The Secret Life of William Shakespeare

by Jude Morgan

  ‘The cow-keeper? Been and gone, mistress,’ the maid said. Adding brightly: ‘I bought a pint for you.’

  No, no, this wouldn’t do, she had to have a talk with Betty each day, a deep, warm, earthy draught of her; it mattered. Anne took up her cloak. Edmund looked his question: where? ‘Out.’ If she had missed Betty coming to her, then she would go to Betty. These things seem small and undistinguishable, like far-off mountains turned into clouds. She walked north-west, along by London Wall, judging by the setting sun, asking when she went astray: not shy, because this had killed shy, this feeling of importance to her alone. Who knew or cared for Betty, the cow-keeper of St Giles? She did. Barns appeared, timber-ponds, vegetable rows, though still London did not seem quite to fall away. I know a bank whereon the wild thyme blows, where oxlips and the nodding violet grows. But where? New fine houses rose up, some still building in choice brick: habitations of the wealthy sort. But she was looking for something plainer, simpler: a cottage by the old spital wall, with an old oak and a sweet well. She found a church: St Giles, very well. Found remnants of old monastic wall among a scrubby rambling sort of village, but where…?

  At last, an old woman had heard of Betty the cow-keeper and Dickon the poulterer. She nodded Anne to a tumbledown hovel she had already passed twice. The oak was a dead stump. Still: to airy nothing give a habitation and a name. Love looks not with the eyes but with the mind, and Betty loved this spot of earth.

  Above the open door hung a couple of skinny fowls: another, hardly more alive, scratched on the threshold. Anne’s calf muscles burned from the walk. Getting soft from London: next she would be carried about in one of those new coaches. She would say this to Betty, and they would chuckle.

  ‘Betty, art there?’ She hadn’t used thou with her before, but they were friends after all. She went forward in semi-darkness. Damp straw squelched underfoot.

  ‘Don’t come dunning here, mistress! You’ll get naught, hear me, get naught!’

  A man loomed at her, breathing drink. A strap dangled from his hand and spit from his lips.

  ‘Master Dickon?’ she quavered. She had expected someone like Peter Quince the carpenter, solid and jovial. This man was like a rat nosing from an alley.

  ‘Who’d know?’ Behind him a small child grizzled on the floor, another stood nose-picking and staring. A sickly goose squatted in a sort of wicker pen directly adjoining the bare room.

  ‘I’m a friend to Betty. She keeps a cow, has a milk-walk in Bishopsgate—’

  ‘Oh, a friend, hey?’ His crusted eyes ran over her clothes, adding up. ‘Not a dun, then, hey? Your pardon, but a man must wonder, when a stranger comes asking of her.’ He hit out at the crying child, with a blind fly-swatting motion, while his face rearranged itself into troubled friendliness. ‘That’s my Betty, yes, but she’s still from home, mistress. Late. Always she’s late, the bitch.’ He belched sourly and grinned. ‘Jesting. She’s a good creature in the main. But what’s goodness when there’s a pest on your fowl, and sick children needing delicate food? Nothing, that’s what.’ She noticed the prompt way he stepped forward when she stepped back. A drunk, and a hitter. She brought to mind how Betty always kept her arms covered, even in warm weather. What hempen homespuns…? ‘Now you say you’re a friend, but I don’t say friend until I see money. Money’s what’s needed, you see.’ Wheedling, sidling to block the door. ‘And I see money about you, mistress.’

  Not for long. She wrenched her purse from her waist and scattered the coins on the filthy floor and ran.

  And ran.

  In mud-spattered Bishopsgate Street, in grey dusk, she ran straight into Will, who was out looking for her. She screamed and fought him for the few seconds it took her to understand this.

  ‘Where have you been? Edmund’s out seeking you, I’ve been everywhere – in God’s name, what…?’

  She told him. Leaning on him, half staggering back to the house, she told it all: why not?

  Indoors he dispensed quick explanations to the children, urging her upstairs. In their bedchamber, door shut, he gently took off her drenched cloak, then knelt and eased off her mud-stiff shoes.

  ‘Why?’ he asked, as he had to.

