by Louis Bayard
“That’s someone’s yard,” I pointed out.
“Bet they’re not home.”
The only way to fit on the bench was to lower ourselves in tandem and draw our knees straight to our chests. It would have been altogether impossible to feel adult … were there not adult feelings stirring inside me. Prompted by nothing more than her mint-and-clove smell.
“I’ve been thinking,” she said. “About all the reasons you might hate me. So how about I go through my list, and you can tell me if there are any left over?”
“Okay.”
“There’s, first of all, the lying. Which I grant you, except not as much as you might think. I really am a dumb business major. Bernard liked me that way, he didn’t want me to be an expert.”
“Or you’d break your dumb-business-major cover.”
“Something like that. My point is … all those questions I was asking you about Harriot and Ralegh, they were all sincere. I really wanted to know. And being with you and Alonzo—it was a real education.”
“You’ve been an education, too.”
“Huh. Really?” Her knees rose to her chin. “I won’t explore that. So another reason you might hate me is you think I was lying about the visions. Which is not true because that really is how I met Bernard in the first place. I was living in London then, and these damned visions were coming every night, and they were—killing me, basically—and Bernard was giving a lecture at the Humanities and Arts Research Centre. On, what do you know, the School of Night.
“So I went. And afterward, I went up to him—just like I did with Alonzo a few weeks later—and I told him I have this problem, and he said, ‘Funny, I have a problem, too. And you’ve got this security background, so how about we join forces? You’ll learn all you need to know about the School, and I’ll get my document back.’ Seemed like a win-win all around.”
She paused to interrogate herself.
“And I needed money, and this was a job. At least it was supposed to be.”
She picked up a Bradford pear leaf and very carefully began to shred it. The margins first, then the veins and the midrib. When it was nothing more than a petiole, she flung it away.
“At the wedding, Henry. When I told you—”
“Yeah.”
“I mean when I said I loved you.”
“Right.”
“Well, that wasn’t a lie, either. It was just—you know, it was lousy timing. So anyway, for the things I did lie about, I apologize. Truly. And for putting you in danger, too, which I never meant to do but still. And…” She exhaled, shook her shoulders. “What else?”
“I don’t know.” I shrugged. “It’s not like I kept a spreadsheet.”
“Well, that’s good.”
“I’m glad you came.”
“Well. I’m unemployed again, so…”
We sat for some minutes. Alone, except for a single tricycle, rolling mysteriously past, unattached to any child.
“It wasn’t lousy timing,” I said. “To say those words.”
“No?”
“See, the thing is—I mean, you have to understand, I have a very fraught relationship with those words, all right? I used them with the first girl who had sex with me. I was so—immoderately grateful, they just came out. And since then—God, is it a dozen? More than a dozen women, probably, have heard me say those words and I was, frankly, most of the time, mistaken, though never exactly insincere, but the problem is I can’t speak them anymore without thinking it’s more bullshit. Which is the last thing I want in my life, even though I’m not exactly sure what’s left—after the bullshit leaves.”
“Okay. I get that.”
“No. No…”
And now I could no longer sit on that tiny unbearable bench, but my legs, under compression, had nodded off, and when I tried to stand, they folded under me and left me … on my knees, yes, in the cool grass. Staring up at Clarissa. Very conscious of my humiliation, but conscious, too, that this was the best attitude to take when everything comes rising up.
“I love you,” I said. “I love you, Clarissa Dale … Gordon … Borgia, whatever your name is. Whatever your infamy. I love you more than is good for me. More than may be good for you. I love you for the duration. Five acts, plus epilogue, plus curtain call. I love you without refund.”
A single tear vibrated on the corner of her eye. She angrily brushed it away.
“Henry.”
“I’m only sorry—”
“What?”
“That it’s going to be so hard to stand up again.”
She laughed.
“You don’t know the half of it, Henry.”
