by Talbot Mundy
“Will Shakespeare,” he said, “of Stratford.”
Then I placed him in memory. He was the lad who had married Ann Hathaway, a woman older than himself, in such haste that there was talk of it on all the countryside. Some said he had been made to marry her, but I doubted that tale. He was used to being whipped and stocked, for killing deer and for writing saucy doggerel, which sort of man is neither easy to compel nor usually reckoned a good catch. He could have run away, there being nothing to prevent since his father had come to poverty in old age, after being alderman. If what I had heard was true, his home, like mine, had been sold for debt, and there was no more to keep him in Stratford than me in Brownsover.
I took another view of the Ann Hathaway affair, the more so as I looked into the fellow’s eyes. He was a man such as women throw their hearts at and go any lengths to snare — a witty-wise, good-looking fellow with a devil-may-care spirit on occasion and a way of mocking at himself that gave the clue to catching him into the hands of any wench whose reputation was worth gossip. Ann Hathaway had tempted him, I did not doubt, and had blamed him for it afterwards; and he, with a mixture of selfmockery and dignity, had put his head into the noose to make her an honest woman.
But though I had a feeling for a fellow in adversity I did not care to condescend to him too much.
“Stratford,” I said, “is but a village by the Avon, where the middens stink in mid-street and the plague kills elders faster than the brats are born. No wonder you should leave the place!”
My words offended him. If I owned Stratford I would trade the whole place for a hundred rods of Brownsover, but I liked the fellow nonetheless for being angry. Good dogs love old kennels, though they stink. A good man boasts his township, even if the pigs lie ham-deep in the main street mud.
“From which Elysium are you?” he asked. “Do the dungheaps smell o’ roses where you come from? I can see your horse drops much like any other animal.”
I told him, Brownsover. He laughed.
“None ever heard of Brownsover,” said he, “until they started Rugby School — and such a poor school, and poor scholars, that a pair of barns was reckoned good enough. In Stratford we use the Town Hall — all the upper story.”
“Aye,” I answered, “where the beadle can better observe you, lest you go a-poaching sooner than learn your conjugations.”
So we bickered for a while in mutual disparagement, each, cock-a-doodle-do-ing his own dunghill, and not either of ns offering his scholarship in proof. And in truth I was afraid to do | that, having absorbed the most part of my schooling from a peeled ash sapling, which is excellent for horsemanship, making the roughest saddle easy, but not sweetening irregular Greek: verbs.
But by noon we were friends and sat together on a rail beside: the road to feed our horses and ourselves. So better was my capon than the venison he carried that I could not help but offer him a drumstick; and when he had made short work of that I broke off a wing for him, whereafter we slaked our thirst with icy water from a nearby brook and by and by we grew so friendly that when we reached a tavern called “King Harry’s Head” we had to stop to pledge each other in canary wine. Then on, again, as chattersome as wenches at a maying.
We told each other all there was to know about ourselves. His wife Ann, so he said, unlike good wine, was hardly mellowing with age. She loved to sit in church o’ Sundays and quote sermons at him all the week, so that he knew by heart so many sins as it would take a lifetime to commit the half of them. For himself, he better loved to rest him merry and to write such airy nothings as imagination conjured into words, whereas Ann tolerated no such nonsense, as she called it, in the house, but used his scribbled sheets to light the oven fire.
“And it’s bad bread that she bakes, Will.” We already called each other Will and Will. “Bread as much resembling belly-comfort as the unoathed, funless Heaven that she prates about resembles good cheer for a hospitable soul.”
He had a thought go into the butcher-trade, having learned that, for he had to kill his father’s calves when the family fortune dwindled, and not knowing much else except how to shoot deer and dress the venison, which he confessed he could do far better than his wife could cook the meat, she burning it, he said, as if the hell she prated of were something near at hand.
But he was gentle-minded and not hankering for the Smithfield shambles.
“Ludd knows, Will,” he said, “it is a pity we must kill the poor brutes with pleading eyes that look at us so soft and melancholy.”
