Impossible Things

  He looked about him. “A great reckoning in a little room,” he said in a gentler voice than before. “I advised against his coming. I said it was not safe while any still lived who knew him, but he would see the daughters. Does the sister know?”

  “Nay,” I said. I laid the coverlid upon the bed and looked to put it so that it hung straight. I set the bolsters at the head of the bed. “Who is he?”

  He sat upon the press, his hands on his stout knees. “There was a time I could have answered you,” he said. “I knew him long ago.”

  “Before the murder?”

  “Before the murders.”

  “They killed others?” I said. “Besides my husband?”

  “Only one other,” he said. His voice downstairs had been loud and bold, an actor’s voice, but now it was so low I could scarce hear him, as though he spoke to himself. “You asked me who he is. I know not, though he was but a young man when first I knew him, a roguish young man, full of ambition and touched by genius, but reckless, overproud, taking thought only for himself.” He stopped and sat, rubbing his hands along his thighs. “Walsingham’s henchmen killed more men than they knew that wicked day at Deptford. I saw him on the street afterwards and knew him not, he was so changed. I would show you something,” he said, and raised himself awkwardly. He went to the chest in the corner, opened it, and proferred me the papers that lay therein. “Read them,” he said.

  I gave them back to him. “I cannot read.”

  “Then all is lost,” he said. “I thought to bargain with you for his life with these his plays.”

  “To buy me.”

  “I think you cannot be bought, but, aye, I would buy you any way I could to keep him safe. He hath been ill these two winters past. He has need of your refuge. The London air is bad for him, and there are rumors, from whence I know not.”

  “The young men you brought here have heard them.”

  “Aye, and wait their chance. I know that naught can replace your husband.”

  “No,” I said, thinking of how he had stolen my honor and my mother’s plate and run away to London.

  “You cannot bring your husband back from the dead, if you tell all the world. You will but cause another murder. I’ll not say one man’s life is worth more than another’s.” He brandished the papers. “No, by God, I will say it! Your husband could not have written words like these. This man is worth a hundred men, and I’ll not see him hanged.”

  He lay the papers back into the chest and closed the lid. “Let us go back to London, and keep silence.”

  Elizabeth ran into the room. “Come, granddame, come. We are to have a play.”

  “A play?” Drayton said. He lifted Elizabeth up into his arms. “Madam, he has no life save what you grant him,” he said, and carried her down the stairs.

  “The decoction will make him sleep,” John Hall said.

  He slept already, his face less lined in rest. “And quench the fever?”

  He shook his head. “I know not if it will. I fear it is his heart that brings it on.”

  He put the cup into the pouch he carried. “I give you this,” he said. He proffered me a sheaf of papers, closely writ.

  “What is’t?”

  “My journal. Thy husband’s illness is there, my treatments of it, and all my thoughts. I’d have thee burn it.”

  “Why?”

  “We have been friends these three years. We’d drink a cup of ale, and sit, and talk. One day he chanced to speak of a play he’d writ, a sad play of a man who’d bartered his soul to the devil. He spoke of it as if he had forgot that I was with him: how it was writ and when, where acted. He marked not that I looked at him with wonder, and after a little, we went on to other things.”

  He closed the pouch. “The play he spoke of was Kit Marlowe’s, who was killed in a brawl at Deptford these long years since.” He took the papers back from me and thrust them in the candle’s flame.

  “Hast thou told Susanna?”

  “I would not twice deprive her of a father.” The pages flamed. He thrust them in the grate and watched them burn.

  “His worry is all Susanna’s inheritance,” I said, “and Judith’s. He bade me burn his plays.”

  “And Marlowe’s?” he said, dividing the charring pages with his foot that they might the better burn. “Hast thou done it?”

  A little piece of blackened paper flew up, the writing all burnt away. “Yes,” I said.

  “Judith said we are to have a play,” Elizabeth said as we descended the stairs. She freed herself from Drayton’s arms and ran into the hall.

  “Judith?” I said, and looked to where she stood. The Fox was at her side, his feathered cap wet with snow. He leaned against the wall, seeming not even to listen. The Frill squatted by the hearth, stretching his hands to the fire.

