AEgypt (17 page)

He turned his thick blue-tinted glasses on her. “What's that you're reading?"

Rosie showed him
Bitten Apples.
“It's fun,” she said. “Is all this true, though, about Shakespeare running off to be a boy actor?"

Boney smiled. His false teeth were as old as most people's real ones; the porcelain was wearing thin in spots, showing a glitter of gold beneath. “I never ask,” he said, “what's true in those. He did a lot of research."

"You knew him, right?"

"Sandy Kraft? Oh yes. Oh, Sandy and I were good friends, yes."

"Sandy?"

"That's what he was known as."

Rosie turned to the inside back flap of the paper cover. There was a picture of Fellowes Kraft, an ageless, gentle-eyed man in an open shirt, cheek resting on his fist, a shock of light hair falling over his forehead. Thirty years ago? Forty? The book was copyright 1941, but the picture might be older. “Hm,” she said. “He lived in Stonykill."

"Near there. That house, you know the one. He bought it in the late thirties. It's owned by the Foundation now. Sandy was with the Foundation for a while. Off and on. We have the copyrights too, they still bring in a little, you'd be surprised.” He clasped his shaky hands behind his back and looked out at the day. “He was a nice man, and I miss him."

"Does he have any family still here?"

"Oh no.” Boney grinned again. “Sandy wasn't the marrying kind, if you know what I mean."

"Oh?” Rosie said. “Oh."

"What we used to call a confirmed bachelor."

"But that's what you are, Boney."

"Well.” He cast a sly look at Rosie. “Depending on how you say it, it means different things. Don't go spreading rumors about me."

Rosie laughed. That antique sort of delicacy. Boney, she knew, himself had a long-ago secret, a secret sorrow that was never to be talked of; something that might have been, should have been, an awful scandal, but wasn't. Nowadays there were no secret scandals. They were all right out there for everybody to ponder, and talk about, and give advice on. She looked out at the broad driveway. Under the maples her station wagon was parked, stuffed to the roof with belongings she was as yet unwilling to unpack. Boney had taken her in instantly, no questions asked, as though she were merely coming for a long visit; and Mrs. Pisky, his housekeeper for the last millennium or so, took her cue from Boney. Well, Mrs. P., Rosie and Sam are going to be staying for a while, what do you think, the west bedroom has a bathroom and there's the little boudoir too. Oh Mr. Rasmussen they haven't been aired out or anything, I'll do a load of wash, isn't it nice to have young ones around. Whatever griefs, Rosie thought, the old reticences had once caused or hidden, they could be restful too, if you just didn't have an explanation, if you just wanted to get away and couldn't say why for a while. Mrs. Pisky might be a hypocrite, for sure she had a quick eye for the things Rosie brought into the house, a mess of a life as yet unpurged, rolling-papers in the jewelry box and Sam confused and not as clean as she might be—food for Mrs. Pisky's thought, no doubt; but Boney, Rosie felt sure, not only said nothing but as far as was consistent with affection thought nothing either.

Arcady. What on earth would she have done, she thought humbly, if she hadn't had Arcady to come to, great dull brown Arcady with its big flagged veranda and its wicker chaise longue where she could lie with a book in the sweet coolness, as she had as a child, a library book into whose pages crept the summer outside and the far hills; what would she have done? How did people bear it, who had no place to go, when something dreadful had to be done and they weren't ready yet to do it?

"You notice,” Boney said, seeing her turn back to
Bitten Apples
, “how he uses little dashes instead of quote marks, when people talk."

"Yeah. I think that's sort of confusing."

"Well I think so too. Hard to read. But now do you know why he does that? He explained it to me once. He said he just couldn't bring himself to claim that all these historical figures really said, quote quote, what he has them say. They never really said these things, he told me; not really. And the little dashes make it not seem so much like people are really talking. Sandy said: It's more like you're dreaming of what they must have said, if they did the things they did.” He looked down slowly, unmoving, at Sam, who had approached him just as slowly. “That's all,” he said gravely. He and Sam looked at each other, her blond head bent up, his lizard's head bent down. “Hello, Sam."