I thought him likelier to make a parson than a butcher, but I learned a little more of him that evening and changed my mind about the parsonage. We bedded at the “Three Wise Men,” a roadside tavern, and a good one, kept by a one-legged rogue named Bellamy, who had owned a sixty-fourth share of a privateer that fell in with a Spanisher from the Americas, all loaded down with silver bars. So, though he lost a leg, he sold it for a high price, and he had married as buxom a wench as ever sliced a loaf against her bosom. She was all the way from Bristol and, having neither kith nor kin to weep with when old salty timber-toe was in his cups, she laughed instead with any merry traveller who came along. Both I and Will were merry, being young.
So while we stalled our horses and scraped the mud from them (to save a hostler’s fee next morning) I saw fit to drop a hint or two to friend Will. For it is a strange thing how a lover’s loyalty can make him jealous of another’s peccadillos. I have learned to rest well satisfied if my own behaviour offends me not too much, and other men’s incontinencies vex me not at all. But I was young in those days.
“Will,” I said, “our hostess hath a hospitable eye and you, a married man, must of necessity act seemly, being not so far from home but that a rumour might reach Stratford.”
For a while he scraped his horse’s fetlocks, whistling to himself to keep the dust out of his teeth.
“Women,” he answered presently, “resemble rhymes and tunes in this: the easiest to catch are they that, as it were, impatronize themselves until they seem more inescapable than empyreal destiny. Those are the sort that lose their zest, and like the ale left in a tankard over-night they bear not later scrutiny. When yesterday’s sour ale has dulled the drinker’s wit doth he not charge his belly all anew with vintage to restore the vibrance of his brain. ’Tis even as with tunes: the dull ones so obsess the memory that not the very lark’s excited welcome to the spring can drive their limping measures out of mind. Shall a man steep himself in merry music to forget care — in the joy of living an he love not death?”
“Then shrewish wives,” said I, “excuse incontinence?”
“Excuse,” said Will, “is coward’s courage. He who makes excuse defends himself against another’s conscience like a school-boy stuffing pigskin in his breeches to defeat a teacher’s cane. To be in love with wisdom is to follow precept; but to love and yet be wise is to invade the province of the angels, which is trespass. Foolishness and love go hand-in-hand to many a hey-day that the dry-wise never know. Did you not tell me on the road, in words as red and white as roses, of a maid named Mildred? Do her grey eyes fade so soon from memory?”
I was offended, so I combed my horse’s tail a while, with an eye to his heels, he not loving to be handled when his nose was in the manger.
“Which has the better,” Will asked presently, “the gallant with a rosebud out of reach, or he who treads a blown bloom underfoot?”
Whereat he went into the inn ahead of me, and when I reached the hearthside he was seated in the best chair, with a mug of sack beside him, and the woman on her knees at the fire making toast, which any of the kitchen wenches might have done — and done better, for she burned it, what with listening to Will and looking sideways at him.
I had lingered at the pump to wash myself and polish up my brass spurs, sticking the pheasant-feather in my new hat at an angle that matched better with my smart moustachios. But Will had let the woman wipe the road-muck from his boots before she made the toast, and presently she sat o
n the arm of the chair to stitch his sleeve where he had torn it, giving me her back to gaze on.
‘Od’s blood, how the fellow talked! I soon began to change my mind about Ann Hathaway: though she had been as virginal inclined as Queen Elizabeth she must have lost her head and heart to him. I thought of old King Solomon, who had a thousand wives, and understood how he conducted all that courtship!
Will could make a verse offhanded when the sparks flew upward from a faggot; when the gusty wind blew smoke out of the chimney-mouth he likened that to dead men’s spirits coming back for one last look at comfortable earth before they soared amid the melancholy loneliness of starry space; he likened scraping muddy boots to the forgiving care of angels probing underneath men’s scabby sins to find the virtue that redeems them.
She was as drunk with honeyed words ere long as Titus Bellamy, her man was drunk with spiced canary in the inner room. Bellamy’s brain remembered feats of daring he had heard of, and, if anyone believed him, he had sent more Dons to roast in hell-flame than the Smithfleld butchers had killed Christmas beeves since the Lord Harry himself was King of England. If he believed himself he should have slept ill, thinking of his end.
