Mistress Shakespeare (29 page)

“I am grateful you rescued me from London, my lord.”

“Ah, but in a way, you rescued me,” he vowed, squeezing my arm against his ribs. “You see, I adore feminine companionship, only not that which others, who believe they rule my life, would foist upon me.”

“I see.”

“My beautiful,
carissima contessa
, I doubt if you do, for, thank God, you do not know my mother or the queen’s chief man, Lord Burghley. Both of them are hell-bent on my wedding women of their choice, not mine.”

“But is that not often the way of it, my lord? And do they not have your best interests in mind, even as does the queen?”

“Ha! The only two friends I trust are John Florio and Robert Devereaux, Lord Essex. The latter acts as an elder brother to me. Like him, I was presented to Her Majesty when I was but a youth, and she said fine things about me, but she ever has her own best interests in mind.”

That reminded me of Will’s opinion of our queen; perhaps Lord Southampton and Will would get on famously. I really should mention Will to him . . .

“And,” he rushed on, as he indicated we should sit on a rustic bench beneath a weeping willow overlooking a small pond, “if my father had not died when I was but eight, I would never have become Lord Burghley’s ward. At least he sent me to university and the Inns of Law, so I did not have to abide his rules all the time. But he tried to betroth me to his fifteen-year-old granddaughter, Elizabeth Vere. I wanted none of her, I don’t care if she is the Earl of Oxford’s daughter. My mother is always after me to wed to preserve the earldom. ’S teeth, I am only eighteen years and not a stud stallion to be bred at someone’s whim or profit! She’s even threatened to hire one of my poets to plead with me in rhyme to take a wife.”

I tucked that little nugget away too. Surely, Will could do that, though winning over this man’s mother was certainly not the way to his heart.

His expression became even more sulky; he occasionally stamped a foot for emphasis. “She cannot fathom why I love the theatre above all else, when it is such a fine escape from her harping—the shrew!”

Will had been working on a play tentatively titled
The Taming of the Shrew
, so I also vowed to mention that later. My host seemed so peevish right now that I decided to pick a better time to approach him about Will. But soon—soon.

The next morning I came to realize that, if the volatile Henry Wriothesley, Lord Southampton, was like the shifting tide, John Florio was deep water. While the earl was out dispatching deer, we sat together at a round table in the mansion’s large library—Will would be wild to see this many books—while the tutor gave me some suggestions about speaking Italian: to elongate the vowels, to let the natural lilt of the language flow forth, even to gesture to augment the emotional tenor of the words. Yes, I thought: I can vaguely recall all that from muted memories of my mother.

“By the way,” he told me, his dark eyes intense, “though his lordship has not seen fit to mention it, I am not only a tutor, but an author in my own right, one of his many adopted causes.”

“Poetry?”

“Nothing that imaginative. Besides, my wife’s brother is the poet Samuel Daniel, and one of them in the family is quite enough. But I’ve written two published works entitled
First Fruits
and
Second Fruits
, a collection of speeches, proverbs, witty sentences and golden sayings, as well as an instructional volume,
A Perfect Induction to the Italian and English Tongues.
”

“How interesting!”

“I believe you mean that. I must say, I am impressed with how well you speak English, so I have no fear you cannot master Italian. Besides, it’s running hot through your veins, I can tell.”

He smiled—the first time I could recall he had done such. It lit his eyes and softened his stern countenance. I wondered if he was flirting. Though I felt nothing but fascinated and flattered by Southampton, this man evoked an intellectual allure I’d only experienced before in Will.

“You remind me somewhat of a friend of mine from home,” I told him. “He lives and works in London now, when the plague does not rampage there, of course.” Nervous at the mere mention of Will, I took an apple from the big bowl of them on the table and crunched into it.

“He’s a linguist too?”

I chewed and swallowed. “In a way, but with our own language, the playwright William Shakespeare. Have you seen his work, perhaps
Love’s Labour’s Lost
or his historical trilogy on King Henry VI?”

“No, but the earl’s carried on about him right and left.”

“He has?”

