I have not written in this book for a week, for now the river runs obedient as a baby strapped in its swaddling clothes between its banks again. I have dined out each day, and if the dinners, house and plate were not as fine as that of my own household, I am still too newly made a gentleman to shun the invitations of others.
This morning my wife, Judith and I, with Jem as our footman, went to the Mop Fair, where on this day each year labourers and maids go to seek work. My wife desired a new milkmaid for our cows in the fields below the house, though I believe she wished even more for the bows and curtseys of the motley.
We passed the housemaids carrying their mops, the shepherds with their crooks.
A young man with a crop of black hair well greased with oil and little washing under his hat bowed to us. ‘I hope I see you well, Master Shakespeare.’
I stared at his effrontery. That he should speak to me, who has the right to wear the livery of His Majesty, without even a cuckoo between us to sound an introduction! It was Thomas Quiney, who keeps a tavern, but not one of the kind I do attend — or at least not in Stratford where I am known.
My wife and Judith in their innocence would have returned his bow. I laid my hands upon their arms to stop their curtseys, and we passed on without a word.
‘Father, who is that man?’ asked Judith. ‘Why shouldn’t we show him courtesy?’
‘A tavern-keeper. I know him not. It was a presumption for him to speak to us.’
‘Many do wish to claim your acquaintance, husband.’ My wife spoke with the pleasure of a woman who did the work of cook and housemaid when she was young and so enjoys her gentlewoman’s estate the more.
Judith glanced back. ‘And yet his face is handsome.’
‘Hush. No more, girl!’ I muttered, hoping no one of consequence had heard.
‘But, Father, why is a tavern-keeper less respectable than a wool merchant? One sells drink, the other wool.’
I clenched my teeth and kept my smile. This crowd would not see me rebuke my daughter in public. ‘Because that is how the world is made. Kings at the top, and tavern-keepers below farmers and merchants.’
‘Are they also below glove-makers?’
I would have boxed her ears if we had been at home. I had once been my father’s glove-maker’s apprentice, and my daughter knew it, as did the whole of Stratford. It had been her grandfather’s deepest desire to raise his family to a gentleman’s estate, and years of work to make me one. And now this girl would tarnish the crown of all our labours.
‘Enough!’ I muttered.
Judith cast one look back at the tavern-keeper, who still stared at us, but thankfully said no more.
At last, we found a maid who did not displease my wife by being too old to work, nor whose maiden beauties outshone an unmarried daughter or might tempt a husband, and whose fingernails were clean even if her face was poxed. I pressed a penny into the girl’s hand as a symbol of her hire.
Judith would have stayed to eat the fair’s roast ox, but my wife’s teeth pained her in the cold air, and I had no wish to eat and dance with the motley, nor have my daughter do so. We walked home, my wife to hot compresses and bed, and Judith and I to dine alone.
I wished I had sent a note for her sister and her husband to join us, for Susanna has the wit her sister lacks, and the good doctor the best conversation to be had in Stratford. That is to say, it would not earn a halfpenny in London, where the wise and witty gather to share bread and tales and women, but Dr Hall is a good man, and sensible.
I left the table at the second course, and had John bring my wine here, well warmed, and apples, cheese and wafers with it. Now I sit with sharpened quills and fresh ink — my wife must have seen I write and so supplied them — and a good fire, and memories so sharp that they might cut the ox heart that we dined upon.
That day my father told me I would see a play! Despite the threat of our family’s disgrace, I could have swooped into the air and danced a quatrain with clouds.
It was as if my unruly heart already guessed that plays would ride on Cupid’s arrow to my breast, though I had never seen one. Players had come to Stratford before, performing at the guildhall. My father had judged me too young to see them. Today’s performance would be at the Green Man Inn. Today, because the house of Shakespeare must be seen to hold its head high as Caesar’s horse, I would see it too.
There’d be noble clothes and sword fights and perchance a dancing bear. Ned’s uncle’s cousin the carter had seen a play in London. He said an actor died in front of them, there on the tavern floor, all daubed in gore, yet stood again full of life at the play’s end to make his bow. Would Ned be at the play too? He hadn’t been at school the past week. My doubts fled like autumn swallows as I scrambled to find my least darned stockings. Life was apples and May butter. A play!
