The Secret Life of William Shakespeare Read online

  ‘It eats me,’ Will said.

  ‘So. Confide.’ Towne stretched out his leg to the hearth: it seemed to go on for ever. He was very fair, fine-boned, full-lipped; when he gazed into the fire the robber’s bride flickered into life – yet a shift, and you saw the line of stubble under his jaw. It was dazzling and queasy. ‘What are you, Will? What do you do between our visitations? I notice you don’t stand toes in and chuckle like most of them. Belong to some noble’s house hereabouts? Say yes, I pray, you might put me in his favour.’

  ‘Nothing of that. I live with my father. Lately burgess and alderman of Stratford – also bailiff.’ Curious that he should now be making much of his father’s lost eminence.

  ‘Pretty. And are you eldest? Ah, there must be a tidy property waiting for you.’

  Will stared into his untouched ale. A worm of candlelight wriggled in it. ‘My father is – still a man of some substance. But his fortunes are decayed of late.’

  He struggled with something unsaid, but Jack Towne had flung his long legs out with a sharp laugh. ‘Not so bad. My father left me naught but whipping-scars. See.’ He faced his narrow back to Will and clawed the shirt off his shoulder. Dull pink strokes sulked across the luminous fair skin. Will seemed to feel heat on his face. ‘Well, I call him my father. Only God and my mother know who he truly was – but he had the run of my hide every night for five years. How I wept at his plague-bed. I couldn’t believe such access of joy possible.’

  Towne shrugged his shirt back, and Will thought of his own father: thought of him dying. Or, rather, sprang away scalded from the thought.

  ‘They say it’s wrong to be a player,’ he burst out, lunging at his drink.

  ‘Aye, they do that, and what, I wish to know, can they mean? We only game and booze, and have no settled place or station, and die in want when we’re cast off.’ Drunk – yet not as Will was used to seeing men drunk – Towne seized Will’s hand, an urgent reinforcement to the scrambling words. ‘You know this ranting godly fellow fastened on me at Banbury – Sudbury – some pisshole – and consigned me to his hell because I was an invitation to sodomy. I could only answer that it was not an invitation I would ever extend to him.’ He laughed loudly, but the sound was anger diverted. ‘Well, you surely don’t think it wrong, or you wouldn’t be keeping company with us.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Will said. ‘I don’t know what I think.’ He meant it as a general statement. He spent most of his time thinking, but thought was a current on which he drifted: he didn’t steer.

  ‘You’re scared of your honest alderman father, no doubt,’ Towne said, yawning. ‘God’s blood, Will, only look at those great baboons.’ Across the tap-room two of the players, Knell the king-player and a red-haired gangler, who was drinking sack by the pint, had drawn their swords and were lumbering at each other. ‘It’s play, good sir, only play,’ he called out to the innkeeper, who came sweating and muttering. ‘They’re running over the last scene of Alphonsus of Lincoln. Every stroke planned, sir, like the steps of a galliard. Or should be,’ he added to Will. ‘Knell is so very apt to forget himself.’

  ‘A most desirable thing,’ Will said, feeling the drink quicken and sorrow him all at once.

  ‘But there you have it,’ Towne said excitedly, ‘exactly what your virtuous, godly citizens do not see. Oh, it’s wrong to be a player, they declare. But what do they do when they wake up in the morning? Straight be themselves? No: they remind themselves who they are. They have to. Ah, yes, let me see, I am Goodman Bollockchops, esteemed burgher of Hole-in-the-Road, and yonder lies my wife, whom I choose not to see is faithless, and though I have just dreamed of running naked in the fields with a set of wild lads and lasses, I would see all whores and gypsies and players whipped at the cart-tail and I am grave, deep … They have to, because otherwise they’re walking on ice and it’s cracking. Ever been to London? Well, to be sure, no.’ The pitying look was meant, no doubt, to be kind. ‘Some winters the Thames freezes clean over. River turns to road. Everyone goes on it – they set up a fair on it and roast chestnuts and tell fortunes, all pretending they’re not walking on water—’

  ‘Dear God, don’t.’

