William and Susanna

by L E Pembroke

  ‘These are your morning and midday meals, William. You may purchase a bowl of hot soup at each over-night stop. Your father will give you the money.’

  ‘And, here’s a few pence for your ale, my boy.’ John, having been convinced by his wife that this was the best decision for his son’s future and for their pocket, was now eager for him to be off to begin his new career tutoring children in one of the grand Catholic houses of Lancashire. There would be no halcyon days at university, but he had been permitted to conclude his school days at Kings.

  Gilbert, a large lad, two years younger than William and as strong as an ox, was less pleased at the turn of events that would deprive him of the company of his brother. Gilbert, unlike his older brother, was not an enthusiastic student yet despite their differences in personality, they were close chums and Gilbert dreaded the thought of William’s departure for what might prove to be years. Richard, eight years younger than Gilbert, was far too young to care one way or another. Even today he showed no interest in the comings and goings of the travellers, too busy whingeing to Anne about the bitter cold of the early morning. ‘Needs a good clip around the ear-hole’, was Gilbert’s opinion, instead of being molly-coddled by Anne.

  Anne Hathaway had become a member of the household a few months earlier during the crisis surrounding the illness and finally the death of their nine-year-old sister, also named Anne. Mary, worn to a frazzle after twenty years of child-bearing, the loss of now three children and their financial ups and downs, was pregnant again, for the eighth time. John made the decision that, despite their financial difficulties, his ailing wife needed permanent help in the house and, it seemed the twenty-four-year-old Anne from the village of Shottery just a few miles from Stratford would provide the solution.

  Anne accepted willingly the offer to move to Stratford and take up residence with the Shakespeare family. Her parents were dead and she, for several years, lived with her brother, her step-mother and her many half brothers and sisters. She was delighted to get away, had felt like an unpaid servant in her own home. Besides, from her first day in the Shakespeare home young Richard Shakespeare had clung to her as if she were his mother and this was the first time in many years that Anne had felt needed and wanted. John considered that fact alone was reason enough to invite the young woman to remain with them for the next two or three years, or at least until Mary was over her weakness and recovered from the effects of this last pregnancy. And, one thing was certain in John’s mind. This baby, whether boy or girl would be the last to be born in the Shakespeare home.

  Gilbert wandered around the horses and box cart kicking at the cobbles as he went. He looked into the unpainted box that contained only two wooden benches facing each other. He was not impressed. He thought the cart resembled a large communal privy on wheels and he suspected that William and the other passengers would have the devil of a time for the following four days as they bounced and lurched along largely makeshift tracks.

  William bent low, ruffled young Richard’s hair and said a word of farewell. As he straightened up, Mistress Hathaway brushed his cheek with her lips. He blushed and turned away. His father clapped him on the back. ‘Goodbye son, do us proud.’ His mother wept as he stooped to kiss her. His sister, Joan murmured, ‘Goodbye dear Will’ and Gilbert’s face screwed up with emotion as they shook hands. ‘God be with you, brother,’ he murmured.

  *

  The five other passengers, along with two gentlemen outriders who would, as was the custom, ride their own horses, emerged from the inn. They all knew that it was not the custom for gentlemen to ride in the unsprung carts that were pulled along the rough terrain of rural England; gentlemen considered that doing so was unmanly. Infrequently some deigned to ride a shorter trip, perhaps from Oxford to London, in one of the few modern sprung carriages recently appearing on some English roads.

  William observed his fellow passengers with interest. Keen observation of those around him was a habit of his. Mary said that one day someone would punch her son in the nose for his impertinence, but that didn’t deter his natural curiosity about his fellow man.

