Love's Will (16 page)

“Not
selling. Giving. Out of love.”

“Then
do it thoroughly. Bring me the money and bring me home enough of your love.”

“I
do. Oh Christ. You love him?”

“Fell
in love with him. There’s a difference. A fine difference. Words matter.”

“Aye,
they do, and I will attend to the words, fine or otherwise. Use your mouth for other things, Anne.”

“As
you would Harry did?”

“As
you would Harry did. Let me at you. Oh God you bitch, you whore, you witch...”

“...your
wife. Touch me there. As you can’t with Harry. And there.”

“And
there. Anne. Oh, Anne. Oh God. Jesus. Take another man and I’ll kill you.”

“Take
another woman and I’ll kill you.”

“Not
with you in my bed, like this. Do it. Do it, Anne. Do everything.”

“Like
this? And this?”

“And
this, and this, and this. You bitch, I love you.”

A
long time later, she said, “You’re right, this bed does creak.”

“Under
that treatment, you’re surprised? Jesus, Anne. Ten years married.”

“Jealousy
makes a good spice.” She turned on her back, stretching, trying to pull up the tangled sheets. William flapped a moment, dragging the blankets up, throwing her pillow up from the centre of the bed.

“Did
you really fall in love with Harry?”

“Did
you?”

“I
asked first.”

“Then
I think I’ll leave you wondering.” Neatly she turned on her side, her back to him. “Goodnight, husband.”

“Goodnight,”
said William.

1
1.

Only a fool would travel in winter unless by dire necessity. So William told himself through the miserable days of his journey from London. The roads were foul, the weather worse. Often he could see only a few paces ahead through the flurries of snow. Once he lost the road entirely and wasted half a day. The inns he stayed at were dirty, cold and crammed with travellers in as bad a case as he. Despite his leather jerkin and oiled-wool cloak he was wet and chilled to the bone by the time he reached Titchfield, and was wondering why he’d come.

But
he was taken inside at once, an honoured guest, and in the hall a huge fire blazed, and there was Harry, kissing his cheek and thrusting a mug of hot spiced wine into his hand.

“A
bad journey?” he said sympathetically.

“Beyond
telling.” William’s teeth chattered so much that he could hardly say the words. He downed his wine in two gulps and held his tankard out for more. Only then did he notice the other people in the hall. Most of them were unknown to him, or no more than vaguely familiar. He bowed, generally, as Harry mentioned his name, and heard some offensively warm, clean gallant say, “Oh, yes, the play-writing fellow,” and laugh and turn away to nudge the Earl of Essex.

“Would
you like a hot bath?” Harry asked quietly. William nodded. Harry murmured to a servant. “Come,” he said to William. “The least I can do is thaw you out.”

The
organisation of great households like this was an awesome thing. How much money did it cost, William wondered, and how many servants, to keep rooms ready for guests who might arrive this week, next week, never? For his room was all prepared for him, the bed made and turned down, the fire alight, a jug of wine to hand. Above all, it was warm. Before he’d properly toasted his hands at the fire, servants were bringing in a bathtub and copper jugs of hot water.

Soaking,
feeling the chill leave his bones, William so nearly fell asleep that he had to ask Harry to repeat something he had said.

“Christopher
Marlowe has been here, and is expected again soon.” Harry turned away as he said this.

“Oh?”

“He said he would come. Nashe too, perhaps.”

“A
plethora of poets.”

“None
so good as you. And also we have that strange Spaniard Essex thinks so well of. Perez or some such name.” Placatingly, Harry took the sponge and began to wash William’s back. “Did you have a merry Christmas?”

“Merry
enough, and a pleasant time at home. You?”

“Yes,
but it was dull without you. Did your family like the gifts I sent?” He was after all, very young.

“Yes,”
William said gently. “They liked them very much. It was a kindly thought, Harry.”

Harry
had sent silver lockets for the little girls, with a flower and their initials in enamel; also a dress length of velvet each, blue for Judith, green for Susanna, and nothing would do but that Anne and William’s mother immediately begin to make the material up. For Hamnet, who liked animals, a Bestiary and a sheathed dagger sworn to have been captured from a Spaniard. Hamnet had been enchanted. For Anne there had been a bolt of kingfisher-coloured changeable silk and a pair of Turkish slippers with curling toes. She had been moderately charmed, given the source of the gift.

