'What is it that you know?'
'Oh.' She turned away from him with a deep sigh. 'There are poems you have written. They were brought to Master Field for his printing.'
'That is old stuff, my poems. I brought home Lucrece, though none here would read it. Field himself told me that my father read Venus but you said it was filthy or some such thing.'
'I said not that. But it is about naked goddesses.'
'Aye, a naked goddess tumbling a boy in a field.'
She did not see that. She said: 'There are little poems, and some are to men and some are of a black woman.' She snivelled. 'Thou didst never write such to me----'
'Sonnets? Is it sonnets? What is this about Field being given my sonnets?'
'I know nothing of it.' WS was already out of bed, moonlit in his shirt. 'Get back to bed,' she ordered. 'You make it clear that all they have said is true.'
'It is not that. It is that poems I have written for friends have been thumbed by dirty hands----'
'Perhaps the dirty hands of friends. Get back into bed or not, as you please. Leave the house if you wish. But let me sleep.'
'I would speak to Dickon of that. I would know more. There are thieves, traitors----'
'Richard is away, as you well know. This is unseemly, all this raving. Your son not cold in his grave.' She began to snivel again. Then she said: 'I have seen one of these sonnets, as you call them. I have one of these sonnets.'
'That is not possible. Where is it? Who gave it to you?' He went to the bed in moonlight, he took her moon-silvered neck between his fingers. She broke his weak hold with her own strong hands, saying:
'So, I am to blame for all this. Fool. What have I to do with it?'
He saw his unreasonableness. 'Where is this sonnet?'
'Oh, it must wait until morning.'
'I would see it now.' He took the tinder-box and worked at it, moonlight leading him to the candle in the sconce that had been there since his boyhood. 'And I would know who gave it to you.'
'Richard----'
'Aye, Dickon again.'
'It was another Richard that gave it to him, if you must know. Your friend Master Quiney.'
'Dick?' He was puzzled, he just could not----'Dick Quiney?'
'It is in my book there.' She pointed, her fine full arm now red-warm in candlelight. 'It is between the leaves.'
WS, frowning, puzzled, took up the poor little bound volume of devotional chatter, weak warnings of the Spanish Antichrist and the End of the World. He found a folded piece of good parchment and, even before unfolding, at once remembered the May night, his own trembling fingers (were they then now different fingers?) pulling from his breast what had been defiled, turned sour and rancid, by the laughing defection of a black-haired girl and the jeers of her new lover. How many years ago had that been?
My love being black, her beauty may not shine
And light so foiled to heat alone may turn.
Heat is my heart, my hearth, all earth is mine;
Heaven do I scorn when in such hell I burn.
'Well,' he said. 'After so much time. This I wrote as a boy. Before I even knew that you---- Yes, I had finished it that very day.' He peered at it. 'It is very poor stuff, but I was only young.' And then, in something like awe and fear, he perceived whose name was embedded in it. 'God,' he said, 'must we be pursued all the time?'
'Come back to bed,' she told him, 'now you are satisfied.'
HE WISHED TO travel back to London the following morning. But his father said:
'I hoped you would have stayed longer. There was one piece of good news I wished to keep till it was in black and white, no going back on it. I had thought I would have had it by now. I wanted you, with all this sorrow, to carry back something to cheer you.'
'Well, we could all do with some private happiness to match the public.'
'Public? Oh, these French alliances and so forth and the Queen passing out of her whatever-it-is----'
'Grand climacteric.'
'Heathen superstition. These mean little to us here, out of the great world. Small things please us best. Though I would doubt this was a small thing.'
'Let us have it then.'
They were in the shop and workroom. Gilbert, older and graver than his years, was examining with serious closeness a piece of calfskin whereon he had pencilled fingers. He said, looking up from this seriously:
'Aye, such as 'tis. All are to be made gentlefolk, aye. But that cannot make little difference, as in God's eye it is all one.'
'What is all this about?' smiled WS.
'Oh, Gilbert fumbles things, as ever.' His father cleared his throat in something like embarrassment. 'I applied for arms, and it is to be granted. It is but a matter now of awaiting the ceremonious parchment from Garter King of Arms.'
