Mr. Shakespeare's Bastard

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Mr. Shakespeare's Bastard Page 5

by Richard B. Wright


  “When my health was restored and I had thanked my sister-in-law for getting me employment in London, my thanks acknowledged with only a nod, I visited Goody Figgs. Goody’s expression never changed, whatever you told her, and so she greeted my news as if it were nothing. Had she not predicted a journey? She never said as much, but I could tell she had great faith in her own powers. I drank a cup of her horrible tea and felt again light-headed, as if I’d swallowed a liquor, while she told me to beware of the French pox in London. I didn’t tell her about Philip Boyer, for I had no intention of ever again lying with a man. I smiled as the old woman stirred the fire and told me to watch myself in that city. ‘I have heard it is filled with the French pox, so mind your honey-pot, girl. Scour it well and apply this ointment before you lie with a man.’ She handed me a small bottle of something that smelled horrible, and that I later threw away, for I didn’t altogether trust Goody’s nostrums, remembering the story of a girl who had nearly died from something prescribed by the old blister. ‘And stay away from gentlemen,’ she added, her back to me as she bent across the fire. ‘They lie with too many and are all pox-ridden, so I’m told. Settle for less. You’re better off with an honest joiner or a green grocer’s boy. But always remember to scour well, for neglect will hasten woe. Those who carry the pox have a sorry end.’ And then, as if the idea of my lying with joiners or gentlemen or greengrocer’s boys was amusing, she began to cackle, and perhaps it was her awful tea, which had properties for lifting the spirit, because I too laughed. I judge we both might have been a little off in our heads from the tea. Oh, I shouldn’t be telling you such things, Aerlene. You’ll think ill of your poor mother.”

  I told her that I would never think ill of her, for I loved her too much. But I wanted her to go on with her story. How did she get to London? What awaited her there? How did she meet my father? She smiled, but I could see she was weary enough.

  “Tomorrow, child,” she said. “I’m all out now. Get me up to my bed.”

  I sometimes used to share Mam’s bed, but her sickness had induced a restlessness in sleep and often she would talk or cry aloud or thrust an arm about as if tormented in her dreams. Once I lay down beside her in hopes of offering comfort and was almost myself asleep when her arm lashed out like a whip and struck me across the face. I feared my nose was broken, and though it wasn’t, it was yet sore for days. Thus it was best to leave her by herself, and I slept in the truckle bed nearby. I missed lying beside Mam; I remembered the bolster of her big, soft breasts as I lay listening to her breathe and sometimes murmur words or softly laugh in her sleep. But all that would soon be gone from my life.

  CHAPTER 5

  THIS HAS BEEN A cold, wet spring with the weather so foul that Maypole Day was cancelled. Under Cromwell, the day itself is no longer the frolic it was in olden times, but it is still celebrated after a fashion, and so the young of the village are disappointed this year. Mr. Walter is also out of humour, and with good cause, since many fields have not yet been seeded because of the dampness. We all seem vexed by one thing or another. I myself have been hampered all week by gravel in the kidney; for three nights now I have paced about my room drinking ale in hopes of moving the stone along, in time staggering off to sleep, only to awaken an hour later to piss. Still I must try not to complain, as many throughout the land are suffering from plague. This morning Charlotte told me that Mr. Thwaites was in Oxford Wednesday and saw posted the Bills of Mortality for London. Nearly six hundred for the week just past. Bristol too is sorely afflicted and Southampton and other coastal towns. We must be thankful that it has not touched us here, so when Charlotte asked me to pray with her for deliverance from the sickness, I said I would, though I told her it was too arduous to get down on my knees and back up again—I would make do with a bowed head from my chair. The truth is I haven’t prayed much since childhood; yet I wanted to please Charlotte because she has been diligent these past weeks and even says she is enjoying the labour of taking down my words. She is a good girl and I am often too hard on her. So I closed my eyes in the chair, thinking myself not unlike the King in Hamlet, who prays with empty words while the Prince looks on, postponing his revenge. And did the King too not recognize the futility of his gesture?

