For and during the term of her natural life.
‘No conditions.’
And after her decease, to the first son of her body lawfully issuing –
‘Never a fear of bastards there, eh?’
Never say never. And to the heirs males of the body of the first son lawfully issuing; and for default of such issue, to the second son of her body lawfully issuing.
‘Right, I see how this is going – let me just put dashes here, I’ll fill the rest in later.’
No, no, no, no, no, no, no – seven times no.
‘Seven times. All right, all right, I have it in my head.’
I don’t want it in your head. I want it in good black ink. Do it now. Write it down and read it back to me.
‘Take a few minutes.’
As you see, I’m prepared to wait.
‘No option but to tarry. Very well.’
While I rested and Francis scratched, little Alison stuck her head round the door and came skipping up to the bed. Francis kept scribbling but one eye glinted at her over his quill.
‘What, no sack?’
She bent down and reached up inside her own skirts. That stopped the lawyer dead-eyed in his drafting. He stared with sagging chin and widening eye as Alison stood up again, fumbling under her dress.
With practised hands she detached the bottle from the sling around her waist, bent again, and slipped it in beside me with a wink, letting me see all the way down to her two unsucked nipples. Then she stood up, smoothing her skirts.
‘Well, I’ll be damned!’
I hope not, Francis. I’d like to have a word with you in the next world – and I don’t want to be going there.
‘Anything else, master?’
Yes, child, but I’ll keep it to myself.
She gave me her faun’s flutter and left.
Thank you, Alison. Keep at it, Francis. Nice little trick, eh?
‘Incredible. That’s me done. Shall I read it back to you?’
Every syllable.
‘I hope you’re ready for this.’
I’m ready and ripe and almost rotten. Take it from second son.
‘And to the heirs male of the body of the second son lawfully issuing; and for default of such heirs, to the third son of the body of the said Susanna lawfully issuing, and of the heirs males of the body of the said third son lawfully issuing; and for default of such issue, the same so to be and remain to the fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh sons of her body issuing one after another and the heirs males of the bodies of the said fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh sons lawfully issuing, in such manner as it is before limited to be and remain to the first, second and third sons of her body, and to their heirs males; and for default of such issue, the said premises to be and remain to my said niece Hall –’
We corrected that earlier. It’s grand-daughter.
‘Of course. I’ll see to it. And the heirs males of her body lawfully issuing; and for default of such issue, to my daughter Judith –’
Well foreseen, Francis.
‘And the heirs males of her body lawfully issuing; and for default of such issue, to the right heirs of me the said William Shakespeare.’
For ever.
‘Why not? For ever. How’s that?’
Amen. And well done. You’ve earned your cup of sack. And your capon.
‘I can smell it.’
It’s on its way up. Did we say Judith’s to get the bowl, the silver and gilt one?
‘Done that.’
But Elizabeth’s to get the rest of the plate?
‘Seen to. Stop worrying, have a drink. And now let me check I’ve got this right so far.’
You’ve just been through it all. It’s perfect.
‘Construction, Will, construction. I’m executor as well as lawyer. I want to be sure I’m interpreting your wishes correctly.’
You want to be sure I haven’t lost my marbles.
‘The point being, you’re attaching strings now to the January draft.’
Which no longer exists.
‘Which is no longer tenable.’
O, Justinian!
‘One hundred pounds to go to Judith for a marriage portion, but for the other fifty she’s got to give up claim to what I take to be the Chapel Lane cottage – correct?’
That’s correct.
‘And if she or such offspring as she may produce are here three years from today, there’s another hundred and fifty on the table?’
Correct.
‘But if she dies barren instead during those three years, your grand-daughter, Elizabeth Hall –’
Not my niece.
‘Not your niece – will come in for a hundred, and the remaining fifty will go to your sister Joan and her sons?’
Right.
‘But if Judith or children of hers are around in three years time, then I’m to see to it – assuming I’m around myself – that she’s paid the annual interest earned by the hundred and fifty.’
But not the principal, so long as she stays married.
