Her Last Assassin (44 page)

Not that he expected to take genuine pleasure from the act. He knew too much of that other secret life with the Earl of Southampton to be satisfied with just this ordinary woman, this conventional marriage. Perhaps he would never again experience such intense joy now that he had been forced out of Wriothesley’s bed.

His physical needs were still alive, however. And she was his wife.

But it seemed she too had changed in her carnal appetites since they had last performed this dance together. Anne lay sprawled beneath him, her thighs splayed greedily, a stranger in his bed, pulling her own nightrail up to demonstrate her readiness.

‘Yes,’ she exclaimed, panting hard, then whispered lewd suggestions in his ear, begging him to touch her, to push his fingers inside her. When he finally mounted her, her eager hands reached for his buttocks, clawing him, pressing him closer.

He cried out with surprised pleasure at the climax, and heard her sigh beneath him, her hips lifting.

Anne lay warm and sleepy for a space afterwards, her limbs tangled heavily with his, her woollen stockings scratching his legs. She seemed content at last, like a purring cat on a sunny windowsill. Then she stirred, gently pushing him away.

The sun was rising. He had performed his duty as a husband. Now that delicate business was over, the day could begin.

‘I must tend the children,’ she told him, and he released her.

Wandering out into the street after breakfast, he found Hamnet kicking a football with some of the other Stratford boys. The morning was dry but frosty, and once or twice he saw his son slip on the icy puddles in the street. The boy did not cry out though, Will noted, but rose again immediately and continued with his game.

Susanna was seated on the wall, braiding Judith’s hair. Her younger sister squirmed as her hair was pulled tight, and Susanna chided her.

‘You must look your best, Judith. See, Father has come to visit us. You don’t want him to see you crying like a baby, do you?’

Judith, still not quite nine years of age, glanced at Will, taking in his bruised and swollen face, and shook her head. Her little mouth hardened and she raised her chin, as though determined not to cry in front of him. She still gave a cry when her sister began to thread a narrow green ribbon through her hair, but Will felt it was uttered more in fury than in pain. Judith had a touch of her mother’s stubborn nature, he thought wryly, though her older sister still possessed the quiet shyness of her early years.

He smiled at Susanna, and she stared, also taken aback by his battered face.

Her gaze dropped, as though his elder daughter did not wish to seem too friendly with this man who looked like a vagabond. The girl’s thin arched brows were slanted in a frown, and suddenly he was reminded of Anne, that air of disapproval that seemed to haunt every room whenever he had done something to annoy her.

Even my children are strangers to me, he thought, and felt his temper prickle under his skin like a fever. Had Anne spoken about him in such a way that Susanna was growing up in fear of her own father? Even Judith, whom he barely knew, had seemed tentative and unsure when he addressed her. And Hamnet …

But things were less clear-cut with Hamnet and Judith, who could easily turn out to be another man’s children. The illegitimate offspring of his father’s apprentice, perhaps. In all fairness, how could he open his heart in love to the twins, when at any moment his faithless wife might announce they were not his blood?

Hamnet had seen him now.

The boy came running, mud from the road on his tunic, his cap tumbling off, breath steaming on the wintry air.

‘Father! Father!’ he piped, and threw his arms about Will’s thighs and stomach, embracing him so fiercely that Will staggered backwards, surprised but laughing at the young boy’s enthusiasm. ‘You have come home at last! Susanna said you were too busy to come this year, but I knew that you would! Will you stay for Christmastide and New Year, sir?’

‘Alas, I cannot,’ Will told him, and ruffled the lad’s hair. ‘The theatres have opened again now the plague has eased. I must return to London soon, or risk losing my place in the company.’

Hamnet’s face fell. The boy nodded stoutly though, accepting his father’s reason as just. He picked up his fallen cap, dusting it down and replacing it on his head.

‘What happened to your face?’ Hamnet enquired, staring up at his ugly bruising.

‘I was set upon by thieves,’ he lied. ‘I put up a good fight, but they stole my purse. London is a dangerous place.’

Hamnet’s eyes had widened. He seemed quite impressed. ‘We are playing at football. Grandfather says it is a dangerous game and I should not play. Will you join us?’

