Susannah looked at the light, and thought why it must be so, that her father would only come back to Stratford when it was too late, when she’d already grown up fatherless. Now, he’d come and be the gentleman of New Place, and draw everyone’s eyes in Stratford to his magnificence.
But Susannah remembered a childhood of much-mended skirts, of bare feet in cold weather, of scant food, of darkened rooms and, always, always, of longing for her father’s visits, for his presence.
She took her hand to her hair, the hair so much like her father’s had been—those thick, dark curls—only hers confined in a bun and worn beneath a proper bonnet, as befit a doctor’s wife.
Her attire was also what a doctor’s wife should wear—thick, clean, dark bodice and skirt over a high necked, long-sleeved shirt—and it molded her still-slender, spare figure gracefully enough, but modestly, bespeaking at once both her station in life and her husband’s strong puritan beliefs.
Coming from a house where religion had never been underscored, Susannah had to learn her husband’s ways, learn to accommodate to his manner of thinking. And perhaps that was right. Surely, that was why her father had encouraged her to marry doctor Hall, eight years her senior.
Her own parents were mismatched in age the other way, and where had that led? At least…. Susannah wrinkled her brow at the pouring rain outside, at the deserted street. At least her mother didn’t seem to mind his absences, but she was happy enough to have him near her now.
Just as Susannah was happy with John Hall. At that moment she caught a glimpse of him, the sound of hooves in the rainy street outside, and then of John dismounting by their garden gate up front, and John leading the horse around the side of the house to the stables and the stable boy who would attend to it.
Presently, John came in through the front door, into the dark-paneled hall of Hall Croft, where nothing but the well-made oak trunks and the two nicely crafted benches proclaimed the distinction of the inhabitants.
He removed his hat to reveal his short salt-and-pepper hair, that matched his chest-length beard, and hung from the wall peg the broad cloak that had protected his black suit.
Looking at Susannah, his blue eyes seemed to grow harder, more focused. This was ever the way, as he examined her, head to toe for a sign of the disarray, the madness, as John called it, that her family had carried and given to her. Drunk with her mother’s milk, John said, that slovenliness, that natural untidiness.
Usually, after John inspected her that way, his eyes would soften, and he would say something kind. Not this time. Having looked Susannah over, head to toe, he turned in silence, and closed the door upon the pouring rain, before looking at her again and asking, “Have you dinner for me?”
Susannah, confused, scared, wondering what she could have done to displease, mentally reviewed her clothing. It was clean and new, and she’d put her hair back so that not the smallest corkscrew of curl escaped the dark bonnet. She didn’t dare run her hands around the bonnet to verify its arrangement, and she didn’t dare, likewise, examine her other clothing.
Instead, she bowed and said, “By the fire. Take you a seat by the table, and I’ll serve you.”
Serve him she did and sat down in the dining room, across the dark, polished oak table from John’s patriarchal splendor. While he said grace upon his meal, he looked so like the gods depicted in the books her father probably shouldn’t have shown her—it probably wasn’t good for her soul—but had shown her, anyway, when she was just a child. Powerful, strong, protective. Like that god, it was with the thunderbolts.
He ate in silence, slicing his meat with his knife, and taking the ale when she refilled his cup.
He did not talk, until the food had been consumed and the table cleared, and then he sat, his broad, generous lips pursed in distaste.
“Have I done ought to displease?” Susannah asked, her voice trembling.
At that John sighed, and his eyes did soften for a moment. His strong, square hands clenched, one on the other, on the polished, dark oak table. “Your family,” he said.
He was silent a while, while she waited for the word of condemnation or reprieve. She had been so lucky to marry John. Oh, her father had money, but no more. That a man like John should have condescended to marry the daughter of a lowly actor and play maker. And yet, sometimes she felt as if her family were like a sword hung upon her head, ever ready to fall and destroy her marriage.
“Your sister’s unfortunate marriage,” John said, the word echoing off Susannah’s thoughts. “To a tavern keeper, and yet that isn’t all….”
Susannah’s heart clenched and she lowered her head to look at the pattern of the grain within the oak of the table. Judith’s marriage had been a point of contention for the two weeks since Judith had taken the liberty of marrying a tavern keeper seven years her junior and marrying him during Lent with no special dispensation. Thomas, Judith’s new husband, had got excommunicated for it, and would have had to fulfill painful penance indeed, safe his new father-in-law had intervened and paid a heavy fine on his behalf.
Such it always was, of course. Since Hamnet, the favored son, had died at eleven, Judith, his twin, had stepped into the void and received all of the affection. While Susannah, well-behaved Susannah got very little attention from her father, very little praise for her pains—as much, indeed, as the prodigal’s brother had ever got from his stern father.
If Susannah had run off and married a tavern keeper, she’d have been disowned faster than thought could turn upon the word.
She saw John look at her clenched hands, and shook her head, then raised properly penitent eyes to her husband. “Is there worse?” she asked. “About my poor sister and her unfortunate match?” Susannah herself had avoided going out into the market for these two weeks, and her stern look had stopped any gossip on the serving wench’s lips.
John nodded. “There’s the babe.”
“The babe?” Had Judith delivered herself of a babe only two weeks after marriage? Susannah felt her cheeks color. Well she knew that she, herself, had been born only five months after her parents marriage. Well she knew what was on John’s mind, even when he didn’t mention it. But must Judith bring it home to her, now, the shame of her birth? She stared at John feeling as if the house, with its broad architrave, its dark paneled walls, the clean rushes on the floor, the broad hearths, as if all of it might come crashing down around her head, any moment.
“Margaret Wheeler’s babe. The poor wretch died giving birth to it, and she accused your new brother in law, Thomas, as the father.”
“Oh,” Susannah said, unable to say more. She felt cold, polluted. There had never been such dealings in the Hall family. Would John set her aside as unworthy, tainted with her sister’s crime?
Susannah looked at John’s blue eyes, his salt-and-pepper hair, his well-trimmed beard, his strong features. She didn’t think she could bear it, if he left her.
“Well…. Well….” John seemed to soften at her true horror. “Don’t distress yourself with it, good wife. Your father is, even as we speak, changing his will, so that she will not get the equal portion of yours, rather a meager one. And his plate, that should have been hers, shall go to our Elizabeth.” He looked up, his gaze disturbed. “Your father is not an ill man, despite his past sins. His very prosperity is a sign of God’s favor, and God doesn’t favor the wicked. But as for Judith…. It’s just that I find it hard, sometimes, to see the wicked prosper like the green bay tree.”
Susannah nodded, feeling truly grateful for John’s compassion and understanding.