My Name Is Will

by Jess Winfield

  “O gentle Romeo,” said Willie, “if thou dost love, pronounce it faithfully!”

  Then, acting to Juliet but pointing pointedly at Willie, Romeo said, “Lady, by yonder blessed virgin, I swear.”

  Willie smiled his most charming smile and said, “Fuck you, Romeo.”

  The crowd roared again.

  “Okay, being funnier than us is not allowed,” said Romeo.

  The troupe moved on and rocketed through their shtick to a final tragic death tableau of Juliet splayed out on top of Romeo, dress hiked up to show most unladylike tighty-whities.

  Willie laughed through the whole thing, and so did Robin. It had taken ten minutes, and they passed the hat afterward. It seemed like almost everyone put a buck or two in the hat, partly because the troupe cleverly spread out and surrounded the audience: no one could get away without making eye contact with one of them. Willie had only nine bucks in his pocket for the entire weekend, but he felt bad about screwing up their act.

  As Willie dropped one-ninth of his life’s savings in the hat, Romeo saw him. “Thanks. That was funny.” Willie watched the flow of dollar bills — and a couple of fives, and at least one joint — wondering idly just how much dough these guys pulled in, in one show; and wondering, less idly, just how many millions of dollars Shakespeare made in the world, between plays, movies, books, tourism — he must be a billion-dollar industry. And the money was only the surface: what about the intellectual, moral, philosophical, poetic capital? Thinking about it made Willie feel small, and the prospect of his unwritten thesis seem huge.

  Willie found Robin in the middle of the plaza. She tucked her remaining flyers and her BluStik back in her Copymat bag.

  “Okay, I’ve done my bit for saving the world this morning. I’ve got some time before my next class, you want to get coffee or something? I’m kinda hungry.”

  It was a stunning day. Warm in the sun, cool in the shade. The preclass rush had quieted down a little. The Piano Man played “Moon River.” Willie glanced over to the northeast, where Strawberry Creek ran through the campus, shrouded in live oak and sequoia, ivy trailing down its banks. The first time Willie had visited Robin in Berkeley, on a summer Sunday when the campus was quiet, they had picnicked by the creek and made out . . . Willie had gotten a hummer.

  Now, he gestured with a nod toward the trees. “Maybe you could have a quick snack by the creek?” The second he said it, he panicked with the possibility that she might say yes — his dick, he realized too late, was still crusty with dried Dashka.

  “Mister One-Track Mind,” Robin said. “At this hour, I’d actually prefer coffee and a bagel to pure protein. Come on, I’ll buy.”

  The couple headed out of Sproul Plaza toward Berkeley’s south side. The light at Bancroft Way changed. As Robin stepped out into the traffic first, she reached back to take Willie by the hand, and guided him toward the bustling morning jostle on Telegraph Avenue.

  Chapter Fifteen

  How might Shakespeare’s famous punishment at the hand of the most infamous pursuivant in Warwickshire have contributed to his development as a playwright? His rich and complex treatment of characters such as Richard III, Iago, and Edmund suggest an up-close experience of the villainous type. And one need only revisit the grueling blinding of Gloucester by Cornwall in King Lear to see that Shakespeare had a visceral response to torture.

  William was shirtless, bound at the wrists to an iron ring bolted to a stone wall. A whip lashed into the flesh of his back with a sickening crack. He noticed with an odd detachment that part of the sound we associate with the whip was simply the sound of flesh splitting open. He also noted that this hurt, very much.

  “Thrice more, Master Rogers,” Sir Thomas Lucy said primly.

  As the eighth, ninth, and tenth lashes ripped into William, he further noted that his tolerance for the pain appeared to grow less with each stroke. The first had been less painful than he had feared. The last three, he was sweating with the effort of not screaming, and near to fainting.

  He was in an outbuilding less than a hundred yards from the main house at Charlecote: Sir Thomas Lucy’s laundry room. Glancing around to look for an escape, William saw copper pots for boiling clothes. It occurred to him that the pots were also large enough to boil a man. He saw a tiled channel in the floor leading to a drain, and mused that blood might flow through it just as easily as wash-water. On one side of the room was a giant stone block suspended on a pulley over an iron plate. The device was made to press Sir Thomas Lucy’s shirts, but, William concluded, it would be decidedly uncomfortable if applied to his chest.

