Mr. Shakespeare's Bastard (9 page)

To her surprise, she was asked by Philip Boyer to replace the girl and was given some of Eliza’s old skirts and bodices, for they were much the same size. She took to her new duties and proved so adroit and personable that Boyer was soon praising her at some length. He could see how gentlemen especially enjoyed Mam’s presence as they bought shawls for their wives or mistresses, or hats for themselves; moreover, with each passing day she grew more confident and more useful. Her modest demeanour and friendliness impressed the patrons. She was making money for Boyer, and this was pleasing to his thrifty, Protestant soul. Even Eliza could see this and it helped to temper her hostility.

One evening Mam heard them discussing her below stairs, Boyer putting forth the argument that Mam was more valuable behind the counter than upstairs with the child; they could hire a girl for that because “Elizabeth’s gifts,” as he put it, lay elsewhere. His wife reluctantly had to agree.

“How they both loved money,” said Mam, “but like so many that way, they were close with it. Tight as a nun’s crack, both of them,” she said, then laughed at the simile, and I did too, though I wasn’t sure why. “They decided to keep me in
the shop but paid me hardly anything,” said Mam. “Boyer was a good man and I knew he liked me, but not as I had feared at first. Not as a man likes a woman whom he may one day charm and seduce. No, Philip simply liked me as a person who knew how to work without complaint, because he told me once that he got nothing but gripes from the apprentices and often was provoked to box their ears for it. But I never complained of anything; I was so grateful to be free of that child.

“Boyer even told his wife that they must be fairer to me. ‘Elizabeth should have more time for herself,’ I heard him say. And so I was granted Sunday and Wednesday afternoons off plus an hour after closing in the evening, with a warning to be home before dark. I felt I was being treated like a schoolgirl, yet I was happy to get away by myself.”

Mam then went even farther on her walks, and her favourite was by the river. On Sunday afternoons, she liked to watch the boatmen ferrying people across to Bankside, hearing, sometimes, the shouting and applause from the bullring and bear pit. At St. Magnus Corner at the north end of the great bridge, she watched the throngs of playgoers on their way across to the Rose playhouse. But especially she enjoyed the river itself, the swirling, dangerous water surrounding the abutments of the bridge and the smell of fish and mud. Sometimes she missed the countryside in summer: the quiet woods at dusk, the cattle and
sheep in the fields, with darkness seeping into the fading light between the trees. But as she said, those were but passing moments of a loneliness, intense and urgent, then quickly gone, replaced by the noise and vigour of the life around her.

One afternoon she gave a penny to an old woman who was sitting with her bundle near St. Magnus and calling out to passersby who wished to know their fortunes. “She might have been Goody Figgs’s sister,” said Mam. “She read my hand, traced its lines and told me the strangest tale I’d ever heard.”

I laughed because I put no store by the notion that your future lay in signs on the palms of your hands, but I was always amused by Mam’s touching belief in such things. “What was the tale, Mam?” I asked.

“Why, I couldn’t fathom it,” she said. “The old woman told me I would meet a shepherd. A shepherd, mind you, in the middle of London! I supposed there were shepherds on some days, bringing their masters’ sheep to market, but I had never seen one. Furthermore, she told me this shepherd came from a far-off land, and he would slaughter many folk and rule the world.”

“And you believed this nonsense, Mam?” I said with a smile.

“Don’t be impudent, Aerlene,” she said crossly. “I believed what I believed. You shouldn’t ridicule others’
dreams and fancies. It comes easy to you, all this scoffing, but it’s an unkindness, a failing in your character.”

True enough, I thought, though I could no more change my nature than I could the size of my head. Such things had been placed upon me, whether by God or by the devil, I had no idea, but there they were. Still, I was sorry I had hurt her feelings and said so. She told me then that the next Sunday on her walk she had met someone.

Before I could stop myself, I asked, “And was he a shepherd, then, Mam?”

This time she laughed.

“No,
she
was not a shepherd but a woman, though large enough to be a good-sized man with broad shoulders—and the hands on her, the size of a drayman’s. For all that, her face was amiable and like many large folk she had a hearty manner. I was leaning on a railing looking at the river and the sunlight on the water. There were long shadows beneath the bridge. And this big woman, well dressed, chose to stop by me and also lean against the railing. I seldom spoke to a soul on my walks, for I was wary. But when she offered an admiring comment on the fine afternoon, I could only agree, and hearing me she said I must be from the country.

