The Shakespeare Mask

by Newton Frohlich

  “And how do you know she’ll keep that vow?”

  The next morning, before anyone was up and about, a message was slipped under his door. The queen wanted to ride with him—she’d be at the stables in an hour. They’d never ridden together before.

  When he reached the stable, she was waiting, two horses saddled. Soon they were splashing across the River Cam and then cantering across the field.

  She said nothing, and he followed her lead. It was rather pleasant, simply enjoying her company.

  At last, she signaled that she wanted to rest. He jumped from his horse, extended his hands, and her supple body slid through his arms until her feet touched the ground.

  Then, her face directly in front of his, he saw why she wore that new paste—to cover the small scars and pockmarks left by her bout with smallpox.

  He felt a wave of pity. She was still attractive, but she’d been so beautiful. And vain—how she must be suffering! Even now tears streaked the paste and made craters of their own.

  “I didn’t want you to see me this way, but I so much wanted to ride with you, Edward. It’s been too long. I’ve missed you.”

  “And I’ve missed you, Your Majesty.”

  She smiled—no more tears. “You’ve been busy studying.”

  “I hear you’ve been busy as well, Your Majesty.”

  They laughed.

  He spread his doublet and they sat on the grass close together. She was wearing a light-green riding costume that set off that glorious reddish hair. He worried that her costume would be stained, but she didn’t seem to care.

  “This is the first time I’ve gone riding since the pox.” She lay back on the grass. He knew what he wanted to do but he didn’t dare.

  Silence engulfed them except for the sounds of birds. But it was enough. They listened.

  “Your Majesty, may I ask for your help? I’m troubled.”

  “Of course you may. You have only to ask.”

  “Sir William insists I marry his daughter Anne when I reach my majority.” He paused. “It’s not for seven years, but I can’t get it out of my mind. I don’t want to marry, I want to write.”

  “Do both. A man can do whatever he wants.”

  “But she’s … so childlike. Her parents control her utterly. They make her that way, she’ll never be different. Wouldn’t it be better if I didn’t have to violate my marriage vows?”

  “Better? You’re a man. A woman obeys her husband, but men needn’t extend the same courtesy. Just look at my father.”

  Edward kept quiet. Her father had executed her mother so he could marry someone else!

  “No man is perfect,” she said, “nor need he be. My father was a good king, but did you know he was also an artist? He composed songs. Now let’s talk about something more important.” She sat up. “When are you going to Italy? If you’re going to write, you must. To drink, one must go to the well.”

  “Cecil insists I marry and produce an heir first. Only after that will he consider Italy. Even then he says he’s worried about my being captured en route and held for ransom.”

  “You’d be protected by your entourage. I’ll speak with him.”

  “Thank you, Your Majesty.”

  She got to her feet.

  “They’ll be wondering about me. This was fun. We must do it again.”

  He helped her mount her horse. No, Your Majesty, it wasn’t fun. He’d enjoyed her, but she’d made it clear he was indeed doomed to marry Nan. The queen held the lever—all he could do was bend.

  Two years passed. Edward was sixteen now and preparing for another graduation, this time from Oxford. He often daydreamed about the queen, but today he wondered what she’d think of the musical play he’d written for the graduation ceremony.

  The first of his plays to be performed, it was to accompany the award of honorary M.A. degrees to seven nobles: himself, two knights, two government officials, and Cecil. Edward had again chosen to live at the university—anything was preferable to living in a household with crippled Robert, puppet Nan, and the controlling Cecils.

  Neither Manners nor Howard had gone to Oxford with him. During his two years here, Richard Edwards was his companion, and together they’d produced the play—Edward writing the dialogue, Richard the music.

  Cecil had appointed the much older Richard to be director of the Children of the Chapel Royal. The mild-mannered musician had simply appeared at Oxford and sought Edward out.

  “Sir William informed me his brilliant ward—you—intend to write a play,” Richard said. “He asked if I’d co-author a musical with you for the graduation celebrations.”

