"I couldn’t answer either for the buboes gripped my throat and it was all I could do to breathe at all, and my fever was very high. But in my heart I answered, ‘Save me, forgive me!’ thinking, you see, that it was really the voice of God.”
“Yes?” said Portia, putting down her marketing basket so she could listen better.
“Perhaps it was,” he added thoughtfully, “Or perhaps it was only a friend or acquaintance who shouted, but you see it broke through the fever and my aloneness and... He did. God did come to save me. In my fever and desperate need, He... saved me.”
“He did?” said Portia, sceptically.
“In my fever, with all my wits disturbed, there was suddenly a clarity, an understanding... I saw... I understood just as St Paul teaches... I saw face to face.” There were tears on the man’s face and Portia felt the sad stirring within her of envy for his certainty. “I saw that it was I in fact who was the base metal to be turned to gold and that God was indeed the True Stone which maketh the transmutation of all the changes of this world. But in all my alchemical striving to understand base matter, the stuff of this world, to master it and force it to become gold, I had misunderstood completely.”
“Amen,” said Portia softly, wishing this could be true and not just the product of fever. Cheke’s face always had a hungry searching look to it, but now for the first time in her memory, he looked happy.
“It was so simple. I understood that everything is made of God's Love which is to say, God's Light. Everything in the world is made of Light, alchemised to solidity by God's Word. I found myself laughing at such clarity and although the fever and pain came back, I remembered what I had understood." Portia wondered if Cheke had strayed into what a Divine would call heresy or possibly even lunacy, and then thought that it didn't matter.
"Then I knew there were people with me," Cheke continued quietly, "giving me water and bathing my wounds where the buboes had burst. I was afraid for them that they would take the Plague themselves but then one brought the candle near his face and I saw bandages on his neck too and that he was a poor man that I had tried to help when he had the plague in August. Alas, I could not save his baby son. Behind him were two others of my quondam patients and at the door, another keeping watch for the plague-finders.”
Portia smiled. Cheke still looked puzzled.
“And yet, you know, Mrs Morgan, I hadn’t been able to help any of them very much at all. I tried to speak, to push them away, but they said... they said it was time for them to help me and wouldn’t be told no.” There were tears on Cheke’s face again. “They said it was only right.”
Portia swallowed the lump in her own throat as Cheke blew his nose on a stained kerchief. “Forgive me, Mrs Morgan,” he said, “I’m still as weak as a baby and weep like one at the least thing.”
“Mr Cheke,” she said, “Why wouldn’t they wish to help you? Any decent person would. Apart from the Jewish physicians like Dr. Nunez and Dr. Lopez, you are the only medical man that has tried anything at all against the Plague. The Christian doctors and apothecaries all ran away.”
Cheke put his hand on her arm.
“You don’t understand, mistress. None of them were decent persons. They were not men of property nor even respectable. One was a beggar, the women who came to help later were whores, the man who guarded the door was a notorious upright man.” He shook his head in wonder.
Portia was silent for a moment. “Well,” she said, remembering what someone – she forgot who – had said to her once. “After all, who did Christ go to dinner with?”
For a moment Cheke frowned but his smile was radiant. “Of course.” Then his eyes narrowed. “Mistress, I cry you pardon, I have kept you standing on my step listening to my maunderings and not even asked how I may serve you.” He struggled to stand up and without thinking about how she was a weak woman at the moment, she offered him her arm to lean on and braced so he could do it. He looked surprised.
“I was wondering,” she said, a little embarassed at her errand now, “Um... do you have anything that could serve to whiten my face and... er... hide it a little?”
He frowned. “The ladies of the court use white lead and cinnabar in a grease or wax to whiten their cheeks and lips,” he said, “But I have always seen their complexions and their tempers become much worse after a few years of using face paint and I think it may have something to do with that. Perhaps I could make something better for you that could answer the scarring better? I will think about it, perhaps try a few things.”
“Thank you, Mr Cheke,” she said. “Are you sure you need nothing?”
