Rotten at the Heart

by Bartholomew Daniels

  She paced by our bed a moment, her lips moving but no words issuing forth, as though keeping her own congress. But then she again did turn and speak.

  “Though I be some years your senior, I know you have long thought me a fool for my poor schooling, and weak, as my standing as woman would require, and so you thought I could neither know nor bear the truths of this world. But lest you think this so, I tell you now true that I understand well men’s lusts and their weaknesses and never did imagine that you could live so long apart and not of occasion seek some satisfaction. I knew this true at some hurt, but did never speak it, nor withhold from you my wifely duty during any time when you sojourned here, nor even, again in truth, let it much diminish my own affection for you, which was true. And being a woman and thus, in truth, stronger, so was I true, true to you.”

  She was quiet again, again pacing, her silent speech with herself continuing as though in rehearsal. And then she stopped again, facing away this time.

  “And I do know what marriage means. It is not in common a matter of heart but a matter of office and dowry, such that in usual a wife may share a name and bed and progeny and still be in her husband’s mind much like his cow or barn – perhaps more valuable than the former, cows being oft short lived, but likely in value held lighter than the barn, as it will the next cow contain, and the next. And while a man may make some blandishment in courting, it is akin to those words used in a shop to gain some advantage in price, the negotiation in which a man persuades a woman to be wife and thus give herself up entire to his ownership. A woman does know her place.”

  She turned toward me, her face now awash in tears that I had not heard in her speaking, as though she had become such in custom of weeping that she did it now without sign or notice, but instead like breathing. As though grief were now not some transient affliction, but instead a true part of her being.

  “But, Will, you did make me believe it other. Against my own heart and mind, me being even in our courting of sufficient age to know the nature of the wifely office, you did with such constant sweetness and such jewelled words have me think myself special, and thus us special, and thus love special. So special that I did grant my nakedness and favours and heart and soul unto you even before our marriage, thinking in your care their keeping safe, when I should have held some back as my own, should have kept some small corner of me and thus have had those defences that other women hold to make the insult of their husbands’ poor faith less dear. Instead I am unarmed and unarmoured and feel the truth in each cut of this,” now pointing down at the pamphlet, “total and to the bone.”

  And she turned and paced again into another rehearsal, my heart already bleeding from her deft performance. But I dared not speak, knowing I owed her silent attention to all she had want to say. I had in recent days my own soul examined, chiselling away at that false statue of self that was my previous imagining, to find instead this much lesser and flawed figure with which I must now reconcile. In her words I felt not a chisel, but instead a hammer that showed me not just flawed but reduced complete to some worthless gravel. She continued.

  “When I gave myself to you complete and in secret and as yet unwed, you were simply son to a glover, though with much wit, and so I did imagine you would a witty glover be, and me a glover’s wife. And that fitted me fine, Will, as a glove to my hand. But you found this new ambition, and as I know that a man will to his ambitions cleave as he will to no woman, I let you go – and not with any hesitation but instead my blessing, even knowing what cost our separation would sure exact. And while I never supposed you would be complete faithful, you did well maintain the comfort of our household and increase its wealth, did when at home treat me with such tenderness as you did in youth. And so I supposed that you did care for me in such best fashion as you could manage, and felt I could expect no more from any husband.”

  She snatched the pamphlet up again from the bed. “But in these particulars I do not read a man seeking convenient solace from such place as he might in private find it, but instead in public pursuit of some younger thing – some better thing than that of his having or experience. I read a man caring more for his lust than for his reputation. Or mine. Or, then, for me.”

  She let the pamphlet fall to the floor. “But your son is dead, and while I know now you have no true heart for me, I do believe you had some for him. And so now, in your pain for him, you seek comfort from me, none other being available.” She pulled her gown over her head and stood before me naked, her hands to her sides, those tears that still streamed running from her eyes running down her face to her neck to her breasts to her belly, her breasts now sagged, her belly showing the cost of her children and her age, and her thatch now showing some grey. “I do true understand my wifely office, sir, and cannot in law withhold it. But I do warn you that comfort is a matter of heart and not of flesh. And as I have no heart left for you, I have also no comfort. I am sure this aging sack of skin doth much pale in compare to such virginal pleasures as you have late received. But take of it what you will. Just know that you do take. For nothing is offered.”

  And she stood still and naked before me, her speech clear finished and in both form and content better than any with which I could answer.

  “I will not insult you further, Anne, with any claim that what you read me false,” I said.

  “I am most gracious thankful for your kind favour, my lord,” she answered.

  “Nor will I try to excuse the matter, having thought on it much and suffered for it dear these few days hence.”

  “The girl, then, being much fortuned to be dead and thus beyond such agonies as no doubt you have borne – unless such rules of Hell as we have been told be true. But even then her suffering sure would be no equal to such that your fine mind must be able to invent for itself.”

