There was a silence, and an uncomfortable shifting.
Edward Arden bristled. “You speak treason, sir, and foolishness beside. You would have us murder an anointed prince, and to the enmity of her spymasters and torturers add that of all England? The sky of Warwickshire would blacken with the smoke of those burned in the reprisals.”
“Only if we merely pray, and wait to be burned. Let us rather do the burning, to save ourselves and our faith.”
“If we resort to burnings, we have already lost our faith,” said Robert Arden.
“Then it is lost; that gone, I will have no more of losing friends, and neighbors, and countrymen.” He stood up, tipping over his chair. He pulled from his breeches a matchlock gun. No one moved.
“By God, if you, my good and noble lords, will not act, then I shall!”
Arden lowered his voice, keeping it steady. “John,” he said, “ever have I tried to love you as my daughter does, but firearms are not welcome in my council. Get you hence. Go.”
Somerville waved the gun around wildly. “I go, nuncle, I go — to London, this very night, where I swear upon my grave I will go up to the Court and shoot the Queen through with this pistol!” Clumsily, he lowered himself out of the turret, his bloodshot eyes, wild hair, and finally his gun vanishing through the hole in the floor.
There was a scuffle below as another voice said, “Ho, there, look to, look to!” A moment later another face rose into the turret, one that changed William’s expression from fear to joy in an instant.
It was his old schoolmaster, John Cottom.
He looked about at the assemblage, then glanced back down the hole. “I see I missed the good part,” he said. “Forgive my lateness.” He picked up Somerville’s chair and set it right. As he sat, he saw William, and smiled.
“Salve, Iuliemus. Quomodo Linguam Latinam agis?”
“Male, magister, male,” replied William quietly.
Robert Arden closed the meeting with a prayer for Somerville, and a final warning. “Hide your rosaries, your crucifixes, and your practice of love’s true rites. And beware Robert Debdale! And so, good night until we meet again for the morning’s Mass.”
As the company slowly dispersed, John Cottom spoke with William, asking after certain students of the New School and families of Stratford. He had relocated back to Lancashire, where, he said, “ ‘Pope’ is not a four-lettered word, for now at least.”
“Magister,” said William, “I have been most grievously saddened by your brother’s murder.”
Cottom nodded.
William continued in a low voice, “I have in my chamber a remembrance I would deliver unto you, if you will.”
“And I would have it gladly,” said Cottom, surprised. “But I first must needs speak with Master Arden, and I am weary from late travel. Stay you for tomorrow’s Mass?”
“Ay,” said William.
“Then if it please you, we may meet thereafter?”
“Ay, magister,” William said.
“It is good to see you, William,” said Cottom with a smile. He went to talk to Robert Arden, and William and Mary went to bed after the long, long day. Although he couldn’t remember being more tired, William slept a fitful sleep.
Chapter Thirty-five
The wise man’s folly is anatomiz’d
Even by the squand’ring glances of the fool.
Invest me in my motley; give me leave
To speak my mind, and I will through and through
Cleanse the foul body of th’ infected world,
If they will patiently receive my medicine.
— Jaques, As You Like It, II.vii.56
Willie climbed a narrow, winding path up a surprisingly steep hill through silhouetted oak trees. It was late; midnight, Willie guessed. He passed a plywood building and heard the sound of running water and giggling. A couple wearing nothing but towels and carrying shampoo walked toward the ramshackle hutch. Showers. Judging by the commingled laughter and hooting, communal showers.
Beyond them, on either side of a path along the ridgeline, there were dozens of campsites under the trees. Some were elaborate parachute tents, lit with Coleman lanterns and festooned with ribbons; some were one-man pup tents; some had no tents at all, just pads and sleeping bags laid out on the ground. Small groups of revelers clustered around the larger tents, talking, drinking, laughing, smoking.
At the far end of the camp, Willie saw a large white tent with a single colorful flag flying over it: a playing-card joker, in the exact same pose as a Tarot-deck Fool, stepping fearlessly and fatefully off a cliff and out into the void. The fool’s costume, he noted, looked much like the one he carried in his bag.