‘And her husband can only get his hands on the money if he settles on her lands to the value of the hundred and fifty.’
Brilliant.
‘And as for Susanna, she walks away with almost the lot – if I may put it thus bluntly.’
You may, you may. I see a degree in the law was not wasted on you.
‘To the extent that I can hardly help noticing a certain disparity between the estates of the two daughters. You still haven’t told me what’s going on.’
Nor have I. But we’ll get to that.
‘And your wife is out in the cold.’
She’s not out in the cold, she’s in with the Halls.
‘Is that decided?’
It’s understood – and here comes your capon.
The dishes were deposited in all their glory, Anne in attendance, on the look-out for liquor. The women were swept out, Francis rubbed his fat palms, and I rubbed the bottle of sack, safe between my legs, where Mistress Mine has not been or looked for thirty years. We sank back and congratulated ourselves on our labours.
‘Whacking progress, Will. That was some burst! And a whacking capon too! Why don’t you try some? I can spare a little.’
I might just do that.
And I chewed a forkful of meat in preference to the standing-pool scum that had been set down for me, gruel poorer than piss. I then got out the sack, plucked from under the blankets like a torch of life.
20
What are you, Will?
‘Talking to yourself, old man?’
That’s what she used to say to me. And could I blame her altogether for the catalogue of complaints she came out with? the sounds and smells of that hellish Henley Street shop, the cabin we were cribbed and coffined in, the puking, mewling infants, the confinements of the communal dining room – a babble of many voices with my father’s growing beerier by the day and my mother needing more and more help. Nothing, it seemed, but work. And what was my work, she wanted to know? What are you, Will? A glorified butcher?
‘A cutting question.’
Neither glover nor scholar, it was true. My father had provided me with sufficient schooling to make it impossible for me to draw a cart or eat dried oats. But what were the alternatives? Shopkeeper, usurer, dealer in timber or wool? Inheritor of John Shakespeare’s failed fortunes, a counter-caster, to debitor and creditor bound? A chip off that worn old block? That’s when I began to scent the breeze. The wind that scatters young men through the world, to seek their fortunes other than at home, where small experience grows. Even the soldier’s uncertain life seemed preferable to this, the bubble reputation infinitely more attractive than the wars of the hearth. No, war is no strife – to the dark house and the detested wife.
Time and discontent. Late in the year 1582 I looked in my glass and I saw a stranger. He looked young but he didn’t look hopeful. He was a husband and a father of three, stuck in a Stratford rut. He was a country nobody.
A de
cade later the crow had become an eagle, the Stratford hare a London tiger. The nobody had become a somebody.
‘Metamorphosis.’
Yes, Francis, the essence of the human drama. The Stratford clod becomes a London luminary. Tempora mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis.
‘Never forgot your Ovid, did you?’
Daphne and Apollo, flesh becomes grass. Apollo the archer, quiver full of arrows and each one tipped with flame. Swifter than quicksilver she flees from him, the wind baring her limbs, ripping her clothes from her as she runs. And just as the lovesick god reaches out to feel his first fistful of female flesh, the great change occurs. Her toes are rooting already – where she strains to leave the ground her feet have gone sluggish. Her outstretched arms are branches, tendril fingers turning to leaves, staining the skies with the green death which is her new life. Her hair is forest fleece, her heart beating under bark, her swinging tits two time-hardened knots, and all that alluring amber flesh impenetrable. The frozen fleeing girl has become a tree. Women are always turning into something else.
‘And that’s what happened with Anne Hathaway?’
As I said, a tongue with a tang. And when an English rose turns out to be a cabbage, you catch on at last that you must have needed spectacles. The rose lost its bloom, the great seductress of Shottery began to vegetate, the buttery-bar girl became a bore.
‘And she looked on you as something of a let-down in the end?’
From buttery to butchery, the young poet who’d buttered her up at Hewlands was now stuck in Henley Street with the chopper and the slab. We stopped hearing the chimes at midnight. The gods had gone from Snitterfield, the nymphs played no more in the forest of Arden.
‘Such is marriage.’
