Mistress Shakespeare (21 page)

“I may still not be able to show Henslowe the tragedy the scrivener’s finishing in my room,” Will admitted. “I won’t have time to go over what he’s copying, but perhaps we can have this play done by dawn.”

He spread the pages out on the table in acts. Three of the piles looked completed but messily—that is, shakily—written. The final two seemed a bit sparse.

“The way we work at rehearsals,” he went on, sounding as excited as the boy in him I recalled so well, “I can make changes up until the last moment anyway. Once the play’s accepted—purchased, that is—it needs to be copied over in long rolls, the roll of the king, the roll of the princess, et cetera, for each player. Lines are sometimes amended by the company anyway.”

“Let me look it over to see what you have before we go on. Then you can dictate and I can write, or we can act out scenes between us if that helps.”

“Hold a moment,” he said, backing me up to sit in John’s big chair at the head of the table. “Let me give you the backbone of it all. And this time,” he added, starting to pace around the table, “I believe you will well note that you—we—are the inspiration for
Love’s Labour’s Lost.”

“Even in the title perhaps? But our labor of love for this play shall not be lost.”

“I pray not.”

“‘Let us not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments,’” I recited from his sonnet to halt the pall of melancholy that suddenly seemed to cloak him. “We must labor to get this in shape and, unlike other nights, this one will end too soon.”

“I know,” he said, putting his hands on the arms of my chair and bending toward me. “And yet I’d almost give it all the heave-ho for another kind of night’s work between us.”

“
Almost
, you said,” I countered as he bent to kiss me, a heavy, hot kiss. Then he straightened and instead heaved a huge sigh. “Will, let me hear the story of this comedy and quickly, for we have work to do and are in danger of doing nothing at all—of this sort.”

He paced again, explaining how the plot satirized scholars and certain pompous playwrights who boasted of their Oxford or Cambridge credentials. But it was also a comedy of the sexes. Three men, including the King of Navarre, vowed to live a strict life of learning for three years. This meant swearing off all sorts of distractions, including wooing women.

“But of course, those are famous last words,” I put in.

“Exactly. Three women, including the Princess of France, arrive on a diplomatic mission, so King Ferdinand and his friends must deal with them. He becomes much enamored of the princess, and his friend Berowne—”

“Berowne? You used Father Berowne’s name?”

“In honor of the old man, I did.”

“I am not in it, am I?”

“Not as Anne, but I have borrowed your middle name for one of the women.”

“Rosaline? Tell me of her.”

“All right then,” he said, linking his hands like a cap over his head, elbows straight out, as he paced again. “She is described as a bright woman with velvet brows and two dark eyes. She is clever and independent and takes no rubbish from any man, even when she falls in love with Berowne.”

“Let me see the cast of characters there on top,” I cried, bouncing up and seizing the paper.

“No,” he said, pulling it back from me, “rather look at Act V, scene 2, though that is a part which needs much work.” He shuffled through the sheaf of pages and thrust one at me. “There,” he added, pointing to a line of tightly scribbled words with asides thrust in here and there with arrows.

“I see why you need me,” I said, tipping it toward the waning window light, for we had not yet lit the candles or lantern. “This is most difficult to read. But here it is the Princess Katherine who says that her friend Rosaline has a ‘merry, nimble, stirring spirit.’ What does the man who loves her say—what do you say, if I am the inspiration for Rosaline?”

“It’s not like that. People always think it is, but it’s not. The author’s feelings and ideas are usually more patched together, conveyed more indirectly. Then too, Berowne and Rosaline are sparring, are at odds, when he says she is ‘a whitely wanton with a velvet brow / With two pitch-balls stuck in her face for eyes.’ ”

“What? A wanton? With pitch-ball eyes?”

“See what I mean? It isn’t exactly you, just inspired by you. He’s teasing her when he says that.”

“You’re mad as a Bedlamite, but brilliantly so. Say on.”

“You must add all the parts together to get the whole of how you are my muse for this play. For instance, there is another character who is so enamored of a country wench that he falls into melancholy and is driven to versifying. That man is but a piece of me—his love a snippet of you also. Toward the end of the play, the men admit that women are ‘the books, the arts, the academes / That show, contain, and nourish all the world.’ Indeed, whether with me or afar, you are my muse. This play may not tell the world that, but I pray it tells you so.”

