Willie tried to get his thoughts together. It seemed like easy cash, but even high on shrooms, he suspected it was a bad idea. He should probably, to quote Nancy Reagan, just say no. “I don’t need the money.”
“Everybody needs money. Plus you’ll be at the Ren Faire, dude. You’ll probably get laid.”
Willie felt a little jump in his pants. His heartbeat quickened again, and as it did he felt another wave of the mushroom high. Todd was looking at him with a devilish grin, the cold starlight giving his face a ghastly cast. Todd was right. He probably would get laid at the Faire. He’d been to a Renaissance Faire once before, near L.A., a few months ago — May, was it? — and he’d gotten lucky, way lucky. Jesus, he’d fantasized about it dozens of times since. There was this game, Drench-a-Wench, that involved sling-shooting a wet sponge at an array of wanton maids sitting on a little bleacher of hay bales. If you hit one, you got a kiss. He’d wondered how long that game could possibly last with a new STD being discovered every day. Just for fun, he’d played. He hit a buxom bleach-blonde, and she gave him a good if too-professional kiss. He turned around to go, and there was another girl watching him — was her name Joan? Juliet? — something Renaissancey that was at odds with her exotic looks. Some sort of Asian or maybe island blend: tall; long wavy black hair; slim hips.
“Truly, I am shocked, sir. Paying for thy kisses when thou couldst surely get them free.” He suspected she was just a paid Faire shill playing street theater with him, but when he moved toward her ever so slightly, smiled, and said, “Verily a fool and peasant knave am I,” she swooped right into his arms and took his lips into hers in a passionate yet light-touched French kiss, running her hands through the thick curls of hair around his shoulders.
“Mmm,” she said dreamily, “I never do that.”
“What, kiss a man?”
“No, kiss a stranger.”
Half an hour and a couple of cold pints of ale later, he was on a blanket in the woods behind the jewelry booth where she worked, deep inside what was surely the caelestissime strictus cunnus caelorum. She was still wearing her Faire costume, skirts hiked up around her waist, one small breast peeking from her bodice, almond eyes closed, murmuring things that weren’t quite audible but, Willie was certain, were not G-rated.
Now, as Willie sat cross-legged on the foothills of the Santa Cruz mountains, tripping on mushrooms and reliving that searing sweetness in his loins, a strange thing happened. To say he thought deeply about Shakespeare, or felt a sudden empathy with the Bard, doesn’t describe it. It was more than that: a synapse somewhere fired across a virginal neuron, and for a brief instant, he could feel a coolness on the back of his already thinning pate, his black locks brushing against his face as he thrust in and out of that heavenly, glovelike cunt, zounds and marry, a triumph of a cunt —
And then, in a flash, as quickly as the vision came it went.
“Jesus!” Willie said with a sudden shudder that came, not from the cold, but from somewhere inside.
He still sat cross-legged, looking at the glowing blue mushroom atop its excremental altar. It looked entirely alien to him, and a little scary. The hallucination, if that’s what it was, freaked him out. He felt sudden tension in his shoulders and his back, the feeling of a good trip about to turn bad.
“So what do you say?” Todd asked.
“No,” Willie said vaguely. “No, I’ve really got to work on my thesis this weekend. I’m not a dealer. I’m not into breaking the law.”
“Dude,” said Todd. “You’re already breaking the law. Sometimes the law sucks. You gotta stand up for your right.”
Willie stood up, but it was only to walk away.
Chapter Six
As the social and religious climate in England changed, so did its theater. For centuries, “mystery plays” based on scenes from the Bible were acted at holiday festivals throughout the year, and were also favorites in the inn yards. But Protestant doctrine banned these plays as superstitious and idolatrous, and that left a void needing to be filled. Enter William Shakespeare, with his towering intellect, vigorous style, masterful technique, and his love of classical forms.
“Jesus!” William Shakespeare cried, his hose around his ankles, as he spent himself in the heaven that lay twixt the thighs of Isabella Burns.
“And Sweet Mary, and the Holy Ghost,” Isabella gasped.
William heard a “Ho! William!” from the distance.
