Shakespeare's Scribe

by Gary Blackwood

  As I left Mr. Pope’s room, I heard the sound of footsteps retreating along the darkened hall, and a door latch clicking shut. Someone had been listening in as I told of Sander’s sad end. I had a strong suspicion who it was.

  I opened the door to the room that Goody Willingson shared with Tetty. Though the young girl lay still in her bed, I could hear how harsh and rapid was her breathing. I sat on the edge of the bed and hesitantly laid a hand on her shoulder. “You overheard.”

  After a pause, she nodded. “I told you,” she said.

  “Told me? Told me what?”

  “Every time I come to like someone, they die.”

  I shook her shoulder firmly, as though to dislodge this notion. “Nay. Don’t think that. You had naught to do wi’ Sander dying, I promise you.”

  She turned to face me, her dark eyes accusing. “You’re a good doctor. Could you not have done something to make him well?”

  “Nay. There was naught that could be done.”

  “I suppose you’ll be leaving us now, too.”

  “I—I don’t ken,” I said.

  “If you do stay, I won’t like you. I’m never going to like anyone again. It hurts too much.”

  I could not come up with a reassuring reply to this, for the truth was at that moment I felt much the same way. Yet I had to say something. I could not bear to sit helplessly by as I had with Sander. I cleared my throat. “It doesn’t matter,” I said softly. “I’ll still like you.”

  Beneath my hand the tense muscles of her thin back slowly relaxed. It seemed to me that for once I had managed to say the right thing. Perhaps it was not just what Sander would have said, or Julia, or Mr. Armin, or any of the others by whom I had measured myself in the past, but it was what I felt and that, I supposed, made it the right thing.

  In the morning Goodwife Willingson sent me off to the market in Long Southwark to see if I could prevail upon one of the vendors there to let me have a bit of food on the promise of future payment. She had exhausted her own credit with them, she said. She hoped, however, that they might be open to an appeal from a new face. But the merchants were no fools; they knew me as a member of Mr. Pope’s household, and knew that we were not likely to settle our account with them anytime soon. A fishwife did suggest that, if I returned late in the day, she might let me have those fish that had grown too fragrant to sell.

  I shuffled home, feeling myself an utter failure. I had done nothing at all to aid Mr. Pope and the boys. All I had given them was yet another mouth to feed. I told myself that it would surely be better for everyone if I did not return to Mr. Pope’s and, in fact, when I came to the house I walked on by it—to test myself, I suppose, to see if I could bring myself to leave.

  I could not.

  And a moment later I was extremely grateful for that fact. At the table in the kitchen sat a figure so unexpected and so welcome that I actually cried out, “Oh!” I had thought until that moment that crying out such things as “Oh!” was something that occurred only in plays.

  Smiling, Mr. Armin rose and took my hand in both of his. “I hoped I would find you here,” he said.

  Finding me had not, of course, been Mr. Armin’s sole purpose in coming. When the Chamberlain’s Men reached Stratford, Mr. Shakespeare had raised fifteen pounds by collecting on some old debts, and Mr. Armin had been dispatched at once to London with the money.

  “I’m to meet up with the company again at Bristol in four days’ time,” he said. “I hope you’ll come with me.”

  “Truly? You’ve no sore feelings, then, over what happened?”

  “Not any longer.” He rubbed gingerly at his ribs. “I’ve a bruise the size of a sovereign where you stuck me, but my feelings are scarcely sore at all. It was natural that you should come to your father’s defense.”

  I winced, for he had found a sore spot on me as well. “I’m not certain that ‘a was me father.”

  “I always had doubts about it. One thing is certain, though—he was not the one who robbed us.”

  “I ken that. But how did you?”

  “Ned Shakespeare told us how Jamie Redshaw lost the walking stick in a game of cards.”

  “Aye,” I said, “and wait until you hear who ‘a lost it to.”

  Now that he was not being bled dry on a regular basis, Mr. Pope improved rapidly. Mr. Armin hired Goody Willingson’s niece to help run the household until our return, and then we set off on Mr. Armin’s new mount, to rejoin the company. By the time we reached Bristol I had recounted all that had happened to me since we parted ways, and Mr. Armin had managed to convince me that the company would welcome me with open arms and without reservations. Of the two undertakings, I believe the latter occupied the greater amount of time.

