The snuffling halted. ‘I stole the carriage, John. Hid it in the stables till it and you could be cleaned.’
‘You did, old friend. And more times than I can count have you rescued me. So how if I tend to you now?’
He moved away, stumbled over a book upon the floor. Indeed, every board was covered with them, every surface too, those not filled with sheets of inked parchment. He crossed to the window, winter’s pale light coming through the tanned skin across it. Reaching, he peeled the hide from the frame, light poured in, and the man behind him gave a piteous moan.
The room was the same catastrophe to sight as it had appeared to other senses. Papers and books scattered everywhere, bottles upon their sides, platters with mouldering remnants of food upon them. In one corner, a pot brimmed with excrement and vomit. Ned was staring down at his employer in disgust. ‘Here,’ called John, ‘go you to the tavern hard by and fetch a bucket . . .’ He considered. ‘Make that two, of hot water. Bring scouring cloths too. Here.’ He reached into the purse at his waist, pulled out a crown, threw it across. ‘Fetch us also a quart of beer, the weakest you can find. And some bread.’
Ned frowned. ‘I am needed back at the theatre.’
‘You are more needed here, boy. Aiding the man who keeps the theatre in health. Go!’ Ned stood for a moment, then sighed and left. John turned back. ‘Now, let us see how I can help you.’
‘This will help me,’ the playwright replied, reaching for the one bottle that was upright on the table, knocking it, catching it, raising it.
But as he found his lips, John laid his hand on it. ‘I’ll have that,’ he said.
The playwright scowled up – then smiled. ‘Of course, man. You were ever thirsty – and after your stay in the Tower . . .’ He released the bottle. ‘First you drink, then I’ll drink, and when we finish this one we will send your boy for more.’ His forehead wrinkled. ‘Your boy. Your fine boy. I had a fine boy once.’ He gave a sob that rose into a miserable laugh, throwing his arms wide. ‘Come, man. Let us get fantastically drunk together.’
John lifted the bottle. It was half full of whisky, the one scent in the room that did not nauseate. The reverse. He sniffed it, and felt the same pinch of longing he had felt standing at the door. He had hoped his stay in prison, where nothing was brought to his cell but weakest ale, despite some nights of pleading, would cure him of desire. It had failed to. His love was as strong as ever. His arm was raising the neck to his lips . . .
. . . and lowering it again. ‘No,’ he said, stepping to a corner to set the bottle down. ‘Let us wait for the beer.’
Instead of arguing, Will nodded, and placed his head upon his arms. John again heard a soft sobbing. He sighed. There had been several times in their long acquaintance when he’d seen his friend thus. The bouts would last but a short while, he would retire to solitude, and soon return, his smile as sunny as ever – and usually with a new play or set of sonnets tucked under his arm. But John had never seen him thus prostrated. The scribblings upon the table showed a ferment of writing, the state of the room a prolonged gloom.
He espied a pipe on a shelf. He went to fetch it, kicking a pouch as he did. It contained tobacco, and John filled the one with the other. There was one glowing coal left in the grate, and he lit a nub of candle with it, and then the clay bowl. Sucking, he produced a steady glow then tapped the playwright with the stem. ‘Here,’ he said. Will looked up blearily, reached, took, inhaled.
There was a stool on its side nearby. John set it upright beside the chair. As the playwright puffed, he glanced down at one page amongst the many higgled upon the table; picked it up, peered, read it once, then once again aloud. ‘ “I have of late, but wherefore I know not, lost all my mirth.” ’ He looked at his friend. ‘Have you, Will? Lost it all?’
Shakespeare inhaled deeply, then plumed the air with his exhale. ‘All,’ he replied. ‘For what mirth can any man have who has lost what I have lost? Forsaken all that I have forsaken?’
‘And what is that?’
‘All that makes life worth the living.’ He took another long pull at his pipe, coughed fragments of smoke, then swept the stem like a wand over the table. ‘I have finished the play.’
‘You are often saddened when you do.’ John looked about the wreckage of the room. ‘Yet why does this one make you more so?’
‘This play . . .’ Shakespeare wiped his eyes. ‘This play would make a statue weep.’
‘That good, is it?’
