All Night Awake (47 page)

“Ariel,” he said, his voice suddenly loud. “Tell me. I must know.” In a rush, he approached her, he reached for her hand.

Ariel pulled her hand away. He must know. When had he shown such a keen interest in anything else, these ten years?

It was Quicksilver’s shame, his undoing, to show interest in this mortal, this ephemeral, inferior creature.

And yet there was nothing for it. And yet Ariel must tell him. “I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t know.”

Quicksilver stood for a moment immobile, then took a deep breath as if awakening and stepped away from Ariel. “Then I must go and find out, and wage this battle in the heart of man, if that’s where it will be.” His features hardened with decision, and the sharp scent of his fear vanished from Ariel’s nostrils.

“Milord,” Ariel protested, a single, sharp cry.

She sat up in bed. He would go like this? For a mortal? Would he have rushed thus to Ariel’s defense? Well did she know that he would not. “Milord, but the mortal has gone to London. I’ve heard it from my maid, Cobweb, who has commerce with a human youth. Your.... Will Shakespeare has gone to London. Three years ago now.”

Quicksilver looked away. “I know. I scried his whereabouts a month ago.” He blushed dark. “I feared for his life, since I hadn’t seen him cross the forest in too long a time.”

“But then...,” Ariel said. He had scried Will’s whereabouts and feared for Will’s life. Oh, treacherous heart, oh, weak, improvident mind that could so abandon his realm for the sake of these trifles. The whereabouts of a mortal. These were the affairs of state that distracted her husband and king from her and from his domain.

“But then must I to London after him,” Quicksilver said.

“London?” She heard her own voice raised in disbelief. “All that iron and all those unbelievers, and not a wood large enough to shelter you, milord. Our kind lives and breathes from the hand of nature. London is not natural. You’ll not survive it.”

Quicksilver grimaced, a grimace that attempted to be a smile, but fell short, translating into no more than clenched teeth and hard, staring eyes. “If that’s where battle must be engaged, I will go there,” he said. “Am I one, milady, who ever ran from fray?”

She bit her lips. She would not answer, no matter how provoked.

Now he would find his courage. Now, when courage might well take him to his death. Reaching blindly, she grabbed his hands, held them close feeling their warmth. “Milord, milord,” she said. “You dare too much.”

He didn’t seem to hear her. He spoke as though out of a dream. “I’ll change aspect, though, and go as Lady Silver.” He smiled absently, color returning in a touch of peach on his cheeks, and his eyes acquiring a gentle animation. “I know I promised you never to change, but this is a need of the hill, and for the hill’s defense. If it’s his heart I must touch, Silver will be best for it.”

Ariel let go of Quicksilver’s hands. She didn’t think he noticed.

He’d turned to the mirror, and his eyes looked remote as he concentrated. In a shimmer of light he changed aspect, to a lady with long, dark hair and perfect oval features, who smiled at Ariel condescendingly.

Lady Silver wore a silvery, shimmery gown, a pale cloak and a creamy bodice.

“We’ll see if he’ll resist this,” Silver said, as she set dainty hands to either side of the bodice that cinched her already tiny waist and made most of her full breasts protrude, rounded and white, above her decolletage.

Scene Four

The nave of St. Paul’s cathedral, or Paul’s walk. People of all descriptions crowd every corner of this ample space: tailors, factors, lawyers, pickpockets, sellers of racy woodcuts, bawds and chimney sweeps, all of them do business here, beneath the imposing arched roof and between the lofty columns. The magnificent stone tombs of the nobility, the rood loft, and even the baptismal font are used as money-changing counters. Dandies stroll aimlessly, displaying their fashionable clothes. An ill-dressed young man in his late twenties, with the beginnings of a receding hairline, walks briskly amid this bedlam.

W
ill walked amid the press of vendors, his feet on the paving stones, his mind far away from it all, in Stratford. Like the homing bird returning to the nest, whenever not firmly tethered, his mind was wont to gather to Nan and Hamnet and Susannah and Judith. Today, more than ever.

