Authors: Meredith Whitford
2
.
In the days before they could afford to send their laundry out, Anne might have noticed sooner. As it was, when all she had to do was to sort and bundle the clothes sent for washing, it took her some weeks to recognise that William’s shirts had not acquired some of their marks in the theatre. The players taking women’s roles used lip-rouge and face powder, they wore long wigs. But usually the wigs were blond, not black. And not the most ardent actor could week after week press his lips to the same place on William’s shirts. And that faint scent, which now she knew she had smelt before? But of course he met many people out of her ken. He went often to Harry’s house and no doubt there were women guests. Suspicions were ignoble and she put them away with the clothes to be washed.
But
the following week there was lip-rouge on the hem of a shirt, and long black hairs, too dark to be her own, caught in the lacings. The week after that, his under-linen was torn. And that scent seemed to cling to every garment. Anne stored clean clothes with rosemary, lavender and pepper to keep the fleas and lice at bay. This scent was of chypre and roses and ambergris.
After
that she began to watch her husband. He came and went at the usual times. Or if he did not, always there was a reason, freely discussed. A company meeting, rehearsals, business with Lord Hunsdon their patron. Always a good reason. But he was different. Different in the way he’d been at Stratford last year after the fire. Gentle, loving, entirely himself. Yet different. Alert. Given to odd silences.
Sometimes
she would catch him looking at her with sadness or even pity, but if she asked, he would say he was thinking of a new play and read her a scene as proof. In bed he turned to her less often, he would complain of being tired and fall asleep or think he heard Edmund or one of the children still awake. He brought her gifts more often, coming home with earrings, a box of sweetmeats or the fruit he knew she loved, a book, a pair of shoe buckles. Not that he’d ever been ungenerous, and certainly they now had the money for these fairings, but these presents came so often, for no reason. Presents for the children too, she noted. Hair ribbons or dolls for the girls, books and toys for Hamnet. He acted differently with the children too, more indulgent and at the same time more demanding, less tolerant of noise or squabbles, then overcome with remorse when he snapped at them.
Anne
watched him. He watched her. Often she had the feeling he was on the verge of some confession, but always held back.
And
then he suggested they move house. A man called Francis Langley was building a new playhouse, to be called the Swan, on the other side of the river, near the Rose in Bankside. Why, said William, should they not move house to Southwark? So much easier, to be near the new theatre (the word was coming to be used, now, after The Theatre). The company would be based there. Surely it made sense to move.
“But
Southwark is all brothels and bath-houses,” Anne objected.
“Not
all. There’s – ”
“What’s
a brothel?” Hamnet piped up. They had forgotten he was in the room, so silently had he been working at his school books.
“Nothing
for you to know of. A bad place.”
“It’s
a house where the whores and punks do business,” Susanna told her brother with chilling authority.
“Susanna!”
shouted both her parents. William added, “Where do you learn such words? You shouldn’t know of such things.”
“But
everyone does. I’m not a little girl any more, I’m twelve.”
“All
the more reason,” he shouted, “not to talk of such things!”
Susanna
burst into tears and ran out of the room. Listening to her thudding furiously up the stairs, William and Anne exchanged a long, rueful glance.
“Twelve,
aye. It’s time I talked to her. She’ll be a woman soon. We shouldn’t have been angry with her. Children hear things, they pick up words and the knowledge to go with them.”
“Knowing
but innocent. The worst combination. Twelve. Where have the years gone, Anne?”
“I
often wonder. Where have many things gone?” Their eyes met again, for a long, taut moment. William was the first to look away.
“Are
you angry with me?” Hamnet asked tremulously.
“Not
at all. Get back to your work, dear.” With a worried glance he did so. “Well, revenons à nos moutons. What do you think of a move across the river?”
“I
don’t want to. I like this house, Will, we’re settled here. And surely it will be a long time before this new playhouse is built. I dined with Mrs Burbage yesterday and she said nothing of the company moving to a new theatre.”
“It
will come. But perhaps you’re right. It was just a thought. Very well.”
Perhaps it was the unacknowledged workings of the back of her mind that took Anne to William’s old lodgings. Perhaps it was an odd glance or two from the other players, conversations cut off abruptly when they knew she was near. Whatever the reason, she set out one day, six weeks after William had talked of moving across the river, to do her regular shopping, and had found her steps taking her in the other direction.
