Will puts his arms around me and holds for a long while. Then, very gently, he pushes me away. ‘Let me say only this…’ he begins.
‘Don’t twist the knife! I couldn’t bear it!’
‘Aemilia. Calm yourself. You are not a murderer.’
‘I cannot calm myself! I cannot! Because I am!’
‘Look at me. Look at me… Every evening, every morning, every moment – my love, my sweet girl. Aemilia, I think of you.’
‘Will, no…’
‘You have read my plays.’
‘Yes.’
‘Come back to this world. Come back to your true self. Didn’t you see how it was? That all my heroines are versions of my Dark Aemilia? Black-eyed Rosaline, clever Portia, the Egyptian Queen who drove poor Anthony to madness – all you! All you. Each one.’
‘Don’t… don’t say this.’
‘I never was so happy, never so much myself, as I was when I was with you. When I loved you.’
‘Will.’
‘And you loved me.’
I hang my head. Rainwater swirls around our feet.
‘Henry,’ says Will. ‘The boy – he is the two of us. I live in him, with you. It’s only this that has sustained me. Only this, and writing. The recreation of my sweet lost lady in my words.’
‘There is no… future for us, is there?’ I say, my tears flowing from the sky. ‘Only your words are left.’
Will says nothing. We embrace, and I know this is for the last time.
Act V
Poetry
Scene I
Aldgate, Spring 1611
I am a sinner, steeped in evil that is past, and I can never make amends. So it is now my habit to go to St Botolph’s Church at Aldgate every morning for the matins service. It is a simple building, despite its gold-tipped spire. Today I feel ill and restless, and believe that the end of all this might be the madhouse. I have passed a disturbed night. The house echoed and stirred with malevolent spirits, and the air I breathed seemed odorous and distempered, infected by the demons that dwell among us. I could hear them whispering and gibbering in my ears, so I wrapped my head in the bed-sheet, sweating with terror. In the end, I crept up to the garret and sat upon a joint-stool by the window, waiting for the first rays of sunlight to drive the evil spirits away. Only when the rooftops and chimneystacks were gilded with the dawn did I dare to drowse a little, head sagging. I dreamed of Will, as I do most nights.
The last I heard from him was a short letter, sent to explain that the second publication of the sonnets was done without his knowledge. A volume was printed two summers ago: his hate-verse and the fulsome words he wrote to please Wriothesley. His note was polite, but there was no love in it. I keep it, with his poems.
Now I am sitting in the church, I feel as if I am lost in a dark mist, and the voices of my fellow worshippers seem far away. I sit among the other women, head bowed, ignoring their chatter, waiting for the service to begin. Our usual prelate is not here. I don’t see the new man when he enters, as I am busy with my prayers. But, as soon as he begins to speak, something in his voice and manner catches my attention.
‘It has come to my notice,’ says he, ‘that this City is as full of Sin as Sodom, and as riven with Bawds and Strumpets as Gomorrah. There is a not a homily that addresses this Disease of London, so this morning I have written you my own, in plain words. May the Devil in you hear this, so you can cast him out.
‘And you may ask yourselves – how did we come to this pass? And you may ask yourselves – how did we come to be cast out of the Garden of Eden, we whom GOD made in his own image, to have mastery over Creation and over all the beasts of the field, and all the birds in the air, and all the fishes in the sea?’
I shift my position. My knees are growing stiff. Where have I heard that rasping tone before? I clasp my hands tighter, and try to pray harder. But the voice is insistent.
‘I can tell you how. I can tell you why. I have studied in the greatest universities in all of Europe, and I have looked most carefully at the cause. I have found our culprit, with GOD’s help. It is Woman who has ruined us. First in the person of that weakest of vessels, Eve, and since then in the frail form of every woman born.’
I bow my head. ‘Lord, forgive me. Jesu, have pity. Mea culpa. Mea culpa.’
But it is hard to concentrate on my own sin when there is so much of it about. And most of it the fault of my ignoble gender.
