“He is not here, and dusk is fast upon us,” Susanna said. “I say he will not come.”
“I wonder what my brother will think of the impertinent daughters he hath raised,” Joan said.
“He raised us not,” Susanna said hotly, and on the same breath Judith cried out, “At least we do not trick ourselves out like—”
“Let us not quarrel,” I said, putting myself between them and their aunt. “We all are tired and vexed with worry that it is so late. Good Sister Joan, I had forgot to tell you. A gift hath come from him this very day. A gilt-and-silver bowl. ’Tis on the table in the hall.”
“Gilt?” Joan said.
“Aye, and silver. A broad bowl for the punch. I will with thee to see it.”
“Let us go down, then,” she said, rising from the chest with a great sound, like a gallows in a wind. I picked the coverlid up.
“They’ve come!” Elizabeth shouted. She burst into the room, the hood of her cloak flung back from her hair and her cheeks as red as apples. “Four of them! On horses!”
Joan pressed her hands to her bosom momently, then adjusted her ruff. “What does he look like, Bess?” she asked the little girl. “Doth he be very changed?”
Elizabeth gave her an impatient glance. “I never saw him ere this. I know not even which one he is.”
“Four of them?” Judith said. “Be the others young?”
“I told thee,” Elizabeth said, stamping her little foot. “I know not which is which.” She tugged at her mother’s sleeve. “Come!”
Susanna plucked a feather from my cap. “Mother … ?” she said.
I stood, the coverlid still held against me like a shield. “The bed’s not yet made,” I said.
“Marry, I’ll not leave my brother ungreeted,” Joan said. She gathered her skirts. “I’ll go down alone.”
“No!” I said. I lay the coverlid over the end of the bedstead. “We must all go together,” I seized Elizabeth’s hand and let her run me down the stairs ahead of them, that Joan might not reach the door before me.
• • •
“Now I remember me,” he said. “I left the bowl to Judith. What was bequeath’d to Joan?”
“Thy clothes,” I said smilingly. “You said ’twould keep her silent as she walked.”
“Ay, she is possessed of strange and several noises of roaring, shrieking, howling, jingling chains.…” He took my hand. His own was dry and rough as his night smock, and hot as fire. “Silent. She must keep silent. I should have left her something more.”
“The will bequeaths her twenty pounds a year and the house on Henley Street. You have no need of purchasing her silence. She knows naught.”
“Aye, but what if she, seeing my cold corpse, should on a sudden realize?”
“What talk is this of corpses?” I said, pulling my hand vexatiously away. I pulled the sheet to cover him. “You had too merry a meeting with thy friends, and now a little fever. You’ll soon be well again.”
“I was sick when I came,” he said. “How long ago it seems. Three years. I was sick, but you made me well again. I am so cold. Is’t winter?”
I wished for John to come. “ ’Tis April. It is the fever makes thee cold.”
“ ’Twas winter when I came, do you remember? A cold day.”
“Aye, a cold day.”
He had sat still on his horse. The others had dismounted, the oldest and broadest of them doubled, his hands to his knees, as though to catch his breath, the younger ones rubbing their hands against the cold. A white dog ran about their legs, foolishly barking. The young men had sharp beards and sharper faces, though their clothes bespoke them gentlemen. The one who was the master of the dog, if he could be called so, had on a collar twice wider than Joan’s, the other a brown cap with russet feathers stolen from a barnyard cock.
“I should not have plucked the feather from your cap, Mother,” Susanna whispered. “It is the fashion.”
“Oh, look,” Joan said, squeezing through the door. “He hath not changed a bit!”
“Which one is my grandfather?” Elizabeth said, her little hand clasped to mine.
They turned to look at us, the feathered one with a face canny as a fox’s, the collared one with a gawking gaze. The bent man stood with a groan that made the dog run at him. His doublet was quilted and puffed as to make him look twice as broad as his own girth. “Come, come, Will,” he said, turning to look at him still on his horse, “we’ve come to the wrong house. These ladies are too young and fair to be thy family.”
Joan laughed, a screeching sound like the cackle of a hen.
“Is he the one on the horse?” Elizabeth said, squeezing my numbed hand and jumping up and down.
“You did not tell me that he was so well-favored, Mother,” Judith said in my ear.
He handed down a metal chest behind him. The round man gave it to the feathered one and put a hand up to help him dismount. He came down off the horse oddly, grasping the quilted shoulder with one hand, the horse’s neck with the other, and heaving himself over and down on his left leg. He stepped forward, stiff-gaited, watching us.
“See how he limps!” Joan cried.
I could not feel the wind, e’en though it bellied his short cloak and Elizabeth’s hair. “Which one is my grandfather?” she said, fairly dancing in her impatience.
I would have made her answer, but I could not speak nor move. I only stood, quiet as a statue, and looked at him. He looked older even than I, the hair half-gone on the crown of his head. I had not thought him to look so old. His face was seamed with lines that gave it a sadness of demeanor, as if he had endured many November’s blasts. A winter’s face, sad and tired but not unkind, and that I had not thought it to be either.
The round-bellied gentleman turned to us and smiled. “Come, ladies, well met,” he said with a merry, booming voice that conquered the wind. “I was long upon the road from London and thought not to find such fair ladies at the end of it. My name is Michael Drayton. And these two gentlemen are Gadshill”—he pointed at the one with the ruff, then at the fox—“and Bardolph. Two actors they, and I a poet and lover of fair ladies.” His voice and manner were merry, but he looked troubledly from Joan to me and back again. “Come, tell me your names and which of you his wife and which his daughters, that I speak not amiss.”
“Come, Mother, speak and bid them welcome,” Judith whispered, and nudged at my elbow, but still I could not speak nor move nor breathe.
He moved not either, though Master Drayton looked at him. I could not read his face. Was he dismayed, or vexed, or only weary?
“If you’ll not greet him, I shall,” Joan whispered, bending her head to me with a snapping sound. She stretched her arms toward them. “Welcome—”
I stepped down off the porch. “Husband, I bid thee welcome,” I said, and kissed him on his lined cheek. “I could not speak at first, my husband, so struck was I to see thee after such an absence.” I took his arm and turned to Master Drayton. “I bid thee welcome, too, and thee, and thee,” I said, nodding to the young men. The ruffed one wore now a silly grin, though the one with the feathers looked foxy still. “ ’Tis a poor country welcome we have to give, but we’ve warm fires and hot supper and soft beds.”
“Aye, and pretty maids,” Drayton said. He took my hand and kissed it in the French fashion. “I think that I will stay the winter long.”
I smiled at him. “Come then, we’ll out of the cold,” I said.
“How looks he, Mother?” Susanna whispered to me as I passed. “Find you him very changed?”
“Aye, very changed,” I said.
“I have bequeathed naught to Drayton,” he said. “I should have done.”
“There is no need,” I said, laying a cool cloth on his brow. “He is thy friend.”