She helped me to my feet, and then she drew my arms around her and pulled me tight. And she was there, suddenly, all of her, scent and touch and heart and soul, ravishingly concentrated, her dark eyes shining like tomorrow. No face is fair that is not full so black …
“Glad we cleared things up,” she said.
Just then, an ancient dog-walking woman in a wearable-art sweater walked past us. Her face lit up with a yenta’s smile, and we grinned back, delighted to be exactly the people she assumed us to be.
“Let’s walk,” Clarissa suggested.
And so we did. Down blocks innumerable, toward every point of the compass. Past bird baths, azalea bushes, corner stores, abandoned middle schools. The breeze laid a chill on our skin, and the sun scorched it off. I envied no one.
“Henry, can I ask you something?”
“Of course.”
“Alonzo. Did he … was he the man who jumped from Kew Bridge?”
I nodded.
“Well, I’m sorry,” she said. “I’ll miss him, if that doesn’t sound strange.”
“It doesn’t. I don’t know if—see, I found out Alonzo was—”
“Lily and Amory, yeah. I was getting around to that conclusion myself. Lord knows, Bernard could’ve done it, it wouldn’t have shocked me, I just couldn’t see why he would. There was no motive.”
“What about the treasure? Wasn’t that an incentive?”
She shook her head. “Bernard never put much store in that. He was willing to hold off for a little, see what came of it, but he was after another prize.”
“Which was?”
She gave me a puzzled look. “The document, Henry.”
“But that…”
I frowned, jerked my head away.
“It doesn’t make sense. Why would he care so much about a few lines of Walter Ralegh’s? I mean, sure, it’d be worth some money, but not that much. Nothing worth dying for, that’s for sure.”
“For him it was.”
“Why?”
“Because without the letter’s second page—without that signature from Ralegh—the first page loses most of its value. All of it, really.”
I stared at her.
“There’s a first page?”
“Yep.”
“But Alonzo—”
“Never saw it. See? Bernard wasn’t as much a fool as Alonzo thought. He might flash you a card or two, but he’d never tip his whole hand.”
“So all along Styles had this first page. In his possession.”
“Yep.”
“And all he wanted to do was … reunite it with the second.”
“Yep.”
“So what makes the first page so special?”
Clarissa smiled then: slow and lippy. She unsnapped her cordovan handbag and pulled out a folded sheet of paper.
“See for yourself.”
It was a digitalized copy. Written in the same hand as the other document. Written at the same time by the same man. But breaking a hole in everything.
“It can’t be,” I murmured.
“Keep reading.”
To my verie loving frende and master Thomas Harryott of London, gent,
Yew were goode enough to ask after our healthe.
The Queene lyes now at White Hall dead. Shee came in with the fall of the leafe, and went away in the Spring, and neuer, I thinke,
has the English Nation been so robed in black as youreself. In spite of the generall terror her death has occasioned, you shall perceiue that I haue more cause to mourne than most. The wheele of Fate turns, a new Sun rises vp out of the North, and no more shall the Truth bee my warrante.
All ready are slaunderous and shamefull speeches bruited abroade. I doe not knowe when I myself shalbe arayned, althoughe I must confess that my hearte is not heavy but of singuler lightness, I knowe not how. Besse and I haue taken ouersels to the Innes of Court, there to behold the latest fancy of master Shaxper. Yt was titled Alls wele thatt ends wele, and a more curious and straunge play haue I neuer seen. I was most forceibly strucke by the epithet resarved for ovr Hero, hight Bertram. Towit, foolish idle boye and for all thatt verie ruttish.
Was this not, in all its particulars, howe Kit used to speke of Shaxper? You recall ful wele, I hope, that night at Sherburne, whene Kit brought his louer there to mingle at lengthe with our Schollers. Wordes came but sparingly to the younge wight’s lips, and though wee scanned the remotest Orbs for their deepeste Misteries, there was for him no misterie, no glorie greter than his well-loved Kit. Howe little wee regarded him then, Warwickshire stripling, except when he had bene reduced most to tears by Kits gibes and japes.