  In addition to his talent as a musician, Richard was full of advice about theater.

  “The Oxford venues are enclosed, like the ones at court. I suggest we use a lute rather than the blaring trumpets used in outdoor productions.” He paused. “And I suggest we take our plot from Chaucer’s Knight’s Tale.”

  “Please, go on.”

  “Palamon and Arcite, two cousins who are prisoners of war of Theseus of Athens, fall in love with Emilia, Theseus’ sister-in-law. Arcite is banished. Palamon escapes from jail with the aid of the jailer’s daughter, who loves him. Theseus learns of the rivalry of the two kinsmen, decides to hold a tournament at which the victor will win Emilia and the loser will be executed. Arcite wins the tournament but dies in a riding accident. Palamon and Emilia, now free to marry, live happily ever after. We can call it The Two Noble Kinsmen.”

  “Palamon and Arcite would be better for the Oxford crowd.”

  Richard’s smile came quick. “Well, you’d know best, wouldn’t you?”

  As soon as the applause died down from the queen’s entrance, the two-part play began. But just as the last actor made his entrance onto the makeshift stage, there came a deafening crack—then another, and another.

  Edward, seated next to the queen, was frozen in horror for a moment. The stage collapsed in pieces—first the supports and then the floor, plank by plank. Actors fell through the gaps, some shrieking as planks fell on them or they fell on jagged pieces.

  He leaped to his feet and moved toward the stage. There was blood everywhere, limbs twisted, faces contorted. Three were dead, five injured. He was devastated.

  After the casualties were taken away, he and Richard sat with the queen.

  “Edward,” Richard said, “the show must go on.”

  He buried his face in his hands. “I don’t see how.”

  “Substitute actors and another venue,” Richard said. “That’s the tradition. The show must go on.”

  “I know how you feel, Edward,” the queen said. “But Richard’s right.”

  While rehearsing with new actors, Edward heard shouts. He ran to the window and saw two frenzied hounds barking, fighting. Two drunken undergraduates hung out the window, cheering the dogs on—then one leaned out too far. His friend made a wild grab, and both students tumbled out the window and to the ground.

  With their broken bodies still in the dirt, again the queen insisted the play go on.

  That night, tense and worried, Edward attended the performance. When the curtain finally fell, he was exhausted, but Richard was ebullient.

  “Edward, your first play’s a success! Your characters don’t just say lines—they think and feel!” Richard threw his arms around him and kissed him on the forehead. “What an achievement!”

  They were on stage, behind the curtain. He felt the warmth of the older man and realized it was the first time anyone had truly hugged him since Earl John. He was still in Richard’s arms when the curtain was drawn back.

  “Make way for the queen!”

  Richard dropped to his knees, kissed the queen’s hand, and backed off the stage. The actors also stepped back. But Edward was rooted to the spot as the queen rushed to him and kissed him on the lips.

  He grasped her hand and kissed it as Cecil came up behind her. He didn’t say anything, and the actors dispersed.

  “Congratulations, Edward,
” the queen said. “I loved your play.”

  “Thank you, Your Majesty. You remember my colleague, Richard Edwards, the director of the Children of Chapel Royal.” He turned, but Richard was gone. “I don’t know where—”

  “That’s all right, Edward.” She smiled at him. “I adore your lyrics. So many new phrases! You must lie awake nights thinking them up.”

  “When I’m not thinking about Your Majesty.”

  Cecil coughed. Neither the queen nor Edward took notice.

  “What phrase did you invent last night?”

  “Play fast-and-loose.”

  “Who, me?” She laughed.

  Edward felt his face flush. “No, Your Majesty.” He grinned. “Never you.”

  “The next time you invent a phrase, I’d like you to send it to me by courier.”

  “I’ll be happy to.”

  “I loved your altering each actor’s speech to match his character. I’ve never seen that done.”

  “I’m pleased I could show you something you haven’t seen before.”

