The Tutor (18 page)

Katharine looked at herself in the glass, saw the peacock feather, and thought of the fine gloves Will had given to her, realizing how they would match the hat.

“You must,” echoed Joan.

“A jewel of a hat for a gem of a lady,” said the milliner. He adjusted the angle of the hat, tilting the brim so it almost covered Katharine’s left eye.

“Where would I wear a hat like this?” Katharine asked. “When?”

“There will be an occasion,” said Isabel.

“Yes. There will be,” chimed in Joan.

“A hat such as this will make an occasion,” said the milliner.

With the glorious hat perched on her head, and the two girls and the milliner gazing at her, waiting, Katharine was overtaken with the narrowness of her life. Over the years, she had mapped the terrain at the hall. She knew her place, distinguished the open fields from the enclosures. She had contented herself with her lot and had poured her passion into the rich and varied world of words.

Katharine took off the hat. “Monsieur, your hat is
magnifique
!” she said, handing it to him. Her voice was weak, and she thought she might cry.

“I do not believe you have ever tried a hat on in this shop, my lady,” said the milliner. “You deserve this hat. You are a beauty and the hat is a beauty and the two of you belong together . . . are betrothed, if you will. We can talk of the cost.”

“Monsieur, you are an artist. You deserve to be paid well for this hat. I am happy to have had it on my head, if only for a little while. Gramercy.”

Katharine nodded at him, then walked out of the shop. In truth she had no money for an extravagant hat, or almost any hat, for that matter. Sir Edward had been generous, and since she’d moved back to the hall a widow eleven years earlier, he had given her coins regularly. But either he had forgotten to tell Richard of this arrangement or Richard had failed to remember, because there had been no such allowance since Edward’s departure.

The girls followed her out of the shop and the three of them strolled through the morning throng. The streets were overcrowded with folk, the stench of dung and rotten food rising from the ground, and the pungent odor of yeast and malt from the breweries clouded the air. The water mills along the river were voracious, forever grinding grain into flour, pounding wool with wooden hammers; the constant cacophony of their
wheels and stone often made it difficult to hear one’s own speech. Katharine wondered how the streets in London compared to this village. More people, she imagined, more smells, more of everything. She wondered if Will had left London yet; she worried that, once there, he would grow accustomed to his old haunts, and never return to Lancashire.

The weather had turned bitter in the last days. A damp wind blew in from the Irish Sea and Katharine pulled her cloak tightly around her neck. As they neared the river they got caught up in a procession. At the center of this boisterous group was a woman locked onto a cucking stool—a wooden chair constructed to look like the chamber pot it was named after. The poor hag was stripped down to her smock: neats’ tongues hung round her neck; her head and feet were bare; iron staples restrained her arms and legs. The stool was attached to two long beams on wheels. They were bringing her to the water.

This shrew’s face was pockmarked and red, and she was screaming at her captors at the top of her lungs. Dogs barked and children ran alongside the rig, poking her with sticks.

“What hath she done?” Isabel asked one of the revelers, a tall, skinny man with no front teeth.

“She didna heed her husband and did persist in shoutin’ foul at him. Let that be a lesson to ye. The old scold’s gettin’ three dips.” He laughed. “That’ll cure her scurvy tongue!” he shouted as he ambled on.

After the first dunking, they brought the woman up from the cold current, and she was sobbing, no longer screaming, while water ran from her nose.

Katharine said, “We must go. Lady de L’Isle will wonder what’s become of us.”

The girls did not move, their eyes staring at the woman on the chair as it was lowered once again into the water.

“Isabel, Joan, we are not going to stand here and watch this. We must
go!” Katharine took each one by the arm, turned them and marched away from the scene.

“What do you think that woman in the chair said to her husband?” asked Joan, when they were far enough away from the crowd to hear themselves talk.

“Most likely she hollered,
Could ye clean your sack breath before you kiss me!
or
Get your paws off me skin and leave me in peace!
” said Isabel with a laugh.

“Isabel!” Katharine said, suppressing a smile. “What would your mother say if she heard these words?”

“Ah, there’s Mother now,” said Isabel.

