by Jude Morgan
‘I didn’t love him best. Bartholomew loved him best – straight and honest, according to his bond, not changing his feeling when Father took the stick to him. If Father had taken it to me, do you know what I would have done? I would have withheld my love from him. I would have made him suffer, made him pay. That was my love, Will. All conditions. As long as he let me be wrong, and never tried to make me right…’
‘Don’t weep. Come, hush, don’t.’
‘And now you indulge me as he did.’
‘So I shall always. I’m yours, you see.’
‘He did laugh. It was low and soft, half hidden somehow – like a man feeding scraps to a dog under the table. Oh, I’m yours too, Will. But isn’t it frightening? Love isn’t like anything else. It’s saying, “Here is the secret vein, here is where I bleed.”’
Later they went into her bedchamber. It was full of dancing dust as he undressed her. Some of her tension had eased – or passed to him, perhaps. How complex these garments – the sleeves laced to the gown, the kirtle tied to the bodice, bodice pinned over shift: clothes as a maze. She smiled, white above gartered hose. ‘Believe me, easier to undo than to do.’ Even as her nakedness blinded him, felled him like a stick across the back of the knees, he felt the presence of the house. He was almost inhibited. Light melted from the window, died along the floorboards; cooling timbers gave sudden creaks, loud as slamming doors. They clung and whispered, made love like conspiracy, planting gunpowder.
‘More,’ Edmund croaked.
Will blinked and shuddered.
‘There is no more,’ he said. ‘That’s the end of the story.’
* * *
It’s the butter and eggs that set it off. The smell of the butter especially, but also its yellowness and greasiness and the soft weight of it in the cloth. She sells hers quickly, going below fourpence a pound just to be rid, but it seems to cling to her fingers and she has to swallow hard, again and again, trying to fix her eyes on something still and astringent. But everything in the market looks in sweet, greasy motion. Women’s necks and breasts ripple like buttermilk; and the noise of their voices swirls round the fragile basin of her head.
‘There, Mistress Hathaway, I’m glad there’s someone feels as I do. It is unseasonable warm, is it not? There ought to be that sharp apple-bite in the air by now. Instead I feel, phew, quite smothered.’
Joan Shakespeare clasps her hand. Joan’s presence is tart and refreshing – good: Anne swallows successfully. But then Joan draws her attention to the eggs.
‘A pretty basket there, but they aren’t selling, are they? I think folk mistrust eggs in this weather. An egg may look fair, after all, but what’s inside?’
That does it: thinking of what’s inside. Anne runs retching.
Come, butter, come. The rhyme goes through her head as she finds an alley-corner and leans in, spattering helpless shame. Peter stands at the gate, Waiting for a buttered cake. Recited over the churn to make it turn. Churn, churn. She has never been so sick, unless you count yesterday. Joan waits at a tactful distance.
‘I’m sorry. This is dreadful—’ Impossible, but there’s more.
‘Dreadful for you,’ says Joan, drawing back her skirts. ‘But at least we know what it is now.’
Bent double, Anne gasps and stares and blinks up at the sagely nodding girl.
‘Bless you, don’t try to talk yet. Why, it was when I mentioned eggs, wasn’t it? I’ll lay odds you’ve eaten a bad egg this day. It’s curious how someone has only to say the word, and up it comes. Oh, I beg pardon, I shouldn’t say that.’
‘No, no. Better now…’ Better, but not good, and soon kind, bracing Joan has taken her arm and her weight and is insisting she come to Henley Street and rest. It’s but a step, and she surely cannot go back to Shottery like that; indeed, Joan won’t hear of it …
So now – of all times – she is to see Will’s home, meet his family: to cross over. Oh, it has hung there as a thought, like a bunch of herbs drying in the still-room, eventually to be attended to. But not like this, with her new knowledge. (Thinking of what’s inside.) How does she know? It’s not just the missed courses and the sickness. Somehow an inner voice has said, Yes, a voice she hardly recognises as her own: womanly wisdom, it must be, though Anne has never believed herself liable to such a thing. She can imagine herself old, very easily, but not wise.