‘Good?’ Shakespeare let out a cackle that trailed into a moan. ‘That will be for you to judge; you, who have been the first to speak a speech. Then my fellow players, who will take it, shrug, mutter and tear it to tatters for the groundlings to eat nuts and piss on the reeds while they mishear the shredding of my soul.’
‘Your soul, is it now, William?’ John couldn’t help the smile. ‘Is that what’s lying about here?’
The other did not smile. ‘No less than that.’ He jabbed the pipe stem. ‘Do you know what this piece is called?’
‘I do not, except that Burbage said you were engaged . . .’
‘It is called: Hamnet, Prince of Denmark. A tra . . . ge . . . dy!’
He waved his pipe in the air as if it were a viola bow and he was counting in the consort. ‘Do you mean Hamlet?’ John said gently.
‘That’s what I said, rogue!’ the playwright snapped, half rising, pipe stem jabbed forward like a blade. ‘Hamlet! Hamnet! Hamlet! Damnet! Damn! Damn!’ His voice rose in a shriek, then, as John’s hand fixed upon his forearm and gently squeezed, descended to a sob. His eyes, swiftly raised to John’s, contained tears – and an appeal. ‘Do you think he is damned, John?’ he whispered, sinking down. ‘Do you think he burns in purgatory?’
‘Who?’
‘My sweet boy. Hamnet! Hamlet! Hamnet!’ His voice rose and fell again. Flipping John’s hand, he squeezed it to the point of pain. ‘I have seen him, John. He has visited me here. He cries out for mercy, for aid. And I could not give him life because I was here and he was in Stratford and I went home twice a year and missed his growing. Missed his dying!’ The sobs rose, then fell again to a whisper. ‘You and I were raised in a different faith. The Church today does not allow us to intercede for the dead. The Church today says they are gone for ever, beyond all aid. But they are not gone. They are here.’ He slapped his head. ‘They are here.’ He slammed his hand down upon the pages. ‘They are . . . here.’ He flung an arm out towards the door. ‘And I would help him!’
John snapped around, as if to see someone stride through it and to check that no one had. For it was true, they had both been raised with other beliefs. The Catholic Church taught that the dead were not gone, not entirely. The dead were at a different stage. And they could be . . . aided. ‘Will,’ he said softly, for what he was to speak was, in its own way, a form of treason, ‘if you need a Mass sung for Hamnet’s soul, I know a priest who could arrange . . . My stepfather . . .’
‘I know many,’ Shakespeare hissed, interrupting. ‘For my father begged me to intercede thus for the dead son I hardly knew, that he had raised. So I paid some silver – for my guilt, for my absences, for secret intercession. Now my father lies dying and begs the same for himself. And I will do’t – as poor a son as I was a father, the least I can do is that.’
He laid his head down again, forgetting the pipe, spilling embers on to a page, which John hastily extinguished. Only a few words were burned out and he wondered if they were lost for ever. But the little flames had reminded John of the bigger flames that his friend referred to, the place where sinners paid in fire for their sins. ‘Perhaps what you have done here will be a type of Mass for your son,’ he said gently, adding, ‘For your father too, when his time comes.’
Shakespeare looked up. ‘I had hoped it, John. If I could not gather many to a secret Mass, perhaps I could call them to the Globe to partake of a different ceremony. Not the one I witnessed in Stratford churchyard, that short . . . dismissal.’ He wiped at his str
eaming nose. ‘I saw it with dry eyes. And now, five years later, I cannot stop weeping.’ He blew his nose upon his sleeve. ‘Do you think it may be so? Can I mourn him now as I failed to mourn him then?’
John shrugged. ‘Perhaps. I’d have to attend the ceremony.’
‘Then come. Indeed, I will need your help. You who understand something of lost fathers, lost sons.’
John frowned. He hadn’t known his own father, dead before he was born. He’d seen him in dreams, conjured by his mother’s tales. But was his own son lost? Not yet, he prayed. Not yet.
‘There’s something else you can do for the play,’ Shakespeare continued. ‘And perhaps there’s something he can do too.’ He raised his voice. ‘For you love your father, boy, do you not?’
For a moment John thought his friend was again seeing his own son’s ghost in the doorway. But when he turned, he saw Ned, who’d climbed the stair silently, and stood staring at the two men now, a bucket in each hand.