“‘Oxfordshire,’ I said, ‘near Woodstock.’ And she nodded.

“‘Not all that far from where I was born, a village called Coxton in Gloucestershire. Most people in this city
are from somewhere else,’ she added. ‘We all have come to make our fortunes or our misfortunes.’

“Her name, she said, was Mary Pinder and she had been in London five years. I was grateful for someone to talk to, someone who knew the countryside, and so I told her my name and circumstances—a widow and working in a milliner’s shop for my brother-in-law. She nodded and listened, friendly enough, though she had an air of menace about her. I imagine it was her size, as she didn’t look like anyone you’d want to meddle with.

“She told me she rented a room near Bishopsgate. ‘Beyond the wall,’ she laughed. ‘Shoreditch. A free-and-easy neighbourhood and a lively place, especially on Saturday and Sunday evenings when the players have done with their work and are refreshing themselves. They’re a merry lot when they’re not quarrelling. Have you been to a playhouse yet?’

“‘No,’ I said, because I could not imagine ever telling Philip or Eliza that I was bound for a playhouse. I had heard them remark on what foul places they were and how they should be scourged from the earth even though many of their customers, especially the young men from the Inns of Court, often talked with approval of a performance they had seen.

“Pointing across the river, Mary said, ‘The new one over there, the Rose, is offering a colourful spectacle. It’s full of blood and death, but there’s poetry in it too. Called
Tamburlaine the Great
and half of London is flocking to see it. I’ve gone myself and plan to go again. Composed by a young Cambridge wit called Marley. He’s got London by the short hairs, I can tell you that for a fact.’

“I told her that I would love to see a play performed, but the Boyers did not approve of such entertainments.

“‘Puritans, are they?’ asked Mary. ‘Well, they hate the playhouses, and with some cause, perhaps. The plays can draw a rowdy bunch and sometimes the apprentices with too much drink can fight among themselves. It’s nothing to fret about, though the city aldermen do, fearing a general uprising of the people with every little brawl. For my part, I find plays diverting. They take you out of your life for an hour or two, and where’s the harm in that?’

“‘None, so far as I can tell,’ I said.

“‘Well put and true, Elizabeth,’ said Mary Pinder, and turned to me with a broad smile. ‘Why don’t we talk more on this and other subjects? Do you have free time from that milliner on Saturdays?’

“I told her I was finished at six o’clock and then given an hour or two in the evenings, though with the darkness closing in sooner now, I had to be careful.

“‘They have you on a curfew? And you a grown woman?’ She shook her head in astonishment. ‘Can you find your way to the Dolphin after six o’clock next Saturday? It’s a worthy inn up Bishopsgate, a little beyond the wall, with
proper food and drink. Some of the players can get a little rough, but you are not to worry. I can handle that. We’ll talk about getting you to the playhouse. Tell your Puritan relatives that you’ve had a change of heart about your spiritual health and are going to Evensong.’

“I said I would go, though I wasn’t at all sure at the time. Why, I had only just spoken to this big woman for half an hour and I knew little more than that she came from a village in Gloucestershire. But I never asked what she was doing in London, for I hadn’t the nerve. I certainly couldn’t tell the Boyers I was going to Evensong, as they would never believe me. In the end, I decided to tell them that I was going out for an hour or two of air, and so I did, though Eliza thought my best dress a little proper for just a walk. I told her that presenting a well-dressed appearance discouraged idlers, and her husband nodded in agreement.

“It was only twenty minutes to the Dolphin, and Mary was waiting for me under the sign of the fish just as she had promised. It was September by then, but a lovely mild evening. From within came voices and laughter spilling out onto the street, and when we entered, I could see that the place was crowded with both men and women, some seated at long tables, but others in private rooms at the back; a blue haze was in the air, which I asked about as we took our seats at a small table. Mary told me that many people of fashion now used a herb brought lately from the Indies called
tobacco. Even some of the women were burning this herb in long clay pipes, drawing in the smoke and then expelling it with an air of great satisfaction, although I watched one young woman with a group of gentlemen coughing as though ready to expire. Some of the gentlemen were laughing at her, another clapping her on the back.

“‘It’s her first time,’ said Mary. ‘They are teaching her how to smoke this tobacco. It’s all the taste now with the young.’