  She considered. Her wet hair felt like weed clinging to her face. As if she had been dredged from the deeps of wild seas, and certain stars shot madly from their spheres to hear the sea-maid’s music.

  ‘I thought,’ she said, ‘that it would be like the wood.’

  She heard him suck in breath, and in the room’s unlit dimness saw his teeth. Was it exasperation she saw, was it a wry laugh? Don’t ask me, I can barely read, let alone read Will Shakespeare.

  ‘The wood,’ he said, ‘is no place.’

  Inside her heart, deep in its silent sea-caves, sounded her answer: I know that now.

  * * *

  ‘As Her Majesty’s former officer in chief of Stratford and Justice of the Peace, he should be entitled to bear arms.’ Will had been to the College of Heralds again, and was explaining to Hamnet. ‘And as property-holder, and as husband to Grandmother, who is of the Arden line. They take all these matters into account when they grant it.’

  ‘What about you?’ Hamnet said. ‘You’re an important man too. A Chamberlain’s Man. A play-maker. They ought to give arms for that.’

  Will laughed and slapped his son’s shoulder. ‘Not the same in their eyes, I fear. But thank you, Hamnet, you are gracious.’

  A beautiful moment: beautiful, the glow on Hamnet’s face. Here I come to sour and curdle, thought Anne.

  ‘Will they grant it?’

  ‘I don’t see why not. There are men bearing arms who never gave such good service to Crown and country.’

  ‘Lord. Now you’re sounding like your father.’

  They had this hesitation around jokes. After a moment Will put down his guard. ‘Lord. Please, knock me on the head first.’

  She opened the window to let out a fly, and let in warm air like the inside of a shoe. ‘This is the sickly season in London, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes. But we’re well situated here. Why?’ Suddenly he was close, looking into her eyes, anxiously conning her skin. Oh, that tenderness could make up for a lot: if you could just prise it out, give it a different setting. ‘No, no, I’m not ill.’ The fly returned and crawled on her hand. It was hideously soft and intimate. ‘But is there plague about this year?’

  ‘I’ve seen one red cross. But south of the river, Bankside.’

  ‘Judith’s been sick again. No, she shows nothing like that. It’s this flux that keeps preying on her, and she can’t shake it off.’

  ‘Poor creature has been pale lately. Too young for green-sickness, think you? Where is she?’

  ‘Lying down. Edmund’s reading to her. He solemnly promised not to leave her even if she fell asleep.’

  ‘Like Hamnet when he was small.’ Hamnet had gone through a stage of irrepressible nightmares. Edmund swore to stay up all night and fight them off. And he did it: when Hamnet woke at first light there was Edmund sitting fresh and upright by the bed, saying: I got them all. Anne and Will shared a smile of memory: or, at least, both smiled, individually. ‘I’ll go see her before they come.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The sharers. We’re meeting here.’

  ‘I didn’t know.’ She clapped the window shut. ‘There’ll be eating and drinking, no doubt—’

  ‘We’ll be sending out for that, to the Black Bull.’

  ‘I hope it won’t turn into a carouse.’

  ‘It won’t. We have a quarter’s accounts to divide and an inventory to revise.’

  ‘I don’t want Judith disturbed.’

  ‘She won’t be.’

  ‘Now if it was Matthew who was poorly, clever exceptional Matthew, then it would be a different matter.’

  He studied her in deep apparent puzzlement. ‘Why are you like this?’

  ‘Like what? A shrew-wife?’

  He had an air of someone taking careful aim. ‘Not yourself.�
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  ‘Who’s that? You don’t know who I am, Will. Certainly not here. You can’t even see me here. I’m like a little dun sparrow in a great tree. Now you, you’re showing what a significant man you’ve become. Was that the whole entire reach of the notion – so that I’d be duly impressed and humbly grateful? You’re showing the wrong person, Will. Your father should be here.’ She let that sink in. She let it sink in that she was actually saying these things. ‘You should be here, but you’re not. Or, at least, you’re not with me.’ She sat down heavily, faint with heat and candour. ‘Will, I want to go home.’

  ‘So I thought. Did it need to be said in such a way?’