On the point of refusal, Will hesitated. Then he grinned. ‘Why not? The day is so cold, I could do with a little sport to warm my blood.’

‘Thank you, sir.’

He grabbed Will’s hand and dragged him down the street to where a crowd of boys were kicking a tattered pigsbladder about the place. The pigsbladder had once been carefully covered in leather, but its shape was now uneven and lopsided.

‘Look, my father has come to play. Stop, stop! We will begin again, only you must give him first kick.’ Securing the ball, Hamnet placed it in front of Will and nodded earnestly. ‘Our goal is at the end of Henley Street, sir.’

‘Did your grandfather make this ball?’ he asked Hamnet.

‘Yes, sir, he did.’

‘Aha. I thought I recognized the stitchwork.’

Will kicked the football down the street as hard as he could, and watched with a grin as the other young lads dashed towards it, some trying to urge it further, others attempting to drive it back to the other end of the street.

‘Come on!’ Hamnet urged him, running off in pursuit.

Will needed no more persuasion but took to his heels at once, following the lad down Henley Street at a swift pace; faster than he had run since he was a young boy himself, he realized. Hamnet was quick too, agile and slender, darting between the older boys time and again to retrieve the ball.

Will watched him with pride. He wondered what kind of man Hamnet would make when he was grown. The boy’s mind was keen, his father had told him so several times, and he learned his lessons well and obediently at school. Perhaps he should take the lad down to London once he was old enough to be apprenticed, and teach him the theatrical trade.

He could train Hamnet himself, let the lad follow him about the theatre, pick up a few tricks here and there, maybe learn to speak a few lines. Boys were always needed to play the women’s parts, and if he was a quick study …

‘Father! To us, to us …!’

The ball came to him several more times, passing back and forth in a crowd of heaving bodies between the goal-ends, and Will was soon out of breath, gasping as he limped down Henley Street after the boy.

My son, he thought proudly as Hamnet slammed his foot into the leather ball, raising it a good few feet into the air.

His
son?

Hamnet turned on his heel at that moment as though to see where his father was, shielding his eyes against the cold bright glare of the morning. Will saw himself in the boy’s delicate, shining face, and suddenly knew that he was indeed Hamnet and Judith’s father. Judith might take after her mother, but Hamnet was surely his. That high forehead, those dark eyes …

He owed his wife an apology, he realized with a start.

‘Did you see that?’ Hamnet called excitedly.

‘Yes, quite a kick!’ He grinned, then raised his hand in a wave when the boy would have come trotting back to him. ‘No, go on. Don’t wait for me, I’ll follow.’

It was a noisy family luncheon that first day home, not only his wife and children gathered for the meal but his younger brothers and sisters too, squeezed in around the table in the narrow kitchen. They sat squabbling and teasing each other with jests, accepting Will’s presence there with easy good humour. The servants hurried around them as the stew bubbled in the pot, fetching knives and trenchers from the cupboard. They leaned in to place them on the freshly wiped table, its clean linen runner an indication that a special guest had come to lunch.

Glancing about at their eager faces, hands reaching for food as soon as it was placed on the table, spiced cabbage and pulses, flat-breads of rye hot and scorched from the oven, Will was reminded of his childhood. The square wooden trenchers they were using were still the same from when he was a child, his own cracked and warped, its much-rubbed greasy salt hole holding a generous pinch of salt. There was a good fire burning under the pot, his mother directing the servants what to serve and to whom. The dogs ran in and out, sniffing after the bones and scraps. The noise was incredible, and he was used to the din of a busy theatre.

His father came in, wiping icy boots and throwing off his cloak. He stood looking at them all, stripping off his leather gloves. ‘What’s all this commotion?’

A whispering silence fell among the younger children, then Hamnet stood and helped him pull off his boots, leaving the wet leather to steam before the fire.

‘Here, Grandfather,’ he said, and handed him a cloth for his hands. ‘It’s rabbit today.’

John Shakespeare exchanged a smiling glance with his wife. ‘Excellent, my favourite.’

‘Can we go fishing after luncheon, Grandfather?’