In the months following ours I thought that time would never turn our pages. I was locked into a plot that was interminable. No action, no development, no spectacle, no poetry. The script was rotten and the characters were dull, me most of all. Towards the mid-eighties the hand of Hathaway had grown less busy about my balls and more heftily directed at shoving me out of Henley Street in search of better employment. I could have argued that the hand of little employment hath the daintier sense but she’d have given me to understand that more work and less wit would better become my new roles as husband and father.
‘And so it was that you to Henry Rogers did make love?’
Well, figuratively speaking, and the law proved tedious enough, and that was no surprise. And so did the schoolroom.
‘What! Master Shakespeare, Stratford schoolmaster?’
Beater of boys, but unenthusiastic. I was dismissed. My replacement was a thug called Wymote, who battered them black and blue.
‘Private tutor, then?’
Not for the first time. When Cottom was schoolmaster here his family in Lancashire had a Catholic neighbour called Alexander Houghton of Lea Hall. He needed a tutor for his children and my father needed extra cash. Cottom recommended me, and Houghton took to me, I’m not sure why – I wasn’t a strict keeper of his warren of children.
‘Had Cottom given him the Catholic whisper about you?’
That’s how it started. But in the end Houghton may have fancied me just because of the play-acting.
‘At last – the play thing!’
Among his servants Houghton kept a number of players, of whom he was unusually fond, and he asked me at Christmas if I’d fill in for one of them who was sick. It was nothing to speak of – a line hammed out, a mumble of mumming, a tumble or two, a humble bow to a murmur of aristocratic applause. But old Houghton approved. I’d made a start. And it made a difference. So did his will.
‘A will? Ah, tell me about it.’
Houghton died when I was seventeen, but before he did he willed his half-brother Thomas either to take me into his service or help me to some good master. The good master the dead Houghton’s brother helped me to turned out to be his brother-in-law, Thomas Hesketh, only ten miles off, at Rufford, and I was glad to get back north again when the chill winds cooled our bedsheets. Except that now I wasn’t even tutor to a rich man’s children, but simply another rich man’s player, a move which did not go down too well in Henley Street. Player indeed. With precious little left to piss against the wall, let alone send back to Stratford. What is he playing at, that’s the question?
I think I knew even then what I was playing at – what all players play at, illusion and escape.
Hesketh sent us now and again to Knowsley to play for his friends, the Stanleys, the great Earls of Derby, who kept their own players, the company of Lord Ferdinando Strange, the fifth earl. I didn’t know it at the time, but the core of that company was destined to become the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, the flower of the London theatre. And it was at Knowsley that I first came close to actors from London and got my first whiff of the capital in their sweat and breath, felt its life and vigour in their lunging strides and seductive speeches – the mean murderous magical metropolis.
‘It was magic, magic that had ravished you!’
They sowed words like corn with a single telling gesture and reaped an instant reaction from their audiences. You could see a hallful of people stir like barley under the breath of a single whispered syllable. Here was power, right here. In a fistful of air. In the echoes of a few spent words.
‘You must have seen the acting troupes before.’
Essex’s Men and Stafford’s came up, and Leicester’s, led by Burbage, and Worcester’s with Ned Alleyn as their glittering star.
‘And then the Queen’s?’
And then in the late June of’87 came the Queen’s Men with two clowns, Dick Tarleton and Will Kempe. Kempe was at the start of his career, Tarleton a man nearing the end – a decaying hulk with melancholy eyes, whose power to pull the queen out of the dumps was as faded as his legend. Poverty, royal displeasure, and death by drinking were all awaiting him the following year. If I’d looked close enough I’d have seen his fate already written into his fat face. But like most of the other Stratford spectators I didn’t come so near. Instead I watched him face out his inevitable fall with a fool-born jest and an irresistible grin, mocking the grin that mocks us all: the skull beneath the skin.
