Mr. Shakespeare's Bastard (29 page)

This was nothing like Bankside, but a prosperous neighbourhood with many fine houses and, near the end of the street, a great property with a walled garden. But now that I was on the very street where he lived, I was overcome with nerves, and to compose myself I went into the churchyard across from the house and lingered there for fifteen or twenty minutes, reading the names on the tombstones and from time to time glancing across the street. I saw two well-dressed women go into the house, and all this time I was nervous with a fast-beating heart, as I didn’t know how to approach him. What would I say? How would I begin? Would it not be an unpleasant surprise to have a fourteen-year-old girl tell you that she is your daughter? Would such an assertion not unsettle anyone? What if he denied everything? Rebuffed me? He had his own family, and when all was said and done, it was a long time ago when he knew Mam. He was young then and newly arrived in London. The city was filled with young women, and he was making his way in the theatre world. Mam could have been just one of many and now quite forgotten.

Such questions assailed me as I stood in the rain in
St. Olave’s churchyard that Saturday afternoon watching the two women come out the front door of the house. And all those questions made me so fearful that I lost whatever resolve I might have had and left the churchyard and walked back to Threadneedle Street.

Awaiting me there was a parcel from Uncle Jack and an accompanying letter addressed to the Boyers. This was sheer coincidence, having nothing whatsoever to do with Aunt Eliza’s letter, which would not yet have reached Worsley. Uncle Jack wrote of a position available with a Miss Nash, an elderly woman in Woodstock, whose maidservant was soon leaving for marriage. Uncle Jack had spoken to Miss Nash about me, and she appeared interested, but I must try to get back as soon as possible for an interview. He asked the Boyers to arrange my way; in the parcel was a handsome new cloak for the journey and money enough for a horse and lodgings. Aunt Eliza could not have been happier had I said I was walking to Worsley that very afternoon.

When Philip Boyer looked in on me later, he remarked on how provident it was that I might soon find work in a good house. He was only sorry that the parcel had not arrived a few days earlier, for it would then have been unnecessary for his wife to have written. Still, he was confident that my aunt and uncle would welcome my return. Meanwhile, he had arranged for the rental of a horse with a pack train leaving for Oxford early in the week—Monday
or Tuesday, if the weather improved. I suggested that he and his wife were keen enough to be rid of me and he offered only a thin smile.

“Aerlene, if you read your uncle’s letter carefully, you will see that the position is not yours until you talk to this Miss Nash and see if she finds you acceptable. There may well be others applying, so it is important that I get you back to Woodstock as quickly as possible. It is all in your best interests. I shall take you to the Castle Inn myself and see you safely on your way.”

“My mother told me that you put her up at the Castle Inn when she left London fifteen years ago,” I said, “so I am following in her footsteps, am I not?”

“I do not think the circumstances are quite the same,” he said. “At least I hope I am correct in thinking that.”

“Well, Uncle,” I said, “you are correct.”

“You don’t seem altogether pleased by this news.”

“I am fine with it, Uncle.”

“We can only hope this rain lets up. They like a dry road, these fellows.”

But
I
could only hope I would see my father the next day, and much of that night I lay awake willing the bad weather to continue.

It was still raining lightly on Sunday when I knocked on the door of the house on Silver Street dressed as a girl might for church in my best skirt and smock and my new
cloak. A maidservant, not much older than I was, opened the door, and when I asked if Mr. Shakespeare lodged in the house, I sensed her appraising me and my country accent.

“He does,” she said.

“I wonder if he might be at home?”

“You might wonder,” she said, “but I can tell you he is not.”

The pertness of her reply may have unstrung me a little, and I said I was from Mr. Shakespeare’s part of the country, newly arrived in London and looking to pass on good wishes to him. I immediately regretted the lie, but didn’t really know what else to say.

“Mr. Shakespeare went out some time ago,” the girl said. “But I shall tell him you called when he returns. What name shall I give?”

“Ward,” I said. “Aerlene Ward. What might be the best time to find him in?”

“Difficult to say,” she said. “He is often at the playhouse across the river, though he has been working in his rooms of late. When he is here, he goes out to his dinner at one o’clock. You might try tomorrow at that time. I shall tell him you called.”