  My words fly up, my thoughts remain below:

  Words without thoughts never to heaven go.

  When Charlotte arose, I said, “On Monday, my dear girl, we shall get my mother to London, you and I.”

  She smiled. “I look forward to that, Linny.”

  Despite the weather and the plague, Charlotte alone among us is happy, for, I now believe, she is in love.

  CHAPTER 6

  WHEN MAM WENT TO London over seventy years ago by horse, the journey took two full days with an overnight stop at Wycombe. For the poorest traveller, the walk was four days, three if your pace was firm and you weren’t accosted along the way. Mam told me that she could not exactly recall the month she left Worsley, but reckoned it was late May or early June in the year 1587; everything, she said, was fresh and green and the weather fair. Uncle Jack put her in the company of the carrier Jessup, who did regular trade between Woodstock and London. My uncle paid the carrier, but Mam thought Jessup might be doing it more as a favour. As she told me, “From the beginning, I could tell this Jessup didn’t like me. I am certain he had heard of me and thought I was little more than a bawd. I rode behind him on a poor, thin horse, a more miserable-looking beast you couldn’t imagine, though it was gentle enough. There were three other men with their packhorses carrying goods, mostly lambskins and linen. Your aunt Sarah went so far as to wish me Godspeed, reminding me to pass on greetings to her younger sister. We left at first light and your uncle Jack rode with us as far as Oxford. When we parted he was in tears, as I’m sure he thought he would never lay eyes upon me again. He had provided money for my lodgings along the way and a piece of paper with directions to Boyer’s shop on Threadneedle Street, warning me to set the words to memory in case I lost the paper, as he knew how careless I could be about such things. ‘And mind your money,’ he said. ‘London, I’m told, is thick with thieves.’ But I knew that much at least and had made little pockets in my petticoat to secure the coins.”

  “How did you feel, Mam?” I asked. “Were you frightened going off to London like that by yourself?”

  Mam said, “Yes, I was frightened. Of course I was, but a part of me was happy too. I told myself that I was having an adventure. I had a little money and prospects and a place to stay when I got to London, so matters were not so bad. It was cheering too that I would no longer have to endure the gossip and looks of people in Worsley. No longer have to put up with tavern louts calling me names, or children leaving turds on our doorstep. In London, not a soul knew me, or how I had so far lived my life. And even had Sarah told her sister the true account of my habits, the Boyers had accepted me and I was determined to work hard in their service, earn their trust and lead a good life. So in sum, I have to say that I was probably happier than I was sad to be leaving, though I knew I would dearly miss my brother.”

  I was trying to picture Mam on that ill-fed horse, following the back of the carrier Jessup, who didn’t much like her. She told me that on the road she saw all manner of rough folk and she felt sorry for those on foot. Men and their women with children, turned out from who knows where or why, with little more than the rags on their backs, filthy with living in woods and fields.

  Looking down at them as she passed, she thought herself fortunate. “There were many far worse off than I,” she said, “and there they were in the dust of that road. I saw a blind man led by a young girl—his daughter, I suppose—and half-mad men gibbering to themselves and making faces. Some gave us terrible looks and others offered hands outstretched for alms. From time to time Jessup cracked a whip above his head and so too did the other carriers, yelling to those afoot to stand aside. I remember one woman with terrible sores and blemishes about her face, a child at her breast as she walked on the side of that road i
n dirty bare feet. I don’t believe I had ever seen a more wretched-looking soul on the face of this earth. I wanted to give her a penny, but the carrier behind yelled, ‘Give her nothing, Missy. Not a groat or we’ll be harnessed to her all the way to London. Mind my words.’ And he cracked that whip again to scatter those about him. At the time I thought him heartless, but he knew his trade and perhaps he was right.

