The Lady and the Poet (41 page)

I would begin my plan that very night. Yet, if he were not to be suspicious of me I must put my cherished letters back where I had found them.

This I did with the greatest misery, wishing with all my heart to keep them close to me, to give me strength.

I would have to carry the contents in my heart.

I raised the last letter to my lips and could not stop the tears falling, smudging his life-giving words.

Afterward, when I had hold of my emotions, I went to look for my father, carrying a posset of spiced ale.

‘Here, Father.’ I set it down next to him in the library as I used to do with my grandfather. ‘It is late and you have been working a long time on that great sheaf of papers.’ Indeed, lately he had been spending more time at Loseley, both to escape Constance and to begin the business of relieving my grandfather of duties that he was beginning to find too arduous. It was hard to believe that Grandfather was nearing eighty and still Sheriff of Sussex and Surrey.

‘What is this trick, Ann?’ My father looked up suspiciously. ‘You have never been so careful of my health before?’

‘It seemed to me that you looked tired, that is all.’

To my surprise he took hold of my hand. ‘Ann, when I seem harsh, it is but for your own good.’ His eyes fixed on mine with a rare sympathy. ‘You have a keen mind that likes to question, yet man is most content when he follows God’s holy ordinance and does what is decreed that he should do.’

I almost replied that it was not God who decreed I must marry Master Manners but himself. Perhaps he thought both were the same.

I kept my eyes meekly downward. ‘I have watched this burden of State business grow on you, Father, and would like to use my keen mind to aid you. You seem always to have so much to peruse as commissioner
and justice and member of Parliament and yet I know you do not like to trust such affairs to a secretary.’ I knew the real reason my father employed no secretary—as the Lord Keeper employed Master Donne and others—was because he wished to avoid the expense, though it were one he could well afford. ‘If you thought me apt enough, perhaps I might read your petitions and divide the wheat from the chaff, so that you could devote your time to the issues closest to your heart?’

He said naught, and yet I knew this to be a good thing. If he adopted my suggestion it would have to be as though the idea came not from myself but him.

‘Good night, Father.’

And so, over the coming weeks, slowly and surely, I took on the role of my father’s secretary and amanuensis. And without seeming to have agreed to the process, my share of his load grew subtly greater.

To be honest, it was a role I relished. It both took my mind away from its burden of misery and proved of more interest than I would have guessed. And soon I vow no lady in the realm, save Her Majesty, and possibly not even she, knew more about the evils of horse stealing, the production of kerseymere, the prosecution of recusants, and—my father’s favourite topic—the ungodly expansion of alehouses.

I think my grandmother, ever sharp-eyed, guessed there was another motive behind my sudden dutiful manner, yet did no more than raise an eyebrow and said naught. She had often been the quietest of my family where Master Manners was concerned.

With every day that passed I began to think my plan would work, and that if Master Manners’s father had not yet given his agreement by the time my father returned to London, he might yet take me with him.

And then something happened I had never counted on in the joyful expectation of my young life.

I fell ill.

At first my head ached and the joints of my limbs pained me so that I could not stand. My throat raged and I had such a thirst upon me that nothing could quench it.

On the sixth day a rash appeared. My grandmother, with fear in her
eyes, called a physician and I heard again those words, like nails banging into my coffin, that all depended on where the lesions spread to.

And I knew then the truth that hid in their eyes.

They feared I had the same dread pestilence that had carried away my beloved aunt.

I TRIED WITH
all my heart to keep it out, yet fear possessed my soul.

Would I die before I even had lived? Or feel my face dissolve in pain and agony as my aunt’s had? Or would I survive, to be marked like Queen Elizabeth’s devoted lady, with such disfigurement I would forever need a veil?

My grandmother nursed me, telling all that she had lived a good long life and God would choose to do with her as He saw fit.

As I remembered when a like fate befell my aunt, the house beneath me was struck suddenly silent, the servants talking only in hushed tones, and the very horses seeming to have cloth on their hooves.

On the seventh day the lesions spread thickly upon my belly and breasts, yet spared my legs.

By the ninth they had formed into scabs and begun to fall off, though all the while new ones formed.

And then I wept out of joy for I knew that I had escaped my aunt’s fate and had been blessed not with smallpox but with the chicken pox.

I was no thing of beauty, scabbed and suppurating, yet I would not die nor have to hide away forever, for which I thanked Almighty God. And in some mysterious way the relief I felt served to harden my resolve.

That night my grandmother ended her lonely vigil at my bedside and the house breathed again.

Dawn had but lightened the sky for a few moments on the morning that followed when I heard a footstep beyond the curtains of my bed. I sat up, thinking my grandmother had come to see if I would take another sip of her brew of chamomile.

‘Mistress Ann!’ A familiar voice, low and shaking with fear at its own temerity, whispered through the heaviness of the hangings that surrounded my great bed.

I pulled them back, forgetting the ravages of my skin with its still weeping lesions.

‘Wat!’

‘Mistress Ann, your beauteous face!’

He fell to his knees and buried his own in the stiff worked coverlet.

I laughed at that, a rusty incongruous sound. ‘Worry not, Wat. Such beauty as I had will be restored to me. That is, if I do not scratch these damned itching scabs! I am ashamed to say it is naught but chicken pox!’

‘Then thank God for it!’ Wat regained some of his wonted happy looks. ‘My master has been on his knees since he heard the word of your affliction. He wished to come himself but his friend Sir Henry persuaded him that to risk your father’s wrath and your good name would hardly help his case. So he sends a message by myself of his deep concern.’

‘Are you then of less value to the world than Master Donne?’ Now that I knew I was not to die or be disfigured I could afford to tease a little, especially since Wat had become so very much the gentleman.