When Will and I had supped, Dame Bellamy attending on us and loading a board before the hearth with fare that would have watered the mouth of a prince to smell of it — cold pigeon pie, there was, with eggs, and fat ham, and a chine of pork, and sausage, and honied apple dumplings soused in cream, and Leicester cheese, and pickles — I forget what else — I went into the back room to sit facing Bellamy before the fire to listen to him.
I would rather have listened to Will, but I was envious, and Mistress Bellamy thought nothing of my new moustachios. Nor had I any gift of speech to take the wind out of Will Shakespeare’s sail and keep him from the port he had in mind. I would have liked the woman’s flattery, and I would have liked the smug feeling of virtue to be won, perhaps, by skating over thin ice. But I was young; and if we came into the world with as much good sense as living teaches us, this world would be another kind of place, or so I think.
Besides, good Will was even then fumbling at the doorway of her virtue where she offered such warm welcome to the stranger at her gate.
CHAPTER TWO
Will Halifax becomes the owner of a “gimcrack” in a red box and Will Shakespeare acquires a mare.
THAT whole night long I listened to Titus Bellamy. He grew more talkative the more he drank. And so I have no knowledge of what Will did, not though vinegary Ann should hale me before judges for a questioning.
In addition to me and Bellamy there were five men on the settles on either side of the fire in that back room, and by midnight four of them were snoring, doubtless having heard his tales an hundred times but preferring to sleep before the fire because it cost less than a bed.
He who sat beside me was a leathery-faced and leather-jacketed, sharp-nosed fellow with a pair of merry blue eyes, Jeremy Crutch by name, whom I remembered to have seen at Coventry Assizes, where they tried him for some felony and let him go for lack of evidence. I knew his reputation well. Some said he was a Jesuit, although my father had gone bail for him when he was charged at Coventry, which I think he would never have done had he thought him a Jesuit — rash though my father sometimes was, and ready to befriend even masterless men.
That had been the first time that a masterless man found bondsman while awaiting trial in our part of England, and there had been plenty to advise my father that a knight should risk his substance in a worthier cause. Truly enough, if Jeremy had chosen to abscond my father must have fallen into bankruptcy, he being already deep in debt, as I discovered when he died.
However, Jeremy made no bid that night to claim acquaintance on the strength of my father’s charity; nor had he the indecency to speak about my father’s death, although he must have known the circumstances, which had been a nine days’ gossip on all the countryside. He was thoughtful to give no offence, and he drank no more than I did — very sparingly, that is, since I take no pleasure in a next day’s ride when half a merry morning goes to drive off fumes of wine.
Only when old Bellamy paused in his talk or lost the thread of reminiscence Jeremy Crutch would break his silence to ask questions — with a by-your-leave or if-your-honour-will-permit to me — to start the old ruffian off again describing doings on the Spanish Main or off the Portugais or on the road to India. For he claimed he had ventured all over the globe.
It was talk to make a young man’s blood go galloping if anything but ice were in his veins — tales of strange seas, and the Inquisition, and of gold and silver bars in heaps — of fighting out of sight of land for galleons deep-laden with the plunder of Brazil — of Captain Francis Drake, whom all the world had heard of, and of mermaids and sea-monsters, and of John Hawkins and his traffic in blackamoors stolen from the Portuguese off Africa and sold, as many as lived the voyage out, to merchants in the New World.
No man ever heard more exciting tales than that old timber-toe could reel out through his shaggy beard; and not the half of them were half-true because they lacked, as I discovered later, half the fact — of suffering as well as deed. There were tales, too, of the past when the Lord Harry had beheaded a wife or two to show his independence of the Pope, and the men of Devon had begun to copy his example, privateering against any ship that carried the Pope’s blessing.