  “I recall too there was trouble that morning, and though I didn’t think it my fault, Jessup didn’t like it. On the edge of a village a drunken man was dancing a jig in the middle of the road, twirling around like a child’s top and dressed outlandishly in layers of clothes; though the day was warm, he had on an old canvas doublet and a long coat and a bonnet with brightly coloured feathers. A kind of roadside jester singing and dancing and expecting money for it. A ragged devil of a creature, perhaps a former soldier, for he had but one arm, the other a mere stump at the elbow; the long coat had only the one sleeve and I could see that naked lump of flesh where once a healthy arm had been. He may have been an Abraham man pretending to be mad for pennies, but Jessup was having none of it and nearly knocked him over as we passed. Drunk or not, the fellow was nimble and jumped aside at the last minute, cursing Jessup and all of us. Then as I passed, he looked up at me and grabbed my ankle and called me a filthy name. I could smell his foul breath, and he wouldn’t let go of my leg as he tried to run his hand over me. But we had stopped, and Jessup jumped down and applied that whip. Such a hiding he gave that man, I thought he might murder him. The man crawled away into the bushes beyond the verge like an animal to escape the blows, dragging himself along with only one arm for purchase. Worthless creature that he doubtless was, I still pitied him. Before Jessup climbed back on his horse, he gave me the darkest look, as if I had invited that beggar’s hand on my leg. I told him I was sorry if my presence had caused trouble, but he said nothing, turning his broad back to me and cracking the whip, and on we went.

  “In the late afternoon, we stopped at a respectable inn in Wycombe, where I ate supper and shared a room with a farm woman who had walked from a village ten miles away. Jessup ate with the other carriers and drovers at a long table, and they soon grew loud with drink as men in taverns do at the end of the day. This woman—and it’s odd, but I still remember her name, a Mrs. Earle—was a widow who had lost her husband within the month. She told me he had received a hurt with scythe or axe. A bad wound in his leg which had broken the shinbone and the wound became infected. Within a fortnight his leg below the knee had turned black as charcoal and smelled of rot.

  “She fetched the doctor, who had the man drink as much ale as he could hold, and then they laid him on the kitchen floor with two others holding him down while the doctor began to saw at his leg above the knee. ‘I couldn’t bear to look,’ she said, ‘and he wasn’t drunk enough, poor fellow, and so awakened screaming. In all my days, I never heard such shrieks,’ said Mrs. Earle. ‘I covered my ears and fled from the house. The children came too. We stood in a field and listened to the howling, and then finally it was quiet and when we went back into the house, he was dead. The doctor told us that the hurt from the cutting must have stopped his heart.’

  “Mrs. Earle told me all this as we lay abed in our room. Her husband, she said, had been young and vigorous and then within a fortnight he was gone. It was hard to fathom. I felt sorry for her and so decided to tell her about Wilkes. I feltno great loss over him, and it had been a long time before, but I thought it would make this woman feel better to hear of another who had lost a husband. I told her Wilkes’s death had happened only last winter and I changed its causes; it was, I said, a sweating sickness that overtook him. But she wasn’t listening to a word, and soon interrupted to tell me that she was on her way to Uxbridge to visit her sister-inlaw. It had to do with money owed to her late husband and she foresaw a dispute. That woman kept me awake half the night with her story about the sister-in-law and the money owed. I was grateful when at last she fell asleep and I could lie there with my own thoughts, looking out the window at the stars, listening to the laughter and songs from the tavern hall below, wondering what might become of me in the years ahead. When the tavern closed, the silence of the night settled in, and before I fell asleep I heard the watchman on the street below calling out his round:

  Give ear to the clock

  Beware of your lock

  Your fire and your light

  God give you

  Good night

  One o’clock.

  “I slept little, however, for I was fearful of not being ready and angering Jessup further, and so I was dressed by three o’clock, when the boy knocked at the door. I left the widow snoring. The morning was wet, and Jessup’s head, I gathered, heavy from the night’s drinking. I had a miserable time of it on that horse with only a shawl to keep the rain off my head. Wagons were stuck in ruts, as the road was muddy, and men were cursing. Terrible mouths on some of them. But as we approached the city the rain let up, stopping finally as we came along by Shepherd’s Bush, passing the gibbet at Tyburn. It was something to see the great houses farther on in Tyburn Road. We had to walk the horses up Snow Hill, and so through Newgate, where Jessup stopped at the market by Christ’s Hospital. This, he told me, was where I got off, for he was going elsewhere. He got a boy to take me to Threadneedle Street; it wasn’t far, he said, and the boy could be trusted because he’d used him with travellers before. The streets were filled with such urchins who loitered about the hitching posts of inns and taverns.

