There, lying on the stony bottom, was Soho, flat on his back.
The water was clean enough to see him clearly, and in that instant Samuel noticed how the little fellow’s eyes were shut and his gargoyle face, instead of being twisted in its traditional image of fun, was calm, tranquil, almost in repose. His little misshapen hands, the ones with the big sausage-shaped fingers on such tiny palms, were crossed over his chest.
“Soho,” screamed Samuel. “Soho!” And plunging his giant forearms into the water he bent down, slid them under the tiny body, and scooped him out in a split-second.
Water flew everywhere as the sun glinted on the still face of the tiny gargoyle.
From up above, Marlowe held his hands to his face and mumbled, “No, no, please Lord, no, no.”
“No!” screamed Samuel, staring to the heavens. “No!”
By now Rasa had reached the water’s edge. Marlowe spotted her and began blabbering through his tears.
“He was just tumbling,” he stammered. “Tumbling. You know how he loved to somersault. He went to the very top, and he just got too close and went over the edge.”
The strong man looked up at Marlowe. His years in the mummers troupe told him that the little fellow had dropped from about one hundred and fifty feet, an enormous height, even for the most resilient and experienced performer.
He slowly trudged out of the water, and laid Soho down on the stones, as the entire entourage gathered around. There was a moment’s silence, as all conversation was still, while heads were bowed to stare at the lifeless, baby-sized body. Samuel Davidson’s tears of laughter from just a few moments before had been erased and replaced by tears of immense sorrow.
“Ohh, Soho, Soho,” said the big man, “don’t leave me now.”
He leaned forward, placed his ear near the tiny misshapen mouth, and after a few seconds drew back, and shook his head.
There was a shocked murmur through the crowd.
And as Samuel gently leaned forward again and kissed the little gargoyle on the forehead, people began to look away.
For a few moments, only the sound of the big man’s sobbing could be heard above the babble of water flowing across the stones.
Then, in a symbolic gesture underlying his relationship, he slid his huge hands under the tiny body, stood up, and effortlessly held Soho up towards the sky, like an offering to the gods, tears streaming down his face.
He opened his mouth to say something, to let out his feelings of grief and anger. But, just as his small friend had had to endure for his entire life, no sound came.
“You are cruel, God,” came a voice. “So cruel.” It was Marlowe, who had scrambled down from the aqueduct and now was making his way through the parting group.
“You dealt him the wild card in life,” he shouted skywards, as he joined Davidson at his side.
“A body such as no man should deserve,” he continued, shaking his fist at the sky. “Diminutive and twisted and silent. Yet he took up your heinous challenge, and lived with it, with dignity and grace and humour, and no anger or jealousy or regret. And now, when he has given so much, done so much and deserved to live out his days in peace, you have suddenly, so cruelly taken him from us. I wonder about you, God. I really wonder about you. Why would you do such a thing to such a man? Housing such a beautiful spirit in a broken temple? Where is the compassion, the love, the forgiveness that we hear so much about? Why is it your believers speak so much of love but inflict so much cruelty in your name? Are you jealous and vindictive because he played your nasty little game with grace and enthusiasm and was beating you? I wonder about you, God. I just wonder.”
It was Marlowe at his best - in full flight exploring all the options in a situation that was not lost on Rasa, who had now joined his side. Her brilliant Christopher, the wordsmith, stepping up and supplying the material from behind the scenes for someone who, for whatever reason, was incapable of doing so …
“He may have been a little man,” Marlowe added, pointing skyward in a jabbing motion. “You made sure of that, God. But he will leave a giant hole in our hearts.”
And as Samuel Davidson turned and trudged slowly across the stones towards the camp, clasping the body of his dearest friend to his chest, he realised that the sickness that had been debilitating him for all these months, had now overwhelmed him.
Truly, it was time to go home.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
At first William Shakespeare thought he vaguely recognised the woman standing in the doorway. The red, glowering, complexion, the crinkled face, the cheap black dress trimmed in white, the big forearms folded aggressively.
He had seen her before, a long time ago, but where? Rapidly he tried to sift through the portfolio of faces his memory had collected over the years.
Under which category was it filed? Around the theatre traps, maybe? Among the many thousands that had filled the seats at Uncle Percy’s? On the road with the travelling mummers? Perhaps as far back as growing up in Stratford?
His efforts to remember were not helped by the fact that he was standing before the stranger totally nude.
He had jumped out of bed when he had heard the commotion at the door, and was now frantically fumbling around in the half-light of the early morning for his pants, a shirt, a cape, anything, to cover his nakedness.
Meanwhile Mr Mullins, in nightshirt, was standing behind the stranger, apologetically declaring, “I’m sorry Mr William. She just burst through the door of the tavern and insisted on seeing you. I couldn’t do anything about it, what with the horrible noise waking up half of London.”
“Noise?” said Shakespeare, hastily concluding the best camouflage he could find was a silk ruff and holding it strategically in front of him. “You mean the knocking on the door?”
“Er, not exactly,” said Mr Mullins, tilting his head towards that of the stranger.
