The first time I ever saw Robert
Kavanagh he was dancing at my wedding. He was wearing a green
velvet doublet and a silver-buckled belt. He danced well for an
Irishman and had a very pleasing curve to his calf. ‘My forester
thinks himself a gentleman,’ my new husband said.
The torches burned bright in the
hall of my husband’s new house and the scent of fresh-cut pine
still lingered beneath the smell of grease and roasted oxen. Sir
Francis spared no expense on his wedding – roasted swan and breast
of lapwing, jewel-like jellies and custards as smooth and pale as
my Lady Margaret’s cheek. My new husband ate near on a whole
suckling-pig to himself and claimed that it tasted exactly like
fresh-cooked baby. That is the kind of man he is.
Everyone was made to admire the jewel he
gave me for my wedding present – but for all its gold and emeralds
it was still a picture of the dance of death which, if you ask me,
is not such a pretty jewel to give your bride on her wedding day.
I, of course was as much to be viewed by his fawning retinue as
were his trinkets and baubles. He displayed me to his assembled
company, lifting a strand of my hair and observing me with his
thin-lipped smile. ‘Scotch,’ he said, as if I was a prized savage
creature, and I corrected him, for that is a kind of
mist.
On our wedding-night I began to
understand what kind of a man it was that I had married. But I will
not speak of it, only to say that he knew more tricks than the
de’el himself. And then a few more. And now, also, I understood
what manner of man it was he gathered around himself in his little
court, the more corrupt and depraved, the more my master liked him.
They pandered to his whims and inflated him like a puffed
toad.
And as for my Lady Margaret … Sir Francis
claimed Lady Margaret was his ward, but there was no document to
this effect, no record, no provenance for her at all. He claimed
she was the bastard of his dead brother Thomas, but rumour had it
that she was his own ill-gotten child. Rumour would also have had
it (there was much rumour in that God-forsaken country) that his
relationship to her was far from that of protector.
Nothing there was as I thought it would
be.
I came upon my lord and his
so-called ward in a position which did not suggest consanguinity,
unless it was customary practice in that country for an ‘uncle’ to
be so familiar with his ‘niece’. I thought Lady Margaret a sly
thing, she would never meet my eye, only bob her demure little
curtseys, yes m’ladying and no m’ladying to me. Yet I was a harsh
judge of her for she was barely sixteen, nothing but a child, and
was as much prisoner as I myself was.
She had a tutor still, as if she
was a royal bairn and spoke three languages and sang very prettily.
My Lady Margaret’s tutor, a Master Shakespeare, wrote Sir Francis
an epithalamium, full of flattery of my lord, which was this
tutor’s character. These folk were not fit company for any
woman.
The first time we met was as I
walked in the wood one spring morning. He was on his black pony and
stepped off the path and dismounted for me to pass and bowed his
head almost to his knee and I remembered that he thought himself a
gentleman. He said nothing, but as I passed I saw that my good
hound Finn, a very discerning animal, could not stop his tail from
wagging at Master Kavanagh, which was the stamp of his
approval.
I came unannounced into my Lady
Margaret’s bedchamber – suspicious, thinking I would catch my
husband in her embrace – and instead saw my Lady Margaret’s naked
back – thin and supple as a deer, a young girl’s back of arcing
blades and knuckled spine – and covered over all, as a map of the
world, with a vast expanse of black continent – here and there
shaded in yellow or purple. She covered herself hastily but not
before I voiced my distress.
Who had made these vile marks? But
I did not need to ask, my heart could tell me the answer. ‘My lord
has a most foul and unnatural temper,’ she whispered. I told my
husband, who was in his cups as ever, that she was not his dog to
be whipped. In answer, he threw me across the room.
The first time we spoke was in the
wood. I knew him well by then, our paths had crossed many times in
the great forest, each time he bowed low and did not speak so that
I began to wonder if he was dumb. But he was a man of few words,
unlike our Master Shakespeare who gabbled like a goose. Master
Kavanagh had that look about him, as if he felt himself to be no
man’s servant. I could tell.
I was often in the forest, it was
the only place in my lord’s domain where peace still reigned, for
there was no peace to be had in the sty that was my lord’s house. I
was not mistress there, the lord of misrule had sway. In the
forest, I could imagine myself to be mistress of all the trees,
they bowed their branches in obeisance, rustled their leaves in a
murmur of fealty.
