The Diary of William Shakespeare, Gentleman (9 page)

I met Anne the next Tuesday. More mist, swirling like cats' wraiths about my feet, the dew turning the trees' leaves to jewels.

‘Anne —'

For the first time, the only time, she interrupted me. ‘I am sorry. I can meet thee no longer. My brother —'

‘Your brother values you as the owner of fields that he can use for grazing and as a housemaid and servant,' I said harshly.

She said nothing. A loyal sister, even now.

‘Anne . . .' I took her hand. ‘Oh, how this spring of love resembles the uncertain glory of an April day, which now shows all beauty of the sun and, by and by, a cloud takes all away.' It was a passage I had written the night before. ‘Lovers are not bound by brothers, nor by the laws of earth, but yet by love. Will you meet me tonight, behind the hazelnut hedge? For once two lovers are so joined, then no brother can have them parted.'

She knew what I asked. Better than I perhaps, for maids must think on swelling bellies more than a man, who can walk away, leaving them to shame.

‘I would not desert thee, Anne,' I said. ‘My heart and all I have are yours, for ever more. Meet me tonight and we can make ourselves as one.'

Her voice was soft. ‘I will come.'

Anne, I saw, had thought of this too: the one road to freedom from her brother's house.

I waited all the day, scraping leather, chopping wood, fetching water from the well for my mother, feeling my father's eyes upon me. As soon as it was dark, he watched me slip out of the door. I crossed the fields, rather than risk being seen upon the road. The moon stood high, as if it watched me too.

Had Anne changed her mind? Or had another approached her, who had heard about her godfathers' bond? Had she decided that if she must do this, she would do it with another, not with me?

A shadow moved within her cottage garden. I stepped back, into the darkness of the hedge.

She wore her nightdress and a shawl, and pattens to keep her feet from the mud.

She whispered, ‘If I am found, I will say I needed the privy, too bad to use the chamber pot.'

As a lover's speech, it lacked a little.

I pulled her towards the hazelnut hedge. She did not hesitate, nor when I took off my cloak and laid it on the damp ground. I caressed her, glad of the widow's lessons. She cried out once, in pain, then again — I think — in pleasure, or perhaps just gladness that the deed was done.

I waited till she had straightened her skirts, then kissed her on the lips. ‘This bud of love by summer's ripening breath may prove a beauteous flower when next we meet.'

She did not answer, but she smiled and kissed me back, the first kiss she had offered of her own will.

The nightingale sang from across the river. The moon had sunk to rest upon the trees, but it was still light enough to see. Oh, lovers' moon, I thought. If only I could love indeed. And yet, of course, I did.

My body smelt of Anne, of woman, yet I went not directly home but to the beech tree. Its leaves had turned to gold now and fluttered when I pushed aside the branches.

There was a note. How had I known there would be? Can two hearts truly beat as one? Two souls have like thoughts together?

It was too dark to read beneath the tree; the moon had sunk still farther to its rest. I scrambled home, the message in my sleeve.

A candle flickered in the hall. It was my father, sitting at his desk with his accounts.

‘Father?' I said.

He looked up at me, his face clearing. ‘Well, son, is it done?'

‘Ay. It is done.'

‘Well, well, well.' He took another candle and matched its wick to his, then handed it to me to make my way up to my bed. ‘You must go again tomorrow,' he said quietly, and gave a wry smile. ‘Works such as yours, son, may take months to bear its fruit.'

Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, I thought, will creep at their petty pace from day to day. If love gives wings, then this, the travesty of love, tears time to shreds upon the ground.

I said, ‘Good night, Father.'

‘Good night, my son. Or rather, good day, for thus it will be soon.'

I took my candle up the stairs, but not to bed. I stopped and pulled out Judyth's note. Her writing. Her voice, soft in my ear:

Doubt that the stars are fire

Doubt that the earth doth move

Doubt truth to be a liar

But never doubt I love.

I crept into the room I shared with my brothers, and took the paper, ink and pen. I sat upon the stairs, took my courage in my hands, and began to write words of love and hope:

Enjoy'd no sooner but despised straight,

Past reason hunted, and no sooner had

Past reason hated, as a swallowed bait.

All days are nights to see till I see thee,

And nights bright days when dreams do show me thee.

I stared at them, waiting for the ink to dry, then rolled them up to keep them with my other papers, stuffed well into the feathers of our mattress, where they must stay.

For this was truth, and truth was what I could not give — not to Judyth, Anne, not to my father. But here, unbidden, I had given truth to myself.

Four invitations to dine this week, of which I have refused all, for there is neither table nor conversation to tempt me.

Dinner: a sirloin of beef; tripe, baked, with a leek sauce; ratafia puffs; minced mutton pies; blancmange of chicken; apricots, dried and stewed with marrow bone; a medlar jelly; spiced damson cream; cheese with caraway; biscuits; apples. The spiced wine I find even better now the lees have cleared.

Bowels: stopped a trifle. Waters clear.

