Free Portrait of an Unknown Woman by Vanora Bennett

he often did—he always transported whatever roomful of watchers he’d gathered around him into a quite unexpected state of pure, joyful merriment. He wasn’t exactly laughing now, as I slipped into the room behind John Clement. He and Dame Alice were sitting on two high-backed chairs, surrounded by a standing crowd of soft-faced admirers with stars in their eyes, and the pair of them were struggling to overcome Father’s tone deafness and make their disobedient lutes obey them.
                 Father’s magic worked as powerfully on me as it did on everyone else.
                 Glancing around past all the usual family faces and the stolid features of Master Hans, I saw he’d brought the Rastells and the Heywoods home with him, and John Harris, his bow-backed confidential clerk, and Henry Pattinson, his fool, fat and shambling behind them, and in the shadows John Wood, his personal servant, who was probably tutting adoringly in his corner over the state of the master’s muddy old shoes, sticking out beneath his robe. The sight of Father emptied my mind of all my rebellious thoughts. With him here, the household was complete. The dusky room was lit up with more than candles. The warmth came from more than just the fire blazing in the grate. Like everyone else, I was ready to forget everything and just revel in the effortless happiness that came from enjoying watching him enjoying himself.
                 Until, that is, I sensed a shiver run down the back of the man in front of me. From where I was standing, I couldn’t see John’s expression. But, with sudden protective anxiety, I became aware of Father glancing up from the frets under his left hand and, for the first time, taking in the bearded face of his uninvited guest.
                 Father didn’t miss a beat. With his hand still moving on the fingerboard, he held John’s gaze for a moment, inclined his head in the merest sketch of a courtly bow, and murmured, in his softest voice, “John.” The   smile stayed on his lips. Then he turned his eyes down, back to his difficult music.
                It had been no more than a greeting. But I felt John flinch, as if he’d been hit. He was shifting uneasily on his feet now, glancing back at the door, clearly longing to be off.
                 After the music finally dissolved into applause, Father got up with the lute still in his hand. I was certain he was about to make his way toward us. I stepped aside, stealing a glance up at John’s face and reading the pale signs of guilt on it.
                 Yet Father didn’t part the crowd of acolytes to approach John. He had too much of a sense of occasion. He was turning now to the delighted Master Hans, and apologizing for the poor musical entertainment—“But I assure you something better will follow,” he was saying, and John Rastell, my uncle the printer, and his son-in-law John Heywood were visibly quivering with secret knowledge of what that would be—and within minutes we were being organized into the impromptu performance of a play, and transported back into the carefree atmosphere of a family evening in the old days.
                 “Let’s do The Play Called the Four PP !” young John More, excited and puppyish, was calling out. John Heywood’s play, written long after John Clement went away, had been a family favorite for years—a satire on the trade in false relics by mendacious traveling monks. Young John was waving his goblet of Canary wine, and his grin was almost splitting the child’s face, which now seemed far too small for his ever-growing body. “We could use this as the wedding cup of Adam and Eve! . . . And this”—he picked up a trinket box, loving the joke—“as the great toe of the Trinity!” But the older Johns shushed him. They’d clearly agreed in advance what we’d be acting—and opted for no religion—because it was only a matter of moments