by Lisa Klein
“Do you have a burr in your bodice?” whispered Meg. “Something surely is pricking you.”
Violetta subsided onto the bench, but Meg could see her eyes still darting about as if she was looking for someone. Whom could she possibly know in all of London?
Will had bought an orange and as he peeled it, the scent reminded Meg of the night she had gone to the Boar’s Head with Davy and Peter and a woman had offered her a bite of an orange. The same longing stirred in her again: the desire for a home, for sweetness on her tongue and laughter in her ears. She felt a nudge. Will held out a piece of the fruit. Meg could only stare at it and wonder how Will had known what she was dreaming of.
“Wake up. Take it,” he said, lifting her hand from her lap and placing the pungent fruit on her palm.
She brought the orange to her lips and bit it. Nothing had ever tasted so good. She licked her fingers and murmured with pleasure.
A fanfare sounded. Sweetness and joyful noise! A man came onstage and shouted what Meg guessed was the prologue. The audience quieted and the play began. It was about a goodwife named Gammer Gurton who lost her one and only needle while mending a pair of breeches for her servant Hodge. She drew the entire village into the trouble of finding it, and such slapping, tumbling, and rudeness ensued that the audience hooted with laughter.
“I cannot hear. What did he say?” Meg whispered to Will.
Will waved his hand. “No matter. The words are slight. The actions are what gives delight. I will have clowns in all my plays.”
But Meg could not laugh at the foolishness. It left her strangely saddened.
Will turned to her. “Don’t you like Diccon the beggar?” he asked. “He is the cause of all the trouble, yet even he grins.”
Meg stared at the ragged player. “My father became a beggar,” she said softly. “And that was the beginning of all our troubles.” The words came to her lips and she made no attempt to hold them back. She didn’t care if Will heard them.
In the next scene a drunken parson was mistaken for a thief and beaten bloody with a stick. The audience roared its approval and Will whistled through his fingers. Meg could not even smile.
“Come now,” Will said. “This is no tragedy.”
“Oh, but it is!” said Meg, blinking back tears. “Such a priest abused my mother. He was killed, as he deserved to be.” She could not admit that her mother was the killer. “And my father did not thrive by wickedness, like Diccon, but died despite his goodness.”
She closed her eyes. Sounds came to her as if from a great distance: Gammer Gurton’s high, false voice, the stamping of feet in the galleries, Violetta giggling beside her. What had caused her to reveal her secret sorrow now—in the middle of a play—to Will Shakespeare of all people? Next would she throw off every stitch of clothing and confess to Will that she was her brother, Mack?
No. She would pretend she had said nothing. She opened her eyes again. “I like your plays much better, Will.”
He ignored the compliment. “Could you but laugh, would it heal the hurt?”
So he had heard every word! She felt herself redden, knowing his eyes were on her.
“I don’t think so.”
“I bid you try it,” he said.
He looked so earnest and yet so lively, his face divided in halves, that Meg could not help smiling. It was not hard.
The servant was now running about the stage making farting sounds. Meg did not suppress a giggle.
“Eww!” said Violetta, grimacing.
“It’s nothing but air!” Will said. “He has a bladder in his sleeve.”
Finally the lost needle was found in the very breeches Gammer Gurton had been sewing. When the constable slapped Hodge on his rump, driving the needle into his buttocks, and Hodge shot upward, cursing inventively, Meg truly laughed. She drew in her breath and released it into the air, where it dispersed like her secret, a brief story no more terrible than Gammer Gurton’s lost needle.
She felt herself glowing with inner warmth. This was happiness. To be free of sorrow and secrets. To sit in a theater beside her friend Will Shakespeare, laughing together.
Chapter 28
When the play ended Overby stood up and let out a loud, long fart. “Henceforth call me Hodge,” he said. Laughing, Will stumbled down the gallery stairs.
Violetta was not so amused or appreciative. “How will this teach me to play Cleopatra? There were no lovers and no one died.”
Will remembered the reason he had brought them and sighed. Indeed, what could such a light play, so lacking in poetry, teach them?