Will remembered his dream, his ghastly dream last night, and wondered what it all meant. Having been born on a Sunday, Will could see into supernatural realms and often had dreams that proved true. He did not wish this one to be one of them.

In the ten years since Will’s last encounter with the topsy-turvy realms of faerieland, he’d told himself it was all fantasy: Nan’s kidnapping by the faerie king, Sylvanus, Sylvanus’s wooing of Nan, and even Will’s own seduction by the Lady Silver, the female aspect of the mutable prince, Quicksilver.

What could such things have to do with Will Shakespeare, of Stratford? He’d told himself it was all a fantasy, a mad spinning of his brain that had been so overwrought by early marriage, the birth of his first child, and economic difficulties besides.

And yet, the fantasy had come to haunt him again in his very solid world, in, of all places, bustling London.

Will’s receding hairline betrayed his fleeing youth, his cheap russet suit advertised his provincial origins and lack of money to one and all. He went unremarked here at St. Paul’s, or nearly so. Indeed, he’d never stood out in a crowd.

Everything about Will seemed designed to hide and mingle and look like every man: his median stature, his median build, what remained of his dark curls.

Only his golden eyes, intent and focused like a hawk’s, had just enough cunning in their gaze to keep away the cony catchers, the charlatans, the bawds -- all those worms that ate at the still-living carcass of London.

It was three years since Will had come to town, and wandered about, open-mouthed, slack-jawed at the sheer press of people, the multitude, the populous variety of faces and figures, and clothes and manner, the likes of which he’d never seen in his little native town of Stratford.

In those three years, though Will’s clothes remained the same, his mind had set aside its homely raiment, and put on new, cosmopolitan clothes.

Neither the majesty of St. Paul’s -- with its towering walls, its peaked roof, its massive pillars, and its imposing choir loft -- impressed him; nor did St. Paul’s decay -- its ruined walls, the remnants of its burned-up wooden spire that had once risen five hundred and twenty feet towards the heavens above, nor even the babel of merchants and con men within its walls -- shock Will any longer.

When he remarked the bustle of St. Paul’s at all it was to savor it with pleasure, like a man contemplating a beautiful tapestry. He could see the thread of sermons, preached from the great cross, the golden thread of baptisms still performed at that fount turned money counter.

He could gaze impassive on the bawds who, like unrepentant Magdalenes, displayed their tightly corseted bodies, their partially bare bosoms, their velvets and ill-got silks in this sacred precinct, and felt no shame. If only he could put it all into a play, he knew it would succeed.

The voices that rose around him -- speaking in every dialect of England, in every variation of note and tone -- wove like music in his mind, creating harmonics of true humanity, a magic whirlwind of minds and habits.

If Will thought about the crowd at all -- as he dodged its steps and wove his own uncertain path amid squabbling friends and quarreling enemies, lawyers lying out for their prey, and bawds angling for customers -- it was to wonder, with puzzled mind and wrinkled brow, how this could be allowed, if theater wasn’t.

Yet Paul’s remained open, and the Theater had been closed, to stay the danger of the plague.

If the danger of the plague were so great, that the theaters must be closed and the great seeming representation of truth stopped on the stages of the land, how could people yet be allowed to assemble, like this in great multitude? Would not the danger of contagion, the fear of the great and common plague be as great here as in the theater?

Oh, Will knew the answer too well, though it still nettled his mind to think of it. The theater was deemed sinful and, in itself, worthy of the plague and of punishment.

But Will, looking around at the scenes unrolling around him, couldn’t imagine how the theater could be sinful if this weren’t. Wouldn’t God approve of the truth you could create from your own God-given mind? And if not, was He a God at all to whom Will should give his worship and fealty?

Dangerous thoughts these, if spoken aloud, which Will knew better than to do. Even having the thoughts disturbed him. He’d always been law-abiding, and respecting of religion.

Yet now religion would deny him livelihood.

