The Secret Life of William Shakespeare Read online

  ‘It’s a show. It doesn’t mean anything.’

  He rose. Tugged the pin from his thumb, looked at it, dropped it on the ground. ‘Perhaps not.’

  ‘I always thought—’ She struggled with her voice, which seemed about to go wildly out of control – to shrill like a gale or growl deep as a bear. ‘I was sure, always I was sure that if you were unhappy, I would be able to tell.’

  His glance was briefly puzzled, as if she had posed him a quick sum. ‘Oh! Unhappiness. That would be different. There’s a cure for that.’

  Blood beaded and dripped from his hand. Anne reached into the neck of her smock and tore off a length of lace. ‘Give me.’ They looked at each other while she tightly bound his thumb. ‘Money, you say. Is that what you want? Money, fame?’

  ‘You’ve spoiled your lace … I dare say I would like them. If I can get them, I will. For us. For our – well, our name.’

  She shook her head. ‘No. It’s not that.’ She felt herself scowling. A little shudder of warm raindrops fell from the leaves above, and for a moment she imagined it blood. ‘And you could never speak to me of this. This wanting. Because I can’t read, perhaps, because I can’t understand? God knows. It must have been so strong, all the time, and I never felt it. I wonder what else I missed.’

  ‘Thou hast only to speak the word, Anne.’ Suddenly his voice and look came from somewhere different, from a place of high, resounding challenge, like the wedding-altar. ‘Dost know? Only speak it.’

  ‘And thou’lt stay?’

  ‘And I’ll stay.’

  They walked back in step, in two different kinds of silence.

  * * *

  The Queen’s Men performed The Famous Victories of Henry the Fifth at Stratford Guildhall that day. It was only a moderate success. Even with a cut text, the shortage of an actor left them straining. Once Robert Wilson rushed off and rushed on again with such an obvious hasty change of wig that the audience laughed when they should have been thrilled; and it was hard to win them back after that.

  ‘Aye, aye, let’s say you’re right, then.’ Lawrence Dutton: who had held out to the last against recruiting Will Shakespeare, and been grumblingly outvoted. ‘But, look you, it’s an expedient only, so the tour don’t disgrace us. Once in London, he goes his own way.’

  * * *

  ‘You can forbid it, you know.’

  Her father-in-law had sought her out in the kitchen. The quietest place in the house just now: since finding out last night that Will was going away Edmund had been unmanageable, which in turn had affected the children. Anne stirred the broth. ‘How?’ she said.

  ‘He won’t stand against both of us. Alone I can’t move him.’ He took her elbow and turned her to him. ‘But you, Anne, you have the power.’

  She studied his eyes, so like Will’s eyes, except for those lines around them, rays of irritable weariness. ‘To change him?’

  ‘Damn it, to bring him back to his senses. He’s always been a dreamer. But this is the worst.’

  A dreamer – yes, Anne thought, and he had the true hardness of the dreamer. And on this matter of joining the players he was diamond-hard, glittering, resolved. Yet her father-in-law was right. She was the one who could tie up all her anger and grief and bewilderment and place it neatly before him as: no. As my husband, as father to our children, you do wrong. No. She did indeed have the power – such power. It was like being a giant, hesitating where to set down your great killing foot. How horrible, to be a giant.

  ‘Did he invite you to meet them? These players?’ her father-in-law went on, as she turned away.

  ‘Yes. The Queen’s Men. I said no – though I don’t doubt, as the Queen’s own company, they are of a decent seemly sort.’

  ‘Now thou art the dreamer, daughter,’ he said gently. ‘Why dost think they need another man, hm?’

  ‘Will told me. One died while they travelled.’

  ‘Died how, I wonder. Shriven, peacefully settling to last sleep? Dost think?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ She put her hands to her temples. ‘It’s not that I fear.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘I don’t want to change him. I don’t want to bend him and turn him against his will. There’s no loving in that.’

  He snorted. ‘Oh, yes, there is.’

  ‘But there is more,’ she said carefully, ‘in a wife’s loyalty to a man, no matter what befalls.’ Daring: his flush showed he took the point. Daring, for could she rely on John Shakespeare’s goodwill any more? After all, she had failed to tie Will down as he had hoped.