  ‘Probably not. I want to go home and take the children. This is not a healthful place in summer. You’ve told me so.’

  ‘But it’s more than that,’ he said dully.

  ‘No, no.’ Mop up the blood, let not a spot remain. ‘Forget what I said. I’m sick with heat, and I can’t face any more men having great talks, and I simply want to know that I can go home. Soon.’

  ‘You know you can.’ He knelt down by her: took her hand, with excessive gentleness, as if she had asked him to look at a wound. ‘And you know I have to be here. Is it – would you live here again?’

  She shook her head. It might have been the shake that says, I don’t know. And she really didn’t know. Except when she thought of the road, oh, God, that road leading away – she wanted to throw on her cloak and overshoes and start walking now.

  ‘Well. As soon as it can be managed, then. And naturally, if the children will thrive better in the country … Anne, I have tried. No good, perhaps. But I have tried—’ He stopped. As if refraining, temperate, Will-like, from adding unlike you.

  * * *

  Go home? Yes, yes, the children cried. Coming away had been a novelty, now going home would be. Besides, they were missing Grandfather.

  And beyond that, they were Anne’s children and their loyalty was to her. Susannah, certainly, knew she was unhappy, and had perhaps said something to others. So, take advantage of this loyalty? Exploit it? Oh, yes. People did worse things. The beggar whipped through the streets, his shoulders intricately laced with bright blood. The screaming monkey tied to the bull’s back and the dogs set loose on them. She hadn’t seen that – Jonson had told her about it – but it was as if she’d seen it. No detail was lacking.

  A procession of such memories accompanied her on the ride north. They would fade, no doubt. Will rode with them too, though business would take him straight back to London once they were safe returned. And Edmund, because he had to: though she knew he would willingly have lashed himself to London drawbridge to stay. Harvest-ripe fields shimmered, sky sang blue. The sun pointed out new lights in Judith’s hair as she rode before Anne: new roses in her cheeks too, or was that Anne’s wishful thinking? A goose-girl plodded, prodding with her stick, scowling up at Anne, and she saw again Betty’s husband looming from dark filth. But that would fade, surely. And so, please, God, would her feeling of failure.

  She had never guessed at failure’s magnificent potency. She had never seen the sea, but on the Thames she had seen great ships bleached and weathered and scarred, with the marks of the sea on them; and when they had taken a boat to Greenwich to see the palace, she had felt the tidal tug under her feet, and had imagined it strengthening and broadening and becoming. Becoming sea: a perfection of horizon, an absolute breadth and depth and power: so much so, it could contain monsters.

  That was how failure felt.

  So it was surely wrong to feel happy as they came to the Stratford road, and to views that made sudden sense to the eye. Wrong, having failed so profoundly, to feel the spirit lifting like this.

  But this was no slinking home: why think it so? The neighbours who came out waving and reaching up, as soon as they were over the bridge, plainly thought no such thing. If anything they seemed a little in awe of Mistress Shakespeare and her brood who had spent a season in London. And at Henley Street there was prodigality of welcome, John Shakespeare all heartiness, embracing, hoisting the children, smiling with glistening eyes – not laughing, for he never quite did – and congratulating.

  ‘You did it, daughter,’ he said to her, enfolding her hand. ‘It was bravely done.’

  And she liked it. Liked being told she was brave and that it was done, finished and achieved. And Judith did seem better at once, unlikely though that seemed: she thundered up and down the stairs as she had never done in London. Which had been, perhaps, after all, one of those long, long dreams that left you exhausted. I have had a dream, past the wit of man to say what dream it was.

  It was Will who drew his father aside at last. A reversal: always before that had been John Shakespeare, a great drawer-aside and turner to grave matters. She knew what they were talking of. Well, let it work their peace, if peace there could ever be between them. She wanted to brush out her crumpled clothes, and hear of Joan’s health and the price of flour, and devote herself to small things.

  Will stayed another day, seeing them settled in, soothing his saddle-sores with goose-grease, and trying to cheer Edmund, who had gone from fire to ashes, gently smiling as he shambled about, hopeless. There were more grave talks apart with his father; once, for a moment, with the sun behind them in the yard-gate, they looked for the first time ever like each other; or, rather, if they were on stage, acting father and son, you would think them convincing. Will still had London in his face, she thought.

