Conceit Page 12

  I can recall the exact number of steps through the unlit halls from Essex’s prison in York House back to my own room as if they were steps to Golgotha, but I cannot recall, Ann, where your sweet bedchamber lay.

  11. THE SUN RISING

  My father took me back to Loseley park the morning after my aunt’s funeral. Sir Thomas Egerton was inconsolable at his wife’s death, so much so, he wrote my father, that the Queen had reprimanded him for preferring his private grief to his duty to the state.

  I sat out the spring and summer listening to my father talk about his livestock while wondering whether time was passing as slowly for the inhabitants of York House. Then, just before Michaelmas, I received an invitation from Sir Thomas, who had always been fond of me, to come to town to meet his new wife and her three daughters. It seemed he had proved all too consolable when he had met the Countess of Derby.

  The fourteen miles and three furlongs in the old carriage from Loseley to Cobham were made unbearable by my father giving instructions to Bess on how to care for me in London. She was holding my unfinished tapestry, though I had told her I would have no need of it. By the time we reached Cobham bridge, I was so shaken by the disagreeable roads that I pushed the tapestry behind my back to cushion the hard bench. My father was sprawling across from me, his boots muddying my gown, and Bess was taking up two-thirds of the seat we shared. At Kingston-upon-Thames, I decided it was time for me to have a lady’s maid, not a servant bred in the country, and began to plot how I might get my father to take Bess back with him when he returned to Loseley. I was never so glad to see the windmill turning in St George’s fields and the gates of London bridge rising up before us.

  I progressed cautiously into the salon, for I had discovered that my new farthingale went its own way without my legs if I moved quickly. Mary was at the virginals, with my cousin Francis at her side, playing much more expressively than when I had last heard her. By the improvement in Mary’s complexion, I guessed they had consummated their marriage when my aunt’s death brought him home from Oxford.

  The chamber was filled with the liveliest conversation, the sort men and women engage in when determined to be publicly charming. Wall sconces and flickering candles lent a warmth to the room which had eluded it in my aunt’s time, and a row of men in livery stood looking servile and idle. My aunt, with her lessons and needlework, might never have existed. I hoped that this new Lady Egerton would let me learn the latest dances.

  The salon was knitted so tight with voices I did not know which strand to pick up for fear of dropping one or all of them. I wanted to absorb everything-every syllable of London talk, every jot of London news.

  “I wish Mother would not say such things. Sir Thomas cannot wish his wife to be so indiscreet.”

  “On the contrary, he is so besotted he will let her say anything.”

  “Our guest will do very well, I think, for she has no sense of fashion.”

  “And he will do even more nicely. I cannot say how pleased I am with poets. They are far more charming than I was led to believe.”

  “What news of York House’s infamous guest?”

  “He is now at liberty at Essex House.”

  “I hear necklines will be lower this season—”

  “But toes will be more pointed and heels rounder.”

  “How can he put up with her? It has been less than a twelvemonth.”

  “A man does not use his head in such matters, my dear.”

  Breathless with anticipation, I could hardly take it in. I had been away too long from society. My eyes strayed enviously to the row of pastel feet across from me. Had the three daughters shortened their hems to show off their shoes? I tried to glimpse the heels so that I could describe them to a City shoemaker.

  “Come, Ann, and meet Lady Egerton,” Sir Thomas said, drawing me towards his wife, who seemed delighted to find me less well shod and dressed than she was, and soon returned her attention to her daughters. “And there is my son Edward and my secretary, Mr Donne. I am surprised he is not talking to the ladies as is his custom.”

  Sir Thomas left me at the table where servants were setting out quelque-choses and wines. As John Donne took a sweetmeat, I overheard him say to Edward, who was washing a mouthful down with sack, “Today the Queen cancelled Essex’s licence for sweet wines.”

  Edward said, equally low. “There’s an end of him, poor man. It was folly to set him free then humiliate him. Since he cannot recover her favour, he will strike out against her. He has been heard saying that the Queen’s conditions are as crooked as her carcass. God knows what he will do next, but we must stay clear of it.”

