Portrait of an Unknown Woman (57 page)

 
          
I drew what hope I could from a murmured conversation I overheard between him and Butts, holding their horses’ bridles, saying good-bye to each other under my window one evening.

           
“Give my regards to your lovely wife, dear boy,” I heard the doctor say archly, while I drew as close to the window as I dared, hoping to hear what John would say without being 
seen. “I hope she’s well?”

           
He must wonder why he wasn’t invited in anymore. He must be angling for information. Perhaps that harmless old man might even worry that it was his fault, that he’d somehow given offense. The thought wrung my heart.

           
“As well as can be expected,” John was saying, quietly, loyally. “Of course these are hard times for all of us.” Then he laughed, gently, more to himself than to Butts but with genuine warmth.

 
          
“I’m learning that marriage is a bit like medicine, Dr. Butts,” he went on. “If you open your heart to someone, whether it’s a doctor or a wife, it’s inevitable that you expose yourself to pain. Shocks. Disappointments.

 
          
Luckily I can see that the healing process is very similar in both cases too. If you have faith in your remedy, and go on doing your honest best to achieve a cure for long enough, you find the right way in the end.”

           
They both chuckled, and Butts reached up to pat John sympathetically on the shoulder before setting off for his own home.

           
Did that mean, I wondered, heart racing, that John knew he’d forgive me as soon as his hurt had healed; that he felt his wound knitting back together; that it was just a question of time?

           
“We must ask you in for a meal again,” John called after his colleague, mounted now, retreating into the twilight. “Soon.”

 
          
Meanwhile, Tommy was my consolation: rising four now, with a peachy skin and that elegant little nose that would one day be his father’s great beak, and John’s elegant hands too, lisping and running determinedly round the garden. But whether there’d be any more children, even if John were to find his old joy in me, I couldn’t have said. However modest the dose of pennyroyal I’d taken in my angry attempt to purge my womb of his baby, it had set off its own fury of bleeding and pain. It was beyond my medical knowledge to try to treat myself. All I could do was hope that my sickness, like so much else in my life, would cure itself.

           
So perhaps it was no wonder that everything seemed so confusing. Distinguishing reasons had become too complicated for my overtaxed mind.

 
          
And perhaps that’s why I missed the sight of Master Hans looking nervously at me out of the corner of his eyes so much that I took a chance and went to Maiden Lane one evening. Perhaps I was missing the hearty simplicity, the joyous lust for life that I remembered in him.

           
I didn’t go just once, if I’m to be honest about it. I went several times. Time after time, as spring deepened into summer, whispering to the maid that I was just off to stretch my legs if the master asked where I was, slipping away in the warm dusk on my private business and coming back as quietly as I could more than an hour later.

 
          
It took two or three visits before I saw his back in the shadows and identified the house where he’d taken rooms. After that I went past, as if by chance, whenever I could get away. Sometimes I saw that solid, purposeful back again; more often I didn’t. I had a lot of time on my hands. It was something to do; something to keep me feeling alive.

 
          
But I’d have given anything to avoid running into him on the street.

 
          
Anything. I ran home afterward with my heart beating as if it would burst and a lump of shame swelling so big in my throat that it seemed to be pushing out into my mouth. I stayed awake, pacing around in the dark garden until the city was completely quiet except for the occasional wavering footsteps of a drunk, shutting my eyes against the recurring nausea of embarrassment at the memory. His hands on me. His eyes boring into mine. Hands on my shoulders, or about to be. His voice, a bit slurred, a bit drunk, muttering: “Meg . . . ?”

 
          
Still, one good thing had come out of it. He was here this morning. I saw him hanging round outside the church door from my bedroom window ten minutes before the bell rang for matins. He wasn’t taking any chances today. He had no intention of missing me. And, through the window, as he stared up, he was exactly as he’d always been: big, gingery, capable, determined, and so visibly ill at ease and anxious about what he might or might not have seen the night before that my heart warmed painfully toward him. My heart was lurching like a lunatic’s anyway.

 
          
“Tommy, you’ll have more fun playing in the orchard than coming to church on a beautiful morning like this,” I said, pulling my lovely little dark boy off the bed with my hands under his armpits and swinging him against my dress, loving the small, solid barrel-chested strength of him.

 
          
“But I lub matins with you, Muvver,” he lisped indignantly in his treble voice. “
Pater noster quis es in coelis
. I know it all.”

 
          
I kissed the top of his head, put him down on the floor, and placed his hand in the maid’s. “Yes, I know, you’re doing really well. But today you and Jennet go and water the apple trees,” I said briskly, with not a moment’s regret. “You’ll be pleased you did when we have apple pie in the autumn.” And as they went downstairs, I whisked quickly over to the glass on the wall to look guiltily at my face: the pallor and pinched panic of so many recent days vanished; instead there was a flush of what I feared might be excitement on my cheeks. Sparkling eyes. Pink lips. I looked better than I had for months.

 
          
I sprinkled sweet rosewater on my cuff before picking up my psalter.

 
          
Absentmindedly; I swear I didn’t mean to. Then I slipped away down the stairs to mass feeling my feet almost fly over the boards. I couldn’t explain even to myself why I was suddenly almost floating.

 
          
I pretended not to see him on the way into church. Under the brilliant sunshine, under the pretty whiteness of my lace and bonnet, I stared at my feet, looking soulful. It wasn’t just pretense; I needed to compose myself. I needed a moment alone with God.

