Page 11 of Love, Will

After a few minutes, I could not stand the silence and my state of nonexistence, so I had to ask. “What am I supposed to do now?”

“Go away,” she uttered the words without looking in my direction.

So I stopped walking, my legs instinctively listening to her order.

Anne Hathaway kept on following the road towards her house, while I remained in the dark, watching her leave.

Thus grew the obsession of a child, which I was at a time with a mature, untamable woman. Since that impartial kiss that was almost perverse in an angelic way, I swore to myself not to rest until I met Anne again and showed her what I, myself, was unsure of by now, that I knew how to kiss a lady properly. I laid awake at night and was haunted by the easiness she gave her lips away with, like it was merely a means to cast me aside and scare me into vanishing.

I was determined to meet her again and earn her trust, so that I could once again find myself alone with the woman and attack her lips with the kiss I kept on imagining during many wakeful nights.

The next time I laid eyes upon her would be in church, but this time, she sat in the front along with members of her family. I was surprised to find her there, since she had missed almost a lifetime of occupying her rightful place. Talking to mother on the way home, I found out they used to attend the Shottery church, but had swapped to the Stratford one, after the family had helped with repairs and were granted the honorific front bench.

“Coin is heavy in the Hathaway family,” she added, winking at me before she opened the door to welcome us into the house.

The change of church was ignored by everyone, as the swap did not look curious in their eyes, but I knew what Anne was after. She wanted to haunt me, bring me to the edge of a cliff before making me beg to not be dropped. During mass, she kept looking at me instead of acting like we both knew what she was not, a submissive woman. Whenever I turned my eyes to her, she would gaze elsewhere, as if she wasn’t even aware of my existence in the first few rows. This was a game the woman definitely knew how to play and I had become a pawn, bending at her will.

So I decided to stop playing because I recognized my non-existent chance of winning. I had kissed a few girls before, but all my age or younger. We used to meet in town or during my glove deliveries and we would sometimes walk together or run in the fields. They liked me and I liked them, so much that I was not at all inexperienced in carnal pleasures. But Anne was not one of those girls. She was a woman who clearly had a purpose I could not read.

Notwithstanding, fate did not allow me to dwell in the sorrow of my unsuccess as Anne and I met the next day in the market. I was on my way to tutoring while she spent the afternoon buying ribbons. I saw her and took a moment to admire her beauty. The black bonnet was replaced with a white one, but the black dress remained. It made her brown eyes shine in a way that was almost golden. I approached her but went through a back alley, making sure that when I turned to face her, she had no other choice but to acknowledge my presence.

“Miss Hathaway, good day to you.” I appeared out of nowhere, forcing her to look me straight in the eye.

“Hello.” She seemed to think about my title or how to properly address me.

“William, ma’am. William Shakespeare.” I smiled.

To my surprise, she smiled back.

“Will you walk me home, William?”

I knew I would be late for tutoring and possibly lose the payment for the day, but I could not say no to her tricky offering. We both knew something important was about to happen.

“Of course, it would be my pleasure,” I said eagerly and proceeded to walk next to her. This time, the pace was slow, both of us enjoying the lovely day of March, the sun was not something we would often see, especially this early in the spring.

We walked quietly until we left the market and town square behind. The road took us towards the church and we paraded through the gardens for more than half an hour to her house.

“Thank you for the dates, they were delicious.” She broke the silence right after we passed the church.

“Of course, it was my pleasure, Miss Hathaway,” I clumsily replied.

“Please call me Anne.”

“It was my pleasure, Anne.” I immediately jumped at the opportunity and pronounced her name with triumph.

She looked at me and smiled. She was beautiful.

I smiled back.

We filled the journey talking about the gloves she ordered, my role in delivering, the tutoring I did in various wealthy houses, and her chores in the family. When she spoke, she did it with confidence, holding my gaze and using decisive phrases. Anne was not the kind of woman to be easily intimidated or shied into doing something she did not want or agree with. She was strong willed and determined.

Without realising, we were already in front of her house. She stopped and turned towards me, since I was unsure what to do next, then looked at me, expectant.

I gazed back at her, acting like an idiot who never took a girl home.

“Go on, don’t be shy.” The woman smirked very sweetly, understanding what she had done to me all this time. The tortured nights she had made me suffer through. All of it, to prepare me for this moment.

“Go on...what?” I asked, confused.

---