Mr. Shakespeare's Bastard (14 page)

“Few rides are free in this life,” she said, “and Will Shakespeare better than any should know that, for it’s said
his bride was quick with child when the wedding vows were spoken.”

To which Mam could only remember muttering, “Dear God in Heaven, will I never learn anything in this life? I am a foolish woman and no argument.”

“And how did my father take your news, Mam?” I asked. “Where did you meet and what did he say?”

But she had already reached out to press a finger against my lips. “Hush, Aerlene, for the love of God. Your questions are irksome. Just listen, please.”

She drank some water, for her sickness provoked a great thirst. I was careful to keep the cup filled, as she no longer had strength enough to hold the pitcher.

“As I’ve told you,” she said, “it was our habit to go out on a Saturday evening, and we went to the Cross Keys Inn on Gracechurch Street. I liked the Cross Keys, for the patrons there were not a rough sort. I imagine I was nervous that night. Who wouldn’t be? But at first your father didn’t seem to notice, for he had something to tell
me,
and he could scarcely hold it inside. At one point he took both my hands and, leaning forward, whispered, ‘Do you want to hear something wonderful, Elizabeth?’ I had no time to answer before he said, ‘Our troupe has been invited to court to present a comedy before the Queen, and I am to be one of the dancers at the play’s end. Now what do you think of that?’

“How difficult it is to tell someone filled with glad tidings that you have contrary news! I couldn’t bring myself on that night in the Cross Keys to tell him. He was so …” Mam looked away for a moment. “He was so very young and happy. Perhaps he was a little drunk, but just with excitement. We went back to his room. And then he saw me to Threadneedle Street, where I wept until morning.”

“But when
did
you tell him?” I asked.

“I didn’t tell him. I couldn’t bring myself to do it. It was Mary who saw him in the Dolphin a week or so before Christmas, when he was with friends. I had not seen him for a fortnight because the shop was busy, and it kept my mind off things. Only at night in bed did I worry. But Mary said that in the Dolphin she took your father aside and told him, and he said to her, ‘Knapped again, then.”

“What did he mean by that, Mam?” I asked.

“I don’t know. But what does it matter anyway now? That night Mary told your father that he couldn’t be expected to leave his wife and family, but he should do the right thing by me and provide some money, because it was likely that I would be turned out by my relatives when the truth became known. Yet apparently, all your father said to this was ‘I have no money. I live at Mr. Burbage’s pleasure.’”

I had never heard of that verb
knapped,
but years later when I saw a performance of
King Lear
at an Oxford Inn yard [one of only two plays by my father that I ever saw
enacted, the other being
Hamle],
I heard it used by the Fool when he mocks the old King for ranting over his treatment at the hands of Cornwall and Regan:

The word suggests that at the time my father felt “knocked about” by Fortune in the guise of another woman wanting either marriage or money.

When I asked Mam on her deathbed whether she ever spoke to him again, she said, “Aerlene, that season your father was occupied, so I can’t believe he made himself scarce on purpose. As for me, I felt so apart from everything around me that I was sick unto myself. It may have been the morning illness coming on, but I was sick at heart too, distraught by all my foolish longings. I still worked in the shop because I was needed, but on Christmas Day I took to my bed and wept. I think Eliza suspected the cause, though she didn’t approach me in my room. I remember Philip Boyer himself bringing something up to me, but I couldn’t touch food. If his wife had confided her suspicions to him, he didn’t let on. The next day was the Feast of St. Stephen, and I lay in bed thinking of your father dancing a jig at the end of a comedy before the Queen.

“A few days later came a letter from your uncle Jack telling me how satisfied he was that I had settled and was finding my way in London. And there I was trying to imagine writing a reply asking if I might return! Those weeks of grey frost in January and I seemed to be passing through them like a shadow of myself, not knowing what to do, hoping that I might miscarry as I had after Wilkes’s death.”

Mam was not one to spare my feelings even when it came to relating how she wished I’d never been born, but I was used to her ways. I don’t think she meant harm by it; she just wasn’t aware of how it sounded to me.