Rosie received the bundle of her daughter in her lap with a grunt, Sam fleeing from Boney's intimacy. She turned the pages of
Bitten Apples,
which had fluttered closed, to find her place again.

Boney, his hand on the screen door to go out, paused. “Rosie,” he said. “May I ask you something?"

"Sure."

"Do you think you'll be needing to talk to a lawyer?"

"Oh. Oh, Boney..."

"I only ask because."

"I don't know, I don't think so, yet."

"Tell me if you do,” Boney said, “and I'll call Allan Butterman. That's all."

With a small smile, he went out the door, and down the wide shallow steps as though they were steep. Sam, watching him go, got up all of a sudden and went after him, slipping out the door before it could close on its old slow pneumatic closure, and going down the steps which were steep to her too; Boney noticed her following, but took no notice.

And the wide afternoon still remained; long, long till lawyers, please, please. Young Will went home along Henley Street, past the shambles and the market cross, up to his father's door, his heart beating hard, with an invitation to be one of the Earl of Leicester's Boys from Master James Burbage to lay before his father.

There was no one in the leather-odorous glover's shop on the first floor. Will mounted to the chamber above, hearing voices speaking in low tones. The room was dim, shutters half-closed, and with the August day still sparkling in his eyes Will could not at first make out who stood there behind his father's chair.

His father wiped his eyes with his sleeve; he seemed to have been weeping. Again. In the far doorway his mother stood, hands beneath her apron, her thoughts unguessable but troubled. The man behind his father's chair, tall, lank-haired, was his teacher of last year, Master Simon Hunt.

—Will, Will. His father gathered the boy toward him with a two-handed gesture. Will, my own son. We have just now spoken of you.

They were all looking at him; in the old smoked darkness all their eyes seemed to him to be alight. Will felt a tremor of apprehension that chilled the sweat on the back of his neck. He did not go to his father.

—Will, here is Master Hunt. We have prayed long together. For you, for all of us. Will, Master Hunt undertakes a journey tomorrow.

Will said nothing. Often lately he had found Hunt the schoolmaster here with his father, his father in tears; Hunt and he talked of the old religion in low voices, and of the sad state of the world now, and how nothing ever would go right until true religion came again into this land. Hunt had taken him, Will, aside too, and talked closely and intently to him, and Will in a paralysis of strangeness had listened, and nodded when that seemed required, understanding little enough of what was said to him but feeling Hunt's intensity almost as a physical touch that he wanted to shake off.

—I'm going over the sea, Will, said Master Hunt. To see other lands, and to serve God. Is not that a fine thing?

—Where do you go? Will said.

—To the Low Countries. To a famous college there, where there are learned and pious men. Brave men too. Knights of God.

Why were they speaking to him in this way, as though he were a baby, a child to be won over to something? Only his mother had not spoken. She held herself stiffly at the door, half in and half out of the room, in the way she did when her husband reprimanded or beat her children, not daring to intercede for them and yet unwilling to be party to their punishment either. They waited, Hunt waited, for him to speak, but he had nothing to say, except for his own news, which was not now to be said: that he knew.

—Come, boy, come.

Tears were gathering in his father's voice. Will reluctantly went to him; Hunt was nodding solemnly, as though yes, this were the next thing to be done. His father took him in his arms, patting his shoulder.

—I will tell you what. I have decided—Master Hunt and I have decided, with God's help—that you should go away with him tomorrow. Beyond the sea. Listen to me, listen.

For Will had begun to draw away. His father would not release him. A horror was growing in his heart: they meant to deliver him to Hunt, an endless schooling, Hunt's voice and touch always. No.

—Oh, son, oh, son. You have a good wit, a good wit, a better wit than I. Think of it, think. There is learning there, holy learning you cannot have here, listen, Will, that is a treasure to search world's ends for. Listen. You are a good boy, a good boy.

Closed in his father's arms, Will had grown weirdly calm; a cunning almost seeming not to belong to him, a whisper in his ear, made him still; and when his father felt it he released him. And held him then before him by the shoulders, smiling at Will with his mouth while his wet eyes searched his face.

—Good lad. Brave lad. Will you not speak?

