The Diary of William Shakespeare, Gentleman (4 page)

Today I did inspect the garden to make sure it is well dunged against the winter to keep the growth of the asparagus and spinach and cardoons and small salletting and radishes. The winter roots are now cellared: fat orange carrots bred in the Netherlands — the seed a gift from my Lord Southwell decades ago — and common purple carrots, turnips, parsnips, onions, beets and Virginia potatoes, which I love even if my wife will not abide them but for my sake. Our pumpkins too are stored up in the well-aired attic, with hard pears, quinces and late apples in boxes of sand, and hands of grapes, shallots and onions hung to dry from rafters.

My wife is in the stillroom, brewing the winter wines and cordials, and Judith is out again, as she finds the grey sky a better roof than her own home and prefers gossip to learning a woman's arts.

Today the squire's son came to the smithy to order new gates for the manor house, to be made of twisted iron and emblazoned with their crest. I heard it all from my desk up here, and made a note to tell my agent that our gate too needs a crest, the one I bought my father long ago. The squire's son looked for Bess, and found her, but
poor Romeo received only a smile and not a kiss as his Juliet vanished to the dairy. I think those gates will need much discussion ere they be hung, and daily visits to the blacksmith's.

I sat by the window, the glass shut against the autumn cold (how much it gladdened my father that our New Place should have so many windows, and each one glassed), and thought of my own first kiss, sweeter than honey, or rather just as sweet, for I had been eating honey cake and so had the kitchen maid, who smiled at me, and so I caught her in the larder and kissed her mouth, once I had worked out where our noses should each go. She let me take one kiss, and then two more, ere she ran off giggling. I was fourteen that year, and she perhaps thirteen.

My father must have seen something in her manner, or in mine, because he called me to him as he stitched a hunting glove in his chair by the doorway, where the light was best on sunny days. ‘William, I must have word with thee.'

‘Yes, Father?' I wished the kisses were untaken, even more than I wished the nettle pottage for my breakfast had been uneaten. (My mother was as great for breakfast pottage as King Henry was for his ships, although it do give me grievous wind, enough to fill the sails of Spain. My wife would have stayed nettle-pottage-loyal had I not forbade it after Mother died and my wife became mistress of the kitchen.)

My father motioned me to sit on the stool by his feet. I waited for him to talk of kissing. Instead he said, ‘Do you know how much I love thee, William?'

I must have looked as startled as the fox that thinks it steals upon a plump chicken and instead finds the farmer's boy waiting with his bow. ‘Of course, sir.'

‘How do you know, William?'

I considered. ‘By your care for us, sir.'

‘Indeed. I work not just at my trade but at trading too, so you shall be a gentleman one day, your brothers settled, your sister dowried well. It is the duty of a father to care for his family so. The servants too are in our care, for they cannot refuse what we might order them to do.'

I flushed. I had not ordered the maid to kiss me. But nor could she have slapped my face and told me, ‘Leave off, Master William.'

‘I see, sir,' I said.

My father smiled at me. He was not one for beating a willing donkey with a stick. He ruffled my hair and said, ‘I see that you do.'

He held out the glove he was working on. ‘Now, see this tongue of leather here? That protects the falconer's arm from the bird's claws . . .'

I kissed no more servants in our household after that. The kitchen maid left us on Mop Day for another house, and we did not take another young servant. But there was the red-haired girl I kissed after the May Day dance, whose lips tasted of May wine; and another at the Harvest Feast, when we both had cider breath and cider tongues and cider-loosened laughter; and the young widow when I was sixteen. When I brought her new mourning gloves, she gave me not just the coins she owed me but much more. Bright kisses for the memory; kisses for pleasure, not for love.

But I do remember the first kiss of love too. Its heat burns my lips still.

Dinner: Merchant Habbicombe and his wife and daughters came to dine with us, bringing a gift of honey that is not as fine as ours here at New Place, although I did not tell them so, and a brace of herons.

First course: a turkey, roasted; a young kid, seethed; leek pottage; mutton tongues in a pie; apple fritters; salletting from our own garden; cheese cakes. Second course: a butt of beef, spiced; pigeons, roasted, with a black liver sauce; a mess of chicken; whipped syllabub; small savouries of sweet Canada potatoes that some call artichokes of Jerusalem, crafted in shapes, at which all exclaimed so that my wife smiled, being careful not to show the new gap between her teeth; a marmalade of quinces; olives; almonds; medlars; apples; raisins of the sun and sugared plums.

All good with bowels and waters, and when I gazed into the hand mirror this morning, my beard and hair do show only a silvering of grey.