My mother dressed in her green silk and embroidered sleeves, and Father in his brown velvet cloak with bear-fur trim. Father had sent old Tom who worked the garden for us to place stools in the front row outside the tavern. We joined the crowd, Mother returning the curtseys of each woman there. No one glanced at us and whispered. Father’s crime must still be quiet. Perhaps the alderman and others who had found him guilty would not yet speak of it, for if Father’s fine was truly paid by Friday he would be a man of influence once more in Stratford, and not one to offend.
I looked across the crowd for Ned. He was not there. Perhaps his father had him hoeing ground for turnips, to replace the wheat that had failed. But Farmer Forrest would have first to find the money to buy the turnip seed . . .
We arranged our cushions. Old Tom brought us a tray of ale and a dish of walnuts. I tried not to bounce upon my stool. When would the play begin?
At last an actor in a moth-eaten silk cloak strode from the tavern door to a small chorus of cheers, holding a pottery box out for us to put in our pennies and threepences.
‘Today we play The Death of Caesar,’ the actor announced, rattling his coin box. He bowed, then strode back into the tavern.
Two seconds later an evil, snarling fellow in a Roman toga snuck out the door, and stood in the round gap before us. ‘Hist!’ he whispered.
Suddenly the crowd sat quiet. Stratford’s breath was stolen by that single word. It was the first time I saw an actor’s magic. Even now it thrills me.
‘For there is murder coming!’ the player whispered, his whisper somehow louder than a barking dog. ‘All this cursed month we have been plotting! And now our evil bursts to flame! Today must Caesar die!’
No one cracked a walnut. I thought, how can one man command so many, all with whispers and a toga?
The actor peered this way and that, as if to check that no one saw, turning a crowd of townsfolk and yeomen into the pillars of ancient Rome. Mark Antony came on next, noble and fair, and then Livia, dressed in some lady’s discarded robes of silk. The fair Livia raised giggles, for she had not shaved that day. Her beard pricked through her rouge.
‘Marry, methinks they need a younger actor for such parts as these,’ my father muttered to my mother.
‘Women’s parts!’ some lout sniggered behind us. Father silenced him with a stare. Livia began to speak, in a high girlish croak that revealed a teenage actor’s breaking voice.
We breathed in ancient Rome that day, sitting outside an English tavern, while the ducks swam on the pond and the tavern-keeper brought out tankards of ale: screamed at the brutal stabbing of Caesar, the traitors cowering, cheered at Mark Antony’s fierce defence. For two hours each man forgot the stench of blighted wheat, his rotting hayricks, that the plague lurked a few villages away. Women cared not about the terrors of childbirth, nor men the antics of their sons. For two hours of the clock we floated upon words, taking us further than any ship upon the sea.
Words. But what words! I’d read fine words at school. But written words had not power to take farmers, glovers and small boys across time and space to ancient Rome.
And then the play was done.
It was, in truth, not much of a play. But I knew no better then.
Father and Mother lingered to talk to neighbours, carefully keeping their faces cheerful. I slipped away, with naught but a ‘Do not get your hose dirty’ from my mother. I ran down the streets, avoiding the contents of chamber pots and the horse droppings because I was wearing my best shoes, out into one of the sad, bare blighted fields.
I looked around, but there was no one — blighted wheat needs no tending, just the animals put in to eat what can be salvaged and then the land left fallow to clean the blight away.
I shut my eyes.
I had planned to recite Mark Antony’s speech, but I’d forgotten it. Instead, as if they had always been there, came other words. I heard my voice say,
‘Friends, Romans, everyone!
Listen to me!
I’ve come to bury Caesar
Not to praise him.
Brutus says Caesar was ambitious.
Brutus is an honourable man.
All of those who lifted savage knives to Caesar
Are honourable men.
Yet did not Caesar weep when soldiers died in battle?
Did he not feel the hunger when wheat rotted on the stem?
Did he not —’
‘What are you doing?’
I opened my eyes. It was Ned. He wore a muddy shepherd’s smock, not the stockings he wore for school or church, but his hands were clean, even if his bare feet were not.
‘Nothing,’ I said, flushing. And then, ‘Stuff for school.’ It was the first time I had lied to him. But how could I explain that the play still whirled in my brain as if I had been given mead to drink?
