The Secret Life of William Shakespeare (2 page)

At that she wanted to hide her head. She seldom saw her own face. Her stepmother had a looking-glass, but kept it close. Whenever she had seen herself reflected, she had wanted to avert her eyes as if from a glimpse of nakedness. There was Bartholomew’s gold-and-ice fairness, but instead of that great thrust he made in the world, this face seemed ready for nothing. She knew she blushed easily, but it was alarming to see how the blood surged, and the way her features seemed made for the registering of small pains and gnawing questions.

‘You have a burden,’ her father had once said. ‘Beauty.’ But he was her father, and always kind. He would even have understood – she was sure of it – her secret marriage to the night.

But on this night, with storm rolling on the western hills, his presence was weak with her. She made a mistake and got too close to the bedchamber door, and heard not snores but urgent grunts and squeakings. She recovered from that by going to the kitchen and taking down her father’s favourite cup and setting it by a dish and just for a moment creating him, sitting there, taking his modest supper … But it was only a moment. The thought got in, before she could stop it, that soon he would be gone altogether. And quickly came another: that that was right, that was how it should be, and this was wrong.

The storm rescued her. As if it had made a giant stride it was suddenly here, the thunder cracking overhead, lightning making cold blue sketches of the room. Quietly she unbarred the back door and stood on the footworn threshold looking out across the yard to the meadows beyond. No rain yet, but it would sizzle when it came. Luckily the hay had been cut. She could just make out a blot in the top meadow – the sheep huddling together at the far end. When lightning struck the oak tree beyond the barn it took her a few moments to comprehend what had happened. There was something almost stealthy in what she saw, the downward flick of the assassin’s knife, and then her eyeballs were aching with a hot scribble and her ears ringing at the noise, not so much a noise as an axe chopped into her hearing. She blinked and rubbed. Groaning and rending, the oak seemed to be giving monstrous birth. The riven part was breaking away in smoke and din.

The other noise reached her fitfully. It, too, seemed to make no sense: a deep moaning, long and loud beyond the possibility of human lungs. Yet it sounded so human that her heart clutched.

‘God. Look at that.’ Bartholomew was beside her.

‘Yes, isn’t it fearful? That’s what woke me,’ she said quickly. The moan rose again, beseeching. Bartholomew sighed. He had flung on breeches and stuffed his white bare feet into shoes, but he did not look ridiculous: he never could.

‘I fear me that’s the young brindle. The one that’s with calf. Damn.’ His jaw was tight. Plump drops of rain descended singly, each choosing a cobble. ‘Go fetch the lantern, will you?’ He went ducking towards the byre.

In the kitchen, while she fumbled with tinder and flint, her stepbrother John came yawning and wanting to know what went on. She gave him, perpetual eater, a gooseberry tart and sent him back to bed. Part of her still fretted simply at this invasion of the night. Yet she knew something had changed, and the screeching of the tree seemed to echo inside her.

In the byre Bartholomew was performing a soft, circling dance of caution round the brindled cow. She was standing oddly, head lowered, occasionally making a staggering half-turn, like a drunk man on a slope; and all the time she let out the terrible noise that was almost a wild voice. Blood dripped from her left forequarter.

‘Hurt herself against the wall,’ Bartholomew said softly. ‘Ever a skittish beast. So, so … Bring that nearer. Set it down there. Buggery.’ He dodged as the cow flung her great sad head about. Rain pelted the roof. Cool air blew in, and the cow’s snorting breath made steam-dragons in the lamplight. ‘Ah, damn it. See her tail, see. She’s going to miscarry. Shit on it.’

Anne said: ‘The farrier. Perhaps—’

‘Perhaps not. Who’ll stir in a night like this? Besides…’ The brindle made a new, unthinkable noise, her neck swinging lithe and wrong, like an adder. Bartholomew scrambled backwards. ‘Besides, I doubt his skill will avail. It’s too soon, we’ll get no live calf. Only hope she’ll drop easy and it won’t kill her.’

There were convulsions all along the cow’s side, and under her tail a red gape shrank and grew. Anne stepped nearer. ‘Brother, she suffers so—’

‘Keep back, she’s maddened. Oh, buggery. Never cared for this notion of a herd. Father’s invention. Sheep for me, hardy, no troubles.’ Lightning shuddered again, illustrating a few crisp moments of the cow’s agony. The sound she was making suddenly changed. It became dry and dark and plain, not protest but accompaniment. From her palpating rear came a soft slither, and then it was on the ground.