  ‘My dear,’ her father-in-law sighed, sitting heavily on a stool, ‘don’t you see that if he pursues this folly, it will change him? Change him beyond all your power?’

  She thought of that. And, yes, there was terror in it. Again she pictured him a player, walking beside the painted cart, stepping on a distant stage, speaking and acting as though he were someone else and not her Will at all. It was dreadfully easy to picture, she found.

  And yet was this a diversion from the journey that had begun with green passion in the wood, or the journey continued? You made me, he had said once. Your love, it made me. Last night or, rather, on the brink of dawn, they had talked, kissed, fought, wept. And he said again, You made me. This me.

  So, stop him going? Unmake him?

  Part of her wanted to, yes. She was realistic about love: she knew love was inimical to freedom. Love was a dungeon-keeper and would rather see its object chained and miserable than not see it at all. And yet: Bring him back to his senses, John Shakespeare said – relying on her. And, God, how doleful a fate that was, she thought, to be someone who brought people back to their senses! Is that me? Once, not so long ago, I could rob Will of his senses with a glance, a finger-touch. Now, yes, I am mother and helpmeet and my waist is thickened, but I am still that same Anne who could make him weak with love. I would still be his witch, not his corrector. In the end, I am on the side of madness and enchantment, and so I must let him go.

  ‘He might do great things,’ she said. ‘None of us has thought of that.’

  She spoke temperately, but her father-in-law flinched as if she had screeched in his face. ‘The right thing,’ he said, after a moment. ‘That’s all I want him to do.’

  He had not moved from the stool, but his presence seemed to reach out and fill the room. She made a feint of tasting the broth again. ‘Needs salt,’ she said. ‘And our box is empty. I’ll go borrow some of Judith Sadler.’

  She went out cloaked and hooded. Not to the Sadlers’.

  She slipped over to the Swan, and asked the ostler to show her into the presence of the players.

  They were gathered round a table heaped with papers. Ah, papers, pens, writing – her gentle enemies. But listening, and observing one of them counting with a frown on his fingers, she realised this was a matter of numbers not words: a reckoning of accounts. She hesitated, studying faces, postures, dress. They were different, certainly. Everything about them seemed a little more quick, a little more defined. One – the clown? – had a rich pink laugh that made you smile just to hear it, though she wondered what it would be like to have that laugh directed at you. All were rather older than Will, except a youth who must be a woman-player, and a tall fair young man with beautiful arching eyebrows: a beauty that somehow made her uncomfortable, like the sight of money or jewels left nakedly open to the thief.

  Rogues and vagabonds, not at all, and when the players saw her, they were mannerly and sober, bowing: Mistress, your pardon, what do you seek, may we serve…? But she drew down her hood, said she was mistook, and went away. She was not sure what she had wanted to see, but she was satisfied: some gaps had been filled in. Master Smart the draper used an abacus for his counting – you could see him through his window, flicking and tapping – and that was Anne at this juncture of her life; that was Anne hurrying home in warm street-shade, flicking the beads of love, loyalty, fear, in search of a reckoning.

  One figure would not alter. ‘An
ne, Anne, I can hardly believe it,’ as Bartholomew had said on his last visit – Anne, turned thirty, who would believe it? Hard to tell whether he was being malicious or not. He might simply be observing the fact: the blowsy fact that could only grow bigger and more blatant.

  You are older than Will, Anne – and with each year it will matter more.

  A reason not to let Will out of her sight, then, not to let him roam the great world and behold a thousand objects of comparison. A powerful reason – but an ugly one. Beauty was where they had begun.

  She found him in the yard, splitting firewood. He was shirt-sleeved, sweaty, homely; but as he raised his eyes she could perfectly imagine him taking his place with those players at the inn, oh, yes. Just then it even seemed a wonder that he was here at all.

  ‘Will. Listen.’ She put out a hand – to touch him or ward him off, who could tell? It stayed between them, wavering. ‘You must never belong to anyone else.’

  And he took her seriously, she thought: he breathed as she had seen a mouse breathe, trapped in the corner before the shovel came down.

  ‘I won’t,’ he said. ‘My life on it.’