—I will do as you like. Father.

The tears welled in his father's eyes. Will counseled himself: say yes, yes, only yes. His mother drew up her apron over her face.

—There was secrecy required, Hunt said. It had to be so. We could not tell you till the last. For fear of the powers of this world.

—Yes.

He knelt by Will and looked into his face.

—An adventure, boy. Going secret by dawn's light. I will be knight, and you my page, and we will fight every devil the world shows us. For the world is full of them now.

—Yes.

His smile was somehow worse than his solemn face. Will's face smiled into it.

—Oh, there will be singing there. There will be singing there as you have never heard, and plays, and churches full of splendors made for God's sake. As wonderful as in any book. Not like this darkened land where they hate beauty and figured song. And truth, Will. Truth to learn.

Will took a step back from him.

—At dawn? he said.

—Yes, said Hunt. I go now to make all ready. Bring little, now. Everything will be provided.

He rose, anxious and intent again, his common face, and sat at the table, where Will now saw there was money being counted out and a leather pouch. Hunt and his father put their heads together.

—There will be lodging in London, Hunt said. My careful friend there. He is apprised of this. But the wherry thence to Greenwich must be hired....

They turned again as one to watch him when Will stepped farther away.

—I'll go prepare, he said.

—Do, said Hunt, with a wink. I'll return about the middle of night. You won't sleep?

—No.

—See to him, see to him, John Shakespeare said to his wife. See to him.

But he was gone up the stairs to his garret room, and had latched the door before his mother could reach it.

A fissure had opened in the world, huge, and he had found himself all in a moment on its edge. On the opposite side were his father, and Hunt, asking him to leap in; and his mother, asking him to come to her. But he could not. He could feel nothing but his sudden danger, he could only think fast and calmly how he could abandon them and save himself; and his mind whirred like the gears of a clock about to strike.

—Will? his mother said softly; Will didn't answer. From a secret niche in the wall he drew out paper, he had a fondness for paper and saved clean scraps of it when he found them; and a little horn of ink. His hands shook steadily with the beat of his heart, and only by an act of will he steadied them. He propped the paper on the sill of the tiny window, and by its light he began to write; he spoiled one sheet, and began another, more calmly, the words flying to his mind's tongue as though his father really were speaking them: or if not his own father, then some father; a believable father, a father whose voice he could hear.

Just after dark, he took the bundle of shirts and hose his mother had made up, and the little purse of coin his father gave him, and the new kid gloves he had made himself, all up to his room: to think and pray there, he said, and wait for Master Hunt. And when he thought his brother and sister were well asleep, and his father below at his wine, he went out the window and down the side of the house by a means he had long perfected for getting out on just such a summer night as this one was.

Master James Burbage was in a great hurry to get out of town. A member of his company had got into a brawl with a local boy over some wench or some piece of money, and the swain had got the worst of it and might die. Burbage, furious with his man, had however no intention of waiting to see local justice done, and himself fined or worse, and at ten o'clock was seeing to the strapping-down of the last of his stage properties on the wagon, to leave by moonlight, when the boy startled him into crying out by sidling up and tugging at his sleeve.

Did he believe the note the boy gave him? Signed, and attested by a Master Simon Hunt. Trusting he will treat with my son the said William in good faith and honestly and train him up in the trade, business and arts of player in my lord of Leicester's company. My beloved son whose person and fortune I entrust to the said Master Burbage and the said. There was no mention of any fees; Burbage had never and would never meet this man John Shakespeare; in the dark, the redhead's face was a mask, a mask saying
I have done what was asked of me and here I am ready.
No, Master Burbage did not believe it, not for a moment, any more than he believed the boy's face. But he thought a magistrate would, if it came to that; or would anyway forgive Burbage for having believed it; and he was in a very great hurry; and the imp had an angel's voice.

—Get up then! he said, giving Will a boost that was nothing to the flight he had given to the boy's full heart. Get up on the seat. No—not on the seat, then—get down in there. Well down. Good. Now, young Master Shakespeare, gone for a player, you will keep to that place until we are past Clopton Bridge, and farther on than that too. No g'yup! G'yup!