Willie approached the tent. There were camp chairs and a lantern set out in front. A bottle of single-malt scotch, an ashtray, and several beer bottles were scattered about. Laughter and hushed voices came from the tent.
“Hello?” Willie called toward the tent. No one seemed to have heard. The giggling inside continued. “Hello?!” Willie called louder.
“Hello!” came a female voice in response that was somehow simultaneously annoyed and amused.
“Sorry, I’m looking for Jacob.”
“Who wants him?” said a male voice.
“My name’s Willie. I’m a friend of Todd’s. From Santa Cruz.”
There was a pause.
A moment later a head popped out of the tent’s door flap: a slender, smiling face, with a pointed nose, eyes lined with crow’s-feet, wire-rimmed spectacles, and a long, braided beard with small flowers woven into the braids.
“Hello,” Jacob said. “Welcome to paradise!” More giggles from the tent behind him — more than one person. “Pull up a chair, my friend, I’ll be right out.”
Willie sat, and after a minute Jacob emerged wearing drawstring cotton pants and a Ren Faire t-shirt. “May I offer you a libation?” he asked as he sat.
“Sure, thanks.”
Jacob found the least grimy shot glass available and filled it with Scotch. “William, was it?”
“Willie.”
“Willie. How’s Todd?”
“Oh, if you know him you know how he is.”
“You go to school with him?”
“I suppose,” said Willie, “though somehow I never think of him as actually going to school — ”
Jacob threw his head back and laughed, a long, hearty laugh. “In faith, good sir, in faith! A scholar! What are you studying?”
“Literature. Shakespeare.”
“Shakespeare!? Ah! Soft butt! What wind from yonder widow breaks, I am the yeast, and Juliet is the bun!” He grinned.
He’s totally nuts.
Willie reached for his bag. “So, can we — ”
Jacob stopped him. “Ah-ah-ah . . . not yet. Let’s just chat a little. I like to get to know my transactors before transacting transactions.”
“Okay,” said Willie, leaning back into the camp chair.
“So tell me, o scholar, how many long, numbing years have you spent in the mouse-maze of academia?”
“I’m working on my master’s thesis.”
“What is it?”
“What’s what?”
“Your thesis. What are you trying to say?”
“Oh, well . . .” Willie didn’t know what his thesis was anymore. But for lack of any other idea, he said, “Basically, that Shakespeare was a Catholic. You see — ”
Jacob threw his head back and laughed. “Bullshit!”
“What — why?”
Jacob shook his head emphatically. “Shakespeare wasn’t Catholic. He was a humanist! In case you hadn’t heard, there was this whole Renaissance thing that happened around his time?”
Willie started to protest, but Jacob continued, “Oh, sure, he might have claimed to be a Catholic, he might have claimed to be a Protestant, he might have claimed to be a respected married man, but we know what he was really doing, don’t we, he was fucking and drinking and getting high on big, juicy Warwickshire mushrooms,
wasn’t he? If he’s a Catholic, I’m a Catholic, and I actually am a Catholic, but I’m not. I mean, nobody’s a Catholic, really, are they, especially Catholics. Nor should they be!” And he threw his head back and laughed even harder than ever. “BEND OVER, COUNTRYMEN, LEND ME YOUR BEERS!” he boomed in full voice. “My apologies, but iamb what iamb! Ha! Another libation, sir?”
Willie, stunned to silence, held out his glass. Jacob just grinned at him.
Finally, Willie spoke to break the impasse. “So . . . is . . . King of the Fools, is that a full-time thing?”
“Oh, no, it’s strictly an extracurricular activity. A super-extra-curricular activity, a macro-super-extra-curricular activity, as it were.” Another laugh. “Oh, no, my real, real, fake job is much more interesting: chess.”
“Excuse me?”
“Chess. You know, little black and white men and horsies running around a checkerboard? I’m a professional chess player. In fact, I have a tournament tomorrow, I should REALLY get some sleep soon.” He still smiled broadly, positively beaming at Willie.
