Authors: Meredith Whitford
4
.
“Judith still never speaks.”
“No.
Leave her, let her work her grief out if that’s her way.”
“But
it is two months since Hamnet died.”
“She
will speak in time. I think it must be worse for a twin. Worst for a twin who shared the womb and the mother whose womb it was.” Lightly William touched Anne’s hair.
“Or
for a father, to lose his only son, his posterity and future? His name.” Something sparked in the back of Anne’s mind, a dim memory of someone saying “Your name will live forever”. Not now. There would be no descendants named Shakspere.
William
moved sharply away, turning back to the window. The autumn sun caught the chestnut in his hair and struck points of light from the angles of his face and the silver threads in his ruff. His son’s death had aged him in so many ways, and he had become punctilious about his clothes, no longer the untidy, ink-stained William of London and carefree times. Perhaps it helped him to honour his son with the perfection of his mourning clothes. Or perhaps this was just the Stratford Master Shakspere. But, come to that, Anne too was finely dressed, her gown and cap of black silk with a velvet trim. Rich people, the aristocracy, erected lavish tombs to their dead children, they commissioned music and poetry or endowed churches in their memory. People of the Shaksperes’ position could do naught but show their mourning in the expense of their clothes.
Another
point of light sparkled from the ring on William’s hand as he lifted a paper from the table and seemed to read it through. “This came today.”
“I
saw the messenger, but you said nothing so I didn't ask.”
“Oh,
it’s nothing private. Just meaningless, now.” He put the paper, opened, into Anne’s hand. “The College of Heralds has granted my coat of arms. I am Mister Shakspere, gentleman, now.”
It
was the first thing that had interested her since Hamnet’s death. “William Shakspere, gentleman!” She squinted at the French words under the drawing. “What is this motto here?”
“Non
Sans Droit. Not without right.” He watched her, the corner of his mouth twitching.
“A
very proper motto. Right – write. A pun, Will?”
“Not
on my part, though it occurred to me too. No, just a suitable motto. Remember that my father applied for a coat of arms some years ago? He was keen to do so again, the matter’s been in hand for some time. He – I – we thought it would be for Hamnet, that he would go to university and into his profession a gentleman’s son. These things matter.”
“Yes.
But it will matter to the girls, Will. A gentleman’s daughters can look for good marriages, they will have standing now. But Judith?”
“Doesn’t
speak. I know.” With a sign he sat down facing Anne. “Leave her be. She grieves in silence, I with words.” He made a long arm to take another paper from the table. “I still have to work. The Company send their condolences, their sympathy, their gifts and their love, but still they need a new play.”
“Did
you write nothing in London all spring and summer?”
“I
wrote. Poems. Sonnets. A play, yes, but another is needed soon.” He leaned forward, looking into Anne’s eyes. “I found that woman with Harry, as you knew I would. I know you and he planned it. Well, it worked. But still I went back to her. I shared her with Harry for a week or two. Then I sickened of her. I never saw her again, or not alone. I saw her twice, in the distance. She came to the playhouse, she applauded my plays. She is with Harry, now. Or was. She caught him as she did me. Held him in the same way.”
“That
hurt you?”
“I
suppose it did. Odd, isn’t it? I can hardly remember now. She, and all those things, are in the past. I frittered away my son’s life in that woman’s bed. I wasted time when I could have been with my son.”
With
a little shrug Anne said, “It’s past praying for. Hamnet loved you.”
“And
missed me? Wanted me here with him, when I was in London, with that woman?”
“He
missed you, yes, but all his life that was the pattern, that you were in London, acting and making plays. He would not have had it differently, my dear. He was proud of you. He liked to read your plays, he loved to see them acted, you were glorious to him.”
“And
I suppose that is something. Anne, see what I wrote, here. This is the new play about King John. A mother grieving for her son …”
Anne
took the paper from him, held it up to the light.
Grief fills the room up of my absent child,
Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me,
Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words,
Remembers me of all his gracious parts,
Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form:
Then have I reason to be fond of grief…
Her
voice cracked. “Yes, Will. Yes, yes, yes! That is what it is like, yet I must not be fond of grief.” All at once the tears came, the storm of weeping she had longed for and denied herself. She wrenched forward, the paper caught between her knees and chest as she huddled herself, crying for her son.