A squawking from the goose yard as if all fowldom dances to the drum of war — my wife has ordered the mattresses and quilts refeathered for the winter. Small feathers dance like snow about the garden. I spent the morning with my agent. As I thought, this summer's mildewed wheat has made me richer, for if men cannot buy wheat flour they must make do with barley from my stores, and the price has doubled in the month, and will double once more, at least, by the year's end. I am richer by half as much again as I were last year. I order him to purchase me a share in the church tithes, for its price will be low in this year of poor harvests, but will reap great profit when the sun deigns to return.

I also ordered three fat geese and a pot of preserved apricots sent as a gift to Thomas Thomas, Esquire, a wool merchant. Merchant Habbicombe told me last night that Harold Thomas, the eldest son, is still unmarried. The family is a good one, though not so high in status as I would have chosen for my daughter. But as Judith grows older her chances are less, and our family at least would not lose dignity with the alliance.

Indeed, my father hoped to be a wool merchant the year that I left school. As a glove-maker, he had always a store of wool as well as leather, and, as he said, if one can deal in the wool that lines a glove, why not deal in wool without the glove? But the guild of wool merchants said not. Once again my father was fined, and once again he paid it. I stayed a glover's apprentice, stretching the leather, even as my life shrivelled, rubbing in the oil to make hide shine white, while my life grew duller still. My soul shrank in ‘might have been'.

They were not bad years. I was well fed, well clothed, even if both cloth and food were drabbed by pinching each penny till it squeaked. The work was simple. I had time to roam with my brothers or Tom the apprentice cooper and Harry with his apprentice potter's rough clay hands, hunting sparrows or snaring rabbits. The sport was fun. Yet fun skims upon the surface of the waters. You must dive deep for friendship's truest bonds, or love.

Often I used the time to read books borrowed from the schoolmaster, the myths of
Greece and Rome, and tales of travels, and Chaucer's
Canterbury Tales
, which
made my mother blush and say they were not fit to read aloud for a young girl like
my sister, and caused Mary the servant to purse her lips. Some days I read my family
my own poems, scratched with a dull quill, mocked by moonlight, but did not tell
them they were mine. It is not a glover's place to write poetry, nor did my father
approve of too much writing lest it impair my memory and make me less able to
remember glove patterns. I knew he worried much about my lack of skill.

No, not a bad life. Just a small one. Only my mind could roam in those years. I scribbled my words on scraps of paper — the back of a loading docket or bill of sale,
whatever I might find to write on. Fresh paper was too much of a luxury for an apprentice such as I to buy. Even if I'd had the coin, my father would have heard of it and demanded why.

If you had asked me then, I might have said I was content. And then life changed. The world spun backwards, the clouds turned upside down. Birds flew with their stomachs to the sun.

Her name was Judyth.

Dinner: joined this noon by Susanna and her husband, Dr Hall, and Parson Roger and his wife. We ate of pigeons, dressed; hare pie; a turkey, roasted but tough; mutton soup, of which only my wife ate. For the second course: saddle of mutton, roasted; a mess of chicken; a roasted cream with rose water; preserved cherries in a tart; small parsnip cakes with raisins of the sun; quince fritters; and to drink, October beer and ale spiced with cloves and apples.

Afterwards, at good Dr Hall's request, I read my poems, but think that only Dr Hall and Susanna enjoyed them, for Judith yawned, the parson and his wife dozed, and my wife fidgeted from her toothache and from setting the serving men to prepare our supper.

Then Susanna played the harpsichord, to our great enjoyment. We danced like little lambs in May, except for the parson with his gouty foot.

Bowels: uneasy, though my waters are still clear. I do blame the quince.

We dined today at the invitation of Thomas Thomas, Esquire, and his family. A fine new house with glass and many chimneys, though not as fine as New Place. The conversation was the best I have had this month, for Master Thomas is a man of the world and the talk of London reaches him. We spoke of the Shrewsbury case: the Countess of Shrewsbury having been lately released from the Tower of London as reward for her help in discovering the murderer of Sir Thomas Overbury; and how Overbury's wife did use poison and witchcraft to make her husband incapable so she could take up instead with her lover . . . At which we noticed Judith listening to us at the top of the table and ceased our conversation, for such topics are not suitable for young women.

‘Do you ride, Miss Judith?' asked young Harold Thomas.

He is not a handsome youth — indeed, he is a trifle short, and one shoulder sits higher than the other — but sensible, with a grave manner I like.

‘I care not for it,' said Judith, not even looking at him. ‘Father, what were you saying?'

‘My hound, Flight, has puppies, if you would care to see them after dinner,' offered Harold.

‘No, I thank you.' Judith turned instead to Parson Roger, who had been asked with his wife to make up the table. I could have boxed her ears.