‘Do you, Ned? Do you love your father?’
The boy lived in the theatre. He was used to drunkenness and maudlin feelings expressed. But John saw he did not know how to answer the playwright. ‘All’s well, lad,’ he said. ‘Just bring in what you have and wait below.’
‘No!’ Will lurched up from his chair, took a stumbling step towards the boy, who hastily set down the buckets, retreated. ‘All is not well. Something is rotten.’ He reached Ned, placed one hand on his chest, one on his back. He squeezed and the boy flinched, yet did not move. ‘I ask again: do you love your father?’
John watched different reactions shade the lad’s face. Fear of the man before him, disgust at his scented proximity, anger that he was being harangued by a drunk . . . yet when the expression settled, he saw something that made him sad, and strangely proud simultaneously. A calm honesty. ‘I scarcely know him, sir. How is it possible for me to love him?’
Will slumped, his hands rising to fall again, on to the boy’s shoulders. Ned staggered, then took the weight, his face turned from the man’s sobbing. ‘You do not know him,’ he repeated. ‘And my son did not know me. And John Lawley’s father did not know him. And Hamlet . . . how well did he know his father, this father who shrieks for vengeance from beyond the grave? Is that not worse? Asked to atone for someone you did not know?’ He turned and jabbed his finger at John. ‘Could you?’ He shook Ned. ‘Could you?’ Then he lurched back to the table, crying, ‘Can I?’
As the playwright slumped again into his chair, John called, ‘Go fetch the ale, boy.’ Ned departed fast while John crossed to the buckets. They were filled with warm, if not entirely clean, water. Still, it was cleaner than the room and the man it was intended for. He picked one up, carried it across, found a scrap of cloth within, dipped, began with his friend’s face, the encrusted food, the salt trail of tears. Shakespeare submitted, his eyes closed, lips still mumbling words. John moved on to his doublet, dabbed, rinsed.
After a while, Will opened his eyes. His hand gripped John’s wrist. ‘You have a chance that I did not,’ he whispered. ‘Do not lose it. Find your son if you can.’
‘If I can,’ John replied, daubing. And if other people let me, he thought.
It was as if his friend had read his mind. ‘You can. Avoid those who abuse you. Return to what you love. Your family. The theatre.’
‘Both are my only desire,’ John replied, ‘but there are . . . there are those who have different thoughts for me.’
‘I know of whom you speak. My lord of Essex. The Master Secretary. They are both in here.’ He waved at the pages. ‘The ardent rebel. The scheming counsellor.’
It was then John remembered what was to happen at the Globe upon the morrow. Why he had hastened to Southwark. ‘This is not the time to be writing of such things. Do you know what Burbage has agreed to? The company risks—’
‘You are wrong,’ Will interrupted. ‘For when time is out of joint – and a nation itself goes mad . . .’ His eyes were gleaming, fixed at some point above. Now his gaze met John’s. He laid one hand over the pages on his desk, squeezed John with the other. ‘’Tis all here. A madness that is in the state and in the state . . . of man. In you. In me. A mad prince. Is he?’ He smiled. ‘A mad girl. Is she? Fine roles I have created – for Dick Burbage, sure. And for a girl . . . a player like . . .’ The light faded in the eyes as he released his grip, looked away. ‘Like someone.’
John saw it then, the first glimmer in the return of Will’s wits. Saw it in the manager considering a player for a role, and dismissing him in the same moment . . . while looking in that player’s father’s eyes. In the look, John heard Burbage’s voice again, his doubts. ‘Ned can play it,’ he blurted, then took a breath, continued more slowly, ‘More than that, if this is the play about fathers and sons that you say it is, you need Ned to play it.’
The men stared at each other in silence for a long moment – one finally broken by another’s voice. ‘Need Ned to play what?’
His son had returned, again unheard, this time with a leathern bottle in one hand, a slab of coarse bread in the other. John cleared a little area upon the table, pushing the papers aside for his son to set down what he’d brought. ‘Need me to play what?’ he asked again, straightening.
The playwright peered up. ‘What do you know of madness, boy?’
Ned did not blink. ‘Madness? Something, I think.’ He looked at them both. ‘For am not I my father’s son?’
