'We shall be sorry, then.' And he threw on to the unmade bed a few copper coins. 'These are mine. It is a gift.' Then he kissed WS clumsily on the cheek and ran off. More leisurely, WS left the house; the butler, leering, watched him go; a maid (Jenny or Janny or something) stood peering round a door, giggling. He would, by God, be avenged. He would, by Zeus and Isis and all, prevail over these slaves. The roads rang with frost, but he was hot enough within. He had no horse, for it was on a nag bought by Quedgeley for his son Matthew's use that he had first ridden into Gloucestershire. Whither now? Not Bristol, not not Bristol. The western skies were a perpetual burning sunset of shame and humiliation. He took the long road north-east. A man so prone to sin had best go back to his family (soon, he counted the months, to be augmented), to dwell harmless in its bosom. He carried with him some little new experience of life, a memory of Berkeley Castle with its haunting martlets, and a few hundred lines of pseudo-Plautus.
A heavier task could not have been imposed
Than I to speak my griefs unspeakable;
Yet, that the world may witness that my end
Was wrought by nature, not by vile offence,
I'll utter what my sorrow gives me leave.
But the utterance was to be much delayed.
At Whitminster he ate in a frowsy inn. He fell in there with a kinching coe whose trade was false dice. WS was mumbling bread into well-watered cullis when this rogue accosted him. This was no inn for gentlemen, and WS had the look of a gentleman; argal, in the kincher's syllogising, he must be one like himself -- a smooth one, bowing, smiling, without scruple taking where he could. The cove was a thin man in a great black hat like a Brownist; he spake swift like a juggler. 'That broth,' he said, 'fills no bellies. In Gloucester we could eat mince-pies with flawns to follow. And what is your trade, sir? The trade goes badly by the look of things.'
'I am, I think, a poet. I was, though briefly, a schoolmaster.'
'Briefly, eh? Aye aye aye. Well, there is trades honest enow but there is little pickings there. I am called to Gloucester for the practice of a different trade, and profitable. Let us walk thither, but first let me say what I propose to you, who look a brisk enough fellow.'
Briefly, they were to enter an inn severally, WS first to call for ale like a gentleman, this kinching coe to follow with his rattlers. He was to invite play and WS was to go first and win, this other then saying, 'Nay, sir, go to, you are more than my match, yield place kindly to some other.' And then he would ruffle the innocent and reap.
They walked under a frosty sun, and, as they passed Quedgeley, WS spat. The other talked of his craft, whose mysteries would fill a book, what with the barred cater-treys and the barred cinque-deuces, the bristle dice, the contraries, the graviers, demies and fullams. And he told of other rogueries a man might meet in a fair town -- the dummerers, who sought alms for pretending muteness, and the priggers of prancers, or horse-thieves. Then, there were abrams, swadders, jarkmen, dells, morts, uprightmen, glimmer-women. It was a new world, and WS felt himself already committed to it; was he not a cheat, a whoremaster, a corrupter of boys? But he felt also fear of what other things might be within him. He did the bidding of this kincher in Gloucester, at the We Three, which had an inn-sign of two fools, and took silver on his way. He lodged cheaply at another inn and next morning set off for home, his heart beating faster.
But he delayed at Evesham, seeing in that riverside inn where he had once dreamed of one marriage and had another announced to him a cry of players in the inn-yard. He saw with a new eye, he that had these lines of pseudo-Plautus in his traps. The players performed unhandily, with their cart at one end and their hillock of boxes up which they stumbled to make their entrances. Their audience was small (it was a cold, though bright, afternoon) and given to jeering. Whose men these players were he knew not, some petty lordling's belike or even, with counterfeit liveries, masterless men. They were out of what he knew to be the fashion; it was some morality they did of Prudence and Patience and Temperance, all in vile rhymes, and their play took life only when the Vice and his zany tumbled on. These were what the beholders loved, and when Vice was sent packing to Hellmouth, leering, winking, unrepentant, they roared their displeasure and hurled flints they picked up from the yard. But when Vice and zany rose from the dead, as this were some Easter mummers' play, and rattled their boxes for money, the crowd gave a few small coins, they that had them, and WS himself, lordly kincher's accomplice, contributed a whole halfpenny.
