His Last Mistress: The Duke of Monmouth and Lady Henrietta Wentworth Read online

  But into that world came duty, trade, a woman saying, “…in fact selling gloves?”

  He looked up, the vendor’s patter ready on his tongue. Saw grey eyes, dark hair under a straw hat, an amused smile. A familiar face.

  “Anne. Mistress Hathaway.”

  “I wondered if you would remember me.”

  “Of course, why should I not? I’ve not been away that long. Two years.”

  “I had heard you were back. You should have come to call on us.”

  “My father keeps me busy. As you see.”

  “Yet somehow I forced my way through the eager crowds.”

  “You’re right, trade is poor today. But just the same…”

  “Well, cheer up, it’s about to improve a little, for although I am glad to see you again, I really do need to buy gloves.”

  “Mistress, you shall have gloves; the finest in all England, the finest in the known world. Cheveril? Deerskin? Pigskin? Your size, madam, and the colour you prefer? For everyday or something finer?”

  “Brisk and business-like; that’s the way. The finest in Stratford will do. I don’t know my size, and I want the gloves for best. When did you return?”

  “Last week.”

  “And bored already?”

  “And bored already. Give me your hand.”

  She had already taken off her own gloves. He took her hand, stroking her fingers straight, the finger and thumb of his right hand encircling her wrist. When they were children he had often clasped her hand to gain her attention for his chatter or to keep up with her as they walked. This, now, was a different touch. She was a farmer’s daughter, a country woman, but hers was no housewife’s hand, red and scarred and rough from work. Of course, the Hathaways were well-to-do. Their daughters didn’t labour in the fields and Anne could afford the rosewater he smelt on her skin. He liked the trusting way her small, sun-browned hand lay in his.

  She was looking at him oddly, the beginning of a frown pulling her dark brows together. Quickly he smoothed a glove onto her hand.

  “See how sweetly it fits, how smoothly, how…”

  “Fittingly?” That made him laugh. “You are very poetic for a glover.”

  “But ‘glover’ is very close to ‘lover’, and must a lover not be poetic, Mistress?”

  “You may well be a lover, sir, but to me you are a glover.”

  “I would be both, lady.”

  “Maybe, but I am in the market for gloves, not love.”

  “Give me first refusal when you do shop for love, Mistress.”

  “But I do not look to purchase love.”

  “Nay, I give it freely.”

  “So if ‘love’ is close to ‘glove’, you must give me the gloves freely – which is just as well, for I do not require crimson gloves, and nor can I afford them.”

  “But the crimson becomes you. With your hair, your eyes. Yes, crimson. Try the other glove, if you will not try my love.”

  Resistless, laughing, she tried the other glove. Cheveril was the most expensive leather, and crimson gloves… “Your father knows his business when he leaves you in charge. I will take them. But I must have some plainer ones as well. Yes, those.”

  “Will you have them sent? May I bear them like a gift to you?”

  “No, I will bear them: or at least I’ll wear them. Best wrap up the crimson ones.” As he did so and she thrust them deep into her basket, she said, “Where is it you’ve been, William? In the north, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes. Lancashire.”

  “Beautiful?”

  “If you like moss. No – it has its own kind of beauty, much wilder than here. Fewer people.”

  “At least you’ve travelled. I’ve been no more than five miles from Stratford all my life.”

  “And would you like to?”

  “Very much. Doubt I ever will, though; ordinary women like me don’t. I would like to see London.”

  “Tell you a secret – and it really is a secret – I was supposed to come straight home from Lancashire but I told some lies, fudged the time I was to leave, and I went to London. I had a whole week there.”

  “Oh,” she sighed, “and is it marvellous? Beautiful?”

  “Full of marvels, and beautiful in lots of ways. Also crowded, dirty, noisy. And I loved it.”

  As if by way of punctuation the bell rang for the close of market. And, prompt as conscience, came the voice of Anne’s stepmother at her shoulder.