And here it is, the house where he was born: her lover. Is that how she should call him? Nothing named, that has been part of the beauty of it. But the time for names is coming. She swallows hard again, crossing the threshold, conscious as a smuggler. Darkly dignified, the house, if a little subdued – likewise the man bowing to her.
‘… so, Father, I said she must come and rest herself here.’
‘Quite right. Mistress Hathaway, you are very welcome.’ Low, deep voice: Will’s eyes, stranded in a grey face. ‘It’s a sickly season, I fear. Pray, take your ease.’
And Anne does feel very welcome: here is the curious thing. Such deliberateness and gravity ought to make you feel awkward. Will’s mother has it too, noiselessly appearing, softly enfolding Anne’s hand in her own, eyes busy. ‘My dear, will you try a cordial?’ When Anne refuses with thanks, there’s no pressing: they let her be. Such a difference from the hospitable racket of Hewlands Farm, where it would be Come, speak out, what’s amiss? Drink it down. Here, she suspects, you can hide your feelings around the edges: none of that hauling into the open space of frankness. Yet she shouldn’t relax: she brings poison to this sober air. They wouldn’t be so kind if they knew, she thinks. She talks of prices at the market, wondering where in God’s name is Will, wondering also whether she really wants to see him just now. Of course she will have to see him soon, now she knows, but that’s different. Everything is different.
Suddenly Will is there. She realises she never hears him enter a room. He is shirt-sleeved, sweat-damp from work.
‘Lord, Will, clothe yourself, for here’s Mistress Hathaway come to us for once, instead of you going forever to Shottery,’ cries Joan.
Ah, so it is spoken of. Their eyes meet: for a moment they are together in the wood.
Then: ‘Mistress Hathaway, your pardon, a moment,’ and he slips away to put on a doublet. And slips away to put on something else, it seems; when he returns, though he is still Will, he is a different version, armoured for pleasantries, with the far pale gaze of a sentry. He maintains it even as he listens to Joan’s unstinting account of Anne’s sickness. The truth seems to Anne like a bird trapped in the room, flapping shrill and unignorable about their heads. But grave, mild, the elder Shakespeares smile on her: gently they protest when her own tension twangs her upright and she says she is well, perfectly well to walk home …
Not to be thought of. She is to ride the mare, and Will is to lead it. Master Shakespeare looks as if a refusal will pain him in some profound rarefied way; she finds herself thinking of defeated royalties, quietly glowing in the shadows of exile. And then of Bartholomew remarking, If a man loses money he should make sure it’s his own.
When they are outside the town Will helps her dismount. She stays in his arms for a moment, then draws away. Speech without touch is necessary, now: another innovation.
She looks down at a tuft of grass. Wonders if she will remember this little wickerwork of green, the dry strand of chickweed, the late five-spot ladybird crawling. ‘Will, I’m going to have a child.’ Of all the ways to put it: as if it is some peaceable decision, like keeping geese.
‘What shall we do?’ he says, after perhaps three breaths, with something of the same neutrality: you might suppose they are going to stroll and have a chat about it.
‘Oh, God,’ she moans, bleats it out, ‘don’t forsake me.’
‘Forsake you, how so? I love you, and I am your servant—’
‘Yes, I think that’s true, but you see you are saying it, and you’re very good at saying things, and there – there’s my fear.’ Having revealed her great naked weakness, she is bold:
no sense in trying to cover yourself with shreds. ‘I don’t mind you inventing, Will. I know you can’t help it. As long as it’s not now, not about this.’ At some point they have moved together, her hands are gently pounding his chest, there is an intention of lips. But no, look at him, fix his eyes.
‘Our child,’ he says. ‘Our life together. This we shall have. What could we desire more?’ He makes a sweeping gesture, as if the question has stirred a little swarm of stinging answers; sweeps them away. ‘Anne, you are the great gain of my life.’
‘And you … that is you…’ The great gain: yes, trust him to find the right words. She holds him, and doesn’t need to say, no one needs to say, that something also has been lost: choice.
* * *
Stabling the mare, Will looked up to see his mother.
‘Mistress Hathaway was better, I hope?’
‘Much better. She sends her kindest thanks and remembrances.’
His mother stroked the mare’s nose. ‘Getting blind, I fancy, poor old creature, though her step is still sure … That sickness goes off, Will, after the first few months.’
