My hand shakes and the ink smudges the paper. Yet to whom else might I confess this except my book?
This morning, as the rest of Stratford laughed to watch the ploughmen in blackened faces leap and dance in front of the plough to be blessed before the first furrow of the year be turned, I saw my daughter Judith emerge from behind the holly bush at the bottom of our cow field. Behind her came Thomas Quiney, still fastening his codpiece. It seems he too ploughs a furrow, and one that is not lawful either to man or God.
I said naught, for what was there to say? I have worried at the smiles of the smith’s daughter when I should have been watching the glances of my own.
I offered Judith my arm as if I had but met her strolling in the garden. I did not speak to Quiney, nor even look at him, for if I had I would have ripped out his heart, or that piece of him which has profaned my daughter. And perhaps I would have done it yet, had I the rapier I wore in London, but not here among the swans.
My daughter and I walked back to New Place with no word or glance between us, but the silence thick as pottage three days old. Quiney did not run after us, nor even try to beg my pardon. A kitten lover, who licks the cream, then creeps away.
I left Judith in the hall, and came here to cage my rage into what beast might serve me best. And so I write, for words on the page have always helped me shape my world and see it clear.
I do not worry that Thomas Quiney will seek my daughter’s hand. My chief concern is that he will, and what then should I say?
More than one score years and ten ago I did as he has done: stole the maidenhead of a well-dowried girl to ensure she would be my wife. Judith has the rent of the cottage in Chapel Lane in her own right, and the three hundred pounds I settled upon her a year past; beyond what she and Susanna will inherit after I am gone, for there can be no son of my house now. It will be a goodly sum, and more than any other woman in the county might expect. He has done well for himself with his ploughing, Thomas the tavern-keeper. That my daughter should be naught but an alewife!
And yet, with my blessing and a good dowry, she need not. She could live in Chapel Lane, and someone other than her husband could run his tavern for him while Thomas Quiney apes being a gentleman, if he can learn to eat without dribbling on his doublet. All this I expect he knew when he lay with her behind the hedge.
A foolish daughter makes a fool of her father; yet a foolish father allows his daughter to be a fool too. Today, like Hamlet, I saw my father’s ghost appear to me with his sin and mine held in his outreached hands, returned to me tenfold.
My daughter and my ducats: Thomas Quiney will have them both.
Later
I called my daughter to me, when my temper had cooled to that of the blacksmith’s iron and not the flames of purgatory.
She had changed her dress; it was stained by the mud perhaps. I expected her to kneel to me, to cry and plead. But she just stood there, hands together, her look as steady as that of any dutiful daughter.
‘Had you no thought for our good name?’ I asked, trying to keep my voice calm.
‘I thought but of my heart.’
She said the words as if they were the most reasonable plea in all of England.
‘Your heart!’
She came to sit upon my knee, but I turned my legs so that she might not do so. I wished to warn her that no man buys what he has had for free, but what use was that now? For this is just what the wretch doth want: my daughter for his wife, her dowry for his chest, my substance after I am gone.
‘How could you do this to our house?’ I asked again.
‘But, Father, you yourself have said, to the marriage of true love let there be no impediment.’
‘True minds! I mind not your mind dallying with this man, but your maidenly body. He wishes for your fortune, girl, and takes your body so he may get it,’ I told her harshly. ‘Are you still a maid?’
She flushed. ‘Of course, Father.’
She lied. I, who have read the faces of the motley, can read one girl.
‘How long have you been meeting him?’
‘I have loved him these three months.’
I closed my eyes, and hoped when I might open them she would be gone, and I might be in Venice, or Elsinore, anywhere but here. But then I did open them, and there she was: her mother’s daughter. And, if my sins be remembered, her father’s too.
I looked into the fire, and not at her. Sin builds walls we cannot shatter once the sin is done. We can no more unscramble eggs than put a lost maidenhead to rights. Now we were on a road with ruin at one end and love’s illusion at the other, and no byways along its path that we might take instead.
At last I found the voice to say, ‘Do you love this man?’
‘Yes, Father. With all my heart, I love him.’
She who loves quince puddings and sarcenet dresses! This was her body’s passion, not love, and for a wretch who knew how to play her like her sister’s harpsichord.
And now I had to say the words. ‘And would you marry him?’
She nodded eagerly, all smiles now I had said the words she wanted most to hear. ‘He has asked me, and with such earnest expressions of his love.’
She reached into the bodice of her dress and handed me a parchment, much creased and greased with fingerprints and sweat.
