Shakespeare's Scribe (9 page)

“I don't ken. Perhaps ‘a's one of those wights who talks wi' horses. Ask him, why don't you, and let me sleep.”

There was silence for a time, then Sam muttered, “I don't care what you say; I think Sal is a Sally.” A moment later, he added, “Ow! You've no call to hit me!”

Sam was like a small dog who, once he has his teeth into something, will not let go no matter what. At least twice a day over the next week or so, he came up with some bit of “evidence” that supposedly added weight to his Sally Pavy theory. Most were pure foolishness, ranging from the fact that Sal Pavy scrubbed his teeth with salt rather than just a rag dipped in wine like everyone else, to the way he often sat with his legs crossed.

Though I scoffed at Sam's fancies to his face, I could not help regarding Sal Pavy in a new light, weighing his words and actions as an actor does those of his character, looking for the meaning that lies behind them. There was no denying that his manner was rather effeminate at times, but that was hardly surprising, considering he was given daily lessons in how to accurately impersonate a girl. I myself had grown so used to wearing a dress that occasionally I found myself reaching down to lift a hem that wasn't there. Besides, passing oneself off as another gender upon the stage was quite a different matter from keeping the pretense up all day, every day.

On the other hand, Sal Pavy had proven himself a master of deception. Whenever one of the sharers was about, he was the very picture of a willing, eager worker. But when we prentices were alone with any sort of task, from washing the muddy carewares to grooming the horses to airing out the mattresses, he always contrived to avoid actually contributing anything.

“At Blackfriars,” he said, “we were taught how to act, not how to clean things.”

“Yes,” said Sam, with a meaningful glance at the sword Sal Pavy was supposed to be polishing. “I can see that. You know, Widge, when we return I believe we'd be wise to apply for a position at Blackfriars. It sounds as though it bears a striking resemblance to the land of Cockaigne.” Cockaigne was, I had learned, a familiar fancy among Londoners—a mythical land of idleness and luxury.

I made no reply. Though I knew well enough that he was jesting, I found nothing amusing or appealing in the notion of leaving the Chamberlain's Men.

To Sal Pavy's credit, when it came to studying for his roles, he applied himself more assiduously than any of us. I thought myself an early riser, yet often I emerged from our room at some inn soon after sunrise to find Sal Pavy pacing about the courtyard, reciting his lines under his breath and practicing over and over the appropriate gestures to go with them.

He also worked harder than most at keeping himself and his attire clean and tidy. He bathed whenever the opportunity presented itself—in private, of course—paying from his own purse the two or three pence innkeepers customarily charged for such services. Naturally, Sam pointed to these habits as further indicators of a female nature.

We were working our way northward, now, traveling as quickly as we might and stopping at the smallest and shabbiest inns to conserve our dwindling funds. Lodging of any sort grew increasingly scarce and one night, finding ourselves between towns when darkness fell, we stopped alongside the road and spread our mattresses out upon canvas sheets beneath the carewares.

Though I welcomed the chance to sleep in the open air, some of the other players griped about it, most notably Ned Shakespeare. I had noticed that he was not chary with his complaints at any time. The meals we ate were never to his taste; he grumbled over the fact that, though he was the famous playwright's brother, he must make the journey on foot; when the sun shone, he railed against the heat; when it rained, as it did almost daily, he cursed the damp.

It was a pity we were not farmers. Had we been, we could have put to use all the earth we turned up with the wheels of our carewares. And had we been growing crops, we might have welcomed the rain that made the roads into a morass of mud. Our definition of a good day became a day when the carewares bogged down no more than half a dozen times.

Sometimes the sharers could drag the wagons free by tying extra ropes to them and adding the pulling power of their mounts to that of the draft horses. Other times we prentices and hired men had to play the part of so many Atlases, taking onto our shoulders not the weight of the whole world but that of the wagons, which sometimes seemed nearly as great.

After one such dismal day we stopped at an inn outside Grantham, and several of the company paid for the privilege of a bath. Sam and I contented ourselves with scrubbing our clothing and shoes in the horse trough. When Sal Pavy crossed the courtyard from the stable to take his turn in the bathhouse, Sam sidled up next to me and announced gleefully, “I've a plan that will reveal the truth once and for all.”

