The Lady and the Poet

by Maeve Haran

  ‘Ann is prone to forget, in the heat of the moment, that she is a high-born lady.’

  ‘Then she needs someone to remind her.’

  Though his face was smiling and handsome there was that in his voice that made me shiver, and not from the snow that fell steadily upon my shoulders either.

  ‘I would be happy for you to visit my father’s house in Leicestershire,’ he announced, ‘so that you might see for yourself my birthright.’

  ‘It has forty rooms,’ whispered Mary.

  ‘And a dining pavilion besides,’ added Margaret. I could see that my sisters had been gossiping together and planned some new campaign.

  I kissed my father and returned to my chamber, my soul as heavy as the lead coffin it had taken six strong men to carry to her graveside.

  That night I passed a note to Wat, bidding him ask his master to visit me as soon as ever he could.

  My whole being leapt like a hart on a spring morning when I heard his knock on my chamber door.

  ‘I must say goodbye. I am to go back again to Mile End with my sister.’

  Despite my sorrow he seemed relieved. ‘Better than banishment to Loseley. Mile End is not so far. You may still visit us at York House from there.’

  ‘Yet we will have no time to read and talk together as we have done this last week. There will be no more meeting of true plain hearts.’

  ‘And what of bodies, Ann?’ he burst out suddenly, as if he could no longer contain himself. ‘Are we never to express our love through the flesh also?’

  Remembering how I had tried to take him to bed, and he had out of conscience refused me, the words of another of his poems came to me. ‘“Or else a great prince in prison lies”?’

  He shook his head. ‘Know you that verse of mine also?’

  I laughed and quoted further: “‘Love’s mysteries in souls do grow, But yet the body is his book.’”

  At that he pulled me against him and held me there, the tautness of his body pressed against mine, and the fire inside me flamed bright enough to burn down all York House and both our futures with it.

  When at last he let me go, all I cared for was that we found a way to cast our futures in the same mould.

  ‘I am not yet betrothed to Master Manners. No legal contract exists between us. Why do we not go together to my father and beseech him, in the name of love, to let us wed? He has a fiery temper but he is not a cruel man.’

  Even as I spoke I knew my words to be like mist over the Tyburn gibbet, dissolving in the morning sunshine to show the brutal truth beneath.

  ‘Ann, my Ann, the love we feel is seen by such as he as a sickness, a danger, a very threat to all that he believes in. He will accept me only if he sees that I am fit for you. If we go now he will accuse me of taking advantage of your innocence. Though I would wish it else with my last breath, it is best that we stand blameless of his charges.’

  ‘Yet if we go not to plead our case to my father,’ I protested, ‘he may wed me to Master Manners whether I agree or no.’

  ‘Then I must haste and prove to the Lord Keeper that I am worthy of advancement. That should he but rear me up and set me out, I shall indeed be worthy of your father’s trust and your love.’

  ‘Amen to that.’

  And so we knelt by the side of the great bed which had been our secret garden and our golden refuge and joined our hands together. Had there been a crucifix as there would once have been above each bed before the great changes, I would have looked to it. Instead I bowed my head. ‘We will be together, you and I, if it be God’s will, and so I swear.’

  ‘You are nearer to God than I,’ he answered, his eyes still cloudy with desire. ‘For I would have us be together were it God’s will or not, even if it cost me my immortal soul.’

  My eyes held his, soft with my new-found love. ‘Then let us hope the price will be cheaper than that.’

  AS THE WORLD of York House came back to life after its week-long sleep of grief, I sadly embraced my uncle, my cousin Francis and his betrothed, and went to live again with my sister Mary, whose great belly was growing vaster by the moment.

  From there my sister made it her greatest project that I should be too busy or too bone-tired to clap eyes on Master Donne. She ever wanted this book or that medicine, or a cordial from this apothecary or a tonic from that herbalist, and all the while sent her servants along under strict instruction to keep me in their sight and him from it. I felt almost a prisoner in my sister’s home. And yet, slowly as if each minute were an hour, the weeks and months began to pass.

