My Name Is Will

by Jess Winfield

  William finished out his week’s work at the King’s New School as inconspicuously as he could. He avoided the inns and Philip Rogers’s apothecary shop, and overcame the occasional urge to visit Davy Jones’s house and enquire after Rosaline. He neither saw nor spoke to any of his friends. He heard no word from his bride to be, and he sent none, though his parents were thick as thieves with the Hathaways. Mary had gotten word that Edward and Mary Arden planned to attend, and she pushed wedding plans forward with controlled panic.

  After leaving the schoolhouse on Friday evening, William went home and fixed the broken cart wheel in the tanning yard, fed Lucy (the ass), then went inside and began to pack for the journey to Park Hall. William opened the trunk he shared with his brother, and took from under the bed linens at the bottom the mysterious box from Thomas Cottom. So much had happened since Robert Debdale had delivered it to him. It seemed heavier now, more sinister. The inlaid St. George’s cross, a sign of the Old Faith, gleamed in the candlelight. He shook the box gently: a soft ruffle. Too light for gold. Rosaries, perhaps? The teeth or bones of a saint or martyr? Whatever it was, the last individual on earth but one to possess it had been executed, and the box and its precious contents smuggled away. He eyed the lock and briefly considered trying to break it, but then wrapped it carefully in a shawl and packed it with the rest of his gear.

  While looking for a spare shirt, he came across Goody Hall’s potion. What to do with it? He considered emptying it into the chamber pot, but it seemed such a waste. Ten shillings was ten shillings. He finally hid it in the bottom of the trunk where the box had lain hidden.

  On Saturday, William and his mother set out from Stratford early, toward the northeast. At a tavern in the shadow of Warwick Castle, they shared a midday meal of meat pies, cheese, and ale. Then they turned northwest and rode for some hours, stopping for a late afternoon rest at Wroxhall Abbey — or what was left of it.

  “What is this ruin?” William asked.

  “Your grandfather on your father’s side was baptized here,” Mary answered with a pale smile. “I’m sorry you never met Richard Shakespeare. He was a kind man, much like your father, less many gallons of ale. His aunt Isabel was the prioress here, and his sister, your great-aunt Jane, was to succeed her. And in the village nearby lived Richard’s brother William, your namesake.”

  William looked around at the ruined stones of the abbey, already trailing with creeping vines. “What happened here?” he asked, knowing the answer.

  “The new faith came,” said Mary, “and the abbey was thrown down.”

  They wandered amongst the stones. Mary took a rosary from her bosom and, after a look over her shoulder and a furtive genuflection, left it on the stones where the chapel’s altar had once stood. Then she turned and mounted the cart.

  They arrived at Park Hall after dark.

  As they approached the gatehouse at the moat that surrounded the structure, a grim-looking pair of guards stepped out to bar their way with spears.

  “I have no herald,” said Mary, “and therefore humbly announce myself as Mary Arden Shakespeare, along with my son William Shakespeare, arrived in fealty to our Most Blessed Saint Mary and the one true church of our sweet Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.”

  One guard simply said “Ay, mum,” and gestured to the other, who opened the gate.

  As they crossed the moat and rolled up the carriageway, they passed a gardener standing by the path and leaning on a rake. Curiously, William noticed, there were no leaves to be seen anywhere about, nor trees to drop them. The approach to the great house had been entirely cleared of flora.

  The ancient wooden house loomed in a tortured evening light. The Hall was large, but time had not been kind to it. Only two windows were dimly lit with candles. The door to the great hall opened even as William and Mary walked up to it, and they were shown immediately by a young servant girl — a very pretty young servant girl, William noted, with cornflower blue eyes, pillowy breasts, and a jest about her lips — to a guest room in the house’s east wing, where they rested after the long journey from Stratford.