He was such a famous name that the Stratford crowd broke the windows of the Guild Hall in their determination to see him. Any view would do. Nobody was going to be robbed of the chance to get a glimpse of the fat little wizard who could so enchant a queen. His quips and cranks put her into such a good mood that condemned men waiting for the chop were spared at the last minute. They owed their lives to poor Tarleton – who couldn’t in the end save himself. But none among us either inside or outside the Guild Hall that day knew much of that. Or of what lay ahead for the comedian as we watched him romp his way through the Seven Deadly Sins and take the fire out of hell.
‘Farewell to Tarleton. And Stratford adieu!’
When their wagon disappeared in its cloud of dust it left me with a strangely empty feeling. The echoes died away. Stratford itself felt suddenly empty.
I went up to the Welcombe hill and looked about me. I saw an endless circle of flat farmlands lying quietly under Warwickshire’s slow skies, that restless armada of clouds. Clouds that looked so close, as Uncle Henry always said, you could jump aboard one of them at random and sail off over those farmlands to something new. To be what? That was the question. What not to be was no longer in doubt. Beyond the circumference lay all of England. And beyond that – blue emptiness. And the untravelled world. I stood on Welcombe for a very long time, turning slowly round and round, environed by this vast circle. Its edges were the nagging skylines that held things tight and finite and yet pushed out into the future, the unknown. How to break the circle? To catch that cloud and steer it off into the blue compass.
I threw myself down and lay on my back in the grass, stretched out my body across the fields. They accepted it like the rack, as the sky accepted my soul, spun like beaten gold over all the counties of England. Everything whirled and wen
t wild in my head, the shopboy servitude, the butchery, the grey boredom, life leaking away, a shrew always eating into my ears. If I stayed here one week longer I’d never leave at all. For the rest of my days I’d submit to the turnings of this great green clockface of fields and the blind succession of seasons that had turned the Snitterfield farmers in their sleep. I’d go under those fields myself, joining my ancestors in their graves, never having known anything else.
‘And you at the great age of twenty-three?’
The year was 1587. And the time had come to do what John Shakespeare had done. What Richard Shakespeare had done before him. And what I should now do after them. Change my sky. That we would do we should do when we would. Or lose our venture. The tide had come in yet again. Time to take it, then. And with a free will go on.
‘Free will and midsummer madness?’
A muddled broth of eleven souls bubbled beneath the Henley Street rafters. My father avoided my mother’s eyes, in which he saw her lost heritage. Bile flecked Anne’s tongue and the wormwood dripped in my ear. The twins fretted and teethed. There was no answer here.
All around us June burst like a green bomb, a slow explosion of energy. Pigeons and crows made a bedlam of the woods, the pear blossoms pounded with the peppering of tits, bees blundered among snowstorms of butterflies, and thistle-seeds, dozens deep, drifted thickly by, while the nettledust and the dry white dust of the roads stung the nostrils and pricked the eyes. Ants whizzed across the baked earth like the balls of black spit that bounced along winter stoves from the old Snitterfield mouths. I ran out into the fields, threw off my clothes and lay back again, looking up from the bottom of the ocean of growth. Through the greenness all was blue: blue trailing tangles of cornflowers, blue towers of thistles, castling the sky, blue bullets of dragonflies and the blue flames of field-fires, glassing the sun. Beyond the field, somewhere, the sea – blue water and the four points. Beyond the sun, infinity. And through all of Warwickshire I could hear it – the cuckoo, broadcasting its merciless monotonous message, cuckoo, cuckoo. Mocking married men. Cuckoo.
At nights the wicked gold of the stars melted and ran into my sleepless eyes and the wild garlic came knifing up the nostrils, through the open windows of that suffocating little room in Henley Street, filling the lungs. The thatch crackled as if it were set to burst into flame. I rose like a madman with the moon, staring up at its crazy frustrated face as if into a glass. I was led by a star that I could not see, but in which I trusted. It was lighting me the way to exile, banishment from heart and home. Standing by the window, I looked back at Anne, asleep in bed, bathed in silver like a corpse. Beneath that fresh white calico breathed the same body that had driven me mad with lust and longing five years earlier. Where does it go to, Francis, all that love?
Will Page 18
