Free Love's Will by Meredith Whitford

doing?”
    “Counting the money.”
    “So early?”
    “Why not?”
    He shrugged and turned over again. Anne stared at his bare, well-muscled back and thought how much she would like to plunge a knife into it.
    “Will. The players are in town today. The Queen’s Men.”
    “So?”
    “So we can afford to go to the play. I have asked Joan to mind the children. Three hours to ourselves, seeing a play.”
    “I don’t want to go. Save the money.”
    “Keep your voice down or you’ll wake the children.”
    Too late. A thud, the patter of tiny feet, and the curtains at the foot of the bed parted on a shining morning face surrounded by russet curls.
    “Good morning, Susanna.”
    “Good morning, Mama. Is Daddy awake?”
    “Yes,” Anne said meanly, and four-year-old Susanna scrambled up the bed beside her father.
    “Dad-dee.”
    “I’m asleep.”
    “No you’re not ’cause you’re talking. Tell me a story.”
    “It’s too early. God, it’s barely dawn. No story.”
    “I’ll wait till you’re awake.” Susanna snuggled into the middle of the bed between them. She had her father twisted around her little finger, and knew it. They tried to be strict with her and not let her grow spoiled, but she was so clever and pretty, and they loved her so desperately. She looked like William, she had his shape of face, his hazel eyes, his red-brown hair. Nothing about her was Anne’s.
    “Susanna,” said Anne, “would you like to go and see a play today?” William’s eyes snapped open.
    “What’s a play?”
    “It’s when a lot of people act out a story on a stage, in pretty costumes.”
    “I want to go.”
    “Good. You and I shall go; Daddy doesn’t want to.”
    “Why not?”
    “Ask him.”
    “Daddy?”
    “Oh, very well, we’ll go and see the play. But you’ll have to sit very still and quietly, Susanna.”
    “I will. The twins can’t come too, can they? They’re too little.”
    “Much too little.”
    “You’ve woken them,” William said resignedly, as again came the thud and patter and the flinging aside of the bed curtains. The two small faces that peered in were identical and blended their parents’ features, but Hamnet had Anne’s dark hair and brows and her dove-grey eyes, while Judith took after William’s mother with blue eyes and fair hair. The twins were, this July, two years and five months old, and had an infinite capacity for noise.
    Well-trained, they said a polite good morning, then bounced onto the bed. “Daddy tell us a story,” Hamnet said confidently.
    “Too early.”
    “He’s been awake for a long time,” said Susanna.
    “And I must get up,” Anne said, and swept all the money but two shillings back into the bag and locked it away. “Daddy will tell you a very quick story then you must go and wash and dress for breakfast.”
    It was going to be a hot day. The dawn mist had already burned off and the sky had the hard, clear look of intense sunshine ahead. Anne disliked summer in a town, the heat held in by the crowding houses, the air muggy and over-used; perhaps it was time to spend a few days at Hewlands Farm. Five years of respectable marriage, and the children, had improved matters between Anne and her stepmother. The children loved going to the farm. They had cousins there now, for Anne’s brother Bartholomew had also made up his differences with their stepmother and brought his wife Isabel back. They had two babies now. Anne’s sister Catherine had been less lucky; none of her children had lived. Idly planning as she dressed, Anne listened to the rise and fall of her husband’s voice as he told a story – from the odd word she could catch she thought it was a version of The Odyssey .
    Five years ago this month she had first met William Shakspere, just home from the north, and he had come to call on her and had told her old cousin that same story. Poor cousin Agnes had survived to see Susanna christened, and then had faded away as gently and undemandingly as she