“It was almost a tragedy,” said Meg. “For the silly needle occasioned as much woe as a lost kingdom.”
“Almost a tragedy, yes,” said Will, gratefully seizing on her words. “A comedy is a tragedy averted by unexpected good fortune. That is our lesson.”
It was more complicated than that, Will knew. While watching Meg he had been surprised at how the simple matter of the play moved her. Was it possible that comedy as well as tragedy could touch the heart? That it could have a purpose beyond inducing laughter? Perhaps despite its exaggeration, a comic tale could hit the truth like a hammer on the head of a nail. For this slight comedy had uncovered a part of Meg’s soul, the sight of which affected Will also. A tender feeling mingled with his merriment, confusing him.
Overby was poking Will in the chest. “You must put a mad beggar and a farting clown in your Cleopatra play. Too much dying makes me melancholy.”
Will could barely hide his annoyance. “I will, and you shall play them both,” he said, though he had no intention of adding such ridiculous characters to his play. If he were around to finish it.
Mirth departed and dread settled over him. “I have some business and will return to the inn anon,” he said. “Come with me, Meg.”
Meg stepped to his side and Will felt a surge of confidence. There was no one—not even Mack—he would rather have with him for this meeting. Was it because she really was striking to behold?
“Sirrah!” he called to the burly fellow heading toward the stage. “Will you take me to Mr. Burbage?”
He nodded and Will and Meg followed him through a small door behind the stage. There the players were putting costumes and props into trunks. The boy who played Gammer Gurton doffed a nethergarment stuffed with bombast that gave him a woman’s shape. Will wanted to linger and talk to him. More than that, he wanted to pull aside the curtain and stand on the stage and imagine what it would be like to perform there.
“Do you have business with me?” The peremptory voice startled Will. A man with a graying beard stood with one foot on a bench, leaning on his knee. “I am James Burbage. I built this theater and manage this company.”
How like a god he looks! Creator of his own world, thought Will.
“I commend the skill of your players and their pleasing performance,” he said, aware of sounding like a flatterer. “I am William Shakespeare, formerly of Stratford, now staging my own plays at the Boar’s Head Inn.” This was an exaggeration, for Will knew that once he refused to put a madman and a clown in his new play he would be out of a job. “It is my ambition to be in a company such as yours.”
“You are the third fellow this week to ask me for work. The first one is sweeping garbage from the galleries and the other two I sent away.” Burbage brushed something from his knee.
“Tell him your true purpose before he is out of patience,” Meg whispered.
Will said that he was looking for William Burbage. He fully expected to be directed elsewhere when James replied, “He is my brother and a shareholder in this enterprise. William!”
Will fought the urge to run. Meg’s hand on his arm restrained him.
A bald-pated man reeking of wine sauntered into the room. Will saw with relief that he was an ordinary sot, not the bugbear he had feared. Now was the moment to reason with him, to appeal for mercy and thereby avoid the dreaded sentencing. And yet he was loath to discuss his father’s debt before James
Burbage, the one man in London he wished to impress.
As soon as Will identified himself, William Burbage began to abuse the name of Shakespeare, calling Will’s father a crooked cheater and a villainous varlet.
Will grew hot. His neck and forehead throbbed.
“He is as dangerous as a rabid dog,” Meg murmured, stiffening.
“Hold your peace, for this is not the Boar’s Head,” Will whispered back.
“My father, like all men, has his faults,” said Will, striving to be conciliatory. He explained that his father had dispatched him with enough money to settle half the debt, but it had been stolen from him and he was unable to recover it. “Will you accept payment as I earn it?”
“I’ll have the entire ten pounds now,” William Burbage barked.
“I am all but penniless,” Will said in a low voice.
“Then I’ll see you at Westminster and to prison after.”
Will summoned all his courage and said with a bravado he scarcely felt, “My lawyer has grounds on which to challenge the debt. He shall present a witness and ask the judge to void the prior judgment. You shall get nothing.” Will was pleased with this hasty invention but it only enraged William Burbage.
“I’ll smoke your skin, Will Shakespeare. Roast your ribs for every farthing your miserable father owes me,” he said, advancing toward Will.