“Thanks to my friends, I have bread, cheese, ale, bacon, a barrel of hazelnuts, even some money they gave me.”
Something jogged her memory. “Did you know the names of those who helped you?”
“Not all, but the upright man was Gabriel Nunn who serves the King of London – and one of the whores was French Mary. Not a respectable citizen among them.”
Portia nodded, glad of her mask. She wouldn’t tell him just yet what had happened to French Mary and she certainly wouldn’t mention how she had come to meet Gabriel Nunn as well. Although... Could Peter Cheke have done the killings? It occurred to her that being locked up in your house with Plague made a good alibi – so long as you didn't in fact have it. No. Nobody, not even a lifelong clapperdudgeon, could fake that degree of skinniness, that pallor. It would take too long.
“Mr Cheke, I am off to visit a woman I am hoping will come to serve me and if I do not go now I may not catch her at her house,” she said, “But I’ll be back another day. I am so glad you are well of the Plague, thank God for it.” she added conventionally, although as always she had to fight the little spurt of rage she felt whenever the god who had killed her children and left his knife stuck in her heart saw fit to save anyone else. Then she walked on down the street, enjoying the rocking of her skirts and the anonymity of her mask.
Shakespeare woke with a chicken roosting on his head and the suspicion that it had just shat in his mouth. There was sunlight filtering through one of the gaps in the thatch and driving nails into his eyes so he batted the bird off his head and it flapped squawking to sit on a rafter nearby. There was something round and hard behind his neck and just in time he felt there and found a warm smooth egg. Well at least she had paid rent for the use of his head, he thought, and smiled despite the pounding behind his eyes. On reflection she probably had not used his mouth for a jakes, that was just the result of giving in to aquavitae yet again and served him right.
Sighing deeply, he sat up, reached for the jack of small beer and found there was only a little left in it so he would have to go out. Still, he had the egg. He had no fire nor dish of coals to cook it on, so he put it in the angle of one of the beams for safety.
He washed his face in the bucket of water that stood under the largest hole in the thatch, risked drinking some of it because he was so thirsty, tried to straighten his doublet and after some thought put on his last clean falling band because his other was disgusting. When he felt his chin, he decided he would have to go to the barber soon and wondered how the devil he was going to pay for it since he had lost all his money to that bloody man, Munday.
Inspiration struck. There was one option to gain quick money and so he sat down rubbed his eyes, yawned, dipped his pen and used one of his precious sheets of paper to write a close-packed letter to his unacknowledged lord, Sir Robert Cecil. He ciphered as he went, his memory having easily learnt by heart the figures that Cecil preferred for his correspondance. Cecil was very like Walsingham had been and very unlike the other pretenders to Walsingham’s network of contacts; he valued intelligence for its own sake and was willing to pay for it.
And so the matter of the dead whores was packaged up in pithy phrases and pinned to paper in a pretty pattern, which Shakespeare devoutly hoped would make him some money and postpone for a little longer the necessity to stand by the serving man’s pillar in St Paul’s and try and look
humble and helpful and hale and hearty. What with the Plague, his chances of finding a master were very poor anyway. Nobody was saying what the mortality bills were, but from the numbers of houses being shuttered in the City even though the weather was chilling, Shakespeare thought the theatres would stay shut for a while. The Burbages were planning a tour of the provinces to begin in the spring to try and stave off bankruptcy themselves. Would he go with them? Not if he could help it. He hated touring the provinces. Besides, he needed money now, not in the spring.
The letter finished, he sealed it and put his hat on, climbed down the ladder and nodded to his landlady who sat in her living room at her constant task of plucking a chicken. From the yard at the back where the cockerels lived came a raucous crowing as the younger one again challenged the older one for possession of the dunghill and the hens.
“Ah, Mr Shakespeare,” she said, scowling at him, “The rent...”
“You shall have it, Mrs Taylor, no later than the end of the week,” Shakespeare said hurriedly as he slid round the door and shut it behind him.