Bartholomew delicately danced again. ‘There, draw back, Anne, let her lick it. See. She’ll tire. Phoo, stinks. Well, look, it couldn’t live.’

Anne was on her knees. The folded, soft-limbed shape did not stir. She tried not to weep. Thunder sullenly slammed doors and stamped about overhead.

‘So, so … She’s bleeding a little – only a little. She’ll heal, God willing. I’ll send to the farrier in the morning. Damn you, beast, be quiet now, you’ve dropped and it’s done.’ Bartholomew squatted on his haunches beside Anne: a glance. ‘Ever the lady. I’ll be sworn, no one would suppose you’d been bred up on a farm.’

‘It ought to be horrible.’ She fought with her voice. ‘But look. It’s beautiful.’

Her brother shook his head. ‘Beautiful. Well, I never do understand it when you say that. Look now, she’s standing away. They don’t lack all sense. Never fear, beast, we shall bring the bull to you and you shall have another. Now, I want a piece of sacking – the thing will be slippery.’

‘What will you do with it?’

‘Get what I can for it. Nothing like the value of a grown calf, but the skin is something worth. Morts, they call them, fine gloves made out of unborn skins. I’ve known them come out of Ireland.’ He examined her a moment. ‘Why, is it worse than a skin from slaughter?’

‘No. No, to be sure. Only – Bartholomew, don’t hang it up by its heels.’

He hesitated, then shrugged. ‘Aye, I dare say it’s a thought grim. Besides, the crows might get at it.’

Rain pounded and puddled as they crossed the yard, Bartholomew carrying the wrapped burden, Anne the lantern. She set it down in the kitchen and lit another rushlight from it, then another. She smothered a strange wish to make the whole house ablaze with light.

‘I’ve laid it in the buttery. Cooler.’ Bartholomew came in, shaking the rain from his hair. ‘Lord, what a night. Clove the old oak like an axe. Well, we must send to the fellmonger tomorrow as well as the farrier. Curse on cattle, they’re all trouble.’

‘Surely not the fellmonger. Father used to sell his hides to Master Shakespeare at Stratford. The glover—’

‘Oh, him.’ Bartholomew made a face. ‘No, they say he’s a queer, awkward fellow to deal with nowadays. There was all that ticklish matter of him trading in wool, and going before the court for it. And now I hear he never stirs abroad. Half mad, or popish. Cut me a slice of the brawn, will you?’

Anne wielded the knife. The meat sighed and flopped. ‘He was Father’s friend.’

‘Yes, but Father isn’t here any more.’ Bartholomew reached for the platter she offered him. Then his eye fell on the table, their father’s cup and dish set out. He looked at them for a long time.

‘Brawn,’ Anne said, holding out the platter stiffly.

‘Dear God.’ Bartholomew sat, tipping his head back, looking at her as if he had caught her stealing from him and was earnestly trying to work out why. ‘Dear God, Anne. Anyone would think
you
are his widow.’

Instead of her stepmother, half blind and sickly in her chamber. Once mighty-fleshed, she had been stricken, suddenly, like the lightning tree, two years since. Just as if everything Anne had wished on her, when first her father brought her falsely blushing home, had finally come true. As it happened, Anne need not have feared. She had lost no love. She was still first, until—

‘No. It’s only that I have to do the remembering for both of us.’ The anger, tainted with guilt, came on her foul and shocking, as if she had croaked blasphemy or soiled herself.

Bartholomew stabbed a knife into the brawn, chewed noisily. His cheeks were a little red. ‘What sad work you make of life. You should have married George Godden. There’ll not be many such chances. The years, Anne, the years. Well, after all, you’re not contented here, are you? What is it? Is it Bella? I’d hoped you might rub along well enough.’

Anne thought of Bartholomew’s wife, her mild, smiling plumpness, the way she could talk comfortably on damsons, on the ailments of children, on the water boiling in the pan: on and on. She didn’t dislike her. She rather envied her. And sometimes she wanted to flee from her to the furthest horizon.

‘I am contented. Bartholomew, I’m sorry for what I just said.’

That seemed to irritate him. He pushed the platter away. ‘Oh, we’ll send to Master Shakespeare if you will, Anne. Doubtless you see it as carrying out Father’s wishes. But you can make that mean anything, you know, because he’s in the grave and can’t answer for himself. I remember him right enough. He was a good man in the main, an honest man: too indulgent and soft sometimes, and I fear both his wives led him a dance, but there, he was mortal like the rest of us.’ He rose and stretched. ‘I’m going back to bed. You’d best do the same. I don’t know why you must creep about of a night.’ He picked up their father’s cup and put it on the shelf. ‘Not all men are like Father, Anne, and that’s the way of it.’