  ‘Ah, there, you’ve broken my image. It was about to be mighty profound, I think. I’m drunk, though.’ He emptied his tankard, then leaned on Will’s shoulder. His breath was unnervingly sweet, like a child’s. ‘Got a yearning for London, hey? Well, I can understand it. I’ll tell you what it is, Will, it’s the worst place to starve in. Hereabouts you can lay your bones down by a stream and drink the clear water and, I don’t know, perhaps catch a coney, or the old goodwife who’s known you since you were a tacker will help you. London, no such matter.’ He touched Will’s cheek with a gentle, even timid finger. ‘What are you looking for, then? It helps if you know where it’s to be found first of all.’

  ‘I – I don’t know if it’s been made yet.’

  Behind him a dropped sword skittered on the flagstones. Knell heaped curses on his weak wrist. Towne sat up and raised his tankard to him, catching Knell’s eye with a smile that seemed prepared: unpacked from a box.

  ‘Now watch him bluster,’ he said, between his teeth.

  Knell stalked over. ‘Well, now, Master Will, what tales has this stripling been telling you? All lies, whatever they are.’

  ‘We’re players,’ Towne said, wagging his empty tankard. ‘Lies are our business.’

  ‘Another pint? That means he’ll be singing “Willow, willow” next. Then declaring his love for all the world. Then challenging all the world to a fight. Then he weeps and sleeps together. All pat without a prompt, for once.’

  ‘Chatter on, old man, while you’ve still got the teeth for it,’ Towne said amiably. ‘Will’s in love, you know. But the object of his love doesn’t exist. What is he to do?’

  Will said:

  ‘“You do me wrong to take my guileless words

  And free them to the world, like caged birds

  That ne’er have op’d their wings beneath the sun

  Nor learnt the eagle and the hawk to shun.”’

  ‘God. I remember that,’ Knell said. ‘What is it, Fountain of Ardena?’

  ‘Devil’s Brother.’ Towne watched Will. ‘How does it go on?’

  ‘“For when my heart misgives me, straight my tongue

  Must give it ease, as we the – something stone

  That galls the tender sole, unthinking shake

  From forth our shoe, though – something…”

  ‘No, it’s gone.’

  ‘Villainous stuff.’ Knell groaned. ‘A beautiful maiden hopping about with a stone in her shoe.’

  ‘Errant stone,’ Towne said. ‘Yes, a feeble figure. Still…’ He gazed at Will, half drowsy, half penetrating. ‘Where do you keep it, Will?’

  ‘Why, man, here,’ Knell said, rapping on Will’s head. ‘You can tell he’s no country dull-wit. He admires us for one thing. I only wish you had such a memory.’

  ‘I keep it here,’ Will said, after a moment, and touched the space beside him, gently, as if another Will sat there, preferring not to be disturbed.

  * * *

  He was hurrying home, a piece of the night.

  Above the roofs the stars swooped with him, and no dogs barked because his feet only skimmed the ground here and there. In his mind a wonderful handiwork was going on. Yes, he had promised his father he would have no more to do with the players, but his father need not know, and even if he did, perhaps he could be brought to understand what was so remarkable about them, the way they conjured something new out of nothing, through craft and wit: that they were makers.

  Perhaps that was the true lesson of the day: everything was possible. He had felt it so in the White Hart tonight, as the talk grew wilder, exciting him even more when understanding ceased. The world was a vast and wonderful thing, and it was also an apple just within reach, heavy for the tug and pluck.

  He slipped in through the door of the back kitchen, where the serving-girl
slept on a pallet and the old hound on the floor. When the dog stirred he rubbed its jowls and hushed it back down: the beast never realised how much he loathed it.

  He got to the foot of the stairs, and there was his father. Will was never sure if he had come out of the parlour, or had simply been standing there all the time, taper in hand.

  What he could be sure of, alas, was his own face: how, taken by surprise, he had been unable to hide his expression. His father must have seen it – how weary Will was of him, and how he wished he was not his father.

  It was there, in his distant, hurt eyes.

  ‘You needn’t lie,’ his father said. ‘I know where you were. I sent a lad to look.’

  ‘Father … I know you don’t approve it, but still it can’t be so very bad—’

  ‘It’s how you make me feel.’ Spoken strong and plain, as if to emphasise that Will would not evade this with a great flourish of words. ‘It is not the matter itself. When you go against me, it is how you make me feel.’

  A quiver on the last word; and Will wanted to cry out, Do you suppose I don’t understand that?

  Understanding was easy. He had understood it when Master Ridley’s great grown half-witted boy had laughed at the little child that got mangled under the wheels of the soil-cart: it had been a blaze in that dun, damp mind. Will didn’t like or dislike this capacity for picking up feelings; it was like being able to read, you simply couldn’t undo it.