'So.' WS sat down on a rough workstool. He slowly began to see what this meant. 'Arms? A coat of arms?'
'A falcon shaking a spear and a silver spear on what they call a bend.'
'And the motto?'
'I cannot pronounce it aright, it is Norman French.' He took Gilbert's pencil and traced the letters large on a scrap of paper: NON SANZ DROICT.
' "Not Without Right," ' translated WS. 'Good,' he said after a little time. 'That is very good.'
'We have always been gentlemen,' said his father, holding himself straight with a dignity that was somewhat pathetic. 'There were very hard times but, thank God, they are over. It is thanks to you. And the sooner you are out of this way of making money and back here to live like the gentleman you are----'
'We English are like that,' sighed WS. 'We like to forget how money is made. Only land is truly gentlemanly, land and property. Well, I shall do my best to buy land. And I am glad we are now acknowledged to be gentlemen.'
'Soon you may have your arms on your liveries and seals,' said his father, bubbling it out like a child. 'Rings and banners and all. It is a fine smack at the Ardens,' he grinned with child's impishness. And then, with mature seriousness, he said: 'It is strange how things be all reversed in time. Your mother forgets all about how her family stood for the Old Faith. I think it is your Anne that has brought her to this plain religion and sniffing at bishops. And I, in mine old age, take up the position she once held, though privily, very privily. At least, I see that there is more truth there than I formerly thought, and that men have been cruelly burnt for nothing. I see, I mean, in what belief I may die. They say men end as wine and women as vinegar.'
'Whatever else may come,' said WS, 'we will all end as gentlemen.'
'And think what it would have been for your son,' said his father softly, regretfully.
'Oh, well, that is all over.'
Gilbert, like a clock, whirred before striking. 'We know what we are,' he said, 'but know not what we may be.'
AND so he rode back in more scorn than bitterness. That a lord should behave so to a friend. There is one here would speak with you, my lord. He is, he says, a gentleman. It would be best to have a seal made and to twang off his scorn on fine vellum, then down with it, a spear-shaking falcon in hot wax. Non Sanz Droict. You have exposed my heart, my lord, to the grinning world. You have made manifest so your own unworthiness. This admired fine flower is stricken with a hidden canker. Believe me, they that understand will mark that more than mine own shame; they will know where to attribute that shame, my lord. And then and then and then. Was it not perhaps dirty Chapman (there is a vulgar name, a Cheapside name) who had, putting his own poems in that spice-smelling box, stolen in spite and jealousy and run in glee to Field, thinking Field to be a ready filching printer who would pay out his few slivers of silver -- drink-money, boy; for the poet naught; for me much? But was Field that manner of man? He might well be; he was not of need better for being a Stratford's son; he had said not one word that day WS had called on him with money for the family nor that other day when he had brought his crapula-quelling news. Or was it shame that kept him silent before shame's own begetter?
Still, the true en
emy to be boarded was that fine and graceful lordship, silver-masted, silk-caparisoned, clothof-gold sails lifted proudly to any breeze of perfidy or wind of court policy, faithless, as incapable of love as of loyalty -- And then a great wave of weariness washed over his own poor barque as he saw once more the boy's coffin drop into the grave, and he wondered whether, with death always lurking in alleyways, tainted meat, sour ale, death a very contending twin of life, those great cries about honour and rank and treachery were more than the bawlings of a fretful child in a cradle. Honour is a mere scutcheon. Who hath it? He that died o' Wednesday.
A mere scutcheon? A mere scutcheon?
VIII
SCUTCHEON. Escutcheon. Shields, targets, escutcheons, coats of arms, pennons, guidons, seals, rings, edifices, buildings, utensils, liveries, tombs or monuments ...
'I noted,' said Florio, 'with pleasure----'
The seal had been cut hurriedly by a man in Fetter Lane. To bear and make demonstration of the same blazon or achievement upon their shields, targets, escutcheons ...
'In this strange country,' said Florio, 'a gentleman may be a poet. Indeed, gentility has been taken as the primal qualification for making poetry. It is rarer to see that a poet may be a gentleman.'