James Burbage stepped in front of his brother and said, “Go home; you’re soused.”
“Let’s away, Mistress Meg,” said Will. “All is lost. ’Tis time for me to fall on my sword like a good Roman.”
“Wait! Will you savor humiliation or turn it to victory?” said Meg, seizing his sleeve. She turned to James Burbage and intoned, “O the crown of the earth does melt, and there is nothing left remarkable beneath the visiting moon.”
Will stared at her in stark surprise. Meg drew a deep breath and went on.
“Good sirs, take heart,
We’ll bury Antonio, and then what’s brave,
what’s noble,
Let’s do it after the high Roman fashion,
And make death proud to take us. Come away,
This case of his huge spirit now is cold.”
One of the players began to applaud. Will swelled with pride.
“What is that speech?” said James Burbage, looking at Meg in amazement.
Meg nodded toward Will.
“Queen Cleopatra beholding the deceased Mark Antony,” said Will. It was no surprise to him that Meg had committed Cleopatra’s entire speech to memory. But what moved her to speak it now?
Meg nodded toward the player. “You should hear Will Shakespeare as the Roman general. His dying would move a stone to weep.”
“Is that Kyd’s work?” asked James Burbage. “The tragedian Thomas Kyd,” he explained, seeing Will’s blank expression.
Will drew himself up to his full height. “No, it is mine. You would honor me by attending its performance at the Boar’s Head in Whitechapel.”
“Now hear Cleopatra as Antony is borne away,” said Meg, and her clear voice rang out again. “Come, we have no friend but resolution and the briefest end.”
Meg beckoned to Will and with long strides swept across the backstage. She was a galleon sailing through the waves! Will bowed, exulting in Burbage’s astonished expression. He turned to follow Meg, a proud Mark Antony trailing after his brave and beautiful queen of Egypt.
Chapter 29
Meg soaked up Will’s praise like a flower garden soaks up rain.
“Oh, that was brave! Well spoken in the spirit of Cleopatra herself. What made you do it?”
They were walking back toward London, warmed by the bright October sun and a sense of triumph.
“When you spoke of dying on your sword, Cleopatra’s speech naturally came to mind. I’ve heard Violetta practice it a hundred times.” She rolled her eyes, because Violetta still did not have it memorized. “I thought if Burbage knew of your genius he might help in the matter of the debt.”
But Will did not want to talk about the debt.
“He was impressed. He compared me to Thomas Kyd, who must be a great playwright.”
“Do you think he will come to the Boar’s Head?” asked Meg.
“We must be prepared for it. The performance must shine.” Will paused and scratched his head. “What am I going to do about Violetta? She was a passionate Thisbe, but her fire is all turned to ice as Cleopatra.”
Meg shrugged. “I think she is cold because you spurn all her advances. She believes you do not love her.”
“She is right,” Will said. “Though she is pretty, her wit is too slight for my liking.”
“It is good news for me that there are men who prefer cleverness to beauty,” Meg said lightly. She fingered the ribbon in her hair. It was making her downright flirtatious. She must be more serious. Will’s situation was dire.
“Can you at least pretend to like her? Pick up the honeyed looks she sends you and return them.” She was not in favor of more deceit, but she wanted Will’s play to succeed.
Will marched his fingers up her arm and said playfully, “This fruit is nearer. I would rather pluck it.”
His touch pleasantly tickled her. But she swiped his hand away. “Off, you bug. What do you mean, going after my fruit?”
Will put up his hands. “Don’t be angry, sweet. I mean you must be my Cleopatra.”
“Me?” Meg trilled. She was too stunned to say more. He calls me sweet!
“Did you see how moved James Burbage was by your speech?”
“I think he was merely astonished to see a woman declaiming in verse.” Why not play Cleopatra? She knew all the lines. She loved the words. If Violetta could play Thisbe, why couldn’t Meg play a queen?
“How can I feign love for Mark Antony?” she said, thinking aloud.
“I wish you did not need to feign it.” Will sounded hurt.