“I’ll come by tomorrow, then,” I said.

I had said it without thinking because the next day would be Monday. Yet as I walked away, I decided that
Aunt Eliza and her curfew could go to the devil. If the rain held, the carriers would not set out, and I would try again to meet my father.

As it happened, the rain did stop that Monday, but not until late morning, when a strong northerly wind scattered clouds across the sky, the sun emerging to cast the streets into vivid light, then just as quickly darkening them as the sun went into hiding. The wind met me full in the face as I walked towards Cripplegate. When I turned in to Silver Street, the St. Olave’s bell pealed a single chime. I was halfway down the street when I saw a man in a dark cloak leave the house at the corner and begin to walk towards me holding a hat to his head in the gusty, bright air. He stopped and, taking off the hat, looked down as if inspecting it for something. Loosening threads? A rent, perhaps? It was only a few moments, but time enough for me to observe the wide brow and balding head. Then he settled the hat again and, with a hand upon it against the wind, began to walk towards me, looking downward as if his mind were occupied elsewhere.

As he approached, however, he glanced up at me, and I said, “Excuse me, sir, but are you Mr. Shakespeare?”

Stopping, he regarded me severely with hazel eyes that were very like my own. “I am,” he said, “and you would be the girl who asked after me yesterday.”

“I am, sir, yes.”

“I saw you from my window on Saturday in the churchyard. What is it you wish of me?”

I remember how disappointed I felt at his guarded air, the note of mild exasperation in his voice.

“You told the maidservant you were from Warwickshire,” he said, “but your accent is most certainly not Warwickshire. Where is your birthplace?”

“Oxfordshire, sir,” I said. “Worsley under Woodstock.”

“I know it,” he said abruptly. “Your name is Ward?”

“Yes, sir. Aerlene Ward.”

“So what brings you to my door, Miss Ward? And why that lurking in the churchyard?”

The buffeting wind kept his hand on the big hat, and my hair was now loose and disordered and I could have wept at the circumstances of our meeting: the unruly air, my father’s curtness, my own labouring to explain my presence before him. I spoke quickly, imagining my words flying through the wind unheard.

“I believe you knew my mother, sir,” I said.

“Did I?” he asked. “And when was that?”

“It would have been some fifteen years ago, sir. When you first came to London and lived in Shoreditch. My mother told me you were an apprentice player at the time. One Sunday she said you went walking together in Finsbury Fields and you were nearly struck by an arrow. People had been out all night revelling and one young man was
showing a girl how to use a bow, and her shot misfired and the arrow passed carelessly by you and my mother. You remarked then on how easily chance can overtake us in this life. She never forgot that.”

He looked away and I wondered if he remembered that morning in Finsbury Fields.

“It’s a poor day to be standing in the street,” he said. “It’s cold when that sun goes behind the clouds, and I’m tired of holding this hat on my head. Let us walk along. I’m going for my dinner. Have you eaten?”

“I have not, sir,” I said.

“Well, come along. I’m going to the Mitre. It’s not far.”

We walked and he asked what had brought me to London, and I told him of the fire that destroyed our house and how I came to live with my aunt and uncle, who was a milliner in Threadneedle Street. I hastened also to tell him that I was soon returning to Oxfordshire since I had just learned by letter there might be work for me in service at Woodstock. He nodded as though this news was agreeable, inferring perhaps that at least I was not there to pester him and would soon be gone. And truthfully, I wanted him to have that impression.

“And how did you find me?” he asked. “I have only moved within the month.”

“A friend told me, sir. He works in a bookshop at St.
Paul’s and knows your plays well. He made inquiries of friends in the trade.”

He smiled. “Well, this city is rich enough in wagging tongues.”

From the weary amusement in his voice, I sensed he now felt better disposed towards me.

