Mistress Shakespeare (34 page)

“And be seen together? Why would I want that?”

“Perhaps we could talk of other things besides what you’ve come to say. Did your father tell you how people love his plays in London, and how—”

“Mother wants the big house and nice things, but she doesn’t want him in London!”

“Yes, I can underst—”

Another knock rattled the door and, this time, we both jumped. I prayed it was Will and not her mother come to fetch the girl. I went to the door and opened it, expecting the worst.

But a young, handsome stranger stood there, perhaps aged twenty-one or -two. As he snatched off his brimmed hat, I saw a russet horse was tied to my gate. The man was clean-shaven, with dark hair and eyes and a strong, square chin with a cleft in it. Though he was well enough attired, road dust powdered his broad shoulders. He seemed entirely surprised to see someone as dusky-skinned and exotic as I here in this shire of rosy skin and fair hair.

“I beg your pardon,” he said with a slight smile that lit his face, “but this is the edge of Stratford, is it not?”

“This is Temple Grafton, sir,” I told him, as Susannah came to peer around me.

“Then Stratford is . . . ?”

“There’s a signpost just down the way,” I told him, pointing. “Stratford is that direction, very close.”

“I am sorry to intrude upon you and your daughter, but I am dreadfully inept at finding directions. If I do decide to set up a medical practice in Stratford, I shall have to ask my patients to come to me,” he said with another smile as he nodded to Susannah.

All this while—after her gasp at his calling us mother and daughter—I was expecting Susannah to set him straight, but she just gaped at the man and blushed to the very roots of her hair. Her lips were slightly parted, her blue eyes wide as if the man had entranced her. That reminded me how sheltered she was and what pluck it must have taken for her to come to face me down.

“I believe,” I said in the awkward silence, “Stratford and this entire area would treasure another doctor, and the town physician is quite elderly. Dr.—”

“I’m Dr. John Hall, fresh from Queen’s College, Cambridge, born in Bedfordshire.”

“Well, Dr. Hall, if you are heading into Stratford, this young lady, Susannah Shakespeare, is returning also and would be glad to show you the way.”

“Oh, I couldn’t presume,” he said, smiling at the still dumbstruck girl, “but I would appreciate the company into town.”

“She’s lived there all her life.”

“Not your daughter then? I apologize . . .”

“Quite all right. She’ll be able to tell you about the town, perhaps introduce you to her family, won’t you, Susannah?”

To my utter amazement, she had not only changed her expression from sour to stunned but she now looked so sweet. As she stepped outside with us, I realized Susannah had probably rehearsed some sharp parting rebuke for me but now would look bad in the eyes of her new hero if she carried on so. Yet I yearned to tell her to enjoy—no, to treasure—her rampaging feelings in this moment, which now were centered not at all on me.

They left together, Susannah on Dr. Hall’s horse like a princess as he walked, holding the reins. Ever the foolish romantic, I blinked back tears of hope for Susannah and of sadness for myself.

 

 

 

“It will be a damned
outrage if we have to sublet this theatre after we’ve leased and remade it with great charge and trouble!” white-haired James Burbage exploded. He had just finished reading the notice to his son Richard, who beat both fists on the railing so hard I let go of it. The boy who had brought the message into the Burbages’ new Blackfriars Theatre, where they’d been giving me a tour, scampered off as if he’d been shot from a firearm.

Richard shouted, his deep actor’s voice bouncing off the walls, “Six hundred pounds this renovation has cost us, not counting the lease on the entire building! The artless, beef-witted joltheads!”

Will had told me both Burbages were hotspurs. Though their fiery personalities were matched by many of their fellows, Will was different. He only exploded when he was jealous, or perhaps—if his daughter had told true—when he argued with Anne Hathaway. The rest of the time, he seethed, even if he struck out at others, as he had at the queen by rewriting his old play.