  Mr. Armin had not deceived me, though. With the exception of Sal Pavy, who glared at me from afar, all the players seemed quite pleased to have me back. Even my old nemesis Jack greeted me with something resembling goodwill—a tribute, apparently, to the effort I had put into patching up his pate.

  Sam seemed particularly glad to see me. Taking me aside, he whispered, “Since you left, Princess Pavy has been more unbearable than ever, and Toby is no help at all against him.”

  “Toby?” I said.

  Sam nodded toward the other end of the inn’s main hall, where a chubby-faced lad of thirteen or fourteen sat talking with Mr. Phillips. I had assumed he was the innkeeper’s son or the stable boy or some such, but now that I looked more closely I recognized him as one of the prentices from the Earl of Hertford’s Men, the company we had bested in the acting competition.

  “Oh, gis!” I muttered. “It’s just as I feared! They’ve replaced me!”

  Sam laughed. “You needn’t fret. He’s as wooden as a well bucket, and twice as thick. They took him on only out of necessity. We had no idea, after all, whether or when you would return.”

  Sam’s assessment of the new boy proved sound. Toby was suited to play only the smallest and most undemanding parts. However, Sal Pavy had laid claim during my absence to yet another of my customary roles, that of Blanche in King John. Though I resented this liberty, I let it pass, not wishing to seem ungrateful after the company had so generously taken me back. But I could not help recalling what Jamie Redshaw had said to me about Sal Pavy—that he was the sort who would push and push until he pushed me out of the picture.

  With his arm now free of the plaster cast, Mr. Shakespeare had no more need of my services; he could write the final scenes of All’s Well on his own. Though I knew it was unfair of me, I resented this a little, too, feeling as though another of my old roles had been wrested from me.

  My skills with a pen were still in some demand, for I had to translate into ordinary writing all the parts of the play I had set down in charactery, so the actors might decipher them. I had to rush the task a bit. The sharers wished to begin rehearsing the play immediately upon our return to the Globe, so that when we performed it before the Queen at Yuletide, it would be as polished as possible.

  Now that the script was all but completed, Mr. Shakespeare seemed content enough with it, or at least resigned to it, as he was resigned to having an idle slouch for a brother. Though he trusted me, I think, to transcribe his work accurately, he was not above looking over my shoulder and goading me good-naturedly.

  “I don’t recall composing that line,” he said. “‘He wears his honor in a box unseen that hugs his kicky-wicky here at home’? That’s an abominable line. Are you sure you got it down properly?”

  “Oh, Lord, sir!” I replied, pretending to be offended. “An ‘t sounds abominable, I take no responsibility for ‘t. I wrote down only what you told me to.”

  “But ‘kicky-wicky‘? What was I thinking of?”

  “Nicky-nacky?” I suggested.

  “Oh, certainly,” he said. “That’s so much better.” Shaking his head, he turned to go, then turned back. “By the bye, Widge, when you copy out the sides, could you begin with Helena’s? It’s a demanding part, and I’d like to give
him as much time as possible to study it.”

  “Him?” I echoed.

  “Yes. Sal Pavy.”

  So stricken was I by his words that I lost control of my pen. It went skating across the paper, leaving a trail of ink like an open wound from which black blood welled. “Sal Pavy? You don’t mean ‘a’s to play Helena?”

  Mr. Shakespeare avoided my gaze. “We felt that he was best suited to the part.”

  “But … but I supposed that I would …” I trailed off.

  Mr. Shakespeare spread his palms in a gesture of helplessness or apology or both. “I’m sorry, Widge. We have you down for Diana. It’s a substantial role.”

  “But it’s not Helena.” The moment I said this I wished I had not, for I realized how petulant it sounded. I realized, too, that Mr. Shakespeare was likely to reply, “And you are not Sal Pavy.”

  He was not that unkind. He simply said again, “I’m sorry,” and walked away.