William
closed his arms around her and together they slipped to the floor, clutching each other, weeping, talking through their tears of Hamnet, blaming themselves and each other, blaming God and chance, remembering the living child.
After
moments or hours they perched shoulder to shoulder on the floor, hugging their knees, sharing a handkerchief.
“And
what do we do now?” Anne asked at last,
“We
go on, my dear. We look to our daughters, I look to my playing company and my writing, which I think from now on will be only plays, I make money. Do you still want New Place?”
She
nodded. “More than ever. I don’t want to live again in a place where Hamnet lived. I don’t care if the house is falling down, I’d sooner move in with all its dirt.”
“Then
we shall.”
“That
poem you spoke to me that day in the Forest; did you truly write that for me?”
“I
truly did. Because I’d learnt by then what I had, and nearly lost. I do love you, Anne, and without you there’s no comfort in the world.”
She
looked assessingly at him for a while, then said with a brisk nod, “I know you love me. And I know I can never be everything to you. But I won’t take away what completes you. So we’ll go on as we did. Stratford is home, you’ll come when you can, and sometimes I will come to London, when our daughters want to come.”
“Judith
will never want to. She must stay where Hamnet is.”
“Later
she will. I won’t let grief fill her life. Or mine. Or yours. But if you go to London, Will...”
“I
will share my lodgings with Edmund, I will work, I will see my friends, including Harry, but you need fear no… attachments. That is in the past. All of it is in the past.” They looked at each other again in silence. “Remember we said, clap hands and a bargain? Never again will I renege on a contract. I broke my wedding vows, but that’s my past. Stratford now is my future.”
“A
bargain,” she said, and they clasped each other’s hand. The first time they’d met they had touched hands and William had beguiled her with words. As he always would do, no doubt.
“Come,”
she said, “let’s take the girls and go look at our new house, our gentleman’s house, and start our plans. That side garden wall must come down and we should rebuild the outhouses.”
“There’ll
be a lot to do,” he agreed, and followed her down the stairs. “And years in which to do it. But Anne, is there a writing room for me there? A library? There’ll be no more poetry, but I must write my plays, every year, even when I’m home.”
Anne
glanced back over her shoulder, half-smiling. “Yes, Will, there’s a library. It was the first thing I thought of when I saw the house.”
“Good.
And I think we’ll plant roses. And mulberry trees. We could play with our grandchildren in the shade of a mulberry tree. And a grape-vine?”
“Not
warm enough for grapes.”
“We
could try… Go and fetch the girls, and we will see.”
Epilogue
1603
“The grapes flourished. The roses, too. And things changed, of course. I went home less and less, yet when I was there it was more real than London, I loved it more, and I wrote more there. Here…” William turned away and went to the window, staring down into the swirling fog that misted Tower Green. On his first visit to London, he had come here to see the Tower, that epitome of English history. Never had he thought he would be here like this, bribing the guard to let him in to visit a prisoner, waiting through an icy night that could spell the end of a reign or of his lover’s life. Harry’s little black and white cat, Deborah, sprang up onto the window seat and rubbed her head against his arm. Absently he stroked her, as once he had stroked her master. “Here,” William went on as the cat purred, “here in London, it was all business. Running a playhouse. Building the Globe. I was back to clerking and keeping accounts, just as I did for my father twenty years ago. And acting, of course. All the usual routine of a show a day, six days a week, and fretting over the management of the whole thing, and going on the road. Never writing, it seems.”
Harry
had said nothing for almost an hour. He was watching the clock. “But you did write. All those plays.”
“Oh
yes, of course I did. But at home, in Stratford, in our beautiful house. Not here in London. And when I am at home, I am William Shakspere the glover’s son, the landowner and wool dealer and malt dealer, not William Shakspere the playwright and poet. Stop a man in the street in Stratford and ask what I do for a living and he wouldn’t know, except that he’d probably say I must make a fair amount out of wool and malt. Pushed, that man might say he’s heard I own shares in a playhouse or some such thing. Meaningless, at home.”
“Except
to your wife and daughters?”
“My
daughters spend my money and don’t care where it comes from. But Anne cares in her way. Now she’s come under her brother’s influence and turned Puritan. So has Susanna. Odd, I never thought Anne cared much for religion. Susanna is interested in a doctor – calls himself a physician – called John Hall, and he’s rabidly Puritan and does not approve of me. Of my money, yes, but not of me or my work.”