He lodged there that night, and when he left Evesham next morning (wet and windy, his cloak well about him), for some reason plays and players were in his mind. The Inns of Court, he thought, and the courts of inns; was there not perhaps some decent middle way, where poesy might be shouted at the world like truth itself? And then he saw that this was not a gentlemanly thought and abandoned it. Yet it was to blank verse his feet tramped, tired and tender now, into Warwickshire, beating out the feet of tragic speeches:
And for that sin I did I am cast off,
Embracing now my hell with stoic soul.
Near Temple Grafton a devil-raven on a bare elm-branch croaked: 'Anne Anne Anne Anne.' Then it flew before him on his Stratford way, screeching 'Anne Anne Anne Anne' like a harbinger.
X
RAILINGS, tears, embraces, eventually appetite: so much for big-bellied Anne. Why am I back? I am back because I was lonely for my wife and child, for my father and mother and sister and little brothers. Though none could call Gilbert little; a man now, he had shot up to slouching boniness, growling about God; when he fell in his falling-sickness the house rumbled and the pewter sang. Richard, still a limping boy, yet had settled into his face a mature and foxy look. Susanna had grown. For the rest, things were much as they had been (after all, it had not been many months); Stratford was Stratford yet. His father's fortunes had not mended; garments were patched; the thatch of the roof was brown, burnt, thin, rustling at night (an adder's nest?).
'Well,' said his father, 'thou art home in a good time, for Master Rogers was but two days agone saying about his need of a clerk and how such as thyself would fit to perfection.'
Henry Rogers, the Town Clerk, was a decent tooth-sucking man who smelt musty and, indeed, had a relish for death and dust. Well, that was right, for was not the law a raw head and bloody bones haunting the living? A man could oft, through the law's mediacy, rule stronger from the grave than in life. Did not the rule of, say, William the Conqueror grow more hard and firm on them year after year? William the Non-Conqueror, nay William the Conquered, saw sourly again a fresh rearrangement of his life. And so to learning the high terms and rites of the law's creaking workings, the quiddits and quillets, statutes, recognizances, double vouchers, conveyances. It was putting calfskins to another use, for were not parchments made of calfskins?
'Amen amen amen,' said WS.
'Feet of fines,' tooth-sucked Master Rogers. 'He to whom the land is to be conveyed must sue the holder for wrongful keeping of him out of possession. It is a legal fiction, that is what it is called.' His chambers smelt of dead and lively law, ruling from the mad and reasonable world of the dead. 'Then the defendant acknowledgeth the plaintiff's right. Then this compromise is to be entered into court records and all set out in the threefold indenture, at the foot of the fine.'
'But what is this fine?'
'A fine is the compromise of a collusive suit as a mode of conveyance, all ordinary modes being unsuitable. It is part of our history, it is from Richard the First onwards.'
'Ah, words. It is all words.'
'This realm is ruled by words.' WS seemed suddenly to see the light. Words, pretences, fictions. They ruled. 'You must learn the French language,' said Master Rogers. He gave one vigorous tooth-suck and turned to his loaded shelves. So there was the Conqueror again. 'Here is a merry and bawdy book,' he leered at WS. 'It is Rabelais, a tale of giants. We will read it together each day after dinner.'
Oh, the grey days of winter, Anne growing daily greater an
d greater, that extra mouth to be fed soon to blare forth its greeting to the dirty world. 'To be born,' sucked Master Rogers cheerfully, 'is to start to die. You are condemning a soul to death.'
Gargantua, after this disgusting stuff of arse-wiping with a live goose's neck, is sent to a great sophister-doctor called Tubal Holofernes. WS was learning no French; Master Rogers sat with the book, reading it, roaring, out in English. ' "Afterwards he got an old man with a cough to teach him, whose name was Maitre Jobelin Bride, that is, the fool with the muzzle." But we must skip all this and come to more bawdry. This is all for your education, young man.'
Christmas over, Anne grown large to prodigy almost, WS settling to the bowing, smiling, hand-rubbing effigy of small law clerk, kind husband, lullaying Susanna on his knee of firelit evenings. January limping along, each dull day a candlemas in the dark chambers, and then, at true Candlemas, Gilbert came to call him from his conveyances. Master Rogers was gone for a long costive seance in the privy, belike with a live goose. It was a stormy morning, the rain beating without as if it were mad, dripping (spies to the great battalions) from the ceiling and, jump on Gilbert's entering, blotting the name WILSON that WS had just engrossed. He knew what it was, Anne's pains being on her that morning ere he had left; he rose and reached for his cloak, nodding, before Gilbert could speak. Then Gilbert said, rumbling:
'They are come, aye, both. From their mother's belly, as it might be. God hath sent them for a sign in Israel.' He stood there in his kersey cloak, a rain-pool forming round his boots, drip after drip dropping stately from his nose-end.