  The sole saviour of my sanity was Wat, whose existence they all forgot. And Wat loved me with so great a devotion for saving both himself and his siblings, that he would do aught that I asked him or even lie that I had said nothing.

  And it was he who told me with what industry Master Donne was keeping his word to raise himself in the Lord Keeper’s eyes. No more frequenting plays, or visiting ladies, or writing verses, as his master was wont to do. Now, said Wat, Master Donne did naught but harry the six clerks who between them administered all the cases at the court of Chancery; question the Examiners who demanded money from petitioners to take their statements and make sure they did not overcharge; and haggle endlessly with the Clerks of the Sub-poena Office and the Clerks of the Petty Bag, all in the cause of the Lord Keeper’s reforms. On one occasion, Wat recounted, he even took issue with the Royal Chafewax for demanding extra payment to heat the wax to have a document sealed!

  I could see this was a dangerous business, for those who lost out on their bribes and overcharging would not take it happily.

  My uncle, it seemed, was burying his grief by redoubling his efforts to root out petty corruption, and Master Donne was proving an able accomplice.

  Yet though I applauded my love’s good intentions, I sorrowed in the fact that it seemed he was now too occupied to write or visit me. My only consolation was that, as he intended, his endeavours would advance him with my uncle and, in that way, lead to more chance of acceptance by my father. Yet his absence pained me sorely. And my sister did her best to turn the knife in my wound.

  ‘Perhaps it is not all work and no play with Master Donne, as you so generously imagine,’ my sister told me slyly one afternoon as she lay upon her daybed, her belly so great it brought to mind a seethed egg perched upon a sippet of bread. ‘For I hear Isabella Straven is up to her tricks once more. The Earl, her husband, has fallen from his horse and instead of tending him as a wife should, my lady has come to London to seek her diversion.’

  I had to feel that Mary told me for my protection yet she did not need to relish the revelation so.

  And still this silence.

  My confidence, at first as bright as the evening star, began daily to wane. While my sister whispered that I was but another conquest of a corrupted soul, I refused to listen to her.

  One day I caught my reflection in Mary’s costly new looking glass, so much prized and eagerly sought by the fashionable, and saw the saddened look that was in my eyes, not long since so merry and overflowing with my love.

  And yet I would not believe such. I had seen the tenderness reflected in his eyes, had felt the gentle touch of love upon my skin as well as the raging fires of passion that we had been forced to damp down with the needs of present practicality.

  I would keep my faith.

  And keep it I needed to, as the days passed, for I was sorely tried by so long a silence.

  ‘The truth is,’ my sister told me baldly, as she came upon me staring sadly down the street in the direction of the city, ‘he has thought better of your arrangement. He knows he could have you at the flick of the dice and now he thinks of his own advancement, how it would be dangerous indeed in him to break his master’s trust, and go creeping through corridors to slake his lust upon the great man’s innocent niece. Indeed he wonders how he could ever have been so foolish and is no doubt grateful that all has ended without discovery.’ She looked narrowly at me, holding on to my shoulde
rs, gripping them so hard there would be a bruise tomorrow, while my heart shrivelled like an oyster doused in lemon. ‘Wake up, sister, from this dream! Our father will never consent to such a union.’ She scanned my face intently. ‘There has been no unwanted legacy? You have had your flowers this month as usual?’

  ‘Mary, stop!’ I felt my face flame up at her scrutiny. ‘I have no cause to look to my flowers. Hard though you may find it to believe, we committed no sin of the flesh.’

  ‘In deed perhaps, but in thought you did.’

  ‘Aye… well, in thought. But in deed…’ I smiled suddenly, remembering his verse, ‘his prince remained in prison.’

  Mary threw back her head and laughed so loud her belly wobbled like an apple jelly. ‘The best place for it. Tell him to keep it there.’

  Would that I had the chance. But his silence was breeding the beginnings of doubt in me.