Sat with my granddaughter, Elizabeth, for an hour this morning, reading her an old script of my
Julius Caesar.
At seven years old, she understood it well, and clapped and cried or sat wide eyed, as the tragedy unfolded. Yet I could not but think of the time I spoke to kings and crowds, and heard both the silence at my magic words and their applause.

Elizabeth wanted to know why do the ducks fly in winter, and where do they go. I told her they fly south, and to Venice, the most beautiful city in the world, and city of the most beautiful as well.

‘More than London?' she enquired.

I smiled, for she has never seen the pits nor smelt the stench of London, where even the river smells of the privy pit. ‘Far greater and more beautiful.'

‘And have you seen Venice, Grandfather?'

‘In my mind's eye, child, many a time. And that is how you may see it too.'

She frowned at that. A pretty child, with soft brown hair. ‘How do I open my mind's eye?'

‘You must practise. As you do your sewing, think of
bright castles and gleaming spires, of artist's colour upon the walls, of canals instead of cobblestones.'

She kissed my cheek. She has my Hamnet's smile, which is perhaps mine, or Anne's. ‘Will we go there together in our minds' eyes, Grandfather?'

‘Most assuredly, my child,' I told her.

And, for a moment, watching her, holding her small warmth, I knew that in her I have been blessed.

Thy grandsire loves thee well

Many a time he danced thee on his knee

Sang thee asleep, his loving breast thy pillow

Many a matter hath he told to thee . . .

Elizabeth and her mother left soon after, Jem carrying a cheese for them, a bag of warden pears, and a pudding with raisins of the sun and dried apricots from our own trees.

My wife was below in the hall, embroidering my new shirts that I will wear to London after Christmas, and Judith with her friend Catherine, so I to my library, to my book. My wife has placed a jug of new pens upon my table, so I need not sharpen the nib from time to time, but take up a new one. So I write tonight with a new nib and fresh ink too.

So it were done with Anne, and done again each day that week and all that month, whenever she could sneak away; though once she wore a purple bruise upon her arm where her sister-in-law had struck her for failing to mind the pots.

I did not go again to the beech tree, not even to see if a ribbon waved within its branches.

Each night I wrote more words of love to enchant Anne with me, and each day I read them to her, for Anne, of course, could not read nor write, except perhaps her name.

I grant I never saw a goddess go;

My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground.

And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare

As any she belied with false compare.

When I read those words to Anne, she smiled and kissed me. But each word was for another.

And then, one day, Anne did not come.

I waited that morning in the lane around from their hall. Waited till the sun stared down from high above me, winking each time a cloud passed by. One of the labourers hoeing the turnips glanced at me as he placed his hoe over his shoulder and unrolled his lunch from a piece of cloth, so I left so as to cause no comment.

All that week I waited behind the hazelnut hedge, where I might spy her on the road and none see me, but still she did not come.

And then, at last, as if pulled by a cord inside my heart, my steps led me home past the great beech tree. A ribbon fluttered there. I looked both ways, then quickly retrieved it ere anyone could see, and thrust it up my sleeve.

I read it behind the beech tree:

For where thou art, there is the world itself,

And where thou art not, desolation.

I humbly do beseech of your pardon,

For too much loving you.

I did not answer.

My wife suggested we have company to dine, to cheer my autumn face, but I would have none, nor accept the invitations either, even from my Lord Sheriff. One consolation of my age is that one can refuse an invitation and it will be put down to weariness, not lack of courtesy.
Yet I am not old, in neither limbs nor spirit. My weariness is of the soul.

Dinner: a soup of forcemeat balls of chicken; a hindquarter of mutton, roasted, with spiced dark beer sauce; a partridge pudding; veal sweetbreads with mustard; snipe seethed in elderberry juice sauce; a Virginia potato pie I know my wife has chosen to cheer me; carrots from the cellar, with butter; rhubarb, stewed; an apple pie; warden pears.

Bowels: regular, at last.

Rain this morning, like yesterday and the day before. The sheep stand reproachful in the fields, as if it be their owners' fault. And I feel like a sheep to say, ‘I have had enough of greyness. Give me sun.'

The rain turned to dribbling mist like an old man's wet mouth after dinner time, when the squire's son came to inspect his father's gates and the smith's daughter. Bess smiles at him but he does naught but gape.

That is not the way to woo a woman, lad! You need words, falling trippingly from your tongue. I have an urge to shout out the window, ‘For pity's sake, lad, if you have not words enough, then poets have! Give her them as your own, and she will never know.'

I could throw him a copy of my sonnets — written in part for my Lord of Southampton's wooing, and with which he had much success — that the squire's son might pluck the fruit therein. He is a good-enough lad. If he weren't, I'd have heard of it, for we are a small world here at Stratford. If your neighbour farts, you will hear ten tales of it the next day. Nor have I heard that Bess has smiled on any man before. Their stations, their families, are far apart. But should any man that walks this earth
stand against true love? Could the squire's son be happy with Bess? And if they love, should their two stations and their parents stand in their way?