  Before he left she told him: ‘I thought your Dream play was beautiful.’

  Surprised, he said, ‘I’m glad,’ and waited.

  Surprising herself, she said: ‘And I know it’s foolish of me, but I don’t think somehow such things should be. It’s one thing to shine, another to set ourselves up against the sun.’

  He inclined his head, respectfully. Alas, to be the victim of Will’s respect.

  In some buried sea-chamber of her heart she wanted him not to go, and him to know it without her saying, and abandon his travelling-cloak and London and eminence, and just stay.

  He put on his travelling-cloak.

  She said: ‘I hope Matthew will do well.’ The sun was strong, and squinting up she could hardly see him. When the kiss came, it was like a touch in the dark, making her jump. His beard was less soft, more wiry: older. Will was past thirty now. It seemed to her that they should have stopped time, somehow, between them: that they had had an opportunity and lost it. ‘Have a care for thy purse, and drink no water.’

  He laughed softly. ‘My heart with thee.’

  So, Will left again for London. And so, Will was not there two days later, when Hamnet said in the middle of dinner, ‘Pray you, I feel faint,’ tried to leave the table, and slithered down to the floor.

  * * *

  It begins with the plague: does it end so? The doctor is unsure at first. He doesn’t find the swellings, the buboes, but it’s hard to investigate when Hamnet is in such a high and frantic fever. A well-grown eleven-year-old is not easily restrained, even with Grandfather on one side and Edmund on the other. And Anne, on the other side of the round earth, reaching hopelessly for him and screaming inside, even as she puts the cold wet cloth to his fiery tossing head.

  The plague: yes, when there is a short intermission of fever, the doctor finds the signs. There it is, alas. He has come a long way on a broken-winded nag, and has no magic. Where has the lad been lately? Where might he have taken the infection? Ah. Not that there is any telling whence, nor whither. We must pray to God. He’s young and strong. There is always hope.

  There is always hope, but not when your child is blind with agony and his skin is turning black.

  Outraged, Anne holds him, holds him. At the crisis she lies down beside him, as best she can, to wrap herself around him, contain his whimpering heat. Vividly present to her is the birth of her twins, a long, painful peril crowned with triumph, the two sweetly raging faces brought to her breast. But, of course, if that happened, if that birth was so momentously ach
ieved, then it can’t end with this: it makes no kind of sense. She clutches Hamnet to her, all along her body, and even though he doesn’t know her, doesn’t know anything, she holds on. It is her mother-in-law who tugs and coaxes her away at last, when there is no longer any hoping or denying or pretending.

  * * *

  It is impossible to say that London killed Hamnet. But Anne knows that it must be on her face when Will arrives, summoned by letter but still a week too late: so she may as well use words, too.

  ‘We should never have gone. Before that, Hamnet was never ill. We should have stayed here.’

  He seems to accept that, at least. He is stiff, ashen, and slow-moving. A footpad could despatch him in a moment, she thinks.

  But, then, where is the fault to be found? It lies somewhere in that great space between them, as they stand by the fresh lively earth of Hamnet’s grave. They touch fingers across the space, but distance renders them cold and inert. Such distance.

  He wasn’t here. Somehow that’s what she cannot get over. He left her alone to face their son dying. Oh, not alone, not literally: Joan is kind and strong, Edmund tries, Father John masters his grief to attend to hers. Even Bartholomew comes over to place an awkward arm around her stiff shoulders. And Susannah and Judith are as good as children can be in such circumstances. But this is the bitter revelation: that with all this, still without Will, she considers herself alone. It’s like some debt that can never be repaid, no matter how much money you have.

  ‘You weren’t here,’ she says to him dully.

  ‘No. Tell me all.’

  She can’t, but she tells some of it. He listens. Weeps. He speaks of their son, his life. Inevitably there are gaps. But he speaks beautifully. He speaks as only Will can.

  However, that’s no good. Anne has a new knowledge: that no amount of beauty can make up for this, ever; that no conceivable Heaven can atone for one pinch of Hell.