  Henry Rogers turned William around so he could face Sir Thomas Lucy. Lucy wore no hat; his beard was still razor sharp, but the shock of red hair atop his head was wild and unkempt.

  William breathed hard. “For what, my noble lord, am I punished thus?”

  “For trespass, for poaching of deer, and for public lasciviousness with a maiden,” said Lucy, who held in his hand a tightly rolled piece of paper.

  William’s head spun from the pain, and he felt words pouring out of him, his mouth overflowing like the banks of Avon in a flood.

  “Begging your pardon, my lord,” William said, “but no maiden she, as I was informed by none other than her apothecary good and true. Nor was our lasciviousness conducted in public, but privately in your coney warren. And if that be a crime, then arrest and whip your hares also, for they are guilty of my crime thrice or more daily, and of incest, buggery, and bestiality besides. I have ne’er poached my Lord Lucy’s deer. As to the crime of trespass, I would plead guilty, were I before a judge.”

  Sir Thomas Lucy paced slowly back and forth in front of William, considering.

  “Thou art a bold boy. Yet I would mark thy tongue. A wit as sharp as thine may be a weapon, and to assault thy betters with it, in these treacherous times, a capital offense.”

  “Am I like to be charged with using my tongue on a maid as well?”

  “Vex me not with thy bawdy,” Lucy snapped. “Thy mistemper’d tongue may be used as a weapon; but the selfsame blade might, mishandled, wound the wielder. Or, in other wise” — and here he smiled at William — “thy tongue may be used as salve: as a mongrel dog, wounded by the whips and scorns of its daily travail, will lick his wounds until they are no more, so might thou, with thy tongue’s proper employ, heal thy family’s festering canker.”

  “What mean you?”

  “You know best,” said Lucy, shrugging and softer now, “but surely your circumstances are not what they were in better days, when your father was bailiff?”

  A thought raced through William’s wrenched mind: best not be too agreeable in this interrogation. He let the flow of words continue unabated.

  “The stages of a man’s life are inconstant,” William said. “Fortunes rise and fall like a sleeping man’s breast: sometimes high and full, sometimes low and empty, but always to breathe again.”

  “Until breathing stops, and your man is dead.”

  William said nothing.

  “It is possible, William,” said Lucy, now William’s best friend, “that the fortunes of the Shakespeares might rise again, if you but call upon your wit, and use your tongue as physic to this our clawed and bitten state. There is a cancer grows within it. Our Queen, God save Her Majesty, tries but to unify us, one nation under God’s rule and the Queen’s. But factions there are would have us forever cloven in twain, our loyalties split between Queen and Pope. This path leads only to ruin.”

  “No one may foresee the ends of all paths,” William responded. “And in the end each man’s journey leads only to his own conscience, which, in these times, must perforce be enclosed and fenced against trespass. Even as your coney warren, my lord,” he added, and immediately regretted it.

  Lucy stared at him.

  “Spoken like an embittered papist.”

  William said nothing.

  “Your punishment for trespass is paid,” said Lucy, turning away. “Now I would ask of you qu
estions that touch on matters of state. I pray you answer well and quickly, for Henry Rogers is an impatient man.”

  “I am no statesman, but a country schoolmaster and glover’s son,” said William.

  “We are all statesmen in these times. What is a state but the sum of its men? And what is faith but those who profess it? I shall be blunt,” Lucy said, and turned to look William in the eyes. “Are you a papist?”

  “My faith is my own.”

  “Are . . . you . . . a papist?”

  William didn’t reply, because he didn’t know the answer himself. He felt solidarity with the oppressed, and rage at the oppressors. But did he believe in an infallible Pope? Or even in God? He hadn’t taken Communion from a Catholic priest in his living memory . . . would he if he could?

