“The world will end on 21st December? The winter solstice. The midwinter night.”
“Exactly. So we have ...”
“... six months,” Will finished the sentence. He closed the book, but held it in front of himself, pensively.
“Here, check this out,” Leon said, taking down a copy of The Complete Works Of William Shakespeare. He passed the hefty volume to Will. “It contains all your plays. Well, all the plays we know of. There may be some missing. You can tell me!”
“My scripts. All my scripts in one folio? And still read four hundred years hence?”
Will opened the book delicately. “King Henry V. Anthony and Cleopatra. All’s Well That Ends Well. My sonnets! Thou hast my life’s work, my life, in one folio.”
“Will, you are one of the most studied and researched people who has ever lived. Everyone studies your plays at school. Thousands of people study and research your work at university. Actually you were recently voted the greatest Englishman ever in a poll.”
Will sat down on the coffee table and closed the book. He ran his hand back across his head, smoothing his hair. Two cats ran into the lounge, purring. Leon picked one up and cuddled it close to his chest. “Mamillius! And how was your day good buddy?” He waggled one of the cat’s paws towards Will. “I would like you to meet the famous William Shakespeare. Will, this is my charming and ever loyal feline friend Mamillius. That other one is Dita. She belongs to my charming and ever loyal girlfriend Hermione.” Leon put Mamillius down. “Off you go! Go and play, Mamillius!”
Will didn’t seem to have heard what Leon had just said. “Greatest Englishman ever? But I am not a king. Greater than Richard III? Henry VIII? How can this be?”
“Probably because you’re everywhere. People quote you all the time. Many lines from your plays have entered our normal language. You are perpetually influential.”
Will looked perplexed. “Dost thou have strong ale?”
Chapter 15
Leon heard the front door of the flat open and close. A voice called from the hall. “Lysander! Oh Lysander! Wherefore art thou my hunky Lysander?” Hermione entered the lounge carrying and stroking Dita.
“Oh, hi!,” she said jovially to Will, “I’m Hermione. I didn’t realise we had a guest staying over tonight.”
Will leaped to his feet. Hermione looked Will over from top to bottom with a slight grimace, then offered her hand to him for a handshake. Will lifted and kissed Hermione’s hand. “Hello.” Hermione, startled, lowered and took back her hand, struggling to disguise her distaste.
Leon sprung between them. “Hermione! Sorry, I forgot to mention this to you.” Leon quickly debated whether to create a plausible story about Will’s presence, and outfit, then decided not to. Hermione knew when he was lying, and he was sure she’d be open-minded to what he was going to reveal. “I bumped into my old mate coming home tonight. This ... this is ...” Leon gestured towards the sofa. “Hermione, have a seat please. I’ve got some news for you.”
Hermione sat down on the sofa and leaned back into the cushions. Leon perched himself on the sofa’s edge.
“Do you remember we were talking earlier about the collective unconscious?” Leon asked.
“Yes ...” Hermione replied, intrigued.
“Well, you were mostly talking,” Leon asserted, “Quite fervently, if I may say so.”
“Yes …”
Leon racked himself for a persuasive way to approach the topic. “Well, do you think humans, people, many people, thinking, dreaming, together, locked into the same consciousness, could achieve something weird, miraculous?”
“Have you been talking with those churchy folk again sweetie?” Hermione said teasingly.
“No. No, I haven’t,” Leon replied firmly. “But do you think we could?”
“What? Can people collectively do something unconsciously? Sure, certainly. Anything is possible. But what are you waffling on about now sweetie Lysander?” She reached out and stroked his cheek.
“Anything?” probed Leon, grinning.
“Oh, well, the only limits are the limits of our imaginations,” Hermione said philosophically.
Leon’s tone dropped to become more serious. “What about … something like, say … reincarnation …?”
“Reincarnation! Wow! Well, I believe it’s real. But where are you going with this? Can people resurrect someone with their minds you mean?”
Leon studied Hermione’s face to gauge her reaction to his prompting. “Maybe. And what about, say, time travel? Or, what about, hmmm, what about, say, time kidnapping?” He realized he lingered a little too long on the word ‘kidnapping’.
“I don’t get you,” Hermione replied flatly.
