Honestly. Illiterate doesn’t mean stupid, and where do they think Shakespeare got all those wonderful, witty, intelligent women for his plays—Beatrice and Rosalind and Cordelia and Kate—if not from his wife and daughters?
If I were concocting a Shakespeare conspiracy theory, it would have to take Anne into account. And it wouldn’t have any codes or committees. It would have all the things Shakespeare liked so well: secrets and murder and romance. And mistaken identities.
WINTER’S TALE
“Is the will here?” he said. “I need …”
“Thou hast no need of wills,” I said, putting my hand upon his poor hot brow. “You have but a fever, husband. You should not have stayed so late last eve with Master Drayton.”
“A fever?” he said. “Aye, it must be so. It was raining when I rode home, and now my head is like to split in twain.”
“I have sent to John for medicine. It will be here soon.”
“John?” he said, alarmed, half rising in the bed. “I had forgot Old John. I must needs bequeath the old man something. When he came to London—”
“I spoke of John Hall, thy son-in-law,” I said. “He will bring you somewhat for thy fever.”
“I must leave Old John something in my will, that he’ll keep silence.”
“Old John will not betray you,” I said. He hath been silent, lo, these twelve winters, buried in Trinity Church, no danger to anyone. “Hush, thee, and rest awhile.”
“I would leave him something of gaud and glitter. The gilt-and-silver bowl I sent thee from London. Do you remember it?”
“Yea, I remember it,” I said.
The bowl had come at midday as I was making the second-best bed. I had already made the best bed for the guests, if any came with him, airing the hangings and putting on a new featherbed, and was going into my room to see to the second-best bed when my daughter Judith called up the stairs that a rider had come. I thought that it was he and left the bed unturned and forgot. Ere I remembered it, it was late afternoon, all the preparations made and we in our new clothes.
“I should have stuffed a new featherbed,” I said, laying the coverlid upon the press. “This one is flattened out and full of dust.”
“You will spoil your new gown, Mother,” Judith said, standing well away. “What matters if the bed be turned? He’ll notice not the beds, so glad he’ll be to see his family.”
“Will he be glad?” Susanna said. “He waited long enough for this homecoming, if it be that. What does he want, I wonder.” She took the sheets and folded them. Elizabeth climbed onto the bed to fetch a pillow and brought it me, though it was twice her size.
“To see his daughters, perhaps, or his grandaughter, and make his peace with all of us,” Judith said. She took the pillow from Elizabeth gingerly and brushed her skirts when she had laid it down. “It will be dark soon.”
“ ’Tis light enough for us to make a bed,” I said, reaching my hands to lift it up. “Come, help me turn the featherbed, daughters.” Susanna took one side, Judith the other, all unwillingly.
“I’ll turn it,” Elizabeth said, squeezing herself next the wall at the foot, all eagerness to help and like to have her little fingers crushed.
“Wilt thou go out and see if they are coming, granddaughter?” I said. Elizabeth clambered over the bed, kirtle and long hair flying.
“Put on thy cloak, Bess,” Susanna cried after her.
“Aye, Mother.”
“This room was ever dark,” Judith said. “I know not why you took it for your own, Mother. The window is high and small, and the narrow door shuts out the light. Father may be ill pleased at such a narrow bed.”
It were well if he were, I thought. It were well if he found it dark and cramped and would sleep elsewhere. “Now,” I said, and we three heaved the featherbed up and over the foot of the bedstead. Dust and feathers flew about, filling the room.
“Oh, look at my doublet,” Judith said, brushing at the ruffles on her bosom. “Now we shall have to sweep again. Can you not get the serving boy to do this?”
“He is laying the fires,” I said, pulling at the underside.
“Well, the cook then.”
“She is cooking. Come, one more turn and we’ll be done with it.”
“Dost thou hear something?” she said, shaking out her skirts. She went out. “Have they come, Bess?” she called.
I waited, listening for the sound of horses’ hooves, but I heard naught.
Susanna stood still at the side of the bed, holding the linen sheet. “What think thee of this visitation, Mother? Thou hast said naught of it since word arrived of his coming.”