Remembering
that, and Anne stitching at her daughters’ new dresses, William said, “I brought you a gift, Harry.”

“You
needn’t have. What is it?”

“In
my bag, on top of my clothes.” Craning around he saw that the valet had finished unpacking, and the gift lay on the table. “In the muslin, there.”

Eager
as a child Harry unwrapped it. “Oh, Will. Gloves. How beautiful.” He turned them over, admiring the fine cheveril leather and the quilted, scented satin lining, the cuffs embroidered in gold.

Watching
him, William said, “Remember we spoke of my boyhood and I said I could still make you a pair of gloves? Well, so I did.” With it in mind, he had carefully measured Harry’s hand against his own before he left. Harry’s hand was narrower than his own, with very long thin fingers. “Not that I would rush to tell your friends I made them myself. It’s enough they’re forced to mix with a hireling player, let alone an artisan smelling of his father’s workshop.”

“But
the gloves are beautiful. Finer than any I’ve ever seen. And you truly made them yourself?”

“With
my own fair hands. In between making you a fine new play and more sonnets.”

“A
play? And more poems? Will, how can I thank you? And for the gloves, which I will wear with pride and tell everyone to shop for their gloves in Stratford.”

“Be
specific. Tell them, John Shakspere’s shop. You can thank me by handing me a towel, I must get out.” But Harry held the towel out wide and as William left the tub he wrapped it around him, thus holding him imprisoned in his arms. Very lightly he kissed the corner of William’s mouth. They stared for a long moment into each other’s eyes. Then William bowed his head onto Harry’s shoulder. “I had forgotten how much I love you.”

“I
had not. But I have been so very alone all these weeks.”

“Alone?
With your mother and sister, with Lord Essex, with all your friends?”

“It
is different. I thought – I feared – you might not love me anymore.”

“You
need not have. For I do love you, Harry.”

“And
I you.”

A
bell rang, severing the moment. “Supper,” said Harry, annoyed.

William
glanced, up, laughing. “I need it. I’ve been on the road since first light. I’ve a dim memory of an equally dim pork pie at noon.”

“Then
dress, quickly, and come have your supper. And during it you’ll tell us of this new play. Please.”

“It’s of some gentlemen,” William said along the table as the servants brought the second course. “Gentlemen who foreswear the company of women for a year while they study.”

“No
women in it?” someone asked. “Sounds dull.”

“Ah,
but they cannot keep their oath.” Boiled mutton, William saw, with caper sauce, and boiled fowls, pies, baked fish, blancmanges and creams, fritters. Excellent. “I call it
Love’s Labour's Lost.
”

“Good
title,” said the critic.

“There’s
a room,” Harry excitedly interrupted, “by the front door, facing the front of the house. I’ve ordered it cleaned and readied, it will be excellent for playing.”

“When
do the players arrive?”

“Soon.
February.”

“And
are we merely to watch or can we take part?”

Harry
knew Will’s views on amateurs and studiously refrained from catching his eye. “We shall see,” he said. “To amuse ourselves we could perform one of Will’s old pieces.
The Shrew
, perhaps.”

“No.
It’s too countrified,” said the same man, “but
Titus Andronicus
; now that has a pleasing touch of Marlowe to it.”

“And
Marlowe’s touch must please anyone,” William said evilly.

Trying
not to laugh, Harry suggested that such ideas were for later. After supper they would have music.

“And
perhaps,” said John Florio, his accented Italian voice lilting, “Master William would be so kind as to read us some of his poems. He has a most poetic touch.” And Will, his mouth unpoetically full of mutton, could only nod agreeably.

And
that’s what I am, he thought that night, in bed. A hireling. A player. Someone to amuse the guests. A winter house party while there’s plague in London. Guests at a loose end? Send for Whatisname, Shakspere, that’s right, he’s your man. Make extempore words to a song. Read a poem. Tell amusing anecdotes about touring. Teach some mincing lordling how to play Katerina. Trot out your Latin, your French, your Greek and your little Italian. Make a classical allusion, cap a quotation. Earn your keep, Will Shakspere. Sing for your supper.