  “Oh, grandsire, prithee do!” Elizabeth said, half climbing into his lap. “I never saw a play.”

  “Yes, brother, a play,” Joan said.

  Drayton stepped between them. “We are too few for a company, Mistress Bess,” he said, pulling at Elizabeth’s ribbon to make her laugh, “and the hour too late.”

  “Only a little one, grandsire?” she begged.

  “It is too late,” he said, looking at me. “But you shall have your play.”

  The Fox stepped forward, too quick, taking the Frill by the sleeve and pulling him to his feet. “What shall we, Master Will?” he said, smiling with his sharp teeth. “A play within a play?”

  “Aye,” Drayton said loudly. “Let us do Bottom’s troupe at Pyramus and Thisbe.”

  The Fox smiled wider. “Or the mousetrap?” All of them looked at him, Judith smiling, the Fox waiting to snap, Master Drayton with a face taken suddenly sober. But he looked not at them, nor at Bess, who had climbed into his lap. He looked at me.

  “A sad tale’s best for winter,” he said. He turned to the Frill. “Do ye the letter scene from Measure. Begin ye, ‘Let this Barnardine.’ ”

  The Frill struck a pose, his hand raised in the air as if to strike. “ ‘Let this Barnardine be this morning executed and his head borne to Angelo,’ ” he said in a loud voice.

  He stopped, his finger pointing toward the Fox, who did not answer.

  Drayton said, “ ’tis an old play. They know it not. Come, let’s have Bottom. I’ll act the ass.”

  “If they know not the play, then I’ll explain it,” the Fox said. “The play is called Measure for Measure. It is the story of a young man who is in difficulty with the law and would be hanged, but another is killed in his place.” He pointed at the Frill. “Play out the play.”

  “ ‘Let this Barnardine be this morning executed and his head borne to Angelo.’ ” the Frill said.

  The Fox looked at Drayton. “ ‘Angelo hath seen them both, and will discover the favor.’ ”

  The Frill smiled, and it was a smile less slack-jawed and more cruel than I had seen, a wolfen smile. “ ‘Oh, Death’s a great disguiser,’ ” he said.

  “An end to this!” I said.

  Both of them looked at me, Fox and Frill, disturbed from their prey.

  “The child is half-asleep,” I said.

  “I am not!” Bess said, rubbing at her eyes, which made the party laugh.

  I stood her down from off his lap. “Thou mayest have plays tomorrow, and tomorrow, and the next day. Thy grandfather is home to stay.”

  Susanna hurried forward. “Good night, Father. I am well content that you are home.” She fastened Bess’s cloak about her neck.

  “Will you a play for me tomorrow, grandsire?” Bess said.

  He stroked her hair. “Aye, tomorrow.”

  Bess flung her arms about his neck. “Good night, grandsire.”

  John Hall picked up the child in his arms. She lay her head upon his shoulder. “I will take the actors with us,” John said softly to me. “I trust them not in the house with Judith.”

  He turned to the Fox and Frill and said in a loud voice, “Gentlemen, you’re to bed with us tonigh
t. Will you come now? Aunt Joan, we will walk you home.”

  “Nay,” Joan said haughtily, stretching her neck to look more proud. Her ruff moaned and creaked. “I would stay awhile, and them with me.”

  John opened the door, and they went out into the snow, Elizabeth already asleep.

  “Marry, now they are gone, we’ll have our play, brother.”

  “Nay,” I said, kneeling to put my hands in his. “I am a wife long parted from her husband. I would to bed with him ere sunrise.”

  “You loved not your husband so well in the old days,” Joan said, her hands upon her hips. “Brother, you will not let her rule you?”

  “I shall do whatever she wills.”

  “I know a scene will do us perfectly,” Drayton said. He spread his arms. “ ‘Our revels now are ended.’ ” He donned his wide cloak. “Come, Mistress Joan, I will accompany thee to thy home and these two to Hall’s croft and thence to a tavern for a drop or two of sack ere I return.”

