She was. She’s a good girl. But she did as I asked, and I emptied the contents onto the blankets in front of me. They chinked and glittered.
Can you count, Alison?
‘Yes, master.’
How many?
‘Twelve, master.’
Twelve what?
‘I don’t know. I never seen them before.’
Crowns. Twelve gold crowns, and not a betrayer among them, all good and true.
‘But what do you want me to do with them?’
They’re for you, sweet one, to set you up, when I’m dead and gone.
Her tiny fingers flew to her face and she started to cry. I reached out quickly and laid my hand on her.
No, Alison, stop now, do you hear?
Her chest began to palpitate and I could feel the breast heave under my hand. I kept it there.
The little bird calmed down but shook its head over taking the money. I put on my sternest Stratford look – and voice.
Pick up the coins, Alison, put them back in the purse, and tell no one.
She obeyed – and held out the purse helplessly.
In your bosom of course, where else?
She looked at me with shining unsmiling eyes and started unlacing herself.
No need to make a fine art of it, lass, just squirrel them away.
But she wasn’t preparing a nest for the golden egg, she was thanking me in the only way she knew how. And I couldn’t have asked heaven for more. There they rose before me, the hills of paradise, at their most fragrant when sipped at by lovers or when babies nuzzle like bees. Thank you, Lord, for breasts. They are the round turrets of ineffable empires, to be taken only by the tongues of angels. They are the via lactea, doves on high perches, raindrops of flesh, grapes of Gethsemane, Christ’s tears incarnate. They are the dreams of men.
And like dreams they come in a thousand shapes, of which I have seen many – little lemons with protuberant navels, peaches furred with down, melons like bombs, waiting to burst, wrinkled swinging wineskins, dugs hung so low you could paddle a wherry with them, row the queen’s barge up and down the Thames. And the nipples staring like lobsters’ eyes, pouting like pricks, nipples neat as rosebuds in spring or hard as crabs in a winter bowl, nipples like sea anemones clinging to the rock, made for the sea-hungry mouths of mad mariners, wrecked on strange coasts, avid for mermaids, exotic food of the ocean gods, and aureoles like the haloes around saints.
‘Master.’
Forgive me, Alison, I was lost in thought –
Of other breasts. But none so lovely as Alison offered me now, leaning over me so that I could accept them with grateful lips and hands, none so lovely as the breasts that comfort the dying man. Alison’s hung before me, not big, but round and firm, yet weightless to the eye, heavenly bodies poised, suspended in space, accidental apples, dropped elegantly onto Eve, onto the blessed Virgin herself.
There was a time I could have accepted their weight, drowned in that bosom, and gone to heaven. But now – now not a lustful tremor stirred within me after all, now that she stood there, so immaculate and calm. I reached out to the breasts and with fluttering fingers waved them away, like two frightened doves that were shooed from their perches. Alison looked at me sadly.
‘I wish I had milk for you, master.’
Nipples like polished chestnuts, like two baby moles new come out, innocents under the sky.
I shook my head.
‘What’s wrong, master, are you angry with me? Is it no good for you?’
It is the milk of human kindness, Alison.
O, that this too too sullied flesh would melt. Yet I’ll not scar that whiter skin of hers than snow, and smooth as monumental alabaster.
‘Master?’
Lace yourself up, Alison, quickly now, put that money where my mouth would be, many moons ago, live well, and remember me.
‘Thank you, master.’
No – thank you, Alison. And tell that fat lawyer to come up and finish the business. As it is he’ll be back to Warwick in the dark.
37
‘The fat lawyer will be here for breakfast at this pace!’
Francis came in grinning and looking, if possible, fatter than ever, just as Alison finished lacing up and hurried out.
The deep of night is crept upon our talk.
‘And there are still things to settle. Why are you looking so pleased with yourself? You haven’t even touched your pie.’
There are things sweeter than pie. Francis, I’ve been in paradise.
‘Already? Then why did you come back? I thought no traveller returns.’
Ah, here will I dwell, for heaven is in these lips, and all is dross that is not Alison.