  “The boy was small and ragged, but cheerful enough when he took my penny. He wanted to carry my bag, but I said I could manage; he didn’t seem to like that and turned away, beckoning me to follow. I remember how frightened I was once I left Jessup and the other carriers, because the streets were crowded and the noise was something I could never before have imagined: the church bells alone would deafen you, but there was the grinding of cartwheels on paving stones and the cries of hawkers with their wares and beggars plucking at you with pleas for money. ‘A groat, Miss, only a groat,’ they would yell with outstretched hands. And there I was, following this boy through the crowds at Newgate market, trying to keep pace with him. Why, I thought, he could lead me anywhere or nowhere, since all the streets and laneways looked the same to me. And the infernal racket of it all. I couldn’t think as I hurried after him, trying to avoid the beggars and barking dogs and stepping around the kites squabbling for scraps. I’ll never last a month in this place, I said to myself. Over the roofs of the shops and houses I could see a great building and imagined it was the cathedral Jack had told me about. But I feared I would lose sight of that boy, who was taking me through laneways and side streets where a rougher sort hung about. This was to be my first encounter with the sharp practice of Londoners, because the boy stopped and demanded another penny before he would take me a step farther.

  “I told him I wouldn’t give it to him. We had agreed on a penny, I said, thankful that I’d had the good sense to hold on to my bag. The boy only laughed, while others, watching from the tavern doors, idlers and bawds from the look of them, laughed too because they could see a newcomer being worked over, and such people enjoy laughing at a stranger’s misfortune. So the two of us, the boy and I, were at odds and I wasn’t going to weep, though I felt like it. Then a happy surprise when two gentlemen happened by and took pity on me. They were both in good humour, a little affected by drink, I imagined, and one asked me what the matter was about, and I told him I was newly arrived in London and had paid the boy fairly for directions to Threadneedle Street. Now he was demanding another penny. The other gentleman then took hold of the boy and might have given him a thrashing then and there had the tavern idlers not begun to grumble. A crowd soon gathered and so there I was, in London not twenty minutes and already in the midst of a street broil. Then one of the gentlemen said, ‘Come along now, Miss, we’ll show you the way to Threadneedle Street. It’s not far. This young rogue is not for you.’

  “The crowd, how
ever, was with the boy, and some began to mutter about gentlemen minding their own affairs and leaving the common folk to their own. One of the gentlemen reached into his doublet and withdrew a handful of coins, flinging them into the air. As they fell, the people were soon on hands and knees, quarrelling among themselves in search of the money, quite forgetting me and the boy, who freed himself from the gentleman’s grasp and ran off cursing us all. The gentlemen merely laughed and together walked along with me to a broad street with many fine shops. This was Cheapside, and as we walked, the gentlemen hardly took notice of me, engaged as they were in remembering bits from a comedy they had seen that afternoon at a playhouse. By the church, which I came later to recognize as St. Mary-le-Bow, they stopped and, pointing ahead, one said, ‘You go that way, Miss. You are walking eastward and soon this street will part into three, so keep to your left and that is Threadneedle Street.’

  “I thanked them with all my heart, but they had already turned their backs on me and were still talking about the play. So I walked on as directed and no one took any notice of me, and I soon found the street and the shop with its sign of a yellow hat. The shutters were still open because the day’s business was not yet done and well-dressed people were going in and out. It was not rough and busy on Threadneedle Street, and I was glad, and felt more at ease. The shop itself looked prosperous and this was cheering too, and I prayed that Sarah’s sister would take kindly to me and give me a chance to show how I would amend my life and make them proud of me.

 

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