  Judith walked with them to the far end of the hall and opened the door. I knelt still with his hands in mine. “Why did you this?” he asked. “Hath Drayton purchased you with pity?”

  “Nay,” I said softly. “You cannot leave. Your daughters would be sad to have you go, and you have promised Elizabeth a play. You asked if there was aught that you could do for them. Be thou their father.”

  “I will and you will answer me one question. Tell me when you discovered me.”

  “I knew you ere you came.”

  His hands clasped mine.

  “When Hamnet died, and Old John went to London to tell my husband,” I said, “he came home with a coat of arms he said his son had got for him, but I believed him not. His son, my husband, would ne’er have raised his hand to help his father or to give his daughters a house to dwell in. I knew it was not he who did us such kindness, but another.”

  “All these long years I thought that none knew me, that all believed me dead. And so it was as I were dead, and buried in Deptford, and he the one who lived. But you knew me.”

  “Yes.”

  “And hated me not, though I had killed your husband.”

  “I knew not he was dead. I thought he’d lost us dicing, or sold us to a kinder master.”

  “Sold?” he said. “What manner of man would sell such treasure?”

  “ ‘The iron tongue of midnight hath told twelve. Good night, good rest!’ ” Drayton called from the door. “ ‘Sweet suitors, to bed.’ ”

  I rose from where I knelt, holding still to his hands. “Come, husband,” I said. “The bed at last is made, in time for bed.”

  “The bed,” he said, so weak I scarce could hear him.

  “What is’t, husband?”

  “I have left you a remembrance in the will.” He smiled at me. “I will not tell you of it now. ‘Twill please thee to hear it when the will is read.”

  He had forgot that I sat by him when he made his will.

  “John’s foul decoction hath made me better,” he said. “I am as one again, not split in two.”

  I laid my hand upon his brow. It was more hot than ever. I went to fetch another quilt from out the chest.

  “Nay, come and sit with me and hold my hands,” he said. “I have paid the sexton a French crown to write a curse upon my grave, that none will dig me up and say, That is not he.’ ”

  “Prithee, speak not of dying,” I said.

  “I wrote not mine own will, but signed it only. They had him write out his name ere they killed him, that I might copy it.”

  “I know, husband. Soft, do not fret thyself with—”

  “It matters not whose name is on the plays, so that my daughters’ inheritance is safe. Hast thou burnst them all?”

  “Yes,” I said, but I have not. I have sewn them in the new featherbed. I will ensure it is not burnt with the bedding when he dies, and so will keep them safe, save the house itself burns down. I will do naught to endanger their inheritance nor the love they bear their father, but in after years the papers can be found and his true name set on them. The clew lies in the will.

  “Wife, come sit by me and hold my hands,” he says, though I hold them already. “I have left thee something in the will, a token of that night when first I came. I have bequeathed to thee the second-best bed.”

  A FEW YEARS AGO, I MOVED BACK HERE TO THE town where I had gone to college. The campus hadn’t changed at all. Well, actually, it had. The college had moved bag and baggage to a new campus half a mile away, and all the buildings on the old campus had been put to new, humiliating uses. But it looked the same—the library (now the administration building) and the student union (now the campus parking authority) and the flagstone walks.

  And the kids. Almost the first thing I saw was a girl leaping out of a car and running across the grass to embrace two other girls, all of them screaming happily. It could have been Tannis and Linda and me, all of us just back from summer vacation with so much to say, we all had to talk at the same time. We hadn’t seen each other all summer; we hadn’t (in spite of our fervent promises in May) written or called or even thought of each other all summer. But now here we were all back, hugging and shrieking and talking a mile a minute, as if we had never been apart.

  Moving back was like that. I hadn’t thought of the flagstone walks, of the library, of Phil and Matsu and Pam, in years. Some of them I didn’t even know I remembered. But now here I was back, and here they all were, the memories I thought I’d forgotten. Rhonie and Sharon and Chuck, and my own young careless self, who had let them all go.

  CHANCE

  On Wednesday Elizabeth’s next-door neighbor came over. It was raining hard, but she had run across the yard without a raincoat or an umbrella, her hands jammed in her cardigan sweater pockets.

