Mr. Shakespeare's Bastard (23 page)

That stopped me. Had my father actually been in this shop? Was Scarfe just lying to me? But why wouldn’t my
father have been in this shop and others like it? Presumably he bought books, so why not here? I resolved to be careful about what I said.

“I’m not from Warwickshire,” I said. “I’m from Worsley under Woodstock in Oxfordshire, but I love Shakespeare’s plays.”

“So you have said, and with spirit. Did you see his latest, Miss?”

“I did not.”

“I saw it last April,” he said. “Or was it May? In the spring at any rate. I am a Marlowe man myself, but I have to say this latest work by Shakespeare was excellent with some rare speeches. All about a Prince whose father is murdered and when the Prince finds out that it was his father’s brother who did the deed and stole the crown, this Prince decides to seek his revenge. It played well. Pity we don’t have it yet in the stalls. Probably next year. I have to say it’s much better than what you’ve got in your hand. Old Richard is thin stuff compared to Hamlet.”

I knew I should have been on my way back to Threadneedle Street. “Does he come here often, then?”

“Who?” he asked. “Shakespeare, you mean?”

“Yes,” I said. “Does he come here often?”

“You might see him hereabouts on a Saturday morning, or an afternoon if he hasn’t a performance, for he’s a player as well. He played the ghost in
Hamlet.
Can I ask you a question, Miss?”

“Yes, of course.”

“If you’ve read all those plays by Shakespeare, why would you want to buy them again?”

“Our house in Worsley burned down,” I said, “and all my books were lost in the fire. That was my reason for coming to London: to live with my aunt and uncle while a new house is being built. I so miss my books because there is nothing to read in my uncle’s house except the Bible.” I hated the self-pity in my voice. “I want to own all of Mr. Shakespeare’s playbooks and I’ll start with this copy of
Richard III.
I’m pressed for time, so I’ll give you six pence for it, though I’m being gulled and you should be ashamed of yourself. But I must get back or my uncle will be angry. If you have
Romeo and Juliet
or
A Midsummer-Night’s Dream,
I’ll take it instead of
Richard III.
You are right. It’s early work. I’ll save it for another time.”

People were now crowding about the bookstall and a red-faced man who had been waiting was growing impatient. Parrot and the owner were in the shop with another customer, but Scarfe seemed unconcerned. “Calm yourself, now,” he said. “I’ll see what we have in the shop.”

As he left, I watched that narrow back with the shoulder blades showing through the smock. What did he live on? Air? Words? Soon he returned with a copy
of Romeo and Juliet.

“We haven’t the other in stock,” he said, “but I can get one for you by next Saturday.” He grinned. “Tell you what.
Since you’ve shown such spirit, I’ll give you both Crookback and the lovers’ sad tale for your tester.”

I was astonished. “Can you do that? Did you ask your master?”

“It’s entirely within my discretion,” he said, handing over the two books.

“Then I must thank you sincerely. Have you a first name?”

“Scarfe will do,” he said.

“My name is Aerlene Ward.”

“Yes. From Worsley under Woodstock in Oxfordshire. I’ll have the other play for you next Saturday without fail.” He turned at once to the red-faced man. “And how, sir, may I help you?”

That night I read
Romeo and Juliet,
looking up from time to time at the guttering candle, but when I finished reading, I couldn’t sleep. I was thinking of my father somewhere in that city; with luck I would find him. Listening to the rain splashing off the roofs into the alleyway, I thought of Scarfe. He knew what my father looked like. Perhaps I could ask him to help me. I would have to concoct a story to provide a reason for my search.

Lying there, I tried to picture my father at that very moment; perhaps he too was awake, thinking of words, a wavering thought lurking in his mind, waiting to be put down on paper before it was lost in sleep. Up then in his
nightshirt to light a candle from the fire in the grate. Sitting down at his desk to sharpen a quill with his penknife, glancing out his window at the dark, wet city. Then looking down to the half-written page and the uncompleted scene. Unstopping the inkhorn and dipping the quill and so he begins, the words arriving swiftly, a scrawl across the page and then on to another and yet another, sprinkling each with sand as it fills with words. Getting down at least the pith of the matter before it vanishes. Amend it in the morning when the brain has been refreshed by sleep. Might he not be doing something just like that as I lay wondering?

