“I rode in but an hour ago and found the Maiden Head,” he told me. “Though your carriers are en route home, I used a false name when I asked for you. I’m here as Andrew Whateley, one of your distant cousins from Henley Street. Father and I must let Edward Arden know we have not abandoned him. I’m going to try to catch his eye when they bring him in for trial. A dreadful way to see London my first time.”
I was amazed at the reply that fell from my lips, when I had spent so many months cursing this man. “Come meet my friends and sit down at our hearth. I can get you some food, and you could stay—”
Looking surprised he still touched me, he dropped my hands. He folded his under his armpits. “I can’t, though I’d like to talk to you to get caught up. We are so grateful to you,” he plunged on, “all of us, despite how Anne acted. Can you step outside with me for a quick walk?”
I hesitated. But this was not for us to resume our relationship; it was rather life and death for others.
“Yes, of course.”
We strolled Wood Street for a quarter hour, ignoring everyone, hearing none of the noise. I tried to convince him not to go near the Guild Hall or Newgate Prison, where I’d heard the crown prisoners were being held after being tortured in the Tower.
“I can’t believe Walsingham and the Privy Council would stoop so low as to charge Mary Arden too,” he said more than once. “You’d think the queen would have pity on the womenfolk, at least.”
“She wasn’t tortured, at least. But Her Majesty must think like a man in all this. Besides, she’s no doubt seen the duplicity of her own cousin, the Queen of Scots. That woman is the passionate, impulsive woman our queen can never be.”
He frowned that I would dare to gainsay him or stick up for the queen. “But Walsingham and the Privy Council must know John Somerville’s deranged,” he argued. “I can see why they think he must be silenced, but to pull everyone down . . . Anne, they stormed in and searched our house. Thanks to you, my father had hidden his prayer book and other things, but they found where I stowed the books I had from Edward Arden—just to keep them safe because I could not afford such, I told them.”
My insides cartwheeled with fear and the shock that I cared so deeply about that. “Did they believe you?” I asked.
“I’m not sure because the one in charge—Thomas Wilkes—looked page by page through each one. Two of them had Edward Arden’s name in them—”
“Oh, Will . . .”
“But even when Wilkes read the tiny notes Cousin Edward had made in the margins, he found nothing to incriminate me. Anne blurted out to them that my ambition was to be a poet and playwright—as if she was proud of that, when she berates me for such airy dreams all the time.”
“If you go to see the Arden trials in the Guild Hall, I will go with you,” I vowed. “And I am certain you could get a room for the time you’re here from the Davenants—”
“No, Anne! I hope to stay with Dick Field. Besides, if I stayed near you, my wife would get it out of me and scold for days and—I agree with her—I can’t be near you. I mean, here we are, but I can’t be with you at night, or in private, I swore it. She does not know we took vows, but she knows . . . I cared for you. Anne, I’m so sorry for all that’s happened between us. Those two friends of the Hathaways vowed to ruin my family if I did not comply—and it was my fault—the babe she carried.”
“And hers.”
“Be that as it may, all this too may mean the ruination of all the Shakespeares.”
He seemed so distraught that it terrified me even more. This turn of events kept all I had ever meant to say to him—scoldings, accusations, curses—at bay, at least for now. I did convince him to take a meal with us, and I believe he calmed a bit in the Davenants’ company, even when John told him he should wear a sword in the city streets not for style but for safety’s sake.
After farewells, John and Jennet went into the shop, I believe to let me walk him to the back door alone. As Will went out into the twilight city with an old sword and scabbard borrowed from John, he turned to face me again.
“Anne, I had to see you, to tell you all. But I will stay away now, so that no one can link us.”
“No one but ourselves, Andrew Whateley!” I called after him as he hurried down the darkening alley and disappeared as if I’d dreamed him. I might not, I thought, be able to go by the name of Shakespeare, but, even if in pretense, he had taken mine.