‘My lady will catch cold,’ he said,
startling me half to death, for I had not seen his soft approach
and my dog Finn was sleeping on the watch. But Master Kavanagh was
no enemy. He wore a puzzled frown as if he could not understand why
the mistress of so much should be making do with so little – and it
is true I was not a happy sight, sitting on the ground in the cold
and the drizzle under the shelter of a great oak tree. Wrapped in a
thick wool cloak and with only my wet hound for company I was truly
no better off than one of the serving-girls. And the first time I
touched him was when he held out one of his brown, old-callused and
new-blistered hands and said, ‘My lady, please, get up off the cold
ground.’
I would my lord had looked at me with his
eyes.
My Lady Margaret was with child.
This was obvious to all. We need not ask the father. How came Lady
Margaret into this den of vice? She could not remember, she was but
a little child, she said. She had had no mother, no sister, no
friend or comforter all those years. Her childhood had been stolen
from her. ‘My lord has had me since a child,’ she said. She meant
in every way.
Her cheek was pale. Her tutor
feigned indifference for he was my husband’s pet, but he was not
bereft of Christian feeling. ‘My lady is dreadful pale,’ he said to
me, stopping me in the dark corridor and I replied, ‘Aye, as pale
as any glass.’ I knew he had a fondness for her himself, I had seen
the tender looks he gave her when he thought himself not
overlooked.
There were no torches lit in the hallway,
all was darkness, a single tallow candle waved wildly in the
draughts. The wind had residence in this wicked house. Poor
Shakespeare’s face was all craters and hollows in the feeble light,
like the moon. I could see his skull. I could see the tear in his
eye glitter and reminded him that he had behaved as badly as any
man in my lord’s retinue. But he had me by the sleeve and would not
let me go and I had to comfort him and tell him I would look after
her.
The first time I saw him naked was
in the heat of that summer when my Lady Margaret swelled and my
lord grew blacker and the house that was so cold in winter became a
sweltering stew.
I was sitting under a great tree,
flapping away the forest flies with my hand, in a doze of heat,
when the noise of chopping raised me from my slumbers and, treading
quietly on the mossy path, I was able to view Master Kavanagh at
work, chopping down a tree half-felled in the great winter storms.
He was stripped of leather jerkin, and of his sark also, so that I
was able to admire the fine brown skin of his back with its coat of
sweat, like dew and the black curls of his hair lying damply on his
neck. And much more. For a moment I could think of nothing but what
he would feel like if I reached my hand out and ran it over his
skin.
Lacking all shame, I followed Master
Kavanagh deeper into the forest and when he left the path I left
the path also and when he divested himself of his nether garments
it would have taken a deal more than self-will to turn my head and
not watch him dip himself in the cool black pool where the flag
irises waved and the frogs were startled.
He knew I was there, he was a man who
could hear the tread of the deer and the rabbit, who could hear the
leaves unfurl and the cuckoo sleep, but he did not turn around –
for he was a gentleman, remember – but continued with his
exhibition of himself. And I was most pleased with what I saw. Sir
Francis was no picture, he had nor flesh on his bones nor hairs on
his head and his breath was rank and his farting more so. Naked, we
are equal before God, they say, but I think Master Kavanagh would
have seemed more noble than my husband.
I watched my son, who was a sickly
thing, tainted with my lord Francis’s thin, bad blood, playing
hoopla on the lawn. Maybe my husband had fathered something more
robust on the Lady Margaret. She sat weeping by the fish pond, the
great mound of her belly shaking with her grief. My lord had
ordered her to a nunnery.
I saw him in the kitchens when I went to
speak to the cook, for I had some say in my kitchens still, if
nowhere else. He was sitting at the big scrubbed table eating bread
and cheese. He was hardly ever seen in the great house, he had his
own rough cot in the forest where, I had heard said, the deer would
come to his door and feed from his hand. But that was probably
rumour too.
I blushed. He blushed. We blushed.
We were caught in the cook’s disapproval. ‘Manners,’ she said to
him and hit him on the back of the head with a clout and he
stumbled to his feet and laughed, then bowed and said,
‘Lady?’
I had never been this deep in the
wood, never trod on this path before. Though I knew where it led.