To the fairest most celestial Judith
Doubt that the stars do move
Doubt that the sun is fire
Doubt truth to be a liar
But never doubt my love.
Hung by my own words! Cockscomb. Damned and thrice-damned villain. That it should come to this!
I read it twice. She reached for it, eager to have it back, next to her bosom. Did she not know those words? But why should she? My daughter has not seen my play; nor do I own a copy here that I might read to my family. It is not what I would have my daughter hear: a girl becoming mad for love.
‘Are you with child?’ I asked bluntly.
She flushed. ‘I . . . I do not know.’
Well, her mother must see to that.
Jem knocked upon the door. ‘Sir, Thomas Quiney the vintner is here to speak with you.’
‘I thank you. Show him into the small hall.’ Let him wait where there is no fire, I thought, till I am ready for him.
‘He is a good man,’ cried Judith. ‘He loves me more than life itself, more than the stars.’
‘And yet he takes you behind the holly hedge and does not speak first with your father.’
‘He was afraid you might say nay.’
Ay, well he might be. But they had both hit that nail so deep into the wood it will not be seen again. Should I wait to see if Judith truly be with child? Or have them marry now, so that when the gossips count the months till a child is born they might think the babe is but a few weeks early? I did not know.
I gazed at my daughter’s face, wondering what it hid. For though her look was properly penitent, a smile lurked behind her eyes. The wench had bested me, and knew it.
‘Go to your mother,’ I said to Judith. ‘I will see your lover now.’
He scuttled in like a rat grown fat on an honest household’s winter stores: green stockings, red velvet doublet, worn about the knees and elbows; some lord’s cast-offs given to his servant, the servant casting them off for a shilling to this clown. His hat even held a falcon’s feather.
‘My Lord Shakespeare.’ He bowed. I did not.
‘I am no lord,’ I said. Nor was I lord of my own household. ‘It insults us both to say so.’
He straightened, tried to hide his smirk. ‘I would ask — nay, sir, I do entreat — that I may have the dainty hand of your most fair daughter.’ He prattled the words like a child counting to ten in a damn school. Had he composed what he thought a poet’s words to woo a poet father? There was no need, and we both knew it. His codpiece wielded power in this room, and not his words.
Had Bartholomew felt this, when I profaned his sister? They had never asked us to dine, nor we them. I thought it our family’s choice, for the man had used his sister ill. For the first time I realised his anger, that no weapon, be it fists or swords, could strike against the mischief of a codpiece.
I had never felt guilt for sinning against Anne, for in truth it was no sin to free her, to give her hearth and family, and later pearls and servants beyond any she had dreamt. But for the first time I realised how I had wronged her brother.
‘’Tis love,’ quoth Quiney soulfully, ‘that makes fools of men. Love that gives me courage for a star beyond my station. Love that . . .’
I listened not, but gazed at the bare trees outside the window. If my windows had been stopped with honest shutters, instead of a rich man’s glass, would they have kept this march fly out? My fortune and my sin brought my daughter this.
‘. . . and I will keep her as a gentlewoman, you shall be sure. Serving men to do her bidding, nor shall she step foot within the tavern door. Everything my wife desires I shall provide for her.’
And I should pay for it. ‘She will have no dowry,’ I said abruptly. ‘If you love her so, her love must be enough.’
He bowed again, sweeping his hat against the floor. ‘Her love will make me prince of Stratford town.’
Nay, her cottage would do that, and her three hundred pounds. It would be enough to see them comfortable until I died. We both knew it. This was a play that we performed, with an audience of two. But for the first time this was not one crafted with my words.
Who was this man, who smiled and bowed to me? A man can smile and smile, and still be a villain. I, who played so many men, still did not know this man who now must be my son.
I saw his greed. I saw his lust, not for my daughter now, but for my ducats. I saw his feeble cunning too. Not a man of words and wit, unless he stole them both, but neither is my daughter. And yet her mother made this bargain too, and did right well from it. Could my foolish daughter be happy with this fool? Perhaps there lurked behind his rat-smile cunning, the heart of a good husband, who would give courtesy to the wife who’d made his fortune, and honest love perhaps to his children?
I did not know. ‘Then you shall have her,’ I said.
I watched him bow, and try to hide his triumph, thinking his words had swayed me now, and might again, to give him more, once he was my son-in-law. ‘Sir, I thank you from the piteous depths of a poor lover’s heart. I will at once procure the marriage licence.’
That last, at least, I did believe.
Dinner: galls and wormwood, and vinegar to drink.
Bowels: stubborn, entirely stopped. Waters a cloudy flow.