Read Online The Tutor by Andrea Chapin - Free Book Online Page B

rhymes.” He took the roll of Sidney’s sonnets from his belt and handed them to Katharine. “I have no more use for these.”
    “The envy you wear upon your sleeve does not become you,” she said. “Find a glass and gaze at the image there.”
    “‘Oh no, her heart is such a citadel, / So fortified with wit, stored with disdain, / That to win it, is all the skill and pain . . .’ Dear lady, to write that is all the pain and no skill.”
    He seemed to have read all one hundred and eight sonnets and memorized a good portion of them, though he’d only had them for less than three days. She’d heard of people who read something once and held pictures of every single word in their mind, so they could recall not only lines but whole poems without ever having to study them again. Perhaps he was one of those.
    He chuckled. “Sidney vexes me. A few stanzas inspire envy, yes, but sonnet after sonnet of eyes beaming and gleaming. Oh, and the dreary repetition of ‘Stella’s rays’ and the dull ‘two stars in Stella’s face.’” He paused and looked into Katharine’s eyes. “Could he not think of a better image for beautiful eyes? Something to do with heaven, perhaps? His pen too often marks with ‘dribbed shot,’ to steal a phrase from the master himself. ‘Desire, mire, sake, slake, same, shame’ . . . come, now, even I could do better than that. Love and virtue, love and virtue . . . up and down, a seesaw, again and again, how tedious.”
    “Then do it.” She glared at him.
    “What?”
    “Have you ever tried to write a sonnet? Have you one hundred and eight tucked under your bed? Or perhaps they are the stuffing of which your bed is made!”
    “I certainly have written . . .” He put his blade in his belt. He stared at her, his eyes steady. “I—”
    “Oh, I mustn’t forget,” she continued. “You are the self-anointed poetof mankind. Do you actually put those quills to paper, or do you just spend your hours carving up feathers and poets alike, poets who have created whole books, whole worlds?” All of a sudden she felt faint and leaned against the tree. “The smoke . . .” she began but did not finish.
    He moved to her, but she put her hands up to stop him from coming closer.
    “’Tis nothing,” she said, straightening herself and walking to a stone bench. She was mortified that she and this glove-maker’s son were in plain sight, for the windows of the household above were prime seats for viewing. She wished she’d never ventured down from the library.
    “Where did you come by your learning?” he said when she was seated. He remained on foot.
    It was the first time she’d heard the tutor utter a word that did not sound choreographed, and she was as much taken aback by what he said, that he had asked about her, as by his tone, which had lost its edge and was gentle.
    “Sir Edward,” she said, her eyes filling with tears. If her uncle were at the hall, she would have leaned on his warmth to shield her from the man who stood before her.
    Shakespeare nodded. “Sir Edward was a scholar. The walls lined with books, which I have started to plunder. I thought a father, or a brother, or a husband had sat you down with a hornbook.”
    “Sir Edward is a scholar. He is still with us, though for a time abroad.”
    One black crow landed in the garden, and then another and another. It wasn’t the rooks, for they hadn’t returned, but carrion crows, their beaks black and stout. Shakespeare waved his arms at the cackling tribe and shooed them away.
    “And no one sat me down with anything,” Katharine said.
    “How came you to live at Lufanwal?” he asked, sitting on the bench next to her.
    “I was brought as a child, when my parents and my brother and sister perished. I married and moved five leagues from here. My husband died and I returned. ’Tis not a complicated history.”
    “A child robbed of parents is always complicated—a hollow in the heart that endures. The