“Well, okay then,” said Willie as he discreetly pulled the duffel bag toward him.
“WAIT! One more thing, Willie the Shakes. Any real Shakespeare scholar should be able to quote a bit o’ the Bard. Recite for me, forthwith and posthaste, some lines from Hamlet. S’il vous plait.”
“Really?”
“Please,” said Jacob, and his smile, though it didn’t leave, was a little tight around the edges.
No problem there: Willie had had the lines floating in his head for several minutes:
“. . . since brevity is the soul of wit,
And tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes,
I will be brief: your noble son is mad:
Mad call I it; for, to define true madness,
What is’t but to be nothing else but mad? . . .
That he is mad, ’tis true: ’tis true ’tis pity;
And pity ’tis ’tis true: a foolish figure.”
“Ha!” said Jacob. “The action suited to the word, and the word suited to the action! Well done. You are a gentleman and a scholar, Willie the Shakes.”
Jacob pulled his chair over, much closer to Willie, and said, more quietly but still smiling, “I had to make sure you were who you said you were.
“. . . for we are at the stake,
And bay’d about with many enemies;
And some that smile have in their hearts, I fear,
Millions of mischiefs.
“From Julius Caesar,” continued Jacob. “You’d do well to keep an eye out, Willie the Shakes. Rumor is, there are DEA agents here, at the Faire, undercover, this weekend. And you know what they say about rumors: always true. So, if you have any more deliveries to make” — and here he launched into his best Elmer Fudd impersonation — “be vewwy, vewwy careful!” And he threw his head back once again, and laughed, then drained his Scotch, stood, and went to the tent. He opened the flap and motioned Willie inside.
“Now, why don’t you come into my office, young, fresh Willie?” He said the last three words a little too loudly toward the flap of the tent. Willie entered, and when his eyes adjusted to the light, he could see that the tent was larger than it seemed from the outside. It was filled with people, maybe seven or eight, men and women, all naked and engaged in a stunning variety of sex acts. Some looked at Willie and giggled, most continued about their business. Willie set down his duffel bag, and pulled out the fool’s hat to get at Jacob’s pot and his mushrooms. When Jacob saw the hat, he laughed, snatched it away gently and crowed:
“As I do live by food, I met a fool . . .
A worthy fool! Motley’s the only wear.”
Willie handed Jacob his dope; Jacob handed Willie a roll of hundred-dollar bills and his hat. Willie put the money away.
One of the orgy girls, quirkily pretty with short, bright red hair, crooked teeth, and pierced nipples, looked up from the noisy blowjob she was giving. “Your friend’s cute, Jacob. Does he have a place to stay tonight?”
“Well, I don’t know,” said Jacob with exaggerated innocence. “Do you have a place to stay tonight, young, fresh Willie?”
Willie shrugged and said, “Here’s a night pities neither wise man nor fool.” Then he sang:
“He that has a house to put’s head in has a good head-piece.
The cod-piece that will house
Before the head has any,
The head and he shall louse;
So beggars marry many.”
Jacob laughed again. “What the fuck does that mean, fool?”
In response, Willie took off his shirt. Two of the orgy girls, and one of the orgy men, looked at him approvingly. Willie smiled. “It means, thanks for the place to crash.” He rolled the shirt into a wad, tucked it into the darkest corner of the tent, laid his head down on it, and quickly fell asleep to the lullaby of gentle moanings and slurpings.
Chapter Thirty-six
If the youthful Shakespeare was, as we have conjectured, surrounded by Catholic rebels — and was possibly at some stage a rebel himself — one can’t help but wonder what event or series of events caused him to turn the other cheek, to become the philosophically impartial “Gentle Will” of legend, whose works so exalted peace, order, and humility.
Mary and William woke to the sound of church bells. William rose, used the chamber pot, and looked out the small window of their room. It overlooked the courtyard where the players had played, now stone-cold in the dim morning light. The sky was ransacked with grey clouds on gray clouds. William couldn’t tell if the sun had risen or not. A murder of crows circled slowly up beyond the house’s western wing.