Matilda had visited several shops and stalls; her maid was laden with goods like a workhorse. Cries and cheers of the third dipping rang through the air. Katharine wondered at the plight of women, how their tongues were ripped from their throats or they were dunked in icy rivers more often for what they said than for what they did. Since most of her fair sex could neither read nor write, their voices were all they had.

The driver was piling their boxes and packages into the cart when Katharine caught sight of Mr. Smythson with his son. She didn’t want more encounters; she wanted to get in the cart and start for the hall. She hoped Mr. Smythson hadn’t noticed them, but he had, and walked over to their group. He and John bowed to the ladies. It was the first time Katharine had seen him without dust or dirt all over him.

“Mr. Smythson, what have you bought on market day?” asked Isabel.

“Nothing yet. We’ve just got here,” he said, running his fingers through his dark curls.

“Are you from these parts, Mr. Smythson?” Katharine asked.

“No.” He shook his head.

Katharine waited for him to say where he was from but he didn’t continue.

“Better hurry,” said Joan. “The stalls will be closing.”

“Yes, we best get along,” said his son John.

They took their leave. As the cart with the ladies rolled along the street, Katharine watched Mr. Smythson and his son. They were talking. Mr. Smythson put his hand on his son’s shoulder and leaned in to listen to what his son was saying. Then he threw his head back, laughing. She’d never even seen him smile before, let alone laugh. The cart passed them and she craned her neck to watch, wondering what he could possibly be laughing about. Father and son seemed unaware of the bustling commerce around them, and she worried they might not have time to buy anything before the market closed.

—

Will sent a note
telling Katharine he would make haste to her; he had no new verse but was certain that she would, as she always did, inspire him. Katharine prepared for his return with delight. She arranged for the wooden tub to be hauled to her room and water lugged up from the well. It was almost a day’s work. While the water heated in a kettle on the fire, she instructed Molly to fetch rose petals and lavender stems. When the fragrant steam was rising from the tub, Katharine removed her smock, unbound her hair and stepped in.

“This feels lovely,” she said. “Molly, you must use the tub yourself when I’m done.”

“Thank you, mistress,” said Molly.

Katharine sank into the water. Long strands of her thick hair floated on the surface. She dipped her head in fully, and Molly spooned a mixture of rosewater, rosemary and lye into her hair. Then she scrubbed Katharine’s back and arms with a paste of honey, almonds and oats.

“Molly, fetch my clean smocks and hose from the laundress, please,” said Katharine. “But stoke the fire before you go.”

Molly did as she was told and was out the door. Katharine slid deeper
into the water. His letters these past weeks had an eager heat in them. He had left his wife, his family and London, and he was coming back to her. She shut her eyes and saw his eyes, his ripe lips, his beautiful hands. She ran her hand from her thighs to her stomach, then over her breasts.

After her soak, she dried her hair by the fire and rubbed her skin with oils of clove, cinnamon and jasmine. She dressed carefully. She usually wore a partlet of lace or linen that stretched from the top of her bodice to her neck, but today she did without, revealing the path between her breasts, blocked only by the tight line of her bodice. The gown dipped down low in the back, and surely if her shawl were to slip her scars would show. He will have to take me scars and all, Katharine thought gaily as Molly threaded the bodice and pulled it fast.

“The old green gown always looks so comely with your hair, mistress,” said Molly. “I’m glad you keep your hair natural and not paint it with that potion that makes it dull as buckram. Each strand of your hair has a million hues.”

“A million, Molly?”

“A million, mistress,” Molly said.

Minutes later, Katharine saw light in the library and threw the door open. Will had sent word through Molly he would be there.

“Good even.” The sound was deep and masculine, but it was not Will. A tall man with a head of unruly hair was bending over the table.

“Beg pardon,” Katharine said. “I thought someone else was here.”

The man who raised his head was Mr. Smythson.

He bowed and Katharine smiled, and they said hello. Large drawings were spread on the table in front of him, and he wore a wool cape around his shoulders.

She moved closer. “What is this?” she asked.

“Lufanwal,” he said. “’Tis plans for its change.”