“The truth?” I echoed. “About what?”

“About whether it's Sal or Sally, you dunce.”

“Sam,” I said with a sigh, “must you always be harping on that same string?”

“Ah, Widge, you know you're consumed with curiosity about it.”

“Nay, I'm not—truly.”

He nudged me with his elbow. “Come, come, tell the truth and shame the devil. You admit, surely, that there's something suspicious about the boy—if he is, indeed, a boy.”

“Well, aye, perhaps a bit, but—”

“Right. So let us find out what it is.” So saying, he seized my shirtsleeve with one sopping hand and pulled me across the inn yard.

“Where are you taking me?” I demanded.

“Whist! Just over here.” He led me to an alcove next to the bathhouse, where firewood was stacked. In the growing dusk, I could see a narrow shaft of light issuing from between the boards of the bathhouse and laying a yellow ribbon across the rough bark of the logs. “I discovered this earlier, when Mr. Phillips sent me to fetch firewood,” Sam whispered. He knelt atop the woodpile and pressed his face to the crack in the wall.

“Stop it, you sot!” I said, and tugged at the back of his shirt, though not all that insistently, I admit. Some part of me, a part I did not much care to acknowledge, wanted to know if there was anything to Sam's theory.

Sam whispered from the side of his mouth, without taking his eye from the crack, “I can see him! He's starting to strip down! There goes the doublet … the breeches … the shirt … the hose …” There was a pause, then Sam exclaimed softly, “Gog's nowns!” and, without warning, jerked back away from the crack, nearly breaking my jaw with his pate, for I had leaned up close behind so as to hear him.

I could not see his face well in the fading light, but enough to read astonishment upon it. “What is it?” I demanded, still holding my jaw.

Sam slowly shook his head. “See for yourself,” he said, and yielded his place to me.

Hesitantly, feeling uncomfortably like the fellow who peeped at Lady Godiva and was struck blind for it, I put my eye to the crack. The room was lighted by a candle I could not see; probably it was on the wall against which I leaned. In the center of the room was a wooden tub, like a half barrel, and Sal Pavy, naked as a nail, was just stepping into it.

His profile was to me, and I could see well enough that his appendages were appropriate to a boy. I was about to turn to Sam and say, “Did I not tell you so?” but then Sal Pavy shifted position, so that his back was to me, and I saw what had startled Sam so. A series of long, livid
scars or welts descended his back like a ladder, continued across his buttocks, and down the backs of his thighs—the sort of marks left by a caning.

I knew the pattern well, for my own frame had been similarly decorated often enough by Dr. Bright's walking stick, when I had spilled some valuable medicine or was caught filching from the pantry. But my welts had always faded after a few days. I doubted that Sal had come by his so recently. For one thing, I could not imagine anyone in our company giving such a caning to a prentice. For another, these tracks did not look fresh. They looked, rather, like a permanent record of punishments long past.

I could only speculate about how severe the beatings must have been to have blistered the skin in such a manner, and how painful. Feeling suddenly queasy, I stepped back from the peephole and nearly lost my balance.

“Did you see it?” Sam asked in a soft, subdued voice.

“Aye,” I replied. “And I would I had not.”

“Who do you suppose might have given him such a smoking?”

I shook my head, unable to imagine. “You'll ha' to ask him that,” I said, knowing that even Sam, with his rash tongue, would find that difficult to do.

11

I
was still feeling shaken when I went up to Mr. Shakespeare's room. I found him at the folding desk, fighting valiantly to control his quill with his left hand, and losing. His hand, his sleeve, and his paper were all spotted and smeared with ink, and the words he had managed to set down were even more illegible than his normal script, a thing I would not have believed possible.

He laid the pen down and glanced up at me with an expression that put me in mind of the way Mr. Pope's boys looked when they were caught at some mischief. “Now I understand why the left hand is called sinister. It has a twisted will of its own and cannot be made to obey.” He rose and gestured for me to take his place, then set about awkwardly trying to clean the ink from his hands using a rag soaked with brandy.