  She blushed. “And blank verse—how sophisticated! And quite courageous, rejecting conventions.”

  “No one ever called me courageous.”

  “Well, you are.” She turned serious. “I do have a few suggestions. You use too many terms from your days at Cambridge. You can’t expect an outside audience to understand them.”

  “What terms?”

  “I knew it! You weren’t even aware you used them.” She laughed and shook her curls. “Now, I liked the terms. I’m simply suggesting you consider whether a word or phrase will be understood by those members of the public who haven’t attended Cambridge—which, let me assure you, will comprise most of them.”

  “For example?”

  “You referred to a ‘study where he keeps.’ Anyone can understand study, but keeps? You and I know that’s where a Cambridge student can be found, but how many others will?”

  “Very true, Your Majesty,” Cecil said.

  Again they both paid no attention to him.

  “I don’t know where your talent will take you, but I do know it will be a long and fruitful journey.” For a moment, the queen looked proud—which for some reason made him uneasy. “Therefore, always consider how you’ll be understood by the broadest number of people. The audience in England is small now, but it will grow. One day we may even have public theaters.”

  He’d dreamed of that—a public theater, where everyone would see his work, not just courtiers and scholars. “I don’t know what to say.”

  “Aha! Then I, too, accomplished something today—I reduced England’s most promising playwright and poet to speechlessness.”

  Cecil chuckled. The queen took Edward’s hand and kissed the palm.

  A page carrying a red leather message case approached the queen and dropped to one knee. “Your Majesty. Urgent. From London.”

  She removed the message from the case, read it, nodded. “I must return to London at once.” She gave Edward a last, brilliant smile, and as she walked off the stage with Cecil tagging after her, she perched her right hand on her rear—leaving Edward alone on the stage, wondering if queens ever did that. So far as he knew, village girls didn’t do that.

  But the queen liked his play! If people didn’t know how students spoke at Cambridge, let them learn.

  That night, the scent of her musk haunted his dreams.

  A few months later as he prepared for his first day of reading law at Gray’s Inn, he received bad news: Richard had died of the plague. They hadn’t worked together since Oxford, but he felt his passing deeply.

  If you can look into the seeds of time,

  And say which grain will grow and which will not,

  Speak then to me.

  Shakespeare

  Macbeth

  Ned Baynam, apprenticed to Cecil’s tailor, was taking measurements for Cecil’s new robe. Edward sat nearby, reading.

  “Care for a bit of fencing?” Ned said one August afternoon.

  Edward glanced outside—it was only seven, plenty of light left. He put down his law book and outside they went.

  They were just beginning when out of the blue—just as Edward lunged—someone ran into the courtyard and charged between them.

  The intruder, Cecil’s undercook, screamed as the point of Edward’s rapier thrust deep into his thigh.

  The bleeding was profuse. Neither Edward nor Ned could stop it.

  “God’s blood!” Edward yelled back toward the house. “Somebody call a damned doctor!”

  By midnight, the undercook—Tom Brincknell—was dead. He was the father of a three-year-old, and his wife was pregnant.

  “This is serious, Edward,” Cecil said. “You require the services of a lawyer.”

  “It was an accident!” Edward paced the study. “You heard Baynam. It wasn’t intentional and I wasn’t careless—Brincknell was drunk and ran between us! It could just as easily have been Baynam’s weapon that struck him.”

  “Nevertheless, you were armed and he wasn’t. Follow your lawyer’s advice and plead self-defense. Don’t leave it to a jury. The penalty’s too grim.” Cecil leaned forward, hands pressed together. “I beg you, be reasonable. In just a few years you’ll be married—”

  “Nan’s lovely, Sir William, but she’s too silent for my taste.”

  Considering that Nan’s parents kept her in a constant state of intimidation, her reticence was understandable, but he couldn’t say that. Over the last seven years, Cecil had become like a father to him. He was still controlling, manipulative, preoccupied with money, but Earl John’s death had left a gaping hole, and in many ways Cecil filled it.