I know that, she thought, but it went down into the great vault of the unsaid.

When he was gone she stood at the door, watching the rain, breathing its freshness. Then she walked out in it. She wanted to see the lightning tree. She wanted to give that calf life. The rain drenched her: her hair straggled round her face, her clothes clung to her body, their touch heavy and insistent. For a moment she longed to be a witch, to work a spell and see the calf stir. She stood beneath the stricken oak. It looked crippled yet everlasting. She remembered climbing it once, as a girl – just the once. It was simply not the sort of thing she did. She saw her father smiling anxiously as she struggled down. ‘Ah, you were not meant for a hoyden,’ he said. He was right. But, oh, just for once, that exhilarating terror of being stranded up there, far from earth, and thinking: I did this, and it is wrong and perilous, but I am living.

*   *   *

When the message came, Will was at work paring a skin in the yard. He noticed that when the knife caught and snagged, he winced just as if he were shaving himself. Was it time to go bearded or moustached, like some of his old schoolfellows? Too often, though, the whisker was a poor ill-nourished thing, like a rafter cobweb twirled on a maid’s broom.

You must learn what it is to be a man.

The message was from a farm at Shottery. A stillbirth hide, rare, delicate. ‘There’s little call for such fine goods hereabouts,’ his father said, looking over Will’s shoulder. His beard was the same shape as the paring-knife. ‘Still, go see. Say sixpence or nothing.’ This meant he could go up to ninepence. ‘Present my compliments to Master Hathaway. I loved his father well. Ah, Richard Hathaway, now,
there
was a good man, weigh it how you will.’ Often now he had this dogged, injured tone, as if someone were contradicting him.

At the stable door Will was caught by Edmund, the youngest of his brothers. Two years old, strong, loudly undeniable, Edmund clung to his leg and howled. ‘Hush, I’m coming back,’ Will soothed. As it grew less likely that the child would die, Will was allowing himself to grow fond of him. But on his side, Edmund was passionate and exclusive. ‘Coming back, coming back.’ The boy’s skirts were dabbled with dung.

Joan came bustling and sighing. ‘Now see that muck. Mother will scold. You shouldn’t let him.’

‘Coming back, hush … I tried to slip away.’

‘Here, monkey.’ Joan prised Edmund away, hoisted him. ‘Such tears! Now you’re all besnotted. Look, look at the pretty chicks a-running…’ She frowned at Will over the bristly tumultuous head. ‘Lord, I swear, whenever you go out it’s as if he thinks he’ll never see you more.’

‘And yet I always come back,’ Will said, touching Edmund’s wet hot cheek, ‘don’t I?’

As he set his foot to the mounting-block, he thought he heard Edmund, borne back into the house, say with an odd adult resignation, ‘No.’

The mare twitched and tossed and sidestepped out of the yard, hating Will on her back. When Gilbert rode her she was peaceable. The wisdom of animals and infants. Will, no rider, managed her as he managed life. Things he loathed and had no aptitude for, he had learned to deal with in this way: he had learned to be good at them.

Last night’s storm had swelled the gutters to overflowing, and the top of Rother Street was six inches under water. Three yelling boys were playing football with a bloated toad.

‘Will! Good news!’

Master Field, the tanner, leading his laden donkey. Their faces were of a length. Will reined in.

‘Richard’s home. God be praised. Late last night, when we’d given him up. Five nights on fearful roads.’

‘God be praised.’ For once Will meant it.

‘He’s sleeping yet. Later you must come see him. His mother’s in a pother over his looks. Says London’s turned him yellow as parchment. But he prospers. Through labour he prospers. Idleness,’ Master Field said, aiming his switch at one of the shrieking boys, ‘see what it begets. The council should do something. They’re too lax. Prentices running around after curfew, shouting and fighting. When’s your father going to come back to meetings? Backbone, that’s what’s wanting.’

Accustomed to thinking two questions ahead, Will dodged this one easily. ‘Father will be glad to hear Richard’s safe arrived. He often speaks of him. Have you come by the Shottery road? Is it fair?’

Richard back. Riding on, Will cautiously allowed the thought to shine on him. Last winter he had come across a hedgehog sleeping in a briar tangle behind the midden. The midden was warm with the liveliness of rot and the hedgehog was warm too: he had managed to touch it, using his open palm. He knew about soft prickles. He knew about choosing his times to stir and live.