The Lady and the Poet (48 page)

He loosened our hands and bade me take John’s hand in my right one. ‘I, Ann More, take thee, John Donne, to my wedded husband, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love, cherish, and to obey, till death us do part, according to God’s holy ordinance. And thereto I give thee my troth.’

‘Who hath the ring?’

Christopher handed it over and John solemnly took my left hand in his, his eyes still holding mine. He slipped it onto the fourth finger of my left hand, repeating, ‘With this ring I thee wed, with my body I thee worship, and with all my worldly goods I thee endow. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.’

I could scarce breathe with relief and happiness when Samuel joined both our hands and stated gravely: ‘Those whom God hath joined together let no man put asunder.’

He then pronounced us man and wife and at last John swept off his black hat and kissed me.

It was not the wedding I had dreamed of, with bells pealing and
kith and kin toasting and feasting through the night, and yet my heart sang nonetheless.

For John Donne was the man in all the world that I had truly chosen for my own, and whom I loved, body and soul.

‘Well, Ann,’ said Mary as she held me tight in her arms, ‘you have what you wanted at last and I hope you will be eternally happy.’

I returned her embrace. ‘None can be eternally happy this side of paradise. Yet I know one thing: without him I would have had as much chance of contentment as a blackbird prevented from building her nest.’

‘And now the only shadow in your blue sky is when to tell our father.’

At that I sighed. ‘True enough. Yet I will not think of it now. We have decided that I must return today and prepare the way, that the blow when it falls, should be cushioned with the straw of my daughterly devotion.’

‘You will need a cartload of hay for that, if I know my father’s temper. So, what do we do now? Disperse without even a toast to your health and future? Bett’s marriage had too much in the way of ancient custom yet yours, it seems to me, has not enough…’

Henry Goodyer, to whom I felt no great love, since he had sat silent throughout all like a great brooding owl, portending nothing but doom and disaster, suddenly awoke and spoke. ‘I have bidden a room above the Angel tavern not two steps from here. I mentioned nothing of a marriage to the landlord, since John wished all to be discreet and silent. Instead we are celebrating my return from a long sea voyage.’

‘I hope it was a successful one,’ my sister laughed, the feather on the top of her hat nodding saucily, ‘with much treasure and booty?’

Sir Henry smiled at that. ‘It was indeed. Enough for good food and much wine to launch this auspicious occasion.’

As we sat, all seven, around the oaken table my new husband raised his goblet to me. ‘A toast to my sweet wife, Mistress Ann Donne, the only woman on God’s earth that ever I wanted to wed.’

‘Aye,’ teased his friend Christopher under his breath, ‘though there were plenty you didn’t.’

I stood then, to raise a toast of my own. ‘To my dear husband, John Donne. Better, in my contention, to be the last love than the first.’

‘Amen to that!’ chorused all.

‘There will be no seeing you home to bed, then, as we did with Bett?’ asked Mary, a dangerous glitter in her eye from the wine. ‘Yet I forgot. That is a fruit you have already tasted.’

I reddened then, and did not answer her. ‘We will have a lifetime ahead enough for that. I must go to Charing Cross soon, before my father wonders what detains me.’

Though I kept my voice light, the pain of leaving sat like a stone upon my heart. This night should have been, by all usual accounts, my bridal night.

I was hoping to seize a private moment with my husband when his old friend Sir Henry, to whom I had spoken little, laid his hand gently upon my arm. ‘Mistress More?’ He laughed at that. ‘Or rather, I should say Mistress Donne…’

This first use of my new name sounded strange even to my own ears.

‘I wished to say that I am humbly sorry for what must have seemed to you churlish behaviour when you came upon us.’

‘You worried that your friend would do an unwise thing in marrying me,’ I stated simply.

‘Aye,’ he admitted, stroking his dark beard and smiling. ‘Yet when I remembered what manner of lady you are, how wise, how nimble of mind, what learning you have, and how well you understand that rare and clever soul, Master John Donne, I could not but change my mind.’

‘I have reason to be grateful to him. He woke me from a sleep that had lasted all my life.’

‘Mistress Donne, Ann… I also saw that it was not
he
who was risking much to marry you, but
you
who were ready to hazard all in marrying him.’

‘An equality of souls, then? Is not that what matrimony is instituted for?’

He laughed at that. ‘If so then I have seen few successful marriages.’

‘Then ours will be the pattern.’

‘Mistress Donne, you are wise beyond your years, perhaps even beyond John’s.’

‘My grandfather told me I was born with an old soul. And indeed I do sometimes feel older than the people around me, be they twenty years on this earth before I was.’

‘You will need courage in the days ahead, when Sir George discovers the truth about your marriage to John.’

‘Indeed.’ There was no denying it.

‘If there is aught I can do, I will ever wait in readiness.’

I saw that I must alter my bad opinion of the man who stood before me. ‘He has a good friend in you, Sir Henry.’

‘And a good wife in you, Mistress Donne.’

And now I had to take my parting of my husband. He stood across the crowded chamber, his eyes fixed on me, as if he would detain me by power of his will alone.

‘I must go, husband.’

‘Aye, wife, yet I wish with all my soul it were not so.’ He dropped his voice so that only I might hear him. ‘And that instead I held you within the circle of my arms and naught—world, masters, fathers, none—had the power to reach us. I would take off that silken gown and claim you as my own.’

Deep inside me I felt a ripple of desire, as if some small, hidden tremor had begun its dangerous and lethal action, and that nothing in our lives could ever be the same.

‘It will not be long before we are together, as God ordained, man and wife.’ I unpinned the rose from my headdress and pressed it into his hand. ‘We must keep the faith, no matter how hard the road ahead.’

‘I will do so. You are my destiny, Ann.’