'But the letter itself,' said WS, 'apart from the seal----'
'He has not seen the letter,' said Florio. 'And I think it better that he do not. He is not well, he is not solely sick of his body but also most profoundly melancholic----'
'Following the fashion.'
'Alas, no. He caught some pestilential thing in France. Alone in bed in the dark a man has no audience. As for what you say in your letter, I perceive its justice. Shall we say that my lord was careless and that my lord's friend the Earl of T desired copies of these most exquisite and mellifluous etcetera etcetera and that these then fell into the hands of Sir John F and then descended rung by rung to----'
'To some impoverished master of arts or other.' Dick Field may have talked of them in Stratford but he had not desired to print them. Some small anonymous fellow had brought them, saying he had been sent by a gentleman whose name he had been forbidden to disclose. Not Master Chapman, said Dick Field. Indeed, Master Chapman was not impoverished; his new plays of humours were doing well at the Rose.
'As you say,' said Florio. Florio looked fatter: something to do with the content of love, with Rosa, a poet's daughter. 'And you may also say, if you think about it, that if my lord showed your sonnets to any of his friends it would in no wise be out of malice; rather out of pride. I think you may understand that.'
'Well----' WS felt, in a kind of despair, the whole matter of bitterness and high feeling begin to slide off; he was always an actor quitting old parts for new. 'We have been somewhat estranged of late. I sent sonnets, as you will know, and the sonnets bounced rudely back.'
'I was instructed to return them,' said Florio. 'Nor was it in mine office to add aught that might explain his rejection of them. But, to speak plainly now, he was in one of these states of his -- states that belong more to his rank than to the man that holds that rank. He is naturally, as you well know, free and honest. Sometimes, though, he must remember what he is, especially when great lords are going forth to wage war against the Queen's enemies. Her Majesty would not let him follow my lord Essex to Cadiz, and that rankled. He would not have it then that he was sick. And he has been much importuned by small poets and smaller players. Then there was some question of a woman, not a lady. He has had her hidden away somewhere. There has been, in fine, a fit of revulsion against what he termed the lowness of his life.' Florio gave an Italianate shrug. 'Guilt is a word you might use. The English are given to guilt. It is something to do,' he said vaguely, 'with the English being a sort of twofold people.'
'Tell me more of this lady -- woman, I would say.'
'I know little. Some very dark creature, I am told. He had her taken into the country. But he has been railing against drabs, poet's drabs, as he calls them. There are times when he has a very low opinion of poets.'
'And what of this poet?'
Florio sat back comfortably in his great leather chair, black legs crossed. Behind him was a table littered with the materials for the dictionary he was making; his shelves were full of fat books. It had been a good life for him, a watching life. Symbol of his philosophical content, a fat black cat slept by the spitting pearwood fire. Autumn was cold this year. He said:
'Yourself? It is time, I would say, for you to be his friend again. The ranks close.' He grinned at that. 'Your respective ranks grow nearer, I mean. I think you have, looking back on it all, done him more good than harm.' Florio did not know everything, that was quite certain. 'You lacked authority to enforce your precepts, no more. I will send word that you have been. Do you send words, a sonnet or so. This time they will not be rejected, that I can promise.'
... And for his crest or cognizance a falcon his wings displayed argent standing on a wreath of his colours; supporting a spear gold steeled as aforesaid set upon a helmet with mantels and tassels as hath been accustomed.... WS, gentleman, went back to Bishopsgate, his head buzzing with images. 'Not mine own fears, nor the prophetic soul of the wide world dreaming on things to come----' It was a matter of looking back to that most balmy time, the mortal moon having endured her eclipse, peace proclaiming olives of endless age, but a month gone. Symbols of established order drawn from the great and public world to figure his own exaltation, to refigure what was, after all, an abiding love. As for olives of endless age, there was no such thing: fruit grew black and wizened; trees died. The lease of the Theatre was, in a year's time, due to fall in; old Burbage was negotiating to buy that fencing-master's hall in the Blackfriars, his aim being to create an indoor playhouse. Nothing stayed still. A man changed his lodging, his place of work, his mistress; between man and wife love could die, a man's art and skill grew or languished or merely changed, and all beyond his control. Only between man and man was there hope of maintaining -- beyond pure animal need that misted the eyes with blood -- a love nourished by will and brain and a conscious art of forbearance. And so, his comedy of the Jew of Venice put by for a day or two, to sonnets of love's renewal, his own past pain, the fresh pride of a poet who was also a gentleman:
And thou in this shalt find thy monument,
When tyrants' crests and tombs of brass are spent.
