Mistress Shakespeare (6 page)

Despite their tumbling fortunes, the Shakespeares paid well for the pealing of the mourner’s steeple bells when they buried their Anne in the graveyard by the stony skirts of Holy Trinity. Though I knew Will’s mother didn’t care a fig for me, I grieved for her. Surely the agony of a mother losing a daughter must be like unto that of a daughter missing her mother. Anne was the third daughter Mary Shakespeare had lost, the other two before Will was born. Dick did a rough count and reckoned that nigh on two-thirds of Stratford infants died before their first year, so at least, he said in an attempt to cheer Will up, little Anne had lived longer than that.

But naught lifted my spirits or Will’s either that cruel winter. As he wrote years later in
The Tragedy of Hamlet,
“When sorrows come, they come not single spies / but in battalions” and “One woe doth tread upon another’s heel.” It was that way for us then, and, I warrant, all England too. But for Will and me, the worst was yet to come.

 

 

 

In the depths of that
second dreadful winter, when Dick had been gone to London for two months with not a word sent back, Kat’s parents betrothed her to Guiles Willoughby, the miller’s heir. Kat told me that immediately increased the bounty of bread for their table, fine white flour manchet bread too, ’twas said to be the queen’s favorite bread.

Bitter cold though it was, I met Kat under the bridge and we walked along the slippery banks of the half-frozen river. She was wrapped in a shawl and carried a milk pail.

“I’m on my way to the mill,” she told me. She looked ashen-faced with gray half-moons under her eyes as if she’d been ill. But her bloodshot gaze showed that sleepless nights and crying were the culprits for that too.

I tried to lift her spirits at first, as Will and I had done after Dick first left. “Not giving out milk at the mill now are they?” I asked.

“Don’t jest. Mother thinks I’ve gone for flour.”

“What is it then, my Kat?”

“What is it?” she cried, turning to face me and throwing the pail down. “I’m going mad as a Bedlamite not hearing from Dick after Will sent that letter to him for me. You told me he wrote in it that, if he cared for me, he should declare his plans before the first banns are read for Guiles and me, and that is this coming Sabbath!”

I took her hands in mine. We both wore gloves Will had made for us from scraps of calfskin—fine, supple gloves, though a bit like a motley coat of patched pieces where he’d practiced his small stitches. “Kat, even after the banns, you might hear from him and could change Guiles’ mind, if he knows your affections lie elsewhere.”

“Stuff and nonsense! What have affections to do with this bargain? Dick had to get that letter weeks ago. Your friend Stephen said he delivered it personally.”

“So he did. He told me.”

Stephen Dench was my father’s most trusted worker. I had asked him for a privy favor for Kat’s sake, though I had the same worry with him that Kat had with Guiles. True, I’d paid Stephen a kiss to take the letter from Will to Dick, but at least my father had no burning desire to match me to anyone this soon. I was worth too much to his business. I just hoped he didn’t get the idea that a betrothal for me to Stephen would strengthen the Whateley pack train endeavor, as he had no male heir.

“Kat, keep your hopes and heart up then,” I urged. “And even if Dick only looks on you as a friend—”

She pushed me away. “I suppose it wouldn’t hurt you one whit if Will took off for London to make his fortune, or decided to go off with the queen’s players he so adores without a backward glance!”

“Yes, of course it would, but I intend to have a life with or without Will Shakespeare.”

“Oh, brave words!” she cried, kicking her pail so it rolled down the bank and skidded onto the ice. The center of Avon’s current was open water, but the river was icing up from both sides.

“Kat, I am sorry.”

“I’ll run away, I vow I will!”

With that last declaration she sank onto the muddy, slippery bank, put her head on her hands and began to sob so hard I thought she might choke. I knelt beside her, one arm around her quaking shoulders, one covering her hands clenched on her knees.

I just held her, until I was crying too, but silently. Tears froze on our cheeks. Her heavings muted to mere hiccoughs, and she quieted at last. When I saw she meant to rise, I helped her up and fetched her pail for her, careful not to go out too far upon the ice. I wanted to tell her something like,
Surely you will grow to love Guiles
or
When you have children, you will live for them and life will be worthwhile
. Or the worst lie yet,
I am sure Dick will write or come in time.
But the words would not form, so I spoke the bald truth.