  And I know how you feel, Father: how life is a barbed sharpness in you like the hook in a fish’s mouth. They talk of you behind the hand, pityingly; and Mother is so loyal she will never permit herself the merest whisper of reproach, and so your ears strain and strain in terror of hearing it. And if your own son should turn against you, what deeps of failure are left?

  ‘I’m sorry, Father.’

  A shrug. ‘I dare say you are, for this moment.’ That was acute. He glanced about as if for somewhere to sit down, or to lie: lay himself down for ever. ‘And then you go your own way. It’s hard, Will. Not merely that you won’t be my prentice: that’s only the surface. The poison’s beneath.’

  He turned and groped for the banister, and Will saw that he still bore his stick; and his knuckles as he gripped it were white as the bone beneath.

  * * *

  His mother, soft-spoken and gentle and steely as a cat’s paw, came to his room, somehow knowing he was still awake. She sat on his bed.

  ‘I can’t bear discord. I know it’s wrong of me, because it will always come in life. And I know what the quarrel was about, and I shan’t speak on that, Will. Only I hate to see you so … so bitter.’ She spoke judiciously. His mother handled words like needles and knives.

  He sat up. ‘What makes you suppose that?’

  ‘I’m wife and mother, I have a hundred eyes and ears. Your father is not always an easy man, I know that well.’ She took his hand. Her fingers explored as if to discover a palmed coin. ‘But try to understand him. He made his fortune – aye, it didn’t come from what I brought him when we wed, though there were folk aplenty saying I stooped to marry him and my portion would soon be lost.’ Mary Arden she had been, kin and heiress to the highest folk of the district. ‘He made himself, and I was proud. I was proud when he stood highest in the town. I was proud still when his troubles came on him. And when my property was lost, then too. It is the germ and kernel of a man that matters, and there my love is fixed, and my pride, and I would have yours too.’

  ‘Yes,’ Will said, restive, ‘I see it, but we are what we do, surely.’

  His mother’s silences were not like his father’s. They made room for you on the soft couch of second thoughts.

  ‘Let’s not talk of this,’ he said. ‘It’s as you say, we want no more discord.’

  ‘You look weary. I’m keeping you from rest … But do you know what your father said when he took me to wife? “I feel myself a king.” I hope I had more sense than to let my head be turned by it. But he is proud as any king, Will. And a king must have a prince.’

  She had got hold of his hand in both of hers now. Her grip was tight.

  ‘What would you have me do?’

  ‘Nothing: nothing you don’t want. I know you don’t wish to be bound prentice to him. But there are other bonds, natural bonds, and to go against nature … Oh, Will, sometimes you are a little frightening. I don’t mean there is anything to fear from you. Only that sometimes – I see you go so far away.’

  He shook his head, trying to smile. He thought that no one could be more frightening than her, when it came to it.

  ‘I’ve mended matters with Father, or I mean to. And—’

  ‘Oh, Will, it’s what I wish to hear. Thank you.’ She got up. ‘Make a proper peace. Don’t defy him any more.’ Her smile was bright and cool as she looked down and it chilled him. ‘Make up your mind to it, Will.’

  * * *

  It was Joan who took the question out of their hands: Joan who was not yet fourteen in years but twenty in her buxom, bustling figure and twenty more, any age, all woman in her worldly-wise equality to anything. Lately, when the maid had had toothache and fought shy of the barber-surgeon, Joan had borrowed a pair of pliers from the blacksmith and efficiently pulled the tooth herself, drowning the cries with lusty singing.

  Will adored her. He sometimes suspected that his father was a little afraid of her. Joan loved light and was a great thrower-open of shutters, and when her guts were disordered she would say so and warn everyone against the privy. Contrast their mother, whose characteristic, muffling phrase was Let’s not speak of it – especially when John Shakespeare gazed into ale-cup or memory and saw grievance at the bottom. Suspicion, indeed, that Joan was quite capable of saying, No, let’s speak of it, let’s open the shutters on it.

  ‘Father, the players are here and I have never seen them yet. Can I go?’

  ‘Hm. A year or two older, Joan, and then we may speak of it.’

  Joan would have none of that judicious rumbling. ‘Bess Quiney goes. She’s younger than me, and the Quineys lose no reputation by it. And Mistress Sturley was married at fourteen. She was telling me of it.’

