St Mary’s Chapel.’

‘That is kind of you. Yet surely I should be the one to find it.’

‘If you think so. I will wait outside. You ought to take a care with all this soldiery abroad.’

The apothecary listened to my request politely and reached behind him towards the shelves lined with jars and urns. To my surprise, instead of opening any of these he broke off a lump of charcoal and selected one of the mortars sitting on his counter. With a brass pestle he ground the charcoal into powder. ‘He must take this infusion twice a
day. It may taste like the Devil’s own concoction but it will answer the problem better than chamomile or peppermint. Even better than chewing ginger, though all these remedies will answer in their way.’

I thanked him.

At the inn my father had taken to his bed and was glad of the charcoal, though suspicious of its newness. Frances, still beaming at her good luck in the marriage prospects, had elected to stay and sit with him, ministering to any needs.

I stowed my cloak in my chamber to find that Master Manners had ordered supper and awaited me in our own private dining room. The food and wine were all laid out invitingly.

‘I told the innkeeper we would need no boy to serve us since it seems they are short-handed.’

‘That is kind of you,’ and yet I wondered why he felt the need to point it out.

Silence fell between us. I refused the wine he proffered yet Master Manners drank it steadily, rarely letting his goblet touch the table, until the ewer emptied and there came a dangerous glitter in his eyes.

Growing concerned at his wild look, I got to my feet and began to bid him good night, saying that I was tired and needed to sleep.

‘Aye,’ he slurred. ‘To lie in bed and think of Master Donne.’ Uttering the name seemed like lighting the fuse on a barrel of gunpowder. ‘Master Donne again! Always Master Donne!’ And suddenly he was upon me as if the barrel had exploded. ‘All the time in London you avoided my company,’ harshly he forced me back against the wainscoting, ‘yet you seemed ready enough for the company of Master Donne!’

I felt his leg pushing between mine and one hand roughly fondle my breast and I wanted to scream out, but his other hand covered my mouth. ‘Yet despite all the rumours you claim still to have your maidenhead.’ He held me fast, with his hand under my chin pressing roughly against my neck so that I could hardly breathe. ‘If that be so, the pleasure of your deflowering belongs to me. For only then can we see if you tell God’s honest truth or lie like a Deptford whore.’

As I struggled for my life and honour I felt his breath coming fast, and saw his eyes glazing in cruel anticipation and that he meant to have me there and then, standing up like some cheap doxy. In my fear
and panic I looked for some implement to ward him off, but there was none.

I tried to scratch his face yet this made him smile the more as if my very resistance increased his enjoyment in the taking of me. At last I managed to cry out for help.

‘What mischief takes place in here?’ The innkeeper’s voice rang out and I thanked the Almighty as Master Manners slackened his hold.

‘We are well, thank you, landlord,’ he sneered, beginning to whistle as if he had been simply surprised in a lovers’ tryst.

The innkeeper looked suspiciously from Master Manners to myself. ‘Need you any assistance, mistress?’

‘I would welcome your company to walk with me upstairs to find my father.’

‘Indeed. And does the Watch need summoning, think you?’

If I summoned the Watch I knew my father would never forgive me. I knew he cared for me, yet he cared for our family’s reputation more. ‘No, no, I will find my father. He is but a few steps hence.’

‘Too far to come when you might need him,’ shrugged the innkeeper. ‘You’d best come now and I can take you myself.’

As I made ready to follow him, Master Manners grabbed my arm. ‘Time enough yet,’ he whispered thickly. ‘There will not always be strangers to interrupt us.’ He flicked my cheek with his finger as if all that passed between us had been mere playful joshing. ‘Especially when we are wed.’