“I tell you what, Miss. I’ll get a copy for you today.”
“And am I to come back for it a second time, then?”
He seemed lost in thought for a moment. “Why, it has come to me just now that I saw A Midsummer-Night’s Dream enacted six or seven years ago. I was only a boy. My father took me one afternoon to the old theatre in Shoreditch. I thought the play was all fairies and foolishness. Why do you want it so? I have others of Mr. Shakespeare’s comedies. Much Ado About Nothing is better stuff.”
“I want A Midsummer-Night’s Dream, Scarfe,” I said. “It was my mother’s favourite play.”
“Your mother?”
“Yes, I read it to her the year she died. It comforted her.”
No grin then, but he fixed his gaze upon me. Those light blue eyes. “Do you live hereabouts, Miss? Parrot said you were here last week. Have you work?”
“I am staying with my aunt and uncle,” I said. “My uncle is a milliner with a shop in Threadneedle Street.”
“And how long have you been in London?”
“Two months now.”
“Have you seen much of it, then?”
“At first my uncle took me on walks, but he’s too busy now. He showed me where the houses of the rich lay along the river.”
Scarfe nodded. “Listen to me now and tell me your opinion. I’ve done you a wrong making you come back for your book when you could as easily have bought it elsewhere, and so I appreciate your trade. Let me propose by the way of apology to show you a little of our city. I was thinking that perhaps tomorrow being Sunday, you might go walking with me. What would you most like to see in London? The Tower, where the wealthy villains go?”
I have said that I was beguiled by Robert Scarfe, and I believe I was. But I also had the notion that somehow he could lead me to my father. Would I walk out without knowing him on a Sunday morning? Indeed, I would and said so. I told him that the two places I most wished to see were Finsbury Fields and the theatres across the Thames.
“Well, that’s easily done and I’m your guide, Miss.”
“Aerlene,” I said. “Aerlene Ward.”
“Aerlene Ward, to be sure,” Scarfe said. “And I’ll bring along a copy of Mr. Shakespeare’s play.”
“A Midsummer-Night’s Dream?”
“The very one. Do you know Bishopsgate Street? It’s not far from your uncle’s premises.”
“I know of it,” I said, “but I’ve not been on it. Uncle Philip doesn’t like that part of the city.”
“Your uncle favours the better parts, does he? Well, he has shown you the city’s forefront. Allow me to show you its backside. No offence, Miss Ward.”
“No offence taken,” I said. “And so you will show me Finsbury Fields?”
“Yes, tomorrow morning, and may we hope for a better day. Why, I haven’t been to the Fields in years. I shall meet you at the corner of Threadneedle and Bishopsgate at ten o’clock tomorrow. You’ll see a great stone and timber house nearby. Crosby Hall. They say Richard, Duke of Gloucester, once lodged in that house before he became King of the realm.”
“Old Crookback?”
“The same.”
It seemed a favourable omen: a character from one of my father’s plays had lived in a house near where I would meet Scarfe.
“Please do not forget the book,” I said. “I’ll give you sixpence tomorrow.”
He shrugged. “Oh, by the way, your Mr. Shakespeare was in the neighbourhood Wednesday last, though he didn’t come by us. I saw him browsing the stalls. A well-dressed gentleman too.”
It had started to drizzle and Parrot was busy covering the books with canvas, looking flustered. “Give a hand here, Robin, or you’ll find yourself on the street. The old man is having a fit in there watching you gossip with this girl and no money yet exchanged.” He was glaring at me as he spoke.
“Not so,” I said loudly. “There’s money exchanged here,” I added, handing over my sixpence to Scarfe.
He looked sheepish. “Thank you,” he whispered, “but Giddy is right. I’d better lend a hand.”
Other vendors too were now covering their wares as the rain thickened, and I began to run, darting among older, slower people who were seeking shelter. As I ran I wondered if I was tempting fortune by feeling so happy. Perhaps Scarfe was lying about seeing my father that week. Perhaps too he had no intention of meeting me the next day. And I had given him my sixpence. I don’t think I slept much that night.