“So!” the woman spat out, “this is where you have been holed up for all these years.”
As soon as the first ear-shattering bark blistered across the room, William’s memory kicked into life and rapidly brought up a face and name.
He knew that voice - sounding not unlike a blacksmith’s hammer against an anvil - anywhere.
Mr Mullins gave a little shrug of the shoulders as if to say, “Told you so” and sauntered off down the hallway to go back to bed, while the memories came flooding back to William.
“P-P-P-Polly?” said William. “Is that you? I mean, there is no doubt it is you, is there?”
He moved to extend a hand of greeting, but in doing so, dropped the ruff on the floor. He looked down to see there was nothing covering him again, hastily scooped up the fragment of cloth and returned to his original pose.
“Hmmm, not bad, not bad at all,” said Polly.
“Oh, well,” said Shakespeare, turning red, “there’s never been any complaints over the years.”
“I don’t mean the size of your turnip, you idiot,” barked Polly, looking around the room, “I mean this place. Certainly better than what you left your wife stuck in, back in Stratford.”
And it was, too. After Rasa and most of the troupe had left to go abroad with Monsieur Le Doux, William and Sarah had used some of the profits from the tavern performances to renovate the top floor, merging three of the tiny bedrooms, to make their own well-appointed love-nest. At one end of the long, narrow room was a giant carved Blackwood wardrobe, with a highly polished mirror edged in gilt. A small table along one wall supported a vase of fresh flowers. The walls were painted a brilliant white, and on the polished floor was a large hand-woven rug featuring some sort of desert motif. Hanging from the ceiling was the largest wrought-iron candelabra Polly had seen in her life.
At the other end of the room was a huge double bed, also made of the polished Blackwood, with a canopy of cream-colored silk draped from four, thick, carved ceiling-high posts.
In the gloom, among the drapes of the canopy, Polly could just make out another figure in the bed.
“And I see
that you’re not exactly missing your wife, either,” said Polly.
A voice emanated sleepily from behind the silk canopy. “What? What’s going on? William, what’s happening?”
“Nothing, darling, nothing,” said William, half-turning toward her, “go back to sleep.”
The figure obediently rolled over, as William, now rousing to anger, brushed past Polly, went to the other end of the room, withdrew a robe from the big wardrobe and hurriedly pulled it on. “What’s this all about?” he snarled.
“I have something to tell you, it’s important!” Polly said, without stepping back a pace.
Shakespeare looked at the face of the intrusive messenger. It had been many years since he had seen her, and the memories came flooding back. Of how Polly had been Anne’s best friend, had been her matron of honour at their hastily-arranged wedding, and one of the sourest participants in their miserable excuse for a reception. She had been around through the small amount of good times, just about all of the bad times, and at the birth of the three children.
Throughout it all, she had certainly been a good friend of Anne. And an unrelenting, harsh critic of him.
He could see now from the look on her face that this situation had not changed, and if anything, had only magnified since his departure from Stratford for, what? How long was it now? More than ten years?
“We’ll go downstairs,” said Shakespeare, pointing toward the door.
Polly turned to go, but not before she had one more glance at the figure in the bed, observing that the sleeping woman was heavily pregnant.
William ushered Polly down the stairs and into the performers’ dressing room at the side of the tavern stage.
She looked surprised for a second, but could see William was comfortable with this. This was the room where he and Budsby had had some of their most private conversations over the years, had made some of their biggest decisions, devised some of their most successful plans, told each other their most important news.
But William was not prepared for this revelation.
“It’s Hamnet,” Polly said.
“Hamnet?” said Shakespeare, looking puzzled.
“Your son, you fool. He’s dying.”
For a long time William stared blankly into the ruddy face of Polly Rogers, unsure how to handle this, not convinced of what he should say. Not clear, even, on what he was expected to say.
Yes, Hamnet was his son. His boy. His own flesh and blood. One of the twins.
But, wait a moment, thought Shakespeare, let us put this into perspective. How many times have I seen him? Once. How many times have I held him? None. What had happened on the day he and his sister were born? A pot was thrown at me and I walked out of the place. Whose fault was that? Let’s not get into that …
He stared into Polly’s eyes.
Hmmm, maybe she had been the one behind the idea of calling him Hamnet. What sort of a name is Hamnet? My God, a man walks down the road to get a breath of fresh air, to put a bit of space between himself and a minor domestic trauma, and before you know it, they have named his son and heir Hamnet. Thank God, I kept walking that day and met Mr Budsby by the side of that icy stream. Thank God that he took me on board and that he taught me everything I know as we toured around the counties with our brave little gang of performers. Thank God that we came to London and achieved success beyond our wildest expectations.
Thank the Lord, no wait, praise the Lord, that I met Sarah, and that she is now upstairs carrying my baby. Our baby! A baby to be born out of our enduring, joyous relationship. A relationship based on love and trust, a relationship that has taken years to evolve out of the wreckage of the disaster that was my marriage, a relationship that has finally washed away the pain and misery of the death of Anne Whateley.
