The Diary of William Shakespeare, Gentleman by Jackie French Page A

white above it, and then green eyes and grinning mouth. She dropped a curtsey, while I gaped like a bullock who has seen a hayrick appear where there had been none.
    â€˜No wonder, sir, but certainly a maid.’
    I gazed at her. Was she beautiful? Black hair, white skin, slim fingers that had known no more work than with a needle and, it seemed, a pen. My memory gives me not her face, but the glow of her — a sun that lit up my whole heart. Yet even then, at that first throat-clenching glimpse, I managed words. Every word I had spoken or written before seemed bronze to the true gold she called from my soul now.
    â€˜You are a muse of fire whose flames reach the very treetops of invention.’
    The light dimmed from her face. ‘Or, as my father used to say, a maid who writes is as a crowing hen, and neither are wanted in any man’s household.’
    â€˜You write your words as well as speak them?’
    â€˜I do, sir.’
    I looked again at her slim fingers and saw the telltale smudge of ink on the second finger. She saw me looking, glanced at my hands and saw the same stain there, on the same writer’s finger, like birthmarks, linking us forever.
    Her smile fluttered again. ‘I am Judyth Marchmant, daughter of the late Emmett Marchmant, Esquire.’
    I knew of him. He had died two years before; a wool merchant, wealthy, the kind of man my father aspired to be. I should have known his daughter; I had seen her in church a hundred times, but not like this. At church, her head was bent under her veil, as dutiful and gentle as any daughter. Here, beneath the tree, her hair uncovered, her cheeks red from the wind, she was a muse of flame and starlight sent to catch me.
    My thoughts whirled like Ariel girdling the world. ‘How came you to write?’
    â€˜I boarded at school in France for three years. The sisters there follow the rule that a girl shall not just read books but should write as well.’
    France meant a Roman school, but not that her family was papist, for it was well known that the best schools for girls were French. If this enchantress’s merchant father had wished her to marry to a high estate, she would need to learn the arts of a lady: French with a courtly accent, and dancing, fine embroidery, and writing too. Well might he have hoped that a girl so lovely might have caught a young noble’s eye, especially if she were well dowered with a rich merchant’s coin. And yet — for which I sent a silent prayer of thanks — Judyth had not married. Her father’s death and a year of mourning would have stopped any betrothal negotiations, for she must be no more than sixteen.
    A sixteen-year-old girl under a beech tree with an eighteen-year-old youth. I saw the moment when sherealised that even if we were twin souls in words, we were also man and maid. If any should see us here together, it would be her ruin.
    She said abruptly, ‘I must go.’
    â€˜Nay, stay for just a minute. Will I see you again? Hear your words again?’
    â€˜How in this small puddle of a town will we not meet?’
    She vanished in a swish of leaves and skirts. She had not even asked my name.
    Dinner: duck, roasted, with sharp grape sauce; chicken and beef, stewed in strong black beer, with mustard, which Dr Hall commends to suit my constitution; a pie of eels; turnips with cheese and chestnuts; elderflower cheese tart; fritters of milk. Second course: saddle of mutton with Italian sauce; salletting; stewed worts; a rhubarb tart, which Dr Hall believes will also suit me; olives; nuts; apples; raisins of the sun; a malmsey wine to drink.
    Bowels: improved, and I expect them sound once more after the beef in mustard, and rhubarb.

Monday, 2nd November 1615, All Souls’ Day
    This morning my wife complained again of the toothache. Or rather, she did not complain but made the whole house know of her pain by sighs and holding a warm compress to her cheek. I did not say,