“Oft we cannot control or choose where we love,” I told her. “I believe that is the fate of womankind, my Kat, from the queen with her Leicester on down—down to the likes of us. Desire wars with duty, but we must still march bravely on. And I will ever be your friend.”

“You have been a dear friend, you and Will too,” she whispered, not looking at me now. I was astounded to see her nod and press her lips into a taut smile as she dashed her tears from her face.

“I will see you later!” I cried as she started away.

“You will for a certain, ninnyhammer,” she said, using one of our pet names we oft used to call each other. She did not look back as she headed down the riverbank toward the mill where the water turned the big wheel.

She sounded more steady now, pray God, accepting of her loss. Feeling relieved and hopeful I had helped my friend, I hurried up the slippery slope in the opposite direction.

 

 

 

Later that chilly day,
I was sweeping out the stale and greasy rushes from Mr. Whateley’s wool shop floor when I saw Will come tearing up Henley Street. I knew that his younger brother Gilbert had been ill, and I prayed he had not taken a turn for the worse. He ran up the walk where I was now gaping out the front door at him.

“What?” I barely got out before he grabbed my wrist and pulled me outside so hard I nearly left my feet. I dropped the broom and, holding up my skirts with my free hand, tried to match his strides.

He was out of breath. “Fulk Sandells from Shottery—sells us fleeces—just came into the glovery and says—a girl’s caught in the ice near the brook.”

My heart filled with foreboding.

“Says it’s the one who’s to wed the miller,” he choked out.

I gasped as we ran pell-mell toward Clopton Bridge. Still holding hands, we did not cross it, but half ran, half slid down the bank to our old meeting spot under it, then followed the slippery path in the direction I’d seen Kat walk earlier. I nearly dry-heaved from fear. Neither of us was dressed for the cold, but we were both sweating.

“But—no one’s wed to the miller,” I protested, trying to hold back the horror of what this could mean. I remembered the way Kat had suddenly seemed resolved—but resolved to do what?

“He must have mixed that up,” Will muttered. “But Master Sandells says the girl’s drowned!”

I nearly collapsed, but he pulled me on, past the place where Kat and I had talked just hours earlier. No! Dear holy Jesus in heaven, please protect her—please, not Kat.

“It can’t be Kat!” I insisted. “I talked with her a while ago, and she said—well, of course, she’s overturned about Dick and Guiles—but she promised I’d see her soon.”

He slowed but did not let go of my hand. “Watch your footing,” he ordered. “We don’t need to slip in too, if that’s what happened. People will be here soon. Come on! Maybe she’s only knocked her head, and we can save her. I saw a limp cat get pulled out of a well once, and it breathed again.”

Too soon and yet too late, we reached the spot we both feared to look but knew to search. There a willow grew aslant a brook that fed into the river by an eddy that always pulled things down into it. In the sweet months, crowflowers and daisies grew there; now only frozen reeds adorned its hoary bank.

I saw Kat’s discarded pail and, pointing at it, let out a scream. The gloves she’d worn—Will’s gift to her—were neatly folded on the upturned pail. All grew silent in my head and heart as we went closer and looked down to behold our friend staring up at us through the clear ice that edged the banks.

Her eyes and mouth were open, as if in surprise or expectation. Her thick, curly hair had straightened and darkened, yet it seemed to crown her head with a wreath as the current swept past where her body had wedged. Her open, empty hands floated at her sides, palms up as if she were beseeching us to give her something, and her sodden skirts shifted as if she danced. Was this an accident or her own design—suicide? Will held my hand so tight it went numb while we gaped down at her.

“God save us, she’s killed herself over it all,” he whispered.

“No—don’t say that. Not that, or they’ll bury her by the crossroads as a heathen where everyone throws stones. I couldn’t bear it.”

“I know, I know. But unless we can convince the crowner and bailiff it was an accident, they’ll not allow her in hallowed church ground.”

We could hear other voices coming closer, random shouts and cries, no doubt her family as well as others. Fulk Sandells perhaps, leading people in. Yet we did not move but held tight to each other, gazing down in awe as if our friend had been preserved in a glass coffin.