Meg glanced at him. Was he serious? His eyes twinkled as he smiled. It was time to end this uncertain conversation.
“You’re flattering yourself, which is only worse than flattering me,” she said. “Now forget Cleopatra and James Burbage. It is William Burbage who must concern you. How many days until you meet him in court?” Meg knew the answer but she wanted Will to acknowledge how short the time was.
Will sighed and pressed his forehead. “Three days.”
“Three days,” Meg repeated. “If you are not worried, I’m sure my brother is. Does he know about this new witness? Have you prepared him, or must he extemporize before the judge like a player without any lines?”
“If his wits are as quick as yours, he will learn his part on the way to Westminster,” said Will. His eyes widened. “Though perhaps you would be a better advocate.”
“What judge would listen to a woman?” said Meg, striving to keep an even tone. “Nay, your best chance is to trust my brother.”
“A woman cannot be a lawyer,” agreed Will. “So disguise yourself as a man. You could easily do so!” He sounded gleeful.
Meg’s head began to spin. Did Will already know about her disguise? She struggled to remain calm.
“I would not risk it for love or money,” she said firmly. She pulled ahead of Will with a few long strides. Now he could not see her face and divine her worried thoughts. If I can memorize Cleopatra’s speech, surely I can learn a few Latin phrases. If I can move Burbage to amazement, why shouldn’t I be able to move a judge to mercy?
Meg arrived at the Boar’s Head just steps ahead of Will to find a tempest breaking within.
“You went to that mad, wicked playhouse, leaving me undefended. When he came in Bandog crawled under the table and didn’t even bark. I could have been killed!” Gwin’s voice was tremulous, her mouth a wide O framing her teeth. Her hands tore at the edges of her apron.
“Your wits are all a-jangle, woman. I see nothing out of order here,” Overby said.
“There he is, the cause of it all!” said Gwin, pointing to Will. She rushed over and gripped Meg’
s arms. “O Meg, I had such need of you! He was the most vile-looking fellow, with a broken face and a great pistol in his belt.”
“Did he hurt you?” asked Meg. “I will find him and triple the injury.”
“What did he want?” said Overby. “Did you know him?”
“No, I never saw him before. He said, ‘Give up Mack that lives here.’ I would have given him anyone he asked for, but I don’t know any Mack.” She trembled at the recollection. “I had to swear it by the body of my poor dead mother.”
Cold fingers crept down Meg’s back. Who was seeking Mack at the Boar’s Head, unless they knew of her disguise? Meg remembered Roger Ruffneck’s threat. I know who you are, Mack. You can’t hide from us.
“He came to the wrong inn. He won’t be back,” said Overby, trying to sound tough.
Meg was not so sure. She asked Jane Ruffneck, who was helping Violetta serve customers, if she had seen the man. Jane nodded but said he was no one she recognized. So Gwin’s unwelcome visitor was not Roger or Peter or Davy. Besides them, whom had Meg offended? Or rather, Mack? She could think of no one who could be so determined to find her. Yet, being prudent, she decided to take measures to protect herself.
“This has gone too far, Meg,” said Violetta, watching Meg strap a small dagger to her lower leg, where she could reach it at any time. They were preparing for bed. “What has Mack done that someone seeks to harm you? Does it have to do with Jane and her son being here?”
“I do not know,” said Meg honestly. “And we need not worry. He is looking for a man, not for Long Meg.”
“But that puts you in danger every time you go out as Mack!” Violetta was now truly distressed. “You must forgo wooing Will on my behalf. That foolish disguise has no effect anyway.”
Meg winced, for Violetta had struck the nerve of her own doubts. What was the point of her disguise? As Mack she had done nothing to help Will catch Davy and Peter. As Meg, however, she had helped bring his verses to James Burbage’s attention. Why persist in being Mack if she could aid and befriend Will as Meg? Did she dare admit that her disguise, which at first had granted her freedom, was now a burden? Yet to reveal her deceit would put Meg in the same company as the two sisters who had betrayed Will. To what a difficult pass had matters come when to be honest would destroy her friendship with Will! Rather, two friendships: Meg’s and Mack’s.