  She laughed a little. She felt so tired, as if she could sleep a year away. She felt she could smash the world. ‘Very good, very apt. Because if you do, I will curse you. And by that I mean lay a curse on you. I will do it, somehow.’

  He fell to his knees. His brow convulsed, his eyes half closed, he groped at her hand. ‘It’s fair,’ he said. Fingers clenched fingers for a moment, jolted away as if burned. Though his head was lowered, his voice was strong and clear: ‘Yes, it’s fair.’

  * * *

  Before Will left Stratford, with his trunk stowed in the Queen’s Men’s cart, his father came to him to say something. Not trying to undo what was already done: Will credited him with that. If anything, it was like the lost old days when they could bear to look into each other’s face. Advice, given from kindness.

  ‘A man cannot split himself in two, Will.’ He paused. ‘One half will die, sooner or later.’

  It was simpler with his mother. Always calm, she had in the last year or two restricted her range of expression even further: against the unpleasantness of the world she pitted her folded hands and patient, frowning smile. She warned him against the barbarity of the north and the corruption of London. She gave him her blessing. He thought it probable she would never forgive him.

  * * *

  Some responses of Stratford citizens, on Will Shakespeare’s leaving the town to travel with a company of players.

  He had gone mad.

  He was taking a poor sort of risk, and would rue.

  He had always been strange.

  He had never been strange.

  He had married and saddled himself with a family much too young, so he was bound to break out like this in the end.

  He was always inclined that way.

  He would never make a fortune under his father’s roof, for times were hard and there wasn’t enough trade to go round, so it made sense to strike out on his own.

  He hated his old wife.

  * * *

  At Two Elms Gilbert, panting, caught up with the cart. Will experienced a blinding, sweating memory.

  ‘Oh, no, no, not another one,’ Tarlton said. ‘We are not a charitable foundation.’

  ‘Will. In London – find me something,’ Gilbert gasped. ‘A trade. Prenticeship. Like Richard Field. Anything. Out of here.’

  Will grasped his hand. ‘I’ll try.’

  They waved.

  ‘He’s not married, is he?’ said Lawrence Dutton. He swept his cloak back pettishly. ‘Well. I merely ask.’

  * * *

  Ben: he trained and drilled and readied himself for the fight, but no Spaniards came to try the question.

  God blew, and they were scattered, declared the Queen’s Medal, after the Armada broke in bits and the beacon-fires were damped or used to roast the celebratory ox. Ben stood among the gazers at Ludgate as the procession of the great wound into St Paul’s for the service of thanksgiving. Relief, he observed, was somehow less exciting than fear. He glimpsed the Queen’s coach, yawing and bouncing behind four skittish greys, and wondered if she thought the same.

  A week later, at the foot of King’s Street he ran into William Camden.

  For the first time ever, from the way Master Camden looked at him – up and down – Ben wanted to run and consult a mirror. But then his old master stopped that, and put a friendly hand on his shoulder: they walked and talked as if they were equals.

  Tamburlaine – yes, Master Camden had seen it. And it had conquered him too, or conquered his aversion to what he had previously regarded as the triviality of the theatre.

  ‘The abandoning of rhyme, jigging rhyme, as the poet calls it, has given the verse a new strength and grandeur, without doubt,’ he said approvingly. ‘Now, can it be flexible also? Is it capable of sweetness? Here are new seas for our bold English tongue to sail. To be sure, the perfection of the ancient languages is still far to seek…’

  Keeping pace with Master Camden, hearing him discourse and sift and discriminate, Ben realised he had not been thinking of these things at the theatre. Even when admiring, he had been half thinking of Madam’s jostling breasts seen from the corner of his eye.

  ‘Our measure, granted, is of accent not quantity, so the effects of Latin verse can never truly be reproduced…’ Master Camden stopped at the corner, the parting of their ways. He studied Ben genially, as if trying to undo that earlier look. ‘So, when will you be out of your time?’

  ‘Five years,’ Ben said.

  ‘It will go quickly.’

  Ben grinned. ‘You’ve never lied to me before.’

  For a year he gave up plays and women. He took the decision like leaping into cold water. He read and, exhausting his books, saved to buy more. Prowling the booksellers around St Paul’s Churchyard, he bumped into a dark young man, recognising him without knowing him. That narrowing broad-browed face, the disquieting eyes tender as bruises. The young man gave him the wall.

