The Quality of Mercy (20 page)

Hart closed his eyes and said, “I cannot picture his stature.”

“A big nose? Fat lips? The color of his eyes?”

“Nothing, Willy.” Hart sighed. “I’m sorry.”

“What did he sound like?” Shakespeare questioned.

“His voice sounded… unnatural. Deep, but hoarse.”

“An accent?”

“I remember not. He spoke so little.”

“Describe the clothes he was wearing,” Shakespeare pressed. “Surely you noticed them.”

Hart brightened. “I did. A thick woolen hooded cape, old boots caked with mud at the toes and heels. His doublet was much out of date, its skirt way below the waistline.”

“The colors of the garments, Robin?” Shakespeare asked.

Suddenly Hart felt cold. “His entire dress was colored black.”

Rebecca took a last bite of apple and dropped the core to the ground. A fat woman pushed against her — no doubt to get a better look at Burbage — and Rebecca pushed her back. In deference to Rebecca’s fine dress and beard, the woman retreated.

Rebecca smoothed out an imaginary wrinkle in her doublet. Surrounded by swine, she thought. Yet they were pure of heart, these vulgar groundlings. They laughed, cried, cheered the hero and booed the fiend, and if the play was wretched, the actors would know about it. The nobility in the upper seats were very well-mannered, but not an honest emotion passed through their bodies, not a true passion pierced their hearts. Twas better to stand with the groundlings, smell their foul breath, their sweat, piss, and vomit. Better to be shoved and pushed in their drunken stupor than to sit as a lady, escorted by a lord as beautiful as chiseled marble and equally cold to the touch.

What a lovely voice Burbage has, she thought. So commanding, it soared above the belches, coughs, and rude laughter and boomed out like cannon fire. She loved to listen to him, to look at him. He could be as graceful as if he danced the pavane, as forceful as if he marched to war. Often she would daydream of playing with him on stage, how it would be if he were Hero and she Leander, to be Thisbe to his Pyramus.

She raised her pipe, inhaled a whiff of tobacco and coughed. Heavens, the smoke was strong, and the odor stank like a dung heap. A filthy vice. But she loved the look of disdain elicited from the Puritans as she blissfully puffed away while walking down Paul’s. They thought she was doomed to Hell. Would they could know that, as a woman, she was cursed by her own private hell.

Burbage finished, and the setting was immediately switched. A boy came in carrying a sign that said
KITCHEN
. On the left side of the stage was a table on which rested a pot housing a squawking chicken, a butcher’s cleaver, and a plate full of entrails, the blood dripping to the floor.

The chef entered the platform through a door in the backdrop marked
ENTRANCE
. Today he was played by William Shakespeare. Rebecca always was drawn to Shakespeare’s comic performances. He hadn’t half the acting skill of Burbage, his voice being higher and more easily strained, losing projection when he shouted. But his eyes held her as none she’d ever seen. They were the palest blue, like fresh snow awash with sky, imbued with an unmistakable intelligence. She remembered them clearly at the burial grounds, staring back at her, questioning her own eyes. His countenance that day had been so somber, suffused with much pain, completely out of character with the doltish parts he usually played. She hadn’t been able to reconcile that man with the player, and so she’d stared at him. Of course, everything that day had been blurry, so very unreal….

She shooed the dark thoughts from her mind and returned her attention to the platform. Shakespeare was wearing a hat much too large, staggering around, trying to bring the bottle he carried to his lips. The crowd began to laugh. When the hat fell over his forehead and eyes, he stumbled about, then danced an exaggerated trip.

Rebecca found herself laughing along with the others.

Shakespeare raised the brim of the hat from his eyes and slowly, in drunkenly fashion, swaggered his way over to the table. Setting the bottle down, he grabbed the chicken, lifting the hapless bird up by the neck, and raised the cleaver. He swung the cleaver at the bird’s scrawny throat but cut only air instead. The audience howled with laughter.

Shakespeare stared at the crowd, wearing a look of confusion, then gaped at the chicken.

“Why are you still whole?” he cried. The bird was flapping its wings with distress, fluttering feathers in his face. Shakespeare trapped them in his mouth, then blew them at the crowd like a gust of snow. “You should be very much dead,” he explained to the bird. “Pouring out blood as freely as I piss out ale. Like thus.”