‘Why did you not show the young man some courtesy?' I demanded, when the chairs had deposited us at home, it being once again too wet to walk and the road too rutted from the recent rains to take the carriage.

She shrugged. ‘He is like that man in your play, Father. The hunchback king who called out for his horse.'

‘King Richard? You compare a dead villain to a sensible young man?'

The silly wench wrinkled her nose, which is a long one. ‘I did not care for him.'

Did the girl think I could shake a fig tree and have husbands fall out of it like ripe fruit?

‘You could have offered him courtesy even so.'

‘And let him hope he might be mine?'

I could have told her that Harold Thomas might have his pick of wives, all of good standing and family, and that she, at thirty, was as sorely short of suitors as she was long of nose. The time has come when she must settle for a lame rooster, or none at all.

I had thought to write of another Judyth tonight, not the stubborn daughter I have now. But I am angry and my digestion is upset. The pheasant we ate at dinner was well flavoured but hung perhaps too long. I would not write of Judyth except when I might remember her with joy, and share some private tears with the cold weeping wind, and pray for my father's sin, and mine, the sin we did thinking we did good.

I shall take a draught and write no more of that tonight.

Dinner: a good estate provides an excellent table. We ate a saddle of mutton with wine sauce; the pheasant with black liver sauce; a smothered hare; a chicken blancmange; wafers and cakes. Second course: ducks, roasted; a young kid; turtle soup, the turtle brought live from London town, the like of which I have not tasted for ten years; a cherry pie. Third course: fried larks; sweetmeats of marzipan; sugared plums; and small figures made of sugar, most fine, which made my wife exclaim at the skill of making them. (She, at least, gave our hosts their due even as my daughter put me to the blush.) French claret wine to drink, and a device of brass and silver that moved along the table, dispensing rose water for the guests to wash. I must ask my agent to order me one like it made in London, adorned with the Shakespeare crest.

Bowels: uneasy still, so I have ordered a second chamber pot for the night.

Today it rains again, all wild, wet, weeping wind, as it has rained since St Jude's day, the gales sweeping leaves along as if with vast damp brooms, spoiling what little wheat harvest there is left. St Jude is the patron saint of hopeless causes. Today I warrant there will be many who see a hard winter ahead and pray on their knees indeed.

My wife and the maids are preserving quinces and the winter pears in verjuice and making winter wine, as well as pickling forced asparagus, which I like much; and pickled green apples, pickled crabs, pickled soft pears, broccoli and salsify and cauliflower, and straining flagons of birch wine. Later Judith joined them, in high colour from visiting her friend Catherine, the fish merchant's daughter, who shares her dancing lessons. The girl is too much taken up with visiting her friends lately, instead of helping with the autumn work of the household.

After dinner they roasted apples by the fire and threw the apple peels to see the initials of the man Judith will one day marry. If the peels be right, he shall have the initials ‘SS', for so the peels looked no matter how she threw them.

Much knocking at the kitchen door for soul cakes, of which my wife had ordered a good store baked, it being to our credit to give them freely.

Later they played a game of eating soul cake hung on a string — which my wife and Judith missed entirely, but Susanna's sharp teeth bit — with so much laughter that even I was called to join the fun.

And so to bed. And yet this is still the night when the spirits of the dead return to eat and drink upon the earth. I could not sleep, and left my bed and took my candle to write here. Beyond our fine glass windows and their wooden shutters, the church bells toll and bonfires flame to eat the dark to keep the dead at bay, with food left on the doorstep lest the hungry dead should knock at the door.

If a knock from long-dead knuckles sounded at the door tonight, would I open it? Would I truly shut the door against my father, even if he be a skeleton in rotting rags, my good mother, my brothers, cut before their prime, my friends who have gone before? Would I shut the door on Ned?

Or would I have the courage to say, ‘Enter, ye spirits, eat and drink, for tomorrow with the sun you must vanish, into the silent confines of the grave or fiery purgatory'?

No. Those I loved now walk in heaven. If there be wild spirits at my door tonight, they already know the path to reach me, whispering memories in my ears.

And chief of memories tonight be Judyth. Judyth of the sea-green eyes, not the brown-eyed wench who sleeps in the room down the hall as I write this.

Judyth: how can such a woman be held in one small word? And yet it was with words I met her, loved her, fenced with her, and with words she won me too.

I had lost my right to write when I was writ apprentice on my bond. But my mind was too small a larder to contain the words within it. I must write. I had to write. Even in that cramped confined space allotted to a would-be glover, still I dreamt — and knew it but a dream — that one day my poems might be within a book, and on it be writ my name:
William Shakespeare. Poet.