I read it again and again. The words didn’t scatter, as I kept expecting, but remained stubbornly, surreally in place. And how neatly they segued into that second page, which rose now from memory.
Hee wold not be the first louer so to be served by Kit, who wold burn Hotte and Cold in the space of but one breth and who cold conjure up proofs for the Deuil or our Savior, howsoever the winde tourned him.
The one figure I’d never given a second thought to—Marlowe’s lover—was the Colossus that had been squatting over us the whole time.
I laughed so hard I actually fell down. Sprawled there in a tree box, with a row of liriope.
“Henry?”
In my defense: It’s not every day the entire field of Shakespearean scholarship bursts open. Violence like that can make a fellow shaky.
“Breathe, Henry.”
But if anything, it was a case of too much oxygen. Too much possibility.
Where even to begin? If this was a genuine letter, it would be the most exciting find since—Jesus, the plays themselves.
It would fill in the seven-year historical gap between the birth of Shakespeare’s twins in Stratford and his first emergence in the London theater scene.
It would give the School of Night new and global renown as the incubator of some of England’s greatest masterworks.
It would tie Shakespeare to Ralegh, to Harriot, to Chapman … and, most thrillingly, to Marlowe, who was not just Shakespeare’s colleague or rival or associate but his intimate.
And here was the point I was still groping toward. It would give Shakespeare’s career an entirely new trajectory: an arc of revenge.
* * *
“Sit up,” said Clarissa. “And explain that last part.”
“If we’re to believe this letter,” I said, “the young Shakespeare was mad, crazy in love with Christopher Marlowe. No mysterie, no glorie greter than his well-loved Kit.”
“Okay.”
“But it wasn’t a romance of equals. They were the same age, sure, they both had fathers in trade, but Marlowe went to university, he read Machiavelli, he was full of that ‘new philosophy,’ it shows in all his plays. Compared to Marlowe, Shakespeare was less learned, less accomplished. A real rube.”
“And Marlowe made him suffer for it.”
“From the sounds of it. And not just Marlowe. It sounds like the whole School found young Will a bit wanting. Warwickshire stripling. Howe little wee regarded him. I’m guessing they never asked him back, and I’m guessing, too, that Marlowe discarded him before long. Which, when you’re an infatuated young man—”
“Ambitious.”
“—is going to sting like a million lashes.”
The sun was out in full strength now, bringing the white paper to full dazzle.
“So what does Shakespeare do?” I asked. “He builds a life—a life’s work—in direct opposition to the School of Night. He mocks their pretensions in his plays. He plants his flag in the camp of Essex, their enemy. And maybe he doesn’t stop there. Maybe he testifies against Marlowe, maybe he slanders Harriot.”
“You’re speculating.”
“But someone leaks word about what the School was up to. Who has a better reason? The jilted lover. Think about what happens when Ralegh gets in trouble with King James. Out of nowhere comes a poem, ‘The Hellish Verses,’ attributed to Ralegh, full of atheistic sentiments. Pretty much the stake in Ralegh’s heart. Who’s likely to leak such a damaging document? Someone with a serious grudge. And someone with firsthand knowledge of what the School was up to.”
Clarissa frowned into her hands. “Suddenly, Shakespeare doesn’t sound like such a nice guy anymore.”
“Nice or not, it doesn’t matter. He’s a different guy. Not just a survivor, a player. Avenging himself on the men who rejected him.”
The fire in my brain was almost too much now. I had to bury my face in my hands. I had to … Breathe, Henry.
But I was thinking of the last ten years of my life. My little wasteland of self-unemployment. My amassed debts, financial and spiritual. And now, with the help of Alonzo Wax and Bernard Styles, all that was on the verge of changing. A single two-page letter was going to be—how had Styles put it?—the springboard for quite a splendid academic treatise. Such as might restore a man’s career.
“Christ!” I wheeled toward Clarissa. “Do you have the original?”