The Burbages, who were also my new landlords, stomped about in the narrow aisle, so I moved out of their way. It was like watching a drama with heroic characters. If, indeed, city officials had somehow rejected their license for this indoor theatre, this display would perhaps be the only performance that would be allowed here, though we were in the first gallery rather than on the stage. The father and son theatre manager and lead actor of the Lord Chamberlain’s Men were respected but feared too, and now I could see why.

With another curse, James wadded up and heaved the notice onto the stage. Then they tore down the stairs, shouting and cursing. I stayed where I was, for my tour—like this dream of theirs to own an indoor theatre—could well be over.

“And,” Richard put in, his voice booming out as they appeared below me on the ground level, then strode up onto the stage, “it’s partly because a few nosy, noble neighbors around here have signed a petition about noise and traffic before and after our performances! ’S blood, it’s to their advantage to have us near, and there’d be no riots by apprentices to close us down since the penny knaves can’t afford Blackfriars entry fees.”

Indeed I saw there was no pit for mere pennies and standing room below: they had spent their hard-earned money to put in benches or chairs for all six hundred attenders. And they’d planned to allow well-heeled members of the audience who wished to be seen to sit on the edge of the stage for an extra fee.

“Those pious prudes, the Puritan city fathers!” Richard bellowed, gesturing wildly and stalking across the stage. He looked as if he’d tear his curly hair out. “They’re using the neighbors’ petition as an excuse. The city fathers are just enraged we found a way to outfox them with a theatre right in the heart of London. I see Cecil’s hand in this, maybe Edmund Tilney’s too, since we’ve stood up to him! ’S teeth, I wish Will was here. We need a calm head to fight a conspiracy—that’s what it is, damn them all, the reeky maggot-pies, a conspiracy!”

My stomach knotted over the mention of Will and the fact that financial failure here at Blackfriars could mean financial catastrophe for the Burbages and their other playhouse. Giles Allen, the man who owned the land in Shoreditch on which the Theatre sat, had said he would not renew their lease when it lapsed, for the Burbages owned the building but not its site. So they could lose that venue and this one too.

And, I thought, squirming on my bench, what if they were forced to give up this Blackfriars building and the new landlord—like Nicholas Clere—made it an impossible place for me to live? I loved this area, and the Theatre was still only a bit farther away than it had been before I’d left Lilypot Lane.

Worse, Richard had told me Will was back in London, claiming he was ready to act, but that he had not been able to write. He had not been to see me. Clasping my hands on my knees, I hunched over them. I wanted to pray, but sound carried well in this vast room, and the men’s words disturbed me.

I blinked back tears, which made the furious figures on the stage seem to shudder. The beautifully carved room was well lighted from two banks of high windows, but they’d added expensive candelabras that could be lowered when the wicks were trimmed. With all this space, stage machinery could fly in things—even people—from the lofty area above the stage.

It would be such a perfect place. They had been hoping it would inspire Will to write for it, the sort of more inward character plays he had longed to do for an intimate theatre with an educated audience.

I felt the cloak of dark despair cover me. The Burbages had boasted that this chamber had long been a backdrop for drama. Years ago, Parliament members had met to argue here, and it was the very venue where King Henry VIII’s first wife, Catherine of Aragon, had pleaded before a tribunal not to be divorced. She’d lost, of course, and her wayward husband wedded his second bride, the current queen’s mother, Anne Boleyn. Fated to fail, both women fell into the brutal hands of that destructive man. Henry VIII had six wives, I thought, and Will Shakespeare but two.

I started to cry in earnest, but stopped and stared below. For one moment, I thought my agonizing had made me imagine Will, for he’d made an entrance upon the stage as if he had suddenly been flown in by some
deus ex machina
.

“Will!” Richard cried and rushed to clap him on the shoulder while the older man hugged him. “I swear, our needing you here must have summoned you!”

I thought surely the Burbages would mention to Will that I was here, but they were so intent on their problems and each other. I considered stepping outside, but sat stock-still, remembering the first day I’d seen Will on the stage in Kit’s
Doctor Faustus.
Why didn’t he sense my very presence as I so often did his? Perhaps our days together were over now—our bond broken like our hearts had been.