There was a knock at their door, and the pretty servant girl led them with a candle down a corridor to the great hall, gathering other guests as she went. The entire company from the night before, plus a few late arrivals, were soon assembled.
After a few moments, Robert Arden moved toward the back of the hall. “Come now,” he said, and extended his hands in supplication, “all ye faithful and beloved of our Lord and Savior, sweet Jesus, come ye and see ye and hear ye that to which our Sovereign, or those who serve her, would have you remain blind and deaf.”
Two servants pulled aside the large tapestry of the Arden family crest to reveal a wood-paneled wall. Another servant removed a single board from the paneling, behind which there was a single iron ring. Robert seized the ring and turned it once to the right then pushed, opening a door to a hidden corridor.
“Behold, you Lucys and Leicesters and Sir Francis Walsinghams! Here is naught but my wine cellar!” Everyone smiled grimly. Robert took a torch and led the way into the corridor. It soon ended in a flight of stairs, down which the company filed. At the bottom, William found himself in a wine cellar indeed, a small room with earthen walls and lined on three sides from the floor to the low ceiling with bottles of Rhenish and claret, sack and malmsey.
Today the wine cellar was not a wine cellar only, but also a chapel. The room was draped in tapestries depicting the Passion, and atop a low platform under a tapestry of St. George stood a simple table altar and a small ambry to hold the wine and wafers. Standing at the altar, wearing a priest’s robes, was a pale man with a mop of dark hair. William recognized him from somewhere . . . he had seen him, just recently. Was he at the evening meal? Robert Arden approached him, and when the priest turned in greeting William saw that he held a staff, a deacon’s crosier, at a certain angle, as if he were holding a rake — yes. It was the gardener. He genuflected, blessing the congregation. William’s mother crossed herself and knelt quickly with the others, and William belatedly did likewise.
The Mass began. William had been to enough Protestant services at Holy Trinity Church that he could recite the rites backward. Although John never attended, Mary took the children nearly every Sunday. William himself had stopped going a year or so ago, begging other work to be done. But he hadn’t been to a Catholic Mass in his memory. He only knew that it was reviled amongs
t the practitioners of the new faith as wicked, idolatrous, debauched. He wasn’t quite sure what to expect. Virgin sacrifice perhaps.
The service was the same.
Really, almost exactly, the same as the Anglican Mass William knew.
The priest sprinkled holy water. He sang a psalm in a beautiful tenor. It was Psalm 46, and though William was lost in the voice and didn’t follow all of even the simple church Latin, he noticed turbabitur, “shake,” and also something about the breaking of spears, or was it arms? William rubbed his shoulder. The psalm sang of nations at war and kingdoms falling. It sang of God and refuge.
As the service progressed, William stood at the moments he was used to standing, knelt when he was used to kneeling. He joined in singing the Alleluia, and his voice rang out louder than he expected it to in the small space. He noticed a few tiny — tiny — differences in the service, a word here and a word there, a prayer moved here, an extra saint mentioned there.
No virgins were sacrificed.
The reading of the Gospel was from Luke, and it was one of his favorites:
“I say unto you which hear,
Love your enemies, do good to them which hate you,
Bless them that curse you, and pray for them which despitefully use you.
And unto him that smiteth thee on the one cheek offer also the other; and him that taketh away thy cloak forbid not to take thy coat also.”
William rose and opened his arms to heaven and said “Et cum spiritu tuo” on cue, and then at last it was the time for the Eucharist, and the priest of the Old Faith mixed water and wine just as the priest of the new faith at Holy Trinity mixed water and wine, and he recited the same words of Jesus at the Last Supper:
“This is my body, which is given for you. Do this for a commemoration of me. . . . This is the chalice, the new testament in my blood, which shall be shed for you. . . .”
The priest placed the bread in the wine and then . . . then he lifted the cup over his head.
That was different.
My Name Is Will Page 24