Ink and Steel

Act II, scene xiv

Gloucester:

O, madam, my old heart is crack’d, it’s crack’d!

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, King Lear

The house was dark when Tom Walsingham’s carriage rattled to a stop on the summer-baked road. Will put his foot on the iron step, clinging to the door for support as lathered horses stamped.

“There’s an inn not far, John.” The coachman tipped his cap. “I know it, Master Shakespeare. I’ll see to the horses and I shall find you tomorrow.”

I am grateful. Will would have tipped the coachman—another man’s servant, after all but John clucked to his horses, gentling them into the twilight as if he hadn’t seen Will’s outreached hand. It was a measure of the trust of the horses that the coachman never reached for the whip, and they went willing though their hides heaved like bellows. Their clatter receding, Will turned toward the thatched and half-timbered cottage as swaying exhausted as if he had run from Kent on his own two legs. The door was latched, painted wood tight against timbers set in stucco that gleamed a soft pink-gray, stained with ochre earths. Anne had let the flowers by the doorstep die. Will tugged twice to free the latch, although he knew before the door opened that his house was empty: no smoke rose from the chimney, and he could smell cold ash. Twilight streamed down from the loft. Annie had left the windows under the eaves unshuttered.

He fumbled his habitual shilling as he stepped inside, the glass-smooth coin ringing on the door stone. He crouched to retrieve it, feeling among the rushes strewing the floor, and suddenly found he had not the strength to stand. Cold silver between his fingers, he crouched on the threshold in the open doorway and buried his facein his hands. It was Edmund who found him. Will had curled forward, his knees drawn up against his forehead and his back pressed to the timber. He heard the footsteps up the walk and looked up, blinking in the twilight, scrubbing a hand across his face although his eyes stayed dry.

“Will. You should have written you were coming.”

“I got here faster than a letter would have,” Will said, and covered his mouth as he coughed. “From Kent. We only stopped to rest the horses. Where is Annie?”

“With Mother. Are you … ?” Edmund’s voice trailed off. Will pushed himself to one knee and stood.

“No, I’m not well. How did you know to find me?”

Edmund took Will’s elbow as Will hid his shaking hand in his sleeve, the shilling folded tight inside his palm.

“Bill the landlord had it from your driver. He sent his boy. Come.” Both men pretended it was exhaustion alone that left Will leaning on his brother’s strong young arm. “Let’s go home.”

He dreaded Anne. Feared anything she might be speaking, unspeaking. Eyes black with weeping. Eyes cold with consideration. Was there anything I could have done? If I had been here, surely’t were something I could have done.

She sat by the fire when he came into his parents house, her dress overdyed drab in black that would fade as one might expect mourning to fade: eventually. One expected to lose babies. Or young children to the flush of their illnesses, the measles and the scarlet fevers and the great and smallpox. Will’s parents had lost three girls before Will, one of them the first Joan of two at nearly Hamnet’s age. Children of schooling age, however, an only and an eldest son …Will didn’t notice if Edmund came through the door with him. His father might already be abed; Susanna and Judith were nowhere in sight. Will’s mother left her darning in a pile on the board and came around it, past Annie, who looked up, but no more than that. Mary Shakespeare squeezed her own child’s shoulders and leaned her forehead briefly on his neck. She kissed the cornerof his mouth. “Oh, Will”

Her voice broke and he clutched her tight for a moment, then set her back the length of his arms.

“Thank you.”

She nodded and ducked away, knuckling her eye, a hasty clatter on the stairs telling her passage. Will went to his wife. Annie’s hands were white on her skirts. She crouched on a three-legged stool as if warming herself before the fire, but Will knew her chill would take more melting than that. He knelt down before her. The stool wobbled under her when he took her hands, the one leg shorter than the other that his father hadn’t mended in fifteen years gone past. He opened his mouth; she closed it with a look.

“You came,” she said. She leaned forward, her unbound fair hair falling around him, tangled with her lack of care.

“Would you doubt it?” Her look was answer enough.

“Annie, what happened?” She lifted her shoulders and shrugged. The hasty dye at her collar had rubbed off onto the linen of her smock. Her palms were calloused enough to rasp his skin, no lady’s white soft hands.

“Fffuh,” she started, and her throat must have closed on the words. Will heard the front door latched; no one spoke. A stealthy creak that was Edmund climbing the stairs to bed. Saving candles, Will wondered, or too weary still with grief to face a long evening in company? He held his peace and held Annie’s hands, and she neither flinched nor closed her eyes.

“Fell,” she said again, more clearly, leaning back on her stool until only his grip held her upright, their arms taut between them like a rigging. “Fell from an oak. Dashed his brains upon a stone.”

“Annie.”

“Hush,” she said more clearly, and shook her head. “If you had been here …”

Each word might have cost her blood. Will clutched her hands in terror.

She continued on a second breath.“… nothing would have changed.”

“Annie, my love,” he said as the tears silenced her, finally. “Come upstairs.” He pushed a tangle off her cheek. “I’ll brush your hair.”