But meet me he did the next day, though I waited at least twenty minutes past the hour and was about to call myself the greatest gull ever seen on the streets of London. Then he appeared, looking as if he had just awakened, hair crammed into his cap, but grinning, carrying a woven bag over his shoulder as if intent on a walk to Norfolk.
“Here you are, then, and a good morning to you, Miss Ward.”
It was a good morning too. The rain had passed in the night leaving behind fair weather, the sky a pale blue and the air mild for the middle of November.
Scarfe was in high spirits and I felt shame for having doubted him. We passed Crosby Hall and walked northward on Bishopsgate Street, already busy with people and wagons. Scarfe shifted the bag to his other shoulder and I wondered what he was carrying in it. I had to walk fast to keep up with his long-legged gait; nor did he mind jostling others on his way, giving an elbow to this one, receiving a glare from that one. It was all one to Scarfe. A Londoner born and bred, I thought, with no time for courtesies, and why bother anyway? All on the street were alike and the few on horseback would as leave trample you as not. Scarfe never stopped talking, pointing out a large stone building beyond the wall on our left.
“That’s the Bethlem madhouse, where some bay at the moonrise. I’ve heard them myself.”
Looking at the grim building and its courtyard, I thought
of Mam and my father walking by here fifteen years ago with my father wondering aloud what it must feel like to be mad. I also saw the Dolphin Inn, where they met for the first time.
At Norton Fallgate, Scarfe stopped and set down the sack, and snatching off his cap, he bowed his head. “A brief moment of respect, Miss Ward, for Marlowe, a great wit, who once lived on this street and wrote some of his verses here.” Scarfe struck a pose, pressing the cap to his chest, proclaiming,
Ah, Faustus,
Now hast thou but one bare hour to live,
And then thou must be damn’d perpetually!
Stand still, you ever-moving spheres of Heaven,
That time may cease, and midnight never come.
As he stood there in the middle of the street with people stepping past him, some with smiles and others with muttered curses, it came to me that Scarfe was drunk. But I can still remember the clarity of his voice and I loved the sound of the words.
Shouldering his sack again, he took my hand and said, “The sun will have dried the grass now and I have a bite to eat for us and, as it happens, a swiggle or two as well.”
“Those lines you spoke just now,” I asked, “where did they come from?”
“Why from The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus by Marlowe,” he said. “Pa claims he would have been the equal to or better of your Mr. Shakespeare had he lived.”
“What happened to him?” I asked.
“Some say death by treachery, but death nonetheless. He was killed in a brawl in a Deptford tavern. Nine or ten years ago now, it must be. He was only in his thirtieth year. Pa says Dr. Faustus is the greatest play ever written by an Englishman. I wish it were printed.”
“No book of it yet?”
“No,” he said, adding, “How soon we forget greatness!”
“How can you remember the words, then?” I asked.
“I heard them often enough from Pa, who could recount that play word for word. He said he saw it perhaps a dozen times before he lost his eyesight entirely.”
We were tramping across the fields, and I saw the windmills where Mam and my father had rested after that stray arrow from the
bow of the drunken archers.
I asked Scarfe how his father came by his blindness. He seemed not to hear me as he bent to feel the grass for dampness. Satisfied, he laid down his sack and began to root about, bringing forth bread and cheese and a bottle of wine.
“No drinking vessels, I’m afraid,” he said as I sat down beside him. “We’ll take our turns with the bottle.” He grinned at me. “Or are you too young for wine, Miss Ward?”
“I can take a little,” I said, though I’d had it only once or twice, a tiny cupful from Uncle Jack at Christmas.
The red wine was sweet and strong and Scarfe drank deeply, that Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat as he guzzled, then wiped his mouth.
“Pa went blind working for the lawyers at Lincoln’s Inn,” he said. “He was a scrivener for thirty years and one of the best in London. Gave over his life to writing out deeds and indentures, conveyances. All those words on all those pages over all those years. Took away his sight and palsied his right hand.” He took another long draught of wine. “The poor old darling sits at home in the dark now with a useless hand, remembering Marlowe’s lines. Everything gone in service to the laws of the land and the bastards who administer them.”