Despite the fact
he’d told me to stay away, I could not bear to let Will go alone to the Guild Hall for the trial. He had gone with me when I had risked much to see that Italian tumbler so long ago. Yet I knew I often drew stares and realized Will was right that we should not be seen together and not only so his wife would not interrogate and scold him later. Just like the deranged John Somerville on trial today, who knew what senile Father Berowne would say about me if someone questioned him? And then what might Stephen do if we were seen together here?
So once again I bound my breasts and dressed in the secondhand clothes I had bought in the Jewish market. I smudged my face and knotted and pinned up my long hair and played my part in the crowd of restless groundlings outside Newgate Prison, which was actually a three-story gatehouse with rooms and cells inside. The male prisoners were brought out, loaded in drays and driven through the raucous, insulting crowd down Newgate Street and then up Milk Street to the Guild Hall.
I kept scanning the mass of Londoners for Will, though my eyes were drawn back to the three pitiful prisoners, who seemed so alone. I had not seen Edward Arden since he’d insulted Leicester before the queen at Kenilworth when I was a girl. He looked old and enfeebled, but defiant. Somerville, the man who had triggered this upheaval, did indeed look as if he belonged in Bedlam. He was twitching and crying but smiling too; he kept squinting up at the sky as if some heavenly visitation would swoop in to rescue him. The priest Hugh Hall, the kindly man I had known briefly as the Park Hall gardener, looked crooked and all bent over, yet seemed deep in prayer. He spoke now and again to the other two, though how they heard over the tumult, I know not.
But no Will.
I followed along to the Guild Hall and then I saw him. Still in his rude garb, he had positioned himself near the top of the stairs leading up from the street so that the prisoners would be marched right past him. Someone whispered that the female prisoners had already been taken inside; I wondered if Will had seen them. I held my breath and braced myself against the wall of the Haberdasher’s Hall, just across the way, as the prisoners were unloaded from the dray.
The little scene played out just as, I’m sure, Will would have wished to write it. Edward Arden’s head jerked noticeably when Will took his cap off as the older man was herded up the stairs. Will bowed his head but kept his eyes up. Edward lifted his folded, manacled hands together briefly above his shoulder as if to signify they had clasped hands. Then the carved double doors closed to devour him.
We waited for several hours. I edged closer to Will but did not try to catch his eye. At four of the clock, the very time, I thought, the Queen’s Players were performing at the Bull, the doors opened for the next act of this dreadful drama.
Guards spilled out with pikes and shoved the street crowd well back. The prisoners were brought out, the two women first, who were taken off, and then the three men, pushed quickly toward their dray. I could tell—and I prayed no one else did—that Edward Arden was looking for Will again. Caught by the wall on the top of the steps, Will waved to him and Arden, tears slicking his cheeks, nodded.
Word of the prisoners’ fates spread through the crowd like wild-fire, even before a black-garbed man came out to read the verdicts for all those associated with the Arden plot. Somerville’s wife was to be released; Mary Arden’s punishment of being burned at the stake was to be commuted. But all three men were to be hanged, drawn and quartered at Smithfield three days hence.
It was easy enough to get to Will when the crowd dispersed. He still leaned against the wall as if he were frozen there. When he saw me, his eyes widened but he didn’t move.
“Come on then,” I said, not climbing the last few steps to him. “Let’s away. There’s naught else you can do. He saw you—he knows you care and send him your strength and prayers.”
“As you have always sent yours to me, my Anne.”
I felt my blood heat, and my legs went weak. “Don’t talk so. Come on.”
I started to walk away, and he came after me, walking jerkily as if he were a jumping jack with wooden limbs strung together. “I heard,” he said, still whispering, “they will put their heads on the bridge. I saw some there yesterday. Such deceit—and power—and pride crushing mere men . . .”
I waited for him to say more; he looked horror-stricken. I decided to change the subject. “Are you staying with Dick?” I asked, but his gaze stayed somewhere far away.
“What? Oh, with Dick on a pallet in his little room behind the print shop. It’s a wonderful shop. And I’ve been to see the Queen’s Men.”
“Are you demented?” I cried, propping my hands on my hips in a most unmasculine fashion. “You told me once they are spies for Walsingham and you went to see them at this time?”
“I was told to.”