  “And let the birds of prey peck out his liver?”

  “The pox has eaten it, more likely,” Edward said. “It would be better for us all if he died. We must take the Queen’s side if we wish to rise in these times. Do not forget you have further to fall than most.”

  John Donne’s answer was too quiet to hear.

  “Now, Mr Donne, stop whispering to Edward,” Lady Egerton called out gaily. “I hear you have written a new elegy. You must show me all your poems as soon as they are written.”

  “Why, madam, I keep no copies.” His bow had a trace of mockery in it. “They are mere evaporations.”

  “No gentleman publishes his verses,” she agreed, “but since your manuscripts circulate amongst men, what harm if they are seen by women?”

  Just as I was straining to catch the reply, my ears were assaulted with the dimensions of a particularly fine animal. I was horrified to hear my father praising his sow. After describing the birth of her large litter, he moved on to her slovenly habits and the incontinence of her diet, delighted to have gained the attention of the entire company.

  “Sophie is a fine creature indeed,” I said, gripping his arm, “and has the most amiable temperament. But, Father, since we are in town at last, should you not ask Sir Thomas what has gone on at court?”

  “He refuses to speak of public affairs and keeps me talking of the country. How am I to be in Parliament,” he said loudly, “if no one will tell me anything? Young man,” he turned to John Donne, “what news of Essex? How does the Earl?”

  Lady Egerton intervened, pulling John Donne quickly to her side. “I will suffer no secrecy where love-poems are concerned. You must disclose all your amorous goings-on.”

  Must the whole room hear of his goings-on during my exile to Surrey? We might as well hear the pedigree of Sophie’s boar as John Donne’s latest conquests. Edward was beside me at once with a clever remark. I laughed up at him, though I had scarcely heard. I felt a good deal more poised than when I had last been at York House.

  “Ann looks well tonight,” Edward said to Lady Egerton. “Her hair suits her remarkably, don’t you think?”

  He was a most obliging man, and it gave me great comfort to know that others were listening.

  “She is but sixteen and apes a fashion she falls short of mastering,” John Donne said. “Why do women delight in artifice when men admire nothing so much as simplicity?”

  My hand pushed in a stray pin. Over the hairpiece, which Bess had scornfully called a rat, Lady Egerton’s maid had combed my hair into a shining beehive. The effect was flattering in the mirror in my chamber, but perhaps the light of the salon was harsher.

  “Men do not admire simplicity.” Lady Egerton smiled. “They admire contrivance in everything.”

  “It is a subject for one of your risqué poems,” said Edward, leaning on his friend’s shoulder, “for you never flatter women. According to Jack Donne, they are all unfaithful and lack souls.”

  I disliked this game of talking as if I were not there. Lady Egerton was now exuding pleasure like a musk-rose, ripe and melony and a good deal past its prime. “It may surprise you, Mr Donne,” I said, “that even country girls know the Bishop of London has banned your poems. I have read enough to know they deserved the flames. They are lewd and”—it took only a moment to cast about for the exact word—“swinish.”
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  The hurt on his face was cutting. “A man may write about anything, but it does not mean he has done it,” he said tersely. “I am sure Lady Egerton understands the difference.”

  She agreed with satisfaction, and took the poet off to supper. Her hair, I noticed, had not been pinned into a tower like mine, but was coiled loosely at the nape of her neck. Her bodice clung to mature curves, exactly as intended, and her skirts followed her legs, unrestrained by a stiff farthingale. Was she the married woman rumoured to have visited John Donne’s lodgings near the Savoy? Her daughters were just as jaded and forward, and the cut of their clothes was equally suggestive. I did not know whether Mr Donne most admired the mother or her worldly daughters, but it was certain his admiration was no longer mine.