  ‘Sir.’

  ‘Y’r servant.’

  Ben never gave the wall. The young man went on, nimbly picking his way through the kennel-shit, and then Ben remembered him. The Shoreditch tavern: the player, Will. Suddenly he found himself wondering why he never gave the wall. The question followed him nagging into the next shop, where the bookseller hung anxiously over him, watching his bricklayer’s hands turning the precious leaves. Catullus: poems of love, thousands of kisses. He laid it down. Martial: wit crackling like a pot of fire, better. Horribly, he found that he did not want to buy either. He could think of nothing in the world that satisfied him. Head spinning, he got out of the shop. He wandered. He tried giving the wall, but he hated it – not the splashing muck, but the way people stared past, taking him for granted. His breath came short. There must be something in the world, cried his mind, but it was like trying to remember a dream too late in the morning.

  Temperance: he snatched at the thought. Aye, too much temperance of late, that was his trouble: a thorough drunk, a good sweat, and oft you woke restored to life. He found himself at the foot of Paul’s Wharf Hill: entered the first alehouse, dingy, full of watermen trying to outswear each other. The first two pots took him about as many minutes to drink; time enough to peel back and inspect the nasty festered truth that neither Catullus nor Martial, neither lust nor learning, could alter the fact of his stepfather – or put off the day when Ben would turn into him.

  Neither could drinking, but he persisted anyway. He passed through various states – hating all, knowing all, sorry bliss – and emerged in deep conversation with a big, keen-eyed, russet-coated man, who kept the settle by the fire. He must have had a long purse, for he had a manservant who waited by the door and brought over fresh drinks whenever he raised a finger. The man liked only to question and listen, and soon learned everything there was to know about Ben. In turn he took out clay-pipe and lily-pot and taught Ben the fa
shionable new art of drinking smoke. An agreeable companion; and even when it dawned on Ben what he was, as the man exchanged a wink with the landlord and the servant drew the bar across the door, he did not much alter his opinion.

  ‘You’ve said nothing of yourself,’ Ben said. ‘But I fancy yon fellow is not really your servant.’

  The keen eyes twinkled through the smoke. ‘Not exactly. Company clerk.’

  ‘Ah. Then you must be a captain.’ The man bowed. ‘Prettily played. And we…’ He glanced around: the other drinkers, half stupefied, seemed to have noticed nothing, yet. ‘We are fish for your net.’

  ‘Such as I choose not to throw back. Some may have the strength to wriggle free likewise. The Queen still has need of soldiers, Master Benjamin, to fight Spain alongside the Dutchmen. I came Thursday sennight from Flushing, resolved to find some bold fresh spirits to take back to Holland with me. Good Sir Philip Sidney was not the last gallant Englishman, that I’ll swear.’

  ‘Nor the last dead one,’ Ben said, finishing his ale: he had lost count, but he could still see nearly straight.

  The eyes twinkled still. ‘A half-gallon of beer a day. Taking ship to a new land. The glory and fame attaching to a man at arms. Women, you’ll find, take powerful notice. Then there are always spoils, for those with a sharp eye to ’em: a soldier’s cloak is soon lined. What say you? The clerk has the roll with him, and in a moment we can have your name on it.’

  ‘You speak as if there were a choice. Aren’t we being pressed?’ A vast pure curiosity, untainted by fear, buoyed him.

  ‘Well, it’s ticklish.’ The captain dabbed up some shreds of tobacco. ‘No doubt some of these men are masterless and easily swept up. But you, you’ve a place, prentice to your father.’

  ‘Stepfather. I didn’t say father, never, the man is my stepfather only.’

  ‘Soft, soft, I mistook. Your master, whatever else: guild member, a man with a little say in the world, a little substance, hey? Look, I’m telling you this because I like you, and because I am a poor captain, as all the damned captains are over there. Some go on drawing their men’s pay after they’re dead, and so are not sorry at all to see them killed, and I’m not one of those, but still I must live. Apply to your stepfather, and you can surely slip this net, Master Benjamin. We can come to terms.’