The thought gave Smythe a sharp pang of anxiety. Friendship was probably the most that he could ever hope for with Elizabeth, although he longed with all his heart and soul for something more than that. But Shakespeare was right, she was too far above him. And if their relationship continued, she doubtless stood to lose far more than he did. The smart thing, the best thing, perhaps, would be for him to simply put her out of his mind, but what was simply said was not so simply done. Perhaps Shakespeare was right, he thought, and nothing good would come of it, but good or bad, either way, nothing would come of it at all if he did not go to her and beg for her forgiveness.
He hurried after her. A moment later, he lost sight of her among the stalls and tents, but then he caught a glimpse of green and spotted her again. She was moving quickly, purposefully it seemed, and he trotted after her. In his haste, he collided with someone and the man fell sprawling to the ground, landing flat on his back in a puddle of mud and horse manure that made a mess of his fine clothes.
“Your pardon,” Smythe said over his shoulder as he hurried to catch up with Elizabeth.
“Damn your eyes, you ruffian!” the man called after him, angrily. “Look what you’ve done! Come back here! Come back here at once, I said! Somebody stop that man!”
Smythe quickly put as much distance as possible between them, ducking between the stalls and tents. The last thing he needed now was to be taken for a thief, especially amongst this company! He could still hear the man blustering behind him, but he seemed to have made good his escape. Except that now, once again, he had lost sight of Elizabeth. He seemed to have come almost full circle around the fairground. He now found himself standing on the perimeter of the tents and stalls, among some carts and wagons. To his left, some thirty or forty yards away, were the wedding pavillions and the house. To his right, the field continued to slope away towards the pond and the road leading up to the house from the main thoroughfare. Behind him was the fairground, and further on, the river. And to his front ran the road, and beyond it, just below the house, were the gardens and the maze. And as the shadows of dusk lengthened, Smythe caught a glimpse of Elizabeth ’s green cloak billowing in the evening breeze, just before she disappeared from sight on the stone steps leading down to the gardens and the maze.
Once again, he felt tempted to call out to her, and once again, he hesitated. Where was she going? And what was she doing, going down to the gardens all alone at this hour? He frowned and started after her.
The sun was going down, and the merchants would soon be closing down their stalls until the morning, camping out with their goods or in their wagons. Already, he could see a few lanterns and torches being lit in the fairground behind him. It would not be long before it would grow dark. Smythe started to run.
He reached the top of the terraced steps from which he could look out over the garden below. As with his elegant manor home, Middleton had clearly spared no expense with his gardens. Even in the fading light, Smythe could see that a great deal of time and attention had been lavished on them. There were several garden plots spread out below in a circular pattern, each exquisitely laid out and painstakingly maintained. There were stone benches and ivy-covered bowers placed along gently curving flagstoned pathways. And just beyond the gardens, disappearing into the entrance to the tall and perfectly clipped hedges of the maze, was the billowing swirl of a cloak.
4
There could only be one reason why Elizabeth would be coming out to the gardens alone at this time of the evening, Smythe thought, and it was not to smell the flowers. She had come to meet someone. Why else make the pretence of going out to see the merchants’ stalls, only to circle round them and make her way clandestinely down to the gardens? As Smythe ran down the steps after her and along the garden pathways leading to the maze, anger and jealousy flared within him.
Was this why she had picked a fight with him at Paul’s? It had made quite a convenient excuse for her not to see him at the wedding of her friend. Now that he thought of it, he recalled that the first thing she had asked him then was if he would be coming with the Queen’s Men to the wedding celebration. And when she found out that he would, indeed, inconveniently be there, she had started an argument with him that gave her an excuse to walk out on him angrily. And after such a heated quarrel, what reason would he have to think that she would bother to find time for him while they were at the Middleton estate?
He stopped for a moment to catch his breath as he reached the entrance to the maze, and in that moment, his initial burst of anger, spent partially in his run down the steps and across the gardens, began to give way to hesitance and indecision. Just what, exactly, was he doing? After all, what right had he to feel jealous or possessive of Elizabeth? She was not his wife nor was she his betrothed. She was not even his lover. The truth of the matter was that they had no formal understandings between them of any sort, nor had they made any promises to one another. As Shakespeare had pointed out to him on more than one occasion, there could be no hope of any match between them. They had never even spoken of it. In truth, they had not spoken of anything that could define any relationship between them, other than simple friendship. So what, after all, was Elizabeth to him or he to Elizabeth?
Nevertheless, since he had helped her out of her predicament with an arranged marriage that she did not desire and that would, as it turned out in the end, have had her wed to an imposter and an enemy of England and thereby imperilled her very life, they had afterward contrived to see each other whenever the opportunity arose. Perhaps, thought Smythe, it was only gratitude or a sense of obligation that made her seek or at the very least tolerate his company, but even if they had spent their time merely strolling together or perusing the book stalls of St. Paul’s while making idle conversation, were those not assignations? Did he tell his friends-well, anyone else save Will-where he was going? Did she tell her friends or her parents? Or were not plausible stories invented on both sides so that they could be with one another? For that matter, Smythe thought, would they have argued as heatedly as they had if there had been no feelings of any sort between them, other than mere friendship?
No, there was something more there. From the first moment they had met, Smythe felt something pass between them, a sort of spark, a momentary incandescence that they had both acknowledged without ever speaking of it openly. They had flirted in a harmless sort of way, but beneath their witty badinage was a subtext of something more significant.
Infatuation, Shakespeare had called it. “Aye, ‘tis infatuation, nothing more,” he’d said. “ Tis much too innocent in its own way to call it lust, although I daresay it may come to that, should the two of you decide to stop acting like a coy pair of besotted children. However foolish it may be, there is an innocent sort of sweetness to it, but the world, I fear, does not long tolerate innocence and sweetness.”
Perhaps Elizabeth could no longer tolerate it, either, Smythe thought. Maybe she had found something that she could believe was not doomed to failure and frustration. And if she had found something… someone with whom she could have a future, then who was he, an impoverished ostler and sometime player, to deny her? He had nothing, nothing whatsoever to offer her.