“Anon, anon!” he called. “I come!” Isabella, the middle daughter of Anthony Burns of High Street, giggled and grabbed at his ass as he leapt up. He hesitated for a moment at leaving behind her dark, exotic eyes, her olive skin, and . . . what lay below. But then he kissed her quickly and, still pulling up his hose, ran out of the shadows of a small clearing in the forest of Arden and through the brush to a much larger clearing nearby.
William emerged to find five men waiting for him next to a rough-hewn platform that had been erected as a rehearsal stage. A small pine tree hung over the back corner of the platform, and there were several fallen logs arranged as primitive seating. Lanterns fought the early arriving gloom of autumn in Stratford; although William had rushed to the wood after his encounter with the horseman to meet Isabella, it was already nearly dark.
Davy Jones, wearing the traditional green hose and leather jerkin of Robin Hood, stood surrounded by his own merry band of brothers. William’s friend Arthur Cawdrey gestured apologetically toward William. “Ah, see? He comes.”
“Indeed he did,” snickered Richard Tyler, two years younger than William. “In the bush, I’ll warrant.”
Isabella Burns emerged flush from the wood, giggling. “Go thy ways, boys, with thy play!” she said, clearly enjoying their shock, and went laughing and skipping back toward Stratford.
The other men looked at William, who shrugged. “Whatever wisdom may say, I deem one in the bush worth more than two in the hand.”
William picked up his cup amidst the ensuing laughter, and held it forth to Arthur Cawdrey, vintner of the Angel, the fifth-best tavern in Stratford and one of the worst in Warwickshire, who filled it for him.
As Arthur poured, he quietly lectured. “You’d best temper your husbandry, William, lest you nip the bud ere the bush is full grown.” Isabella Burns, at sixteen, was two years younger than William.
William responded, “Do we not, at harvesttime, pluck the fruit before the rude jaybird pierces it? A young bush grows to fullness only by regular husbandry. In fact, this bush, as I gleaned by a noted lack of bud, has been tended by other gardeners. She was deflowered ere I nipped her.”
“What a university of wits I have about me,” interrupted Davy Jones. “A witty libertine Latin tutor, a half-witty ill-dressed tailor, a drunken vintner, a one-eared Jesuit, and an addlepated apothecary. An unlikelier band of Merry Men never was.”
Davy Jones leapt up onto the rustic platform. “May we continue?”
“How may we continue when we’ve not yet begun?” asked William.
“Ay, Davy. What parts are we to play?” asked Richard Tyler, who wore a dress. At sixteen he was the youngest of the troupe, and had no beard. He was apprenticed to a tailor and had joined the troupe with the promise that he could play the ingenue and make all the costumes.
“And in what play?” asked George Cawdry. George was Arthur’s younger brother; he had just returned from the seminary at Rheims, though he hadn’t completed his studies due to ill health. He had a mangled ear from a childhood riding accident, and several other ailments besides.
“ ’ Tis a tale of Robin Hood,” replied Davy Jones.
“Ay, but which?” asked Arthur Cawdry. “There be as many tales of Robin Hood as there be tails in a bawdy house.”
Thereupon with a great flourish Davy Jones produced a manuscript. “ ’ Tis a new text of an old story, procured from the author himself and as fit for Whitsuntide performance as fit might be. We shall enact the Stratford premiere of The Death of Robin Hood.”
There was a long, st
unned silence; shifting of feet.
“ ’ Tis a comedy, then?” asked Arthur Cawdrey.
“No, of course not a comedy,” said Davy, annoyed. “Tragedy rather, and in the high style. Robin Hood, having fallen ill, seeks to be bled by the prioress of an abbey. She performs her office too well and bleeds him even unto death.”
There was another uncomfortable silence.
“ ’Tis surely an allegory of the supposed rape of England by the Church of Rome,” said George Cawdrey.
“ ’Tis but a tale of Robin Hood,” replied Davy Jones.
“Wherein an emissary of the Pope bleeds the very image of England to death,” replied George.
William reached out and quietly took the manuscript from Davy Jones’s hand. Upon the front page was written in a jagged, weak hand: The Death of Robin Hood, by Anthony Munday.
William had heard of Anthony Munday.
