He thought he’d be in love before, but he was quite wrong. He knew that now.
Donne leant against a stone pillar in the shadows of the Great Hall, glass of wine in hand, apparently laconically surveying the elaborately masked dancers in their extravagant costumes moving in the bright candlelight.
Abutting the palace of Whitehall, the grand riverside mansion, York House, was en fete tonight. Torches flamed at the main entrance on the bank of the River Thames to welcome revellers arriving by boat.
There had been an entertainment earlier, a masque play, in which the younger family members of the party had performed, wearing masks and fanciful outfits suitable for their characters as they recited and sang their interlude.
Donne had been in the audience, a spectator of this exclusively aristocratic masquerade, a watcher not a participant, as always. By now, further guests had swelled the numbers in the hall, the musicians struck up and the dancing began. By choice, he withdrew, deliberately an observer on the edges of society.
He only had eyes for one slight figure twirling in the throng. She might be masked and in costume from the earlier masque but she was instantly recognisable to him. His heart missed a beat every time he sensed her presence.
Every so often, she dared to glance towards him from beneath her mask, and the darts of pure love he felt from her, for him alone, quickened his pulse. It was as though their souls soared above the melee, meeting in their own rhapsody, echoing the patterns of the dancers below. ‘A fine Metaphysical conceit,’ he thought to himself, smiling wryly.
His patron, Sir Thomas Egerton, the host of this splendid gathering, nodded to him from the dais with his new, third wife, and Donne made his bow, like an obedient junior diplomat should, not giving away an inkling of his feelings. If that important man, a senior member of the governing Privy Council to the elderly, failing Queen Elizabeth, would guess that his niece, a great lady in her own right, had a tendre for his secretary of dubious background then Donne would be bodily thrown out in an inkling and the doors barred behind him. And more importantly, he would lose his Ann forever.
‘When did she become his Ann?’ he thought. Following his return to London from abroad, two years ago, he had concentrated on his diplomatic career, despite the stain of his Roman Catholic family colouring his prospects. However mixed his private feelings might be about his faith, publicly, he had to make his way in the world. So Donne had been grateful to be shielded in the service of a great statesman and start to be able to make a name for himself in court circles.
For his own political survival, he had ignored the Egertons’ female relatives; pretty, noble young women of marriageable age, who seemed to constantly visit, enlivening the public rooms of the great house with their chatter and laughter. Not that they paid much attention to him, just the odd curious gaze or a stifled flirtatious giggle at the presence of a young man not of their entourage. But gradually, Ann had become more than a face in the youthful crowd. His initial liking and respect for her had grown to much deeper feelings over the past months.
Her intelligence, her wit, her warmth, her very way of being had worn down his reserve and warnings of self-preservation. What was a glittering career if he could not be with her? This was the conundrum he faced.
He withdrew a little further into the shadows, the pillars shielding him like a cloister. It seemed fit in this ancient building, of ecclesiastical origin, imbued with the invocations of long-dead monks, to pray to his God. But, unlike those unworldly, cowled brothers, he did not pray for redemption or self-denial, for his God was a reflection of his own spirit, complex, passionate and tempestuous. Silently, he sent up a heartfelt, soul-deep plea that he did not have to part from Ann.
He opened his eyes, still shaken by the depth of his turmoil. As he watched the whirling couples, the elaborate patterns of their dance echoing that of courtship and seduction, he remembered his past. He had gone through those rites of passage, the normal difficult pangs that accompanied the enjoyment of love affairs; including jealousy, frustration and rejection. But compared to how he felt now, in retrospect, these past loves were simple, merely attraction and pleasure going hand in hand, mouth on mouth, body to body.
Donne recollected the celebrated poetry he had written about his amours. Nights of lovemaking in a favourite courtesan’s bed, waking with the sun streaming through the bed curtains as the lady’s luxuriant, unbound hair streamed across the pillows. Then that the heat of a second awakening to mutual passion, seeking fulfilment in his mistress's warm, writhing body, thrusting between a pair of willing wide-parted thighs. Encouraged as she moaned his name and clutched at his back. Eagerly meeting thrust for thrust in an explosive release together in a bright sunbeam of delight.