  Edward sighed. “All right,” he said. “I’ll get a lawyer.”

  Waiting for Cecil to return with the verdict, he paced the small attic room. The official in charge of the inquest required his confinement to the third floor of Cecil House. He was writing—nothing could keep him from that—but he was bored and the August heat was oppressive.

  As he paced he took care to step around the stacks of books. He needed to finish reading the ones on the bed, copy the portions he’d underlined into his journal, and read the ones on the floor. But worry over the inquest sapped his energy.

  Writing was still his most reliable friend. In fact, except for Ned Manners, writing was his only friend. The two new Cecil wards—stupid Sheffield and lazy Eddie Zouch—didn’t compare to Ovid, Petrarch, Plato, and Chaucer.

  He opened the shutters, planted his hands on the windowsill, and leaned out. Behind the houses across the street flowed the Thames. If he could jump to John Gerard’s garden and make it across the street, he’d hire a wherry, row to the south bank, buy a horse, and head for Dover. He’d be across the channel before anyone even knew he was gone—

  Ridiculous. He’d never survive a leap from such a height. Even if he did, he’d be a cripple like Robert.

  He rolled up the sleeves of his doublet and let the sun bake his face and hands. His gaze drifted across the river to the Cardinal’s Hat and the brothels of Southwark. He shrugged, walked to his bed, lay down—and heard footsteps.

  He sat up and turned to the door. At last this melodrama was about to end.

  He’d never denied that his rapier struck Cecil’s undercook, but Baynam had also testified that the incident was Brincknell’s fault. No, he didn’t like Brincknell, who’d lurked nearby whenever he talked to Nan, but why should that matter?

  The footsteps grew louder. Edward got to his feet. Cecil wore slippers because of his gout, but these footsteps weren’t padded. God knows it wasn’t his fault. He hated violence. Earl John was the one who took pride in the family’s descent from warlike Vikings.

  If only Brincknell hadn’t been drunk … Knees shaking, he stared so hard at the door he could almost see soldiers on the other side. The hinges creaked. He took a deep breath.

  The door swung open and there was Arthur, holding a sack. Without a word, his uncle crossed the room, shoved aside the pap
er, pens and pot of ink that servants brought every day, and placed the sack on the desk.

  “My boy, I present to you the galleys of your translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses.”

  “I thought you said you needed to rest.”

  “The inquest does disturb my sleep, but when Seres sent me a note the proofs for the first volume were ready, it seemed like a message from God, so I ran to his print shop and here we are.” Arthur flung his arms wide in the black robes that hung on his skinny frame. He looked like a scarecrow.

  “Take my chair, uncle. You don’t look well.”

  Arthur sat. Edward took a seat on a wooden bench and faced him.

  “My boy, I want you to promise me you won’t get into something like this fencing fiasco again. I know it was an accident, but sometimes … you’re like a volcano, dormant one moment, explosive the next.”

  “I promise I’ll only fence in closed rooms so no drunk undercooks can throw themselves on my sword.”

  They laughed and laughed. God, what a relief—he couldn’t even remember the last time he’d laughed.

  Arthur picked up the title page. “The ink’s still wet—be careful. The challenge is to correct a printer’s errors in setting type as well as our errors of content.”

  Edward wondered what process he’d follow to edit galleys. Not that he was going to change anything. As Arthur continued to leaf through the pile, the aroma of ink filled the room, masking the faint stench of garbage wafting up from the Thames. Except for the queen’s perfume, Edward thought he’d never smelled anything as sweet.

  Arthur reached the bottom of the pile.

  “It’s all here, my boy.” He closed his eyes. “Lord, thank you for giving Edward the wisdom to do Your work.”

  Edward raised a brow as Arthur remained still, eyes closed, waiting. Finally he sighed and opened his eyes.

  “Very well,” he said. “You don’t pray, but you do know your Ovid. Let’s get to work.” He handed Edward the title page. “Metamorphoses.”