  After an hour or so they were summoned to an evening meal in the house’s great hall. There were perhaps twenty individuals. Many wore expensive clothes, gold rings, silver chains, and brooches. William felt positively Puritan — or was it simply poor? — in his travel-stained shirt, black doublet, and hose. Introductions were made, and William, who had a good head for poetry but not for names, immediately forgot most of them. There were many prominent families represented: Throckmortons, male and female, including Sir Thomas himself; two quiet and intense sisters, the daughters of Lord Vaux; Sir William Catesby, master of Coughton Court; Underhills from the south; a Richard Owen. There were also Smiths, lords of the manor of Shottery. William hoped they wouldn’t ask him about their neighbors the Hathaways and the impending nuptials. There were also the Reynoldses of Stratford, along with several of their household that he recognized. Their presence made William feel less conspicuously out of his depth, for Master Reynolds was a yeoman, yet had he not honored William’s own father when he was bailiff? And there was a haunted, smelly young man at the end of the table, who began drinking great draughts of wine the second he arrived and roundly insulted anyone who approached him. William asked his mother his name. “My cousin John Somerville, and best to stay well clear of him. A ha’penny short of a shilling, as they say.”

  At last Edward Arden entered, and bade his guests to table, and he went around greeting them one by one. When he stopped to greet Mary, he looked at William in amazement, and asked his age. “Eighteen, my lord,” William responded. Edward Arden laughed. “My father used to say he wished there were no age between ten and twenty,” he said, “for there is nothing in the between but getting wenches with child, wronging the ancientry, stealing, and fighting. I hope you prove him wrong. I bid you welcome, William.” He clapped William on the shoulder, took his seat, and dinner began.

  Conversation was small and hushed, murmured bits of gossip from London, of Elizabeth and her court. Growing impatient at the end of the table, John Somerville finally slammed down his cup.

  “Enough of this small talk and prattle, the inconsequential whisperings of schoolgirls! Have there been any fresh roastings of Catholic cocks and guts this fortnight? Nay, the answer I know, for there are such feasts aplenty at Tyburn these days. Have they been avenged? Nay, answer that not, neither, for I see the lily-hued answers in every one of your pied faces. We dine only upon pheasants and capons tonight, and shall not taste revenge.”

  There was a silence. Robert Arden finally replied from the head of the table where he sat under a tapestry of the family crest that covered an entire wall. “Such stuff is not meet for table talk. We will have a full account of the state of our cause after our morning’s assembly. Tonight, we celebrate our congregation with mirth. Eat apace, for there are players here to entertain you withal.”

  When the meal was finished, the company was led through the back of the house to a fountained courtyard. For once, William wished he wore a hat. It was a cold November evening, and despite the warmth from the many torches that lit the stage, he shivered in his inadequate cloak. Robert Arden announced that they would have the great pleasure of watching the Earl of Leicester’s Men — “his players, not his pursuivants,” Arden noted to a grim laugh — enact a play entitled The Greek Maid.

  It was a tragedy, the tale of an innocent and devout maiden named Europa who was lured by Zeus, in the guise of bull, to take a ride upon him so that he might ravish her. It was immediately clear to everyone present that the tale was an allegory of innocent Catholics all across Europe being abused at the hands of a new and bestial incarnation of an old faith. And though William was cold, he watched, rapt. He knew the tale well from Ovid, but the company of performers, Leicester’s Men, were good. Very good.

  The bull came to stamp in a meadow where the Phoenician maidens picnicked. Europa, the maiden, taken in by the beautiful, shining beast, approached i
t slowly in her flowing white robe, and tentatively caressed the bull’s flanks. Frightened at first but then awed and seduced by the sonorous rumble of the bull’s voice that emanated from behind a mask, she dared to touch a gleaming white horn —

  A flash of gunpowder.

  And when William’s momentarily blinded eyes adjusted, he saw that the bull now carried the terrified Europa across the sea — via a water effect much as William had pictured for the fountain of Salmacis — to Crete, where, while tambours beat and viols sawed as though unstrung, the bull transformed with a whisk of a mask into wide-browed, almighty Zeus, who raped and then imprisoned the maiden.

  Europa’s final soliloquy, in her captivity, was heartrending:

  “Pity me my fate, to be seduced by such a beast, so seeming-fair, so simple and so pure, without rich robes or jeweled scepters, with horns like a shining crescent moon, and yet to be at last betrayed. Cruel was the god that gored me, and left me to wither and die, thus a world away from kith and kin, in a forsaken tower of the Palace of Minos.”