What could I answer her? That I feared this day as I had feared no other? The day the message had come, I’d taken it from Susanna’s hand and tried to draw its meaning out, though she had read it out already and I had never learnt to read. “To my wife,” it had read. “I will arrive in Stratford on the twelfth day of December.” I had kept the message by me from that day to this, trying to see the meaning of it, but I could not cipher its meaning. To my wife, I will arrive in Stratford on the twelfth day of December. To my wife.
“I have had much to do,” I said. I gave the featherbed a mighty pull and brought it flat across the bed. “New rushes to be laid within the hall, the baking to be done, the beds to make.”
“He came not to his parents’ funeral, nor Hamnet’s, nor to my wedding. Why comes he now?”
I smoothed the featherbed, pressing the corners so that they lay neat and smooth.
“If the house be too full of guests, you can come to us at the croft, Mother,” Susanna said. She folded out the sheet and held it to me. “Or if he … you ever have a home with us.”
“ ’Twas but a passing townsman,” Judith said, coming back into the room. “Think you he will bring friends with him from London?”
“His message said he would arrive today,” Susanna said, and bellied out the sheet, sweet with lavender, over the bed. “Naught else. Nor who should accompany him or why he comes or whether he will stay.”
“Come, he will stay,” Judith said, coming to fold the sheet against the side. “I hope his friends are young and handsome.”
There was a creak upon the stairs. We stopped, stooped over the bed.
“Bess?” Susanna inquired.
“Nay, my little grandniece stands outside all uncovered,” Joan said, and came, creaking, into the room. She wore a yellow ruff so high it seem’d to throttle her. It was the ruff that creak’d, or mayhap her leather farthingale. “I told her she will catch the sweating fever. I bade her put her on a heavier cloak, but she heeded me not.”
“Hath it begun to snow, sister-in-law?” I said.
“Nay, but it looks to ere long.” She sat upon the bed. “Are you not dressed, and my brother nearly here?” She spread her overskirts on either side that we might see her satin petticoat. “You look a common country wife.”
“I am a common country wife,” I said. “Good sister, we must make the bed.”
She stood up, the ruff creaking as if it were a signboard on a tavern. “A cold welcome for your husband,” she said, “the beds unmade, the children unattended, and you in rough, low broadcloth.” She sat down on the coverlid on the press. “A winter’s welcome.”
I stuffed the pillows into their cases with something force. “Where is your husband, madam?” I said, and putting the pillows to the bed, boxed them a blow or two to make them plump.
“Home with the ague,” she said, turning to look at Susanna, her ruff making a fearsome sound. “And where is yours?”
“Attending to a patient in Shottery,” Susanna said, still sweetly. “He will be here anon.”
“Why wear you that unbecoming blue, Susanna?” Joan said. “And Judith, your collar is so small it scarcely shows.”
“At least ’tis silent,” Judith said.
“He will not know you, Judith, so sharp-tongued have you become. You were a sweet babe when he left. He’ll know not you either, Goo
d Sister Anne, so pale and old you look. He’ll not look so, I wot. But then, he’s not as old as you.”
“No, nor so busy,” I said. I took the quilt from off the bed-rail and laid it on the bed.
“I remember me when he was gone to London, Anne. You said you would not e’er see him again. What say you now?”
“He is not here, and dusk is fast upon us,” Susanna said. “I say he will not come.”
“I wonder what my brother will think of the impertinent daughters he hath raised,” Joan said.
“He raised us not,” Susanna said hotly, and on the same breath Judith cried out, “At least we do not trick ourselves out like—”
“Let us not quarrel,” I said, putting myself between them and their aunt. “We all are tired and vexed with worry that it is so late. Good Sister Joan, I had forgot to tell you. A gift hath come from him this very day. A gilt-and-silver bowl. ’Tis on the table in the hall.”
“Gilt?” Joan said.
“Aye, and silver. A broad bowl for the punch. I will with thee to see it.”