“One day,” she said, “Mary came into the shop dressed as usual like a gentleman and she was frowning as she looked at me.”

“‘You’re not caring for yourself,’ she whispered. ‘Get out of this place and live with me. Come to the Dolphin on Saturday at six o’clock and we’ll talk.’

“I could see Eliza watching us,” said Mam, “and I wondered if she was thinking that Mary was the father of the child I was carrying. The absurdity of it made me smile.

“On Saturday night when I told Mary about Eliza, we both laughed so hard you might have thought the two of us were the happiest doxies in London. I told her too about your father dancing a jig at court, but she only said, ‘And well enough he should dance. I’d have him upturned with
his pockets emptied for whatever they held. And look at you—thin as a pikestaff. Are those Puritans starving you?’

“‘Not at all,’ I said, ‘but I have little appetite these days.’

“Mary again talked about my living with her, but I had been thinking long about that. In her own way Mary was a good friend to me, but when all was said and done she earned her living as a prostitute, and I couldn’t see myself bringing a child into such a life where one day perhaps I too might find myself beneath a man to pay the rent. And Mary’s temper was so inconstant. I could never get the measure of it; she could change on the instant from mirth to rage, a harmless remark igniting her. In Worsley, I could at least manage Sarah’s disdain without the fear of blows.

“In January I wrote to your uncle, and in three weeks or so came his reply. I kept that letter for the longest time by my side, as I wanted to give it to you and it is still somewhere about. It might have fallen into some crack or cranny of this house and you may one day come upon it. It is a fine letter in which your uncle told me that I could return, but that I must amend my ways and this would be my last chance, as Sarah was already hard-pressed to forgive me, anticipating the laughter of the village. He told me not to expect an easy life, but said with the grace of God, I might still find salvation, and he would pray for me daily.

“A few days later I told the Boyers. I had been waiting
to catch them in good humour, and one evening at supper Philip said that he had spent the day with the accounts and it was pleasing to see their profit over the past month. The baby was below stairs with the maid and quiet for a change. I judged it a good time to thin the syrup with vinegar, and so I told them I was with child.

“At once Eliza made a face, reminding me of her sister when she had caught me out in some wrongdoing. ‘I knew it,’ Eliza said. ‘I’ve known it since Christmastide. This is the thanks we get for taking you into our home.’

“Her husband had placed his elbows upon the table and pressed fingers against his brow while his wife rattled on about my wantonness. I was quick to add that I would be no burden, as my brother would take me back.

“‘And the sooner the better,’ Eliza said, getting up from the table and leaving the room.

“Philip Boyer looked at me and said, ‘I’ll see what I can do about getting you back. If this frost lasts, the roads should be passable. I’ll talk to some people tomorrow.’

“He too left the room, while I thought of how much easier it is to deal with those who hate you than with those who are merely disappointed in you.

“Yet within the week he had arranged for me to travel with a family that was moving to Oxford, where the father had been appointed rector of a parish. They were leaving in two days, because the carriers feared a thaw that would muddy the roads.

“The next day I sought out Mary to thank her for her friendship and wish her well. I didn’t know where she lived, but one of the ostlers at the Dolphin knew and gave me directions to her lodgings. He said he hadn’t seen her about lately and was told she’d received a hurt. I found the house in Shoreditch, a warren of rooms where a young woman, looking tired and out of sorts, as though I’d just awakened her, showed me the way to Mary’s room. It was early afternoon and Mary was still in bed, but little wonder, as she was bruised about the eyes and mouth, with a great welt along one arm, as though it had been wrung by strong hands. She was as surprised to see me as I was by her state, but she soon told me how she came by her trouble.

“A week before, in darkness near Hog Lane, she was set upon by two men while a third looked on; even in darkness she recognized this third man as the gallant she had upended weeks ago for disputing the tariff. The other two were brutes—rivermen, Mary thought, for she could smell the mud and fish on them while they held and struck her. They gave her a proper hiding and she feared some ribs were broken because any cough was now distressful. She lay there looking up at me.