Will had the bridle in his hands. He stared at the rosette as if he had never seen anything like it. He should have known.
‘We have spoken of it, Mother.’
‘Who? You mean you and Mistress Hathaway? For you certainly have not spoken of it with us.’
Not harsh, but a new firmness about her. He thought of school, of leaving behind the usher with his gnawed nails and yawning half-attention to their exercises, and moving up to the master. Impressive – but you knew now the questions would be harder: there would be no hiding.
‘I mean to. I’m going to do what’s right, Mother. But I am not being driven there. Neither of us is. We go freely to it.’
‘Your father should hear this, not me alone,’ she said, taking the bridle from him: he saw that he had been twisting, throttling it. ‘You must have his permission, for one thing. It must all be talked of properly, openly. Discussed.’
For a moment he heard that word wrongly: perhaps because of what he saw in her face. Moving away from him, she hung up the bridle. Not quite her son any more, Will said: ‘Never mind Father for the moment, what do you think?’
‘I think as he does, always.’ She shook her head: as if the pupil were not proving promising with these new lessons. At any rate, thought Will, as she left him, soon I shall be new-clothed: I can wrap myself in the cheap grandeur of the parent.
* * *
No, Anne told him when he wanted to come into the farmhouse and speak out now, no and no. ‘Because that would make it seem something you’ve done. Instead of both of us. Go, sweet. I’ll do the first speaking. There, see, I’m playing the shrew-wife already.’ They laughed at that, high and nervously.
Now, indoors, she half repents; wonders, watching Bella at her spinning, whether to tell her first. For Bella is not an unkind woman – unkindness requiring a certain imagination, after all, the ability to picture what will hurt; and most importantly, she is a woman. Yet still it seems unnatural. She and Bartholomew have the rich closeness of rancour.
After supper she follows him to the brew-house, stands watching him as he taps a new keg.
‘What, Anne, turning toper?’
‘Brother, I want to be married.’
‘Hm. Is this a mere general wish, or have you someone in mind?’ He frowns at the ale seething to the jug’s rim; then with a shrug drinks straight from it. ‘You never like my jests.’
‘I thought you’d be pleased.’
‘I am. I think. It’s just the way you land it on a man, as if you want it to slap him down. Is it Will Shakespeare?’ A glance, though their eyes skim away from each other. ‘Dear Lord. Curious business. You know, of course you know, he’s very young. And while he may talk of betrothal and marriage and all, remember a young man’s tongue will run away with him. I can see, I can well see, that you might be flattered. But consider. Consider George Godden, who’s still much taken with you, you know. Think on it, is all I say.’
Now she wishes she had spoken first to Bella, to anybody, rather than say what she has to say to her brother. ‘I don’t – we don’t need to consider, Bartholomew. The match is made up.’
‘Aye, so, but you can still change your mind, Anne—’
‘No, I don’t want to. Also I can’t.’ She finds her voice rising sharply: a mouse scuffles. Bartholomew, setting the jug down, nearly drops it. Ale slops and stinks and Anne tries not to gag, not to put her hand to her belly, not to look at him. ‘I can’t.’
‘Oh, dear God.’ After a moment he bursts out laughing, in a terrible wheezy way, as if someone has punched him in the stomach while telling him a joke. ‘Lord, I’ll be hanged. I’m a blind buzzard. Oh, Father, do you hear this? You’re buried at last, old man, you can rest…’
She turns. ‘It’s true, I never do like your jests.’
‘Wait. Anne. Tell me this – there was naught against your will?’
‘No.’ She feels various kinds of disgust. ‘Hark to this too, Father: this is Bartholomew being the good brother.’
‘I always am. So I thought.’ His face now is cold and stripped. ‘Well, then, there’s not a great deal more to say, is there? It’s not as if you need permission. Not at your age.’
He leaves her to clean up the spilled ale, as if the mess is hers. She fetches the mop.
* * *
Church-time: the best moment for his son and heir to seek audience with John Shakespeare, who – papist, debtor, or just himself – still risks the fines and does not go.
‘Father.’ I seek, I ask, I beg … ‘I want your permission to marry.’