Blinking back tears, kissing far too often to make much headway—until John came down to fetch some pickled cod for Jennet and, thankfully, did not find us sprawled upon the table for a bed—we finally got to revising and copying the play.

“‘By heaven, I do love, and it hath taught me to rhyme and to be melancholy,’” I read a line aloud from Act IV. “When you wrote this—ever since we were parted after being wed, we were suffering much the same, but in silence, Will.”

“I did think to call the play
Cupid’s Revenge
,” he admitted, stopping his well-worn circuit of the table long enough to peer over my shoulder where I’d been taking his dictation.

“I saw your lines about ‘love is a devil,’” I told him. “‘There is no evil angel but Love.’”

“Tell me you didn’t curse me many a night.”

“And day.”

“Ah, my Anne, ‘The tongues of mocking wenches are as keen /As is the razor’s edge invisible’—have you come to that line yet? Still, love is hardly a laughing matter.”

“Yet there is fine humor here amidst all the lovely poetry, songs and sonnets of these lovesick swains. When you wrote the part for the clown Costard, did you mean it for Tarlton? You heard Henslowe. He’s all for this new clown named Will Kemp taking Tarlton’s place. You might mention tomorrow that these lines will turn to much money in Kemp’s mouth.”

“You’ve read Henslowe aright. Sadly, like Tarlton, Kemp, as bright and clever as he is, tends to take over a play and rip it to shreds to get his own laugh lines in—that’s why I hope I can convince him to stick with these—if Henslowe will buy it.”

Hours later when we both came up for air, Will massaged my aching back and shoulders and then my right hand. He kissed each fingertip almost reverently, then licked between each finger until I tingled all over and felt his merest look down to the very pit of my belly. When we saw light was breaking through the eastern windows, we sighed wordlessly.

I turned into his embrace; we collapsed into each other’s arms as if holding each other up. “Are you sure you want to go with me over to Bankside?” Will asked. “That part of Southwark is randy and rough.”

I pulled back a bit and looked up into his face, scratchy with a new day’s beard.

“Of course, for I go on an earth-changing mission. After all, I intend to sell Philip Henslowe scented seat cushions.”

He smacked my bum as I darted away, laughing. “Tease,” he said, his eyes darkening with desire. “Teases always get what they deserve, whether they be called Anne Whateley, the Lady Rosaline, Julia or—”

“Who, pray tell, is Julia?”

“A character for another comedy I have not yet begun to write, a play about Two Gentlemen from Venice, or whatever I decide to call it. Perhaps we can manage that one in the daylight—if you can find time to help me. Anne,” he said, coming back to seize my hands in his again, “if I sell a play or two, I can pay you to help me, and—”

“You’ll not pay me. Never suggest that again, that is, not pay me with coins, Will Shakespeare.”

“Let me offer a down payment then.”

“I have not the time,” I said, with a coy laugh, “for John will be down soon, and I must eat and change and meet you somewhere to go across the Thames. You’ll head home to see if the other play’s in fighting trim, your bloodthirsty
Titus Andronicus
then?”

He nodded. “Meet me at Puddle Dock two hours hence so we can cross the Thames to beard Henslowe in his den.”

“I’ll be there,” I vowed.

“I’ll leave this play in your care. It and my heart.”

He kissed me hard, strapped on his sword, grabbed a day-old piece of bread from the table and tore out the back door on this happy day of his—of our—long-awaited destiny.

 

 

 

But that day
of our dreams was not to be, for a nightmare, not of our making, soon crashed upon us.

“Anne,” John cried as he ran into the kitchen shoeless with his shirt unlaced, “the babe’s coming and so sudden. It’s too early, and the new midwife I’ve hired told me she’d be at her daughter’s house ’til next week. It’s too fast and too early! Jennet’s terrified.”

Both of them were, I thought. His hair stood on end, and his eyes were unfocused. My stomach clenched and, despite how I had tried to uplift Jennet’s spirits, foreboding leaned hard on my heart. I stood from a breakfast of half-finished frumenty and placed Will’s play I’d been rereading upon a shelf of the sideboard. After being up all night, I felt exhausted, but now panic poured through my veins to give me strength.