‘As you are mine.’

I kissed his forehead. ‘Hold me there in your mind. And in your heart. It will not be so far a time until I am in your bed also.’

At that he drew me into his arms and I felt his mouth on mine. ‘For me it cannot be soon enough.’

I could see the pain of loss went as deep with him as it did with me. ‘Let me come with you now,’ he suddenly demanded. ‘We will find your father and tell him the truth, that we made a contract when first we met and have honourably kept to it, as well as any man and wife.’

‘He will not see it as honouring a contract but that you took advantage of my youth and innocence. I need to show him that it was not so. Let me find the moment and speak first.’

‘In that case, farewell, my love, and God speed the time we may be together.’

‘Wait until the day after tomorrow, then send Wat. I will have a letter ready to tell you how the wind blows. Farewell, my John.’

I turned away from the candlelight, not wanting him to see the tears that glinted in my eyes. He was friend, counsellor, lover, poet. He stirred my mind, my soul and my body as none had ever done before. Beneath the witty ambitious courtier, in him I had seen a sadness and a solitariness that echoed with my own. Both had lost a beloved parent at a tender age, and by great good fortune had staunched each other’s long-felt pain.

To leave him now, when we had just joined our hearts forever, was like a mother having her child ripped untimely from her arms, when most she needs it.

And yet I must. And I must be strong also for, married though we might be in the eyes of God, we were not so in the eyes of my father.

I HAD JUST
regained the street and begun to run, holding my skirts up from the mud and the mire, when a voice, full of laughing venom, stopped me. ‘Mistress More, what do you do abroad alone and unaccompanied?’

It was the Countess of Straven, on horseback, with several retainers carrying her parcels.

‘I have been visiting my sister.’

‘Ah. The useful Mary. I hear she has been doing a little visiting of her own. You seem very strangely dressed for a sisterly visit.’ She studied me carefully.

My hand flew up to my head and I knew the cause of her amusement. How had I forgot I wore my bridal flowers still? Hastily, under cover of my cloak, I pulled off my wedding band, though it pained me sorely so to do.

My mind ranged desperately for an answer. ‘My sister plans a Twelfth Night masque and has cast me as Persephone bringing spring back to the winter world.’

‘Indeed? Yet, if you are Persephone, who then is your dark lord Hades? Or can I guess?’

I ignored the cruel laughter in her voice. ‘Goodbye, my lady. I must get home before my father worries.’

‘He has much to worry about, from what I hear.’

I turned my back on her and ran, conscious that she watched me still.

She was an uncomfortable enemy. And would be the worse when she saw that I had got what she so wanted.

I was entirely out of breath by the time I reached my father’s house.

‘Ann, where have you been all these hours? I have looked for you since dinner and that stupid girl who waits on you knew nothing. And are those leaves in your hair?’

His voice bristled with annoyance that I would somehow have to pacify. I had thought he would be caught up with his business not watching out for me all afternoon long.

‘I am sorry, Father, the time passed so quick.’ The answer I had given the Countess was as good as any I could devise. ‘Mary is planning a Twelfth Night masque. That is why I am wearing the green dress with the ivy for she wishes me to play Persephone.’

‘Ah.’ He seemed to accept my story, and replied with his usual concern for naught but his own self, ‘You will have to tell her you cannot. We will be at Loseley for Twelfth Night. That is why I am waiting for you. I wish us to leave tomorrow. The new picture gallery is ready and I must supervise the hanging. Now, go and pack up your belongings.’

I knew we were bound for Loseley, and yet it was a blow that our departure was so imminent. How long would I be absent from my husband? And was I deluded by some mad dream that the manner of my father’s discovering my marriage would alter his acceptance of it?

With a troubled heart I packed my belongings into trunks and baskets and went to tell my father they were ready.

He watched me as I put a match to the tapers in the withdrawing room, a faint smile lighting up his features. ‘The green becomes you, Ann. You could indeed be Persephone coming back to light up the world with the freshness of a new year.’

And then to my surprise he did a generous thing. ‘Do you greatly wish to act in this masque of your sister Mary’s? Perhaps we might spare you somehow if you do.’

‘No, no, Father,’ I answered quickly, seeing a trap opening up before me since this masque was a figment of my own fantasy. I wished to be near him, the good daughter waiting for the right moment to break my news. ‘I am happy to come with you to Loseley.’

‘We will have a happy Christmastide, then.’

I wondered then if I should make the most of his softened humour to break my news to him. After all, the deed was done, I was wed, and surely he would have no choice but accept it?

Yet I had no chance, for in walked an usher to announce the arrival of the Lord Keeper. ‘God’s blood, George, do you know whom I have just seen, bold as brass upon the public street? Mistress Barnes, who married young Aston in secret to get her hands on his fortune. She was with another young lad, stroking his downy chin and kissing him. And she just released from a year in the Fleet prison for her pains and looking for all the world like an old woman!’

I blenched at his words, feeling suddenly faint. If this young woman had paid for her secret marriage with a year in the Fleet, would the same happen to me when it was discovered that we had wed in secret and without my father’s consent?

The Lord Keeper noted my sudden paleness. ‘Are you ill, Ann? You look as if a ghost had walked across your grave.’

‘No, no. A little light-headed with hunger, no more. I left early to rehearse for a masque.’

‘Her sister would have her play Persephone,’ explained my father with a touch of pride.

‘I loved to play in masques when I was younger. Though Hercules was more my line than some Greek goddess.’

While my father and the Lord Keeper conferred on some matter for Parliament, I wrote a note to my sister explaining the reason she was now preparing an unexpected Twelfth Night celebration.

The next day I would have all the coach journey with my father and perhaps then an opportune moment would arise.