He broke off pieces of bread and cheese and we ate for a while in silence, watching housewives across the fields laying out laundry for drying in the pallid sunlight.
“My father,” Scarfe said, “has a gift for memory and I suppose I have it too. He can still recall whole speeches from Tamburlaine, The jew of Malta, The Massacre at paris, Faustus, of course, even one or two of Shakespeare’s plays that he liked. Those Henry plays were favourites, especially the ones with the fat rogue.”
“Sir John Falstaff.”
“Sir John, my royal English arse. No more a knight than I am, but yes, that’s the man.”
“Does your mother like the poets too?”
“My mother’s dead. Jumped off London Bridge one night when I was three years old. I’ve only the vaguest memories of the woman. She was never much at home, it seemed.”
“And you live with your father, then?”
“I do,” he said, “and Mr. Parrot. But you were asking about my remembering lines. Pa has such a prodigious memory that he used to win money from the lawyers. He told me how in his younger days he would wager that he could recite word for word a two-page deed or will. And he always won. He was famous around Scriveners’ Hall for his memory. And I myself have inherited the gift. But only with words. Faces and figures defeat me. I am useless near the counter. But words—well, is that not why I am apprenticed to a bookseller? It is the only trade for me. And kindly old Sharples, whom I am ashamed to say I sometimes take advantage of, is a good master. He’s an old friend of Pa’s. But I do filch the odd item. It’s a failing and I admit it.”
“You steal from your master?”
“One has to eat,” said Scarfe, holding up the empty bottle, “and drink, of course. The wages of an apprentice scarcely keep body and soul together. And I chose not to live under his roof. Strictly speaking, that’s forbidden under Guild law, but old Sharples doesn’t mind. I don’t think he wants me in his house. He doesn’t even much like me. He took me on only as a favour to Pa. He gives me a little extra for lodgings, but it seldom goes far enough and I’m bad with money anyway. Parrot is worse—no more than a child is our young Giddy. We’re always in need, it seems. So a book here, a book there. Why, they’re hardly missed.”
“But if your master finds out?”
Scarfe shrugged. “I wrote a play myself once. For my friend Parrot, who sang in the choir at St. Paul’s until his voice changed and they turned him out. No family to speak of, so Pa and I took him in. As you can see, he’s a poor figure with all that bright hair. I often think that in a certain light, his head is on fire. He can’t play a woman’s part, and with that sunken chest and no leg to speak of, he’d cut a poor figure as either hero or villain. So Pa got him a position with Sharples and I wrote this play for him thinking it might get him in the playhouses. I thought he could enact a fool, and so I wrote a comedy about a red-headed fellow who is swindled out of his inheritance by lawyers. Took it to Mr. Henslowe and then to Mr. Burbage, but they threw me out in quick order.”
He was at the sack again and cried out, “Now look here what I’ve found. Another bottle of this horrible stuff. I’d quite forgotten I’d packed it.”
He was soon working the cork out with his teeth while staring across the field at the women setting their laundry on the grass. Scarfe’s jacket was far too small for him, and his skinny wrists protruded from the sleeves; he had taken off his cap now and the hair was falling into his eyes. Looking at him, I decided that if he wanted to kiss me, I would let him. But his mood suddenly darkened. Now and then he passed the bottle to me and I took only sips, as I already felt light-headed.
Then Scarfe said, “You told me you read to your mother when she was dying. Is that true?”
All this time I had forgotten to ask for my book, and I was afraid now that he didn’t have it, yet I didn’t wish to make a fuss. I just wanted to sit there on the grass with him and stay as happy as I was. I told him that it was all true, that I wouldn’t lie about such things.
“It took her half a year to die,” I said, “and I read to her most days. We had to be careful because my aunt was against plays or entertainments of any sort. She couldn’t abide playbooks. Called them the devil’s handiwork. My reading the Dream to Mam was our secret.”
Scarfe frowned. “It seems an odd choice for a dying woman. Those on their last legs usually like psalms and sermons to ease them out of life. Why would your mother want a story about fairies and silly lovers running around the forest? I allow there is drollery in parts, but it’s mostly foolishness.”
