The Lady and the Poet (52 page)

Wat told me after that he went proudly, and was polite to his jailers, yet I could but imagine the pain and fear that beset him. Did not his own brother, Henry, die of the plague in Newgate Prison but eight years since?

When I heard of his imprisonment, I threw myself upon my father’s mercy.

‘How can your conscience allow this, when you know he will languish and even die in such a place?’

The Fleet Prison, as he well knew, was greatly feared for its nearness to the plague districts.

‘Talk not to me of conscience!’ My father’s fury lashed at me, as painful as a whip across my still-reddened face. ‘You, who pretended sweet innocency while all the while crawling into his bed like a stewhouse drab!’

‘He is my husband. May I at least send food or clean linen to him in this frightful place?’

‘No!’ I thought he might strike again and stood my ground, unflinching, my eyes level with his, if not somewhat above, for I am taller by some inches. ‘He is no husband of yours until the Archbishop of Canterbury himself decrees it at the High Commission. And since I have applied for an annulment, he may never be such!’

‘Do not say so.’ I tried to keep my eyes from letting me down by weeping. ‘He is my husband before God and none, not even you, can undo God’s holy ordinance.’

Of a sudden he laughed hollowly. ‘And you are his destiny, or so he has told the Lord Keeper. Until he met you his life was no more than a waking dream. Well, now it will be a nightmare. And if ever he is released that will be an end to his advancement. The Lord Keeper has dismissed him.’

‘I will not listen to this venom. He loves me and I love him in return. I care naught for worldly advancement and no more does John.’

He laughed in derision. ‘All men care for worldly advancement, your husband more than most. You believe your hearts to be so strong? That you will live on love and air?’

‘If need be. Yes.’

Though it pained me sorely, I dared not try and visit my husband in the Fleet, for I knew that it would bring but greater ire upon his head from my father. Yet I did get a message to Wat that he must go and take some small necessities.

The tale he told fairly broke my heart.

My husband was detained in dank and cramped surroundings not many yards from the Shambles, where my aunt and I had bought the suet for my uncle’s malady so long since. Now he was in a cell choked by the stink of the tanneries, next to the foul Fleet river which was full of refuse flung into the stream by furriers and butchers alike.

And for this privilege, Wat explained, he must pay £3. 6s.d for his commitment and 20 pence to be allowed to feel the fresh air on his face by walking the yard.

‘He is not alone, mistress. His friends visit, and he writes to the Lord Keeper and your father, hoping that one or the other will show him mercy. And also, mistress, he sends you this.’ He handed me a parchment, scrawled in the familiar beloved hand.

My husband’s letter bid me keep my spirits up and said that he knew, in the end, our love would triumph over all adversity.

Yet it was his postscript that made me wipe away a tear for he had added the mournful message:
John Donne, Ann Donne, Undone.

And I swore that to my last breath I would not allow it to be so.

Six whole days had passed since my husband’s imprisonment in the
Fleet and hourly I waited for the news that he had succumbed to some dread sickness or affliction.

Another letter arrived from him addressed to my father, this one as humble as the first had been bold and defiant.

‘Master Donne learns some humility at least,’ my father shrugged.

At that my heart soared with sudden hope. ‘What will you answer him?’

‘That his fate lies not with me but with the Lord Keeper.’

I had almost to remind him that it was he, and not the Lord Keeper, who had caused the imprisonment a week ago. Indeed the Lord Keeper bade him think it over, yet my father would have none of it; Master Donne must be imprisoned and his livelihood lost. And now here was my father washing his hands of my husband’s fate, like Pontius Pilate.

And then, unexpected and unannounced, with only her groom to bid her company, about her neck the double chains that made her resemble the Lord Mayor of London, my grandmother arrived from Surrey.

My father had decided to sup early for the day’s business in Parliament had been long and tiring. The servants had already begun to clear away the dishes when in she strode, riding crop in hand, just as Mary had come into the church on the day of my marriage. Yet where Mary was all lithe beauty and elegance, my grandmother had the bustling strength and courage under fire of a great warhorse that naught, not even vast cannons packed with gunpowder, could alarm.

‘Well, George,’ she thundered, stopping not even to remove her overgarments, ‘I am come to discuss this nonsense of throwing Master Donne in prison.’

My father jumped up from his gilded seat. ‘My lady mother, you know nothing of these proceedings.’

‘I know enough. I know that this man has married Ann.’

‘Precisely. In secret, without my consent and in breach of canon law, and she a minor.’

‘Thousands marry in breach of canon law. The Lord Keeper for one, who has come to richly regret it, and serve him right for wedding that shrew with my dear daughter hardly cold in her grave.’

‘Mother, you forget, Ann was but a maid of fourteen years when he began this cursed courtship. The libertine abused her innocence.’

‘They had no relations until she was near seventeen, Ann swears, and the law allows marriage at twelve. Indeed, you betrothed her sister Frances when she was twelve years old without her even meeting the gentleman.’

He turned angrily away. ‘The present case is different. They courted secretly. They had relations.’

‘And for how long has this courtship run its course?’

‘Three years.’

‘And after three long years, and many separations, one beyond a twelvemonth, they still risked all to marry secretly, knowing the weight of your displeasure would fall upon them. Is that not proof their love endures?’

‘She is but a child, what knows she of such things? And she has chosen a man who some suspect of coveting her portion or her position, a man sullied by gossip, from a family of known Papists, who has few prospects, and you wish me to celebrate such a union?’

‘Ann is no mewling babe in arms, she is a woman, yet you have failed to see it. She has made her choice and proved the steadfastness of her love through much adversity. She even starved herself to show you. Have you not marked how she lights up like the summer sky when Master Donne’s name is talked of?’