  “So there you are! I’ve been looking everywhere for you, we’ll be late home. Have you bought the cascara for Tom’s constipation?”

  “Yes, Mother.”

  “And the flannel?”

  “Yes, Mother.”

  “Then come along.”

  “I must pay for my gloves. I’ll catch you up.” Putting the money on the counter she said quickly, softly to William, “Will you come to visit us? You’re always welcome. Please do.”

  “I would like that. I haven’t forgotten the way.”

  “Good.” Mrs Hathaway was waiting, staring back at her. “I must go.”

  “Yes. Goodbye.”

  They were barely out of earshot when Anne’s stepmother said, “You’ll get yourself a name as a trollop, flirting and giggling with shopkeepers’ apprentices like that.”

  “I wasn’t flirting, I was buying gloves. Though I may have laughed once or twice. And he’s no apprentice, he’s Mr Shakspere’s eldest son.”

  “Oh!” You could tell Joan Hathaway’s mood by the way she walked. Now she twitched her bum like a cross cat. “And of course you and the Shaksperes are on such close terms.”

  “Father was friendly with Mr Shakspere, as you know. He came to Father’s funeral.”

  “But wouldn’t stay for so much as the usual drink.”

  Anne said nothing. The fact was that in marrying Anne’s father, Joan Hathaway had risen a little above her station in life. Her father had been a hired man on one of the Earl of Warwick’s estates, so a prosperous widower of some standing, whose family had for many years farmed ninety leasehold acres, was quite a catch for her. Of course her own people were respectable, but they had no position, no roots going generations-deep into the life and management of Warwickshire’s community.

  These things counted in the country, and people like the Shaksperes, the mercantile class that ran the towns and inherited their land, were courteous to her as Mrs Richard Hathaway, but no more. Even after thirteen years she didn’t quite speak the language, as it were, she didn’t know her way through the web of relationships and feuds and alliances. Anne’s own mother had called Mrs Shakspere ‘Mary’ and talked of childhood days at Wilmcote and traced connections through third cousins who had married second cousins’ in-laws; Joan Hathaway curtseyed when they met and called her Mrs Shakspere.

  After a few more steps: “Not that the Shaksperes are so grand these days.” Twitch, twitch. “They say he’s losing money hand over fist… Still… Large family, isn’t it?”

  “Five children.”

  “How old?”

  “William would be eighteen now, Gilbert sixteen or so. Joan’s about thirteen, Richard a few years younger. Then there is the little boy, Edmund; he’s two.” Well used to her stepmother’s mental processes, such as they were, Anne knew she was matching these ages with those of her own four children. John Shakspere might be having money troubles now, but things could change, and he had been an alderman and Bailiff of Stratford, he owned that big house on Henley Street besides other land, he had a finger in many pies, and his wife had been an Arden. A Shakspere son of ten, a Hathaway daughter of eight. Come to that, a Shakspere son of two, a Hathaway daughter of six… It was never too soon to plan.

  “Didn’t they have to send that William boy away?”

  “Someone found him work in the country, tutoring a gentleman’s sons.”

  “Hmm. Well, if he’s only eighteen there’s no use your flirting with him. Not at your age.”

  “No, Mother.” What had happened to change this woman
from a kind stepmother, a friend, into this carping, sour-tempered nag? Well, grief, of course, the uncertain future as a widow… and yet… That night last year when Anne’s father had drawn his last breath, and they’d known it for the last, Anne and her stepmother had turned instinctively into each other’s arms for comfort, united as if they were truly mother and daughter. They’d wept together, and could begin the business of death only because they had each other.

  Then, next day, it was as if they were barely acquainted. Anne suspected, and disliked herself for the suspicion, that this first storm of emotion had been only shock, that her stepmother had felt no more than a workaday fondness for her husband, and resented others’ real grief, or took it as a reproach.