'Twas not true love that brought Bartholomew Hathaway to my father's house that evening, late, when good folk should be about their suppers and none to see him.

My mother offered him ale and cake. He would have none, but glared at my father until my mother took the children up from the hall.

My father said sharply, ‘William, you go too.'

I hesitated, for surely this matter must concern me.

Bartholomew said, ‘Ay, indeed he hath done enough already.'

And so I left. I tried listening at the stair door, but heard only Bartholomew most like a bull, snorting and pawing his ground, and my father's voice, too quiet to hear what he did say.

At last the front door banged. I opened the stair door. Father sat on the bench by the fire. He did not look at me.

I said, ‘Is it done?'

‘Ay.' His voice was heavy. ‘And what must be done is best done quickly. The banns will be read but once, this Sunday, and the marriage by special licence after.'

I did not know if the weight that crushed my chest grew tighter or less heavy, only that it was there. I had dreaded the readings of the banns over many weeks, knowing each time there would be the likelihood of Judyth hearing them.

‘How does one get a special licence?' Was that my voice?

‘I will take care of it,' said my father. I thought he would say more, but he kept looking at the fire. I had reached the hall stairs again when he said, ‘She is a good woman, and will make thee a pleasant wife.'

‘Yes,' I said. ‘Most pleasant.'

I did not write that night, nor for many more. It was as if my words, my true self, had died.

Dinner: venison, a gift from my Lord Sheriff, with juniper sauce; a capon, roasted, with livers; saddle of mutton with wine sauce; fried lambs' stones; bacon toasts (for from this night we will have no flesh nor dairy till Christmas ends our Advent fast); sea holly seethed in marrow fat; a sallet of winter greens; cheeses from our dairy; spiced butter; biscuits; a caraway cream; warden pears baked in port wine.

Bowels: unexceptional.

The first Sunday of Advent and green garlands about the house and the Advent candles lit in each window. The wind howls hungry for the scent of soul cakes, to so preserve the souls of men.

Already this afternoon two poor girls have brought their Advent dolls to the door to show us, and my wife gave each a penny. A farthing is the usual gift, but my wife has a kind heart and I a full purse. I saw her give each a fresh tart too, and was pleased at the delight in the girls' faces as I looked out from the table where I write this book, to gather up the long hours of the wintery days till our guests come for Christmas.

A fine day, as our chairs carried us to church. As planned, I did purchase a portion of the church's tithe on produce, for which I paid a low price because of the poor harvests. I think in the next year's counting it will be a goodly sum. How is it that each time I conspire to make money, all turns to gold, yet for my father, it always turned to dust? I am no wiser man than he, and if I know more of the world now, I did not when I first began to make my fortune.

It is painful to remember those barren years, when our family had to keep a prosperous countenance turned to
the world and yet count our farthings and my father's debts. It stabs my fingers still to write of them. My father was a goodly man, a good father. He begot me, bred me, loved me. He did his best, and no man can do more. His only failing was in thinking he could make us rich and turn his son into a gentleman. Nor can I judge him for failing, for now his son is a gentleman indeed.

So I was married.

The church was at Temple Grafton, the licence from the Bishop, with some confusion for he first gave the licence to a different Anne, and it must be amended. There were none to witness it but the two families and Anne's two godfathers, who were pleased that she was pleased and set to have a home and children of her own. Good men, like my father, and I a good son, to come to this. All of us good men, and surely it was no bad deed that we did, nor have I ever felt I sinned against her, for Anne was happy, and I had done my duty. I felt the glow of it even as I kissed Anne on the lips, my legal right at last to do so.

We walked from the church, her arm in mine, as man and wife till death us do part. And then I stopped, for Judyth sat there in the churchyard, on a grave crusted with lichen, her face colder than its stone.

How had she known I would be married this day, and not to her? Did her heart beat so truly in time with mine that she must know when legally my flesh became one with another's? Later I learnt that Anne's sister-in-law had prated, seeking to do her ill; that all the gossips knew our story. But that day all I knew was that Judyth sat there.

Judyth had waited. Had known none of my wooing of Anne until this day. Must have thought that I was seeking a position, and was keeping away from her honourably
till I had the right to see her brother and say, ‘I wish your sister for my own; and here, see how I can support her.'

She did not speak, but her eyes met mine. Once more I was lost in that green sea, and have not, perhaps, swum from it since.

Anne spoke something then, and I turned to her. When I looked back, Judyth was gone.

Dinner, which the parson and his wife shared, and Susanna and Dr Hall: a pike, roasted, with green sauce; a pie of herring; collops that might be meat and yet are made with salt cod, spiced and moulded cunningly, and with spiced almond cream; a dish of Virginia potatoes, and one of sprouts, both dressed with Spanish oil and verjuice; a rhubarb pudding, the rhubarb from our hothouses still shooting well; a syllabub that comes from almond milk, not from the cow; a moss jelly of preserved cherries; comfits of aniseed and marzipan; olives; almonds; raisins of the sun; hot ale with baked apple that they call lambswool.

Bowels: steady.