The Sonnet Lover (49 page)

Authors: Carol Goodman

BOOK: The Sonnet Lover

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I see the screen as soon as I enter the hall. “Movable” is perhaps a misnomer; it looks as though it weighs several hundred pounds at least, but I can imagine how it would be useful in a performance. As I walk across the hall, the sound of my footsteps on the stone floor echoing in the vaulted space, I seem to hear the echoes of those long-ago theatricals. What kind of plays would a man like Thomas Hesketh have commissioned his players to perform? Farces by Terence and Plautus, perhaps? Did a young Will Shakespeare dart behind this screen to change roles? Did a young Ginevra de Laura, visiting from a nearby house where she and her father were working on a
pietre dure
floor, watch from the audience and await his return? When he turned his face away from her forever, did she remember this screen and imagine that she could call him back onto the stage of her life?

When I reach the screen I see that it is indeed carved with roses. I touch one of the carved roses and remind myself how common an image it is. This doesn’t prove anything—and yet I feel sure that Ginevra stood here and watched a young William Shakespeare step behind this screen to assume a new role and that years later when he turned away from her in anger she hoped he might turn back again, his anger transformed into love—just as I continue to foolishly conjure Bruno out of these cold northern mists.

I turn and leave the Great Hall and find my way to the exit. Of course I’ll have to do a thorough search on movable screens to find out how often roses appear on them, but I feel sure already that I’m on the right track, that in the end I’ll hunt down Ginevra’s English lover—her Sonnet Lover—until he turns his face to me and reveals the features of Will Shakespeare. I know, too, that it will be the making of me academically. I won’t have to worry about tenure. I won’t have to worry about getting a new job. I can see the path ahead of me, and it should make me happy, but instead it just looks like a long and lonely road.

As I’m going out I notice that a stack of the brochures has slid out of its plastic sleeve and fallen facedown to the floor. As I kneel down to pick them up, I hear “Miss Marple” say, “Could you straighten those out for me, love? I’ve been meaning to since the visitor before you knocked them all over, but I didn’t want to leave my station.”

Since the hall is deserted, it’s hard to imagine why she was afraid of leaving her desk, but when I straighten up and look at her I notice the cane leaning against the old woman’s chair and realize she probably can’t get to the floor too easily. “I’ll put them back,” I tell her, turning the stack over. It’s then that I see what they’re for. I nearly drop them myself, but manage to put all but one away neatly in their slot. Then, clutching the brochure open to the directions page in my shaking hands, I hurry back to the Range Rover.

The house—another sixteenth-century Tudor hall—is only ten kilometers from Rufford Old Hall. I grip the brochure to the steering wheel to follow the directions and nearly drive into a hedgerow, trying to steal glances at the description of the house and gardens. “Built in 1549…attractive landscaped gardens…panoramic views over the Mersey Basin toward Wales…intriguing period interior with secret priest’s hole…marble inlaid floor with floral pattern…”

When I pull up in front of the timber-framed wattle-and-daub manor house, I have to peel the brochure off the palm of my hand, leaving flakes of text and color photography on my sweaty skin. I notice that there’s one other car parked in the lot—a Mini with a rental plate. I sit, staring at the “panoramic view over the Mersey Basin,” for several minutes before I can will my legs to move; then I get out of my car and follow the rose-lined path to the front door.

“The hall most likely takes its name from the rose gardens,” the brochure, whose text I seem to have absorbed through my pores, says. “Although another local legend claims that the name dates from the installation of the unique marble floor in the Great Hall…”

I see a sign with the words “Visitor’s Center, Pay Admission Before Entering” pointing to a path that winds around the side of the house and another sign that reads “Great Hall” pointing to a heavy oak door. I go toward the door. It opens directly into a large vaulted hall. I look down and my throat closes with disappointment. The floor is dull gray stone with irregular splotches where water has dripped on it for centuries. “The floor is in need of restoration,” the brochure had read, but surely this can’t be…

Then a swath of light filters through the clouded lead-glass windows at the end of the hall and falls on the stone at my feet. I kneel down to meet the light as it reaches me and touch an inlaid marble petal. I rub the stone until the original pink color emerges from the grime, then I follow the pattern until I reach a rosette at the center of the floor. The pattern is the same as the one in the rotunda of La Civetta, but where there the pattern is cut off by the eighteenth-century restoration, here the pattern is complete. I trace the initials with my hands, following the pale pink marble shapes that turn a darker red as my tears dampen them. When I’ve traced the final loop of the
G
where it intersects with the
W,
I sit back on my heels and see that I’m not alone in the hall. The room begins to spin and I feel myself sway.

“Cara,”
he says, striding over the scattered marble roses to reach me, “you’re not going to faint, are you?”

I start to get up, but first I touch one of the rose petals and silently ask the two poets whose initials are carved in the floor for the right words to say. But when I go to him I find there is no need of words.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

C
AROL
G
OODMAN
is the author of
The Lake of Dead Languages, The Seduction of Water, The Drowning Tree,
and
The Ghost Orchid. The Seduction of Water
won the 2003 Hammett Prize, and her other novels have been nominated for the Dublin/IMPAC Award and the Simon Schuster Mary Higgins Clark Award. Her fiction has been translated into eight languages. She teaches writing at the New School University in New York City.

BY CAROL GOODMAN