  Whatever the cause, within three months Anne’s brother Bartholomew had married and moved twenty miles away, her sister Catherine had married the first man who asked her, and Anne was trapped with a woman who valued her only as child-minder, maid, housekeeper. A woman who seemed to dislike her. A woman who was inclining more and more to Puritanism. And no doubt that was Anne’s present offence: that she’d laughed and enjoyed herself with the glover’s son. Remembering their silly banter, she almost laughed aloud; just in time she turned it into a cough and a murmur about the dusty road.

  And if the glover’s son remembers, Anne thought, and if he comes to visit Grafton, I might have someone I can talk to.

  By the time William closed up the market stall, returned the goods to the shop and put the meagre takings into his father’s strongbox, it was midday. He was hungry; breakfast, at five had been only the heel of a loaf and some argumentative cheese. As he went from the grubby, dusty hall to the empty dining parlour, then to the kitchen, he allowed himself a memory of this house before he’d gone away. Then, he would have come home to the smells of cleanliness and good food cooking, to the cheerful sounds of a family gathering for dinner. The table would have been laid, the silver and pewter would have gleamed, there would have been flowers in every room. His mother would have come to meet him with a smile and a glad but casual kiss.

  Now, nothing. No one about. In the kitchen there were no signs of dinner, or not unless you counted a bowl of apple slices in water and a dubious piece of cooked beef on the table. He looked at this, and realised it was crawling with maggots. Feeling sick, he took it on the tip of his knife and went to the back yard to throw it to the dog.

  “Oh, William, you’re back.”

  Comfortable in the sunshine, where rosebushes surrounded a tended patch of grass, his mother sat sprawled in a cushioned chair, suckling the two-year-old Edmund. The dreaming adoration with which she watched the child faded to indifference as she glanced up at her eldest son.

  “Yes, I’m –”

  “Good takings today?”

  “Not bad.”

  Edmund was trying to wriggle away from his mother. A sweet-natured child for all his mother’s spoiling, Edmund had been enchanted, not alarmed, to have an unknown brother come into his life. Perhaps it was only the charm of novelty, but William was his favourite person. “Will. See Will.”

  “No, my pet…”

  “See Will!” He battered at his mother’s clutching hands.

  “He’s growing spoilt, Mother,” said William, wishing she would fasten her dress.

  “You are jealous.”

  “No.” As flatly as she had spoken, he repudiated the statement. Two when his brother Gilbert was born, William could not remember the halcyon time when he had been the only child and longed-for son, all the more precious because two earlier children had died. After Gilbert, baby had followed baby at a steady pace, and only when Anne, the short-lived Anne, was born had William noticed that with each birth the present children ceased to matter to their mother. Perhaps he had been jealous of Gilbert; of the others, no, because he loved his siblings and even a toddler knew that babies must take up a lot of time. But after Richard, born when William was eight, there had been no more babies, and once he was breeched the four children had basked equally in their parents’ attention.

  Then, after eight years, there had been Edmund, or at least the announcement of another baby, and once more Mrs Shakspere forgot her other children and decided to resent her eldest son. Suddenly he must leave school, forget university, go out to work. Younger, he might have blamed and envied the new child, but at sixteen he knew about his father’s money troubles, had even been consulted; he could accept his duty.

  Now, returned after two years as an adult, he saw that his mother valued her children only for their dependence upon her; she existed to be needed as a source of food and bodily intimacy, to fill her babies’ world. As grown or growing people, they held little interest for her. She was over forty now, and coldly William wondered if she realised there would be no more babies and that Edmund wanted to chase after his brothers and play with other children. Already he was pushing away her proffered breast, was impatient with cuddles and being held upon her lap.

  As now. Escaping his mother, Edmund ran to William, clamouring to be picked up. William swung him up onto his shoulders, laughing as the infant grabbed his hair, then saw the flash of malice in his mother’s eyes and felt as if the sun had gone behind a cloud.

  “Mother…”

  “I have all the work of him all day then you come home and play with him until he’s overexcited and crying. Your father is the same.”

  “Perhaps we simply love him.”