“I didn’t handle Bernard’s security for nothing. I’ve got the original, and it’s tucked away. How about you? Do you have the other one?”
“I do.”
“Then we’re good to go.”
She said it so simply that I almost let the momentum take me. But sadly it is part of my nature always to look beyond the verb to the entire predicate. Good to go … where?
“We can’t,” I said, gritting my teeth. “We can’t. This is not even legal.”
“Why not?”
“The letter belongs to the Styles estate.”
Like a tightrope walker, Clarissa raised one of her jeaned legs. Angled her face toward dogwood overhead.
“In theory, I’d agree with you, Henry. Except I’m pretty sure Bernard didn’t come by the letter innocently. That whole story about finding it in some law firm’s archives? I checked it out; it doesn’t hold up. And think about it. If he came by the document legally, why didn’t he call in the police when it went missing? He could have saved himself a lot of trouble.”
“So … is there anything left to tie the letter to Styles?”
She gave it some thought. Then shook her head.
“Not anymore.”
“Does anybody else know about it?”
“Far as I know, only dead people.”
But dead people can still fuck you up. My career had been derailed by an eighteenth-century dilettante. The whole thing could be—
“A forgery,” I said, dismally. “Likely as not.”
“Could be,” she said. “I guess that’s for you to figure out.”
“Me?”
“Who else?”
And then she smiled. Just enough to break my heart.
“Because ideally, Henry? It should be someone who’s still alive a year from now.”
53
EVERY DOCTOR AGREED: It was the damnedest thing.
At thirty-six, Clarissa Gordon had the biological indicators of a woman of seventy: shortened telomeres, progressively failing homeodynamics, drastic reductions in cell division. She was aging at twice the normal rate, but her symptoms didn’t align with any of the defined pathologies (Hutchinson-Gilford progeria, Werner’s syndrome, Cockayne’s syndrome, ataxia telangiectasia), and parts of her body—her skin, her hair, her bones—seemed strangely impervious to the senescence that afflicted the rest of
her.
“It’s like Hollywood aging,” she told me. “Very glamorous all the way to the end. I couldn’t have arranged it better. And you know they’re gonna have to name it after me.”
Before we were done, we would see more than a dozen specialists—physiologists, gerontologists, geneticists, evolutionary biologists, embryologists. She would be subjected to microarray analysis, bioinformatics, full genome sequencing. Her hair and saliva would be pored over like entrails. So would her entrails. So would her epithelial cells and bone marrow. A researcher in Bethesda would attempt to give her an entire wing at the National Institutes of Health. A professor from the University of Oklahoma would beg her to leave him her organs.
No one from any field or discipline would be able to explain exactly what was happening or why. The only thing everyone could agree on was the end point.
But I’ll say this for her. Clarissa’s mission was never just to fold up like an old chair. She had a story to tell.
From the moment she held that old perspective trunk in her hands, the fragments that had been haunting her all these months began to gather into something like a narrative. There were missing chunks, to be sure, holes in the continuity, but as I set it all down on paper, the gaps somehow filled themselves in, and the story began to tell itself. Clarissa talked; I wrote; and if what we ended up with is as much fiction as fact, I know it’s true at least to us.
“You know what this means, don’t you, Henry?”
I had just printed out our final draft, and Clarissa was holding it rather shyly to her breast.
“It means you’re just as crazy as me now.”
I’m not so sure. Of course, I’m no medical specialist, I’m not even a licensed metaphysician, but in those moments when the walls of my empiricism soften, I fall back on a theory of my own. Thomas Harriot did not stand by helplessly while his beloved lay on the verge of death. By luck or by design or some combination of the two, he cupped his hands around her essence and sent it spinning into the future. Never guessing where it would land.
Naturally, we couldn’t expect him to get it perfect his first time out. And so, with each incarnation, the spark has been gradually reduced, and maybe it will finally die with Clarissa. Or maybe it will never die.