‘St Thomas Aquinas has warned us of this wanton, wayward sex. “A male is the beginning and end of woman, as God is the beginning and end of every creature.” Man is made in God’s image; Woman is a thing distorted from Man’s rib. Her Latin name is “softness of the mind”, but Man is called “vir” which we translate as “strength or virtue of the soul”. Compared to Man, the Woman is an imbecile.’
It is no good. I open my eyes. The man standing at the wooden table in the centre of the church is my old adversary, Parson John. I stare at him, blinking, forgetting my own misdoing for the first time for many years.
The prelate is warming to his theme. ‘What is lighter than smoke? A breeze. What is lighter than a breeze? The wind. What is lighter than the wind? A Woman. What is lighter than a Woman? Nothing. And yet, even in this lightness, she gushes most detestably, sullying all she touches with her womb-blood. Fruits do not produce, wine turns sour, plants die, trees lack fruit. The air about her darkens. If a dog should eat her vile blood, it will run mad.’
Lord above! Is this truly the Word of God? I glance around me, at the bowed and reverent heads of all the women.
‘A woman is the cause of all our ill. Adam was deceived by Eve, and not Eve by Adam. The Woman summoned him to Sin. She lied and tricked him, and the whole of Creation was overthrown. So the female must pay. She must yield to the man as a reed bends in the wind.’
His words work a curious magic on me. They rouse me from my torpid, grief-stricken state. Dismissing Eve as being both weak and wicked has always seemed foolish and unfair to me. She was subordinate to Adam, more obedient than Lilith. And yet, she ended by looking beyond the life of a child, fenced in by our Maker. Her existence as a naked animal enthroned in flowers was not enough. She sought out Knowledge. Was that a bad thing? Should mankind be stupid? The Serpent may have been the agent of the Devil, but in truth human beings contain the impulses of Hell as well as Heaven. We are not angels. In order to defend Eve, it is necessary to think beyond the version of the Fall that Parson John proclaims. Must all women bear this burden of limitless guilt? Must we spend all our lives accusing ourselves of sin, and despising ourselves as second best?
I sit upright. I am thinking of the Cornelius Agrippa book that I stole from Simon Forman, and the thoughts that this wise philosopher expressed. He was a good Christian – just as much so as our revered parson – and yet he saw women in a very different way. Supposing that the Old Testament God of rage and plagues was not the God of Jesus and his disciples? Supposing Eden had been, not a paradise, but a prison from which humankind had to escape? With knowledge came freedom. I blink hard.
The service is over, and the parson stands outside the church, addressing the congregation with an air of chilly discontent. I walk past him, with no desire to speak, but can’t resist giving him a sharp look I pass.
‘I see we have a Jezebel among us, a copy of that wilful Eve,’ he says.
‘Do you remember me?’
‘You are the termagant whose pestilent son was possessed by demons.’
The other churchgoers look at me askance. I must admit, I have not made it my business to be neighbourly, and they are already suspicious of me.
‘I trust he died soon after,’ says the pleasant parson.
The fear and self-loathing fall away from me. ‘He lived, sir,’ I said. ‘And he is living still, praise God!’
‘Then a miracle took place. God is good; he will save all sinners, even your diabolic son.’
‘Yes. A miracle. And I would like to tell you that your view of women is q
uite mistaken. Eve is not the mother of our undoing. She has been much maligned.’
‘It is not my view, mistress,’ says the parson. ‘I do not invent the Word of God. I am the mouthpiece of the Church.’ He bends forward slightly, as if to direct his spleen more precisely. ‘Ask forgiveness, and it may be that Our Lord will spare your soul.’
‘I will not.’
‘Will not, madam?’
‘The Church is wrong.’
‘Heaven protect us!’ cries an old man.
‘May the good Lord strike you down!’ says his companion.
