The Quality of Mercy (71 page)

Grandmama was weeping with fear.

“God will be there for you,” Rebecca said, squeezing the bony hand. “He’ll embrace you with open arms—”

The old woman sobbed, “Don’t want to live… but… frightened of death. My entire life… Not God’s destiny… merely bad hap.”

Rebecca lay her head upon the old woman’s chest and embraced her. The hag was her baby bird who’d fallen from its nest. Small bones, a rapid heartbeat, her chest heaving with fright.

“You’re part of God’s destiny,” Rebecca insisted. “And you’ve earned eternity in Heaven, Grandmama. Tis your reward for remaining steadfast in your faith. Now drink some watered wine.”

The old woman was too weak to argue. She allowed Rebecca to bring the cool, metal goblet to her lips. Most of the spirits dribbled out of the corner of the hag’s mouth. Tenderly, Rebecca dabbed the hot lips. She tried to give the old woman more, but Grandmama turned her head.

“Becca…”

“Yes?”

“This life… it’s all we have.”

“No, my sweet grandmama,” Rebecca assured her. “You’ll have your Heaven.”

The old woman smiled. “Maybe, maybe not. What if we’re… like the animals. Does a cow have Heaven?”

“You’re not a cow, Grandmama.”

“Horses?”

“Man is not an animal.”

“I’ve felt man’s… lust of flesh… food and blood. We’ve much in common.”

“God created man on a different day. He created us in His image. He made us rulers of Heaven and earth —
haaretz ve hashamayim
.”

“Hear me out,” Grandmama whispered. “Our only life,
if
we are as… animals… disintegrated to dust when dead… Then… I’ve led you astray, girl…. Made you choose a God… You lost a chance to love.”

Rebecca felt a dry lump in her throat. This time the tears came not from sadness for Grandmama, but for the man she had lost. The hag squeezed her hand.

“Go back to him if you want to,” she whispered. “If you need to. If you think I’m right… that we’re… animals. Go back. Hope… it’s not too late.”

“Shakespeare,” said Rebecca.

“Aye, Shakespeare.” Grandmama closed her eyes. She seemed at peace. She brought Rebecca’s hand to her wet cheek. “It must be… your decision. Not mine.”

“Only God knows how much I love you,” Rebecca said.

The old woman smiled weakly, then coughed up blood. Rebecca covered a gasp with the back of her hand.

“Grandmama, you must drink—”

“No,” Grandmama whispered. “Listen, Becca. Love him… if you must. Let him love you. Hard times… terrible ordeals face you, girl.”

The old woman coughed again, weaker this time. She said in a hushed voice, “Mayhap you… need
love
to see you through…. Just as I needed faith.” She turned her headaway from Rebecca. “So much suffering,” she cried. “For you… your mother… your brother. Be strong for them. Give my name to your daughter… and grab all the happiness you can, girl.”

The snow had stopped falling but the winds were still strong. Shakespeare knelt before the white-dusted grave and stuck a sprig of greens into the ground against the headstone. The leaves flapped in the draft until the bundle finally blew away. Shakespeare watched the greens tumble against the drifts until they were lost in the mist.

“Can you hear me, Harry?” he asked the mound of snow. “If you can, visit me tonight and tell me how you died, you son of a bitch.”

Shakespeare recalled one wintry night as he walked Harry home.

I’m dying, my friend, I’m dying.

You’re just drunk,
Shakespeare had said.

Nay, I’m dying. The world has become black.

It’s night
.

Harry suddenly turned to him, his nose bright red.
Remember me when I’m gone
.

Harry had begun to sway. Shakespeare looped an arm around him and propped him up.

Could I ever forget you?

Harry suddenly grabbed his hand and kissed it with emotion.

Remember me, Willy. You’re the only man I know with the decency to keep this promise
.

Shakespeare had felt a swell in his heart.
I shan’t ever forget you, Harry.

Swear it!

I swear
.

Now Shakespeare wept openly. He was exhausted, cold, lonely, and wasn’t any closer to finding Harry’s murderer than he’d been when he left London a month ago.

Go home, he told himself. Go home and write. Create a man more wretched than yourself.

He stood up and brushed the snow off his cape, determined to put the past behind. But it was not to be.

He felt his knees buckle, his heart pound. His teeth began to chatter loudly.