  As the chamber emptied and bottles clanked by in the arms of stewards, I considered how little inducement it took for a man to betray a woman he had once spent pleasant hours with. Spurned, derided, and discarded, I might as well have been back with my father and his pigs at Loseley. The ornate stomacher pressed against my belly like a plate of iron and my great boned under-skirt swung out so far that I was twice as broad as Sophie. I cursed my country dressmaker whose idea of London fashion had proved so false. When next I had my father’s ear, I must persuade him that if I was to marry well, my dowry must show in the ornaments upon my body.

  Just as my eyes were filling with tears, Edward flung open the door and walked back in. He looked about as if he had lost something, noticed me standing alone, and kindly offered me his arm.

  A few hours later, a flicker of light under my door told me that something had been pushed beneath it. I leapt out of bed, then Bess rolled off her pallet to see what the rustling signified. Her nose twitched, testing the air for perfume. Somehow she had got it into her head that this was how a chaperone behaved.

  “Go back to bed, Bess. I only wish to use the close-stool.”

  “Can’t your bladder tell proper time? I must empty that each time you fill it.”

  “Remember your place. You are a servant.”

  This was haughtily said, but my feet were bare and my chemise draughty. She stood there stolidly, like an ancient oak. I had seen this pose before. Unless I begged her forgiveness, she would never move again.

  “I did not mean it,” I conceded. “You are not a servant, you are—Oh, I do not know what you are!” What did I call someone who shared my bed when I was ill, but whose hands were rough and stained with bluing? “Go back to sleep, Bess, and leave me be.”

  “Not until you lift your foot.”

  I stooped to retrieve the folded page. It seemed that midnight was the best time for gliding through the women’s wing, accompanied by a smoky lantern or, better, by darkness alone. I recognized the masculine script just as she took the letter from me.

  “It is from Master Edward,” I volunteered.

  She lit a candle and held the paper to the light, turning it this way and that. I supposed that one gallant’s handwriting looked like another’s when you could not read. The lie appeared to satisfy her—Edward being above reproach—and she returned to her pallet. I wasted no time breaking the seal.

  To Mistress Ann More,

  A man may yearn and what he yearns for he may hope to have,

  but that does not say he has done such things.

  Come, madam, come, all rest my powers defy.

  Until I labour, I in labour lie.

  The foe oft-times, having the foe in sight,

  Is tired with standing, though they never fight.

  I presume this meant he could not sleep, though a woman would have phrased it differently. This was followed by an elaborate description of how a woman’s garments were removed before retiring-first girdle, then breastplate, busk, and gown—as if he had done it more than once himself. At last, he came to the point.

  Off with that wiry coronet and show

  The hairy diadem which on you doth grow.

  Now off with those shoes, and then safely tread

  In this love’s hallowed temple, this soft bed.

  At this, I sat down quickly on a chair.

  Licence my roving hands, and let them go

  Before, behind, between, above, below.

  O, my America, my new found land,

  My kingdom, safeliest when with one man manned,

  My mine of precious stones, my empery,

  How blessed am I in this discovering thee!

  To enter in these bonds is to be free.

  Then where my hand is set my seal shall be.

  Full nakedness, all joys are due to thee.

  As souls unbodied, bodies unclothed must be,

  To taste whole joys.

  The gifts of words had blossomed into gifts of poems—a glorious rebuke for my folly in saying that his verses were lewd and swinish. I felt the upbraiding in the way he had designed, for I was flushed and willing, without a man to perform the acts so lyrically described.

  After much tugging and adjusting of blankets, I fell into a troubled sleep, the page clutched in my fist. Near dawn, I woke within a dream of violation, unable to break out of cumbrous folds of green. Verdant stalks, emerald blades, the hard new green of unripe fruit, the greenish-gold of pistils and stamens bursting with unspent pollen. The deep blue-green drone of insects raiding plants. My legs hinged open like heavily scented petals, then closed upon themselves again.

  Sated, I woke late, and swiftly threw the casement open.