In the churchyard boys, looking like Will ten years ago, clamber about the graves, resisting imprisonment to the last minute. Inside, autumn rheums make ragged the psalm that rises up to the whitewashed walls. A beggar squats in the porch and delicately unwraps his sores, like relics, for inspection; and at home in Henley Street Will bends to stir the fire and tells his father that his chosen bride is pregnant.
His father leaves Will skewered on his sharp-tipped silence for a while – not too long. ‘How old is she? Mistress Hathaway?’
‘Twenty-six. Does it signify?’
‘There. At once you suppose I speak against her. I do not. Richard Hathaway was a good man, an excellent worthy man, and I hear no ill of his heir, nor any of the family—’
‘I don’t intend marrying the family, Father.’
‘No man ever does,’ he says, with a crusty laugh, in which fury may lurk: no telling yet.
‘I’m thinking only of Anne. I love her truly and—’
‘So I should hope. She is fair and gracious. If you were not to do right by such a woman, I should think you deserved whipping for it … Ah, now you’ve spoiled the fire with poking.’ For a moment Will thinks this is some bawdy proverb – but that has never been John Shakespeare’s way. He goes frowning over to the hearth, rubbing his hands. ‘Look. Let the ash lie atop. No, Will, if you had not forced the matter, I would still have thought well of Mistress Hathaway, trust me. But it’s not a matter of her years. It’s yours.’
‘Men have married at eighteen before.’
His father gives the slightest of shrugs. ‘To be sure. Often when folly has pushed them to it and they have no choice.’
‘Often, yes, which means not always, not in every case, and now what else would you have of me, Father? Am I to have your permission or not? After all, if you stand against it, I’m not the one who will suffer.’
‘How you fire up.’ His father smiles aridly. ‘You love the maid and wish to wed her. Who doubts you, Will? Who?’
Will sits down heavily. He meets his father’s look. Knowing that someone sees the worst of you gives a kind of ease. Yes, somehow his father has glimpsed them – those bat-flutterings in the dusk of his thoughts. The idea that he has not designed his future, as a pair of gloves is designed from hide to finish, but has put it ramshackle together from odds
and ends.
One day, Will swears inwardly, he will see the best of me; and wonder.
‘Naturally you must marry,’ his father says. ‘But that’s only the beginning. Does she know what to expect, your condition, estate?’
‘I have created no illusions about myself, Father. That would never do, in this house.’
‘Must you put such hate into it? Perhaps you must…’ Like clandestine love, the enmity issues urgent and passionate while it can. Quite still, gaze level, they pant like wrestlers. ‘Once married, besides, you can never be my apprentice. You’ll have thought of that.’
‘Oh, faith, that was my chief reason for falling in love, what else?’
‘Still you must settle, Will, settle. Hast thought on it? For I won’t say yea if I suspicion you are not in earnest, and will want to skip away once the wedding-clothes are old. Settle and be a husband and father, work hard, plan for the morrow, know the morrow, its very shape and colour. And if you find you don’t care for it, who shall you blame?’ He does not smile, but parts of a smile appear on his face. ‘Not me, not this time, my boy. That’s a luxury you must forswear.’
Will says: ‘I intend that there will be no regrets on either side, Father. Above all, that my wife will never blush for her choice.’ The slightest emphasis on that my. He knows how to distribute the stresses, to produce the most telling effect. The parts of his father’s smile disintegrate.
A brutal bout – but still only a Brummagem dog-fight, the beasts hauled back at last on their chains to have their wounds dressed; not the baited badger Will saw last month, his black and white turned spiky red, undefeated, yet clubbed to death at the dull end.
And while the shape of a new generation is hacked out in Henley Street, in the church the congregation cough and shuffle and submit themselves to the sermon. The question of sin is posed in the vicar’s odd, high, niggling voice; to some there it sounds like a wife or a master complaining from the kitchen, urging that something drearily necessary must be done. Others, perhaps, hear it hardly at all, are busy missing the wall-paintings, the crucifix where the royal coat of arms hangs, wishing the jawing priest could float above them in a swirl of vestments. Perhaps: a lot of faith is habit, and even the deepest thoughts are easily scattered, by a twinge of sciatica, by the cry of a crow from the churchyard, incredibly loud, full of sulphur.