License to Quill (15 page)

“Master bard,” the burly squire greeted with a nod. “Did Aston give you any trouble?”

“None at all! I think we're friends now—or at least friendly.” Shakespeare climbed down from the animal and swapped Aston's reins for the squire's lamp. “I am ready to take him on longer trips. I ride for Warwickshire in two days.”

“He'll be ready for you,” the squire assured him as he hopped into Aston's saddle. “Sleep well, master.”

“I hope I get to,” Shakespeare exhaled. On nights as cold as this one, he was relieved that he no longer had to sleep in Aston's stalls. As the magnificent horse and its squire galloped alongside the Wall and out of sight, the bard treaded through the snow past two houses in the opposite direction. He walked westward onto Muggle Street, which dipped southward from the London Wall in a curve. It was just a short walk past five more houses until the bard was back on the corner of Silver Street and Muggle.

As Shakespeare smacked the snow from his boots and hurried indoors, his raven perched on a rooftop across the street. The bird rested alongside another raven and another figure that had been waiting for the bard's arrival.

 

Chapter XVI

The Discovery

Shakespeare rushed upstairs to his apartment, this time grateful that he did not bump into his landlord on the way. Once inside his darkened room, he cracked his lantern open with frozen fingers to start a fire without the trouble of wrestling with his tinderbox. The playwright needed to warm his hands, but more important, he needed light. After what he had learned at the Duck and Drake, the bard would be writing tonight.

Shakespeare lit the ancient candle fused into the corner of his writing desk. After thawing a frozen inkwell over its flame, he dabbed a ready feather into the liquid and scratched away onto a waiting parchment.

I
f
t
hou

do
e
st Marr
y
, Il
e
giu
e
th
e
e th
i
s Pla
gu
e
fo
r t
hy D
ow
r
i
e
. Be
th
o
u a
s c
h
a
s
t as
Ic
e, as pur
e
as Snow,
t
ho
u
sha
l
t
n
ot
e
s
c
ap
e
Calu
m
n
y
.
G
e
t t
hee
t
o a N
u
n
n
ery.
G
o, Far
e
w
e
ll.
O
r
i
f th
o
u
w
i
lt
n
e
e
d
s
M
ar
r
y,
m
ar
ry
a
fo
o
l
: fo
r
Wi
s
e m
en
k
no
w
w
ell
enou
g
h, wha
t
m
o
nst
e
rs you m
a
ke
o
f t
he
m. To
a
Nu
nne
r
y
go, a
n
d quic
k
ly
t
o
o
.

Fa
r
-wel
l
.

W

Catesby plots rebellion. I will follow to Warwickshire.

W.S.

The bard set down his quill pen and looked the message over for errors. Finding none, he rose from his chair and approached his window with the parchment and a wooden whistle, the latter something Bacon had given him during one of their subsequent trips to the White Tower. The bard opened his window and blew the whistle, which emitted a long, low note. In less than a minute's time, a raven appeared on his windowsill and greeted Shakespeare with a squawk.

“Good evening,” the playwright welcomed.

“Good e'vən,”
the raven croaked.

Shakespeare smiled, but was then surprised to see a second raven perch on the windowsill. “Two of you?”

“Good e'vən.” “TOO əv yə?” “TOO əv yə?”
the ravens mimicked in the playwright's voice.

Shakespeare raised an eyebrow. He had not seen more than one bird in his apartment since Penny's visit the previous summer. His curiosity awakened, the bard looked behind the ravens and down at Silver Street, but he did not spot anyone in the snow or any footprints, save for his own. Confused but otherwise unworried, Shakespeare shrugged and tied his note onto the foot of the more familiar-looking raven, the one saying
“Good e'vən”
repeatedly.

“Shh!”

“Ssh!”

“Better.” The playwright threw the chatty bird out the window, and the raven soared back to its home atop the Tower. As for its companion, Shakespeare politely shooed the bird and closed his window to retain what little heat remained in his apartment.

Back at his desk, the playwright mulled in his seat. Although his official work for the evening was over, something troubled him. The bard unbuckled his weapons as his thoughts turned to Thomas Percy and their repeated rows at the inn. The villain had always been distrustful of the playwright, but this was the first time the bard ever feared for his life in the man's presence. The encounter upset his equilibrium; otherwise, Shakespeare would have gladly traveled to Warwickshire with Robert's men. Instead, he now had to follow them on his own and find a way to eavesdrop on their meeting. Percy's suspicions had become a problem the bard could no longer ignore. They were interfering with his mission, and Shakespeare knew there was only one way to defuse the problem.

The bard stared at the blank pages on his desk. It was time for him to write his play.
The
play. The Scottish play.

Instead of picking up his feather, the playwright folded his arms and took a nap.

*   *   *

It was not that Shakespeare was a lazy man. Quite the contrary; he wrote
Henry V
,
Julius Caesar
,
As You Like It
, and
Hamlet
all within the course of one year. It was the same year that the Globe opened, and the playwright accomplished this while acting in his plays, touring the country with his company, and juggling duties both in Stratford and to Thomas Walsingham. Those were the good days, the bard remembered. The busy days. Back when he was free to pen his plays with impunity. It was what life was like before the Earl of Essex fiasco. Before Shakespeare's falling-out with Walsingham. Before the plague of 1603. And, of course, before Guy Fawkes.