  “Anne, I do not wish to argue the matter with you, for I have no good words to make my wrong be right or even seem so. I will have you know, though, that the beauty I beheld in that poor girl that I full admit I did poorly use was a mirror of your own and of that fair affection we did taste so sweet in our youth. And so, while you may true blame my lust, it was a memory of such lust as you did inspire, your favour having been to my taste so sweet that my heart had hungered for it all the years of my absence. And so I sought in this girl a surrogate for our own love, not just such trivial satisfaction as might some pent need relieve, but instead that intimate congress that I have, only with you, ever known. And I was a fool to think I might find it in any arms other, which I did realise almost immediate. Then I did take that girl’s favours no more, at which she knew that she could not have my love as some other did already hold it entire, and it was in despair of this that she chose her end.”

  For a short moment, the fierceness that had so informed Anne’s features softened such that I imagined my words had found some purchase. But then her aspect changed to a sadness that did trouble my heart even more. For to have earned Anne’s hate did hurt me dear, but to know myself also to be the instrument of this grief did cut much deeper.

  “I finally understand the truth of you, Will. I had imagined you words’ true master, but in truth you are their slave. Such lies as you just uttered, you believe be true, as any idea you can frame in words claims equal credit for you with every other. So, if you can by some trick of poetry say night be bright and morning in its mourning be dark, you are so joyed with your agile wit and the music of those words that you hold them true – even as you burn a candle to write them, night in fact being night and no other.

  “And so, all these years when I did hold you true as I had never sensed you false, it was only that you could not feel yourself false, your own pride being such that you imagined any phrase of your creation must so please God, your hand being such akin to his own, that it could hold no lie. And so your deceptions were much complete, you having first so complete deceived yourself.

  “Oh, Will, you have stopped my hate and made it now full grief, for I had believed myself betr
ayed. And betrayal, being the retraction of such love as once was offered, does hatred make. But I now know that such love was not in truth ever offered, but I was even in those sweet remembered days of youth just one figment of your imagining, and no more real or false than are those characters with which you have peopled the varied stages of your life. For in your mind, all life is but a stage, and we poor players do there strut and fret our hour upon it at the mercy of your imaginings.”

  She stooped, retrieved her gown, and dressed herself. Then she shook her head at me slow as though at a child she had learned was not in fact wilful but failed at its lessons as it had no gift for them.

  “Will, I pray you forgive my harshness, for I no longer have strength for it and must save such strength as I do yet still hold to bear my shame.”

  And I, too, now to tears. “I hope your judgment wrong, but current have no answer for it. But I will tell you this plain and in words tricked with no poetry. You have no shame to bear, as any evil either current or past is mine alone, you only ever having been true to me and gentle, and in your office as either wife or mother always a faithful servant of your duties.”

  She smiled slight, as though expecting my ignorance. “As if my shame was yours to forgive. As if, had I made you cuckold, you could walk proud through town, my having said you hold no shame. As if your daughters could say to their tormentors to hold their tongues, you having called their barbs dull.”

  I looked down at the floor, upon that pamphlet the injuries of which I had counted, until this night, only slight. “So, this has not been received by you alone?”

  “You must at least feel true grief for your son to not have felt some eyes upon you on your arrival, as I have felt them burn deep each time I even pass a window.”

  “Surely our friends must pay this little account, such Puritan antics being in London quite common and, their vile intent familiar, their contents also being much discounted. This will quick pass, what scandal it offers melting like some spring snow, and the public’s eye drawn to the scandal next and the scandal next.”

  “Have you been gone from Stratford so long as to forget its climate? The snow of scandal does not fall here so oft as it does in London. And so, such weather as this being unnatural to these climes, it will be the conversation for some years.”

  I considered this careful. “Anne, I do in my heart and in your sight bear full all guilt in this that I have earned, and shall too wilful bear such public shame and scorn as to it attaches if that be your will. But if it will your own burden relieve, and that of our daughters, then I do have such art of persuasion to have all believe these charges false. For even here most must know this sort of mischief common in London, and oft directed at those of my art.”

  Anne sat on the bed, looking much wearied, her tears finally stopped and all feeling fled her face, which now lay flat and barren.

  “And so you make me share your shame. Knowing that in affection for my daughters, I will not have them bear this and so must assent to your lies and, in my assent, be party to them, admitting that first wilful chink to my honour. And so I say, yes. Go. Be false to our neighbours and with my blessing.”

  I nodded. “Any lie I tell accrues to my honour, not yours.”

  She smiled weakly. “For that lie at least, I thank you. But the hour is late. I am much tired, and we must come morning bury our son. I ask you, let me sleep, and alone, as my sorrow will sufficient fill this bed.”

  Alone in that room, normal used for guests, I sat long awake, finally giving up hope of sleep. I did fancy for some time that I could end the seeming endless grief my life had late become, my dagger near and my heart feeling that would welcome the company of the blade.