“Let us go down, then,” she said, rising from the chest with a great sound, like a gallows in a wind. I picked the coverlid up.
“They’ve come!” Elizabeth shouted. She burst into the room, the hood of her cloak flung back from her hair and her cheeks as red as apples. “Four of them! On horses!”
Joan pressed her hands to her bosom momently, then adjusted her ruff. “What does he look like, Bess?” she asked the little girl. “Doth he be very changed?”
Elizabeth gave her an impatient glance. “I never saw him ere this. I know not even which one he is.”
“Four of them?” Judith said. “Be the others young?”
“I told thee,” Elizabeth said, stamping her little foot. “I know not which is which.” She tugged at her mother’s sleeve. “Come!”
Susanna plucked a feather from my cap. “Mother … ?” she said.
I stood, the coverlid still held against me like a shield. “The bed’s not yet made,” I said.
“Marry, I’ll not leave my brother ungreeted,” Joan said. She gathered her skirts. “I’ll go down alone.”
“No!” I said. I lay the coverlid over the end of the bedstead. “We must all go together,” I seized Elizabeth’s hand and let her run me down the stairs ahead of them, that Joan might not reach the door before me.
• • •
“Now I remember me,” he said. “I left the bowl to Judith. What was bequeath’d to Joan?”
“Thy clothes,” I said smilingly. “You said ’twould keep her silent as she walked.”
“Ay, she is possessed of strange and several noises of roaring, shrieking, howling, jingling chains.…” He took my hand. His own was dry and rough as his night smock, and hot as fire. “Silent. She must keep silent. I should have left her something more.”
“The will bequeaths her twenty pounds a year and the house on Henley Street. You have no need of purchasing her silence. She knows naught.”
“Aye, but what if she, seeing my cold corpse, should on a sudden realize?”
“What talk is this of corpses?” I said, pulling my hand vexatiously away. I pulled the sheet to cover him. “You had too merry a meeting with thy friends, and now a little fever. You’ll soon be well again.”
“I was sick when I came,” he said. “How long ago it seems. Three years. I was sick, but you made me well again. I am so cold. Is’t winter?”
I wished for John to come. “ ’Tis April. It is the fever makes thee cold.”
“ ’Twas winter when I came, do you remember? A cold day.”
“Aye, a cold day.”
He had sat still on his horse. The others had dismounted, the oldest and broadest of them doubled, his hands to his knees, as though to catch his breath, the younger ones rubbing their hands against the cold. A white dog ran about their legs, foolishly barking. The young men had sharp beards and sharper faces, though their clothes bespoke them gentlemen. The one who was the master of the dog, if he could be called so, had on a collar twice wider than Joan’s, the other a brown cap with russet feathers stolen from a barnyard cock.
“I should not have plucked the feather from your cap, Mother,” Susanna whispered. “It is the fashion.”
“Oh, look,” Joan said, squeezing through the door. “He hath not changed a bit!”
“Which one is my grandfather?” Elizabeth said, her little hand clasped to mine.
They turned to look at us, the feathered one with a face canny as a fox’s, the collared one with a gawking gaze. The bent man stood with a groan that made the dog run at him. His doublet was quilted and puffed as to make him look twice as broad as his own girth. “Come, come, Will,” he said, turning to look at him still on his horse, “we’ve come to the wrong house. These ladies are too young and fair to be thy family.”
Joan laughed, a screeching sound like the cackle of a hen.
“Is he the one on the horse?” Elizabeth said, squeezing my numbed hand and jumping up and down.
“You did not tell me that he was so well-favored, Mother,” Judith said in my ear.
He handed down a metal chest behind him. The round man gave it to the feathered one and put a hand up to help him dismount. He came down off the horse oddly, grasping the quilted shoulder with one hand, the horse’s neck with the other, and heaving himself over and down on his left leg. He stepped forward, stiff-gaited, watching us.
“See how he limps!” Joan cried.
I could not feel the wind, e’en though it bellied his short cloak and Elizabeth’s hair. “Which one is my grandfather?” she said, fairly dancing in her impatience.