'Both? Them?'
'Aye, of each kind one. A girl and a boy.'
'Two? Twins?' That word had meant only bitterness. And then, 'A boy? A son? I have a son?' A son; he had begotten a son, a man-child. He looked down at his parchment, at that name the rain had smeared.
'And now,' said Gilbert, 'th'art as Noah in all this floodwater with three childer.'
'Sons,' smiled WS. 'Noah had all sons.' He smiled (still, that fact of twins rankled, as though God and Nature knew, noted, minded, cared, thrust back to stain joy, a son.)
'That I know,' said grave Gilbert. 'There was Sem and Ham and eke Japhet, aye. That is a S and a H' (he finger-scrawled them in the dust of Master Rogers's table) 'and there is the other letter I know not.' (He meant it was I or HI or J.) 'And thou hast a S.'
WS marked his brother as he were an oracle. Susanna, yes, his purity, pharos in lust's sea. And his son should be Ham, nay Hamnet. And there was himself, WS, but some few months a poor Holofernes, like that schoolmaster in Rabelais's bawdy book, and his second daughter should be Judith.
'Oh,' said WS. 'The mother. Anne. My wife. How does she?'
'Well. Very well. She shouted and cried much.'
'So, then.' WS smiled ruefully. 'All is as it is always. Let us go see mother and twins.' They wrapped their cloaks closely about them. 'Our respects and our homage.' They sailed out into the flood ...
And for ourselves (this first bottle is showing its bottom), it is time we loosed our pigeon to seek the settled dry land of a career that ended in---- We shall see what it ended in. He has done all he can in Stratford, or nearly all, and the horns wind and bells ring for him, the sails belly in the land-breeze. We have but to open a door that any key will fit.
Let us say midsummer, '87. There rode into Stratford, each actor on his ass, the Queen's Men. It was a dry and dusty summer, dry as a bleached bone on a bone-white beach. What were these coming, this laughing dozen, boasting in the inn that they were Grooms of the Chamber, all, throwing carelessly around the name Tilney and eke Walsingham? Rain, what was wanted was rain; they were not bringing that. As God had once flooded the earth for man's sins, might He not now be proposing to cast them into an oven? Sin, sin, sin. It had been hammered at them from last Sunday's pulpit. And who was the worst sinner among them? But here was a man jigging about with a flat face, squashed nose, squint, in russet suit and cap with buttons, short boots strapped at the ankle rustic-wise, leather money-bag at's waist, squealing and thudding, in a kind of weak gnat-music, on pipe and tabor. Behind him there waddled another, younger, his zany, and he had a board on which was engrossed the seven deadly sins.
That is Dick Tarleton, those that knew said. Hast not heard of Dick Tarleton? And that with him is Gemp or Camp or Kempe or suchlike, trill-lillies jinging round's calves. This Tarleton was once close to Her Majesty but (whisper it) he hath incurred her displeasure with some impudent mock about Sir Walter Ralegh and the Earl of Leicester. His eyes are not merry, look, though his tongue quip never so.
Ho there, all, give ear to your betters. There is one blats like a flayed pudding and, by Godspod, I shall be after him with my little whip. Hark, all, your doubtful worships are royally bidden to a feast of wrongdoing (oh, you will like that well enough for all your long faces) and thereto will be added for good measure a good measure, nay a treasure of good measures, viddy or skiddy lissit a jig, aye, a jig. Here is your only jigmaker. And it will be tomorrow, you whoreson scurvyrumps, you cheesefoots, you heavenhigh stinkards and cackards.
They pranced, jeering and calling, against the drop-curtain of a fiery sunset, Jehovah's terrible wrath. Rain, when would the rain come? the seven deadly sins. A jig to follow. There was song and light in the inn, the trolling of a ditty of love over the ale-pots:
And so, my dearest heart,
Though yet I know
That we must part, must part,
Say thou not so ...