She
hadn’t been here for nearly a year. There was no reason to visit. William used the rooms only when he was working at white-heat and could tolerate no interruptions. But today she went, walking briskly and without a second thought up the stairs and into the familiar quarters.
The
outer room was very untidy, William at his worst. Dust coated the few books on the shelves. His writing table and the floor around it were awash with papers, blank, written over, scored through, flung down in crumpled balls. Seven broken pens lay surrounded by ink splatters. A stale piece of cheese and the heel of a loaf sulked on a flyblown platter. Wine glasses showed a sticky residue. No one had been here, you would say, for days; weeks, perhaps. Certainly not the house-proud landlady.
Feeling
foolish, Anne almost turned to leave. But there was the inner room, the bedchamber.
The
blankets and coverlet were shoved to the foot of the bed. Stained, rumpled sheets trailed to the floor. Two pillows atop one another lay halfway down the bed. The other showed fine russet hairs and some long, coarse, curly black ones. Two wine-glasses – two – stood together on the bedside chest. And the air smelt of that heavy, musky perfume.
Quite
blankly Anne walked back to the outer room. She felt very cold, but to her surprise she wasn’t shaking, she felt no desire to cry, not even any anger. Just cold, a chill that frosted her soul.
Then
she went home, took a hairpin and picked the lock of the box where William kept his private papers.
She
found the poems.
3
.
“Mistress Shakspere, you asked to see me?” Harry Southampton came into the room with something of a rush. Anne rose and curtsied and, as usual, he brushed the courtesy aside. It had been some time since Anne had seen him, and he had grown up remarkably. He was twenty-one now and the girlish delicacy of his looks was hardening into something very attractively masculine. It was said he was in love with Elizabeth Vernon, but perhaps that was only gossip.
“Yes,
my lord.” With a glance toward the serving man, she lowered her voice to say, “This is going to be a very improper conversation.”
“Oh?
Then perhaps we should take a glass of wine.” He was doing his best to seem dégagé, but his fair skin showed the nervous colour of embarrassment. No doubt he thought she had come to accuse him of seducing her husband.
“Thank
you, yes.” As soon as the wine was served, Harry dismissed the servant. Anne took a fortifying swig of her drink. “Do you know who Will’s mistress is?”
Harry
was sitting in the light. Anne saw his face clench as if in pain, and also with some surprise. “Why do you ask me?”
“Oh,
come, boy,” she snapped, “did you think I didn’t know about you and William?”
“Ah.
He told you?”
“I
saw it in him, right from the start. He told me no details, but he never denied he loved you.” His mouth opened and shut like an unperfect actor forgetting his lines. This time when he blushed it was no defensive colouring but a full, fiery reddening from collar to hairline. Anne’s son blushed like that when caught out. “You’re very young still, aren’t you, Harry. And do not ask if I minded or say you’re sorry.”
“I
was not going to.” He stared at her, almost squinting in his intensity. “You are an extraordinary woman, Anne.”
“No,
only an ordinary woman whose husband is mad for another woman. You were never the rival this woman is. So tell me, do you know about it? Who she is?”
“I
knew there was someone. He has told me nothing. But some things become obvious.”
“Ah.”
“Yes. It hurts me. We share that, Anne.” Abruptly he shoved back his chair and stood to pace about the room. His slender, long-fingered hands twisted together. “Yes, an improper conversation indeed.” He stopped pacing and leaned on the back of his chair, facing her. Impatiently he pushed back the long hair that fell forward over his shoulders. “I love your husband. And he has fallen… no, not fallen in love. Fallen. Into lust, infatuation. Against his will, I think. He’s unhappy.”
“I
think so too. But so am I.”
“Yes.
Poor Anne.” Harry sat down again, and took her hands. “He loves you very dearly. I have always known that. Loved you more than he knows, I truly believe.”
“Maybe,
maybe. That’s no comfort. I bore his children, I believed in him when he was a dream-starred boy, I helped him. We’ve been married thirteen years and more. We are friends and companions. But he loves this woman. Unhappily, perhaps, but it is still love. Of a kind. Harry, he’s written poems to her, about her.”