F
ELL THIS MORNING.
M
ISSED
that damnable last step on the staircase. Emily was soon by my side, as was Mrs. Sproule. Only moments before I had heard them arguing in the kitchen, but differences were put aside as they helped me into a chair in the library. Emily bathed my foot in salted water and bandaged my ankle, scolding me as she worked.

“These feet of yours want tending,” she said as she knelt beside the chair. “What a sight they are!”

How forward and familiar our Emily has become in the household. She was not born to serve because her temperament resists authority. Emily should find a young and sturdy yeoman and emigrate to America, where, I have been told, no one is in service except blackamoors. I wonder if that is really true? Yet I like the girl. I am used to her ways now and couldn’t manage without her. So I said that yes, my feet were doubtless an affliction to the eyes of
the young, but one day she too would be old with ugly feet. She wasn’t impressed with my observation.

“No grumbling about age, Miss Ward,” she said. “Count your blessings for all your years. And don’t neglect your feet. We’re only given two in a lifetime to get us around. Look here at these corns. They want paring. And this nail on your great toe! Why, it’s all gone inward with a life of its own.”

I dimly saw the top of her head, the dark hair pulled back and knotted; she’s often messy, but her apron was still clean. “I wish you wouldn’t dispute so much with the cook, Emily.”

“It’s only habit, Miss Ward,” she said. “We don’t mind it much. But you should hold on to the balustrade when you come down the stairs. With your eyesight so poor, it’s only proper sense.”

“That will do now, Emily,” I said. “I’ve had enough rebuke today.”

“Miss Charlotte will have a fit when she sees you laid up like this.”

“Will you do me the kindness of asking Mrs. Sproule for a tankard of ale, Emily?”

“I will,” she said, getting up. “And then I’ll fetch a knife and work on those feet of yours.”

When Charlotte came in with Mr. Thwaites, there I was, my corns and wayward toenail repaired, my foot raised
on a stool like Mr. Walter’s when the gout is upon him. Charlotte fussed over me until Mr. Thwaites took hold of her hand and said I looked quite comfortable in the chair with my ale. He then told me that Cromwell died yesterday at three o’clock in the afternoon. The news reached Oxford by late last night and Mr. Thwaites had been told by a friend this morning. No one yet knows who will succeed him, but the wagering is on his eldest son, Richard, who is chancellor at the university, though not highly regarded enough to lead Parliament. I said I didn’t much care because our great Lord Protector had never been a favourite of mine.

“Well,” he said, “let us talk, then, of greater men. Last evening Charlotte read to me your account of arriving in London and meeting this young man Scarfe. Am I correct in surmising that he will lead you to your father?”

“Is patience not one of the cardinal virtues, Mr. Thwaites?” I asked, and then sipped my ale.

“It is indeed, Miss Ward.”

“Then pray be patient, Mr. Thwaites, for my old brain tires easily these days. I am trying to recall details of my time with Robert Scarfe, but such details have lain dormant in my memory for a good long while. I have hopes that some may yet return. And if not?” I added looking at Charlotte.

“Why, then you’ll have to invent them, Linny.” She smiled.

“Just so,” I said.

I think I will give them my books as a wedding gift. The playbooks are mostly now in tatters, but the 1623 Folio is in good condition, save for the marring of
Antony and Cleopatra
where a liquor was spilt, discolouring several pages. Over the years, I have often wondered how that came about. Too many glasses of wine inside the reader? The decanter of port upended by a clumsy elbow? At least those brown-stained pages remind me that someone in that house once looked at the book.

I bought it twenty-five years ago this summer, the year Squire Henry married his second wife, Miss Pentworth. Nicky was eighteen that year and drove me to Harrington Hall near Great Tew. A woman who had once served in the household told me the family possessed a great many books, and so I went in hope, for I had visited other places without success. But there it was and no one taking any notice of it. The farmers in their sober dark clothes had no time for literature. As for the family, they were emigrating to America and had no room for any books in their sea-chests, save the family Bible. I bought the Folio for eight shillings.

Yes, I shall give them my father’s words in a fine and durable edition as a wedding gift.