  It was difficult for me not to go after him. I wanted to remind him that, had it not been for me, the play would never have been put down on paper. I wanted to explain that I knew Helena, as surely as though I had watched her grow from infancy—which, in a way, I had. I had even been the source of some of the words she spoke.

  But more than that, I felt a kind of kinship with her. Like me, she was an orphan; like me, she had been taught the rudiments of medicine; like me, she had offered her loyalty to a soldier and been rejected. She was plagued by the boastful and deceitful character now called Parolles, I by the boastful and deceitful character known as Sal Pavy.

  There was one obvious difference between us, though. Helena had the courage and determination to pursue what she wanted until she got it. I, on the other hand, had stood by and let Sal Pavy steal from me, one by one, the roles that I had worked so hard to make mine, in the same way that Mr. Pope had let the doctor drain his life’s blood from him a little at a time, without making a move to stop it, without even a word of protest.

  Though I was as uncertain of my origins as I had been when we set out on the tour, I had not gone through all the trials of the past few months without learning something about who I was and what I was capable of. I had learned that, when the occasion demanded it, I could speak out against something I knew was wrong, that I could push aside my fears in order to aid a friend, that I could mend a broken arm or a broken head, that I could take up a sword in defense of someone I cared for. If I could do all that, then certainly I could stand up to Sal Pavy.

  It was not Sal Pavy himself that I feared, of course; it was the possibility that if I upset the balance of the company, I might lose my place in it. But the fact was that, because I had failed to fight back, I was losing my place just as surely—not in one sudden fall from grace, but inch by inch, role by role. It had made the process more gradual, as being bled by a scalpel is more gradual than being skewered by a sword. If I was to be cut loose, I would just as soon it were done quickly.

  Besides, unlike the subtle slice of a scalpel, a sword thrust may be parried. Jamie Redshaw had suggested that I counter Sal Pavy’s attack by using similar tactics, by seeing to it that he met with a well-planned accident. But that was Jamie Redshaw’s method, not mine. There were other, more civilized ways of fighting back.

  30

  That evening, while the rest of the company were gathering for dinner in the main room of the inn, I was searching through the costume trunk for a pair of long linen gloves that I had worn in the wedding scene of Much Ado, Then I waited, concealed upon the stairs that led to our bedrooms, listening for some line that would serve well as my cue. It came when Mr. Armin said, “Has anyone seen Widge lately?”

  I made my entrance. I strode across the room and straight up to Sal Pavy, who sat as near to the sharers and as far from the prentices and hired men as he could get. Without a word, I flung down one of the linen gloves before him; it very nearly landed in a bowl of stew.

  Sal Pavy stared at me as though I’d taken leave of my senses—and he was not the only one in the room to do so. “What’s this?” he demanded.

  “Me gage,” I replied.

  “Your gage?”

  “Me gauntlet, an you will.”

  He lifted the cuff of the glove distastefully, as though it were a worm, and gave an incredulous laugh. “You’re challenging me to a duel?”

  “Aye,” I said. “An acting duel—to determine who will play Helena.”

  He gave another laugh, a rather uncertain one this time, and glanced around at the rest of the company. “Is this another jest? I’m afraid I don’t see the humor in it.”

  Mr. Armin gazed curiously at me. “No, I’d say he’s quite serious—resolute, in fact.” He turned to the other sharers. “What do you make of this challenge, gentlemen?”

  “Well,” said Mr. Heminges, “if two c-companies may decide who will p-perform by m-means of a competition, I s-see no reason why two individuals should not.”

  “August?” said Mr. Armin.

  Mr. Phillips shrugged. “It’s bound to be more interesting than watching them shoot pistols at each other.”

  “Will?”

  Mr. Shakespeare played thoughtfully with his earring. “We did tell Mr. Pavy that the part was his. If he does not feel he’s up to the challenge, we can’t very well force him to accept it.”

  All eyes were upon Sal Pavy now. His features remained so carefully composed that I could not guess what went on behind them. I was fairly certain he would not refuse me. There was no way he could do so without looking foolish or white-livered. Besides, if I knew him he had every expectation of winning such a duel. He did not disappoint me. Putting on his most disdainful look, he tossed the glove back to me and said, “Name the time and place.”