“Has
he.” Harry’s voice shook. “Love poems?”
“Poems
about love. Poems of lust, love, hatred, guilt. Fine poems, but of such misery and shame. I saw his copies of all the poems he wrote you, and I can tell you he loves you far more than he does this woman.”
The
silence went on for some time before Harry said dully, “Does he write you poems too, Anne?”
“I’m
only his wife, so no. Or only once, when we first met. To prove he could write.”
“Oh,
Anne. Well, to answer your question, the woman calls herself Mistress Leigh. A musician. An educated, travelled woman, a whore in all but name. She’s a Scot and I suspect her of spying for King James, or perhaps on the people who are for King James as our next monarch.”
“Beautiful?”
One of the poems had spoken of dun skin and wiry hair. Not at all a good poem, she’d thought.
“In
her way, she is beautiful sometimes.”
It
was like a sword through Anne’s heart, but she said, “Tell me. Make me see her.”
“Black
eyes and black, dense, curling hair. Skin that is sallow or like honey or like clotted cream. Of middling height with a slender waist and rounded hips and a bosom to cushion a man’s head. A low voice for a woman, and she sings very well, and plays. She has a mouth made for kissing, and for less proper things.”
“Beautiful,
then,” Anne said in a dead voice. “And plainly you desire her too.”
“Yes.
Yes I do. Most men would.”
“And
she has youth, I suppose, as well as Will’s heart.”
“She’s
not so youthful. No younger than you, I would guess. I doubt she has his heart. What she has is his prick and his balls in her tender little hand. She is a bitch in heat, and if Will thinks he’s her only lover he’s mistaken. Anne, it won’t last. He’ll sicken of her.”
“He
hasn’t yet, and he has had her for a long time, I think.” Her voice broke and she struggled against tears. “What do I do, Harry?”
“Tell
him you know. Put your foot down. Say you’ll leave him if he doesn’t give her up. He would, if it meant losing his family.”
“Probably
he would. But then he’d resent me, and she would be his lost love, the love of his life that he couldn’t have, for duty’s sake. I want to see her.”
“What
would that achieve?”
“I
don’t mean I want to confront her. Certainly I am not going to beg her to give me my husband back. I just want to see her. To see what she has that holds him in such thrall. Because none of his others have so held him.”
Harry
blinked. “He has had others?”
“Of
course he has. Did you really think...?. You did. What did you think, Harry? That he was a faithful husband until you made him recognise that part of himself that could love another man? Me for duty, you for love? And nothing else?”
“Well...”
Taking pity, Anne said, “I doubt any of the others were for more than convenience. But this woman I want to see. Just to see. Can you arrange it?” It didn’t occur to her that he would think it an outrageous request or that he would take offence at her asking. He had as much malice in him as any other man. As any other thwarted lover.
“I
can. I shall invite people, one evening soon. I shall hire her to sing. She has a lovely voice. It will not be a respectable evening.”
“None
of this is respectable.”
“No.
Well, I shall let you know when. I shall send someone for you. You can get away at night?”
“My
husband is not likely to notice that I am not virtuously at home, is he?”
Four days later William mentioned in an off-hand way that he would be out that night, possible quite late. Theatre business. Of course, said Anne.
Just
after he had taken himself off to the playhouse, a man in the clothing of an upper servant but with none of the usual livery badges to show whom he served, brought Anne a message. Tonight. Ten o’clock. Dress finely.
She
asked Edmund to stay in to watch the children. A sick friend needed her, she said. Edmund was too young to wonder why she should wash her hair and put on perfume to nurse a sick friend. Nor did he notice that under her cloak she was wearing a new, very expensive and fashionable dress suitable for a party.
Prompt
at ten the manservant returned. He had brought a horse, for they had to go clear across the city to Holborn Hill. Without a word he helped Anne into the pillion seat, as if escorting cloaked woman to secret assignations was all in the day’s work. Perhaps it was. At Southampton House he took her to a back gate and showed her through a garden to a door and then up a stair to a room that held nothing but two chairs and a table on which stood a wine jug. From the other side of the house she could hear music, laughter, the sounds of voices.