‘Alison?’
I meant Helena – as in Helen of Troy. Marlowe’s Helen.
Francis crossed his arms, jerked his head towards the door, and looked sternly at me.
‘Have you been misbehaving, my boy?’
I’ve been reminiscing.
‘You’re a wicked old man. And after I’m done with you, you’d better settle up with God. By all accounts you’ll have a few things to put right. And you’ve got the time, my lad. Marlowe didn’t.’
Marlowe died of politics, Francis, the workings of which are even more inscrutable than the plague – though I can’t imagine a world free from either, can you?
‘I think you’d better start imagining a world without women, old boy. No sex in heaven, remember? Better get used to it.’
Then heaven’s not for me, Francis. A world without women! What, no passion’s heat? no carving in the bark? no cruel flame of love? no gods gone mad with mortal charm? Inconceivable. For if there’s one thing worse than the plague – and believe me, Francis, there is – it’s the plagues of loving. The pestilence saw you off in three days flat. But the plagues of loving set you on the rack.
‘The plague of the pox you mean.’
That’s different from love.
‘Bad enough, I reckon.’
Well, I liked Lucy Negro’s place. I liked Lucy Negro too and she liked me. Black Luce.
O thou black weed! Who art so lovely fair and smell’st so sweet that the sense aches at thee! would thou… would thou…
‘Would thou get back to the real world!’
Her world was hell – black but aromatic.
‘Murky.’
Would all women smelt so fair! Moorish whores. She got her girls to spice themselves up for me. O balmy breath! So sweet was ne’er so fatal!
‘Then why did you go?’
The brothels were sanctuaries, Francis. No jealousies there, no doubts or fears, no visions of betrayal, the green-eyed monster that mocks the meat it feeds on, the damnèd minutes told o’er, the false friend’s lies, the rank sweat of an enseamed bed, the wind, the bawdy wind that kisses all it meets, strawberry handkerchiefs, foregone conclusions, trifles light as air, paddling palms and pinching fingers, virginalling on knuckles, skulking in corners, whispering in chambers, wishing clocks more swift, hours minutes, noon midnight, leaning cheek to cheek, meeting noses, kissing with inside lip, speaking so nearly that breaths embraced, the tongue down the throat, all the way and into the tail…
‘O Jesus, stop!’
Stopping the career of laughter with a sigh. Such are the plagues of loving. But the brothels were beautiful! Purged of the pestilence of lies, no vile spirit of love entered into the trade in human flesh. It was lust, pure and simple. You didn’t sleep with a strumpet to get closer to the court. There was none of that in the stews. There it was cock and cunt, buy and sell, come and go, with not one syllable of flattery, hypocrisy, nor hope of gain. That, my friend, was pure beauty.
‘Beauty truly blent.’
Let’s not go back there. Anyway, the plague put all of that on hold when it put the whores out of work. You’d have to be weary of the sun to walk into a brothel during the plague years. It was safer to hold your piece in bed and crackle your sheets in the dawn.
‘I think you sh
ould hold your peace.’
What else could a man do? Even the night-tripping ladies of the streets you never knew where they’d come from – straight from the whorehouses no doubt, ill-famed and idle. The stars of the stews put up their shutters. Even Henslowe shut up shop. Even the aristocrats had a hard time of it. You daren’t mess with one of the Queen’s Glories either.
‘That sent her virgin Majesty mad, did it?’
Pembroke meddled with Mistress Mary Fitton once too often, and as her belly grew, so Pembroke’s star waned, first in the Fleet prison and afterwards in exile. Such were the hazards, Francis, lining the route that wound up through a chamber-lady’s petticoat. Not to mention the block. It just wasn’t worth the risk.
‘And there’s nothing wrong with celibacy. Are you going to have that bit of pie, by the way?’
Celibacy was never the best of pastimes, but you can’t be more celibate than when you’re dead. My own ventures were not in one bottom trusted.
‘I smell a woman – another one.’