  We settled on two days hence, at the Guild Hall in Salisbury, where we expected to be performing. Since we could not hope to con the entire part in that short a time, we limited ourselves to the final scene of Act I, between Helena and the Countess.

  After Sal Pavy had retired to his stable, Mr. Armin came and sat down next to me. “So,” he said soberly, “you’ve decided, as Hamlet says, to take arms against a sea of troubles and, by opposing, end them.”

  “Aye,” I replied a bit defiantly. “I thought it was time I stopped retreating from Sal Pavy and took the offensive.”

  He nodded. “Well, I’ve only one thing to say in the matter.”

  “What’s that?” I asked anxiously.

  Mr. Armin leaned close to me and said sotto voce, “Why in all halidom did you wait so long?”

  “Well, because … because I feared that, an I complained about Sal Pavy or quarreled wi’ him, you and the others might—”

  “Might what?”

  “Might give me the chuck.”

  He patted my shoulder and said confidentially, “If we dismissed every member of the company who’s ever been guilty of complaining or quarreling there would be no one left.”

  When I had been chosen the previous summer to play Ophelia before the royal court, I had had but one week to prepare for the part. It had been a trying week, filled with anxiety and self-doubt and sleepless nights. I believe I agonized every bit as much over this single scene from All’s Well; the difference was, it was all of it crammed into two days.

  Though I had never seen an actual duel, I doubted that the two combatants were expected to load their weapons and prepare themselves to kill or be killed while sitting within ten feet of one another. Sal Pavy and I, however, were forced to share the same small space behind the stage in the Guild Hall as we dressed ourselves and painted our faces and chanted our lines over and over like a paternoster under our breath.

  I put my back to him and tried to ignore his presence, knowing that, if I gave him the opportunity, he would attempt to undermine my confidence or break my concentration. He did not wait for an opportunity. “You’ve put far too much cochineal on your cheeks,” he said.

  “Mind your own concerns,” I muttered.

  “Only trying to
be helpful,” he said innocently. “I didn’t suppose you’d want to go out there looking like a fool.” He glanced into the mirror and fluffed up his wig. “Or should I say more of a fool?”

  I clenched my teeth. Let it pass, I told myself, and tried to think only of my lines.

  “If you’re determined to make a fool of yourself anyway, why not ask for the part of Lavatch? He’s supposed to be a fool. And they’re as likely to give it to you as they are to give you Helena.”

  I might have managed to let even this pass had I been striving still to be the good prentice, but I was not. I was striving to be Helena. I took the time to put the final touches on my makeup—and to count to ten—and then I turned to face him. “I suspect,” I said evenly, “that your opinion of me acting ability is not nearly as low as you’d have me believe.”

  “Oh?” said Sal Pavy, clearly taken aback a bit. I am sure he expected me to respond with anger to his goading.

  “An you truly felt I was no match for you, you would never have gone to so much trouble to try to get rid of me. It’s only because you ken how capable I am that you consider me a threat.”

  “A threat?” He laughed, not entirely convincingly. “The only thing I’ve ever feared from you was that you would forget your lines and I would be forced to cover for you.”

  “You’re lying. They say that no one may spot a lie like another liar. Well, I’ve been a liar most of me life. It’s only lately that I’ve given it up.”

  “You may as well give up trying to compete with me as well, because you’ll never win.”

  “We should not be competing at all, you and I. Theatre is supposed to be a cooperative effort. Did they never teach you that at Blackfriars?”

  For the first time his mask of superiority began to slip, giving me a glimpse of something darker and more vulnerable behind it. “No,” he said. “But they taught me many other things, and one of them was that if I ever managed to get free of them I would not go back. I would do anything to avoid going back.”

  I nodded. I understood better than anyone the fierce determination he felt to keep his place within the company, at any cost. “I am certain that you want no advice of any sort from me, but I’ll give ‘t to you all the same. An you truly wish to stay wi’ the Chamberlain’s Men, you’ll never do ‘t through trickery and deceit; I ken that well, for I tried it meself. The only way you will ever belong is by being a hard and willing worker, and by being honest and loyal, so that you earn the trust and respect of the company.”