“Will, come home.” She stood when he tugged her upright, leaning heavily on his arm. “I am home… .”

“Or let us come to London.”

“Plague,” he said.

She stopped, one foot raised, and pivoted toward the hearth, drawing him. “We should bank the fire. Everyone’s abed.”

Will crouched on the sun-warm hearthstone. The poker had a curved point on the back like the beak on a halberd; he raked coals together with the edge and knocked ash over them, and the last bit of a log that had fallen out of the fire. He stayed there, hiding his right hand between his knees, fingers steadied by the twisted iron handle. Warmth bathed his face, his fingers, warmed his breeches until he felt the weave of the cloth.

Annie reached down and pulled his right hand into the light. “Worse?”

“No better,” he answered, drawing the poker back so it scraped a white line through ash and across the stone.

Annie flinched. “You re thin.”

“Eating’s…” He pressed a hand to his throat. “Hard. And there’s famine in London.”

She swallowed and leaned closer. “Stratford as well. I wish thou wouldst have a care for thyself.”

“I am taking care of myself, Annie.”

“Shall I warm you a posset before we go up?”

“I subsist on the things,” he said. “I wish only thy company. Let us to bed, wife.” He hung the poker on the rack, muting the clatter with his hand, and thrust himself to his feet. She swayed as he slid an arm around her waist and drew her against his side.

Upstairs, he petted her until she slept; she rarely cried, his Annie. Even when he thought she better might. And held her until a sliver of moonlight fell through the shutters, revealing the dark hollows bruised like thumbprints under her eyes, and she rolled away to bury her face against the wall.

Will rose in his shirt and smallclothes and crossed the floor. Breathless warmth surrounded him as he threw the shutters back and leaned out over the garden, imagining the colors of the late-summer blooms whose nodding faces reflected the flood of moonlight thistle, daisies, and poppies. The Dutch bulbs would be over, but the too-ripe scent of late honeysuckle lay on the air like the scent of rot, and Will drew his head back inside.

Someone, Edmund? had carried his bags up the stairs. Must have retrieved them from John the carriage man at the inn. Will lifted the smaller case and dug in it for paper and pen, finding first the sealed and bundled pages of his uncollected letter to Kit. He pushed them aside to uncover his ink horn, silencing the rustle of papers as best he could, and left the case standing open when he went to the window. The moonlight was bright enough. He wouldn’t need a candle. Will laid his sheets on the ledge and worked the plug out of the ink horn before sliding the nib inside. He let the excess ink ooze back into the palm-sized container, propped it against the edge of the window, and hesitated, the quill almost brushing the creamy sheet. A Midsummer Night’s Dream,he thought, remembering the impossible blue of Lucifer’s eye. I’d dream myself home safe in bed, and Hamnet clattering down the ladder to shake Annie and me awake

The ink dried while he watched the moon-silvered garden. He dipped again and set it to the page in better haste, and wrote:

Ill met by Moone-light, proud Tytania …

Will drowsed, half waking, and mumbled as Anne smoothed his hair back to let the sunlight rouse him. The morning was unkind to the weary lines around her eyes. “The household is awake.” The clatter of pots confirmed it. “How was your sleep?”

“Broken.” He sat upright to knuckle the crusts from his eyes. He swung his legs over the edge of the bed. “Show me the grave today, Annie?”

She hesitated, reaching for her kirtle. “Of course. We…”

“What?”

“Thy father had a mass performed.”

“Christ, Annie, I don’t care what religion my boy is dead in.” It came out sharper than intended, but she didn’t flinch. Her brows rose, as if she were about to deliver a tongue-lashing, and her mouth opened and shut. She covered her eyes.

“Will, I’m sorry. It was hard, that thou wert gone.”

“Would that I had not been. Would that none of this were necessary at all. Would that I were still in Kent with lord Hunsdon’s Men. Would that I could have taken…”

“Stop it, Will.”

“I’m home now, Annie.”

“For how long?” She turned her back on him as she wriggled into her petticoat-bodies. Annie waited long enough to be certain he wouldn’t answer, and turned over her shoulder.

“That traveling priest is here more than you are, Will. If he were Anglican, I’d say I should have married him.”

“Traveling priests and cottage intrigues,” he said, lacing his points with hands that almost didn’t tremble. He heard her indrawn breath and rolled over it, refusing to look her in the eye.

“I would not fight with you, Annie.”

Her shoulders went back and she whirled on him, whispering so her words would not carry. “Well, and what if I would fight with you, Master William Shakespeare? Or shall I put that want on the shelf with all mine other wants, and will you talk to me of duty?”

She leaned forward, hands on her hips, her hair still unbraided and tangled over her shoulders. The little room seemed even closer as she stamped one bare foot among the rushes and then threw up her hands in exasperation at his silence. He felt as if he might choke on all the things he could not say to her.

“Annie, my love.”

“Go back to London,” she said, and turned away to open the door. “If your plays are more to you than your children. Go.”

“It’s not …” he began. But the door swung softly shut behind her, and Will let his mouth do the same. Damn, he said, and narrowly avoided punching the wall.