  A young matron, heavy with child, was being assisted into the box carriage by a man of the age to be her father. Was he her father or an elderly spouse? Hard to tell one way or another; so many wives died in childbirth it was common to see older men, widowers, with very young second wives. What did those young girls really think of their elderly husbands? Many might hope these men in their dotage would soon pass on to better things - might even consider helping them on their way. He chuckled to himself at the thought. Or again, perhaps this slip of a girl was herself recently widowed, a poor young lady whose young husband had passed away and left her enceinte, having to face life with an infant who would never know what it was to have a father. And, yet again, perhaps theirs was a happier and less dramatic story, she had been merely visiting her parents, if so she might be returning to her husband. No, he revised his thoughts once again, she had come to Stratford for her mother’s funeral. This mature unsmiling man was her grieving father. That would be the truth of it. They both wore dark sober-coloured clothing as if in mourning - then again they might be Puritans, their clothes were drab enough.

  At the same time he was pondering the young lady’s background it occurred to William that her state of health might predispose her to nausea on the bumpy journey. Did they provide a bucket? How could the other passengers put up with the sour smell of her vomit in a closed carriage? Would they stop the carriage long enough for travel sickened passengers to recover?

  He turned his attention to the other passengers. An elderly couple, both stiff with arthritis, climbed with difficulty into the box carriage and sat silently to one side of William. Finally, an attentive mother with a girl about the age of Gilbert, took their places opposite him. Perhaps one of the gentlemen outriders was the husband and father?

  William wished he was riding his own horse. He believed young men of his age traveling to take up their initial position as tutor should ride like a man and not travel like a woman. The method of conveyance chosen by his parents was the only vexatious matter that took the edge off his anticipation and excitement. But William never dreamed of complaining or asking for his own horse after the way the family had so satisfactorily resolved his future.

  Three years before, when his father announced he might be forced to leave school and work in the business of buying and selling sheep and cattle hides, the thought had appalled him more than his father knew. William wanted only to be a scholar. Surprisingly enough, it was his mother, herself illiterate, who supported him. Mary sensed it would be a mistake for her son to leave his school at the age of thirteen. She approached her cousin, Edward Arden, considered the patriarch of the family, and he supplied the finance for William to stay at school under the tutelage of yet another headmaster, John Cottam. It was Cottam who recommended William for his first position as tutor to the grandchildren of Alexander Hoghton of Hoghton Tower in Lancashire.

  William was well aware that the main reason the Arden Family supported him was because they hoped that, like so many of his distant cousins and indeed, John Cottam’s own younger brother, he would, following two or three years in Lancashire, leave England for France. There, in the north of that country were several seminaries where young English Catholic men trained for the priesthood and perhaps became soldiers of Christ, “a man for all men” - a Jesuit priest. William was rightly convinced that this was his mother’s dearest wish.

  The long term future was a matter he tried to put out of his mind. Only time would tell what path he would take. Somehow he doubted he would be content leading the celibate life of a priest. During the last few months at the Kings he had become painfully aware that every time he passed close by Mistress Anne Hathaway in one of the household corridors, his breeches bulged, and he sensed by her knowing smile that this had not gone unnoticed.

  *

  The journey was worse than he expected because he discovered, on this his
first major trip away from Stratford, that roads were virtually non-existent away from England’s cities. Constant rain ensured the carriage wheels plunged and pitched deep into dank, sunken, soft earth and the team of horses strained time and time again to free the sodden mud-caked wheels.

  Soon after midday, the exhausted horses turned into an inn-yard. They had travelled less than thirty miles in five hours. The passengers thankfully set feet on the cobbled yard while the coachman unharnessed the sweating frothy-mouthed animals preparatory to leading out the fresh team.

  There had been little conversation during the previous hours. Judging from each passenger’s pallor, he was not the only passenger to be suffering with a queasy stomach. The mother and daughter named Eliza, chewed vigorously on dried root of ginger made more palatable spread with honey. They offered to share some with him and he gratefully accepted. The elderly couple bore their discomfort with stoicism. Was that the way of elderly people, William wondered. They bounced about the carriage with barely a murmur; only the intermittent compression of their lips revealed to him the joint pain they must be suffering.