“Does
Anne ever come to London? I’ve been away so much…”
“She
comes sometimes. When we built the Globe, for instance, she came to the opening performances. She brought Susanna and Judith. Susanna liked the plays and the visit to London, but Judith was bored.”
“She
doesn’t understand how famous you are? Your reputation?”
“She
has no idea, and couldn’t care if she did. She’s a country girl and keen on men. She blames me for her brother’s death.”
“Surely
not.”
“Oh
yes.”
Harry
came to join him at the window. “You note they have given me a room with a view of Tower Green. Of the beheading ground. Where Essex died. And so many others. And,” he laughed wryly, “they charge extra for a room with a view. I pay nine pounds a week for this.”
“They
make you pay?”
“The
final refinement. Yes.” His fingers closed on William’s arm. “If the old bitch doesn’t die, she’ll put me to death after all.”
“Even
now? After two years?”
“She
never did like me.”
“Well,
you did join Essex's rebellion against her. You were neck-deep in treason, Harry.”
“Oh,
can no one resist the temptation to say ‘I told you so’?”
“I
haven’t said that.”
“You
mean it, though.”
William
sighed. They sat down, turning their backs on the window. The cat jumped into Harry’s lap. Cuddling her, he said, “For a while she was my only friend, my only visitor. D’you know, she made her way here from Southampton House to be with me?”
“A
touching story.”
“True.”
“You mean, why did I never come to visit you before tonight.”
“Well,
why didn’t you?”
“Because
what we had was over years ago. Because these past seven years I have been busy being a good, conscientious father and husband – as have you – and playhouse owner. Keeping out of trouble. It is not wise to visit prisoners in the Tower of London. Or at least not wise for ordinary people like me, people without power and influence.”
“I
have no power or influence now,” said Harry. “Nor title. They stripped me of everything. I’m plain Mr Wriothesley. We’re equal. Middle-aged married men. You’ve probably more money than I now. We’re equals.”
“Unless
the queen dies and Scotch James becomes king.”
“Unless.”
“Why did you do it, Harry? Why did you join in that brainless, hopeless rebellion of Essex’s? Because he was your lover? Because you loved him?”
Harry
put the cat into William’s lap and stood up. He poured two glasses of wine. Fine, expensive crystal glasses, William noted, despite his pleas of poverty. “He was my lover but I never loved him. A few times, when we were young together, and again in Ireland, on military service there. But there was loyalty, of a kind. I knew how badly the Queen treated him over his command of the Irish campaign, I thought he had reason.
“Although
now, two years later, I suppose a lot of it was vanity and spite. He thought he had made the Queen love him beyond reason. But Elizabeth Tudor loves no one beyond reason. So I joined him in his stupid, petty, badly planned rebellion, and he was beheaded down there.” He pointed over his shoulder to Tower Green. “And for some reason I was not put to death. Just indeterminate imprisonment; not for the first time, of course – remember when I married Bess Vernon she popped us both into prison till her temper cooled.
"And
if the Queen rallies, lives, comes back to health, she’ll have my head.”
“They
say she’s past that, they say she’s dying.”
“‘They’
have been saying that for days, for weeks, for years. She uses it, Will, she plays at ill-health. She takes to her bed and swears it’s her death-bed. She’s been doing that for forty-five years.”
William
shook his head. “This time it is sure. I asked.”
“Oh,
before you dared visit me?”
“Don’t
reproach me too far, Harry. I would have tried to talk you out of that rebellion, had you asked me, or told me of it. I would have done anything to stop you taking part. Don’t forget that when you and your friends asked my playing company to stage Richard the Second for you, with its dangerous, dangerous theme of regicide and rebellion, I did so. That nearly had the lot of us in here with you. But we talked our way out of it. We said we did it for the money.”
“And
did you not do it for the money? Or did you believe, just a little, in our rebellion?”
“I
never believed in it. The Scotch king will be the Queen's heir, without silly plots in his favour. But I put that play on for you. Out of the memory of our love. I did love you, Harry, very much.”
Harry
leaned his head against William’s shoulder. “And I you. It seems so very long ago.”
“Nearly
ten years.”
“And
I am married now, and a father. Just as you advised in all those poems. Like your Anne when you married her, Bess was with child and loved me. And it was worth it for my child, my daughter.”
A
little time went by in silence. They drank their wine, petted the cat, let their hands meet on the animal’s fur.