He picked up a handful of bloody innards and smeared it over the chicken.

“There,” he said. “Hold still, and by my will, I shall instill you to nil.”

He held up the cleaver, swung it forcefully, but again cut nothing. Again and again he whipped the cleaver through the air, each time barely missing the chicken’s throat. Finally he plunged the cleaver down onto the table and split a piece of sanguineous entrail in two, splattering blood all over his costume.

Not written in the book, Shakespeare groaned inwardly. Robin Hart was going to reproach him severely for the mess. Off to the left of the stage Shakespeare could see the ’tire man’s face fall.

The crowd cheered.

He was about to speak but stopped cold when he saw them. Eyes! Those gray, fiery eyes! They had awed him once before, but now they didn’t match the face.

Or had he really seen
those
eyes on a different face? Or were his memories part of a dream — like Harry’s ghost?

Older had the face been, on a much taller man with an overhanging belly. This face was young, the body slender.

He forced himself to turn away and was about to continue.

The line! What was his next line?

He glanced to the right at Willy Dale, who was mouthing something to him.

Shakespeare’s eyes drifted back to the red-bearded boy.

Harry’s funeral
. He had been a
she
! A she dressed
in black
.

He felt himself slipping. Was he going mad? Seeing ghosts? Seeing men in women?

He heard Willy Dale shouting to him and felt a sharp rap on his chest. Someone had thrown an apple core at him. Another followed.

“A stew,” Shakespeare improvised. “I shall make a chicken and apple-core stew.” He picked up the apple core and plunked them into the pot. “Would I had more of these things.”

He was pelted with a shower of apple cores.

He stared back at the boy whom he’d recollected to be a girl. He/she had turned pale and was leaving. Quickly he collected the cores, threw them in the pot, tossed in the live chicken, limp with exertion, and topped off the concoction with the bloody guts.

He ran off stage like a coursed hare.

“In the name of God, Will!” Robin Hart shouted after him.

“What the devil has possessed Shakespeare?” Richard Burbage demanded, stomping over to Hart.

“I don’t know.”

“Go on with the next scene, idiot,” Willy Dale screamed to a boy apprentice. “On stage, you witless jack!” He walked over to Burbage. “For the love of God, what happened with Will?”

“Should I know?”

“Stage fright?” Hart suggested.

Richard shook his head. “Not Shakespeare.”

Cuthbert Burbage approached his brother. “In God’s name—”

“I know not what happened with Shakespeare,” said Richard.

“Did you have words with him?” Dale asked him.

“No,” Richard answered. “And even if we had — which we hadn’t — we are both too much the ultimate actor to let offenses impede our duties on stage.”

“Aren’t you going after him?” Cuthbert inquired.

“My presence is
required
in the next scene,” his brother said. “As was Shakespeare’s. And he’s quite unavailable at the moment. Cuthbert, we need you.”

“I’m not going on stage, Richard,” Cuthbert answered. “My legs turn to jelly in front of a crowd.”

“Someone has to read Shakespeare’s parts!” Richard bellowed.

“What about Nicholas Tooly?” suggested Cuthbert.

“He is on stage with me.”

“I’ll read Will’s parts,” Willy Dale said. “I’ve committed the book to memory.”

“You can’t act,” noted Hart.

“Do you have a better suggestion?” Dale snarled back.

“Come, come, gentlemen,” insisted Richard Burbage. “Please let’s put out of our mind Shakespeare’s eerie actions until the play is over. I’ve a performance to complete.” He heard his cue and walked back on stage.

“It’s Whitman’s death,” Hart said to Cuthbert. “Willy’s become glutted with vengeance for his murderer.”

Cuthbert nodded.

“Harry was an unusual man,” said Hart. “A troubled man, oft besotted, but an actor of the utmost grace. He’s sorely missed by all.”

Cuthbert agreed. “By Shakespeare especially.”

“They were close,” Hart said.

“Amazingly so,” Cuthbert said, “considering how different they were.”

“Aye,” Hart agreed. “Whitman was wild, unspoiled land. Shakespeare’s a knot garden… poor Willy. He ran off as if chased by Harry’s spirit.”

Cuthbert raised his eyebrows and said, “Perhaps he was.”