  The young pregnant lady swallowed some potion soon after their departure from Stratford. She lolled only semi-awake throughout the morning. Mary had prepared a pot of Valerian to help William sleep away the hours. He had no need of it during the morning, although, thought that during the long afternoon and evening journey to Birmingham, he might do so.

  Upon arrival at the luncheon halt passengers made their way in urgent haste to the washroom, thence to the tavern bar and eating area. William, for the first time in his life, ordered a double ale to help wash down the dried out food his mother had prepared for him. He hoped the added strength of a double might well assist him to sleep throughout the long tedious afternoon.

  *

  Three and a half days later the team of horses turned into an inn-yard a few miles outside Preston. He was close to his ultimate destination, Hoghton Tower. Passengers quickly disappeared in every direction. Standing alone in the yard he saw a gig with the Hoghton family crest on one side and standing by the horse was the coachman.

  ‘I’m William Shakespeare, new tutor, are you waiting for me?’

  The fellow doffed his cap. ‘Evenin’ sir, indeed I am, you’ll need the rug, parky in these parts. Climb up.’

  He threw his canvas knapsack onto the coachman’s seat and quickly climbed up beside it. He enveloped his body in the rug provided.

  ‘A further hour to travel, sir.’

  ‘That will be no hardship after four days in a box cart.’

  Black night fell. Clouds partially obscured the dim light of distant stars. He peered into the nearby dark, they were bowling along a straight avenue which cut through fields and copses. Possibly a mile away he eventually saw, by the light of the crescent moon and directly in front of them, tall gates, a gatehouse and grey, stone outer walls studded with battlements. The outline of the immense and forbidding castle walls dominated the view beyond the outer wall. Centrally, above what turned out to be an inner gate, the overriding feature was a massive square tower that protected the great house and gave to it its name. The manned tower had, for three hundred years, warned castle inhabitants of impending danger.

  High above and beyond the tower, seeming to penetrate the heavens, the steeply-shaped slate roofs of the main castle buildings supported a myriad tall clusters of chimneys. The coachman beside him pulled up at the rear of the inner courtyard in front of the great main doorway.

  ‘I see they have noticed our arrival.’ The driver pointed to the now open door. ‘That be Rigby waiting to direct you to your quarters. You best be polite to him, he wields all the downstairs power at Hoghton,’

  He’ll be the chief steward of the household most senior of all those who worked within the castle, thought William, and in a house this size there must be sixty to a hundred all told, not to mention those who worked under the Land Steward seeing to animals, crops and gardens. Once again he wondered how they would regard the position of tutor to the children. Where would a tutor stand in the hierarchy of Hoghton?

  Somewhat fearful of the immediate future, William slipped down from the gig, murmured a quick thank you and raced up the steps to the house. Rigby nodded, ‘Good evening.’ William noted he did not add “sir” and was discomfited by the thought that he may well be considered quite low on the social scale of those who lived and worked at Hoghton.

  Rigby led him into the massive entrance hall, its walls covered with huge paintings of war scenes, three of which, it was clear to him, were depictions of the long and bloody Wars of the Roses of the previous century when Lancastrian forces clashed with the white rose of the Yorkists in their endeavour to claim the English crown.

  On the right of the entrance hall, double doors were ajar enabling him to see into the Great Hall where meals were taken. The hall was bigger than any he had seen previously and its ceilings a lofty distance from the timber floor; he guessed it would have seated eighty to one hundred persons. At the far end there was a minstrels’ gallery.

  At the rear of the entrance hall, wide stairs wound up to the first floor although he was not taken in that direction. Rigby turned to the left and led William past and through many rooms, small parlours, morning rooms and a library, the size of which he could barely comprehend. Would he be given access to what must be a thousand books that he saw lining its walls from floor to ceiling? Adjacent to the library, Rigby stopped and knocked on the door of what turned out to be a study and private sitting room for the master of the house, Sir Alexander Hoghton. Much daunted, William stood silent while Rigby introduced him to the laird.

