Harry got to his feet, laughing again, though not in the rich creamy ecstasy appropriate to the tale of a friend's cuckoldry. 'That is one thing I cannot do,' he said at length. 'I can never leave you. You have too august an impudence and pertness for me ever to take offence at aught you say. It is a kind of Tarquin superbity.'
'Let's not shut our eyes to the truth,' said WS. 'The long spring is over.'
'Well, I see I must go,' smiled Harry, 'and come back when you are in a more loving temper. Do not say now that I am not yet grown up.'
'Oh,' cried WS, 'can you not yet foresee what you will feel when you are truly grown up? You will understand the disappointments then. You will see where metaphors go wrong, that the door is most tight-shut when it seems most open, that we are condemned to dying more than to death. Let me tell you the manner of our dying away from each other, which is not yet a death. I must age and put off fancies and abstractions, you must feed a greater and greater appetite for power. There is no going back for you, as I see it. You will follow Lord Essex to the very block, for, by a paradox, the path up is always the path down. That is why it seems so delightful and easy. You will justify every treachery, every lust and minor ambition, by reference to some noble sentence, such as "It is for the good of the commonweal". You will even conceive of an image of self-sacrifice when you are encompassing only self-indulgence, self-fulfilment, that self being not the self you think of, for your mirror will be as distorting as any of the Queen's.'
'If it is for this I must stay, you were right to bid me go.' Harry wrapped his cloak about him, its encircling breeze driving a scrawled sheet from the work-table.
'I cannot make myself clear on all this.' WS picked up the sheet, groaning an old man's groan, returning to the vertical in dizziness. Vertical, vertigo. Words. He felt a whinging nostalgia for words. 'I feel only that if I cannot save your soul I must at least try to save mine.'
'Back, as always, to cheesy Banbury cant,' sneered Harry. 'How you make me vomit, you new Puritan gentlemen, with your bit of wealth in candles and corn and dimity and plays. Go to it, then. Save your paltry little Puritan's soul. I prefer my hell, if it is to be a hell. Save your mean little cuckold's soul.' He tossed his head, hatted Frenchwise, making the great black feather in it nod. 'Beautified,' he sneered, remembering an old jibe. 'You cannot disguise the truth of a man's nature. Capon,' he added. 'Not Without Mustard.' He crowed a last laugh. 'How they all mock you. You are more comic than all your comedies.' Then he left, laughing not at all as he clumped like a departing coalman down the uncarpeted stairs.
WELL, then, let it be so, for he welcomed pain. It passed over his head, the gushing of Francis Meres (Plautus and Seneca accounted best for comedy and tragedy among the Latins, so Shakespeare among the English most excellent in both kinds for the stage), the printing pirates after his work, the 'Sweet Master S' fame. We know what we are but know not what we may be. But he thought he knew what he might be could he but draw down on himself the right pain, achieve the right releasing agony. The goddess, he was convinced, abode in the air, an atomy, ready to rush into a wound, were but that wound deep enough. What did young Master Meres know about it? As for the world's madness, his pain in it was diminished by the inoculation of foreknowledge; it seemed, as he packed his 'humours' about Falstaff, that there might well be an exact art of prediction of human folly -- the Queen striking Essex over this matter of who should be sent to flay the wild Irish to submission; the paralysis of rule and the two thousand sent to their death in the foul bogs, ambushed by bog-dwellers. And Harry Wriothesly's decent to folly and impending self-ruin was most predictable of all.
Yet was it not in a measure a folly rubbed off himself, as though poet had infected patron in the manner of his being ensnared? WS watched, with becoming show of sorrow, the slow-treading funeral cortege wind through the summer London streets. Burghley dead, the old times and virtues gone; Ireland near-lost. The flies buzzed. In pathetic optimism the kites wheeled far above that well-lapped corpse. But among the great mourners no sign of one who should be chief in his weeping. Ha' you not heard? He is run off to France with a woman. Defunctive music brayed in the heat. Nay, he hath got a woman here with child, and one of high quality. Soft feet marching slow over the cobbles. But life always to balance death. (Mistress Vernon is from the Court and lies in Essex House. Some say she hath taken a venue under the girdle and swells upon it; yet she complains not of foul play but says the Earl will justify it.) A Royal Maid of Honour a maid no longer, not this year nor more. Seven months, is it? He had best be hurrying back. Maids of Dishonour. They say he is back secretly these four days and secretly hath----
WS hardly heard the bitter words of Cuthbert Burbage as they sat gloomily in the enclosed tavern heat, they two and Richard and Heminges and Phillips, Pope, Kemp. He was thinking of the calm gay words of Florio (black-suited but not for Burghley): 'My lord is in the Fleet.' A rehearsal for the eventual Tower; WS saw it all so clearly: two steps from the ultimate block. 'Slow lechery and hasty marriage. Gloriana is not mocked. Her wrath, I hear, was terrible. One of her Glories, but think, and she kept unaware. But my lord played the man and is in the Fleet as his reward.'