I told him that foolishness is sometimes what we are most in need of, and then, as if I had known him all my life, I began to talk about my mother and her strange ways: her store of whimsy and odd beliefs in wood creatures and the spirit world, her pleasure in the company of an old woman who many accounted a witch; I told him of walking with Mam in the woods and how she talked to birds and flowers and didn’t mind if I laughed at her. I spoke of her innocent nature and how she lay in the woods with a young man who couldn’t speak, and for that was exiled to London. But I couldn’t bring myself to tell Scarfe that Mam had met the poet Shakespeare when he was only an apprentice player, and that I was probably conceived not all that far from where we sat. It seemed too outlandish and I feared his disbelief and laughter.
Then, as though reading my very thoughts, he asked, “And how came you into the world, then? Were you born under a toadstool in those woods near your village?”
“No,” I laughed. “Mam returned to Worsley and married a man named Wilkes, who died before I was born.” So Wilkes proved more useful in death than ever he was in life, his character, more malleable now in my imagination, returning in my account not as the rogue he was, but as a poor honest fellow unlucky enough to be kicked by a horse while Mam was carrying me.
Scarfe had nearly finished the second bottle, and again he was at that bag. To my relief he didn’t have another bottle, but drew from it a copy of A Midsummer-Night’s Dream and handed it to me, saying, “Read me something from the forest and the fields. As you say, we often need foolishness in our lives.” With that he lay on his back and closed his eyes. “Something now to put me in good spirit, Miss Ward. Your Mr. Shakespeare has a ready wit when he’s a mind to use it. Read some of the lines he gave the mechanicals. One of them was a weaver, was he not? An idiot, but comical. As I remember, he plays Pyramus, who believes his beloved This be has been devoured by a lion and so decides to join her in death. But he takes his time about it, does he not?”
I was a little heady myself from the wine, and on a whim leaned down and kissed him lightly on the lips. “I’ll do better,” I said. “I’ll play the scene for you as though you were in a playhouse.”
Opening his eyes, he sat up blinking. “Will you now, by Go
d? A performance for me alone here on Finsbury’s grass?”
“Yes,” I said, grasping one of the empty bottles and getting to my feet. “And this will do for Bottom’s dagger.”
“That would serve better as truncheon,” said Scarfe.
“It will have to do. It cannot be a truncheon, for Pyramus cannot hit himself upon the head. He must plunge the dagger into his breast. The scene demands it.”
“Very well, then,” said Scarfe, leaning back on his elbows. “A fat dagger, but yet a dagger. Play on. Let the commotion commence and continue. Declaim, child.”
The wine fumes must surely have been in my head, for I cried loud enough to confound an elderly man who had stopped to watch. Beside him, a small dog began to bark, which seemed apt enough for my foolishness and anyway I didn’t care.
Come, tears, confound!
Out, sword, and wound
The pap of Pyramus;
Ay, that left pap,
Where heart doth hop.
How Scarfe laughed! Beside himself with mirth and perhaps I too had seldom been so happy. I could hear the distant church bells of London on a Sunday morning, and I was with a boy in Finsbury Fields and was making him laugh.
“I love that line,” Scarfe said. “Where heart doth hop. The weaver is an excellent clown.”
“Be quiet,” I said. “I haven’t finished.” The dog was barking frantically now and the old man looked merely baffled. Holding the bottle by its neck, I stabbed myself in the chest.
Thus die I, thus, thus, thus.
Now am I dead;
Now am I fled;
My soul is in the sky:
Tongue, lose thy light!
“A tongue with eyes,” Scarfe cried. “Jesu, I had forgot that.”
“Moon, take thy flight!”
“Away, moon,” said Scarfe.
“Now die, die, die, die, die.”
Staggering back and beating the bottle against my chest, I collapsed finally to the grass while the maddened dog circled us barking. I lay there in laughter and tears, pleased that I had banished Scarfe’s brooding humour, remembering too how Mam had so enjoyed that passage.
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