  ‘You’ll share a port wine with me,’ Hoghton said after dismissing Rigby. ‘You’ll be chilled , hungry and fatigued. Here Master Shakespeare sit by the fire for a while and then we’ll take our dinner in the hall.’

  He sipped his port wine, the first he had ever had. He liked the taste far more than the ale always the favourite drink of his family and neighbours at home. It warmed him instantly. He relaxed. ‘I look forward to meeting my pupils, sir.’

  ‘And, you will, in the morning, they are presently abed. Tonight you will meet their parents in the hall and tomorrow morning Rigby will see that you are shown throughout Hoghton.’

  ‘I have already glimpsed the library.’

  ‘You are most welcome to peruse our books. If the contents of the library interest you, you may use it to further your knowledge and indeed that of the boys. However, now, I think it is almost time we adjourned to the Hall. After your tour of the house in the morning you will be introduced to some of your pupils. They are waiting eagerly to meet with you.’

  ‘And I, them.’

  ‘You will spend most of your time tutoring my five youngest grandsons. The oldest is eleven years and the youngest only six years. Richard goes to school in France in a few month’s time and the others will follow when they reach his age. We hope Richard will take Holy Orders. But also, there are the sons of the servants who should be taught about our true faith. It is my duty to ensure that all Catholic children living within these walls receive a sound knowledge of the faith.’

  William knew, of course that Catholic boarding schools for boys of the upper classes had been closed since the accession of the Queen. He also knew there were ways of overcoming the ban on such schools. The most usual was what he would be doing, giving the boys a basic knowledge of Latin until they were old enough to journey to France to attend a Catholic College for four or five years. Children of the lower classes depended on their parents for their religious education and if that was not forthcoming children brought up within the great Catholic houses depended on the religious ardour of their parents’ employer.

  *

  The Great Hall was a hubbub of activity. William estimated there would possibly be more than one hundred seated at the four tables. Two were placed from one end of the Hall to the other. At both ends of these tables, two slightly smaller ones, each seating about twenty
or thirty, were set at right angles to the longer tables forming a four-sided eating area.

  His host led William to the top table and introduced him to the mistress of the house who sat amongst her family. ‘This young man is William Shakespeare, my dear, he is the new tutor for our young lads.’

  She smiled graciously. ‘Welcome Mr Shakespeare.’ She turned to a hovering footman, ‘John, find this young gentleman a seat please.’ She then turned to her husband.

  William did his best to appear at ease as he followed the footman to an empty place on one of the long benches placed between the top and bottom lateral tables. Half way along the length of table, the man stopped and pointed to a space. No one appeared interested in the newcomer, all were too busy sipping ale, munching hunks of pigeon pie or tearing the flesh from what looked like grouse (bony birds for which he had little taste).

  It turned out he had been placed adjacent to a Lady’s maid who attended to the needs of the eldest daughter of the house. William, with some small knowledge of the strict hierarchy of employees in a castle such as Hoghton Tower, was grateful that he had not been placed closer to the end of the table. He was, in fact, at the lower end of those who were considered upper staff because, on his left the children’s head nurse nodded at him. She was considered a senior member of the lower staff. With, he thought, an annual salary of perhaps fifteen pounds. William would be paid twenty pounds in his first year at Hoghton, an amount which satisfied him and, he considered quite generous.

  At the far end of the long table, William’s observations about hierarchical seating were confirmed. He noted more roughly clad fellows, possibly ground keepers or stable hands, ripping into mouthfuls of food and gulping from their tankards of ale; and young girls, maybe thirteen or fourteen years possibly employed in the lowliest positions within the house - scullery or laundry maids. William thought it was a strange custom to have the household seated as one for their meals, yet it was the common practice that permitted everyone to know who lived within the castle precincts and precisely where they were ranked.