Once more, Shakespeare was permitted to write his plays however he wished. He just did not know where to start on this one.

Oh yes. He did.

The bard opened his eyes.

Shakespeare picked up his pen and scratched down the ten words Fawkes made him memorize months ago:

Double, double, toile and trouble;

Fire burne, and Cauldron bubble.

The playwright wrote the words in the middle of his page. Parchment was expensive, and he planned to revisit this paper later. Perhaps much later.

Shakespeare's plays always began with what were called “foul papers”: a handwritten draft of the script that he would share with his actors. After hearing their thoughts and making changes—which, in truth, almost never happened—Shakespeare sent these pages to a professional scribe so that a “fair copy” could be written. However, to save time and money, the bard made an effort to write his plays in good handwriting and free of errors to skip this process altogether. This was part of the reason Shakespeare had held off from writing the Scottish play for so long: the bard preferred to compose, revise, and finalize his plays from start to finish in his head.

In either case, this finished manuscript, commonly referred to as “the book of the play,” would be submitted to the Master of the Revels, a royal censor. The official would review the manuscript, strike out whatever he found inappropriate, and then return the book to its author with a signature of approval. These “allowed books,” as they were called, were the Holy Grail to acting companies. They were officiated copies of their plays which served as prompt books that could be carried and performed throughout the kingdom. They could be copied onto scrolls for their actors to memorize. They could even be published and printed. And, if the playwright was clever—or suicidal, in Marlowe's case—the plays could even be changed without anyone noticing. That is, unless someone did notice, as was the case with
Richard II
.

This is what made Shakespeare's license to work free from censors so valuable. It allowed him to write his plays with full prompts and stage cues rather than being forced to add them later. It permitted him to visualize, direct, and script his plays all in one sitting. It liberated him as a writer, freeing him from the oppressive world that he was forced to call his homeland. It was how Shakespeare had written all his greatest plays and how he hoped to write many more.

But, for the time being, his priorities were set in Scotland.

Scotland.

That required research, the bard nodded.

Shakespeare glanced at the dusty books piled high on the chair beside his desk. It was a modest library the bard routinely consulted throughout his writing: his Geneva Bible
*
and prayer book;
†
a
Cooper's Dictionary
‡
and Baret's
Alvearie
;
§
copies of Garnier's
Cornelia
,
¶
Lucan's
Pharsalia
,
**
and Thomas Digges's
Foure paradoxes
;
††
Arthur Golding's translation of Ovid's
Metamorphoses
‡‡
—the bard's favorite since his schooldays; a collection of Samuel Daniel's essays, which Shakespeare purchased primarily for
Musophilus
;
*
a tattered copy of William Painter's
Palace of Pleasure
,
†
which consulted while writing
All's Well That Ends Well
the previous year; a new translation of Plutarch's
Lives
, which the bard was currently rereading for
Antony and Cleopatra
;
‡
Samuel Harsnett's
Declaration of egregious Popish Impostures
,
§
which the bard started but had not finished; and, of course, a carefully cared-for copy of
Hero and Leander
by Christopher Marlowe, deceased.
¶
Seeing that one made Shakespeare smile. Although stacked unceremoniously on a broken chair and stained with wine and candle wax, these books comprised one of the most consequential collections in history. They were Shakespeare's sources for nearly every single one of his plays.

However, for the moment, the playwright needed something different. He reached beneath Harsnett's
Declaration
for his copy of Holinshed's
Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland
, which would have familiarized the playwright on Scottish history months ago had he not accidentally flipped through its pages to the legend of King Leir of Britain. Fortunately, such was not the case this evening. On this snowy night in London, Shakespeare cracked open Holinshed's
Chronicles
precisely where he needed to: its detailed passage on the illnesses afflicting Duffe, king of Scotland in the mid–tenth century.

The word “witches” made one particular passage stand out to him.

Howbeit the king, though he had small hope of recouerie, yet had he still a diligent care vnto the due administration of his lawes … But about that present time there was a murmuring amongst the pople, how the king was vexed with no naturall sicknesse, but by sorcerie and magicall art, practised by a sort of witches dwelling in a towne of Murrey land, called Fores.…
*

The bard smiled. But
of course
it was witches!

He continued reading with a skeptical smirk on his face.

The souldiers, which laie there in garrison, had an inkling that here was some such matter in hand … by reason that one of them kept as concubine a yoong woman, which was daughter to one of the witches as his paramour, who told him the whole maner vsed by hir mother & other hir companions, with their intent also, which was to make awaie the king.

Shakespeare's smile began fading.

The souldier hauing learned this … shewed it to the kings messengers, and therewith sent for the yoong damosell which the souldier kept.… Wherevpon learning by hir confession in what house in the towne it was where they wrought their mischiefous mysterie, he sent foorth souldiers about the middest of the night, who breaking into the house, found one of the witches rosting vpon a woodden broch an image of wax at the fire, resembling in each feature the kings person …
*