'The Fleet,' said WS aloud. His fellow-players stared; Kemp giggled. Cuthbert said:
'Had I my way I would have him in the Fleet, but his crime is against nature more than law.' WS frowned, puzzled; then he recollected. Giles Alleyn. The lease. 'I had feared it, I must say,' went on Cuthbert. 'Never trust an Alleyn. By making of these half-promises of renewal----'
'It must be taken more slowly,' grinned Kemp, 'for our gentleman here.' Keep away from the great world, WS was thinking. The new Countess too in prison. ('She will get over all this, never fear,' Florio had said. 'The Queen's Majesty, I mean. My lord is not to lie wasting in the Fleet while there are kerns jumping and howling in Ireland.' But the next step the Tower, and after the Tower---- Words were safe, words, safer than reality.)
'Half-promises of renewal,' said Cuthbert patiently. 'The lease of '76 said the timber should be ours still if removed before expiry. Now he knows I will not accept of his new terms, that he knows. It was drawn up, this new lease, in that foreknowledge. So now he will break up the Theatre and call the timber his own.' Richard Burbage growled.
'The Curtain will not do for ever,' said Heminges, chewing a little nut.
'Kill Alleyn,' suggested Pope. 'These nights are without moon.'
'Leases live on like souls,' said Cuthbert sententiously. 'It is more to the purpose to consider of where we shall find a new home. Dick here and I have walked this garden in Maiden Lane, a fair enough garden but we do not wish it for flowers. It is not far from the Rose, if we are talking of flowers.'
'A new playhouse, then,' said Phillips.
'We two,' said Richard Burbage, jerking a sort of imperial thumb at his brother, 'are to meet half. You five the other half, if you will agree.'
'Wake up, Will,' said Cuthbert Burbage.
'The expense of building,' said Heminges, chewing the bit of beard that curled up under his underlip. (It is right that I go visit him in the Fleet, WS was thinking. One does not dissolve friendships so easily. And what if he prove haughty and will not receive me? It is a terrible thing for one so high to be brought so low. He will squeal at the rats, he had ever a fear of rats.)
'It must be met,' Cuthbert was saying. 'It can be met. We are talking,' he cried to WS, 'of a new playhouse and the building of it south of the river.'
'There is no such thing,' said WS, wondering at the confidence with which he spoke, 'as the death of anything. There is no making new, there is only renewal. Can love really die?'
'Oh, sweet Jesus,' prayed Kemp, rolling his eyes to heaven.
'The earth turns and there is no new day, only a renewal of the old. In tomorrow's bread there will be a piece of today's dough. You can only build your new playhouse out of the old one.' They stared at him. 'Pull it down, set your timber on carts, send it over the river. Why should the niggling an
d nasty forces prevail? Alleyn rubs his hands. Cheat him.'
'He is right,' said Heminges. 'By God, he is right.'
WS felt a sort of promise of the renewal of youth's energy.
'Yes,' said Cuthbert Burbage, 'he is right. That is what we will do. We will wait till Alleyn is out of town----'
'What is the name of that builder?'
'Street. A master builder. Peter Street.'
Love took new forms, that was all. Forms like compassion.
X
COMPASSION? Did that then seem the proper balm wherewith to anoint his soul's bruises? They struck, my wife, my brother, but knew not what they did. I will feel no anger, I will resent nothing. I stand above, blessing, forgiving, with lips untwisted in bitterness, brow all alabaster-smooth, a statue. He saw, in a shock that was the shock of involuntary blasphemy, whose that statue was. Compassion, pity: are they not much the same? What right have I to bestow pity? At the very gates of the Fleet, hearing the carousing noises of the better sort within ('Farewell farewell, my blessing; too dear thou art for any man's possessing'), the lute and treble voice of mockery among the busy-whiskered rats and the immemorial stench of urine and hopelessness, he knew he would be rejected of his lord. His lord was entering at last into his realm, grotesque bridegroom and father but a man at last, ready for the final treasonous gesture. He rejects his old friend, professes not to know him, his gay but harmless youth was a dream.