Rebecca!

Standing not more than ten yards away from him.

A ghost?

No. It was she. In the flesh.

Life’s a whimsical fiend!

Shakespeare dropped to his knees and hoped that she didn’t see him.

She appeared to not notice anything. Through a swirl of white and gray Shakespeare saw that she was weeping. She was a different person than the enchantress he’d spied the first time at the cemetery. She seemed smaller, completely broken. Then Shakespeare remembered that, so long ago, she had not really buried anyone she loved. This morrow was very different.

Shakespeare shivered and waited for the funeral procession to pass Harry’s grave. Thomas was limping badly. Miguel had recovered and was walking as straight as any able-bodied man. Yet his right arm dangled lifelessly at his side. Rebecca’s mother, supported by her son, was sobbing.

God in Heaven, who in her family had died — or had been captured this time? He regarded the Jews, then his eyes widened.

Where was the
doctor
?

The doctor had
died
?

He was an old man.

Yet he’d appeared healthy.

Plague could reduce a man to ashes in a day. The evil vapors of the disease were still strong in London.

Shakespeare realized that he was visible. He covered his mouth with his gloves, turned his head aside and pretended to cough, but Dunstan noticed him anyway. Shakespeare expected a vile lour, even a glob of spit, but to his surprise, Dunstan immediately stopped Rebecca and moved his head in Shakespeare’s direction.

Rebecca looked up. Her eyes were as swollen and red as boiled cranberries. She whispered something to Dunstan. He nodded, joined their kinsmen and proceeded to the gravesite without her.

Shakespeare waited for the funeral train to blur into the fog, then he locked eyes with her. The wind had loosened her hair, blowing it over her face like a veil, the cold having turned her cheeks rosy. She looked as unreal as the first time he’d seen her. One blink and she’d be gone. Slowly, Shakespeare stood and approached her.

“You’ve yet to return to London,” Rebecca said. Her voice was choked with tears.

“Yes,” Shakespeare said. “How’d you know that?”

“I stopped by your cell yesterday and again talked to your neighbor. She said you hadn’t come back from your trip to Warwick.”

“I wasn’t at Warwick…. Well, I was, but not the wholetime.” His mouth felt stuffed with cotton. He was trembling and it wasn’t from cold. “I was up North.”

“Then you don’t know, do you.”

“Tis your father whom you bury?” he asked.

Rebecca shook her head and said, “My father is alive, imprisoned once again. This time he’s in the Tower. Today we inter my grandam.”

Shakespeare was about to reply with the usual words of condolences but Rebecca’s eyes stopped him, reminded him how close she and the old woman had been. At that moment he understood that words couldn’t express how deeply he felt her pain. A minute of awkward silence passed, one of the few times in his life when Shakespeare felt at a loss for words — a foreigner who did not speak the language of the country. Rebecca seemed to sense his reticence and spoke up.

“She died very peacefully. In her sleep.”

“Blessed be the Almighty for that.” Shakespeare held out his hands to her. “I’m so sorry—”

“Do you believe in God?” Rebecca asked.

Shakespeare was taken aback by the force of the question, by the abrupt, clear tone of her voice. He dropped his hands to his sides and answered yes.

Rebecca said, “Then your God would have my grandam condemned to Hell, as she was not baptized.”

Shakespeare didn’t answer.

“No matter,” Rebecca said. “In sooth, I hope there is a God. And I hope He is neither judgmental like Moses’s God — my God — nor as interested in forcing his beliefs upon others as Jesu — your God. In sooth, I hope God, unlike those made in His image, is kind and loving.”

“And forgiving?”

“Aye,” Rebecca said. “And forgiving as well.”

Shakespeare dropped to his knees and kissed her gloved hand. She stroked his pink cheek, then brought him to his feet.

Shakespeare said, “Thou art my weakness. A poison so sweet that it is Heaven to die with thy venom on my lips.”

“I’ll not cause thee any more grief, I swear!” Rebecca said. “Once again, I offer myself to thee.”

They embraced. Rebecca allowed herself to go limp, to melt into his arms. It was the first time she permitted herself to share her grief with another. He was her pillow, molding himself for her comfort, offering warmth and softness in a hard, cold world. How she loved him.

Shakespeare whispered, “Tell me, what can I do to help thee?”