It led to great danger. It led to the little house in the heart of
the forest. The forest paths were deep in leaves, like
gold.
The fire was dead and the ashes
were cold. Half a stale loaf was on the table, a rotten apple, a
burnt-down candle. It was like a still life of what must come to us
all, when we will dance with death and have our foot finally
stilled. I shivered in the cold air.
But then his little dog came bounding
over the threshold and he himself filled the doorway, silhouetted
against blue October sky.
He did not bow. I thought he would say
that I should not be there but he said nothing, only entered his
own house as if it were a stranger’s, delicately, with trepidation,
like a half-tamed deer. So that I had to encourage him and hold out
my hand. And so he moved closer and stood before me, closer than he
had ever been before, so close I could see the new-shaved bristle
on his chin, the greenness of his eyes, the fleck of hazel that
seemed gold. ‘Well, Master Kavanagh,’ I said, rather sternly, for
my nerves were somewhat frayed, ‘here we are.’
‘Here we are indeed, my lady,’ he said,
which was a very long sentence for him. And he took a step closer,
which brought him very close indeed, so I took a step back and so
we jigged prettily for a while until I had nowhere to go, for I was
pushed up against the table. I could feel the heat coming from his
body, see the sharpness of his eye-tooth and the fine shape of his
top lip.
First the burnt-out candle went flying
with a great clatter and then the rotten apple went rolling to the
far corner of the room. And heaven only knows what happened to the
loaf of bread. Then there was no more speaking, only the exquisite
moans and dreadful sighs that must accompany such violent
delights.
* * *
Lady Margaret was with us no
longer, hanged herself from a tree in my lord’s apple orchard with
rope from the stables. A gardener found her, dangling like a common
felon, in the early light of morning, the babe already still in her
womb. I locked myself in my room and wept fierce tears all morning
and would answer to no-one, until Master Shakespeare wore me down,
knocking at my door to tell me he was going and I replied that he
may go to hell for all I care, but eventually I opened the door to
him. He kissed my hand and said there was nothing to keep him at
Fairfax Manor now and I told him he was right for there was no
future for any of us in that accursed house.
He was leaving with the actors who
had been with us and at whose words our poor Lady Margaret had both
laughed and cried such a little time ago. These players were
acquainted with our Master Shakespeare from his previous life and
it was ‘Our Will’ this and ‘Our Will’ that and he was more than
happy to join their baggage carts. I wished him well, though he was
something of a weasel. He had already left wife and children and
now he was leaving us. ‘You must do likewise, madam,’ he whispered,
as he brushed my hand with his lips and I nodded my head and smiled
for my husband had entered the room.
I had to walk through the forest at
night to reach his little cottage the night that we left and there
were many times I was feart to death, not by those things that I
could see, but by those I could not.
We went on his black pony for the
grooms would have been disturbed if I had saddled my fine dappled
mare. It pained me more to leave my dappled grey than it did to
leave my son, for he was a boy in his father’s image, only weaker.
I was already carrying Robert Kavanagh’s child in my belly and I
cared to take nothing of my husband’s with me. But I would take my
dog. For he was a very good dog.
We left under the cover of the cloak of
darkness but my husband was canny and had us followed and would
have killed us with his arrows but he was not the great shot that
he always liked to think himself. He would have to make do with a
fine plump deer instead.
I ripped his not-so-pretty jewel from my
neck and flung it through the trees and I felt Master Kavanagh
flinch a little for that jewel would have paid our way into the
unknown, but no matter. And the last time I saw my lord Francis, he
was scrabbling in the leaves for his precious trinket. I would have
taken all my fine silks off as well and gone from him as naked as
Eve, but the leaves were already dropping from the trees and I
would not freeze of the cold.
Robert Kavanagh put his arms around me
and we trotted quickly on our way, our dogs bounding on ahead. He
was my shelter and my safety, he was as strong as a great oak and
as gentle as my hound. If you had known the full troubled history
of my life, you would have sped me on my journey with many a
blessing. A great happiness seized me at that moment, as if I had
been given a vision of paradise.
‘And where will we go, Master Kavanagh?’
I asked him, when we reached the northern edge of the forest. And
he turned in the saddle and smiled at me, showing his good teeth
and replied, ‘The future, my lady, we shall ride into the
future.’