Why as God is my witness, I see Sarah for herself, and herself only. And when I am loving her, I am truly loving her, and not some phantom image of Anne Whateley that use to loom as clear as day in my mind when I was loving, for want of a better term, Anne my wife.
He narrowed his eyelids and continued to stare at Polly before finally giving his heartfelt response.
“So?” he said calmly.
“So!” shrieked Polly, the hammering voice making the curtains on the wardrobes flutter. “Is that all you can say when I tell you your son is dying? So? Is that it? So?”
“Yes. So. What do you expect of me?”
“I expect, your wife expects, any normal person would expect, that you would show some concern, some feeling of sadness, some interest in the situation, some indication that you might go back to Stratford to see how can you help.”
“I am not wanted in Stratford, I was thrown out of Stratford.”
“You left Stratford, William. Left it. It’s a different thing.”
There was silence.
“What is wrong with him?” said Shakespeare eventually.
“I don’t know.”
“So, you come all the way to London to tell me that my son is dying, and you don’t know what is wrong with him?”
“No one knows! All we know is that he has never been a strong child, always sickly, never been able to handle illness.”
“So, if he has been sick for so long, what is suddenly different in his condition this time to indicate that he might be dying?”
“This time, a mother knows.”
“You are not his mother.”
“I’m speaking on behalf of his mother. She asked me - no, wait, I volunteered - to come here and tell you, that he is nearing death. Perhaps you would at least have the decency to send some money to help with the doctor’s bills.”
There was another long silence as the enemies eyed each other.
Enemies, yes, that is what we are, concluded William. Enemies. She may well have been my wife’s best friend at the time, but she never liked me, for reasons I never knew. And I have never really liked her.
“It is no business of mine,” he said firmly.
A look of shock came over Polly’s face. “No business? In heaven’s name, you are his father.”
“I am his father in name only. I was never really given the opportunity to be his father.”
“Well, then I will give you the opportunity.”
“What do you mean?”
“Just you see, Mr Producer and Writer, just you see,” sneered Polly. Her voice lower, but still contained the metal harshness. “Unless you come to Stratford, or some financial arrangement is forthcoming, then Anne and her children, including her near-to-death son, will come up to London and tell the whole world what an unfaithful, lying ne’er-do-well you are. See how you promote that event, Mr Theatre.”
She brushed past him, made her way through the empty tavern area, and stormed out the front door.
As the front door banged, and William hesitantly walked out of the changing room, a rumbling voice echoed across the tavern.
“Good heavens,” said the voice, “and to think that we missed securing the services of such a talent as that!”
“Talent?”
“Yes, my boy. I can hear you pitching it up now. ‘Come, Ladies and Gentlemen, be amazed by the sounds of The Woman With The Voice That Shatters Glass. You will not believe what you hear when she opens her mouth and emits a sound, a noise that makes the banshee wail of the condemned sinner in the burning pyre of hell resemble a mother singing a lullaby to her suckling baby. Enter the tent at your own peril, a penny a listen, small children are advised to block their ears with wax …’”
And he laughed his mighty laugh, and William Shakespeare’s face broke into something approaching a grin.
“Ah, that is better, young man,” continued Budsby, as he reached the bottom of the stairs. “The smile is what we like to see. And you have plenty of things to smile about, have you not?”
“I guess so.”
“There’s no guessing about it all, young William. Let us consider the situation. In the three and a half years since young master Marlowe met his, shall we say, unfo
rtunate demise, and I use that word advisedly, the name of William Shakespeare has ascended to the stellar heavens as The Writer of all England, has it not?”
“Yes, but …”
“It has,” interrupted Budsby, “because of your wonderful ability to produce the scripts in your name upon their arrival from France, or Italy, or wherever our late lamented writer is at the time.”
“Yes, but …”
“No buts. And haven’t you had tremendous success with some of these - A Midsummer Night’s Dream, for example? Richard the Second, and that gripping thing about the Jew wanting his pound of flesh, what was it called again?”
“The Merchant of Venice.”
“Precisely. Not forgetting Henry IV, with that amusing, larger-than-life character, Sir John Falstaff which,” and here, Budsby began patting his stomach, “I am not too modest to admit, our young friend Marlowe may well have modelled on me.”
“That is true, but …”
“Allowing you,” interrupting Budsby loudly, “under the contractual arrangements established by Sir Thomas, to make a few gold guineas, yes?”
“Indeed, but …”
“Which,” continued Budsby, “has allowed you to, among other things, establish a most commodious living section in the upper reaches of this tavern, is that not true?”
“Yes, but …”
“In order to suitably accommodate that most delightful young lady Sarah who has worshipped you for all these years, and who now carries your baby, am I not correct?”
“Absolutely.”
“The final piece in the jigsaw being that one day in the not too distant future, Sir Thomas will ensure that you are accorded the title of Gentleman, and you shall live happily ever after, is that not true?”
“That is true, but …”
“But what, William? What are all these ‘buts’?”
“But Mr Budsby, my son is dying!”
“Oh dear. That is distressing news.”
“They want me to go back to Stratford, or at least send lots of money.”
“I see. Is that one of the little ones, the twins, who were born the day we met?”
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