“The young woman recovered with the help of some wine and the merriment resumed. I thought it the oddest thing, this pipe smoking, and by women too. Yet in the Dolphin there were many women finely apparelled, and no one had taken any notice of Mary and me as we entered. When Wilkes was courting me, if you could call it by that name, we sometimes frequented the alehouses and taverns along the Woodstock road and there were always a few women in those places, but they were mostly bawds. In the Dolphin the women all seemed to come of good estate, very like those I served in the shop. The men too were fitted out with velvet doublets and feathered hats, buckled shoes, some of them telling stories in an extravagant manner, striking poses, reciting lines into the air and causing great laughter to those listening. Mary told me they were players who had finished their performances for the day and were now enjoying themselves with drink and banter and bragging.

“‘It’s in the nature of their profession,’ she said. ‘Some of them never leave the stage. Life itself is a performance to them. They are very pleased with themselves, these fellows, but excellent company if they are not too much taken in drink, whereupon they are apt to turn quarrelsome.’ She smiled. ‘They are like children, forever performing, always wanting to be noticed. If you praise them, their chests puff out like guinea cocks at mating time. But just mention a play you liked in which they had no part and they’ll soon heap scorn upon your poor judgment. Then you are no more than an object of ridicule. Catch them in good humour, though, and there is no better company.’

“Mary had money enough that night and wouldn’t let me pay my share of the reckoning, though I had a little in my purse. We drank sack possets, which were sweet and sticky in the gullet and left me light-headed after only one. I vowed to drink no more than two, as I was fearful of getting back to the shop along streets that were already growing dark. As for Mary, her face was flushed and I wondered if she had been drinking before we met. She was in fine humour, and when I asked how she came to be in London, she was happy enough to tell me, for as she said, ‘There is many a rogue in this world, Elizabeth, and we poor country women must stick together. You will soon find that in this city, a good friend is better than gold.’

“I said I didn’t doubt it, and Mary smiled—she had a warm, pretty smile, that big woman.

“‘Five years ago,’ she said, ‘I came to London with a friend, or one I took as such, for we’d known each other all our lives. Sally was small and fair, a little beauty for certain. We both wanted out of that village in Gloucestershire. I saw nothing there for me but more trouble from my father, a drunk and a brute, who interfered with me until I came to eighteen years or so, when I broke his nose one night, and after that he left me alone. But that’s another story that I won’t tell now. As for Sally, with her good looks she was pestered by half the louts in Coxton. I’ll not lie to you, Elizabeth, I loved her myself. She was frightened of men but drew them to her as a flower draws bees. When she was seventeen, two of them got hold of her one night and had their way, God curse their miserable souls. She worried that she might have a child from all that but told no one but me. Mercifully her courses came on, and so we began to make our plans to escape down here to London. I had some money saved from my job as a dairymaid at the manor farm, and so we left together before daylight one morning, walking, sleeping by the roadside or in the woods at night, careful with our money and wary of strangers. It took us a week to get here.’

“‘There is always work serving others and across the river in Deptford we found service in the house of a brewer,
a vile man with terrible children and a worse wife. I could have brained them all with few regrets, though I had little enough to do with the family, since I worked in the laundry, washing their filthy bedclothes and other things. Sally worked upstairs as a maidservant and couldn’t help but be noticed by one of the sons, a boy about her age with his eye on her from the first day. Beauty brings its price, does it not?’ said Mary, who then finished her drink and ordered another. I said I’d had my last and she only shrugged. ‘So you’re wise as well as pretty, Elizabeth Ward? Well, good for you, though I dare say you’ve had your troubles with men.’

“I said nothing to that, for she was telling me about Deptford and how unhappy she and her friend were. But she liked some things about it too. ‘I liked the afternoons, when the joiners and caulkers were coming back from the shipbuilding yards and I was taking in clothes off the grass from drying. Those fellows were in good humour after their day’s work with a glass at the tavern ahead. “Come and work with us,” they used to say. “You look big enough for it.” I didn’t mind their jesting. But the whole place stank to heaven from the breweries and the tanneries. And the Queen’s slaughterhouse was nearby and sometimes you could hear her hounds baying in the kennels from the smell of the blood. That and the constant hammering from the shipyards and the gulls squawking over the river—it was a racket, I can tell you, and I sometimes thought of the ships setting out for the Indies
and what it would be like to be on one. Could I carry it off if I dressed like a man? But it was all only daydreams. Besides, I had Sally to look after and I worried about her.