He had assumed, in his ignorance, that was all it could be, that love was an uncomplicated physical exchange. But this affair, reaching the deepest chambers of his being, was quite different. Even his initial intimacies with Ann had not been so much about sensual gratification, at least not at first, but a meeting of minds, of feelings.
He remembered the occasion earlier this year when he came across her in a corridor of this great palace, his arms full of papers and books for his master and had seen her crying and alone. Her aunt, Egerton’s second wife, was dying and Ann’s genuine, raw grief touched him.
He had stopped briefly, said no more than a few kind words, just to give a little passing comfort. The next time he saw her, this time in a crowd of young women, he had expected to be ignored, her momentary vulnerability to an underling put aside, but her eyes had sought him out and she smiled her thanks.
As he surveyed the dancers, the music came to its end and he saw Sir Thomas looking for him. Not showing any sign of his inner reluctance, he came out into the gathering. The music struck up again, and Sir Thomas gave him a discreet nod to join the revels and make himself useful.
He dipped his head in assent, had a sip of good wine for fortification and ventured out of the gloom to join the glittering throng. His feet moved as the music commanded and he wryly noted that his progress echoed the dance of love he had been mulling on.
Moving in the formal patterns of rehearsed shapes, he had partners who smiled, partners who frowned, partners who ignored him because he was beneath their notice, partners who didn’t see him as they were too busy trying to attract the attention of another.
But Ann, his paramour, could barely look at him at all, even through her shielding mask, in case her eyes showed her naked love for him. Although she avoided his glance, he felt no rejection, no sense of doubt, just a pang of his own heart for her carefully covered emotions.
They came together tentatively in the dance and were parted after only a few seconds. Donne found that he lived for the moment when the music would bring them back together again, if only briefly. Her delicate beauty dazzled him.
He wondered what on earth she saw in him.
Other women had found his dark good looks attractive, he knew. And he had the air of a clever, witty, poet and self-made man who had seen military action and had buccaneering adventures overseas. But, despite these modest charms, he knew well he was no match for an heiress. Ann was the relative of important families and the daughter of a great man. From birth, she was destined to marry well and cement the careers and coffers of her family.
How could it be that she wanted only him? He felt great humility that he had been so showered with her affection. A rare and precious gift indeed.
As their initial, brief and coincidental meetings had grown over the past months to snatched and pre-planned assignations, so their initially courteous words between strangers had grown to those of love.
Donne was keenly aware that although his lady was young in years, she was not naïve in the ways of the world. She knew her own worth, did Ann. She might be only sixteen, but she had a keenness of mind that matched his own.
She was fully aware of the courtly dance of preferment, of marriages arranged, of alliances forged between ambitious and well-established families. Yet she was prepared to rebel and throw this all away. And for him, a social non-entity. A mere struggling courtier from a disgraced recusant family who doggedly followed the old religion despite punitive laws. He was humbled, brought almost to tears due to her faith in him, her belief in what they had between them.
Although their feelings had grown, they had barely touched. They had only dared to share the odd stolen kiss and fleeting caress in this busy office of a palace where they could be discovered at any moment.
As their attachment had grown, so Donne had felt increasingly uneasy for her. Despite his own emotions, he put her position first. And this unselfishness, this caring for another more than for himself was a new sensation too. Against the own best interests of his heart, he had tried to persuade her to see that they had no future together.
A few days before, he had put this to her. He had not chosen his moment well. They were walking together outside York House on the raked gravel path between the spiked lavender bushes of the formal garden. There was a little privacy, at least for a while and Donne had steeled himself to speak to Ann, not with his heart but with his head.
“But you are young,” He had said. “This might merely be the stirrings of a first love that was never meant to be. You could easily change your mind in time and wish you had taken the path your parents chose for you. I would not want you to live a life of want and regret.”
She had turned to him with fury in her eyes, small fists clenched in outrage and railed at him. “Do you think I only care about all this!” She swept an arm towards the noble façade of the mansion. “After what we have shared, do you imagine me to be a mere silly, shallow girl? Do you think so little of me that I would prefer to put my heart to one side and prefer a life of comfort? All to live a lie? Do you truly think so little of me?”