I’d shirked my duty. I’d been so entranced by the gilded life here with silver plates and glass goblets and fine linens on my lavender-scented feather bed—and two intriguing men to study—that I’d only thought of Will when something reminded me of him. It was as if I’d escaped worrying about and longing for him for the first time since I could recall. I’d survived the plague. Could I somehow survive—escape—my passion for Will? And did I want to, however painful it became at times?

“
Contessa
Anna, you are woolgathering. I said, shall we start with basic phrases of greeting others? You look most—distracted and impassioned.”

“Oh, no, I’m fine,” I lied, though I felt myself blush as I had not in years. Was I attracted to this man? If so, it was the first time anyone but Will had turned my head that I could recall.

“It is a wonder you have not yet wed,” John said, tapping a quill pen on an inkwell, “and a great puzzle to his lordship, because he worships, he told me, at the feet of your beauty—
‘Adora ai piedi della Sua bellezza
.’”

I stood, forgetting to chew my apple—Eve’s apple, if I wasn’t wary—and went to stand at the window where the autumn air cooled my face. I swallowed hard, but the lump in my throat was not from that.

“His lordship has been a most gracious host,” I said, hopeful of escaping such personal talk pointed at me. “Let’s begin with the Italian then. I should like to learn enough today to greet our host properly when he returns with bounty from his hunt. Perhaps a witty sentence or golden saying from one of your books.”

“And then,” he said, pushing back his chair, “if I read you aright, perhaps we shall work on something like, ‘I am deeply honored by your attentions, my lord, but I must confess I care for another and so must decline all but your kindness.’”

Frowning, I heaved my half-eaten apple out into the gardens and spun to face Florio with my arms folded across my breasts.

“You may not be hunting deer today, but you are hunting for private thoughts,” I accused. “You presume to know a great deal about me, sir.”

“Do not react so. I would be your friend, not your enemy. I just didn’t want you to misunderstand your host’s desires. He may worship at your feet, but it will not mean you can win his heart. His lordship likes to collect people—poets, artists, beautiful women—the same way he accrues portraits of himself, just to look at if not necessarily to touch.”

“Are you truly his friend to be warning me against him then?”

“I am not warning you against him, for I know no one more generous with his wealth, more open, or more grateful for friends. I am just saying—as with words in foreign tongues that sometimes cause confusion—know yourself and Lord Southampton too and do not expect too much personal attention from him, any more than he would give a cherished, prized work of art.”

He came to stand beside me at the window. As if in prayer at an altar, both of us clasped our hands before us on the deep stone windowsill. Our elbows almost touched. We gazed silently out over the grandeur of the distant, blue-green forest etched with scarlets, yellows and browns.

“He blows hot and cold,
Contessa
Anna,” he said, picking up our conversation as if I hadn’t challenged him.

“Do not all men?”

“Not me—always hot but seeming cold,” he said with a deep laugh. I turned to face him; his eyes bored into mine.

“And brutally honest,” I said. “’Tis a rare trait and one to be cherished in a friend. I believe you tutor your noble charge in clearsightedness as well as Italian, then.”

“It is you who must be clear-sighted, so let us get to work.”

We got to work, but I can’t say, however candid John Florio seemed, that I understood him or the totality of the warning he meant to give me about Southampton. Still, his forthrightness was a heady thing, and I liked him immensely for it. And that first private tutoring session pushed me into telling Southampton about Will after dinner. Not about our past, of course, but that Will was a friend from home, and I knew he longed to petition his lordship to become his patron for a long poem he was writing about Venus and Adonis as well as for his clever sonnets and his plays.

“And related to the Ardens, you say,” Southampton repeated, looking excited. “We Wriothesleys are likewise entwined with them, the poor wretches. Ah, if only I knew how to find your friend Shakespeare in these terrible times, I would send for him to attend us here forthwith.”

“I do know where he is to be the first three days of October—in but a few days,” I blurted before I could think the better of it. If John Florio saw Will and me together, he’d read our hearts and probably ferret out the truth.