“Damn Dick Field!” I said. “Her parents and Guiles too! They killed her. It’s murder!”

“Leave off!” Will ordered, giving me a shake. “If you talk that way, you’ll turn everyone against our common cause.”

“What common cause?” I demanded as I pulled away from him to kneel on the bank. I reached out to put my hand upon the cold, slick ice over Kat’s face. Tears had frozen on that face earlier; now it seemed a torrent of tears encased all of her. If only she could get up and dance a jig with me as we were wont to do, as Will had said corpses did upon the stage at the end of the play to make everything right again.

“I’ve learned a lot at the law office where I’ve been copying documents,” he said, speaking fast now, though his words hardly pierced my stunned brain at first. “If we both testify—you, especially, since you saw her but a while ago—that she was calm and of sound mind, happy enough about her coming nuptials, they will have to rule that she drowned by chance, not what they call
felo de se
—suicide. Anne, do you hear me? Would you stand up with me on that, both as her friends? We must let no one gainsay what we claim.”

The ragged group of people turned the bend in the riverbank and burst upon us. Kat’s mother was with them and began to moan and wail. Will’s mother put her arms around the distraught soul. People pushed the women back and simply stared at first. Then men led by Will’s father and Fulk Sandells began to hack at the ice to retrieve the body.

Will and I stood apart and moved away. If we testified thusly to allow poor Kat to be buried in consecrated ground, everyone would know of our secret meetings—that we were covert friends. And it might come out about Dick and Kat to further sully her name. Though we were yet young, folks might suspect the worst of Will and me too. Purity and honesty were valued in this town, and people oft sued each other over slurs or accusations of sexual affairs. The Shakespeares would be appalled and angry, and my father—I knew not what he would say. Mrs. Whateley would believe she should keep me on a shorter leash—that was certain. I’d be as bereft as Kat was to lose the one she loved if I lost Will.

“Yes,” I whispered to him in the din of cries and shouts and sobbing. I nodded fiercely. “Lord help us, we must hazard all, for it is the least that we can do for one we love.”

“Loved,” Will said, as if he spoke the amen to Kat’s lost life and mayhap to all our days together.

 

 

 

The next morn
in a back room of the Stratford Guild Hall, I testified to Katherine Hamlett’s state of
compos mentis
, as the crowner, who had examined the body, put it. That man and the bailiff presided.

I soon saw that this hearing was to be quite formal and official with Latin terms thrown about willy-nilly, ones I didn’t understand. I hoped Will did, as he’d not only studied Latin but now worked for the lawyer who sat beside him and his father on the opposite side of the room from my father and me. As I write this from my memories of twenty-one years ago, I cannot recall the name of the lawyer Will worked for or if John Shakespeare had hired him or whether he attended from curiosity or as a favor. And, despite the fact Will had a mind like a trap, I won’t ask him, because I don’t want him to know I’m writing my love story and life story, not yet at least.

At any rate, I felt I was on trial myself. My father and I—he had just come back into town the day Kat died—sat on one side of the officials’ table with Kat’s parents seated two benches back. Arrayed on Will’s side of the room—I had thought we were to be on the same side, so to speak—were his parents; the lawyer; the Greenaways, my father’s business rivals; and even the miller’s family, including Kat’s betrothed, Guiles, who looked not as much grieved as gruff. Perhaps some of these folk had chosen their seats at random, but it seemed something dire was to be done with me that day too.

Standing before the table where sat the crowner and bailiff, with tears in my eyes but in a clear voice, I answered the questions put to me. It reminds me now of a plot from
The Merchant of Venice
(though that was supposedly a comedy), which Will wrote a few years ago, where Shylock demands his pound of flesh. Would that I then had the heroine Portia’s brightness and boldness, but I spoke out as best I could.

Perhaps the real horror of that day was that Will and I had resolved to lie, or at least slant our remarks in Kat’s favor. I took strength in our now unspoken bond that Kat must not be buried in a desolate, shameful place where she would be deserted after death as she had been in life. Above all else, that would have galled me sore.