WS stood, pitying among the many cheering, on Cheapside towards the end of March. It was a brisk but sunny day, the smell of new green and the maaaaaaing of lambs borne in from the near countryside. All was forgiven by that capricious Queen: Essex was bound for Ireland, his commission signed a fortnight back. Thirteen hundred horse and sixteen thousand foot were under his command. He rode out of London with the cream of his officers, gracious, bowing, sun-king heading a riot of liveries, silken banners mad in the wind, the horses prancing, stumbling, recovering on the cobbles. The crowd roared and waved, children were lifted on to shoulders, caps were thrown in the air. WS stood silent. There was that lord whom he had once called friend, aloof on his chestnut, the shame of his imprisonment quite forgotten, a great captain bound for the quelling of the kerns. Steed after steed after steed, richly caparisoned, the harness jingling, an ancient dream of chivalric riding between the mean and bowing rows of shops. WS broke his silence to call: 'God bless you, God save you', but it was a feeble cry among the hoarse loud benisons of the London mob. 'God help you,' his heart murmured. A victorious general would return to claim his due -- not bays, not laurels. Those nearest to him in loyalty would then be in most need of God's help. The cavalcade went by in jaunty magnificence; a ragged party of well-wishers joined on behind the wagging cruppers of the rear. Ahead the cheers were still raised under the March sun.
Compassion, compassion. He roamed the streets, alone with his compassion. He dined in an ordinary and walked back to his lodgings, now in Silver Street. He sat at his table to work. Ironic, this play of the warlike Harry assuming the port of Mars. In the late afternoon there came an unexpected darkness, black clouds rolling over the March blue. Then lightning attacked, the punctual unison of kettledrummers grumbled all round the heavens, and balls of hail tinkled and crackled on the pavement. God help us all. He went to his window to look out. After so fair a day's start. He saw a bedraggled march, wet faces, mouth wide in curses unheard under the downpour, cloaks and liveries drenched, the golden hair of his former lord and friend all rats's tails. His pity welled up as he peopled the naked street with this image. But it was the pity one feels for the failed grand gesture, an unworthy pity. His quibbling brain meanwhile juggled with keywords -- a March day's march marred, Mars netted, howling like a child.
And now the reward for his compassion. She is coming again, my heart, coming to these very lodgings. But not in rain; let her not arrive begging for his all too easy pity. It was fine spring weather once more, that great ominous gesture of the heavens trundled off. There was a timid knock. He opened.
'You?' In a plain cloak, unattended, she stood, her eyes lowered. 'It cannot be, how could you know, where did you, who told you where?' They stood, paralysed WS and she demure, unsure of her welcome.
'I did see dis man, I have forgot his name, he is de cloon in your----'
'Kemp, you mean? Our clown, you would say?' Then he shuffled out of his staring trance. 'Enter, enter, you are heartily, come in, it is something untidy in here, see, I will clear these papers from this----' She undid the strings of her cloak, the hood fell from her black curls. An intense agony thrust into his heart as he saw again that delicate brown of her skin, the flat nose, the thick lips whose every fold and contour his remembered kisses knew. It was the agony of knowing that it was departed, all, the insanity of former love (had, having, and in quest to have), leaving behind this deadly godlike sobriety of pity. But why pity? 'You will have,' he said, 'a cup of wine, you have travelled far perhaps, how did you come?'
She sat in the straighter-backed of the two chairs. 'From Clerkenwell only. Dis Kemp was in Clerkenwell yesternight. He was looking for black women, he said. He is a merry laughing man dat is full of jokes.'
'You are not---- What are you doing in Clerkenwell?'
'What can I do?' She moved her delicate shoulders. Giving her wine, WS noted dispassionately the shaking of his hand. 'I have no money. Our tuan is gone to de wars. He will dream at night only of his wife and his child. For dose he did love he has no more any time.'
Our tuan. It was a word of her language. 'So,' said WS slowly, 'he gave you money. You were a paid paramour.'
'I know not dat word. But, yes, he did give me money. I was living in dis place where he was born, Cowdray it is called. Den I did have my child. Den---- Oh, I will not talk of dese tings.'
'Tell me of the child,' said WS, his heart thudding. 'Tell me who is the father of the child.'