  “Hi,” she said breathlessly. “I live next door to you, and I just thought I’d pop in and say hi and see if you were getting settled in.” She reached in one of the sweater pockets and pulled out a folded piece of paper. “I wrote down the name of our trash pickup. Your husband asked about it the other day.”

  She handed it to her. “Thank you,” Elizabeth said. The young woman reminded her of Tib. Her hair was short and blond and brushed back in wings. Tib had worn hers like that when they were freshmen.

  “Isn’t this weather awful?” the young woman said. “It usually doesn’t rain like this in the fall.”

  It had rained all fall when Elizabeth was a freshman. “Where’s your raincoat?” Tib had asked her when she unpacked her clothes and hung them up in the dorm room.

  Tib was little and pretty, the kind of girl who probably had dozens of dates, the kind of girl who brought all the right clothes to college. Elizabeth hadn’t known what kind of clothes to bring. The brochure the college had sent the freshmen had said to bring sweaters and skirts for class, a suit for rush, a formal. It hadn’t said anything about a raincoat.

  “Do I need one?” Elizabeth had said.

  “Well, it’s raining right now if that’s any indication,” Tib had said.

  “I thought it was starting to let up,” the neighbor said, “but it’s not. And it’s so cold.”

  She shivered. Elizabeth saw that her cardigan was damp.

  “I can turn the heat up,” Elizabeth said.

  “No, I can’t stay. I know you’re trying to get unpacked. I’m sorry you had to move in in all this rain. We usually have beautiful weather here in the fall.” She smiled at Elizabeth. “Why am I telling you that? Your husband told me you went to school here. At the university.”

  “It wasn’t a university back then. It was a state college.”

  “Oh, right. Has the campus changed a lot?”

  Elizabeth went over and looked at the thermostat. It showed the temperature as sixty-eight, but it felt colder. She turned it up to seventy-five. “No,” she said. “It’s just the same.”

  “Listen, I can’t stay,” the young woman said. “And you’ve probably got a million things to do. I just came over to say hello and see
if you’d like to come over tonight. I’m having a Tupperware party.”

  A Tupperware party, Elizabeth thought sadly. No wonder she reminds me of Tib.

  “You don’t have to come. And if you come you don’t have to buy anything. It’s not going to be a big party. Just a few friends of mine. I think it would be a good way for you to meet some of the neighbors. I’m really only having the party because I have this friend who’s trying to get started selling Tupperware and …” She stopped and looked anxiously at Elizabeth, holding her arms against her chest for warmth.

  “I used to have a friend who sold Tupperware,” Elizabeth said.

  “Oh, then you probably have tons of it.”

  The furnace came on with a deafening whoosh. “No,” Elizabeth said. “I don’t have any.”

  “Please come,” the young woman had continued to say even on the front porch. “Not to buy anything. Just to meet everybody.”

  The rain was coming down hard again. She ran back across the lawn to her house, her arms wrapped tightly around her and her head down.

  Elizabeth went back in the house and called Paul at his office.

  “Is this really important, Elizabeth?” he said. “I’m supposed to meet with Dr. Brubaker in Admissions for lunch at noon, and I have a ton of paperwork.”

  “The girl next door invited me to a Tupperware party,” Elizabeth said. “I didn’t want to say yes if you had anything planned for tonight.”

  “A Tupperware party?!” he said. “I can’t believe you called me about something like that. You know how busy I am. Did you put your application in at Carter?”

  “I’m going over there right now,” she said. “I was going to go this morning, but the …”

  “Dr. Brubaker’s here,” he said, and hung up the phone.

  Elizabeth stood by the phone a minute, thinking about Tib, and then put on her raincoat and walked over to the old campus.

  “It’s exactly the same as it was when we were freshmen,” Tib had said when Elizabeth told her about Paul’s new job. “I was up there last summer to get some transcripts, and I couldn’t believe it. It was raining, and I swear the sidewalks were covered with exactly the same worms as they always were. Do you remember that yellow slicker you bought when you were a freshman?”