The Secret Life of William Shakespeare (21 page)

‘I think we shouldn’t speak so.’

‘Oh, fuck it, man, I’m dying. If you’re popish I couldn’t give a damn, and if you’re t’other way and thinking of reporting me for a good stretching on the rack I couldn’t give a damn likewise.’ Tarlton reached shakily for his wine-cup. Will put it in his hand. The fingers felt like the blades of a fan. ‘Sorry. Years of being jovial, you know, take their toll. Besides, you … I can’t fit you in either way, Will. Tell, now. Do you fear for what may become of your soul?’

‘Fear?’ Will tried to think. The word itself gave him a fearful feeling, but that was words, more prompt and powerful than the sluggishness of things. He shrugged. ‘No. Not as long as it’s mine.’

‘Tut tut, it belongs to God,’ Tarlton intoned, in a preacher’s reproachful voice. Mock, but not quite. He closed his eyes for a moment. ‘I’m from the country too, did you know? Shropshire. People have odd ways in the country. When I was very young I saw a shepherd’s lad put his prick up a sheep. The beast just carried on grazing while he pounded away. Not a bad preparation for married life, in truth.’ His eyes sprang open, but their gaze was distant. ‘In the village over the hill the churchyard was flooded. The ground fell apart like cake and there, in a fantastic tumble and tangle, were these bones. The sexton heaped them up, skulls atop and smiling. It became a favourite of young lovers courting thereabouts, to go see the bones: she would get the shivers and he would lay a comforting arm about her. When I saw the bones like that, I thought: Very well, sir, very well, I have you.’ Tarlton lifted the cup to his lips, using both hands, in sudden sardonic communion. ‘Now you want some pat conclusion like, “And so I became a clown.” Naught so neat. Though I’m sure I did think that making a jest is, at least, making something.’

Will grinned, then felt his face fall. ‘And so is making an enemy.’

‘Ah, hast been foiled again? I’ve told thee, it’s like fencing, parry, forte to foible, you’ll come back the stronger.’

‘No, no, nothing so bad. Pembroke’s have paid me for another fortnight. Only I heard that Robert Wilson had spoke against me to them, and I puzzle me why. He sits high and secure with the Queen’s, wherefore do I threat him?’

‘Why, man, he’s jealous. Look you, he’s an excellent pretty actor, but he would be more. He’s fitted up several broken-backed old plays, and writ two more of his own devising. Lord, how he laboured over every line! I remember him soaking linen in cold water to press on his poor bursting head as he wrote. Then
you
come along, and you can swell out the blank verse extempore when your memory’s out, or patch in a few comic lines to please the locals, and you don’t even seem to think. It just comes. That’s why.’

‘A strange thing to hate a man for.’ So Will thought: but he thought more on it.

*   *   *

Until his fortunes turned with the year, Will did not go often to the printing-house in prosperous Blackfriars. Too shabby, too conscious of his growling stomach.

And it wasn’t because of Richard, or not chiefly. It was Madame Vautrollier. Perfectly pleasant, hospitable, even kind. Yet somehow not a person you cared to see you at a disadvantage.

‘We never see you, William.’ It was nearly
Guillaume
as she pronounced it: not quite. Betwixt and between, like her eyes, almost blue, almost violet. And who she was: sombre widow yet young, mother of the black-clad little boy, who occasionally appeared in the scented parlour to make an obedient bow, yet how narrow the waist she liked to smooth with hands that seemed appreciative, or reminiscent, or something else. ‘You ought to sup with us. Richard would like it. I would too.’

‘Thanks. In the evenings I often have to study parts, and so—’

‘You could do that here – no? We could help you. It would be diverting.’ She sighed. ‘We are often dull, these winter evenings.’

And yet they were to marry. It was made public now: in six weeks Richard Field was to marry his old master’s widow – the apprentice’s ultimate dream – and take possession of her fair body and business.
We are dull in the evenings.
Revealing – too revealing. Will told himself not to go, but he did it, once: took his newest part along to supper and ran through it with them. Richard was interested, though godly disapproval kept crossing his face like dyspepsia.

‘This isn’t the full playbook, surely.’

‘No, just my lines, and the cues. It looks difficult to get a sense of, I know. But there are plots pegged up in the tiring-house – story outlines, so you know where you are.’