It was as likely as a green-spotted pig. Yet still I wrote. Not in our own hall, not with my younger brothers and sister wailing, Mother bustling, my glover's duty sitting on the bench waiting for me to stretch and stitch now that Father's eyes were grown too frail. Instead that year I found my own hall, safe harbour for me except in winter's depths: a giant beech tree outside the town, its leaves like a green fortress in summer, its branches wide enough to sit upon. And there I'd write, ponder, scratch out, write again and finally recite.

Till one day, I had no sooner slipped under the green gate when I heard words from above my head:

‘
Crabbed age and youth

Cannot live together.

Youth is full of pleasaunce

Age is full of care . . .
'

The voice paused, as if seeking another rhyme. It was clear, not a rustic's burr. It sounded like a woman's tones. But how could a woman have wit to craft a verse?

I looked up, and saw a green that might be petticoats or a green coat, not leaves. I grinned. I had the next rhyme already from a poem I had writ upon a subject much the same as hers. What youth has not thought the same, even if they have not the words nor wit to say it?

‘
Youth like summer morn,

Age like winter weather.

Youth like summer brave,

Age like winter bare.

Youth is full of sport,

Age's breath is short.
'

‘My language! Heaven!' A face looked down, but the leaves still hid too much to tell me if it was lad or lass. ‘Most sure, the goddess on whom my airs attend vouchsafed my prayer and sent me a companion for my words.'

‘Perhaps. My prime request,' I said, ‘which I do with thudding heart pronounce, is: oh, you wonder, if you be maid, or no?'

A laugh from up in the branches. Then she slid down: a froth of petticoats, a glimpse of shapely leg in a blue stocking and an even more shocking flash of white above it, and then green eyes and grinning mouth. She dropped a curtsey, while I gaped like a bullock who has seen a hayrick appear where there had been none.

‘No wonder, sir, but certainly a maid.'

I gazed at her. Was she beautiful? Black hair, white skin, slim fingers that had known no more work than with a needle and, it seemed, a pen. My memory gives me not her face, but the glow of her — a sun that lit up my whole heart. Yet even then, at that first throat-clenching glimpse, I managed words. Every word I had spoken or written before seemed bronze to the true gold she called from my soul now.

‘You are a muse of fire whose flames reach the very treetops of invention.'

The light dimmed from her face. ‘Or, as my father used to say, a maid who writes is as a crowing hen, and neither are wanted in any man's household.'

‘You write your words as well as speak them?'

‘I do, sir.'

I looked again at her slim fingers and saw the telltale smudge of ink on the second finger. She saw me looking, glanced at my hands and saw the same stain there, on the same writer's finger, like birthmarks, linking us forever.

Her smile fluttered again. ‘I am Judyth Marchmant, daughter of the late Emmett Marchmant, Esquire.'

I knew of him. He had died two years before; a wool merchant, wealthy, the kind of man my father aspired to be. I should have known his daughter; I had seen her in church a hundred times, but not like this. At church, her head was bent under her veil, as dutiful and gentle as any daughter. Here, beneath the tree, her hair uncovered, her cheeks red from the wind, she was a muse of flame and starlight sent to catch me.

My thoughts whirled like Ariel girdling the world. ‘How came you to write?'

‘I boarded at school in France for three years. The sisters there follow the rule that a girl shall not just read books but should write as well.'

France meant a Roman school, but not that her family was papist, for it was well known that the best schools for girls were French. If this enchantress's merchant father had wished her to marry to a high estate, she would need to learn the arts of a lady: French with a courtly accent, and dancing, fine embroidery, and writing too. Well might he have hoped that a girl so lovely might have caught a young noble's eye, especially if she were well dowered with a rich merchant's coin. And yet — for which I sent a silent prayer of thanks — Judyth had not married. Her father's death and a year of mourning would have stopped any betrothal negotiations, for she must be no more than sixteen.

A sixteen-year-old girl under a beech tree with an eighteen-year-old youth. I saw the moment when she
realised that even if we were twin souls in words, we were also man and maid. If any should see us here together, it would be her ruin.

She said abruptly, ‘I must go.'

‘Nay, stay for just a minute. Will I see you again? Hear your words again?'

‘How in this small puddle of a town will we not meet?'

She vanished in a swish of leaves and skirts. She had not even asked my name.

Dinner: duck, roasted, with sharp grape sauce; chicken and beef, stewed in strong black beer, with mustard, which Dr Hall commends to suit my constitution; a pie of eels; turnips with cheese and chestnuts; elderflower cheese tart; fritters of milk. Second course: saddle of mutton with Italian sauce; salletting; stewed worts; a rhubarb tart, which Dr Hall believes will also suit me; olives; nuts; apples; raisins of the sun; a malmsey wine to drink.

Bowels: improved, and I expect them sound once more after the beef in mustard, and rhubarb.