The earl seemed much more loggerheaded about such things. I believed I had finally discerned Florio’s message to me: everything revolved around Southampton and was pursued only to please him. At first I believed I’d only been saved from a seduction attempt by the fact that, in truth, he seemed so effeminate. Besides his long, carefully curled blond tresses, he wore fanciful garb and a dangling earring and sometimes rouged his face and his pouty, rosebud mouth.

So perhaps there was another reason behind his vehement refusal to become betrothed to Lord Burghley’s granddaughter or any other woman. Still he excelled at masculine endeavors and planned to pursue military glory in foreign wars with his dear friend, Lord Essex. So whether it seemed my host leaned toward favoring men or women or both, I guess the truth about Southampton was that he only loved himself.

 

 

 

One of the earl’s footmen
was sent to fetch Will from Stratford and to pay the Burbages for his loss from their company for a fortnight or so. I felt I walked on air. Will was coming to partake of this fantastical world of the rich and noble with me. Will was coming to be offered the patronage he’d longed for. Will was coming.

One day, then two passed. I walked about the grounds rehearsing Italian phrases but also quotes from Will’s poems and plays, which ran repeatedly through my mind. “Let me not to the marriage of true minds / Admit impediments . . . Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks / Within his bending sickle’s compass come ... True. I talk of dreams; Which are the children of an idle brain, / Begot of nothing but vain fantasy . . .”

On the fifth day of my Italian lessons, I was reciting sets of standard questions for John as I paced in the library. I happened to glance out the window and saw Southampton, whom I thought had gone hunting again, strolling toward the Wilderness with his arm around the shoulders of a capless man. It looked like—yes, Will was here!

“Go on,” John said when I stopped talking, then prompted me with the last question.
“Cosa desidera?”
What do you wish?
“Contessa, che cosa?”

“
È qui. Il mio amico è qui,”
I cried, gripping the windowsill.

“Ah, and you want to run down to greet him,” he said, coming over to stand behind me. “But since he’s in such earnest conversation with his lordship, let’s just go back to reciting with a clear head,
si
?”

“
Giovanni, mio amico,
must you be such a hard taskmaster?”

“You are dismissed then—hopefully not to make an overeager fool of yourself.”

If anyone else would have said that, I would have snubbed him. I could have kicked myself for my transparency, but I made it worse by blurting, “He’s married with three children, but I knew and loved him first, and their marriage was forced!”

He pressed his lips together and shook his head. “Tread carefully then—that is, don’t trip running down the stairs.”

But I waited, pacing downstairs in the long gallery at the back of the house, until the two men came in nearly an hour later. “Anne,” Will said, beaming as he gave me a peck on both cheeks, a quite proper greeting for a friend. “My good angel has wrought a miracle, and here I am not only in the earl’s beautiful home but in his bountiful goodwill.”

Southampton threw his arm around my shoulders and Will’s too. “We are a marriage of three made in heaven, eh?
Mia contessa
, I’ve even prevailed upon your playwright-poet to write me a series of sonnets to get my shrewish mother off my back. I’ll pretend to pine over them but still pick my own domestic prison, ha!”

Will was flushed with excitement and success. Despite the road dust that clung to him, he looked quite the conquering hero.

“I shall leave you two,” the earl told us, “to discuss old times while I order a room prepared for you, Will, near mine and Florio’s.”

“John Florio,” I told him as the earl left us, “is the linguist and Lord Southampton’s Italian tutor.”

“And yours, I hear.” His voice took on a slight edge, but he smiled and nodded to the footman as he opened the door for us and we went outside.

“Wait until I tell you how he rescued me!” I said. “John and Jennet fled, Maud died and I was all alone, but—”

“He told me. I am ever grateful to him for that too.”

I began to relax. After all, I’d helped him, saved him from penury, his family too, and set him up for future success.

“How did you find things in Stratford?” I asked as we walked past the fountain into the Wilderness.

“Susannah’s quite a help to her mother, though a bit of a fussbudget,” he said, as if I’d inquired about his children. “Judith is a handful too, but my son is so—Anne, I meant not to ramble on. And I thank you heartily again for sending them my portrait as if it were from me. Hamnet sketched it for me, stares at it often, he says.”