Parson John regards me coldly, a pillar of furious contempt. ‘If you wish me to refer you to the City fathers for sedition, then I would be happy to oblige you. I will leave it to our Maker to offer a more long-lasting punishment, and broil your flesh for an eternity in Hell.’
‘Punish me when I am printed, sir,’ I say. ‘Punish me when I set down the true story of Eve and Eden in a chap-book. Punish me when I have made a poem of it. Then I will be quite content.’
Scene II
My night fears have diminished. My wakefulness gives me time to write, and to think, and the shadows keep to themselves. I write and write, referring to the books upon my desk, and using the thoughts inside my head. I look upon the guilt and grief of other women, and I conclude that we have been the cursed receptacle for all the ills of mankind. In failing to be the Virgin Mary, we are Serpents every one.
It comes to me, as I write by candle-light and consider the darkness, that it is possible that poor Eve did not sin at all. She was not wicked. She was curious. I set out the words, and this time they are clearer and sharper than before. I see not only Eden; I see the truth.
Our Mother Eve, who tasted of the Tree,
Giving to Adam what she held most dear,
Was simply good, and had no power to see,
The after-coming harm did not appear:
The subtle Serpent that our Sex betrayed,
Before our fall so sure a plot had laid.
And if Eve is free of blame, then Adam must take the consequence. Now the words flow. I break a goose quill in my haste to get them down, and dip a new pen, greedy for the ink.
If Eve did err, it was for knowledge’s sake,
The fruit being faire persuaded him to fall:
No subtle Serpent’s falsehood did betray him,
If he would eat it, who had power to stay him?
Not Eve, whose fault was only too much love.
From the suffering of Eve came the suffering of the rest of us. Of guilty women, who must pay eternally for the Fall of Man. I remember the lines that had haunted me when Tom sang his sad song at Yuletide: of Rachel, crying for her children ‘because they were not’. What is ‘not’? The empty cradle. The folded nightshirts, put away for other babes. Tom’s laughing face, his joy and foolery. So I write of that too, the love of all mothers, of which the love and grief of Our Lady is the highest expression.
Yet these poor women, by their piteous cries
Did move their Lord, their Lover and their King,
To take compassion, turne about and speake,
To them whose hearts were ready now to break.
I write at night. I write in the daytime. I write when the pottage burns. I write while the soap congeals. I write while the house-mice nibble the fallen cake-crumbs at my feet. I write.
It is a work of many months. Back and forth I go, repeatedly, until I have made a poem which praises the Bible women and puts their case, as if I were a lawyer at the Inns of Court. And, when I have done, I sit down and think of all the women of influence to whom I might dedicate it, and who might now give me patronage, and I write them all my thanks. I start with Queen Anne, and end with virtuous ladies in general. (Of which there are, as you will know, a substantial number.) Redemption is sweet. I find a printer and a seller. I do not go to Cuthbert Tottle, who has died of dropsy, but make a contract with Mr Valentine Simmes, a most enlightened fellow who sees no harm in women writing verse, and believes there is great merit in the case for Eve. My book is sold in the bookshop of Richard Bonian in Paul’s Churchyard.
I send a copy to Will, with my good wishes, but I hear nothing from him.
Scene III
Stratford, March 1616
Time passes not as a river flows, smoothly and ever onward, but as a mob seethes, wild and unpredictable. First walking, then running, then slowing to a stop, then starting to speed up again: faster, faster. Or this is how it seems to me. So I am standing here, on this bright, blustery spring day, and cannot believe that I am so old, or that the things that live in my memory happened so long ago. My chest aches with the pain of times past and loves lost. But I have Henry still, and my penitence, and this good hour.
Alfonso is dead, and I miss him more than I thought I would, though it is pleasant to have the whole bed to myself. (And to know how much money I have in the house from one day to the next.) I have a widow’s freedom, to walk the streets and go about my business. The Globe was burned down, and then built up again, in brick. All were saved from the fire, and I hear the King’s Men are doing well. Will is no longer with them – he retired after the blaze and came here to live the life of a fat gentleman with his wife. It is this wife – this Ann Shakespeare – who wrote a curt note to me. Summoning me here, to speak to Will. I would have ignored her message if I could. Why should I be told to jump to it by this queening country wife? But I have longed to see him for so many years.