  As we stood, Mary and I, regarding each other suspiciously, there was a knock upon the door. I knew I should wait for her steward or groom but I wished to get away from her condemning looks. So I opened the door myself to find Wat standing there upon the doorstep, smiling as if it were the final day of Lent.

  ‘Mistress Ann, I have a letter from my master.’ I could see that he shared my relief.

  ‘Hah!’ said Mary, who had waddled down the stairs behind me. ‘No doubt it will be as I said. How he is sorry not to have honoured your worthy trust in him, yet sees he must extricate himself from a relation that must in the end dishonour you.’ She glanced at Wat, seeing that she had been indiscreet in front of him. ‘You, boy, get you hence. We want none of you nor your sly master neither!’

  Yet the parchment I cradled in my hands said none of this. I leaned against the door, shutting out the chill early spring air, in which, despite the heavy months of winter, new life was starting again to bud and blossom, like my heart.

  Both from relief and the desire to show my sister she was wrong, I held it up and began to read aloud the lines he had written me. ’Shush, sister. It is a verse entitled “The Good Morrow”.

  ‘I wonder by my troth, what thou, and I

  Did, till we loved? Were we not weaned till then,

  But sucked on country pleasures, childishly?

  Or snorted we in the seven sleepers’ den?

  ’Twas so; but this, all pleasures fancies be.

  If ever any beauty I did see,

  Which I desired, and got, ’twas but a dream of thee.

  And now good morrow to our waking souls,

  Which watch not one another out of fear;

  For love, all love of other sights controls,

  And makes one little room, an everywhere.

  Let sea-discoverers to new worlds have gone,

  Let maps to others, worlds on worlds have shown,

  Let us possess one world, each hath one, and is one.

  My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears,

  And true plain hearts do in the faces rest,

  Where can we find two better hemispheres

  Without sharp north, without declining west?

  Whatever dies, was not mixed equally;

  If our two loves be one, or, thou and I

  Love so alike, that none do slacken, none can die.’

  ‘Pretty words indeed,’ snorted my sister, gathering her skirts over her arm, ‘but I wonder how many others he has desired and got, and if he loves them still. And whether my lady Straven is amongst their gathering?’

  Yet I doubted him no longer, for I knew that the verse rang as true as the purest bells tolling out over London. The words held within them a happy optimism, a fresh sense of hope and mutual cherishing that I had never before detected in his verses. These were words written and dedicated to someone who was truly and deeply loved.

  And the thought I valued most of all was that amidst the world we both inhabited of Court manners, cheapened ways and false declarations, he had likened we two unto ‘true plain hearts’ just as I had done.

  I thought of my grandparents, whose true plain hearts had beat together for so long, and I knew that there would be safe land ahead for he and I, no matter what wild dangerous waters stood between us now.

  ‘Ann, Ann,’ Mary pressed me, ‘think you that all this talk of love will soften the heart of our father? He who married Constance for her inheritance and has even now betrothed our sister Frances, who is but twelve years old, to a man she has never met?’

  I stopped my ears at that, for I would not let her spoil my newfound contentment. ‘Master Donne has not cast me aside, as you suggest, for the advancement of his career, nor is he amusing himself with my lady Straven, but working all the hours God gives to further his reputation and make himself the worthier in the eyes of our uncle, that he may yet win my father’s consent to our eventual union.’

  ‘You dream, my sister, for it is only in the world of dreams that you will find such an outcome. Our father dislikes your lover for a fist of reasons—his lack of present fortune, his religion, his reputation—and if these were not obstacle enough, he finds Master Donne uneasy company, for your beloved poet is too clever by half for the tastes of a country gentleman.’

  ‘And was not your Nick clever also?’

  ‘Aye, but he was rich, or so my father thought, and of extreme good family. Besides, my father is disappointed in Nick, and would rather he had the staunch virtues of Thomas, Margaret’s worthy husband, or poor Sir John Mill, Bett’s dullard squire, who knows not his Chaucer from his chamberpot. And one thing yet which you seem to understand not.’

  ‘What is that?’