‘I have no time for such women’s nonsense.’

‘You refuse her own choice, tried and tested by time, yet offer her to a man who would have defiled her if he could, and would do worse to punish her when they were wed, because it suits your ambitions for this family?’

‘Mother, I…’ He seemed at last defeated as if he could think of no further arguments.

She dropped a hand onto his shoulder. ‘George, you are a man of extreme passions, yet you love your daughter, do you not?’

‘How can I hand her to a man who has taken advantage of her innocence, of whom all London gossips, the air beating with all their wild surmisings like the flapping of some evil bird?’

‘Is it not your daughter’s life that matters more than idle chatter,
which will last no longer than a puff of smoke in a strong wind? Besides which, the race is run. She is married to him, for good or ill.’

‘That has not yet been established.’

‘My son, he proves it with a petition lodged at the Court of Audiences which they say he is very like to win.’

At that my father seemed suddenly to hunch up, his shoulders sagging as old men’s do. ‘What world is this, then, when a father’s consent counts for naught and a girl of ten and seven years can marry whom she pleases?’

‘A changing one, my son.’

‘I love him, Father,’ I said in a voice of humble submission. ‘He is my lawful wedded husband. And yet he languishes in a stinking prison cheek by jowl with death and pestilence.’

He turned his head away and I could see that he struggled between pride and anger and the love he bore me.

My grandmother, never one to lose an advantage, blustered onwards. ‘If this nonsense over keeping Master Donne in prison ends not, then I shall never return to Surrey.’ Her hawk-like nose, looming above us in the shadows, seemed twice its usual size, and the grim unsmiling line of her lips could swallow a man whole. ‘Indeed, if you persist in your usual blockhead fashion, George, I shall be as fixed as that oak newel post.’ She pointed to the solid block that formed the base of the banister. ‘And never shall you rid your house of me. The choice is yours.’

Next to God, I knew my grandmother to be my best ally, and while I helped her unpack her trunk that night, I thanked her for it.

‘I hope your father will see the light, yet he is a stubborn man and thinks too much of the world’s opinion.’

‘My lady grandmother, God bless you for coming here and for taking my part.’

‘Ann, mind this. I have opposed this marriage as much as any have, but life has taught me that it is idle to cry over milk that has been spilt. Since the deed is done, better that you prove it was worth the doing.’

‘I will, Grandmother, as soon as ever I am given the chance.’

EARLY ON THE
morrow I slipped out before the rest of the household awoke and took myself to St Bride’s Church to pray for my husband’s release from that terrible place. I could not but think of what had befallen his brother Henry in Newgate, and I pictured a similar fate beckoning to my own husband. If I by the end of this day had not changed my father’s mind, I would go to the Fleet myself, no matter what the risk.

Even at that early hour the churchyard seemed more like a market than a place of peace and penitence, bustling with vendors setting up their wares, at one side a tavern offering ale to busy guildsmen, right there in the sight of God, and at the other a printing shop where pamphlets and bills were being noisily prepared amidst a group of arguing writers.

I stole past, my vizor protecting me, and into the back of the church. Matins were halfway through and the familiar sound of voices raised in worship soothed my sorry heart.

For many minutes I knelt, my head bowed, begging God to have pity on our lot. We had committed a sin of the flesh, I knew, and yet was it so great a sin to love as we did and to sanctify our union in the hope of a true and loving marriage?

I know not how long I knelt there, head bowed, until the cold had overtaken me and I could no longer feel the life in the fingers of my hands. I looked up then to find an empty church, its worshippers departed.

And there, in the deathly silence, a terrible solution came to me.

‘Forgive us, Lord,’ I spoke aloud, my voice ringing out through the chill darkness. ‘Yet if you must punish us for our sin, punish only me. Release my husband from his prison cell before disease can ravish him and I will oppose my father’s wishes no longer, even though it means that he whom I love most on this earth is denied to me and that we will only be united in the next. Amen.’

Outside the sudden sunlight blinded me and I fell back into the shadows to make my way back to Charing Cross. And yet, if my father would do naught for us, why did I not appeal myself direct to my uncle the Lord Keeper?

I found him just rising from his own morning prayers and not yet departed for the council chamber. His kindly face wore the crease of annoyance and bad temper it had worn ever since he married the Countess of Derby. It was said she crossed him in everything, no matter how small, and that their angry words could be heard right down the Strand. How different from the sweet peace he had shared with my beloved aunt.

‘What can I do for you on this cold morning, niece?’ He shook his head sadly. ‘As if I knew not. It concerns Master Donne no doubt.’ He waved a letter at me. ‘I have received this missive from him this very morning.’

‘Then let me add my appeal to his. My lord uncle, his own brother died in Newgate of a plague.’

My uncle shrugged. ‘It is a common fate.’

‘Uncle, listen. If it saves him from sickening in that place I will renounce the marriage.’

He saw what this cost me, yet stared straight ahead, making no answer.

‘Is your Master Donne so dear to you that you would give up all for love—family, position, even your good name?’ The Lord Keeper turned away, staring out at the cold grey river. ‘Love can be an illusion, Ann.’

I wondered if he thought of his new wife, so harsh and shrewish.

‘Ours is not such,’ I said simply. ‘It can also, as you well remember, my lord uncle, be the greatest solace and delight God gives to his creatures on this earth.’

‘Aye.’ His sigh was deep enough to launch a fleet from Tilbury. ‘I will release your Master Donne.’

I gasped, unable to keep in my delight.

‘Yet, niece, I cannot reinstate him in his former place here.’

I bit my lip, knowing how hard that would go with John, how difficult it would be for him to get another place. Our future together would be a lean one.