Stratford is a busy, noisy place. Outside the inn, there is a bustle of carts, livestock and crowding townsfolk, blocking the thoroughfare completely. There are plenty of beggar-folk as well, just as vile to look upon as their city cousins: doxies, vagabonds and all manner of hard-eyed beggars, displaying their deformities to tempt money from passers-by. And yet it’s but a village compared to London’s great smoking tumult. Around us is a rolling landscape of green hills and pleasant pasture. The trees that line the market square are beginning to put forth new leaves, and their branches whisper in the breeze. Stratford’s most pungent odours are of the shippon, not the jakes.
I stare at the shop-fronts and at the cheery, bartering housewives, trying to imagine Will buying a joint of lamb or a bolt of cloth. The houses are modest, built tight together, so that each shop counter, which juts out into the street, buts on to the next. A master tailor is sewing a shirt; a barber smoothes a linen cloth over his customer’s chest; a baker flaps her hands at the flies that buzz around the sugar loaves.
‘Somewhat small,’ I say to John Heminge, who has come with me from London. ‘Too small for him.’
But Heminge isn’t listening; he is paying the horse-boy.
‘Is New Place in this street?’ I ask
He frowns, looking at his change. ‘Close by,’ he says. ‘You’ll have to wait, Aemilia. We don’t know when he will see you yet.’
‘Did she not ask for me to come?’
‘Be patient. He is not the man he was. And speak fairly of Mistress Shakespeare. It was good of her to ask you here.’
That night, sleep deserts me again. I sit in my room, watching shadows, and light one candle from the next to stop them from haunting me. I think of my past, and wish that I could be a better sort of person. I think of my poems and wish that I could have made those better too.
I finally sleep, bolt upright.
I am a child in Bishopsgate again, walking with my father. The air is full of music, and we are walking past the walls of Bedlam, listening to the mad singing their angel songs.
My father tells me not to listen, and not to look through the keyhole of the great gate we come upon, which is so high that it reaches the clouds. I say I will not, and then he goes away. Then I look through the hole and there is a yellow eye.
I look at the yellow eye, and the yellow eye looks at me.
A voice whispers, ‘Little girl.’
‘What?’
‘Little girl. I have been watching you.’ It is a woman’s voice. It has a sibi
lant hiss.
‘I didn’t do anything.’
‘You have come here for a reason.’ Now there is a wheedle in the voice. It wants something.
‘I must go now. My father told me not to look.’
‘You came because I called you, little girl.’
‘I didn’t hear you.’
‘That is because I did not need to speak.’
New Place is built from solid brick and sturdy timber. It is a long building, which stretches along one side of Chapel Street, edged by a high brick wall. It has three storeys and five gables. Much of it is raw-coloured, where new bricks or wood have been used to patch and mend it. There a gate in the wall which leads to a grassy courtyard.
A great deerhound lopes across and welcomes Heminge as an old friend, wagging its tail and gently butting him with its head. Then he leaves me there and enters the house, pressing my hand before he goes.
I shield my eyes and look up at the plain glass windows, set in lead, wondering if Will is behind one of these, and whether he might be secretly studying me, as I am trying to catch a glimpse of him. Nausea grips my throat. What will we say? How shall I meet his eye?
After a while, Heminge returns. He looks unhappy.
‘Will is worse,’ he says.
I frown. ‘Worse than what?’
‘He is very ill, Aemilia. I hope you understand that. It was no one’s wish but his that you came all this way. Ann only tries to please him.’
‘Then I must see him.’
‘I don’t know if he is well enough to see you today.’
‘I am not going away till I have spoken to him,’ I say. ‘Even if it’s only for five minutes.’
‘She had better come in,’ says a voice from the doorway.
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