  William’s mother, sitting next to him, was crying.

  His own tears he held back.

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Come now; what masques, what dances shall we have,

  To wear away this long age of three hours

  Between our after-supper and bed-time?

  Where is our usual manager of mirth?

  What revels are in hand? Is there no play,

  To ease the anguish of a torturing hour?

  — Theseus, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, V.i.32

  Willie had been to a Renaissance Faire, once, during the day, so he thought he was prepared for the temporal jolt that awaited him. He was ready for the jostling of genuine and well-researched Elizabethan elements — costumes, signage, and language, men with beards of formal cut, and women with voluminous whalebone-enhanced boobs — side by side with a retro sixties hippie culture of crystals and unicorns, herbal teas and drip-wax candles, all beneath an overlay of 1980s marketing sensibility: everything that was blatantly un-Elizabethan — generators, first aid outposts, pay phones — was swathed in burlap, but the ale-stands proudly advertised Dr. Pepper.

  Willie was ready for all that.

  But he’d never been to the Faire at night.

  The temporal collision after dark was like that of a VW bus, a Harley, and a hay cart. Part geekfest, part campout, part house party, part orgy. As Willie entered, he saw a food booth directly across from the entrance crowded with half-costumed individuals lining up for a cheap dinner of pasta and garlic bread. To his left under a tattered burlap roof upheld with gnarled oak staves was a blacksmith’s, complete with forge and anvil, filled with burly, hairy Scots. They all wore kilts, some wore tam-o’-shanters, some wore cloaks, some wore leather jackets. They all drank Michelob, and distorted Dire Straits blared from the blown-out speakers of a boom box on a hay bale. Unnoticed by the partying Picts, Willie passed along the dirt road toward the canopy of oak trees to his right.

  He walked a little farther and, as promised, he caught a whiff of coffee and chai and cardamom, and a burst of music and laughter borne on the same breeze. He followed his nose to where the floor of the narrow valley rose up to meet the oak trees, and found a Middle Eastern coffeehouse, its signage all faux-Arabic script, with garden seating on hay bales around a stage under a small oak tree to one side. A dumbek drummer with long braided hair and a cigarette hanging from his mouth played alongside a twenty-something with a shaved head, a Gang of Four t-shirt, and knee-high, soft-leather boots, caressing out an Arabic melody on what looked like an Elizabethan lute yet sounded straight out of Aladdin. On the stage two belly dancers undulated, wearing sparkly Egyptian cotton skirts and t-shirts that said:

  I’M WITH STUPID —> AND <— I’M WITH STUPID

  Willie stepped up to the coffeehouse counter. Behind it milled five or six women, all young and pretty, pouring hot water that seemed to come from nowhere into battered copper pots. A girl behind the counter smiled and came over to him. “Hi, there. What can I getcha?”

  “Just coffee.”

  The girl smiled and came back a second later with a hot foam cup of what turned out to be very good java. “Do you want anything to eat?” she asked chirpily.

  “No, thanks,” Willie responded, stirring half-and-half into his cup. He was a little hungry, but the plate of food a customer was taking away was an entirely unappetizing pile of mush.

  “Yeah, it’s not very good,” the girl offered. “I’m just so hungry. I totally forgot to have lunch, and I’m not really supposed to be working tonight, but I started, and now one of the other girls disappeared, so I should stay because it’s really busy. Ugh.”

  It did seem busy behind the counter, but the girl seemed to show no urgency to return to serving customers. She was pretty in a classic-film style: black hair, brown eyes, lips made up with bright, deep red lipstick, that kind of perfect skin where she could’ve been an old fifteen or a young fifty.

  “Hey,” Willie said — anyone who liked to talk this much would as a matter of course know lots of people — “I’m looking for Jacob. Is he around?”

  “Jacob, fool Jacob?” asked the girl-woman, but didn’t wait for a response. “He was here a little while ago, but I think he’s at the show. Why, do you need something? Because I have some mushrooms,” she said helpfully.

  “What show?” Willie asked.

  “The night show, at the main stage.”

  “Which would be where?”

  The girl-woman laughed. “You’re new around here, aren’t you? Come on, I’ll take you.”