She wasn’t biting the bait. It was time to attempt another approach, Leon thought. “How many productions of A Midsummer Night’s Dream were there in London tonight?”
“52.”
“And across the UK?”
“260.”
“That’s a lot of people sharing a collective Shakespearean consciousness innit?”
Leon was pleased to see Hermione brighten up. “It certainly means something,” she asserted vaguely. “The Mayans had 260 days in their calendar, and 52 weeks in their year. Tonight meant something. I’d love to know what. It was way more than a coincidence, way more than synchronicity. Something special, something cosmically special was going on tonight. I felt –”
“Exactly!” Leon yelped excitedly. “Exactly! Hermione, listen to me.” He took Hermione’s hand. “I need you to keep a secret. Can you keep a secret?”
“Leon, you know I can. What’s going on, babes?”
“Hermione, I’d like you to meet ...” Leon deliberately made a show of taking a deep breath. “I’d like to introduce you to ...” He took another gulp of air. “Hermione, this … this ... this is William Shakespeare.”
He waited for a moment to monitor Hermione’s reaction. She stared at Leon as if he’d said something in Klingon. “I met him, well, found him, outside St Helen’s church on Bishopsgate tonight after the play.”
“What?” Hermione demanded with a rising, agitated tone.
“Shakespeare, Will, has been brought to 2012 from 1612,” Leon blurted out in too much of a hurry. “Tonight, during the plays, by our cosmic consciousness.”
Hermione stood up. “What?” she cried defensively. She looked pleadingly at Leon. “Oh Leon! Don’t mock me! Don’t ridicule me!” She sounded hurt. “You know I hate people laughing at me.”
Leon was shocked by her response. “Hermione, baby, I’m n-“
Will cut Leon short. Sincerely looking straight into Hermione’s eyes he avowed with soulful gravitas:
“Hermione, fairest Hermione,
For Helen out of Troy’s one daughter named;
Thou art too sweet for mocking, laughing’s shamed.
I am here William Shakespeare on this date.
Thy Leon jesteth not. The truth he states.
I know’st not how I camest, what shipless mast.
I know’st not what hath happed, what spell was cast.
Awoke this morning I in 1612.
To sleep this evening lie in 2012.
Yet I am here, tonight, under thy roof.
By God and King James, swear’st this is the truth.”
Leon could tell that Hermione had become profoundly submerged within Will’s entrancing spell just as he had been earlier. Hermione’s mouth fell open. She looked from Will’s potent, charismatic earnestness to Leon’s eager expectation, then back to Will, then back to Leon.
“I ... Wh ... Will- Shak- ... ”
She composed herself with a deep breath. “This is … incredible! I knew something strange was up tonight! I felt it!”
“Hermione, listen,” Leon said urgently taking hold of her hands. “You were right all along. It’s unbelievable, it’s miraculous. But listen, you can’t tell anybody. We need to figure out what the hell is going on and what it means.”
Next morning, Leon lay on his back in bed, watching the dust motes floating in the sunlight filtering through the crack in the curtains. It was going to be a warm day. What on earth was he going to do about the legendary playwright in the room next door? Shakespeare would be fundamentally confused by practically everything about modern London. Seeing something familiar could help orientate him. But what had not changed in London between 1612 and 2012? The old London Bridge had fallen down, everyone knew that from the nursery rhyme. Leon struggled to think of anything beyond the Tower of London. He had a basic grasp of English history, but he didn’t know when the current Houses of Parliament were built. Was it after Guy Fawkes’s failed attempt to blow up Parliament? When was that anyway? Before Shakespeare had died … in 1616. Best not mention that, Leon decided. What if Will asked about his death? Leon would tell him he didn’t know, and that Will should try to not find out, better to avoid any mind-melting space-time continuum dilemmas.