S
IX LONG DAYS TO
fill before I would see Scarfe again, and the routine of the stockroom was not enough; I could do what was required of me in an hour and so time lay heavy upon me. Corbet ruled the roost and he did not like me. To please him, I imagine, Jenny too treated me with disdain and little Prew kept his head down on his sewing. Nobody noticed or cared if I wasn’t there, and after the carters’ deliveries in the morning, I took to walking up the alleyway to the street to watch the passersby. At other times, I lingered by the curtain separating the stockroom from the shop, parting it a little so I could see Boyer and his clerks serving customers, or overhear the gossip of the day as gentlemen were sized for hats or ladies were trying on gloves: Lady Somebody was apparently with child and the father a mere household groom but handsome as the devil and half her age … Lord Such’s masque that week was not to be missed … Have you
not yet received your invitation? … They say the Queen is unwell and has taken to her bed …

The Boyer family life seemed to me embittered and acrimonious, with each going his own way; Boyer had his eye only on the business. I had heard talk that he might be looking for new premises in the Royal Exchange, so he was often away for a good part of the afternoon. But even when he was home for a meal he said little to his wife; they seemed estranged and I wondered if what Marion had said about his having a mistress was true. We no longer took our Sunday walks; he regretted that he could not spend the time with me. Aunt Eliza had many lady friends and often visited them, each, I imagined, commiserating over her husband’s various failings. As for Marion, she was either at her dancing class or preparing for parties, and there were several admirers, or so I was led to believe. She seldom took me into her confidence or even bothered to speak to me; I do remember she once told me that if I was reading at night as Jenny had reported, her mother expected me to pay a penny a fortnight for candles. Nothing came of that, however, and I put it down as only mischief on Marion’s part.

On the Saturday following my first meeting with Scarfe, I returned to St. Paul’s. It was early and he was nowhere in sight, and I went into the great church to await his arrival, as it was raining that day, a light, persistent drizzle. In all
our walks around London, Boyer had never offered to show me the cathedral. He dismissed it as nothing compared to Notre-Dame in Paris. But I was both fascinated and repelled by St. Paul’s. It didn’t seem like a church at all in those days, but more like some vast marketplace, with vendors selling everything from prayer books to trinkets. The nave was filled with shouting and commerce and the everyday life of the street: I saw two men conferring in a corner and money changing hands, a dog wandering by to raise his leg against a column. Apparently a service was taking place, for the preacher was hectoring a few scattered souls, but his voice could scarcely be heard above the din. It was the most curious church I had ever seen, and I thought of a passage that I had read as a child in the gospel of John, in which Christ drove the moneychangers from the temple in Jerusalem. I found it amusing to see holy ground still giving way to the imperatives of commerce.

When I returned to the bookshop, Scarfe was nowhere to be seen. The rain had stopped and left behind a dank, grey day in which the smoke from chimneys seemed to hang above the city, going nowhere. I waited until the red-haired boy had finished with a customer and then asked him if he expected to see Scarfe that day. I think he remembered me from the previous week, for he wore the sneer you expect on the faces of people eager to see others dismayed.

“Oh, he likely won’t be in today,” he said. “Or maybe he will. You never can tell with Robin.”

“But I was here last Saturday,” I said, “and bought two books from him and he promised to have another for me today. My name is Ward. Did he by any chance leave a copy of Shakespeare’s
Midsummer-Night’s Dream?”

Parrot was straightening a pile of books. “Not to my knowledge. You would be better off looking elsewhere.”

“He promised me he would be here. Might he be ill?”

“That’s unlikely,” he said, carrying some books to a nearby table. “He was fine when I saw him earlier. Sleeping like an infant when I left. Mind you, he had come in only an hour before.”

I left feeling puzzled and irritated by my degree of disappointment. I could have bought the book at any of a score of shops in the churchyard, but I didn’t. Now why was that? I wondered.

The Saturday following, however, Scarfe was there, head bent and hair falling into his eyes as he carried books from inside the shop to the tables, and I thought as I watched him that those who write love rhymes may not be far wrong. My heart did seem to give a leap at the sight of him, and when he looked up and saw me, I was happy enough that he remembered me.