Old Vautrollier had gone to sleep with his French forefathers, and in the risky spring of ’93 Richard Field bolted back home to avoid the plague, leaving the lovely Jacklin – now his wife – to take her chances. And to keep the business running and the Splayed Eagle flying in the face of fear. When I heard about this I made straight for Wood Street. What would you have done, in my place, Francis, with sudden death lurking round every corner and liable to surface in your armpits? In any case, this Field was no eagle but a crack-brained cuckoo and he deserved the cuckold’s fate that was coming to him. For if a man wanted an antidote now to the black death it was to be found jump between the Gallic thighs of black Jackie – a fiery wench to fire out the stench of death.
‘No details, please! There were enough in Act One to outlast the play!’
Act Two was business, Francis. When I walked in under the sign of the Splayed Eagle I was carrying the intent of my quill as well as my prick – specifically the manuscript of a newly penned poem.
‘Ah, your Venus and Adonis.’
A shut playhouse means an empty purse, Francis, and even an actor must eat. When Jackie saw me she threw decorum to the winds and leaped into my arms with a whoop. I grabbed her haunches and the pages of the manuscript slid from my fingers and littered the floor at our feet.
‘Well! You weecked Weel! ’ow does your honour for zees many a day?’
‘I humbly thank you. Well enough. Will is well.’
‘And now ’ow famous you ’ave become zee talk of zee ceety!’
Still that broken music. I sucked it from her tongue and tasted French the way I liked and remembered. Then she shut the shop and we went to bed at noon, leaving Venus on the floor in disarray.
When we had put both Venus and ourselves in order, I returned to the manuscript.
‘Inspired all over again no doubt.’
Which necessitated a return to Wood Street on the following day. And night. And every night thereafter while the plague raged in the city and the brothels begged for business. In the midst of the madness the Splayed Eagle hovered over us with its protective wings, gentle as a dove. Wood Street was an ark on a sea of troubles.
‘And Jacklin was a good safe ride.’
It will not surprise you to learn, Francis, that I felt the need to check every syllable of my Venus as it went through the Field press – which entailed much labour under the Splayed Eagle, and between the splayed legs of dark Jacklin.
‘I told you, I’m your lawyer, not your priest.’
I owed it to myself. It was my first work to appear in print. And I owed it to Field, who was not at hand to keep up his standard. So I kept it up for him. Nothing less than perfection would satisfy me, and Venus deserves and demands her due. By the time he came creeping back from Stratford, Jackie and I had done yeoman’s work and a beautifully prepared poem was waiting for him. The sluggard took his time to give it the light of day, and eight months afterwards was stupid enough to sell it on – a move he lived to regret when he saw the sales. But there you have it, just as it fell out between the white sheets, pen and prick hard pressed but keeping perfect time together.
‘A labour of love.’
As I say, my ventures were not –
‘In one bottom trusted, as you said. Any others?’
Well, there was Elizabeth Daniel, sister of Samuel, the sonneteer. She married Florio.
‘Ah, the Montaigne man.’
And the Earl of Southampton’s tutor. And another writer who never made it out of ’92. But she soon discovered that Florio lived in a world of words. It was the very title he gave his dictionary and it was the maelstrom into which he plunged nightly, a world away from the black flag that should have drawn him like a moth to the moon. Night after night he left her sexless between the sheets, that word-mad mandarin of a grammatist, while he burned the midnight lamp over his Italian etymologies, and between you and me, Francis, I did the same for Florio in his ungentlemanly absence as I’d done for Richard Field in Wood Street.
‘Performed his office.’
Betwixt the marital sheets. And warmed them up for him.
‘Jesus.’
They needed warming – they were much too cool.
‘But how did you – ’
Southampton employed me, after I’d dedicated my Venus to him – to him! Henry Wriothesley, third Earl of Southampton and Baron of Titchfield! And it was accepted. The plague had been a blessing in disguise. So I entered his household. And there we all were – together.
‘With Venus ascendant. What a crowd!’