Will would need constant babysitting to begin with. Leon even had to demonstrate to Will how the toilet and sink in the bathroom worked. He left explaining how the shower worked to later, although Will clearly needed a long soak in a soapy bath. Leon had given Will an old Star Wars T-shirt, a pair of socks, boxer shorts, a sweater and pair of tracksuit bottoms. Hermione and Leon had set up a kitchen production line and Will had devoured nearly a loaf of toasted bread, some with peanut butter, some with jam, some with cheese, some with ham, all of which he had crammed noisily and gluttonously into his mouth, washing it down with four cans of lager, burping copiously. His appetite, it seemed, was greater than his shock. Once he was sated he seemed to accept his new situation remarkably stoically, asking question after question about each object in the flat. Late into the night, Leon had directed Will to the sparsely furnished box room with a mattress on the floor which functioned as a guestroom for the occasional person too drunk to make it home across London after a big night out in Hackney.
Will would also need patient, reassuring explanations of how the modern world was structured and worked. Countries were different, the United Kingdom didn’t even exist in 1612. The Pilgrim Fathers hadn’t sailed to America yet. Australia hadn’t been discovered. There were no trains or planes. Will would be blindly ignorant of vast swathes of commonly taken-for-granted knowledge of science, geography, history, medicine, technology. Perhaps he wouldn’t know what science was, his medical knowledge may involve applying leeches and blood-letting. He would have to start in primary school for these subjects. Society’s attitudes would be radically different to his. The UK had no capital punishment, and no stocks. There was no hunting, nor dog-fighting, nor bear-baiting. Yet Will was a poet. Leon had a strong belief that once Will had adjusted to his new surroundings, he could tap into it for inspiration, he could, perhaps, see the truth in the modern world.
Leon heard some movement from the room he had parked Will in, and he quickly stepped out of bed. He knocked on the door to Will’s room. “Will? You awake?” he asked softly.
The door opened. An overwhelmingly pungent odour flooded forth from the room causing Leon to wince and almost step back. Will stood behind the door, wearing Leon’s boxer shorts, but his own grubby shirt hanging open over his ample and stained stomach. His hair was tangled. Leon noticed Will’s goatee beard was unevenly trimmed, and he had dark blotches on his forehead and neck. His face was much chubbier than in the few, familiar Shakespeare images, but with his bald patch on top and shoulder length hair at the sides and back, he had an unmistakable Shakespearean look to him. He didn’t precisely resemble the frontispiece Leon knew from the cover of the First Folio, but there was enough of a similarity to create a double-take. To blend in, Will needed a haircut, and to either lose the goatee or go for a full beard.
“Good morrow my liege,” said Will chirpily.
“Good morning, Will. Did you sleep ok?”
“Oh yes. It is a fine bed, so soft, like lying on cloud. I’m hungry.”
After preparing, serving and watching him messily devour breakfast where he insisted on drinking beer instead of tea or coffee, neither of which he had heard of nor liked the smell of, Hermione ran a bath for Will. She liberally poured in a generous dollop of bath oils into the water. Leon laid out a new razor, a canister of shaving foam, a flannel, a pumice stone, and two thick towels around the side of the bath.
“Time to get you shipshape for your first day out in London,” Leon told Will. “A good scrub, a shave, a haircut, some of my clothes, and we’ll have you looking like a pukka east Londoner in no time mate.”
“A bath in June?” Will asked. “How odd.”
“In June? What do you mean?”
“I usually have my bath at Christmas.”
Just once a year? “Nice. These days we bathe or shower every day.”
“Every day!” Will blurted incredulously. “That must be why you smell so odd. And your home.”
Hermione laughed at the unintentional cuss. Leon showed Will how to apply the shaving foam and how to use the razor. Will observed and nodded thoughtfully. Leon and Hermione left him to it.
An hour later Will was back sitting at the kitchen table with Hermione. He had shaved and trimmed his goatee, and was wearing a pair of Leon’s shorts. Leon couldn’t resist giving Will his baggy and faded old Back to the Future T-shirt. Will was reading a copy of a book about Mayan prophecies for 2012 that Hermione had been chatting with him about. He had worked through nearly an entire packet of chocolate Hob Nobs, and had polished off the last of Leon’s beers.
“Very dapper mate,” Leon commented on entering the kitchen.
“Dapper?” Will asked wiping the crumbs of his lips and licking his fingers.
“Your clothes. They look very cool, very stylish.”
Will pinched a slither of the T-shirt between two fingers. “Your attire almost fits, but I feel I must look a motley fool. But I suppose every player needs a costume.”
