by Ros Barber
Your silence closes like a coffin lid.
The fire spits something burning at my feet;
you stamp it out.
‘So there’s no hope for me?’
‘All hope is in our current plan,’ you say.
‘The plan to keep you writing, and alive.’
‘But no one knows it’s me.’
‘That is the point!’
Infuriation shoots you to your feet
and you settle, swaying, plant yourself more solid
before you say, ‘You have to live with it.’
‘What if I can’t?’ I watch you steadily.
Your eyes are focused on the fire whose light
flares up in them.
‘Then you will die for it.
And I will swing beside you.’
Dearest friend,
I wondered then if it was me or you
that you feared most for. I’d not have you dead
through any fault of mine. Should death weigh hard,
I’ll take my life alone, in privacy.
I felt that night you had abandoned me.
Forgive me, then, if I abandoned you.
HAL
Deserts stay rainless year on chafing year.
Then glutted with months of water in a night
they bloom, their hidden sand-beleaguered seeds
seeming to conjure flowers out of air
in sudden, excessive beauty. My blessings too
fell fast and all at once.
Coming downstairs
from supper with you, into the banquet hall
they clear now for a dance, I glimpse his hair
and the glowing face of the girl he’s talking to.
You notice I’ve stopped, and must retrace three steps
to hiss at me, ‘Don’t stare.’ My feet are stuck,
so thank you for the words. They are a jolt.
‘Your obsession with that boy’s insufferable.’
Your eyes are angry, and your mouth’s a wound.
Insufferable is right. I too have wished
his beauty didn’t draw me like a sword
I cannot wield, which cuts me constantly.
And yet I’m drawn. As I reach his side, you’ve gone,
slipping away as thieves do in a crowd,
unwilling to make believe. This is a move
too dangerous for you.
‘Monsieur Le Doux!’
I’m beckoned close to meet the youth I know
too well, and not at all. ‘Young Henry Wriothesley,
the Earl of Southampton. Meet Louis Le Doux.’
Sir John’s a little drunk. Southampton turns
and a ripple passes through him. So intent
does his gaze become, the girl is melted free
from his company as wax from flame. ‘Le Doux?’
Cracking his voice, a hint of broken boy.
‘I believe I met your wife some weeks ago.’
His lips smile playfully. ‘At the theatre.’
‘At a public playhouse? Surely not!’ Sir John
puffs stiffly.
Southampton soothes our host: ‘Sir John,
the Queen herself brings those same plays to Court
as highly suitable for men and women
of the finest breeding.’ And to me, ‘Was it
your wife?’ The boy must play. All his delight
is focused on how I’ll answer him.
Breathe in,
exhale. ‘My lord, forgive me, but I fear
you must be mistaken, for I am not married.’
He can’t resist. ‘Perhaps it was your sister?
Now I think of it, there was a likeness there …’
‘My mistress, perhaps,’ I say.
‘Too many dogs!’
Sir John barks, shocking us silent till we see
he’s waving his arms at servants, and the hounds
marauding beneath the table. ‘Get them out!’
and he stamps away.
The laugh is a relief,
and the absence of his ears a blessing too.
‘Kit, how are you?’
‘Le Doux!’ I say, alarmed.
‘My lord, though I would have it otherwise,
we’re not alone.’ As if to make my point
young Rutland brushes past us with his arm
on the waist of Lucy Harington. The room
is light with Christmas, crammed with gentlemen,
their wives and sisters. Yet between we two
the air is close and intimate.
‘“My lord”?
Surely the time has come to call me Hal.
I loved your poems. The second was very dark,
but the story clear. You are the nightingale,
singing of your destruction. Have a glass
of wine.’
He puts his own into my hand,
and takes another from a passing tray.
The spot where his lips have kissed the sheen away,
he turns towards my own. ‘You need a drink
to warm you through.’
‘My lord, it isn’t safe,’
I say. ‘The tongue behaves like an unschooled child
when doused in wine or ale. I am the proof.’
‘The smallest sip,’ he says. ‘The smallest sip.’
So, yes, I press my lips where his have been
and taste a draught of his intoxicant.
He smiles at me. ‘So many things aren’t safe,
yet pleasurable. Come to my chamber, then.
But you shan’t enter till you call me Hal.’