In a fever of creation he wrote twenty sonnets. They were sent in a wrapper whereon he himself had carefully drawn and coloured the blazon of his arms and motto. As Florio had foretold, there was this time no rude tennis-ball smacking back of the proffer; instead there ensued a reading silence.
Then give me welcome, next my heaven the best,
Even to thy pure and most most loving breast.
A somewhat timid, a sick man's, note, of humble rather than gracious welcome came to him. WS rode, almost jump on its receipt, to Holborn. This time there was added, to the usual phalanx of flunkeys and butlers and stewards and chained staffed bearlike major-domo, a deep-bearded trio of physicians. Stay not with him over-long; he is soon made weary. I mark you. The great bedchamber was dark and musty, air excluded with shut casements, daylight with heavy curtains. A dim lamp, a votary's lamp, burned by Harry's bed. Harry himself lay thin-faced, languid, with WS's bold black-inked sheets strewn over the silk coverlet. He grinned shamefacedly through the gloom.
'So,' said WS. 'What is all this?'
'They tell me I am not well. You too perhaps have been sick?' He picked up one of the sonnets and read out: ' "Whilst, like a willing patient, I will drink----" '
'Oh, that.'
'--"Potions of eisel 'gainst my strong infection." '
'Sick with not seeing you, if you like.'
'I do like. I would you had not had the sickness.'
'Well, I am better already. It is the honey of being with you that cures. The absence was all eisel.'
'There is nobody quite like my Will. I think you will soon make me better. It has been some French pox or other. So
res and swellings and a fever. They have bled me and stuck foul poultices on.'
'And you must be in the dark?'
'Ah, let us have some light, for God's sake. Fiat lux.'
WS strode over to the casements and drew back the fine heavy curtains. November sunlight poured in, a sudden crushed cask of light wine. 'Air too?' he asked.
'It costs no more than the light.' WS opened the window a fraction, enough for a November gust to send two or three of the sonnets swirling and sailing. Harry himself, with a sort of comic feebleness, blew out his lamp. The sickroom mustiness and foul sweetness of suppurations and electuaries was blown out also. WS picked up two sonnets from the floor ('... Even that your pity is enough to cure me.' '... A god in love, to whom I am confin'd.') and stacked the whole batch together, saying:
'I hope these were some little help.'
'Oh, excellent physic. I think I could get up now.'
'It is I your doctors will blame if you do.'
'Keep away from physicians. It is all probing and guessing and pretending with them. They leave it to Nature to cure in her own time, but they take the credit. As well as very fat fees.'
'You must have been very sick, then?'
'Most inconveniently so. There is much going on at court these days and I am out of it. And I am fed on possets and broths and can have no wine. Nor women. It is strange, is it not, that a German monk first put that trio into words? Martin Luther. Wein, Weib, und Gesang. The Emperor's language is a very uncouth one. But it triumphs here, I think.'
'So women are out of your life?' He had to know, but he would not ask directly.
'An abeyance or intermission or some such thing.' He was very languid. 'Oh yes, there was the question of your own dark little doxy.' A great lord, he could speak carelessly. 'Heterodoxy. It was an experience, I will say that, and an experience we shared. That seemed very strange. I seemed closer to you than to her.'
'Where is she now?'
'She wished to be a fine lady. She had, would you believe it, ambitions to marry into the English nobility, that black creature. And she comes crying to me that she is with child.'
'With child? Your child?'
'Who knows whose child? Mine. Yours. Anybody's. It might well be yours from the time of her having it, if my calculating is correct. Though there are untimely births. But let's talk of other things, not drabs and their brats.'