'The heat,' said WS, naked at the open window. Susanna now slept in Joan's chamber, as once before that other Anne. But the twins were cradled here, sleeping now. And Anne too, slender, carrying no further child, sat naked as her husband. The night air crackled with a sense of something to come -- the moon to draw nearer the earth, Antichrist to caper over the cobbles. Well, thought WS, as for sin it is long since I sinned; they can make no scapegoat of me. He heard in the distance other, not singing, voices. Perhaps it was a company gone to pray aloud at the edges of the fields, asking God to flush green the dry brown meadows.
Farewell, farewell, my blessing,
Too dear thou art
For any man's possessing;
And so we part ...
He looked at his wife's slim moist back, its comely tapering to the waist from the fair wide shoulders. Hearing that song, he felt a regret he could not name nor place. She was reading a small book, holding it close to her eyes; she was growing nearsighted. He looked over her shoulder at the tight-knitted print. 'So then he did fare forth and wander many a daie till that a fairer face than hers should greete his eyes, yet fairer face sawe he notte and in his hearte he then knewe that none other mighte haue all his loue ...' Some little tale of venery, then, delicate and meet for a woman. In pity he bent to kiss her bare shoulder. She was both surprised and ready. She was speedy to put down her book. Body against moist body kissed. I am doing right, thought WS; here is no sin. Arms snaked and stroked.
What was this noise outside in the street? It had come nearer. It was no noise of praying but of jeering. The naked man and woman on the bed looked up, he more distracted than she from work that had not yet become urgent. There were blows and buffets along with the jeers; dogs barked; Hamnet and Judith grew restive in their sleep; Gilbert in the next room murmured; WS heard his father cough. WS got up from the bed, his rod sinking, and went to the window to see. He saw, under the midsummer moon, a mob of Stratford citizens driving a whimpering old woman before them, Madge Bowyer, cat-queen, cartomancer. Seven deadly sins. Black. Gold. What had that been?
'Witch! Bring the rain back!'
'Unholy spells, and her cats be devils!'
'Strip her to her skin!'
'Lash the evil out!'
Some youngsters were beating her with sticks; her gown was torn, brown old dried flesh peering in the moonlight; she wept, she panted as she would die, trying to run from her tormentors; she tripped and fell; they laughed, whipping her up with birch-boughs. It wa
s like a deadly parody of Tarleton and the prancing players.
'On thy feet, witch! Out of town with her!'
Anne came from soothing the twins, both of whom had awakened crying. 'What is it? Let me see.' She brought her heavy breasts to the sill. She saw. 'Oh,' she said, 'they are killing her.' One young man carried a torch; he waved it about old Madge till she screamed in fear; her rags caught alight and she beat and beat the grinning flame out, yelling, then breathless, ready to drop. 'Now,' said Anne, panting. 'Now, at the window.' WS looked at her, sick, incredulous. 'Now, now, oh, quickly!' He shrank away from her, into the room's shadows.
'No!' Here was the witch, here. The driving mob passed on raggedly, beating, jeering.
'Is it the players?' called his father from the corridor.
'Yes, yes, the players,' WS replied.
The voices were more distant:
'She hath the Seven Deadly Sins! Beat her to church to pray!'
'How, devils in church? Burn her!'
WS trembled, picking up his clothes from the chair where he had laid them. She was still at the window, moaning. 'The end,' he said, retching the words out, 'that must be the end.' She came staggering towards him in her nakedness. He cringed from the threat of her touching him. He dressed in a hopping fumbling dance, like a dressing Tarleton, comic, the jig after the bloody play.
At the street's end the mob was quietening, shrinking away from what it, a thing, had done and tried to do, murmuring, breaking up into family pairs, companies of three. Some graver men and women had come out, some wrapped in their night-gowns. WS saw that it was Alderman Perkes, a bulky man, that had lifted Madge Bowyer. Her slack arms were swinging; her head lolled, tongue out, the moon showing blood on her mouth. And now the beadle in his shirt had appeared, driving the mob home with his staff of office. WS foresaw that house of hers, dock and nettle high around it in summer, forlorn at last in winter, the swinging door fallen from its hinges, the cats having taken to the fields to eat shrews, the mice in possession till the last of the mildewed bread should be gone, the flour-bin emptied. If not now, then next time.