He told, too, of the days when Mary, our great Queen’s sister, wished to take Philip of Spain for husband — as indeed she did eventually, she being a Tudor, who would have her own way, cost what it might; and the men of Devon put to sea to keep Philip out of England, filling him so full of dread (for he is timorous) that he stayed away until the Devon men grew weary and turned to plundering elsewhere, so that Philip dared the voyage at last and married her, to England’s misery and shame.
And though Bellamy lied, as having been foremost in all the exploits he recounted, he did no more than magnify himself into the boots of men who stormed over land and ocean, havocking more capably than he could talk. For I met many of those captains in the days to come, yet know not now which was the stormier, Don or English — aye, nor not alone they, but the French and Flemings, Turks, Venetians and Genoese — and a host of others. Under Gloriana men have had to carry bold blades who would leave their mark on memory.
Jeremy Crutch and I sat sleepless, hardly noticing each other, covering the pot-mouths with our hands when the yawning tavern-wench made shift to fill them. But Bellamy drank as a drain takes water and then roused the girl with a sailor’s oaths because she nodded in a corner when his mug was empty.
There was word once or twice of a robbery, one Joshua Stiles, a London merchant on his way to Bristol, having yielded up his purse to someone in the dusk, three nights gone; and old Bellamy bragged loudly of the gibbet at a cross-roads nearby, where he swore such miscreants as did on land what honest men might do at sea with God’s approval, ought to hang in chains for an example to the others. And he said something of a geegaw or a gimcrack that the merchant prized more highly than his purse, having been sorely grieved to part with it to a thief who would never know its value.
“Master Stiles swore to me,” said Bellamy, “that he would rather have that geegaw back than hang the thief, though I forget how he described the thing. It may have been some box for sibbersauces for a woman, or a crucifix perhaps — some bauble. But he’s no Papisher, not Joshua Stiles! He’s a good, God-fearing, loyal subject of the Queen’s most gracious majesty — I heard him say it! — saving, I don’t doubt, when her excisemen stick their pimply noses in among the bales.”
He would have talked more of the gimcrack, only that Jeremy turned him off to boasting of the loot he had seen in strange ports. Towards morning he grew stupid in his cups and returned to the gimcrack and the tale of the robbery, but then Jeremy got up and left ns and by that time it behoved me to go out and feed the horses.
There was a heavy frost and thick white fog, so I found a lantern first and trimmed the wick
before malting my way to the stables; and Jeremy, who seemed to know his way too well to need a lantern, rode off like a spectre as I crossed the stable-yard, none giving him God-speed nor he so much as whistling. He wore a hood like a friar’s drawn up over his bead. The mare he rode was shrouded in the fog, but she looked like a beauty picking up her feet over the mixen.
It was warm within the stable, so, I took my time, and what with watering and feeding both the horses and repacking my two saddlebags, the cocks were crowing when I came out and there was a right goodly smell of eggs and bacon frying. I was wondering what all that good fare would be like to cost us when Will Shakespeare put his head through the kitchen door and catching sight of me came out to meet me. Whereat I told him what was in my mind about the reckoning.
“I have paid the shot for both of us,” he answered, with that merry-winsome smile of his.
I demurred, well knowing he had little money in his purse and not yet realizing how any empty poke can sharpen wit. Will took my arm and answered:
“Study to live courteously, rendering to Caesar what is Caesar’s, but to them whose hearts are golden seek to add no gilt, lest Satan mock thee! Vulgar and immodest jangle-bags are they who flout such trash as money in the face of kindness! Only they who know no other measure should be paid in minted money, that an hostler spits on or a toss-pot flings into the sawdust on a tavern floor! There is such hospitality as only loving-kindness can requite.”
We lined our bellies well with eggs and bacon rashers fried by Mistress Bellamy, who bussed us both and thrust good bread and cheese into our saddlebags, beseeching us to come again; though me she urged, I knew, to keep herself in countenance.
She stood and watched us ride into the fog until we turned the corner of the road, her breath uprising like a kettle’s, and I, to keep myself from asking questions, looked to my pistol priming, thinking that the night air might have damped it. It was well I did. Dry priming has emboldened more men to preserve themselves than ever bullets slew.