  And I thought it queer how that despair I first had felt just one night past when I was sure my death was at hand, which at the time did seem so oppressive and so fearful, could now seem so seductive. How knowing what horrors did, at the end, await us all made the thought of having to bear those horrors over long years so harsh that the idea of surrendering to them immediate appealed – if only in hoping, in that surrender, I might escape my consciousness, which was the only avenue by which fears could reach me. It seemed that, by surrendering to death I could instead defeat it, that thought seeming so sweet that I long held my dagger against my breast and even now cannot say what swayed the balance that this story is writ now in this ink instead of ending then in my blood.

  I knew, too, in this vain exercise, the truth of my wife’s words. My mind could make true any thought I did think, and then make it false, and then make it both. Whether from cowardice or hope or stubbornness or just simple sloth, I would not take arms against my sea of troubles and by opposing end them, for I did not have courage enough for even that.

  CHAPTER 16

  A hole, in its essence, is an absence. A space in which something expected is missing. A grave doth make this plain.

  I stood beside my wife, strangely comfortable in her company after the evening just past. That honest assessment of our current stations now allowed us each to stand as who we were, with all pretending stripped away, and to watch as the coffin bearing our only son was lowered slow into that absence so as to remind us what expected thing we would miss this day, and the next, and in the month hence, and in the year. And also to remind me what I had missed previous, having most of Hamnet’s life been his father in name only and not in presence.

  He had made good progress in his schooling so that in my more recent visits he took joy to converse with me in such Latin as he had acquired – me thinking by his gift with it that his Latin soon would exceed my own – and I had started to share with him some of those books that I had first enjoyed when I was near his age. In this scholarly congress I had made a bond with him that I never did manage when he was a boy, me being more comfortable with the girls when they were younger – supposing, I think, what expectations we hold for girls being slighter, they seem more near complete in some way, as they will not be schooled and can learn early at their mother’s knee such skills as will be their province. And so they become their fathers’ darlings until those strange years in which they acquire their womanhood and cross that boundary which places them permanent beyond our manly understanding.

  But in our sons we hope to fashion our own immortality, to shape men through whose loins we will be pleased to pass our name. So, in our expectations of them, in our striving to cure in them those faults we see in ourselves, we do never hold them in that pure and simple affection that we afford our daughters. For a daughter can be a joy only, unanchored by the weight of our name’s eternity that does so weigh on a son.

  My father stood across the expanse of the grave, some straighter on account of the quick-made standard bearing our name’s new coat of arms. His petty opponents in the press of mourners would know that no such mark of station would adorn their graves or those of their children and, I hoped, suspect that my success in London, which did somehow grant me the status to secure these bearings, could also be used, if they continued in their unwelcome suits against my father’s interests, as a weapon. But I could see also in my father’s face the knowledge that his name would now end in this hole, his grandson gone before his son. And so gone with Hamnet were those grand hopes men do hold that for some long future the name they watered and grew and shared will pass generation to generation, in ascending glory, and that they thus might live eternal. Now, instead, in this hole, my father could see not just that hard promise of his own mortality – for if such boy as this, all his years hale and fair, could be so sudden gone, then the claim of time on my father’s aged and wearied bones must be that much more sure and close. No, he could see also the already fading name of Shakespeare, it having only my few remaining years to gain what glory it may, and then be gone.

  The service at the grave, as had been that in the church, was short and plain, in keeping with the spirit of the Crown’s ordained religion, which despised the pomp and ornament of its Catholic ancestor. I thought this folly
. Death is stark enough, and it seemed to me such religions as we might fashion in our human imaginings concerning a God beyond our hope to know should at least contribute to our own comfort. The absence of the grave could be made to feel less yawning, its inexorable gravity less fearful awesome, if we did fill the air around it with those rites and songs and costumes and incenses that made a Catholic gathering better theatre. For what was religion, really, except such human theatre through which we tried to please a distant audience whose tastes we little understood.

  And then that last moment, the coffin lowered, the earth shovelled o’er it, the service done, there being no ritual further to prolong the idea of a son who, in truth, had been gone complete before I ever had returned home. In that moment, the hole of his grave did swell and consume my whole person and thinking, all my distracting reveries swept aside. Again I was party to that dizzying emptiness that short days previous I had never imagined but that did now seem so present, this bridge of life across which we tread, seeming so fragile and subject to such easy injury that by what magic we did at all ever suspend ourselves above that underlying void was beyond my understanding. And the temptation, again, to hurl myself instead into that hole – to become part of that absence, to never again be party to life’s incessant worry and striving, to instead in death make such true communion with my son as I never had in life – that urge was on me strong, and its disease in me so clear that even Anne, on noticing it, took some pity and lead me by my arm from the pull of the grave that I could not, at that moment, escape on my own.

  We retired to our home, where by custom we feasted our neighbours and pretended again that each hole, each grave was unique, that it held the death of this man or that, and that it was not the portal through which we saw death entire. Pretended again that what we saw as a hole was not in fact a window through which shone the dark truth of eternity, the ever-night which awaits us each at our own sunset. Pretended again that it was the frenzied fabric of life that we vainly wove around the hole of the grave, and not the grave itself, that mattered.