  “By your silence,” said Lucy at last, “I hold myself affirmed. Understand you, clever wit that you are, that while the Queen is its chief prelate, to be opposed to the Church of England is treason?”

  “My Queen and I pray to the same God,” said William. “I for her health and long life, and Her Majesty, I hope, for the health and long life of her subjects.”

  Sir Thomas Lucy looked at William Shakespeare, his eyes burning. “And for their loyalty, sirrah, for their loyalty.”

  Lucy unrolled the piece of paper in his hand. William could see, through its translucent skin, that it was a list of names.

  “Knew you Thomas Cottom?”

  “Nay,” said William.

  “What of his brother, John Cottom?”

  “Master John Cottom taught me at the King’s New School, along with much of the youth of Stratford.”

  “And so you knew his brother,” Lucy said; a statement, not a question.

  “Nay.”

  “This seems strange, to know the one and not the other.”

  “My Lord Lucy knows me, it seems,” William replied, “and yet I vouchsafe he cannot name a one of my siblings.”

  “You have heard of Thomas Cottom, though, surely?”

  “I have heard that he traveled to Rheims,” William said.

  “And thence?”

  “I know not.”

  “A wit like you, no desire to guess?” Lucy mocked.

  “To a nunnery?” William said, risking a joke.

  Thomas Lucy smiled. “Ay, after a fashion: St. Peter’s nunnery, wherein the Pope’s whorish bishops prance and fawn at his feet.”

  William was caught up in the banter.

  “ ’ Twas ever the nature of toadies, to prance and fawn at their toadstool’s feet — ”

  Without warning, Thomas Lucy slapped William hard across the face with the back of his gloved hand.

  “Thou art an insolent boy. Thy responses please me not. Thou usest words both as a weapon and as a battlement. They keep at bay any true feelings in thy shallow heart; real feelings, such as pain. Therefore see to it that thou answerest in plain words, lest thou answerest in screams. Again: hast thou received aught from Thomas Cottom?”

  “Nay, my lord,” William lied.

  “Come, sirrah, what letters hadst thou late from Rheims?”

  “None.” True enough. He had only the box, hidden amongst the spare hose and Sunday best in the house at Henley Street.

  “And what confederacy hast thou with the traitors late landed in the kingdom?”

  “None.”

  Lucy slapped William yet again, but this time he first whipped off his glove so that his ring, which bore the family seal of a dead-looking fish — a luce, William noted with the sudden detachment that came from pain — cut a red streak across his cheek.

  William took a moment to recover. Again, he couldn’t help using the only weapon he had. “Despite your tender ministrations, my lord, my answer is nay, neither documents nor letters have I received from the Continent, nor am I confederate with traitors.”

  Lucy regarded William closely, and then referred to his paper again. “What of Robert Debdale?”

  “What of him?”

  “Thou knowest him?”

  “Nay.”

  “Knowest the name? Thinkest thou well ere offering thy answer.”

  William thought. So far Lucy had asked about all the protégés of Simon Hunt, his Catholic former schoolmaster. The New School had become, during his tenure, almost a prep school for the seminaries on the Continent. Lucy clearly thought that William might continue the tradition, despite the installation of Alexander Aspinall as Master. But William saw no harm in answering the question about Debdale truthfully. “Though I know him not, I knew of him once. He was, as I recall, also a student of the New School, some years older than me, and in the tutelage of Simon Hunt, with whom he traveled to the Continent.”

  “And thou hast had no contact with him since?”

  “Nor never. He was seven or eight years my senior.”

  Lucy referred to his list one more time. “Knowest thou . . . Anne Hathaway?”

  “No,” William lied, and he didn’t know why. Some lingering guilt, perhaps, or simply an approach by Lucy of too much intimacy —

  Smack, again William was hit.

  “Think again. ’Tis said thou hast bedded her.”

  “I have bedded many women. Two this day, if the woods of Arden and your coney warren may be accounted beds. I do not remember them all.”

  “Thou art a libertine.”

  “I am liber, and eighteen, my lord. Perhaps you recall, the humors run toward sanguine at such an age.”

  “Anne Hathaway. Of Shottery. Thou recallest not.”