She looked at him very steadily before replying. 'De child, I tink, has two faders.'
'Oh, that is not possible, that cannot be, that is all against the rule of nature----'
'If it is not one it is de oder. I remember of de time well. I was not to be blamed. It is you or it is he.'
'And,' insisted WS, 'where is--' Then, 'No. There is another question. Is the child a girl or a boy?'
'A son,' she said with some pride. 'I had a son. A heavy son dat cried much. I said to him dat he must not cry, for he did have two faders.'
'And what name did you give him?'
She shook her head many times. 'Dat I will not say. I did give him my own fader's name. And den I tought dat he must be bin someting, for dat is our custom. He must be bin and den his fader's name, for bin does mean "de son of". But it is you dat have de noble name, not he, our tuan dat is gone to de war.'
'I? I am not noble. I am a gentleman, true, but not noble.'
'You are a sheikh,' she said simply. He stared at her. Then he asked:
'Where is he -- my son?'
'He is wid good people, kind people. Dey are in Bristol, people dat are rich from slaves and are now sorry for dat. And when he is older he will go back, back to my country.'
WS's head span. It was inconceivable. So his blood would, after all, flow to the East. It was his blood, it must be his blood. Suddenly she began to weep, soundlessly. Crystal tears flowed. Crystal. Angrily he shook away the formal image. This was the mother of his son, a woman, not a sonneteer's ideal wraith. He gave her his spotted handkerchief, the one that had wiped away the tears of Harry's laughter. 'Why are you crying?' he asked.
'I cannot go back. I can never go back. But my son must go back to my country.'
WS nodded. He saw that. 'You must be with me now,' he said. 'We must be together. You were mine before you were ever his. You broke your bed-vow, but that is all over and forgiven.'
She wiped her eyes, sniffling. 'And so it must go,' she said. 'An I were in my own country I would be de wife of a raja. But here I must be a mistress. And I grow old and am not wanted. In Clerkenw
ell I will not be wanted, not when you trow me away as he did trow me away. And yet cannot I go back, for de ships go not to my country. Some day dey will go, and den my son will go wid dem. But now----' She wept again.
'I have a wife,' said WS unhappily. 'A wife and daughters. It is not in Christian countries as in the paynim ones. I cannot put my wife away, even though she has committed adultery. Here there is no divorce. All I may do is----' What was all he might do? He could give her money, pay the rent of her lodging, but, as for installing her here---- He caught for an instant an image of Green and his pocked mistress, sister of Cutting Ball, the shrieking bastard Fortunatus, crammed into the filthy room where, belching on Rhenish, cursing loudly for quiet, the poet had hurried at Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay. No, the days when that might have been possible for WS were gone: a gentleman, keeping a black mistress in his lodgings, that would not do. 'I will find some place for you,' he said, 'some quiet and decent place. And give you money.'
She nodded, sniffing away the last of her tears. Weeping had made her seem ugly, more in need of his compassion or pity, whatever it was. 'Do dat. Give me money. Much money.'
'As much as I can,' said WS carefully. His palm itched, the cloven hoof of the business-man filled his shoe. 'And,' he added, 'there is little I would ask in return. I am not the man I was.' She stared at him.
IT WAS, indeed, a phase that was come on him again. A man's natural desires, the voluptuous image after meat or before sleep or on dawn waking -- all, all scared away on very conception by the memory of that afternoon in New Place: the girls packed carefully off to their grandmother that the act of adultery might deliberately and brazenly be performed. Or else the laugh of his late lord, friend, patron rang out all down the corridors of his brain, chilling the starting flesh into subsidence. His substitute for tumescence was there on Maiden Lane, south of the swanned river. It had been a bold Christmas venture, that march over the snow and glassy frost, under the tingling sky, trundling carts laden with the hacked limbs of the body of the old Theatre. The fait accompli, as the French called it (the Huguenot family had helped him with his French; he had needed a whole scene in French, delicately bawdy, for Henry V), and Giles Alleyn, back from the country after Christmas, unable to do anything but rage in impotence. Through the spring and early summer the timbers of the old were transformed into the new, the best playhouse ever: it was a raised fist at the times which Essex, even in absence, haunted with threats of order lost, the string untuned to discord. The censors were at work burning books, gagging the news from Ireland, forbidding whispered rumours of all going badly there, of the Queen's declining health and her successor still unnamed. It was a time of ragged nerves and great and small dissensions.