She hugged him tightly and said, “I must return to my family. My heart mourns for my grandam.” She began to cry. “My God, Will, how I loved that woman. What will I do without her?”

Shakespeare was silent. His arms, not his words, would give her the solace she needed. A moment later he felt her stiffen.

“Thou knowest what she would say if she were alive?” Rebecca said.

“What?”

“Tis a waste of time to wail the dead. Concentrate on the living.”

“A rarity,” Shakespeare said. “A wise woman.”

Rebecca pulled away from him. She was a bale of confusion. Tears in her eyes one moment, a lethal look of action the next. She said with animation, “In which tower my father is imprisoned, I know not. Communication between him and family is forbidden. But I do know he lies somewhere in that vile prison, Will. Help me find him.”

Shakespeare was stunned. “What dost thou propose? We hire a boatman, cross the guarded moat, and stealthily make our way through the stone walls of the Tower?”

“I don’t know how. Simply that I must see him!”

“Thou might as well steal thy way into the Queen’s bedchamber.”

Rebecca thought a moment. “Mayhap we shall do that instead. Does she not present herself before her loyal subjects?”

Shakespeare rolled his eyes and said, “Becca, I—”

Rebecca quieted him with an icy kiss on the lips. She said, “I must return to my family. We shall discuss this tomorrow. I’ll come by thy closet at eleven?”

“I’ll not sleep in anticipation,” Shakespeare said.

“And thou wilt
be
there this time?”

“Most definitely,” Shakespeare said. “I was moonstruck to leave thee the first time.”

“Tomorrow, then,” Rebecca said.

Shakespeare nodded, thinking: Tomorrow it will be, if a deathly shadow stays hidden in its murky swamp and the Queen’s men leave thy kinsmen in peace. So much had come between them, most of it still unresolved.

Reluctantly they parted ways.

The following morning Shakespeare tried to write. He’d awakened before six and, according to his sand glass, had been scribbling for three hours. All he had to show for it was a floor littered with crumpled paper. His hand began to ache, his middle finger heavily ink-stained.

The Devil with it!

He cleaned his quill and capped the inkpot. He paced and stoked the fire. Rebecca was consuming him, robbing him of the empty mind he needed for creativity. His mind was agog with impressions of her, his skin tingling at the thought of their reunited flesh. She seared his brain, scorching from it all images but her.

When she did show up at his closet — at eleven, as promised — she was costumed as a boy and in a state of panic.

“They’ve scheduled his
trial
!” she said. “He’s actually going to
trial
! My brother just found — God in heaven, they don’t even have evidence — just hearsay, rumors, gossip!… My uncle’s there now…. It’s all based on mere conjecture and some babbling he made no doubt under… under
torture
.” She seemed to choke on the last word. “The slimy bastards! May they rot in Hell. May that toad Essex burn, nay, be tortured and burned! And even that would be too kind for him.”

Shakespeare waited for her to stop ranting, waited for the tears to come.

She began to pace. “I cannot believe this!” she screamed. She kicked his pallet. The straw exploded with dust. “He never planned ill against the Queen. He’s been nothing but her loyal subject! Aye, maybe he’s used his position a time or two to request favors. And who has not? Has the bastard, Essex, not used his title and charm to beguile the Queen to do
his
bidding? God will get the ambitious son of a bitch. God will get him! If there is a God… Of course there’s a God!
Thou
thinkest there is a God, correct?”

“With absolute certainty,” said Shakespeare.

“Yes,” agreed Rebecca. “There is a God, and He will save my father, will He not?”

Shakespeare asked, “When is your father scheduled to be tried?”

The words he spoke hit her with sudden reality. Her face contorted in a mixture of anger and terror. She said, “The twenty-eighth of February.”

“Come,” Shakespeare said, holding open his arms.

She fell against his chest and cried.

“I must see the Queen,” she said, her speech muffled. Her lips were pressed against his shirt. “I must see her. How can I see her? If only I had listened to Father in the first place. I would have been at court. I would have been in Her Majesty’s favor, and Essex would never have dreamed up such lies. God, I hate everyone. I cannot… I cannot stand these evil political games…. Now I understand why Grandmama was so grateful to die.”

She bit her lip and wiped her face. “I hate everyone! Not thee, of course. Nor my mother. Just everyone.”