  William couldn’t imagine what the connection between Simon Hunt, Robert Debdale, and his first lover could possibly be, but something in him recoiled at the thought of implicating her in the interrogation in any way.

  “Nay.”

  “I do not see thee racking thy brain.”

  “I have no need, my lord.”

  “Then we shall rack it for thee.”

  He nodded to Henry Rogers, who removed the chain from the hook and yanked William roughly into the next chamber, where there was, indeed, a rack.

  Rogers strapped William onto it. It smelled of sweat and fear. William said, his voice trembling despite his every effort, “Stretch me though you may, my mind will not stretch so far as to remember what I do not remember.”

  The rope, padded with linen so as not to leave any mark, tightened around his ankles and wrists.

  Lucy nodded to Henry Rogers, and he pulled the roller at the top of the rack taut. William was stretched . . . not uncomfortably, but stretched. This, he thought, is not so bad.

  “Then tell me of what thou dost remember. Tell me of thy mother, and her faith.”

  “My mother?”

  “Thou rememberest her. Or didst thou fuck and then forget her, as well?” Sir Thomas Lucy asked calmly.

  Sir Thomas Lucy himself gave a turn to the winch at the bottom of the rack. William heard a sickening pop as his left shoulder dislocated.

  He screamed.

  Chapter Sixteen

  How like a jade he stood, tied to the tree,

  Servilely master’d with a leathern rein!

  But when he saw his love, his youth’s fair fee,

  He held such petty bondage in disdain;

  Throwing the base thong from his bending crest,

  Enfranchising his mouth, his back, his breast.

  — Venus and Adonis, 391

  Immobilized, Willie pulled ineffectually against the bonds at his wrists and ankles. He was spread-eagle, completely naked. Hot wax dripped onto his chest, and he flinched and shuddered.

  Robin straddled him, and removed her bra.

  Willie said, “Nice rack.”

  She lowered her body so her small, soft nipples were within an inch of Willie’s lips.

  “Have you been a good boy?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then why aren’t you in school?” Robin said, and dripped a little bit more wax on his chest. He flinched as it hit.

  “Because, mistress, I take classes only o
n Mondays and Wednesdays, that I might attend thy court.”

  “Well answered,” said Robin, and she leaned forward far enough for Willie to just barely brush her nipple with his tongue.

  “Have you been doing your homework?”

  Willie shifted, a little bit uncomfortably.

  “Yes, mistress.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “My thesis topic was approved.”

  Robin shifted off of him, and slipped out of her jeans and panties in one smooth move. She stood by the bed where Willie lay tied up. Robin had a student-cheap but comfortable apartment just off of College Avenue, a mile or so south of the campus. It was in a new building, and Robin had decorated it in a modern style: Jasper Johns and Andy Warhol prints framed in black lacquer on the walls; midcentury furniture finds from the local flea market; a wall covered with modular bookshelves featuring an entire college syllabus of Western Civilization, arranged approximately chronologically by subject from Hesiod’s Theogony to The Soviet Union Demystified: A Materialist Analysis. Robin was a political science grad; she’d volunteered for Barbara Boxer’s first congressional campaign four years ago and had spent a summer interning for her in D.C. Robin had been given a broken desk in a windowless office and told to look for abuses of taxpayer money in the name of something called the Project for Taxpayer Accountability. In fact, it was Robin who, in poring over the records of disbursements to government contractors, discovered the now legendary $436 paid by the Pentagon for a “unidirectional impact generator” — a $7 claw hammer. Of course someone else took the credit for the discovery, but Robin quickly developed a reputation as someone with a nose for underhanded goings-on. She was now doing social work, working on campus doing clerical work for the poli-sci department, studying for the GREs, and volunteering for the Boxer campaign. Check that . . . she was “now” naked and straddling Willie, just letting her pubes gently brush his erect (and hurriedly sponge-bathed, in Robin’s bathroom) dick.

  “Mmm. Did you show it to your senior advisor?” Robin cooed.

  Willie’s heart skipped. “What?”

  “Your thesis. Did you show her the proposal?”