Wat grinned. ‘He did not believe your father would let him enter, while I had an excuse to visit on account of my brother and sister, that was all.’

‘You have not asked after them.’

‘No. They flourish, I imagine.’

‘Made of sterner stuff than I, and can better withstand infection?’

‘Mistress Ann,’ Wat’s happy eyes clouded over, ‘I meant no such thing.’

‘I tease, Wat. And how is your master?’

‘He has suffered much since you left. First no word from you to his
letters, and my lady Straven lost no time in talking of your Master Manners and what a handsome substantial man he was, and bound to win your approval and how your betrothal was soon to be announced. Hard on that the news came that you were stricken with the smallpox, like your aunt before you.’

‘How did he come to hear of my affliction?’

I was surprised that word should have reached him in London.

‘A message came for Master Donne with a serving woman. Prudence, I think was her name.’

I started at that. How would Prudence have known to seek out Master Donne?

My grandmother! In the extremes of her concern she must have sent word to Master Donne, fearing a burial was more like to happen than a bridal.

‘I have written a letter to your master and would be grateful if you would give it to him.’ I handed Wat the sealed paper.

‘It would be a pleasure to see his face light up in these dark days. The Lord Keeper does naught but carp about his new wife and she screams at him, and my master is caught in the middle. It has not been an easy time.’ His smile was sweet in its shyness. ‘Above all, without you. He often recalls the time you had alone together and the happy meetings that occasioned when you were living at York House.’

This put me in mind of Master Manners and his vile gossip. ‘I hope he has been reminiscing of his time with me to none but you.’

‘Mistress, he would never do so.’ His young frame stiffened with offence. ‘He talks to me only because I know and love you also.’

My heart was touched at that.

‘Thank you, Wat. And now, take the letter and hide it carefully.’

He nodded and hid the letter inside his doublet next to his heart, looking so young and serious as I imagine Sir Lancelot must once have done when first he encountered Guinevere.

Yet I was no Guinevere, covered as I was in dozens of weeping lesions. What token of my love and faith could I send his master? As I leaned forward a scab fell from a pustule on my face.

Struck by a thought that amused me, I picked it up and wrapped it in a piece of crumpled silk. ‘Tell him my grandmother says if he puts it next to his skin it will protect him.’

I smiled at the revulsion on Wat’s young face. ‘The Turks do it with lesions even of the smallpox, according to my lady grandmother.’

The gown I had worn before I fell ill was hanging on a hook near the bed and next to the gown my girdle on which were tied my fan, gloves and a small pair of scissors. I reached for them and cut a lock from my auburn hair.

‘Give him this also. I know his taste for saints and angels and such mysteries. Tell him it is a relic, to remind him of Saint Ann, who by some miracle is not dead as she had feared, but living and filled with a joyous longing to see him.’ I laughed then with relief, and delight, and the sheer pleasure of being alive. ‘And tell him he may write a verse on the subject of her deliverance. Now, go. Confide to no one you have come to see me but are visiting Stephen and Hope and bring them good wishes from your sister Sarah. Go!’

Wat saluted me, then grinned. ‘Knowing Master Donne he is as like to write about the scab as about the lock of hair.’

‘Let him write of both! Now that I know I am not to die I shall opt not just for life but for immortality through Master Donne’s verses.’

‘Dream not of that, mistress.’ Wat shrugged. ‘My master says his verses will be forgot in five minutes’ time.’

I laughed again. ‘Tell him to be not so bleak. I am sure they will last for ten.’

As I climbed from my bed and reached for my smock it struck me that I had heard not one word from my suitor, Master Manners, since I had sickened. Like my lady Straven, Master Manners, it seemed, kept a safe distance between himself and all contagion. So much for the vows he would have us say binding us to one another in sickness and in health.

It was a few more days before the last of the lesions disappeared and I felt ready to face the world. The illness, though unpleasant, was as nothing compared to my fears of it, and my escape had rendered me doubly eager to fight for my own happiness. I knew my father was a lost cause and so I approached my grandmother, aware that she had sent a message to Master Donne telling him of my illness. Yet to my great pain she too proved obdurate.

She was supervising the washing and spoke to me gruffly, as if the wash were more important than my trifling concerns for my future.
‘The reason I sent word to Master Donne was that I thought you had the smallpox, and he would want to say farewell. I intended not to bring you together in this life but the next.’

‘Please, Grandmother,’ I dropped my voice to a whisper, ‘it is in this life that I wish to be at his side.’

‘Nonsense!’ She banged the clothes paddle against the barrel of washing. ‘He is not for you! Of all the men you could choose to marry he is the one your father dislikes the most! I should never even have sent him a message. I will hear no more of it. Go!’

I caught Prudence’s eye and she shrugged in powerless sympathy.

No doubt even Prudence had more say in her choice of husband than I did.

I turned away hopelessly, feeling I had lost my last ally.

I had no choice but to try one last desperate option: persuading my grandfather to change his mind and support me. I knew that, after all Master Donne’s hard work in pursuing reforms in Chancery, the Lord Keeper at least might speak up in my cause, since he stood higher in his employer’s estimation than ever.

I had seen little enough of my grandfather lately with my illness and being so caught up with helping my father over his claims from the glassmakers, his disputes over enclosures and the pleas for repair to the Queen’s highway.

I was about to broach the matter with him in his library when I overheard him talking to my father on a subject that interested me greatly: the secret marriage contracted between Walter Aston and one Mistress Anne Barnes, which had scandalized London not so long ago. At the time I had not been so eager to know it since it had naught to do with me. Yet now I saw its relevance for the real cause of scandal had been that Walter Aston was underage and heir to a vast fortune while Mistress Barnes had nothing. And they had married without his guardian’s consent. The fact that his guardian was the Lord Chief Justice of England had made it all the more daring.