A few years older than William, he was a player, poet, and playwright of some renown. A real Johannes fac totum. Apprenticed as a draper, he had gone to the English College in Rome and published a tract, English Roman Life, that described the life of Catholic expatriates in the seminaries. He was now back in England where he published mediocre plays and worse poetry. There were only two reasons why London writers would go to Rome: either to be a Catholic, or to spy on Catholics. Given his success in the arts with such meager talent, it was likely the latter.
William handed the manuscript back to Davy Jones. “I for one shall not murder Robin Hood as our priests are murdered, for the people’s delight in the public square. I’ll see myself hanged first.”
Davy Jones snatched back the tract, perturbed. “As well you might! The trees this season are abloom with papists; even some hidden papists who remained silent and professed no faith.” He looked around the group; several dropped their eyes. “We would all be wise to embrace the new religion in public fashion. With this tale of Robin Hood, we may honor England, our Queen, her court, and her church at one blow.”
“Honor England by killing Robin Hood?” said William. “Do you also honor your sister by taking her maidenhead?”
The tension between them was palpable; young Richard Tyler didn’t like palpable, and strove to diffuse it. “Faith aside, Robin Hood is so exceeding . . . so exceeding done, is it not?”
Arthur Cawdrey, who had the biggest belly in the group, chimed in, “My brother sees in it an allegory against the Pope; yet I’d hate to be hanged as a traitor for wearing the crucifix of a Friar Tuck!”
There was some murmured assent at this.
William was suddenly bored of the discussion, and turned to see Philip Rogers, apothecary, crouched, examining something in the dirt next to the rough-hewn platform. William went over and sat on the stage next to him as the debate raged on. Philip Rogers was bent close to what looked like a pile of dung. He reached out and pulled three small mushrooms from the pile, examined them, and put them in a pouch on his belt.
“Are they edible?” William asked idly.
Rogers cocked his head. “In a way.”
William nodded noncommittally. Philip Rogers was a bit eccentric; it was generally blamed on his diligence in personally testing the various herbs, potions, and decoctions for sale in his shop.
William looked up, and for the first time he noticed a young woman, with red hair and green eyes, sitting on a fallen tree under a lantern at the edge of the clearing, watching the escalating argument about the politics of Robin Hood. William nudged Philip, who knew everyone in and around Stratford.
“Who is yon bonny maid?”
Rogers glanced up, squinted, then pulled a pair of spectacles from beneath his shirt and peered through them.
“Ah. That would be young Rosaline. A kinswoman of Davy Jones’s. Up from Abbot’s Lench.”
“She is wondrous fair,” said William.
“Ay, and accomplished by all accounts,” said Rogers. “She works the loom, has her letters, even some small Latin, I’m told. She is enamored of the stage, and wished to come and watch our rehearsal.”
Then Philip Rogers lowered his voice. “They also say that she has a way with all things that grow. Bud and root . . . stalk and bulb. And though I would not speak of it if I knew you not to be of uncommon discretion . . .”
And now Rogers leaned in close to William’s ear, and said softly, “Her own lap’s garden is exceeding well tended: hedged and trimmed like unto the fancy of a fairy’s lawn.”
“In sooth?” William asked, looking at the girl with rising interest.
Now the voice of Philip Rogers, apothecary, dropped to a barely audible whisper. “And further: though the most precious flower at the heart of that garden be ever so dainty, when ministered to just so, it sprays forth a very fountain of Venus’s sweetest nectar.”
William felt a leap in his loins. He whispered back, “A fountain . . . ? How know you this? Wanton news spreads like the pox, they say; or is this the report of your own dalliance?”
“Nay, ’twas a strictly professional encounter. She came to me as apothecary, seeking a cure for the curious affliction.”
She noticed them talking about her, smiled and waved.
William raised his cup toward her, then drained it.
The conversation about Robin Hood had degenerated to a yelling match about the desecration of Holy Trinity Church some twenty years ago — the tearing down of its papist icons, its crucifixes, its jeweled altar — fingers were being pointed.
William rejoined the group, interrupting. “Arthur Cawdrey, I see these cups are but half full. And yet a vintner and an alemonger you call yourself. Why have we you in the troupe, if not to keep filled our cups with the juice of our invention?”