And if the theater were indeed sinful, was he committing a sin in writing for it? And if so, could his family in Stratford be afflicted because of his sin? He’d read his bible and studied his plagues. Was that not how sins were punished?

He thought of the wolf again and drew breath in, in fear. Should he go home?

What, go home on the threat of a dream?

What would his Nan say, his down-to-Earth Nan, if he showed up at her doorstep saying he’d had a dream?

And Nan’s sharp tongue would no doubt find a name for such exaggerated caution.

It was a dream. Nothing more. Will had come to Paul’s to try to forget it. And yet, it wouldn’t be forgotten.

Will wrinkled his brow upon this thought, and jumped in startled wonder, as a voice beside him said, “Good news, Will, I have it all fixed.”

The solidity of the broad Stratford vowels, the familiarity of this voice that had been known to Will since grammar school, identified the speaker, even before Will turned to gaze into the pale blue eyes, the round, solid countenance of Richard Fields.

Richard had been a school boy in Stratford-upon-Avon, only a couple of years ahead of Will. He was now a prosperous London printer, and still Will’s friend.

However, familiar as face and voice might be, the words nonetheless puzzled Will.

“You have it fixed? Pray, Richard, what can
it
be?”

Richard smiled, a broad, satisfied smile, that went well with the rest of him: his beefy build, his good-quality, dark wool suit, his well-made grey gloves and shining new shoes. “
It
, good neighbor, is a way for you to earn your keep while the theaters are closed.” And, smiling his satisfaction at such capital news, and the great benefit he meant to bestow upon Will, Richard added, volubly. “You see, to my print shop, yesterday, came the young earl of Southampton -- such a young man, Will, noble and proud, fair of face and nimble of mind.”

Will raised his eyebrows at this unbridled admiration, and looked at his friend, uncomprehending. “And I with the earl, Richard? Would you find me employment, or do you mistake me for a noble maid in need of a match?”

Richard waved his hand, impatient at the jest. “Employment. Employment that you find better uses for that golden mind of yours than abusing your old friend.” He put his hand on Will’s shoulder, earnestly entreating Will’s attention. “The earl has just built a theater in Tichfield, his family’s seat. A private theater, which falls not under the seal of the court that closes the other theaters. He now says he’s searching for a playwright who can make new plays and masques to entertain the earl and his friends. Right away, I thought on you.

"I vouchsafed the earl for your ability. He says, if you come to him tonight, at dinner time, he.... But Will, what’s wrong? Are you not pleased?” Richard’s beefy face fell, his blue eyes astounded at the change of Will’s countenance.

Indeed, Will knew he’d gone pale. He felt as if he might lose consciousness. “Marvelous pleased,” he heard himself say. His vision had dimmed and he expected the ground to open into a hole that would swallow him and his aspirations together.

Bless Richard and his confidence in Will’s ability. But all Will would accomplish would be to make himself a fool before the earl. “It’s just that I’m not sure my work will please. I’m no Kyd, no Marlowe, not even a Greene,” he said, thinking of all those other playwrights who exceeded him in talent and learning.

Richard laughed. “As for that, you’ll do well enough, I warrant. Well I remember how you used to make us all laugh at school, with your skits where you imitated our Welsh schoolmaster. And, besides, this is the earl’s dilemma: Kyd is in prison, Marlowe is away, and Greene is dead. So the chance is yours, and don’t forget, this evening at his Lordship’s townhouse.” He patted Will on the shoulder reassuringly. “Only you attend upon him, and be your own, sweet-talking self, and, sure as it ever was, you’ll find your pockets well lined.”

With that Richard bowed slightly, by way of a goodbye, and started walking away. But, no more than a step gone, he turned back. “Only you ask where the house is exactly. All nearby know which one it is, and the footmen know to admit you.”

He turned back, and disappeared, amid the crowd of St. Paul’s, walking quickly towards the far door that led to Paul’s yard and the bookseller’s stalls.