All Night Awake (42 page)

He sighed and poetry came to his lips, with a fresh spontaneity that evaded him in London. “From you have I been absent in the spring, When proud-pied April dressed in all his trim, Hath put a spirit of youth in every thing.”

He’d never realized how much he missed his hometown till this moment. Had his desire for his home transported him here? Had some magical proportion of his longing brought him by blessed insensible transport from his rented quarters in London to this, the backyard of the house where he’d grown up?

But the theaters were closed for the plague, which swept through London like a flame conquering dry tinder. Will, never prosperous, now lacked even for the meager money that came from acting jobs. He did other, menial jobs and lived, quietly, in a small attic room. And he missed his Nan. How he missed his Nan.

Not a comfortable woman to live with, Will’s wife of ten years, his Nan, but yet not a woman he wanted to live wholly without. And even Nan’s domineering ways, the way she planned his life for him, were preferable to the loneliness of London.

He’d been happy with Nan, if a little too confined.

With a wry grimace, Will remembered the incident that had taken him to London, when, three years ago, he’d killed one of Lord Lucy’s deer, and the old idiot, in high dudgeon, dreaming of long past feudal times, had tried to claim his ancient privileges and have Will arrested.

Though Lord Lucy wouldn’t manage that, in a free town like Stratford, governed by aldermen and good burghers, going to London had seemed, then, the best means of avoiding the unpleasantness. Going to London and trying his hand at the tawdry pomp of the stage and there bid try to displace Marlowe’s stage-dwarfing presence.

And his Nan, Will’s Nan, had believed he could do likewise, as well, and encouraged him to seek his joy on London stage, while she stayed home and minded the babes. She asked only that he return to visit, very often and forget neither her nor his children. As if he could, when he thought of them so often.

Still, if he returned to Stratford, how would he quiet the neighbors' guffaws when they talked of Will, who’d thought to make his fame and fortune in London, and yet returned empty handed to his parents’ house, to his father’s glove shop?

The thought was sweet, yet tinged by defeat. Will had gone to London to attempt his hand at the actor business, his fortune at play writing. To return would be to admit failure.

With love and fear, he regarded the shape of the twin houses at the end of the garden, those dear buildings that sheltered his wife and children on the left, and his parents and siblings on the right. Nearer to him loomed the bulk of the barns, the ground-hugging shadows of the spring plants.

The blessed silence of Stratford hung over all of it. Stratford, where Will had grown up, and where he knew everyone and everything. Stratford that was knit to Will’s very bones, etched into his mind and body like a mother’s touch upon her infant.

Stratford, where no one would ever believe that Will, the glover’s son, the grammar school graduate, could ever be a playwright and famous and successful in London.

Will didn’t believe it himself.

He listened to the wind rustling the new leaves on the tall poplars interspersed with the houses of the town. A whisper known and dear to him as the restless babble and noise of London had never been.

Will was here. That he couldn’t deny. And the mystery of his arrival -- that he must adjourn for solving at a better time. He could always return to London later, though he feared the courage would fail him for such a second flight. For now, he was near his family.

At the thought, his heart sped up, like a horse does when sensing the familiar barn. He thought of Nan inside, and of their children, ten-year-old Susannah and the seven-year-old twins, Hamnet and Judith. They’d be asleep in the upper floor of the house, beneath the gently sloping eaves. How joyously they’d welcome him, no matter how he’d got here, or how long he’d been absent. Nan would throw her arms around his neck, and his children -- grave Hamnet who looked so much like Will himself; bright, inquisitive Judith; and serious Susannah, burdened with a maturity beyond her years -- all of them would rejoice in him and leap about and caper in their enjoyment.

Curse London and its promise of false riches. Maybe he would return to it, maybe he wouldn’t. So far, his courting of fortune had been less than successful. Perhaps he should stay in his own sphere, and resign himself to his destiny.

Walking the gravel path, between the patches of garden that Nan had carefully tended with flax and vegetables and newly planted herbs, with his nose full of the scent of the roses that were Nan’s special pride, Will felt joyous relief.

Oh, it had seemed lovely then, and simple, three years ago. He had known his verses would dazzle all of London, and multitudes would crowd around for the privilege of watching a Shakespeare play, for the sheer entrancement of his words.