After
nearly half an hour, so close as Anne could judge, the door opened and Harry came in. “They are both here,” he said without preamble. “Are you ready?”
“Yes.”
“Put this on.” It was a mask, a feathery bird’s face. “It is that sort of party. Not everyone is masked, but many find it convenient. Take your cloak off.” She did so, and he nodded approval of her dress and handed her a short satin cape. He himself was dressed very finely, more elaborately than she had ever seen, in blue and cloth of silver and velvet, with diamond buttons, a sapphire earring, two sapphire rings on his hands. It made her aware of his rank and wealth and of how thoroughly she was out of her depth in every way.
“That
woman is about to begin her performance,” he said. “We’ll go down and mingle. Best if you stay with me, but if you need to go away, come back up to this room and ring the bell. The man who brought you will take you home.”
“You
are taking good care of me. Thank you.”
“Somehow,”
he said, “it seems the least I can do.”
It
was not at all a respectable party. Anne recognised a few of the more raffish theatre players, and several men she had seen at Court or who were famous men of Harry Southampton’s rank. Anyone in London would have known them. A lot of the women and the prettier boys were obviously prostitutes, here with clients or lovers or plying for hire. Incense and chypre hung heavy in the air, blending with the smoke from candles and torches, tobacco smoke, the smell of wine and food. A red-haired man, his arm around a louche boy whose eyes were blank with drink or some sort of drug, spoke familiarly to Harry and ran his eyes in automatic appraisal over Anne. Safe behind her mask, she eyed him boldly. Harry flung his arm about her waist and muttered something that made the other man wink and go away.
“Come
through,” Harry said softly and took her hand to lead her into the next room.
A
woman was playing the virginals, singing to her own accompaniment. A lovely voice indeed. An odd face, not beautiful at all, too dark and scornful, all eyebrows and rouged lips. Her dress was ice-blue satin, expensively trimmed and cut very low over enormous breasts. She was not very young, not very anything.
Harry
thrust a glass of wine into Anne’s hand. “Look to your left.”
Sipping,
smiling falsely, she did so.
William
was one of the twenty or so men listening to the music. He stood against a wall, leaning back, looking half-away from the woman at the virginals, beating time with his fingers and drinking wine. Just another of the crowd appreciating good music. But Anne had been married to him for so long that she knew every tiny shift of his stance, every trick of his eyes and line of his body, of his mouth. She knew desire and hope and self-disgust when she saw it in him. She was glad about the self-disgust. She wondered if he knew that the woman didn’t love him.
The
song ended. There was a polite patter of applause, and the woman took out a new sheet of music. She said something Anne didn’t quite catch, something about a new song, written especially for tonight, and as she spoke her eyes moved around the room until she saw Harry. She smiled, for him alone, and Anne saw that she was beautiful after all. William saw that smile and stiffened. Harry gave him a cheerful wave, and after a moment he too smiled. Not very happily. His eyes moved over the dark-haired, green-clad woman in the bird mask beside Harry, and narrowed in something close to recognition, then he shook his head as if laughing at a ridiculous idea. Then he looked back to the woman at the virginals.
Halfway
through the song Anne moved smoothly away. Harry followed her, back up the stair to the room she had first come to. Glad of the mask, she said, “I have seen enough. I shall go home now.”
“I
too have seen enough. Odd that I did not really know until now.”
“Well,
our clever wordsmith could explain that and, indeed, has done so. So true a fool is love that in thy will, though you do anything, he thinks no ill. One of his poems. I’m sorry, Harry.”
He
made an indeterminate sound and, before she could move away, he reached out and very gently took off her mask.
“I
thought you were crying.”
“No.
I knew already, you see. All that’s new to me is what she looks like. I can see that she has beauty but she’s nothing. Nothing. And I still cannot compete. But I knew that. And do you know, it would be easier to bear if she were a true beauty or very young. But then, of course, he might truly love her.”
“You
think he doesn’t?” he said, with hope springing in his voice.
“It
is what you said the other day – lust, and guilt, and love of a kind, but nothing true or good.”
Harry
stared at her. The room was lit only by two candles and the light glittered on his eyes, making them as vivid as the jewels he wore.