The Tutor by Andrea Chapin Page B

and write and write. I have been in London, at the playhouses, writing verse but neverfinishing it. I count poets and playwrights among my friends—Kit Marlowe, Thomas Watson, Robert Greene.”
    “I know not these men. Your wife . . . is she among the living?” Katharine asked. He had mentioned his wife the day he said a woman other than his wife had told him what felt akin to a sneeze, but he had not uttered the word wife since. Perhaps, Katharine thought, his wife was dead.
    “Aye, I have been in Stratford, too. My wife, Anne, is very much among the living. She is eight years older than I. Or perhaps I am eight years younger.”
    “What is your age?” Katharine asked.
    “Six and twenty.” He was quiet for a moment, then added, “I’d rather my wife not be currency between us.”
    What did he mean? There was no “between” between them. “I was not bartering with my question,” she said, “I was curious.”
    “And I have three children,” he offered.
    “How fortunate you are. What are their names?” she asked.
    “Susannah, Hamnet and Judith.”
    “How lovely.”
    They were silent for a moment.
    “How came you to Lufanwal?” she said finally.
    “I traveled on horseback from London,” he said.
    “I meant, by what reference?”
    “The De Hoghtons’. I was with them when I was scarcely out of grammar school. My old schoolmaster brought me north when my father’s affairs took a tumble.”
    “Are your parents still living?” she asked.
    “My father has been on his deathbed twenty times. ‘Will, my son, Will, my end is nigh.’ He said this to me when he was still a young man. He has been dying since I was born. ‘Will, get me the priest . . .’ Ah! You did not hear that . . .”
    “Surely you know this household is not afraid of priests.”
    He winked. “‘Get me the Archbishop of Canterbury, my end is nigh.’” When he spoke in his father’s voice he spoke from the back of his throat in a thick Warwickshire accent.
    Katharine laughed. “Is he still a glover, then?”
    “He has been everything and nothing. He’s never been a king, but he’s been a trader of corn, wool, malt, meat, skins and leather, a glover, yes, a husbandman, a butcher, a plaintiff and a defendant in suits, a creditor, a debtor, a debtee, an ale-taster, a bread-taster, a burgess, a petty constable, an affeeror, a borough chamberlain, an alderman, a bailiff, a chief alderman, an overseer, a litigator, ah, and yes, a father.”
    “Your father is an ambitious man, and you are your father’s son, for you are as ambitious as he.”
    “You have that wrong: he is as ambitious as I. My father tried to buy a coat of arms and failed. I will have one.”
    “I never knew a coat of arms was a thing bought and sold.”
    “In your world, no. In mine, yes. Mark you, I will sell my work as my father sold his gloves.”
    “’Tis a good plan,” she said.
    “I will make more pounds of silver in one week than my eternally dying father has earned in one month, a year, perhaps in his whole life. I will buy the largest house in town, a house with glass windows, not air, with tapestries, not cloth.”
    “Your words will bring you riches?” She’d never heard of such a thing.
    “To stay solely a player would mean a life of wanting. ’Tis not by mouthing the words of others my coffers will be filled. Yet ’tis not from writing a play that fills the purse, either, my lady—for many a poor wretch watches his words strut across a stage but has neither bread nor sack at home. There are other ways: poets have patrons, players can share in a company and make a tuppence cut from every penny made.Mark you, my work shall be published and my work shall be performed before the queen.”
    “Well then, the riches await you.”
    “Are you mocking me?”
    She did not answer.
    “Will you be my patron?” he asked.
    “Now you are mocking me,” she said.
    He bowed. She nodded. They stared at each other.
    “Can you keep a secret?”