‘And may another know this Hal?’
It’s Ide,
all bosoms in her dress, or largely out,
and lips as wide as the Thames at Deptford Strand.
‘The Earl of Southampton. Ide du Vault,’ I say,
and watch her almost spill out of her dress
as she curtsies deeply. ‘Please forgive me, sir.
I’m French. And may be “tipsy”, that’s the word?’
For a moment, he is fazed, as if his wit
were wiped by the candid beauty of her face,
erased by her perfection. ‘Miss du Vault,
you are forgiven.’ Lifting up her chin
to fall into the disaster of her eyes.
It’s clear at once: he’s struck. Her look alone
transforms reluctant boy to aching man,
turns Ganymede to Zeus. One glimpse of her
could pull the moon to hang before her face,
abandoning its celestial course to stare
lovingly into her oblivion.
She senses instantly her hook is in,
and takes my arm to sink it deeper. ‘My
Monsieur Le Doux has mentioned you before.’
‘I don’t recall,’ I say. She says, ‘Of course.
You were asleep.
He will talk in his sleep,’
she says to my lovely boy, all matter-of-fact,
as though she hasn’t strung me from her keel
as she ploughs her way towards him.
‘Is that so?’
Southampton eyes me archly. ‘Walls are thin
in the tutors’ quarters?’
‘Thinner than the wing
of a butterfly,’ she says, so prettily
that I forgive her everything. ‘But I
can keep a secret. If I have my Will.’
I swear the woman spoke in capitals.
Her meaning landed there upon his face
in a look of intrigue. ‘Then you must come too.’
‘Must come? To what?’ All wine and innocence.
‘To a private party hosted in my rooms
just after midnight.’
‘What – with only men?
You have mistaken me for someone else,
Monsieur my lord.’ But hangs there like a fly.
A dazzling fly, all emerald and la
ce.
And when, for a moment, she has turned her face,
he grabs my arm: ‘And you must come at ten.’
YOUR FOOL
I find you waiting in my room, your face
an accusation.
‘What? Two years alone
and I should stay a hermit? Never trust
another living soul apart from you?
You think that after all these friendless months,
just one should be enough? You’re going away.
You said so.’
‘Kit—’
‘I have lost everything!
My reputation. Work. The very name
my parents had me blessed with at the font
is flushed like so much turd into the ditch.
Am I to sit here cloistered like a monk?
What’s left to nourish me that I should pass
on this sudden feast of friendship?’
‘Kit, you’re drunk.’
The disappointment sinks you to my bed.
‘What if I am? What is the bastard point
of sobriety?’ You flinch. ‘And it’s not wine.
I’m drunk on the rush of feeling loved again.
And if it’s fleeting, all the more reason why
I should have my fill of it.’ What’s in your eyes
is sobering, however, and it brings
me to my knees in front of you: the boards
as hard and cold as penitence. ‘My fill.
Yet you would be enough for me, I swear,
if you would make a promise …’
‘Kit, the girl.’
‘The girl?’
‘The dark-skinned girl. Hung off your arm.’
The supplicant’s position I am in
has weakened me, and chafed against your mood.
I stand, brush off my knees.
‘Who is she, Kit?
I’ve never seen a woman look so knowing.
What have you shared with her? And who is she?’
I stalk across to the window.
‘Jesus’ balls!
What have I shared? Who is she? Tom, a wife
would ask less prying questions. She has been
my comfort, is all.’
‘You cannot be familiar,’
you say, ‘with anyone. What does she know?’
I bite my lip.
‘She knows I am not French.’
Your eyes say idiot.
‘What could I do?
She’s French! She knows a Frenchman from a nail.’
You punch the bed, send up a cloud of dust –
both your dead skin and mine launched into air –
then stand, your hands in fists, as though you might
punch me for satisfaction.
Dearest friend,
forgive me, that I keep our argument
fresh in my head as new earth on a grave.
Had you not left, I would have more to save,
but can’t discard this moment, or its pain.
‘There’s quicker forms of suicide,’ you say.
‘And ones that don’t put friends’ necks in the noose.’
People are leaving. Carriages outside
rattle towards the gatehouse.
‘Tom—’
‘And worse
you’ve let Southampton in on it.’
‘That’s not
my fault! I met him at the theatre.’