As if pacing off a measurement, the three men walked back and forth across the width of the bare stage together. “We’ll be in a pretty fix,” James said, after they explained things to Will, “if we don’t raise some capital—and somehow save the Theatre to keep Giles Allen from possibly tearing it down.”

“If we’re forced to sublet this place,” Richard put in, “I say it’s to Henry Evan’s children’s Chapel Royal troupe, not anyone else. I don’t trust Philip Henslowe not to be behind this low blow and our looming loss of the Theatre too. Will, besides the continued pressure from the powers-that-be, the competition among the theatres has worsened since you’ve been away. We’re glad to have you back as an actor, but it’s your plays we need.”

“But I still haven’t been able to write,” Will admitted, shaking his head more in amazement than denial. “I have several things going—but I feel so distant from them now—as if they are just gone—over.” Like us, I thought. I couldn’t bear sitting there anymore as an audience of one, so I stood to slip out. But the movement must have caught Will’s eye: he turned and came to the edge of the stage, shielding his eyes with his hand from the window light, looking up at me. I stood frozen in mid-stride, staring down at him.

He snatched off his cap and said, “Anne Whateley, my angel from on high, I have much to thank you for.”

“Will Shakespeare,” I managed to get out, “like others who enjoy your plays, I am glad to see you back among your fellows.”

To my surprise, Richard began a sort of pantomime behind Will’s back, gesturing madly for me to talk to Will, to try to get him to write again, if that’s what his aping a scribbler bent over a desk was meant to show.

James put in, “Anne has rented chambers from us out back by the mews. We were uncourteous to forget we were showing her about when the bad news came. We’re off to tell our wives and to decide what to do, so would you walk her back, Will?”

I had to smile at that, for it reminded me of how lamely I had tried to give Susannah Shakespeare some time with Dr. Hall. I was about to reply that I could well find my short way home in these safe precincts, but Richard clasped his hands as if he were begging me. I wondered how much they really knew of Will and me. Surely, he had never told them, and I had not breathed a bit of it. Was it written all over our faces and lives? Did they think we were lovers but decided to act as if we were only friends from home?

“I would appreciate the company,” I said, though I was hurt Will had not contacted me since we’d arrived in Stratford nearly two months ago. In the past, I’d snubbed and ranted at him as his Lady Tongue or Lady Disdain but best to get our twisted passions all thrashed out, I thought.

Will shook both men’s hands then walked toward the back of the theatre to meet me where I would come down the stairs. I heard the Burbages’ footsteps across the stage, then a back door slam as they went outside. Yet I stood, leaning over the balcony, just looking down at Will.

Turning his cap in his hands, he stopped and craned his neck to look sharply up.

“Will, it has been awhile, has it not?” I asked, desperate to fill the air with words between us. “How are things at home now?”

 

Lines from the balcony scene between
Romeo and Juliet
were the last thing I’d expected. But I took his challenge and threw back Juliet’s next line to him, only slightly amended.

“O Will, Will, wherefore art thou, Will?”

“I have been lost, my love, lost in despair of my loss, but I hope now I can go on.”

“It’s not something a father can ever get over.”

“Not get over, no. Get through, perhaps. And with your help if you will lend it. Come down from on high then, my guiding and guardian angel, and let me make things clear.”

I hurried down the staircase, wanting to throw myself into his arms but afraid to. At least I would give him my hand, but he gripped both my shoulders firmly and, holding me at arm’s length, stared down into my face.

“Anne and I have come to an agreement,” he told me, so serious and intent, “though not without argument and agony. I am going to buy the family a fine house in Stratford—probably the old Clopton town house—and buy them, especially for my father, though she thinks it’s for her, a coat-of-arms. She is obsessed with lording it over those who whisper about why I stay away, and she refuses to set foot in London. So she’s vowed that however I live and work here to accomplish my promises is my concern. I swear to you, she will have my house but never my heart, for that has been bestowed for nearly all my life elsewhere.”