“Trust me. You’ll be able to walk around unnoticed wearing those. The shave worked too. You’ll be just a regular guy on the street after one more little treatment.” Leon brandished his hair trimmer. Will looked perplexed at the gadget. “These days blokes with no hair on top,” Leon tapped his crown, “usually shave it all off from the sides and back too. A shaved head and goatee is actually quite a cool look.”
“You desire to cut my locks?” Will asked running his hand through his hair.
“I need to, to complete your disguise. Not even the craziest haircuts down Shoreditch are that crazy. Baldies aren’t allowed locks these days, I’m afraid.”
Will flicked his hair. “But the ladies at court like to stroke and fondle it.” This piqued Leon’s curiosity. Shakespeare’s ladies? At court? Now there was golden gossip waiting to be shared. “But do as you must,” Will continued.
Hermione directed Will to sit on a stool in the centre of the kitchen. She used a number 3 on the razor, leaving Will with dark, speckled, stubby hair all over. His new look was complete. “Perfect,” Hermione stepped back and praised her handiwork. She stood before Will and lifted a mirror so he could see himself. “I present to thee, Mister William Shakespeare Esquire, a modern man of the twenty-first century. London 2012 is now thine to explore.”
Will ran his hands over his head, slowly passing them over the coarse remains of his follicles. “My head! So rough.”
“So rough indeed,” Leon said, referring to Will’s fearsome skinhead. He looked like a bouncer, or an aging cage fighter. Nobody in Hackney was going to challenge Will unless they were particularly brave or confident, which Leon considered to be an extra bonus alongside blending in.
“Right,” said Leon decisively, “it’s time for the real school for Shakespeare to open. And less of Hermione’s cosmic woo-woo lessons.”
“Cheeky bugger!” Hermione said, giving him a gentle slap on the arm. “You’ll pay for that!”
Leon took a Gall-Peters projection map of the world off the wall
and laid it on the table. He pointed out England, and explained the make-up of the United Kingdom. He pointed to Europe and listed some of the key countries. He pointed to the USA, then Mexico, and worked down through central America, South America, then across to Australia, and up through Asia and across to Africa.
“This is a map of the whole world?,” Will asked. “It is flat.”
“No, no, the world is round. Like this orange,” Leon picked up an orange from the bowl on the table. “This map is flat, just to make it easy to use.”
“America, Africa, Asia, Australia, a a a a.” Will followed Leon’s fingers across the map. “Who is the king of England now?” Will asked looking up.
“Queen actually. Queen Elizabeth.”
Will leaped up off the stool like he’d been electrocuted. “Elizabeth! My queen lives?!” he roared loudly, his eyes wide, his hands raised to his cheeks.
Leon was taken aback by Will’s sudden leap and scream, but he stayed seated. “No,” he said calmly. “Queen Elizabeth the second. She’s been queen for fifty years now.”
“Another queen Elizabeth?” Will said quietly. His eyes fell and his hands lowered. He sat down and shook his head. He rested his elbows on the table then put his head into his hands. “I’m adrift.”
Leon looked at the man sitting opposite him, unsure how to respond. He sympathised, but didn’t know how he should comfort and reassure Will. There were centuries of social norms between them. There was a silence between them. Leon reached out and put his arm around Will’s shoulders. “But still floating,” he said. He squeezed Will’s shoulder. “With me. It’s ok. I want to help you.”
Will looked up, staring savagely into Leon’s eyes. He looked angry. Leon thought he’d broken 17th century etiquette. The look faded into fear, then resignation.
“I need a foundation stone in this new London,” Will announced firmly after a silence had settled between them. “Does my Globe still stand?”
Chapter 17
Tony Jones didn’t hear Rob Emerald trailing behind John Venison’s determined stomp along the corridor to his office. Tony did, though, get a fright when Venison suddenly opened the door without knocking. “Tony, we’d like a word.”
“Wow! Sorry? Yeah, of course,” Tony replied nervously, grabbing his earphones out with his right hand and deftly pressing ALT+TAB on his computer keyboard with his left hand to switch the open window on his screen from YouTube to a spreadsheet. Tony assumed trouble. Neither Venison nor Emerald had ever come to his office before. Tony had always been summoned to one of theirs.
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