Sat with my granddaughter, Elizabeth, for an hour this morning, reading her an old script of my Julius Caesar. At seven years old, she understood it well, and clapped and cried or sat wide eyed, as the tragedy unfolded. Yet I could not but think of the time I spoke to kings and crowds, and heard both the silence at my magic words and their applause.
Elizabeth wanted to know why do the ducks fly in winter, and where do they go. I told her they fly south, and to Venice, the most beautiful city in the world, and city of the most beautiful as well.
‘More than London?’ she enquired.
I smiled, for she has never seen the pits nor smelt the stench of London, where even the river smells of the privy pit. ‘Far greater and more beautiful.’
‘And have you seen Venice, Grandfather?’
‘In my mind’s eye, child, many a time. And that is how you may see it too.’
She frowned at that. A pretty child, with soft brown hair. ‘How do I open my mind’s eye?’
‘You must practise. As you do your sewing, think of bright castles and gleaming spires, of artist’s colour upon the walls, of canals instead of cobblestones.’
She kissed my cheek. She has my Hamnet’s smile, which is perhaps mine, or Anne’s. ‘Will we go there together in our minds’ eyes, Grandfather?’
‘Most assuredly, my child,’ I told her.
And, for a moment, watching her, holding her small warmth, I knew that in her I have been blessed.
Thy grandsire loves thee well
Many a time he danced thee on his knee
Sang thee asleep, his loving breast thy pillow
Many a matter hath he told to thee . . .
Elizabeth and her mother left soon after, Jem carrying a cheese for them, a bag of warden pears, and a pudding with raisins of the sun and dried apricots from our own trees.
My wife was below in the hall, embroidering my new shirts that I will wear to London after Christmas, and Judith with her friend Catherine, so I to my library, to my book. My wife has placed a jug of new pens upon my table, so I need not sharpen the nib from time to time, but take up a new one. So I write tonight with a new nib and fresh ink too.
So it were done with Anne, and done again each day that week and all that month, whenever she could sneak away; though once she wore a purple bruise upon her arm where her sister-in-law had struck her for failing to mind the pots.
I did not go again to the beech tree, not even to see if a ribbon waved within its branches.
Each night I wrote more words of love to enchant Anne with me, and each day I read them to her, for Anne, of course, could not read nor write, except perhaps her name.
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground.
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.
When I read those words to Anne, she smiled and kissed me. But each word was for another.
And then, one day, Anne did not come.
I waited that morning in the lane around from their hall. Waited till the sun stared down from high above me, winking each time a cloud passed by. One of the labourers hoeing the turnips glanced at me as he placed his hoe over his shoulder and unrolled his lunch from a piece of cloth, so I left so as to cause no comment.
All that week I waited behind the hazelnut hedge, where I might spy her on the road and none see me, but still she did not come.
And then, at last, as if pulled by a cord inside my heart, my steps led me home past the great beech tree. A ribbon fluttered there. I looked both ways, then quickly retrieved it ere anyone could see, and thrust it up my sleeve.
I read it behind the beech tree:
For where thou art, there is the world itself,
And where thou art not, desolation.
I humbly do beseech of your pardon,
For too much loving you.
I did not answer.
My wife suggested we have company to dine, to cheer my autumn face, but I would have none, nor accept the invitations either, even from my Lord Sheriff. One consolation of my age is that one can refuse an invitation and it will be put down to weariness, not lack of courtesy. Yet I am not old, in neither limbs nor spirit. My weariness is of the soul.
Dinner: a soup of forcemeat balls of chicken; a hindquarter of mutton, roasted, with spiced dark beer sauce; a partridge pudding; veal sweetbreads with mustard; snipe seethed in elderberry juice sauce; a Virginia potato pie I know my wife has chosen to cheer me; carrots from the cellar, with butter; rhubarb, stewed; an apple pie; warden pears.
Bowels: regular, at last.