‘And do you?’ Richard said. ‘I should have thought you would half forget what’s real and what’s fancy, sometimes.’

No: never. Will had a highly developed sense of the real; he was alert to its hovering like a chicken with a kite. Madame Vautrollier took charge of the paper. Will tried to recite rather than act, for some reason. The part was an old fond foolish lord. He was good at old, apparently. Madame Vautrollier’s hand beat time as he spoke, following the blank verse rhythm, which surprised him, since he understood the rhythms of French were entirely different.

‘Well,’ she said, when he had finished, ‘you are perfect.’

The food was excellent and almost made him dizzy with its richness; or the wine, perhaps, or something else. She wrapped some cheese and cold stuffed mutton for him to take home with him. ‘A gift,’ she said, in a faintly warning tone. Walking back to his lodging – absurd to say ‘home’ – he was nudged by the aroma of cloves, nutmeg, verjuice. He had a curious sensation, as he lit a taper to reveal his room in all its worm-eaten nullity, of having been followed.

*   *   *

‘Soon I shall be Mistress Field. A strange thing, William, to be a woman. We change our names and become someone else. As a man you can hardly think of this. You simply stay who you are, all the time.’

‘Do I? Most mornings when I wake I’m not sure who I am. And seldom does the day reveal it.’

They were in the tiny courtyard behind the house where Madame Vautrollier grew herbs and other plants. In summer, she said, he should see it in summer, but even now greenery quivered in the numberless pots and trays. Looking up at the hatch of sky, Will wondered how she did it.

‘Oh, you mean because you are a player,’ she said, plying the water-jug, pressing down loam. A cloth always at her waist, prompt to mop spills, dab sullied fingers: she would never, he felt, be taken unawares. The indeterminate eyes saw far.

‘Something like that.’ It wasn’t what he meant.

‘Well, after all, you wake alone,’ she said, looping back a strand of black hair. It seemed heavy as a string of pearls. ‘That’s never good for anyone.’

Will knew who Jacqueline Vautrollier was, though. Temptation. She was temptation personified, in the way of the older plays that still pleased the inn-yard sort, with a Vice who stalked on winking at the audience and demonically chuckling over his villainy. Useful, he thought, if everyone you came across in life located themselves in this way, so you knew just where you were.

That was what he believed when he was not at Blackfriars, at any rate; when he dwelled on blood and stones and renewed the terms of the pact with himself. Fidelity, absolute fidelity to Anne, was the price of his being allowed to leave her and pursue this dream, otherlife, firstlife, coin it how you will. Whatever he was seeking in London – and he glimpsed it here and there, through the brakes and thickets of the everyday – it must be untouched by anything of flesh and heart. That was elsewhere, under seal and promise.

When he was with her it was not quite so easy. She was not a Vice or one of the Seven Deadly Sins: she was too interesting for that. Her Frenchness: some quality beyond complexion and accent that he could not define, and fascinated him, though she was not forthcoming about the country of her birth. ‘France is dead to me now,’ she said. ‘And to all the godly. A land of ghosts. Here we can live.’ Conversation with her sparked and kindled him. And Richard was so very busy, and it was pleasant and agreeable to everyone for Will to pass a little time with her in the courtyard among the tender shoots and fronds. And when she spoke out to him one afternoon, bare and honest, he thought that at least she was not playing the coquette, and so …

‘Richard is from home. Business at Gravesend. He lies there tonight.’ She laid her hand on Will’s. She made it seem a very natural action, almost as if he had asked her to do it. ‘Now you’re surely not going to run away because of that, are you?’

‘You are to marry Richard very soon,’ Will said, after a moment. ‘Isn’t that so?’

‘Yes, so I am. And you are Richard’s old friend, yes. All this is very easy to get over, very smooth, but the English go along so heavily. Like carthorses.’ A twitch of a smile: more nervous, perhaps, than she appeared.

‘Carthorses,’ he said, gently disengaging his hand, laughing a little. ‘Madame, such flattery.’ He had a brief hope that it could end thus, dissipate in froth. But she stepped forward and kissed him on the mouth, and then stepped back: formal, as a dance or duel.

‘Call it running away, if you like,’ he said, ‘but I must go.’ His voice was strangely thick; and though he meant to move, nothing happened.