It was he — or she — who’d been following him! Of that Shakespeare was certain. A being of many disguises. A witch who had been watching his every move — at the theater, at the burial grounds, in his room last night. Weren’t sorceresses known to change shape and form as easily as men changed horses?

He raced past St. Saviour’s and over to London Bridge, ran a few yards up the plank and was immersed in a storm of bright colors. Swarms of people wearing brilliant golds, purples, reds, and blues. He shoved his way through the crowds, trying to catch sight of the young man with the feathered cap. But his quarry had vanished.

The witch/boy/girl could have gone anywhere — reversed its steps and slipped into the Bear Garden, ducked into a tavern on the bridge, hidden behind a building, dived into the icy waters of the Thames. Was any feat beyond a witch’s supernatural powers?

Or was he simply going mad? Shakespeare wondered. Imagining men to be women, women to be witches? Perhaps the lad had remembered an obligation that required his sudden departure. Perhaps
he’d
frightened the boy off with his fearsome stare.

If only he could find him!

Suddenly, out of breath and faint, he stopped running. His friends had to think him moonstruck, sick in the brain to bolt off stage like that. Perhaps it was true, that his mind was indeed unwell. Seeing an apparition, hearing it speak. It was daft.
He
was daft. Mayhap he should stop all thoughts of revenge and listen to the ghost’s counsel in earnest.

He felt himself ravaged with thirst. Walking another half block, he spotted a red bar over a doorpost — the sign of a tavern. He went inside, seated himself at a table, and had the tapster bring him a pint of ale. Sipping his drink slowly, Shakespeare tried to erase thoughts of insanity.

But images kept darting through his mind.

Mad Willy!
Himself a year from now — with a matted beard, skin crusted with sores, drool oozing from the corner of his mouth, confined to the wards of Bedlam or some other backstreet bridewell, the sole light of day squeezing through small bars mounted on the ceiling.

He thought,
Tell Margaret to leave the dead in peace
.

But Harry’s soul would have no peace until his slayer was caught.

Go back to the theater and forget Harry’s murderer. It has caused you naught but grief
.

But Shakespeare knew he would not stop until the fiend was caught. Memories of Harry were haunting him as surely as the ghost last night.

Whitman kneeling before a wall. Shakespeare running to his side.

Shakespeare asking what happened as he helped a red-faced Whitman to his feet.

I was rehearsing my dance solo for tomorrow’s performance and slipped. But not to worry
. Harry stood and brushed off his hose.
My knees are still sound
.

Whitman, the supreme player. He had carried off a virtuoso performance. Down to the hobble in his walk to prove he had fallen.

Bravo! Bravo!

That night had been Christmas Eve — an hour before midnight services. Shakespeare now realized that Harry had stolen some time alone to pray as a Catholic. His blush came not from embarrassment from falling, but from fear of being discovered — even by his star pupil.

Still thinking of things past, Shakespeare looked out the tavern window.

And the witch appeared before his eyes.

Rebecca was panting, frantic with worry. Her heart beat loudly against her chest, her lungs sent out short stabs of pain with each breath. She turned her head over her shoulder, then spun around to make sure he was nowhere in sight.

She lowered her head and let her arms dangle loosely at her sides.
Why
had he stared at her? At first she’d thought it had been the dress — clothing of the well-off amid the tatters of the groundlings. But no, it was more. He’d recognized her from the burial grounds and knew she was a woman. He was going to expose her.

For what purpose? Why?

God knew what would happen if it became known to certain nobles that Roderigo Lopez’s daughter had dressed as a man. Essex would make her father an object of derision. Her father would denounce her as a disgrace and demand an immediate marriage to the bridegroom of his choice. And he’d be in his rights.

Why?
Why had Shakespeare persecuted her? Curiosity? Humor? Let us laugh at this ridiculous creature and her follies. A woman who thinks herself a man.

She was a stupid jack. Now the jack had played her childish game, and all she wanted to do was catch her wind and go home. Her legs were weak from running, her feet sore from Ben’s ill-fitting boots. Her father’s house, in the fashionable section of Holborn, was yet an hour away by foot. She dropped from weariness against a building and drew her knees up to her chin. The sheath of her sword dangled awkwardly at her side, its point resting in a pit between cobblestones.