The sunlight and chilly wind hit him like a mallet. He staggered but kept going, aiming for Cecil’s house. Cecil himself was probably in Westminster at the palace of Whitehall, but in any case Shakespeare had dealings with Mr Phelippes, who was the finest artist of the age in the mysteries of the cipher and code.
With a standard fee for a report of a crown tucked in his crotch, Shakespeare got himself a quart of mild ale at the next alehouse he came to and downed it in one. Breakfast over, he went back to his house and shocked his landlady by actually paying her the couple of shillings of rent that he owed – you had to keep landladies on their toes, Shakespeare believed – and then went for a walk along Cheapside to cheer himself up. He liked staring at the silver and gold plate in the barred windows and letting his phantasy roam over what he would do when he finally got rich, how he would buy a house in Stratford and show them all, how he would have land, how he would be a sharer in every theatre in the City, how...
The aquavitae was singing to him again and he knew it was because he was bored. When the theatres were open, he didn't have time for boredom. If he was rehearsing a play in the morning for performance in the afternoon whilst also needing to learn a new play for the next day, he never had any trouble writing. He could sit down in any corner with any piece of paper and pen and ink – even a stick of graphite – and scribble away and out of every one of the inexhaustible warehouses of his mind poured forth wealth in tropes and pentameters. Now the stores seemed to be shut and sealed.
He had to think of the poem and he had to have some at least of it ready to recite to the Earl within the next couple of weeks, or Southampton would repent him of the money he had already given Shakespeare and which Shakespeare had already spent. He had to do it, had never before found it difficult. It didn’t need to be all new – in fact it was better not. He could pick any tale from Ovid, most of which he knew by heart, but which one? He could use any verse, had no limitations placed on him by the demands of Henslowe or Burbage or Alleyn or the groundlings... He had what he had always chafed after, he had ultimate liberty of creative thought and... It was impossible to write anything.
Eleanor and Timothy Briscoe had a small house in the city near the Three Cranes in the Vintry. Ellie Briscoe was one of the few who knew of Portia’s double life and Portia was very much hoping that she might do her washing for her. Not today perhaps, Portia’s plan was different for today: but eventually, once Ellie had been churched of her baby who had been born on a wild night in September that Portia did her very best not to remember... Perhaps she might even come and serve Portia as her tiring woman as well. She might be glad of the money or even the entertainment. And as herself, Portia desperately needed a woman to go with her to market. As Craddock had pointed out, not to be attended was unseemly for a respectable widowed sister of a barrister. And Ellie wouldn’t ask questions if she saw bloodstains on the bottom of a man’s shirt. The Curse of Eve was mainly a terrible nuisance as well as an unneeded reassurance. Although Portia had a particularly old linen shift she kept for those times and had always washed out her rags herself, one of the reasons she kept Mrs Morgan around was to be able to be a woman when she needed. It was like the old stories of werewolves: she transformed into a different creature with the phases of the moon.
In the meantime, Portia was certain that Ellie Briscoe would at least have a big washing buck and a copper for linen and she would probably be willing to lend out the use of them.
As she lifted her hand to knock on the door in the respectably tidy little street, she heard a sniffling noise from inside as if someone was crying quietly to themselves. Portia knocked harder and called out, “Mrs Briscoe, Ellie?”
The door was only on the latch so when the sniffles got louder and there was no answer, she opened it and poked her head round the door.
Little Ellie was sitting in the tiny living room next to her small fireplace – Portia thought Mr Briscoe was probably very proud of renting a house that had an actual chimney in it, since neither one of their parents had had any such thing. Ellie was hunched over the swaddled baby, crying and crying as if she would never stop.
Portia froze with fear that the babe was sick of the plague, or even dead. Babies died constantly. The least ill-chanced puff of bad air could carry them off in an instant.
She came through the door and shut it behind her to stave off the bad airs, then hurried across the old rushes and crouched down next to Ellie, her heart hammering.