‘Who are you afraid to hurt? I ask because I am truly curious. Richard? He won’t know. Richard has the measure of his bargain. He esteems me pretty well and he esteems the business very well, and he knows that I need someone to manage it and maintain my household as I am used to it. Marriage means looking at the same face every day, you know: it’s best if it’s an ordinary one, not exciting; it’s more restful. Are you afraid to hurt me? That won’t happen. Once married, I shall be faithful. William, I mean only a little fair-day together, a little indulgence, and then back to work, with some sweet honey memories for the savouring.’

‘Marriage. There, you’ve said the word, and that’s all that was needed. You can’t have forgotten that I am married—’

‘Indeed no, and how is your wife?’

He jerked his head back: he had not thought her capable of this. ‘Madame, your servant—’

‘William.’ She held his arm, forcing him to turn. ‘I mean no insult to your wife. I wish her well. I wish her all happiness and you with her, when you return to the country one day. But I ask how she is because you don’t know – do you? You suppose this and that. It’s all supposes. You’re miles and miles away. Distance, time, they change things. When something is very, very far away, it appears small. God made it so. Otherwise the stars would blind us and the birds in the sky would look like dragons.’

It would have been so easy to kiss her. He could hardly think of an easier thing. But he remembered where they stood: their roles. The essence of temptation was that it appeared harmless. ‘Sweet honey memories may spoil,’ he said. ‘And I don’t think God is pertaining to this, you know.’

She smiled. He supposed pride would let her do nothing else. But, no, she was at ease, picking up her basket and jug, glancing over her plants. ‘Come spring, I mean to have tulips. Have you ever seen tulips? They come from the gardens of the Turks, they say. Too beautiful for the infidel. Are you in love, William?’

‘With my wife, yes.’

She stared as if he had made a crude joke, then laughed lightly. ‘Very well. I’ll say no more – except that life isn’t like a book, you know: you can never turn back to a page. Never mind. You will still come to see us, won’t you? I mean it. Because it really doesn’t matter.’ Her eyes were large and candid. ‘That above all is what I wanted you to understand.’

Will attended the wedding of Richard Field and Jacqueline Vautrollier; and come spring, he was there, in the little courtyard, to see the tulips blooming. Rich upward-sucking mouths without faces. They seemed to him, like most things in life, fearfully unlikely. He had in him a sense of conquest or defeat, as elusive as the colour of the bride’s eyes.

*   *   *

In Stratford, spring was becoming summer and summer the first without him. But Greenaway the carrier arrives from London one bright warm afternoon, when all the talk is of the Spaniards landing and Gilbert and Richard are doing pike-drill with the local muster, and puts a packet in Anne’s hand. It contains two crowns, one gold, one silver, and a letter from her husband.

John Shakespeare is hovering beside her in the doorway. He snatches up the letter and reads it to himself, lips moving, breathing the words. Will is the only person she has known who can read silently.

‘Bravely, I thank you … And how does Mistress Greenaway now? We were sore grieved for your little one. He rests with God … Bonfires built all along? Nay, if they come they’ll have such a fight shall make them wish their bread dough … And Will was in good looks, say you? So, so…’

She has to do all of this, while her father-in-law broods blindly at her side. He grows more and more awkward in company, she thinks. But then this, this moment is exceptional, as Will enters their lives again, if only remotely. And though she cannot read the words, it does not feel remote, really – his presence: when it was his hand that made those rippling ink-marks, and his hand, too, touched these coins. They feel warm to her: an illusion she is quite happy with, for she judges illusions by their quality. Torn between missing him, hating him, and imagining him deserting her for London for ever, she has not expected hearing from him to produce this: simple happiness. Complexity will follow, no doubt, but for now she is content to clutch the warm coins, and wait to hear the letter.

Bidding farewell to the carrier, Anne goes in to find John Shakespeare sitting by his unseasonal fire. The letter – the letter is on the floor.

Edmund’s feet pattering.

‘Oh, is that from Will?’

‘Hie down to the cellar, Edmund. Fetch me ale.’

Anne draws close, puts a hand on his shoulder. The fire in the warm day seems to her scarcely bearable, but perhaps that is the point: a refusal of the real.

‘What does he say?’ Suddenly fear possesses her. ‘For God’s sake, what does my husband say? Is anything wrong? Will Greenaway said he was hale when he saw him—’

‘Peace, peace, he’s well.’ He twitches away from her. ‘How much did he send you?’