She had never seen such renderings of a house. The shape was fine, as though an artist had sketched the form. Mr. Smythson dipped a quill in
the inkhorn and wrote something on the parchment. His writing was as neat and precise as the lines of the drawing.

“I am creating a hall along the side of the house here, so in the future you will not have to travel from room to room.”

She rested her hands on the table and bent her head down to see.

“This is where the new chambers will be,” he said.

“How well they fit with the line of the house,” she said.

“One hopes.”

They were quiet for a moment.

“Is it difficult to add to such an old and reworked dwelling?” she asked.

“Has its difficulties. Everything shifts. I try to maintain the symmetry or re-create it, if it’s been lost over the centuries. ’Tis a bit of a puzzle, always.”

“What’s this?” she asked, pointing to part of the parchment.

He leaned over her to see. “Oh, those are windows, a line of windows—” he began, but was interrupted. Someone had entered the room. Mr. Smythson straightened.

Katharine looked up and saw Will. “How now, my good sir,” she said, smiling. The sight of him instantly warmed her and spread from her flesh to her sinews and her heart.

Will stood in the doorway. He wasn’t smiling. “I do not wish to disturb.”

“Oh, you are not,” said Katharine. “Mr. Smythson was here and has shown me his plans. You remember Mr. Smythson?”

“No, I think not.”

“You met him in the garden. He is the builder, adding to the hall.”

Will was oddly cold. Katharine remembered how he had talked to Mr. Smythson as though they were colleagues, and now he acted as though he had never laid eyes on him. Will turned to go.

“Don’t . . .” Katharine began, flustered.

“I must go,” Mr. Smythson said, rolling up the large sheets of skin.

“Your drawings are . . . beautiful,” Katharine said.

“Many thanks. Let us pray they can make the leap from flat to full, for lines on a page are not stones in a wall. Farewell.” He looked at her and he looked at Will.

“They will leap,” Katharine said. “I am sure of it.”

Mr. Smythson bowed and left them standing there. Will said nothing. Katharine wondered at his rudeness. The fire in the room crackled, but there was no other sound. She had mapped a different reunion, and a feeling of terror took hold of her. Had she lost him?

“I did so miss you,” she said, echoing his recent letter. But the words hung stranded in the air.

He turned his back to her and looked at the books on the shelves. She sat by the fire. It was then she noticed his shoes. They were of fine leather, pigskin perhaps, or something more supple, vellum, with a soft tongue that hugged his slender ankle and side lachets that fastened over his instep with a black satin bow. She could not take her eyes from them. They were delicate, almost feminine but not pantofles, the slipper shoes made of velvet or silk that could only really be worn indoors. Will’s shoes could be worn outside, she supposed, but only if it were dry; the slightest bit of rain or mud or any extended walking, would clearly ruin them. And they were red.

Between the shoes and the silk points that tied his hose like garters below his knees, Will sported fine black stockings that emphasized the bright color of his new shoes. The stockings looked to be of crewel silk and they had a seam down his muscular calf with a diamond pattern knit into the fabric around the ankle. It was as if he’d walked onstage and a lamp lit his shoes from below. The leather must have been treated with grease to make it shine so.

Will turned his gaze from the books to his shoes. “You like them?” he asked. “I got them in London at a cordwainer who makes shoes for Lord Essex. Not sheepskin, I assure you.”

“They look very fine indeed.” She wondered how he could have possibly afforded this shoe.

“I have a patron now, the Earl of Southampton,” he said, squaring his broad shoulders and glancing in the large looking glass hung in an elaborately carved frame that reached from the high ceiling down to the wood floor.

Katharine had heard of the Earl of Southampton. Henry Wriothesley came from a long Catholic dynasty, his father having died under mysterious circumstances after helping the doomed priest Edmund Campion.

“I met a man once who had a pair of shoes I’ve never forgotten,” said Will. “He was a lord. He’s dead now. But he told me of this shop, and that’s where I went. Made to fit my feet like a glove. On the wall was a letter from Essex, in his own hand, thanking the man for being such a craftsman. I believe, actually, he used the word
artist
.”