The
thought drove him out of bed and over to his writing table. He lit two candles and stirred up the fire. He pulled on his dressing gown and, absently, his best cloak over the top. He thrust his feet into the fur-lined boots Harry had given him in autumn. Harry, who had paid him no more attention all evening than to pull his strings for his guests’ amusement. No better than a dancing bear. Harry, who wanted to be made immortal by his words.

So,
all through the icy night, William wrote. Words poured from his pen, coming ready-made, it seemed. Once he rose to use the close-stool and kick the sulking fire to life, and went back to work with the thick velvet coverlet wrapped around him. He hardly felt the cold, or not until he saw the uneven lines of writing and realised his hand was shaking. His whole body was. But the bed was also cold; empty, its sheets a clammy embrace, the warming pan without a hint of heat. Harry’s bed would be warm from the boy’s sweet sleeping body. Or warm perhaps from Essex’s body.

William
remembered talk about those two in the past. Or someone else. I could be home, he thought, snug in my marital bed with my wife. I am a married man. I love my wife, who loves me. Who loves Harry Southampton. Or did she merely say so to punish me? She had said, at parting, “Go to your lovely boy and do whatever you must for fame and money. I’d rather you took him than loved him. But do what you must and bring me the money. I have been a player’s wife too long. It is time I was a theatre-owner’s wife, a poet’s wife. And rich.” His wife, his Anne. The shy farmer’s daughter. You took an ignorant farmer’s daughter… And gave her nothing. No house, no fine clothes, no ease. Friendship, yes. Enough of love. Little enough of love. But more than he had known until she said she loved another man.

William
took up his pen again but his hand refused to answer him. Ink blots slashed across the page, the pen fell. He wanted to write of honour and corruption and could not. Miserably he rolled into bed, wrapping his diverse coverings about him. It was nearly dawn, a winter dawn of grey and frost. It would be a brave bird that heralded this dawn from an ice-hung tree. It is the nightingale and not the lark, that pierced the something hollow of thine ear. No – it is the owl… No... Like to the lark, at break of day arising, sings hymns at heaven’s gate… Better… Birds chirping. Cawing. The rook makes wing… William slept.

He
woke to warmth and pleasant smells and quiet breathing beside him. Most of all, to warmth. Through his closed eyelids he could see the flicker of the fire, and when he moved his feet they met the cosiness of a hot brick wrapped in cloths. Lazily he opened his eyes. Yes, a blazing fire and the thin light of a winter morning well advanced. His cloak was still around him, but someone had straightened the bed and tucked him snugly in.

“Good
morning.” Harry was lying beside him on top of the covers. He put down the sheaf of loose papers he was reading and grinned. “You worked all night again, it seems.”

“Till
dawn. I was so cold. Harry?”

“When
you didn’t come down to breakfast I came to see. Found the candles burnt out, the table covered with papers, you all bundled up and shivering in your sleep. I hope you haven’t taken a chill. There’s breakfast there if you’re hungry.”

William
sat up. A tray on the bedside chest held covered dishes of eggs, slices of beef, bread so new it was still steaming, ale. “What time is it? I must get up. Aren’t your guests looking for you?”

“They’ve
gone out hunting. It’s past nine. Eat it here, on the tray.” Companionably Harry plumped his pillows for him.

“I’ve
never eaten a meal in bed.” But he did so. It was much too pleasant to move. “By the way, what’s that you’re reading?”

“For
once you didn’t lock your work away. You’ve finished
Venus and Adonis
, Will. And it is superb. What genius you have.” His mouth full, William made a modest noise. “It really is good beyond praise. I am honoured. Dedicate this to me and I’ll be immortal. And these other poems, did you write them last night too? And this fragment of a play?”

“I
hardly know. I must have if it was out on the table. You’ve seen what it’s like with me, Harry; the urge to write comes, the Muse comes.” He reached for the sheet of paper in Harry’s hand. Harry held it away, saying no, his fingers were buttery. To read it, William leaned his head on Harry’s shoulder.

“Ah
yes, I remember that idea coming to me. It’s not well written, though. Needs work. It was just a night-time fancy.”

“No,
it’s good.” Harry shuffled the papers together, made a long arm to put them on the table, weighted down with a candlestick. He lay back, his arms folded behind his head, watching William finish his food. “I didn’t give you a Christmas gift.”