‘Oh. School stuff. I’m not going back to school.’ Ned shrugged. ‘School’s stupid, anyway.’ He flung himself on the ground and began to chew a head of grass. He wore his old darned hose under his smock. His hose were muddy too. But I’d missed him so I sat next to him, and hoped I could brush the dirt off my stockings.
I looked at him closely. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘Nothing.’
‘There is. You’ve been crying!’
‘Have not.’
‘Have too!’
He shrugged again, then said quickly, ‘Pa has sold me to the players as apprentice.’
I stared at him. Never in my wildest dreams had I thought of luck like this. A father could pay to apprentice his son as a glove-maker, smith, wool merchant or cooper. But an apprentice player! How had Ned’s father found the money to give his son such a chance?
‘The actors paid Father four guineas for me,’ said Ned softly.
‘That can’t be right. You have to pay to be taken as apprentice.’
‘Not for players.’
‘Why not?’
Ned shrugged yet again. I could see he knew, but wouldn’t tell me. He stood. ‘I have to go. Ma has killed a rooster for my farewell supper. I leave with the players tomorrow. Will . . . can you come and say goodbye to me, as we leave?’
‘Of course.’ I might get a beating for missing school, but it would be worth it, to wave the players off. And Ned.
‘You’ll go to London, as soon as the theatres open again!’ I said, trying to be glad for him, instead of jealous. Grief stabbed my boy’s heart, for I would miss him too. Not just because he was my only friend, but because he was himself, Ned.
Dimly through time’s shifting veil I knew I’d make other friends as years consumed my life. But a new friend does not replace the lost. I tried to cheer us both. ‘You’ll see dancing bears and . . . and the Queen maybe and London Bridge. The whole world!’ While I was stuck here, studying grammar, with no one to climb the trees with.
‘Yes,’ said Ned flatly.
‘You’ll be in all the plays.’ He would make a good girl player, I thought, with his red curls and soft white skin, and he was small and slight besides. You could put him in a skirt and no one would be able to tell the difference.
Ned’s face crumpled suddenly. I thought he was going to cry again. Instead he hugged me hard, so quickly I had no chance to hug him back. I watched him as he ran back to the farm.
I wrote my first poem that night. I do not know if it was for loss of Ned, or inspiration from the play. But all at once the words in my head formed lines that whispered, ‘Write me on a page. Now!’ No beatings from the usher stopped me. I took up the quill and found an inkwell, and then a scrap of parchment.
I began to write. The words looked like ants trotting across the paper, for no scrivener had taught me how to make the letters properly.
O, friend, ’tis hard to part from you
For friendship’s heart is strong and true.
Our beasts will leap and our birds sing
For you the London bells will ring.
I stopped. The poem wanted something more, but I couldn’t think of what it might be. So I rolled it up, and sealed it with a blob of candle wax, as Father did when he sent an account.
I went to bed, lapped by the mattress feathers, and dreamt of London town and reciting the play’s words in a tavern forecourt, with my grand friend, the actor Ned.
The players left early the next day, allowing them to get to the next village in time for mid-morning dinner, and a performance that afternoon. A crowd of footloose apprentices and tavern wenches, as well as Ned’s family and I, waved them off. Their cart was loaded with chests, which I supposed held costumes. The players sat upon the chests, except he who had played Chorus and held the reins. They were still in costume: Julius Caesar with bloodied toga and laurel wreath; Mark Antony, noble and sad. But now it was Ned who wore Livia’s skirts. As I watched, Caesar nudged him and ordered, ‘Smile.’
Ned’s lips curved obediently, though tears rolled down his cheeks. Behind me I heard his mother sob. But mothers always cry when their sons go to make their fortunes.
I waved and yelled, ‘Hurrah for Ned!’
But Ned looked straight ahead and not at me, as if already seeing what lay before him. Even when I ran to the cart and held up the poem I had written for him, he took it but did not meet my eyes, nor did he look back as the cart rumbled down the road.
And all I could think was, if only they had chosen me.
Today’s dinner’s first course was roast kid with sauce; minced mutton shapes; a pie of sparrows; beef collops with marrow bone; a tart of apples and the sparrow brains; medlar jelly; quinces preserved in cider, which again I feel did not agree with me.
My waters clear, but bowels unsteady. I fear the upset will give me bad dreams, and I will dream of Ned.