The babe was fast asleep and scowling, but definitely breathing. Gently Portia felt his forehead, it was cool and velveted like a peach, no fever, no cobbling of smallpox... Oh God, to feel the little pebbles of pocks under the skin of your fretful child’s hot forehead and know... and know... Portia drew in a breath, held it, crushed the memory. This baby was in fact sound asleep and a very large plump child for six weeks old. It was nothing short of miraculous to think that it had not long come out of the tiny person who cuddled it and continued to cry.
“My dear,” Portia said, “what’s wrong?” Ellie shook her head and carried on crying. “Are you sick? Is it the babe?” It was late for a childbed fever but still possible, so Portia felt one of the bird-boned wrists and found it to be cool and the beat of the heart next to the bone, quite slow. Ellie managed to nod her head.
Portia carefully took the baby who opened his dark blue eyes, already on the turn, and looked up sleepily. He shut them again since he had seen Portia before in his short life and was a bold child and not in the least frightened of women with caps and hats.
“Why? He looks lovely and strong and healthy.”
Ellie snortled and turned a square mouth full of woe to Portia. “He’s so hungry all the time, I keep feeding him and feeding him. My milk must be drying up because there just isn’t enough and... and... he’ll starve and d...die of plague and it’ll be my fault...”
Portia’s eyes narrowed. “Has Mother Briscoe been in?” she asked, knowing the normal effect on Ellie of her mother-in-law. Ellie nodded dolefully and sniffled again. “Yesterday,” she whispered.
The swaddling bands around the baby were tight and secure, he looked nice and straight so his bones wouldn’t grow bent. There was the warm smell of cinnamon which told that he needed changing, which meant he must be feeding and Portia had in any case taken an instant dislike to Mother Briscoe.
“She says... I’m too small to do it right and sh...she’ll get a wetnurse in but we can’t really afford it and... and... I don’t want one...” wailed Ellie.
Experimentally, Portia put her finger on the child’s cheek and stroked. He did the baby thing of turning and opening his mouth but it was a lazy turn, nothing fretful or desperate about it.
“Well, I think it’s amazing your mother-in-law doesn’t know this,” said Portia, “I expect she didn’t bother to feed her babies but had a wetnurse from the start. When are you going to be churched?”
“This Sunday.
”
“Well then, he’s a little early but he’s just growing strongly. All babies get hungry just before you’re churched, my old nurse told me all about it. You have to keep them close to you and feed them as much as you can and drink plenty of mild ale possets with eggs and cream so you keep your teeth.”
“Oh?” Ellie’s red-rimmed swollen eyes were doubtful.
“My old nurse knew a lot about it for she had four of her own and then she wetnursed me and my brother and she was no bigger than you.” No taller at least. Goody Janner had been as wide as she was tall.
Ellie nodded tremulously. She looked smaller than ever and had big circles under her eyes.
“Come come,” said Portia, “You look exhausted. Are you still soiling your linen?” Ellie shook her head. “Well you shouldn’t even be out of your bed in any case until your churching.”
“I had to get up,” sniffled Ellie, starting to weep again, “I have to clean before Mother Briscoe comes or she’ll start scolding me again...”
“She’ll what?”
“Sh... she says I’m lazy and... and...”
Portia thought quite seriously about strangling the bloody women when she did turn up. She felt Ellie’s forehead. It wasn’t feverish, thank the Lord, but no thanks to her appalling mother-in-law.
“I never heard anything so shocking in my life,” she snapped, interrupting Ellie's tale of woe, “Expecting a woman who hasn’t even been churched yet to do housework? It’s outrageous. What does the silly cow think churching is for? You’re not strong enough to clean so soon after the baby and if you do, you’ll get sick. Is that what she wants?” Portia stood up, took the baby who made an interested little squeak as she tucked him under her arm, and crooked her other arm for Ellie to stand and follow. “You are going straight back to bed so you don’t get a childbed fever or worse a milk-fever.”
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