Love's Will by Meredith Whitford Page A

back from their tour, to come and see him at Henslowe’s playhouse. But the best, the best…”
    “Tell me or I’ll smother you with the pillows.”
    “Smother me in my bed. Put out the light, and then put out the light… I’ll use that one day. Anne, he gave me an introduction to James Burbage. He said you were quite right and I should approach Lord Strange because knowing someone like that helps, but still he gave me an introduction to Mr Burbage! Head player of the Earl of Leicester’s Men! He wrote it down, it’s in my purse. A letter, Anne! Said I’m a promising writer and a passable actor, and willing to do anything, and he’d take me on if he could but he can’t so Burbage should. Wrote it down. Said I should try.”
    It was true you could feel more than one emotion at once. Joy, relief, sorrow, envy, cold and lonely misery. “I’m glad, Will.”
    His eyes held hers, some of his elation ebbing. Gently, commandingly, he said, “Are you? It would mean leaving you here. It would mean at least a year before I could send for you to come to London. I’d be paid for my work, but not enough, not yet, for you and the children. Or you’d have a miserable little lodging not fit for you. And the acting companies go on tour. In summer, they’re on the road, travelling all over England, for months on end. I’d send you all the money I could, but we couldn’t be together. You’d have to live here or with your step-mother.”
    “I know.”
    He turned over again and lay staring up at the tester. “You’d do that? Put up with that?”
    “Yes. And when you were touring, you could come home now and again. Other times, perhaps. I could come to London.”
    “Four days on the road, at least. And what of the children?” Blindly he reached for her hand. “Anne, I want this so much, but I know how selfish it is. Five years, and I’ve given you no happiness.”
    “You have, Will. You have.” All this time she’d been sitting up, her chin on her knees. She slid down beside him, resting her head on his shoulder. “I love you and I’d rather have you in London and happy, than here and miserable.” Keeping her voice steady with an effort she said, “I want the lovely boy I married back again. I want that happy man.”
    “Even if my happiness takes me a hundred miles away and leaves you here?”
    “Rather that than a bitter man who hates me after thirty years at each other’s side.”
    “I could never hate you, Anne.”
    “But always in the back of your mind would be the knowledge that but for me… When would you go?”
    “Mr Tarleton said the autumn would be best. London’s unhealthy in summer. Plague always about. He suggested I go when the touring companies are coming back and the winter season’s being planned.”
    “That’s sense. It gives us time to plan. To get your clothes together, all that kind of thing. Time to write to Dick Field to find you a London lodging. Or do they put you up at the playhouse?”
    “No, I’d need a lodging. Anne?’
    “What?”
    “Now it has almost happened, it frightens me. A dream come true, or a nightmare? What if I fail?”
    “Then at least you’ll know. You won’t live all your life with what might have been.”
    “There is that. Yes. G’night.” He was asleep almost before he’d finished the word. Anne lay awake all night.
     

 
    3 .
     
    Two doublets, one of good green cloth with spare sleeves, the other of brown leather. Breeches and stockings, a new woollen cloak, a hat. Three pairs of gloves, two belts, a new purse, six handkerchiefs. Two pairs of boots. A knitted scarf. A brush, a comb, a razor. Cloths for cleaning teeth, two balls of soap. Paper, pens, a stoppered ink-pot. A knife, a spoon. A jar of herbal nostrum, sovereign against colds and coughs; a pot of goose-grease and wintergreen, cure for almost anything. Three books, the rest to be sent by carrier.
    Anne had spread all these things, William’s entire possessions, across the bed; the bed