The Mitre was spacious and noisy, the taproom filled and a fire blazing in the enormous hearth. My father nodded to several while the landlord escorted us past the benches and tables to a small room at the back with its own fire. As my father busied himself ordering our meal, I wondered what I could next say to him. He was hungry, he said, and the meal was bountiful with oysters and cutlets, a dressed rabbit and a minced pie. Stewed apples. It may not have been precisely that, but something very like it. He enjoyed his food, my father, and I could see from the tightness of his doublet that he was growing a little stout in his middle years. He urged me to eat, though I had no appetite. He said he no longer had much stomach for ale and now drank only wine. As we ate, we listened to the voices and laughter from the taproom; he was studying my features and I think he knew I was his daughter. Yet I found him circumspect by nature. Not a man to welcome complication into his life. I thought of how my mother had seen him as a prudent and watchful young man fifteen
years before, and now I too saw those qualities in his disposition.

“So,” he asked finally, “you are now about fourteen?”

“I am, sir,” I said. “I was fourteen on Lammas Eve. The same age as Juliet.”

He smiled wryly. “Did I mention her birth date in that play?”

“You did, sir. Early on the nurse reminds Lady Capulet,
On Lammas Eve at night shall she be fourteen.”

“You have seen the play enacted? Where? In Oxford?”

“I have seen none of your plays performed, sir, but I have read them many times.”

“You can read?” He looked both surprised and pleased, and I could not help myself and told him of all the plays that I had read.

Finishing his glass of wine, he stared at the pitcher for a long moment before pouring another. “And your mother,” he asked, “did she perish in the fire?”

“No, sir. My mother died of a lingering illness a year ago last January. She never married and I was raised by my uncle and aunt, who were not in the house when it burned.”

“So,” he said, “the aunt and uncle in Threadneedle Street are looking after you in the meantime.”

“Yes, but now my uncle in Worsley has written of this position in Woodstock, so I shall likely return this week coming. We got his letter only two days ago.”

“Your mother’s dying was prolonged?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And painful?”

“Yes. Over those last months I read
A Midsummer-Night’s Dream
to her. It was her favourite, and she was happy that you have done so well with your writing. I read the
Dream
to her six times in that last year, though she died before the end of the last reading. It was our secret, Mam’s and mine, for my aunt in Worsley is a Puritan and thinks that plays are fit only for the wicked. I hid all your playbooks beneath the rafters in my bedroom, but all were lost in the fire and now I am trying to replenish them.”

A boy came into the room and we watched him clear away the plates and cutlery and put more coal on the fire. After he left, my father said, “And you are called Aerlene?”

“Yes, sir. Mam got the name from an old book of Saxon tales. She said that when I was born I looked like an elf, and
Aerlene
means ‘elf’ in the Saxon tongue.”

Smiling he said, “I remember your mother. Her name was Elizabeth.”

“It was, sir.”

“A gentle-natured soul. She was new to London, and she missed the countryside and so did I. We often talked of the woods and streams and meadows of our childhoods.” He finished his wine. “I remember that day by the archery butts in Finsbury.” He stared at me for another long moment before
saying, “What do you want of me? Do you know I have a family in Stratford?”

“I have been told so, yes.”

“My younger daughter is only three years older than you and our first-born, Susanna, is now a woman of nineteen. It’s hardly believable to me at times.”

“I want nothing from you, sir,” I said. “I wanted only to meet you. To tell you how happy my mother was at your doing so well. She lived her life as she found it without regretting anything, raising me with help from her brother, my uncle Jack, who is a good, honest draper in Woodstock. I have met you now, and you were good enough to see me and have me to dinner. That is enough.”

Silence fell between us again as we listened to the clamour of the taproom beyond the door. I asked him if he would be going home for the Christmas season to see his family.

“No,” he said, “our company has been summoned to perform before the Queen at Whitehall on St. Stephen’s Day night.”

“What will you present to her?”

He looked at the fire. “They want a comedy. Something to lighten her spirit, as she is in poor health. We shall probably enact
What You Will.
She may be amused by the Puritan steward in his yellow stockings.”

“I have been told that your
Hamlet
was well received, sir. My friend accounts it your best work yet.”

He was silent for several moments. “Perhaps, but my last play was not so well regarded. An old and honest acquaintance told me it was too bleak. ‘Bitter as gall,’ he said. ‘As full of bile as an egg is full of meat. Who wants to lay out pennies to hear such stuff?’” He told me this with another of his wry smiles. “As I say, an old and honest acquaintance and ever forthcoming in opinion.”