“What?” I cried and yanked him off the street into a narrow close that led mazelike to who-knew-where. “You’re overthrown, distraught. You’re not making sense,” I accused.
“I—I forgot to tell you before. I was told to see them by the man who was looking through the books Edward Arden had loaned me. He made me sit by him while he read each scribble in them—Arden’s, not mine. In faith, I’ve never owned a book I dared to write in but the one you gave me when—”
“When we wed, Will. But tell me what the man said.”
“It was after Anne piped up with the comment about how I wanted to be a poet and playwright. I glared at her and motioned with my head for her to leave us, and she did. Then he—Thomas Wilkes, a clerk for the Privy Council—said to me, ‘I’m sure some of the Queen’s Players could use a clever man like you. Best you go and inquire about that employment.’”
“Did he mean for you to come clear to London? Did he say it as a threat?”
“By all that’s holy, Anne, everything was like a threat that day! And when he left he whispered to me, ‘See you on the stage in London and the shires soon.’”
“Walsingham’s spies and intelligencers have spun a huge spider-web. I fear for you if you get involved.”
“I fear for myself if I don’t. What if I defy these hints—these invitations I keep getting? Oh, I know you think I’m just looking for excuses to come here to try my hand at it all, but the terrible thing is—despite the horror of this Arden mess—I truly love London. I want to come, and in better times . . . Hell’s gates, listen to what I’m saying. Would I be getting in bed with those who will kill my own kin?” he cried, raking his fingers through his hair so hard that his cap flew off behind him.
Before he could retrieve it, I seized his wrists in a hard grip. I was thinking,
And would you ever again try to get in bed with me,
but I said only, “There’s one thing I am certain of, Will Shakespeare, alias Andrew Whateley and alias my brother that day you saved me at Kenilworth. You can play parts, and I know you can rhyme and write. Whatever you decide to do, you have the God-given gifts for it and have worked hard to increase those. As Father Berowne used to say before he lost his senses, ‘To whom much is given, much is expected.’ Will, if you are taken on by any players, it will be because you are good—and can be great.”
His mouth open, he stared at me. I was as shocked at what I’d said as he. All those lonely, wretched, angry hours I’d rehearsed telling him I hated him and I said that. His distracted gaze finally focused on mine. He lifted his chin and straightened his spine so that he looked strong and settled as he had not in days.
“Two things,” he said, his voice calm and clear, “no three. Above all else, I regret that I have lost you, but I will always love and cherish you in my heart and mind and soul. Anne, swear to me you will not come near Smithfield the day they execute those men.”
“If you will stay away.”
“I swear it, for I could not bear that. But I will see you before I leave the city, I swear that too.”
“Is that the third thing?”
“The third—no, the third is that, if and when I come to make my name and fortune here, it will be alone—alone but for knowing you are here. I will not rear a child in London, and Anne, the murderess of dreams, would never come with me.”
I gasped at how brutally he’d put that, but he dashed a quick kiss on my cheek and was off at a run toward I knew not where.
I did see him again,
the morning after the executions; he was leaving the city later that day. He sent a note saying he’d call for me at my back door, and we’d just be two country lads together. So I wore my boy’s garb again and off we went.
Almost like old times, we headed for a river, but the Avon was but a ripple compared to the torrent of the Thames at high tide. I felt that way about Will too. Whatever love I’d borne him earlier and whatever passions I had felt in Stratford were like a drop compared to this sudden surge within me. And yet, I held my tongue and played the part of his friend.
He hired a boat, a cheap one without a canopy, cushions, or Maud Wilton’s sweetbags. I could have afforded a better one, but said naught about that either.
“Where are we going?” I asked as we headed “Eastward ho” on the river.
“Though I spent the time Edward Arden was publicly butchered on my knees in St. Giles’ Church, in prayer and remembrance of his kindnesses to me, I have to see what they’ve done with his head. No one else would understand but you. Someday I’ll write about such passions and power that can turn one’s world upside down and destroy destinies. And I swear I will put the name of Arden in my plays and the name of poor, mad Somerville too.”