Page 92 of The Two Wills

“Thank you,” I say, wiping my nose. “You have been most kind.”

“Look at you,” he says, smiling. “Your face has barely been altered since last I saw you. What sorcery is this?”

“Careful.” I laugh bitterly before blowing my nose. “These fools might think you’re serious and accuse me of being a witch—again. In truth, I think my skin does not wrinkle because I do not paint it with boiled egg whites or ceruse as your English women do to keep their skin snow white.”

“Well, you’ve remained as beautiful as ever. A pox on their plastered faces.”

There is a prick at my heart—it is done with an old needle I did not know still existed. Despite his kindness, and my sentimental state, dark memories visit me all of a sudden. I recall how this man, who had just been so kind, had once played with my heart so ungenerously, how he made me a secondary character in my own life, how he had written those shameful things about me in those secret verses of his. Before I can stop my mouth, I say, “I suppose I am happy with my ‘dun-colored’ skin as you so vividly described it so long ago. And how did you call my hairs in that pretty sonnet—‘black wires’?”

I hate that I allowed myself to speak so bitterly, for in truth, as soon as I’ve finished uttering those words I understand that I do not truly feel any malice toward him now. The darkness was but a momentary lapse. He truly helped me with that sweet memory of my husband, and now he looks so hurt by my stab. Moreover, I should feel grateful that my mind is, at last, having a respite from its widowed misery. Even the rekindling of my bitterness is a balm of a sort.

For several breaths we stand there awkwardly, wondering what to do next. What does one say to a past lover, when you are uncertain if they ever truly loved you at all? When you’ve frozen their meaning in your mind, positioning them like some carved statue of malfeasance that one can be grateful to no longer care about? Blind hatred for a lost love can be freeing when its opposite—unrequited love—is the most painful. But, in truth, as I stare at him in this moment, I feel a profound gratitude that I truly no longer long for him. Yes, yes, it’s true; all that awful, gut-wrenching desire is gone. In truth, I am feeling a deep affection for him, like one feels affection for anyone who so strongly has shaped what one has become.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I shouldn’t have brought up that sonnet. I suppose I had some vestigial bitterness. But it’s gone now.”

“It is a compliment that you remembered the words of my sonnets at all.” He smiles. “I’m sorry if I wounded you. I was merely being a poet and trying to express my own torment—that youthful belief that one can write anything with impunity.”

“But what if someone reads those poems and takes them at their word? What will they think of me?”

“If they do ever read them, I think the poems prove I did love you in my way, and that you were a very witty and beautiful woman with whom I was overwhelmed. However, if you wish it, I will tear those sonnets to pieces and burn them.”

Do I want him to destroy those many sordid sonnets he wrote for me? How he described me so terribly, defamed my complexion and my character, wrote of how I seduced the youth away from him like some concupiscent harlot? As if I were the only one at fault? Do I truly want all of England to think of me as some outrageous beauty who had such a dark and unseemly power to cause men to go insane with desire?

“Keep them as they are,” I say, feigning indifference. “It’s probably best.”

“As you wish,” he says. “To be honest, I wasn’t sure if you recognized me when I called out your name, and if you did …” He lowers his voice. “Whether you might only feel bitterness for all that had transpired between us.”

“As if I could.” I shake my head and smile.

“We had a time, didn’t we?”

“We did,” I say. “Though it was far more than sport for me. You remember that too, don’t you?”

“I do,” he says. “Neither was it merely sport to me. There were times I hoped it was, but it wasn’t. It was far too intense at times, and so complicated with …” He doesn’t finish his thought. I believe he fears it might hurt me if he says the name out loud.

“Hughes?” I ask.

He nods. I can still see the pain in his eyes. I have misjudged that it is only women who hold so tightly to the anguish of lost love.