‘It is a little cold for fishing, boy. Snow’s on the way, by the feel of it, and once the water is frozen, there’ll be precious few fish to be had. Now don’t look like that, lad. Oh well, I suppose an hour or two by the river this afternoon could do no harm.’ John Shakespeare smiled at the pleasure on his grandson’s face, then hesitated, looking over his head at Will. ‘But have you asked your father, Hamnet? He might prefer to take you himself. What do you say, Will?’

‘Father?’ Hamnet turned to him, and suddenly Will, who had been thinking
Rather you than me in this sharp weather
, found himself smiling and nodding his assent.

‘Very well. But I will have to borrow a rod.’

‘Oh, you can have Grandfather’s best rod, he won’t mind,’ Hamnet offered excitedly, without asking John Shakespeare what he thought of this plan. ‘I can show you where bait is to be found too, in case you have forgotten. We never come back without a good catch, do we, Grandfather?’

It seemed the boy had a way of getting what he wanted, Will thought wryly. He remembered himself as an eleven-year-old lad, pleading with his father to take him on the long journey from Stratford to Kenilworth, just so he could see the Queen and her court. Perhaps such charms and snares were in the blood.

‘I will accompany you part of the way, then,’ Anne said calmly, passing him the platter of ryebreads. ‘There is something I would like you to see.’

He was surprised. ‘In town?’

Will was more surprised when his wife took his arm while they were walking, suddenly forceful, and steered him into the town square.

‘This is not the quickest way to the river,’ Hamnet protested, but fell silent at his mother’s glance.

‘One of those,’ Anne whispered in his ear, indicating the row of town houses opposite. ‘Or a place very like it. That is what I want.’

Will stared across at the fine houses, several storeys high, expensively timbered and fronted with broad casements.

He turned to Anne, aghast. ‘I cannot afford such a house. You are dreaming.’

‘No,’ she assured him firmly, with the air of a woman who had already made up her mind and would not be budged. ‘These past ten years, I have been putting a little by every time you have sent me money. And you have told me yourself how popular your plays are becoming. Everyone in Stratford knows your name. The other wives envy me for being married to such a man, whose plays are performed before the Queen, and even the shopkeepers are allowing us to have food delivered again, not asking for the money first as they did when your father was in such trouble.’

Her tone grew bitter. She stared at him accusingly, not caring that they were drawing curious glances from passers-by. ‘Yet still we live with your parents, cooped up in that house on Henley Street like a penniless young couple. When the children were babes, I could manage. But now they are grown, there is little room left for all of us. We need a new home, Will. And if you do not provide it soon, I will not be able to hold my head up in this town. The younger women are already laughing at me behind my back, whispering that I have a miser for a husband.’

He opened his mouth to deny her, then closed it again. He thought of Southampton in his palatial residence by the Thames, and of the glittering court itself, the great halls and chambers echoing with music and laughter. These wonders Anne would never see. It was her place to be here in Stratford, dutifully tending his children as they grew, just as it was Will’s place to be in London, his ready quill lining the pockets of Burbage and the other sharers. When he had found her waiting in his lodgings in London, the shock of seeing Anne there, in
his place
, had been profound. She had not belonged there, any more than he belonged in this little Warwickshire town. And he knew it was an experience he never wished to repeat.

She must wait here in Stratford until the theatre was finished with him. If it ever would be. It was her sacrifice to their marriage. And he owed her something for that sacrifice. One of these houses.

‘Very well,’ he agreed, keeping his voice low so that the boy, waiting so impatiently behind them, his arms full of fishing rods, would not overhear. ‘But you must understand that you can never come to London again if I do this.’

She licked her lips. A nervous habit. He remembered it from their days of courtship, how it had tormented him with desire to see that little pink tongue running along her lips. Now it was merely a gesture that indicated indecision. He watched and felt nothing. There was a kind of freedom in that, he realized. A hard-won liberty he could rejoice in, even in the depths of this prison that he had built so eagerly for himself as a youth.

Anne looked at the houses, seeming to weigh them up against her loneliness and jealousy. Then she agreed.

‘Never again,’ she whispered.