I would have made her answer, but I could not speak nor move. I only stood, quiet as a statue, and looked at him. He looked older even than I, the hair half-gone on the crown of his head. I had not thought him to look so old. His face was seamed with lines that gave it a sadness of demeanor, as if he had endured many November’s blasts. A winter’s face, sad and tired but not unkind, and that I had not thought it to be either.
The round-bellied gentleman turned to us and smiled. “Come, ladies, well met,” he said with a merry, booming voice that conquered the wind. “I was long upon the road from London and thought not to find such fair ladies at the end of it. My name is Michael Drayton. And these two gentlemen are Gadshill”—he pointed at the one with the ruff, then at the fox—“and Bardolph. Two actors they, and I a poet and lover of fair ladies.” His voice and manner were merry, but he looked troubledly from Joan to me and back again. “Come, tell me your names and which of you his wife and which his daughters, that I speak not amiss.”
“Come, Mother, speak and bid them welcome,” Judith whispered, and nudged at my elbow, but still I could not speak nor move nor breathe.
He moved not either, though Master Drayton looked at him. I could not read his face. Was he dismayed, or vexed, or only weary?
“If you’ll not greet him, I shall,” Joan whispered, bending her head to me with a snapping sound. She stretched her arms toward them. “Welcome—”
I stepped down off the porch. “Husband, I bid thee welcome,” I said, and kissed him on his lined cheek. “I could not speak at first, my husband, so struck was I to see thee after such an absence.” I took his arm and turned to Master Drayton. “I bid thee welcome, too, and thee, and thee,” I said, nodding to the young men. The ruffed one wore now a silly grin, though the one with the feathers looked foxy still. “ ’Tis a poor country welcome we have to give, but we’ve warm fires and hot supper and soft beds.”
“Aye, and pretty maids,” Drayton said. He took my hand and kissed it in the French fashion. “I think that I will stay the winter long.”
I smiled at him. “Come then, we’ll out of the cold,” I said.
“How looks he, Mother?” Susanna whispered to me as I passed. “Find you him very changed?”
“Aye, very changed,” I said.
“I have bequeathed naught to Drayton,” he said. “I should have done.?
??
“There is no need,” I said, laying a cool cloth on his brow. “He is thy friend.”
“I would have left him some token of my friendship. And thee some token of my love. You know why I could not bequeath the property to you.” He took hold of my hand with his own burning one. “If it were found out after my death, I would not have men say I bought your silence.”
“I have my widow’s portion, and Susanna and John will care for me,” I said, loosing his hand to dip the cloth in the bowl again and wring it. “She is a good daughter.”
“Aye, a good daughter, though she loved me not at first. Nor did thee.”
“That is not true,” I said.
“Come, Mistress Anne, when did you love me?” he said. I laid the cloth across his brow. He closed his eyes and sighed, and seemed to sleep.
“The very instant that I saw you,” I said.
We made a slow progress into the house, he leaning on me as we stepp’d over the threshold and into the hall. “My leg grows stiff when I have ridden awhile,” he said. “I need but to stand by the fire a little.”
Joan crowded close behind, her farthingale filling the door so that the others could not follow till she was through. Master Drayton followed upon her skirts, telling Judith and Susanna in a loud and merry voice of what had passed upon the road from London. “As we came across the bridge, four rogues in buckram thrust at me.” Drayton gestured bravely. Elizabeth stared at him, her eyes round.
The young men, Fox and Frill, entered the hall, bearing bags and the metal chest. They stopped inside the door to hear the tale that Drayton told. Frill dropped his sacks with a thump upon the floor. The Fox set the casket beside it.
“These four began to give me ground, but I followed me close.”
“Husband,” I said under cover of his windy voice, “thou must needs compliment thy sister Joan Hart on her new ruff. She is most proud of it.” He gazed at me, and still I could not decipher his look. “Thy daughters, too, have new finery for this occasion. Susanna hath a blue—”
“Surely a man knows his own daughters,” Joan said ere I could finish speaking, “though he hath not had a chance to greet them. Thy wife would keep thee all to herself.”