“What about the midwife you used last time?” I asked as I dashed over to be sure the wash water was boiling on the hearth. It was not hot enough. I swung the chain suspending the pot over the banked fire and began to build the fire up.

“Jennet won’t use her,” he said, coming to help me. “Not after the last babe was lost. Even our maids and my prentice are down to the dock waiting for the Portuguese ship to be unloaded.”

“Then you must go out to inquire if you can find another midwife while I stay with her. Is the child truly coming yet?”

As if to answer for him, Jennet’s scream rent the air. “I’ll go to her,” I said, grabbing his old pair of shoes he always kept beside the back door and thrusting them at him. “See if you can find someone, even a neighbor who knows a bit about this—a doctor or apothecary, if you must. Hurry!”

I scribbled a note for Will, telling him where I was and that
“LLL”
was on the sideboard. I pinned the note on the back door. He would understand. I hoped he would not think I’d changed my mind when I did not meet him at Puddle Dock. But my frenzied prayer was that Jennet’s child would be all right and that John would bring help soon.

John and Jennet’s second-story bedchamber seemed as hot as an oven, despite the fact the sun was barely up, but it beat against the windows here. I longed to open the dreary, nut-brown drapes Jennet thought were so fine to catch a morning breeze, but she believed the city air was noisome, so I dared not. I should have told her about all those Stratford babes who had died breathing country air—two in Will’s family—but, of course, I had never broached such a subject to her.

“Jennet, I’m here, and John’s gone for help.”

“Not Mistress Pierce—not the last midwife!”

“No, not her. Can you tell how far the child is along?”

“Anne, something’s wrong!” she cried, stretching her sweat-soaked night rail taut across her big belly. “Wrong before it even comes. See, the head’s not down.”

I knew nothing of human birthing. And our horses had simply dropped their offspring and then licked them dry. One time I had observed my father put his arm beyond the elbow into a mare that was having trouble and pull the wet foal out, but surely that could not be of help here.

I sponged Jennet’s face and throat while she tossed and raved. She was indeed in labor, for every little while she would bear down and scream. Once she seized my wrists so hard that both my hands went white and numb before she released them. In her frenzy, she pulled her night rail up to show the bulging, naked flesh of her distended belly.

“Anne, look! See the head here when it should be down. Dear God in heaven, what if this one strangles on its birthing cord too, or won’t leave the womb? It has to turn head down—ah, it’s kicking me here—see?”

I did see. There was a definite bulge to the side of her navel that must be the head, and the feet were kicking under the navel, almost atop the hip bone. Where was John? He’d been gone for an eternity!

“Help is coming,” I told her. “A midwife or doctor will know how to turn it.”

“We have to do it now! You have to help me,” she gritted out, then screamed again. Her face contorted, she clenched her teeth and arched her back like a bowstring, but I saw nothing appear between her spread white thighs.

Praying incessantly for John to hurry, I put my trembling hands on her perspiring, vibrating belly. Yes, a head there, up, not down. I gave it a little push.

“Harder!” Jennet cried. “Please, Anne, don’t fear you can hurt me—help me-eee! Ahhh—I want to die if this one dies!”

“Don’t say such things. This one will live and you too!”

I tried desperately to push the head downward, first in little stops and starts and then by applying steady pressure. It seemed to move, then to return.

“Oh, no, oh, no, oh, no!” Jennet chanted between gasping breaths. “It’s coming, coming like this! I can’t bear it—I mean I can’t stand to—I have to push, I can’t hold back . . .”

Between her screams, while she lay panting for breath, I heard a man’s tread on the stairs. Oh, thank the Lord, John was here with help. I spun to the door—it was Will.

“Did you see my note and the play downstairs?” I asked him.

“I came when you weren’t at the wharf, but none of that matters compared to this. I heard her scream. Where’s John?”

“Went to get help. Have you ever seen a child birthed?”

He came to the doorway. “The twins, from across the room. The girl first, then the boy—I saw my son come into the world.”