  That was trespassing too far on her preserves. “Loving a child takes more than half an hour at noon or evening when all is done for you. Give him to me.”

  “Edmund stay with Will,” the child announced.

  “Mother,” William tried again, “it is dinner time, I’ve worked hard, there is no dinner ready, the maid’s not here …”

  “Where is your sister?”

  He sighed. “I don’t know.”

  “She is thirteen. I look to her to help me.”

  “And so she does. Mother, can we not afford another maid? Can’t we hire a girl to do the rough work?”

  She gave a harsh, ironic laugh. “Ask your father why we cannot afford another maid – two, three, and a cook, as we used to have.” Slowly, reluctantly, she fastened her dress. “I married a well-to-do man who could afford a proper living. Now I have to send my children out to work. Gilbert is to leave school at the end of the month and be apprenticed to a haberdasher. And you, my boy, are to take work as an usher at the grammar school.”

  “Truly?”

  “Yes. Then your father can take on another apprentice; we need the indenture money.”

  The hand with which she laced her bodice still bore its jewelled gold rings and, much as he knew they were the last, cherished symbols of the wealthy Arden lady and Alderman’s wife she had once been, William often longed to point out that just one of them would buy the services of a cook and several maids. Or would have paid for his three years at university.

  “I shan’t mind working at the grammar school, although I could do better. Is it certain? It’s been arranged?”

  “When we knew you were coming home.”

  “Thanks for telling me.”

  “Don’t speak to me like that, William. Turn your clever tongue on your father. It was his idea. You’ll start next quarter-day.”

  “I shan’t mind,” he repeated. “But I am eighteen, Mother, too old to have decisions made for me willy-nilly. And if it’s only a matter of money, then let me go to London, I’ve told you I could earn more there.”

  “Being a common theatre player! A mummer!”

  “Why not? The theatre is in fashion in London and – ”

  “In fashion it may be; respectable it will never be. We may not be noble people but you are an Arden and a Shakspere, you come of old families with some position and standing. The Ardens are – ”

  “I know. The oldest family in Warwickshire. We have noble kinsmen. I am well aware of it.”

  “And think it a matter for mockery, I see.”

  “Not a
t all. But must we never do anything new?”

  “Not if it means something like the theatre.”

  Unwisely, desperately, he persisted. “It’s not as if I have no experience, I – ”

  “What ‘experience’, pray?”

  “Mother, please listen! For Sir Alexander de Hoghton, then for Sir Thomas Hesketh.”

  “But you went to Lancashire as a tutor. Teaching schoolboys. Not to strut around in fancy dress.”

  “Parliament passed an act against unlicensed schoolmasters. It was safer and easier to keep me on as one of his private troupe of players and musicians. So you see, Mother…”

  But she turned it against him, mocking, “Much ice a few private mummings would cut in London. What’ll you do, boy, go to some lord whose players have performed for the Queen and whine, ‘Please, sir, I once entertained some country people in the north’?”

  “I’m a little better than that. There could be money in it.”

  “Ha!”

  “And I think I could write for the theatre, I wrote a play for –”

  “You! No, you’ll work at the grammar school and that’s flat.”

  “When I’m of age…”

  “Oh, no doubt you’ll do what you like then. No doubt you’ll turn your back on your dull and humble parents and your dull and humble country town and get yourself appointed Master of the Queen’s Revels.” She reached up for Edmund who, bored because William showed no sign of playing any of his usual games, went happily into her arms. Over his head she stared up at William, her face icy. “Do what you like when you are twenty-one, but until then you will do what your parents tell you.”

  2.

  Another morning in the workshop, stitching gloves until his eyes ached, then an afternoon spent making deliveries and running errands for his father. “Take the horse,” his father said, “and wear your best clothes. Be polite and make a good impression.”

  At least it got him out of house and shop, into the summer countryside, and there was no limit set on the time of his return. Out of anyone’s sight, in the country roads, he dawdled, free for once to think and daydream without interruption. At home there was always noise, some demand.