“‘It will all come right in time,’ said Mary, ‘and anyway, I had the last laugh on that trotter. At the end of my thrashing, he stood over me and made his water. Can you fathom it? Laughing as he pissed all over me. When he was shaking
himself dry, I said, “I’m glad that miller’s thumb of yours is good for something, for it was no use to me and I doubt not but that your poor wife thinks the same.” That set him off and he began to kick me. It hurt like the devil with these ribs, but then one of the rivermen stepped in front of him and said, “Now she’s had enough, sir. She’s had enough. We’re not homicides.” And they led him away.’ She smiled up at me. ‘I should have been more wary. I knew he’d come back, for I’d shamed him that day in front of his friends and his kind don’t soon forget things. My own fault. I’m growing careless in my late years, Elizabeth.’

“I asked her if she was well enough looked after and she waved a hand. ‘The other girls tend to me now and then. I’ll make do.’

“I told her that I was leaving next day, returning to my brother’s house in Worsley.

“‘That’s good,’ she said, ‘but I want a kiss before you go. Only don’t hold me too close, for these old bones will complain.’

“I was happy enough to kiss her, but as I left, I wondered what would become of Mary, and I still do, yes, even to this day, though it would not surprise me to learn that she is now in her grave. But walking down Bishopsgate Street that afternoon I felt happy, and this was a source of great wonder to me, for there I was, unmarried and carrying a child, with a life ahead in the same house as your aunt Sarah.
Yet still I felt this lift in spirit. I passed the lunatic hospital where your father had wondered aloud one day what it was like to be mad. Was I mad then to feel as I did? But I judge it had more to do with escape. I was getting out of the city with its squalor and noise and confusion. I had enjoyed my time there; I had met your father and given myself to him with no thought for the next day, and now here it was, the next day upon me. But at least I was getting out and I was set firmly in my mind to be a better person, vowing that I would do well by my brother and the child I would bring into this world. I was being given another chance, and perhaps it is only on the brink of another chance that we find such happiness.

“That very night Philip Boyer took me to the Castle Inn on Wood Street, where I met the clergyman’s family. Reverend Tuttle and his wife had six children, from an infant in Mrs. Tuttle’s arms to a girl not much older than you now, perhaps fourteen. Her name was Kate and we shared a room that night with three younger children. Boyer had given me money for food and lodgings along the way. Kate took a liking to me and indeed the whole family was agreeable company, cheerful and not much minding the cold, bumpy ride, for the Tuttles were transporting their furniture in two great wains drawn by oxen. The wagoners were sturdy fellows and one had an harquebus in case we met highwaymen.

“Oxen are slow creatures and the journey took us nearly a week. Mr. Tuttle sat next to one drover in the morning and with the other in the afternoon so that each might share his thoughts on theology and the religious life. One day I overheard him offering his views on whether Papists would be allowed into Heaven. The rest of us sat behind amid tables and chairs and dressers and dismembered beds, telling stories to one another, while Mrs. Tuttle nursed her infant son in a rocking chair from which she gazed out at the passing villages and countryside. Nothing, not even a child once falling off and bruising himself, seemed to upset her serenity. We stayed at inns and the weather remained cold and fair until the last day, when it turned mild and the roads softened. Yet those stalwart beasts pulled us through the mire and we arrived in Oxford about two in the afternoon and said our farewells, Mrs. Tuttle drawing me apart and whispering in my ear, ‘Are you not quick with child yourself, Elizabeth?’ She wished me well. Somehow mothers know such things.

“I had managed the money carefully, and on that afternoon I spent my last penny on a loaf and walked to Woodstock, arriving at my brother’s shop as he was closing for the day.”

“So,” I said, “you left London without ever again speaking to my father?”

“I did.”

“Did you not at least feel the need to say goodbye?”

“I may have felt the need, but I couldn’t see the benefit. I had no heart to face him again, Aerlene, for I knew by then that we didn’t love each other. And what could he do about my situation? Him with his wife and children back in Warwickshire? And that’s another thing,” she added, struggling to lift herself in bed. “Put the pillow behind me,” she said.