A sunny afternoon followed Will from the graveside. Fleeing its relentless cheer, he pushed open the door of Burbage’s Tavern and nodded to the landlord in the cooler, airy common room. “Good day, Bill.”

“Will.” He hesitated, a rag in his hand, and cleared his throat. Three or four other men sat about the lower level of the tavern, the silence hanging between them redolent of an interrupted conversation. “I’m sorry.”

“We re all sorry,” Will said into the heavy quiet. He nodded up the smooth-worn wooden stairs. “Have you anyone at work in the gallery today?”

“Not until suppertime. Sit down over here.” A gesture at one of the long trestles, flanked on both sides by sturdy benches. “I’ll see you get some dinner, for all the bread’s gone cold by now.”

“They fed me at home,” Will lied, taking a seat in a sunbeam, which caught flashes of silver from the coin that he fussed. He couldn’t face choking down bread and cheese before these pitying men.

“Ale would go kindly. Served warm, and in a leather cup.”

“Ale it will be. Is there news from London, Will?”

Will shrugged. “There’s starvation in the streets, want and privation, consumption and plague. The usual, only worse.”

“Preserve us from cities.”

Footsteps from the more occupied corner of the tavern, and a voice unexpected enough to knock the shilling from his fingertips to clatter on the trestleboard. “Oh, Master Shakespeare. Surely if London were so unhealthy as all that, none of us city rats would ever return, given a view of the country and a breath of fresh air.”

Will held the mouthful of ale until it could trickle past the tightness in his throat. He laced his fingers under the table and let the silver spiral, jingling, to a stop.

“Master Poley,” he said, and didn’t look up. “What brings you to Stratford?” Expecting the easy charm, the intelligencer’s lie. Surely Poley wouldn’t try to start an argument here, surrounded by Will’s childhood friends and his family’s neighbors.

“I came to look in on your family,” Poley said, swinging a leg over the bench opposite Will. “I’m a father myself. It seemed the least I could do, considering the care you’ve taken of Mary. And little Robin, too.”

Will did raise his eyes then, and dropped his voice. “Am I intended to understand this as a threat?”

“Understand it as you wish.” Poley’s trustworthy smile turned Will’s stomach. The intelligencer held up a pair of silver tuppence to catch the landlord’s eye, and traded them a moment later for a cup of wine.

“Have you considered how much your family must miss you? How much the worst it would be if anything should befall you in London, so far from home? Cities are dangerous.”

“And your family? Do you consider the future of your son?”

Poley just smiled, and it struck Will like a kick in the gut. I am not like this man. I am not like this man. But how, then, do we differ?

Will unlaced his fingers, lifted his tankard with his left hand, and only touched the ale to his lips. He wiped his beard to cover the smile.

“My wife may curse me to my face,” Will said. “And I can’t deny she’s a reason to. But neither my Annie nor your Mary will cross the street not to catch mine eye.”

“My Mary?” Poley turned his cup between the flats of his hands, scraping the board. “I haven’t a virgin thought in my head. Many a cheerful one, but not of Mary. Take her.”

“Tis not so.”

“Pity for thee, Will. She’s a wildcat.”

“I’ll not be thee’d by thee, either. Master Poley.”

“Ah.” The shilling lay shining between them. Poley picked it up, balanced it on edge.

“An old one. A toy. Too debased to spend. It rings fine.”

“It’s shaved to half its size,” Will said, as Poley made it jingle against the table again, the note of silver bell-clean.

“But the loyalty it buys is a whole loyalty, no?”

“Your point, man?”

A scrape as Poley pushed the rough bench back, quaffed his wine and stood. He extracted a short knife from his belt and pared his fingernails over thetable. Will edged his cup away.

“Mine only point is this.” A flick nimble as a cutpurse’s razor. Poley wore hammered rings on both thumbs, rings that glittered the dark hard radiance of steel. “You made an enemy in Essex.”

“My clumsiness is renowned.”

“A wonder you can stay on a stage at all but no matter. Think hard, Master Shakespeare.”

“Think on what, Master Poley?”

“Think whether your family might be better served by your return to Stratford. Or by your choosing a master longer for the world than lord Burghley. Or lord Hunsdon. Or Tom Walsingham.”

“Tom’s young.”

“Aye,” Poley said, and sheathed his dagger again. “Nearly of an age with you and Kit Marley, as I recall.”

Will neither stood nor looked up as Poley moved toward the door; nor did he finish his ale. He sat for some time in silence, and then he picked that poor shaved shilling up with his fingertips and rolled it twice across their backs as Tarleton had shown him, almost a decade before and made it vanish into his sleeve.

“Well, he said under his breath, that was interesting. Bill.” The last louder, so the landlord looked up. “Will?”

“Is John the carriageman still in residence?”

“Not in at the moment, but he did say he’d be staying as long as you did.”

“Send me a tally,” Will said. He stood. “Let him know I’ll be a week or so here, and then back to Kent. “If he needs to attend his master I’ll find other transportation. I shall.”

“For home already? It’s barely noon.”

“For home,” Will said, and went.