  ‘Our father’s pride. He sees it as his right to choose your husband for himself, for such is a father’s power to do.’

  I tucked the verses into my gown, where I could keep them fast. No matter that Mary cavilled and cautioned me, my true plain heart was singing like a bird.

  Not many days after my mind was distracted from Master Donne, not from lack of faith but by my concern for Mary. Until this moment she had been well and busy yet now her peach-like bloom faded and she took sick and feverish.

  With Bett’s loss brought fresh to my mind by grief for my aunt, I put Mary tenderly to bed or made her rest by the fireside. After two careful weeks of guarding her like the most tender flower she began to rally and I could breathe once more.

  One benefit was that, with worries of her own, Mary’s eagle eye was no longer upon me and I took good advantage of it to call Wat and send a message through him to Master Donne.

  I marvelled, watching Wat in all his finery walk up Mary’s path; he seemed so graceful and self-assured, a gentleman in miniature, that it was hard to imagine his life at the tanner’s.

  ‘Have you heard, mistress?’ he greeted me. ‘About the uproar at York House? I am glad my master and I live there no longer.’

  ‘Why, Wat, is something there amiss?’

  ‘It is the Lord Keeper, mistress. He is preparing to marry again, to the Countess of Derby, widow of some great earl. And all the servants fear for their positions, for Lady Alice brings forty of her own.’

  I shook my head in disbelief, a great pain clouding my head at such a dreadful revelation. ‘Wat, your news cannot be true! It is but a few months since my beloved aunt was laid to rest! And the Lord Keeper’s grief was deeper than a bottomless well.’

  Wat shrugged sadly. ‘Aye. Well he has managed to fill it up again. They are to be wed quietly at York House come November next, yet the lady seems already to be in command of the household.’

  I was so angered with my uncle that I yearned to share it with one who would understand. My sister Mary would shrug in that worldly way of hers, tell me not to play the country innocent, and how it proved, if aught did, that marriage was a practical arrangement.

  ‘Wat,’ I whispered, looking behind me that none could overhear. ‘Tell your master I would speak with him. I will come tomorrow, to his new lodgings. Near to the Savoy Hospital said you?’

  Wat looked dubious. He might have
been a street boy but he had learned fast that well-born ladies did not visit single gentlemen alone in their lodgings.

  ‘Yet, mistress, think you…?’

  ‘The direction, Wat,’ I pressed him.

  ‘He lodges with a Master Haines.’

  ‘I will be there at five of the clock.’

  Wat took himself unhappily away.

  After he had left I stared out over Mary’s garden with its statues of nymphs, their arms outstretched towards some hidden lover, and I envied them. Yet their Arcadia had never existed beyond the minds of the sculptors who created them. To visit Master Donne was to risk much, perhaps all. I might care naught for the world’s opinion, yet my family of necessity cared greatly. To them my reputation was everything. And yet, I had risked it for my sister, perhaps unwisely; surely I deserved to take the risk when my own happiness might be lost at the turn of fortune’s dice?

  Dared I go? What if I were seen? And yet this loneliness I felt, this sense of wandering sadly in the desert overwhelmed me. There was but one other I had met in my short life who understood it, to whose soul I felt my own joined by an invisible thread.

  On the morrow I dressed discreetly, covering my face with a vizor, and told Mary’s groom that I went to find a soothing herbal remedy that would hasten his mistress’s recovery. The man seemed relieved that this time he had not to accompany me. In any other house than that my sojourning out alone would be remarked on, yet Mary’s household was as lax as she was.

  By my bad luck there were no empty wherries to be found and I needs must share with a stranger, and still pay double since we rowed against the tide.

  Yet at least he was not a talkative stranger and made no mention of the curious sight of a gentlewoman alone, and even harrumphed at each new line of talk the wherryman attempted to beguile us with.

  I found the lodging easily enough and tapped gently on his door. Before even I had time to push it open, his arms enfolded me, and I melted into them, my heart locked against his.

  ‘Ann, my Ann, how I have yearned for your sweet presence all these days.’