  John Donne’s indifference had been a masque for the benefit of York House. In the days that followed, I discovered that he had been collecting bits of me all along—a hair, a tear, a scrap of torn lace. There was something intriguingly Catholic about all this, though he was not very tender with the relics. He collected the tear on a handkerchief which he then stuffed into his sleeve. The hair he put into his glove, where it was no doubt crushed and forgotten. Even so, I felt cherished after being banished to Surrey for so long.

  Soon afterwards, while I was walking with Lady Egerton in the garden, John Donne greeted her, then slipped a folded paper into my hand. After an agony of waiting, I fell behind to remove a pebble from my shoe. It was only a verse this time, enshrining my tear in words. As usual, he suffered more than I did and said so at greater length. His tears were pregnant of me, emblems of more. But how could I trust poetic tears? Such crying might only be cunning, for he had begun to hint in these verses that he wished to die in my arms.

  Bold and furtive, these poems invaded my peace. They made a misery of my daily tasks, lengthening the interminable hours between our hurried meetings. That autumn, I drove John Donne into a rage of writing—sweaty misbegotten verses, the metres rough and jolting, somersaulting logic I could not hope to follow. I began to suspect that these poems were aimed at someone reading over my shoulder, Edward and Francis perhaps, or students at Lincoln’s Inn, where he had studied law. I struggled to catch John Donne’s meaning until, forced to be satisfied that he was still a lover, I would tuck the verses into my bodice and dream of country pleasures.

  Before long, the November rains were upon us, and we sought out the corners of the house. One night in the salon, when I came up behind him and touched his sleeve, he spun around as if I had raked a fingernail across his skin. I locked my gaze with his and would not let him go, would not release him until he acknowledged my triumph with a bow. Even Edward was not immune that night, for when I brushed against him, he turned away, confused and bashful at my touch.

  As soon as Edward was gone, John Donne was back, accusing me of lavishing tokens of affection upon other men. He pushed me ahead of him into the unlit gallery. But once there, I was escorted up and down as if taking exercise with Lady Egerton, while he lectured me on metaphysics. Must poets always speak in code? It was a waste of time for him to state his case by innuendo when we were alone. I wished he would speak his wishes frankly with his hands, as another man would do.

  I drew him boldly to the window, where the moonlight fell across my shoulder. “I
too have feelings of great poetry,” I confided, “for a woman longs to die in her lover’s arms as eagerly as does a man.” At this I blushed, giving away my meaning.

  He pulled me against him, hip bone to hip bone, and made me swear that I could not feel our souls pulsing from our bellies to the crowns of our heads. How could I swear, for I was shivering like a goose plucked of its covering of feathers.

  “Love’s mysteries in souls do grow, but yet the body is his book.” His lips touched mine—lightly, but with a promise of force to come. “This is our oath of love. Now we are joined, even when apart. You must marry me, Ann More. Or else I am two fools—for loving, and for saying so in whining poetry.”

  I had misunderstood John Donne again, for he scorned simply to bed me. It seemed he had a different idea all along. He demanded all or nothing. He would not take my body without my heart, my heart without my hand, anything without anything.

  This was unfair, for this honey was not mine to give. My father owned the hive. John Donne knew as well as I did that I could not wed a tradesman’s son. I must marry estates and rank, as my sisters had before me. To demand I marry wit and poetry was arrogance and passion. My aunt had taught me that a squire could be got for a dowry of £1,000, a minor lord for £3,000, an earl for £5,000. When I was ready, I would tell my father I would accept nothing lower than a minor peer. I would not give up John Donne and all his poetry for less.

  And since he valued truth above all else, I did not deceive, but told him that although I loved him, I could not marry him. I do not believe he saw, in that dark gallery, the tears spilling from my eyes, and I was not about to offer them up as a subject for his verses.

  Just because a man writes that he will die if he cannot have you does not mean he will die if he cannot have you.

  A poem is only black inkstrokes on white paper, like a list of trimmings for a new gown that you might tire of before it is even sewn. A poem is only a sheet of paper pushed underneath a chamber door when a great house is sleeping.