  “Oh . . . okay, thanks. That’d be great. What do I owe you for the coffee?”

  “Didn’t I take your money already?” She giggled. “I didn’t, did I? I’m not very good at this.” She giggled some more. “Hang on, I’ll be right out.” She disappeared, and Willie saw one of the other girls behind the counter shake her head as she watched the giggling girl-woman shuffle her way out a side door. She still hadn’t collected Willie’s money.

  Nice gal, glad she doesn’t work for me.

  Willie’s new friend — Rebecca, he learned — chattered their way up the canyon beyond the coffeehouse. It was pitch-black under the oak trees, and she produced a flashlight. Willie wished he’d been smart enough to bring his own. But as he watched, a raucous glow in the darkness of the dirt road ahead resolved itself into a gaggle of girls wearing a variety of colored, plastic glow sticks around their necks, singing an Irish neo-folk punk tune loudly and not entirely off-key. Trailing them was a little girl of no more than ten. She came running up to Willie with a big smudge of dirt on her cheek and a glowing blue fluorescent tube hanging from her necklace.

  “You want some LSD on a stick?” she asked innocently.

  “Sure,” said Willie, caught a little off guard.

  “Bend over,” the little girl replied.

  Willie did so and she fastened the necklace around his neck, stepped back to regard him for an instant, cocked her head. “That’s pretty,” she said, and skipped off to rejoin the wandering punk minstrels. Rebecca laughed, and said, “Welcome to Witches’ Wood!” She led him into a space hidden behind a tarot-reader’s booth that was draped with Indian fabrics and strewn with Moroccan pillows. As Rebecca rummaged for her jacket, Willie saw a tarot deck sitting on a table. He flipped over the top card, fully expecting it to be the Fool. It wasn’t. He couldn’t make it out at first in the dim light. He held his LSD on a stick up to it, and saw that it depicted a young man, contemplating the leaves bursting forth from a staff in his right hand.

  “Page of Wands,” Rebecca said, putting on her denim jacket. “I love that card. It’s just, like, go! Be creative, be daring. Jump up and invent a new solution, on the spot! Trust your free will! I forget, did you say you wanted some shrooms?” She reached into an inside pocket and pulled out a small baggie with two small mushrooms in it. “Because I already took as many as I need. You can have these if you want ’em.”


  “Are they any good?”

  “Oh, yeah, they are, I’m seeing God.”

  Willie took the mushrooms from the baggie and held them up. In the light cast by his luminescent necklace, they glowed blue.

  He handed the baggie back. “No, thanks,” he said. “I really need to make a delivery.”

  Willie and his new friend strolled back toward the center of the Faire, passing small groups carrying flashlights. Most booths were dark. There was a grungy-looking party going on at the archery range, all bleary eyes and Grateful Dead. Farther along, one of the ale stands had Bon Jovi blaring out an open side door, and Willie caught a glimpse of a bare breast peeking out from a puffy green dyed shirt as a girl raised an arm and a beer inside and screamed “Wooooo!” to Slippery When Wet.

  “You want a beer?” asked Rebecca, nodding toward the ale stand.

  “No, I’m good.”

  They passed one stage — the Inn Yard — dark now, though surrounded by a veritable food court of Elizabethan dining options: turkey legs, roast beef, cheese pies. Willie heard a loud wave of laughter coming from over the hill. They came around a bend in the valley, and he saw the main stage, forty feet wide, thirty feet deep, twenty feet high, festooned with flowers, ribbons and pennants fluttering in the evening breeze. A replica of Francis Drake’s Golden Hind dominated one side. The stage was lit by the headlights of three idling long-bed pickup trucks parked around the perimeter of the rows of hay bales. There was an audience the size of which astounded Willie: four hundred perhaps. There were three guys performing some sort of broad comedy. As he got closer he recognized the guy in the dress. Tonight he was wearing not Elizabethan costume, but a fetching leopard-print miniskirt with pink, jeweled, plastic-rimmed sunglasses, a Marilyn Monroe wig, and giant breasts made of balloons. He was astride the bowsprit of the Golden Hind, riding it like a drunk girl on a rhinestone-cowboy bar bronco. And he seemed to be having an orgasm.