 
          
And then, somewhere in that moment with God, in the welcoming of candle and shadow and incense and holiness and peace, I decided to brazen it out.

           
On the way out, after I’d blinked into the sunlight and seen that the crowds were already pressing up and down the road and no one was paying particular attention to me, I raised my eyes straight to the waiting figure down the way from me and watched him blush a deep pinky red that clashed with his dirty blond hair.

 
          
“Master Hans!” I exclaimed, a little unkindly, a little theatrically, but with the welcome in my eyes undercutting any tartness. “You’re back in London! What a surprise!”

 
          
He was thunderstruck.

 
          
He stood for a long moment as if turned to stone. Only his big, solid snubby face—like a child’s, like a great adult version of Tommy’s, I suddenly saw, with a surprised stab of almost maternal affection—was too open to hide the emotions chasing through his heart. I saw fear and embarrassment on that face, struggling with something else, making his eyes open wide and his neck tighten and his teeth chew at his lower lip.

 
          
I didn’t mind. All the fear that I’d found went with living in the darkness of the king’s disfavor meant I’d learned more about the kind of life calculations other people had always had to make: who they should or shouldn’t be seen with if their careers were to prosper; how to keep themselves on the up; how to avoid the shadow of someone else’s misfortune falling on them. I’d never needed to think about that before trouble came to us: we’d been so settled. Now, watching Master Hans, I felt sympathy for his dilemma.

 
          
It was the something else in his heart that won, though. As he finally conquered himself and rushed forward to greet me, his arms came out as if he would embrace me, and a look of pure, innocent joy suffused his features.

 
          
“Mistress Meg!” he said, with happiness powering those broad shoulders forward.

           
He came to a halt towering over me, very close, so I could smell the familiar painty smell that always came off him, but when it came to it he didn’t quite dare put his arms around me. “I’ve come . . .”—he fell silent, and blushed again, and shuffled his feet—“I’m here . . .”

 
          
Once upon a time, I remembered dreamily, I’d found his uncourtly straightforwardness both uncouth and often, unintentionally, funny. But after all this time living uneasily with the secrets inside my own family, avoiding them—my husband and father and sisters—with gentle words and polite skating around on the surface of our lives, and becoming aware of so many people outside our family stepping quietly to the other side of the road and looking the other way when we passed, I was rejoicing in the visible play of honest emotions on this man’s intelligent face.

 
          
“I’m joking, Master Hans,” I said gently.

           
His discomfiture was allowing me to feel mistress of the situation, so much so that I even dared to put a reassuring hand on his arm. I liked the feel of muscle under my hand, and the start he suppressed at my touch. “I’ve seen you in the street. I knew you were here.”

 
          
Another wave of crimson. His mouth opened again, gasping for air.

 
          
Was he realizing for the first time that I might have been watching him watching me from the street for all those months? My confidence was growing; I felt almost playful as I watched him.

 
          
“Last night, you mean?” he spluttered, and now it was suddenly my turn to feel heat sweep over my face and body. I’d forgotten last night. Or, if I hadn’t quite forgotten it, I’d never have expected him to bring it up to my face. “In Maiden Lane? Was that you?”

 
          
“I . . . Last night?” I said faintly, playing for time. “Maiden Lane?” It was in my mind to deny it. Pretending things weren’t happening was coming to seem quite natural. But the eyes fixed on me were full of knowledge. And it didn’t seem in the spirit of this meeting to hide from the truth completely.

 
          
“Heavens. Was it you who stopped me?” I asked, trying a light smile. “And there I was thinking it must be a footpad. I was so scared I ran away without even looking . . .” It sounded unconvincing.

           
We both remembered staring into each other’s eyes.

           
“I was coming back from mass at St. Paul’s,” I went on hesitantly, feeling my way toward the truth. That sounded weak too. So I blurted, in an embarrassed rush, “and I’d heard 
somewhere that you were living there, so I took a look . . .” I was mortified by the delighted understanding that was dawning on his face now.

 
          
“You came to see where I lived?” he said, completely failing to whisper, so loud that a man passing by with a bottle of oil turned to look at us.

 
          
“You did that?”

 
          
“Well, I was intrigued that you’d been living just down the road for a year and hadn’t come to call!” I answered, nettled enough to feel safer going on the attack.

 
          
He nodded his head, then shook it, and scuffed the toe of one big boot against another. “Yes,” he said, with shame written all over him. “I know. I can explain . . . but you must think . . . you know, Erasmus wanted me to come straightaway . . . but I wanted to set myself up first . . . get myself straight . . . so you’d admire what I’m making of myself.”

 
          
His English was better than before. He even had a slight London twang. And I saw he’d learned at least a touch of English hypocrisy too: he wasn’t going to mention Father’s downfall. I felt my heart melt at the transparency of his wish to steer clear of that painful subject and whether it had affected his plans to see us after he got back to England.

 
          
“But I’ve come now,” he said, eager as a puppy, and his face lightened.

 
          
He’d suddenly remembered something, whatever it was that had given him the courage to come back to the street outside my home. “I’ve come, and I’ve got something to show you. Something I’ve done. A picture I’m proud of. I think you’ll like it. I hope you’ll like it. And your father.” He paused. “And your husband, of course,” he added unwillingly.
 
He took a deep breath and stood up straight. “I want to invite you . . . all . . . to my 
lodgings to see it.”