There was a moment – and then both the sitting men were laughing. ‘A fair answer,’ said Will, leaning back, rubbing at his eyes. ‘And one that might yet win you the prize. I will think on this.’ He reached out, began to gather the pages before him. ‘Go now, John,’ he said. ‘Nay, do not dispute with me. You have restored me enough, even unto the bounds of friendship.’ He glanced around. ‘The cleaning will be a form of penance.’ He yawned widely. ‘I will clean and then I will sleep. And you have matters to attend to, I warrant. You always have.’
John thought of what was being plotted across the river – and his own concerns upon the Southwark side of it. ‘I do. So if you are sure I can be of no further help . . . ?’ On receiving a nod, he continued, ‘Then we will away. Send word how I can aid you in your’ – he touched the papers – ‘atonement.’
‘I shall. Where can I find you?’
He’d forgotten, for the time he was there. He had committed to a course of action and a cause. It had no fixed address, no certain end. ‘I shall find you, my friend. And until I do, keep well.’
‘And you.’ Shakespeare let out a huge sigh, then fell back into his chair. ‘And your son also.’
They left him staring before him. As the door closed, Ned whispered, ‘Can we leave him so? I have never seen him like that.’
‘I have. And we can.’ John was already descending the stairs. ‘Poets are not like you and me, boy, mere players. They tread a different path to their creations. And from the look of him, Master Shakespeare’s recent path has been rocky, perhaps the hardest he has ever trodden.’ They reached Clink Street. ‘While another lies ahead of me.’ He laid his hand upon the boy’s shoulder. ‘Will you still be my guide upon it?’
There was a shudder under his palm; but whether from recent witness or present touch he did not know. I would like to find out, John thought. So he squeezed, lifted and, on receiving no answer, added, ‘Take me to your mother.’
XXXII
Eruptions
There was always noise in Southwark. Especially at this hour, with higglers seeking to unload their goods before nightfall. From carts, trays or stalls exploded the competing cries.
‘Mussels lily white, Wallfleet oysters!’
‘Coney stew and pottage! Groat a bowl!’
‘’Umble pie and saveloy sausage! More guts than gravy!’
Men stood in the doorways of taverns and ordinaries, bellowing of succulence and warmth to be found within. Sixpenny queans called, siren-like, from alleys, while their half-crown superiors leaned from the windows of br
othels and cooed. Everywhere wheels ground on cobbles, wagon drivers yelling and cursing, seeking passage through the throng, pedestrians giving back obscenity for obscenity, while the watchman’s bass boomed out the hour: ‘Give ear to the clock. Beware your lock. Four o’clock.’ To some a prod to push through to bridge or boat. To others an invitation to linger somewhere snug and sinful.
The noise was at its loudest, the crowds densest, where the road funnelled before widening out to the churchyard of St Mary’s. Yet if the cacophony was also at its height, one sound still managed to pierce it all, at least to the two Lawleys’ ears. Perhaps they were attuned to it, like a viola’s player picking out its note no matter the size of the consort. They looked at each other. ‘Mother,’ Ned said, and John swallowed, nodded, pushed the last and hardest paces to the door of the Spoon and Alderman. At it, they hesitated – for beyond its threshold, and beyond doubt, its landlady was going off on one.
Tess was ever gentle – until something riled her. Then, like the calmest sea swelled suddenly with a rogue wave, she would rise and roar. Father and son had both experienced it, and the look they shared said this: God mend me that I come not into this storm.
Yet come they had to, despite the warning in the eyes of the doorkeeper, six foot of English oak trying to make himself a twig in the tavern doorway. They had also to push against a tide of fleeing customers until, finally gaining entrance, they stopped to behold the scene.
On one side of the room, as far as they could get from the bar, stood Sir Samuel D’Esparr and his bodyguard Tomkins – stood, if their half-crouch could still be called standing. On t’other side, drawn up to her full height, was Tess.
She did not see the newcomers straightway. All her attention, and her mustered wrath, was focused entirely upon the cowering men; one especially. ‘How is it possible, sirrah,’ she exclaimed, ‘that after an absence of a year, you return a greater fool than when you left? Were all your wits dispersed by bog vapour, Irish whisky and Dublin whores?’
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