Your eyes roll to the panelling above
as if you hope for God to intervene
and bring the ceiling down. I’d been so ill,
I want to say, if you had seen me thin
you’d take me to the theatre yourself –
for all the risk – to let some life back in.
‘Your obsession with the earl cannot protect
you from his fickleness. You are his pet.
And now his thrilling secret. But be sure
the moment he sniffs disaster, he will shrug
you off like last year’s codpiece.’
And the rest,
the comparison with you, you leave unsaid.
Your loyalty thickens in my heart, like glue.
‘You’ve lain with him?’
‘Never!’
‘But you’ve lain with her.’
I cannot lie to you; you read the Yes
in my dumb response. And like a beleaguered boat,
you half set sail, then lurch back to my dock,
quietly sinking.
‘Tom. This all stops here.
I promise. But be with me.’ I pull you close.
At first you are a sack of wheat; your arms
hung loosely at your side. But then your breath
responds to my kisses, and the huge machine
of mutual longing slides us into bed.
THE AUTHORS OF SHAKESPEARE
You cannot know how often I replay
our conversations in my head. Your voice
inhabits the space where friendship used to be,
which rattles less when I rehearse these scenes,
tell them like bedtime stories, tell them fresh
for ears beyond our own, should one day this
sad tome of cipher meet posterity.
I see us clearly: pillowed in our sweat,
recovering our breath and sanity
in the gentle flicker of fire and candlelight;
coverlet kicked to the floor, a trail of clothes
like offerings to the god of sodomy.
What livens our bed-talk is the threat of death;
the scythe of its humour cutting me my lines.
‘You said you would not have me here, and yet,
I do perceive you’ve had me thoroughly.’
Though serious, your smile’s no more contained
than a rabbit captured in an open sack,
and yet you say,
‘I would not have you here.
My Kit—’ Your hand, a blessing on my cheek,
removed. ‘I swear to God, you are not safe.
The public are sheep and fall for any lie,
but private rumours circulate amongst
the curious and literate in town.
A lawyer playwright told me in faith last week
that William Shakespeare’s not a real name.’
‘He’s a real man!’
‘But not that can be seen.
He comes to London only twice a year.
Picks up a play from Bacon, drops it off,
collects his cash. He is invisible.
To all intents and purposes, not here.
The masses are none the wiser, but the cream
of literate society suspects
the name’s a front for someone else.’
‘For me?’
‘For Bacon. Or the Earl of Oxford.’
‘What?’
‘Don’t be offended, Kit! You had a death
more documented than most royalty.
The lewder gossips spin it off in yarns
you could strangle cats with. Since you’re loudly dead,
the suspects are the living.’
‘Oxford, though.
The man’s a nincompoop. He churns out verse
fit only for lighting fires.’
‘It could be worse.’
‘How so?’
‘They could be gossiping it’s you.
The clues you keep leaving, Kit, for pity’s sake.
As if your style itself weren’t badge enough
for your friends to work it out. Your enemies
must be gifted nothing. Non licit exigius.
Let them chase shadows. Let them not chase Kit.’
These words float from that bed across the years.
And thus, the Turnip kept my greatest prize
and earned for his silence more than I was paid
for my verbosity. That a man discreet
as a bolted door, by nature taciturn,
/> should be rewarded handsomely to keep
counsel, is like a housecat crowned a king
for being good at sleep. And yet I knew
he could be trusted not to puff and crow –
and never claim he wrote them: only show
his face, and not his handwriting for then
he’d show he was a stranger to the pen
and risk his death as well as mine. So. So.
‘Let them chase shadows. Let them not chase Kit.’
Writing these words I sense the tenderness
your staunch good sense kept from me. Finding my fist
resting against my lips, I kiss that flesh
lightly, as if to say, again, goodbye.
MR DISORDER
‘Who are you watching?’
You, in winter garb,
mounting a chestnut mare, exchanging talk
with our host in a cloud of breath.
‘It’s just the hunt.’
I came down to the east wing’s sitting room
for a panorama of your exit scene
through its windows’ tall, wide-open eyes. Ignoring
my mistress installed in a chair, and quietly sewing.
Lucille is clipped. ‘I have been hunting you.
Three days you’ve avoided me.’