“When I was a schoolboy in Stratford,” he said absently, “I had a classmate—Laurence, his name was—who was left-handed. The schoolmaster believed this was contrary to nature and insisted that, for the purposes of penmanship at least, the boy must use his right hand. Laurence worked diligently at it, but was totally inept. The master, convinced that the boy was just being stubborn, tried to beat him into compliance.”

I winced, thinking of the stripes on Sal Pavy's back. “Did ‘a succeed?”

“He succeeded only in making an enemy of Laurence. When we grew bigger, one day Laurence wrested the rod from the master's hand and gave him a drubbing in return, using his right hand—just to show that he could, I suppose.” Mr. Shakespeare sank onto the edge of the bed and cradled his bandaged arm. “Well. You see what I'm doing, don't you?”

“Easing your bad arm?”

He smiled wryly. “Yes, but I'm also delaying, trying to avoid setting to work.”

“We need not, an you're in pain.”

“The arm is not to blame. The swelling has gone down considerably, as you see.” He held out the arm for my inspection. The flesh around the plaster bandage was no longer red and puffy, but nearly normal in appearance.

I smiled with relief. “I was afeared I'd done it wrong, and it wouldn't heal.”

“No, you did as well as any surgeon, and I'm grateful.”

“What does pain you, then?”

He frowned and lay back on the bed. “This play,” he said.

I did not know how to respond. I had supposed that composing plays was an effortless task for a man of Mr. Shakespeare's gifts. But he was behaving as though it were something to be dreaded, as though it required a degree of fortitude or courage he was not sure he possessed. “Shall I … shall I read what I transcribed last night?”

“Yes, yes, read it all. God knows there's little enough of it.”

It was true. I'd put down but half a dozen speeches the previous night, before Mr. Shakespeare grew frustrated and sent me away. The play's progress, in fact, closely resembled that of the tour as a whole—agonizingly slow, with much bogging down.

We were in the midst of what was meant to be a comic scene between the Countess and the Clown. Though Mr. Shakespeare's mood was anything but comical, he went on struggling with the scene, as his classmate must have struggled to write a satisfactory Italian-style script using the wrong hand. But Mr. Shakespeare had no master standing over him with a hickory rod. The only one driving him was himself.

He pressed his hand to his forehead in that fashion I had seen so often. “The Clown says … The Clown says … Ah! The Clown says, ‘I have an answer that will fit all questions.”'

As I wrote down the line, I laughed. “An answer to fit all questions? It must be an answer of monstrous size.”

“That's good!” said Mr. Shakespeare. “Write that down as well, for the Countess's line.”

“Truly?” I said.

“Why not? I'm not above stealing a line when it suits.”

I wrote down what I had said, happy to have been of some help, however small. “What is this answer to fit all questions, then?”

“Oh, Lord,” groaned Mr. Shakespeare. “I've no idea.” Then he paused and, to my surprise, smiled. “Wait. Perhaps that's it.”

“What's it?”

“‘Oh, Lord.' That can be made to answer anything, depending on how you say it, can it not? Let's try it. Pose me a question.”

“Pardon?”

“Pose me a question—any question.”

Flustered, I asked the first thing that entered my mind. “How fares your arm, sir?”

“Oh, Lord, sir,” he replied in a tone that implied it was in dreadful shape. “That works. Ask me another.”

“Umm … ah … how goes the play you're composing?”

He rolled his eyes and replied in a tone of great dismay, “Oh, Lord, sir!” We both laughed at how apt the answer truly was. “Come, another,” said Mr. Shakespeare. Suddenly the melancholy mood that had hung over us seemed to have lifted.

I thought of an old jest that could not well be answered with a yes or no. “Tell me, sir, do you still beat your wife?”

“Oh, Lord, sir!” This time the reply was laced with indignation. “Ha! You see, it works! Write it down! Rob will know how to make the most of it.” He meant, of course, Mr. Armin, who customarily played the broad comic parts.

Now that Mr. Shakespeare was in better spirits, he went on to dictate another scene and another, at such breakneck speed that I was hard-pressed to get it all down. It was an astounding feat, really. One might have thought the words were already fully formed in his head, and he was merely reading them off.