  Will caught a glance from his father that said, Your doing? But since dawn he had been making a full, dull, dutiful inventory of the Henley Street premises. And, besides, Joan would not be evaded.

  ‘I don’t often ask a boon, Father. Many a girl is forever pestering for trinkets and baubles. But you always find me plain and sober, I hope. Do I disgrace you with trumpery ribbons and bracelets? Lord, I pray not.’

  ‘That is a different question.’

  But the question was already lost. Joan was not to be refused what was granted to Alderman Quiney’s daughter. She could not, of course, go alone.

  So it fell out. Will looked at it as if it were a coin found in the street. Keep it, spend it: still it was not really yours, just a tainted chance. And only a fool would live the rest of his life looking for money on the ground.

  * * *

  Impossible, of course, not to feel it as they shuffled into the Guildhall and the warm wave of babbling sweaty expectancy broke over them. But Will tried to take his cue from Gilbert, who had come along because, as he said, it was better than swatting flies: Gilbert who, at sixteen, had suddenly become a lank, long yawner, wholly phlegmatic in humour, seemingly preparing himself for a lifetime of being unimpressed.

  Still Will’s senses roared, and at a twitch of the tiring-house curtain his mind went furiously questing like an unmuzzled dog – would there be rhymes and how would they use them? Stamp on them flat-footed or touch them in flight, like a squirrel leaping from branch to branch? Beware. Muzzle, muzzle. Will brought back the picture of himself running frantically towards an unreal horizon, in all its self-pitying absurdity. That did it.

  ‘What a crush,’ Joan was saying cheerfully. ‘Have a care for your purse: I see low, knavish faces. Brummagem faces, I’d venture. Day to you, day to you. Lord, she’s aged. Shouldn’t we push forward? However will we hear?�
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  ‘The players’ voices carry,’ Will said.

  ‘You mean they shout? I shan’t care for two hours’ shouting.’

  ‘No. Or only the worst. It’s different…’

  As he turned, the face turned, like a page in a book trying to bring the next with it.

  She was ten feet away. For some stilled, carved moments they looked at each other. Nothing of greeting or recognition. It was as if the look came in the middle of a deep discourse, at the posing of an unanswerable question.

  Joan prodded him. ‘What are you staring at?’ She followed Will’s gaze. ‘Oh, her.’

  ‘Mistress Hathaway. From Shottery,’ he heard himself say.

  ‘Aye, I know her. Well, we’ve often passed the time of day at the butter market. Her name is Anne,’ Joan said loftily. ‘Let’s give her good day, then. Lord, I wonder men ever come to know anyone.’

  True enough, thought Will, as Joan accosted Mistress Hathaway with easy nothings, joining the parties together. Such heat! Aye, but then the season – aye, so … The big boy was with her, round-eyed and damp-fringed. ‘My stepbrother,’ he heard her say – just: her voice was the very opposite of carrying, a leaf swept away by the swollen stream of noise.

  ‘Sweet chick. Never been at a play before, heart? No more have I. We shall look to each other.’ Joan took Will and Gilbert by the arm. ‘Now, these great burdens are my brothers. Was ever woman attended by two such loobies? Like overgrowing beans, and me the stick.’

  Anne smiled. Her name – ‘Mistress Hathaway, I pray you well’ – her name is Anne. She acknowledged his bow. That smile. It touched like the waking from a nightmare – the realisation of the beauty of reality, which never lasted as long as it should. Anne.

  On the stage the clown burst out, cutting a flaccid caper: Jack Towne was right. But the audience rippled and quieted and gathered its attention. Anne among them: her long, tight-sleeved arm gathered the boy in front of her as they faced the stage. Two hand breadth of white neck between collar and coif-netted hair – like caged honey – presented itself to Will’s fidgeting eye. But what then? This: everything about her was beautiful. It made that lazy, spoiled word do its work at last, and he had known that when he had stood boyish before her at Hewlands Farm, but what then? It was nothing to do with him. Will glanced around. Townsfolk standing at ease, country folk craning, still smutted with the dust of their journey. Children perching on shoulders, clapping uncertainly. The clown, teetering on the edge of the stage, was yelling back at a fist-shaking woman. ‘You want to cuff me, did you say, sweetling? Cuff me? Spell it backwards, that’s what you truly want.’ He mimed it with fat thrustings, feeling himself through his parti-coloured breeches.