“So
why did you come tonight?” Harry asked again.
“Because
it is sure the Queen cannot live the night out. She will die, James will be king of England and you will be free. Earl of Southampton again. Because it is the end of a reign, and of the only monarch you and I have ever known. And because it seemed a good time to ask you something.”
“What?”
Harry sounded very tired.
“That
woman. That Scotchwoman. That dark woman. Marian something.”
“What
of her?”
“Was
she a spy? For Scotland?”
Laughing,
Harry said, “Oh yes, all the time. That is, she was spying on who was not for King James. Burghley, Essex, me – we were all in it, all for James. If the Queen dies and James of Scotland becomes King, you’ll see her riding in his coronation procession. A hundred years ago her parents were for York, you see, and fled to Scotland after King Richard died at Bosworth Field. Her father’s an earl, and an intimate of the King’s. So yes, you’ll see the Lady Marian Robsart, meek as butter, her husband conveniently dead, no hint of the whoring spy, riding with King James’s courtiers. She did quite a lot of spying, I think. She was after Essex, and didn’t get him. But me she got, and had, for a while.”
“And
you told her secrets?”
“Oh,
Will, what secrets did I ever know? I was never in favour at court, never given any duties, never in the Queen’s confidence, never part of the spying service like Essex or poor Christopher Marlowe. Ten years since he died, Will, ten years in May. So no, I had no secrets to sell. I didn’t betray my country. Unless you count sending letters to that Scotch sodomite James, assuring him of my support and utter loyalty at need.”
“Was
that what the rebellion was about?” William asked.
“Yes.
Essex thought he would overthrow the Queen and invite James down from Scotland to take her place. Glory and rich rewards for Essex and Southampton et alia. A stupid plot.”
“One
put up to you by that Scotchwoman and her friends?”
“Not
to me. Perhaps she did get to Essex. Not in bed, though. She bedded you and me for fun, I think.”
“Fun
that nearly cost me my wife, and did cost me my son’s life. And cost me you.”
“Never.
Everything has changed, but nothing can take away the memories.” With a change of tone he went on, “You remember that hundred pounds I gave you ten years ago?”
“Why,
do you want it back? I could afford to pay it now.”
“Of
course I don’t want it back. I just meant, I gave you that money because I was in love with you and wanted to give you a gift. And now, because I still love you, if in a different way, I can give you another gift. If I live. If the Queen dies. If James becomes king.”
“What
gift, Harry?”
“King
James of Scotland likes plays, likes your plays. They perform them at his court in Scotland. He admires you. For me, and for his admiration of your plays, and perhaps a little for that dark-haired woman who spied for him, on you as much as on the Queen, James will make your playing company his royal one. The King’s Men, William. Royal servants. Courtiers. You will be the King’s playwright. You will have his royal protection forever. And money. Position, status. You are already famous, you need no one, king or commoner, to give you fame, but it is not nothing to be the King’s playwright and his favourite.”
“I
know it.” William lifted Harry’s hand and kissed it. “Thank you. Odd, isn’t it? I wanted to be known as a poet. All I wrote was three long poems and a clutch of sonnets, and it’s my plays people clamour for. But they’ll go out of fashion, you know. Already it’s all these new men, Jonson, Fletcher, Beaumont. New men. I’m going out of fashion.”
“Not
yet. You'll write great plays for King James.”
“Perhaps.”
“You will. And if that bell rings, the Westminster passing bell, to say the Queen is dead, then you can start buying your scarlet livery, for you’ll be established forever, you and your fellow players. Not any other players, not for the King. You, and yours. He’ll commission plays from you, Will.”
“I’ll
have to dance to his tune, you mean.”
“You
won’t dare write anything he doesn’t approve, but what’s new about that? You barely got away with
Richard the Second
. Will you ever write a play about the Queen?
Elizabeth the First
, by William Shakspere?
Queen Elizabeth
?
Gloriana
, perhaps?”
“I
doubt it. About her father, perhaps. Although I’ve little enough interest in history plays any more.”
“I
enjoyed your
Hamlet
,” Harry said. “And
Henry the Fifth
. I’ve been little enough to the theatre in these past few years, but those I did see.”
“You
did all the things I longed to as a boy; you’ve been a soldier, you’ve been to sea, you’ve fought on campaign.”
“Ireland,”
Harry said on a grunt of contempt.