Cawdrey obliged, taking up a large skin and pouring wine into the five extended cups.
“God Save the Queen!” William toasted, and “God Save the Queen!” came the chorused reply.
William moved casually to the front of the stage.
“The Death of Robin Hood,” he mused aloud. “Would it not be best, in these circumspect times, to choose our plays more circumspectly? A literary pistol less loaded, mayhap, would be more suitable and as well-approved, and less like to lead to inadvertent hangings. What of the classics?”
“You would ask a greater classic than Robin Hood?” said Davy Jones, still angry.
“A classic of ancient Greece or Rome, methinks he means,” said Richard Tyler, drinking deeply from his cup of wine.
Davy Jones laughed. “What would you have us play, magister? Lyly’s Latin Grammar?”
“What of Ovid?” asked William innocently. “Many merry jests there are in his works, and yet somewhat of romance, of gods and goddesses both righteous and lusty. Also huntsmanship and swordplay aplenty. And we have in England no Church of Jove to take offense one way or another.”
“You’d best leave the dramaturgy to those with experience of the stage,” Davy Jones huffed. William was a neophyte player, and had only just joined the fledgling troupe at the Cawdreys’ suggestion.
George Cawdrey came to his defense. “Let him speak, Davy. This Ofydd sounds well.”
“Tell us one of his tales, in brief,” said Arthur.
William pretended to think for a moment. “There is a tale,” he said, and here he looked at Rosaline, “with a fountain — that I have oft wished to wrap my lips around.” Then he turned to the company. “Yea, i’faith, the most lamentable tragedy of Salmacis and Hermaphroditus might serve our present need.”
“Salacious and hermaphroditic?” said Arthur Cawdrey, looking uncertain. “Is it an apt tale for a Whitsunday fair?”
“It matters not; we have no lines composed, and of a certain cannot by Whitsunday,” answered Davy Jones, although Whitsunday was months away.
“Nonsense. We may act it extempore,” said William, and leapt — for the very first time — up onto the stage. “But fill our cups once more, Arthur Cawdrey. The emptier your wineskin, the fairer my tale.” He looked out over his expectant audience
as Arthur Cawdrey dutifully poured.
“But it cannot be played solus. Mayhap yon fair Rosaline will assist, and act the part of Salmacis?”
Rosaline jumped up from her seat. “Ay, good sir!”
Davy Jones stepped in front of her. “It is not meet that a woman ascend the stage,” he said angrily. “And less so my cousin.”
“ ’ Tis but rehearsal, not performance, and thus outside the scope of our Master of Revels or even of custom,” said William.
“But,” said young Richard Tyler, looking disappointed, “if I am to play the maiden’s part, surely I should extemporize with you?”
Topping the rising grumbling, William continued. “Our play shall surely not be marred from having the woman’s part devised by woman, will it? And as she plays, you, Richard, may note her voice, her lips, her hair, how she gestures thus and sighs thus or thus, and raises her skirts so, with lips pouting so, and by close examination capture the very quintessence of the feminine art. What say you?”
No man present knew quite how to respond to William Shakespeare, as no man in England had ever said anything quite like this before.
Rosaline took her cue from the stunned silence of the men, hiked her skirts, and rushed toward the stage. William extended a hand and lifted her up to the platform.
William raised his tankard once more. “Arthur, refill the cups and we shall begin.” Arthur Cawdrey dutifully obliged.
William took a breath, strode forward one step, and began:
“Behold, good gentles all, the Grecian scene wherein, beneath the creeping shade Olympus casts, fauns, satyrs, and centaurs roam, and where the crocus blooms at Whitsuntide.”
Arthur Cawdrey nodded approvingly, and nudged Davy Jones.
William continued, gesturing toward Rosaline. “There a nymph divine, which yon bonny English maid presents, was wont to bathe at leisure in her pool. Now follows, if you will, the tale of Hermaphroditus, from blood immortal born, who stumbled lost upon Salmacis’ grotto fair, and sealed thus his doom . . . and mayhap yours and mine.”
My Name Is Will Page 4