But when he’d thought to dazzle as a poet -- when he’d auditioned with Lord Strange’s company, to write plays for the Rose, where Marlowe strutted his words of fire and air -- Will had recited his best sonnet to the assembled company -- the lord patron, and Marlowe, and the actors themselves.

Oh, how Will could still remember, standing there in the tiring room that smelled of grease paint and sweat, explaining meekly that his Lady’s name was Hathaway and clearing his throat and reciting the fine sonnet that ended in,
hate from hate away she threw/ And saved my life, saying not you.

Before even Will had finished, there was Marlowe laughing into his lace-edged sleeve, and looking at Will with malicious mirth.

“Hate away,” Marlowe had said. “And your Mistress’ name is Hathaway. Why, that’s marvelous, prodigious wit. Why, I wager no more than a man in two would think of such word play.”

After that everyone had laughed, except Lord Strange who had looked kindly and asked if perhaps Will would like to try his hand at an actor’s job, while he learned the trade of play writing.

Will had strutted upon the boards for three years, wearing other men’s words upon his lips. He’d been king and tyrant, slave and lover. In the excitement of playing, he bid on in London, for the applause of the crowds, their greasy cloaks thrown in the air in enthusiasm. Will had been almost happy. He’d even written three plays, which the company had put on to moderate success, when no new plays of Marlowe’s were available.

But then a month ago, the great and common plague that ravaged London had forced the authorities to close the theaters. Will had lost his last hope of dazzling crowds.

Now, walking the garden path where he’d played as a child, in the middle of the sweet, quiet, country night, Will thought that perforce it must be a miracle he had come here, like this, transported by the effect of magic or its minions, to his home town. And when God effected miracles, something was meant.

Here he would stay and here he would bide, and here hoe the narrow furrow of his life, and seed his future in peace.

Leave the London stage to the fools, and to such dare-devils as Kit Marlowe whose plays always, always, drew in the big crowds at The Rose. Leave his uncertain courting of Dame Fortune and that Bawd Fame for the assured joy of his wife, Nan, for Nan’s love, for her tender regard. Nan’s demands could be no harsher than Fortune’s, and Nan meant well, which Fortune might not.

Will stopped in front of the sturdy oak back door to Nan’s kitchen, and put his hand out to knock, since this late at night, the door would be bolted.

Behind him a hunter’s horn sounded.

Will stopped. The crystalline notes echoed through the still air and all Will could think was,
A hunter now?

Oh, sure, the noblemen hereabout hunted, like Lord Lousy himself. But like this, this late at night? Deep night, dark night, the silent of the night, the time of night when Troy was set on fire; the time when screech-owls cried and ban-dogs howled, and spirits walked and ghosts broke up their graves?

Impossible.

Yet his hairs prickled and his ears rang with the refrain of that hunting call.

No. Not impossible.

The hunting horn sounded again, a bright, silver sound splitting the dark of night.

Will’s hair stood on the back of his neck, with the fear of the hunted thing, the terror of the night, the panic that comes upon man alone in the woods, in the unpeopled wasteland.

Who would be hunting this way, at night, but a spectral hunter? Who but
the Hunter
himself, primeval and merciless, who rode through the very thunderclouds as they roiled? The Hunter, whose dogs were said to be tormented souls?

Sweat ran down the middle of Will’s back. He didn’t turn, didn’t want to turn, didn’t want to face the certainty of what he feared.

Ten years ago Will’s Nan and his oldest daughter, Susannah, then a babe, had been kidnapped by elves, taken to faerieland. In rescuing them, Will had encountered this Hunter, this creature older than the oldest nightmares of humankind, this creature who stalked the night and caught -- what?

Will caught his breath with a sudden inhalation into a gaping, dry mouth. How could one know for sure what this creature hunted?

Something that laughed and shrieked inside him, some ancestral knowledge, some leaping demon hooted and answered:
Nothing and everything
. The souls of men, the substance of elves, the pride of angels.

It was said that even elves, fairies, and the other folk rumored to hide in nearby Arden forest -- all that remained of the primeval forest that had once covered all of Great Britain -- feared the Hunter as much and with as much reason as humans.