Venus had to be ascendant. The theatres were shut. And the plague would have made a pauper out of me in no time had I not written the Venus. No, I didn’t write tragedies during the plague, as you might have expected. There was tragedy enough piled up in the streets, in the houses, in the communal graves. People didn’t need more than they’d already got. When you’re up to your neck in excrement you don’t want to be told how shitty life is. My Venus gave Londoners a sense of release and relief from the daily horrors that surrounded them. It was a window onto a world almost forgotten, a world of beautiful, classical, pagan love in a pastoral setting.
‘And it worked. You were a sensation. Even I bought a copy – a boring lawyer.’
The young men loved it, the students slept with it under their pallets, even wrote me down in their diaries, considering it no baseness to write fair when W.S. was the subject. Suddenly I was sweet Mr Shakespeare, public plaudits and honour due. And a dozen editions speaks for itself.
‘I think I preferred your next one, the Lucrece.’
The wiser sort did. Chaste Roman matron preferred to horny Roman goddess every time, when you’re an egghead of acumen and understanding, as you are, Francis. But I’m willing to wager that these wiser scholars and sober souls were careful to keep last year’s Venus slipped between the sheets for private reading – just in case the nocturnal urge took them unawares – and many a candle dripped and sputtered in the secret watches of the night.
‘Jesus, Will, you’re nowhere near ready for heaven.’
The plague years resolved me of one thing, Francis, that the play is most definitely not the thing. It’s the thing of the moment. It always is. But as I hit thirty and looked at what I was – a playwright without a playhouse, I reached my decision. Not the play but the poem. The poem is the thing. That was the truth for 1593.
38
‘Quite a career change, Will, from pleasing the mob to pleasing a nob.’
I was prepared for it, made ready for it, the previous year. It was early in the season, a dark dawn of ’92, that the knock came to the door.
‘Master Shakespeare?’ the voice said, ‘I represent a certain lady, whose identity will shortly be revealed to you. I also represent Sir William Cecil, Lord Burghley, the Lord High Treasurer of the Realm, and therefore, by extension, Her Majesty, the Queen. Do I have your full attention?’
He did. And so did my bowels. I’d known
right away that he was a gentleman, rings and pearled ruffs apart, but when he came out with that mouthful I shook like the hare. The caller smiled and put his hand firmly on my shoulder, half easing me, half ordering me down into my chair. He was wearing very expensive gloves.
‘Relax, there’s nothing to worry about. Just listen to what I have to say, Will. Can I call you Will? Here it is, then. It’s very simple. There is a certain young man who at this moment does not feel inclined to marry. Understandable enough in a lad of nineteen, to be unwilling to enter into the state of holy deadlock. Naturally he wants to live a little before settling down to raise a family and manage his estates. Holy matrimony has its drawbacks, as we all know, despite its undoubtedly blessed condition. Except that in the present case the young man happens to be Henry Wriothesley, third Earl of Southampton and Baron of Titchfield. And to speak plainly, his father has been dead these twelve years and there is no fourth Earl to speak of – not until the third one, our little Henry, does his duty and provides an heir. Which he can’t very well do, legally that is, until he’s married. Bastards don’t count, as I’m sure you appreciate.’
‘But what does any of this have to do with me?’
‘I see that I enjoy your full attention, Master Shakespeare. Permit me to tell you.’
And that was how it began.
Enter into my life, just as the plague entered London, the Right Honourable Henry Wriothesley: beautiful as a woman, popular, self-admiring, ambitious. And rich, seriously rich, at least potentially. A golden lad without a girl was young Henry Wriothesley.
Actually the courtly messenger pronounced it Risley (with a certain sibilantic disdain, so I thought), though the young owner of the name always used the Rye-ose-ley slant, a euphonic preference which may have been a matter of vanity. To a wordplaying poet it was a matter of poetic serendipity – that thereby beauty’s rose might never die.
‘Nice wordplay, Will. You never miss a trick.’
He was beauty’s rose, all right, was my young Harry.
‘No bending and scraping, Will,’ he’d say, ‘unless I bend and you scrape. And you can count on my firmness, all the way to the end.’ It was part of his charm, the silly schoolboy humour. But setting aside the jests he meant what he said, and was even better than his word.
Will Page 33