Quicksilver, king of the elves, had once told Will that the Hunter had been a god and ruler of the elven race in the time before men and that he still remained, biding by, and time and again claiming those foolish enough to get ensnared in his coils.

Hair prickling as if with cold breath at the back of his neck, Will reached for the solidity of his door again. As he did, the call sounded again, and on the heels of it a storm of baying, a rising of howling, a wave of growling rose from the Hunter’s dogs -- their music frightful as the serpent's hiss, and bidding screech-owls made the concert full. All the foul terrors in dark-seated hell seemed to ride at Will’s very heels.

So, he’d not been transported here for good-chance, nor by a benevolent divinity.

Will spun around. He heard the clopping of hooves, and saw a dark and ominous shape amid the lowering clouds: a man riding a gigantic horse and raising a shining silver horn to his lips. The horn alone shone, like a new risen moon. The rest was dark, cloudy death.

The Hunter.

The shadow of the Hunter, his shape, and the turmoil of his snarling dogs filled the horizon.

The Hunter, lord of the storm, bringer of misfortune, omen of all ill change, who devoured souls caught outdoors, even the hard, brittle souls of elves made of moonbeam and primeval fire and little else.

They approached in a snarling tumble of fury, darkening the sky with their menace.

Will took one step back, then another, setting his back to the hard door. There he stood against those supernatural dreads, as the hope of Troy against the Greeks that would have entered it. Thus he barred their entrance into this most sacred precinct of his heart.

His heart beat near his throat and his blood roared in his ears, deafening him.

The shapes in the sky resolved themselves and became one, tumbling from its sphere to the world of men.

Will wouldn’t run. Once before had he seen this shape, while elves were embroiled in battle all around him.

Once before and then, like now, he had trembled at the sight of it. And yet, the horror had passed him by. The Hunter had wanted no more than to take Sylvanus, the elven king, who’d tainted his own soul with treason and parricide and who had deservedly been transformed into one of the Hunter’s own dogs.

Who had the Hunter come for now?

Only Will was here.

Will stared at the gigantic Hunter in mute horror. Had it come for Will? Had Will tinged his soul with the black of his greed, the red of his desire for fame? Had the Hunter come to punish Will’s pride and would Will go through eternity like a dog of the Hunter -- with slavering jaws and dark, hisurt body?

Swallowing hard, on fear and almost forgotten memories of supernatural dread, Will reached his hand out blindly and ran it along the side of the door, till he found the handle of a hoe, resting against the wall, no doubt forgotten from Nan’s planting labors, as it usually was.

The baying rose, unbearable, as the dogs drew near. Didn’t Will’s children hear it, where they slept, comfortable and covered in their beds? Were his children well? Surely the Hunter came not for children?

Will refused to allow fear in through that chink of sudden alarm in his mind. Sweat ran prickly-cold down his back. He adjusted his hold on the hoe to a fighting stance. The handle of the hoe was oak and should endure many an attack by the cursed dogs. And the hoe, itself, at least the end of it was iron -- good, honest forged iron such as hobgoblins should fear.

Though fear trembled steadily along Will’s limbs, and his heart fluttered near his dry throat, and though his mind -- what sanity remained in it -- told him that good wood and iron were no defense against such an enemy as the Hunter, yet Will held onto the handle, held it tight till his knuckles shone white through the stretched skin. Whispering an
Our Father
and swallowing at the bile of fear in his throat, Will thought if the Hunter had come for him, yet would Will fight as best he could.

Will would storm faerieland again, if it would keep his home safe.

Holding the ice-cold handle of the hoe with his ice-cold hands one at each end, Will advanced a foot, and flexed his knees for balance and waited, his back to his closed kitchen door.

Nearer and nearer the horse galloped and the dogs growled, in black mass. So near that Will swore he could see the grin on the Hunter’s face, though such a thing as the Hunter clearly could not grin.

They could have him, and good riddance to Will’s ill-starred existence. But here he’d stay and here he’d fall, and like a soldier defending a sacred trust, he would die before the shadow of evil touched Susannah’s blue eyes, Judith’s golden hair, Hamnet’s innocence.