Mistress Shakespeare (31 page)

He went on and on as we clung together, until I slid down to hold him as we knelt, facing each other. We tumbled onto a patterned Turkey carpet and lay there, entwined limbs and lives, swept away, away. With his hands on me everywhere, trailing fire, we went mad indeed, kissing and caressing with a fierceness I had never fathomed. Then I cared not a fig for a foreign tongue, as there was nothing like a country-bred English one.

It was only after, when we lay perspiring and panting, that I realized we’d finally had the chance to share a real bed and had not done so—and that we’d never relocked the door.

As I got to my knees to shoot the bolt and turned back to Will, I heard the distinct double creak of floorboards in the hall, as if someone had hovered at the door.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

“Will, it looks just wonderful,”
I said as we stood with Richard Field at a bookstall near St. Paul’s, admiring the copies of
Venus and Adonis
for sale.

“Eleven left here out of fifty-four at this seller,” Richard told us, straightening the pile of them and placing them in a more prominent position. “At least something’s a success lately.”

Richard’s shop had printed the poem that Southampton’s patronage had made possible. Will’s first published work was doing especially well, we had heard, among university students. Since one of its topics was seduction, many young men had bought it as a guide for “the bold-faced suitor.” Some copies had been reduced to tatters and already replaced. John and Jennet had told us that in Oxford, the poem had been read aloud in the inns by students who adored the classical sheen to a sensual story. Though he was more a playwright at heart, Will was becoming England’s premier poet.

“It’s strange to see something of mine in print,” he admitted, stroking the copy he held. “I’m so used to seeing everything in my own written hand, or Anne’s. At least my spasms haven’t been half as bad lately, despite the fact I feel I’m writing day and night.” He looked up from the book, his finely chiseled face so serious. “I thank both of you for your years of support and for playing key roles in the career I’ve had thus far.”

Wanting to throw my arms around him, I settled for just nodding with tears in my eyes. Richard grinned and clapped him on the back. “I wager if we print your next long poem—and times improve—we shall all make a pretty penny,” he told us.

Despite our forced gaiety, we all fell silent as if in mourning, not for the past but for the present. Too much spring rain had damaged England’s crops, which drove up the price of food. The plague had killed ten thousand and, though it had abated, the playhouses, like most other London entertainments, were still closed.

The theatrical companies were barely hanging on. Despite rural tours, some had gone bankrupt; others stayed solvent by selling off their precious stores of costumes. Lord Pembroke’s Men, of which Will, the Burbages and the clown Kemp were now a part, had pawned many of their backstage treasures—and, of necessity, to their rival, Philip Henslowe.

John and Jennet’s wine trade was also dismal. Since no one had money for things that were not essentials, pack trains in and out of London were sporadic. Despite Will’s success with his poem, the publishing industry was foundering. Rampant unemployment made the queen’s government more unpopular than ever, which in turn kept the Privy Council on edge and eager to control disgruntled citizens. Even the Puritan-leaning city fathers feared the spectre of domestic riots more than the rumors of a new Spanish invasion.

As is human nature, especially in terrible times, Englishmen were striking out at immigrants, as if they were to blame for everything. We’d heard ugly gossip about riots against the strangers of London, that is, against the foreigners, especially the French, the Dutch and the Jews. That very moment we three old friends stood admiring Will’s first published work was the time that terror first took aim at us.

“Ho, Will! Oh, Anne, you’re here too!” someone behind us cried. We turned and gasped to see Kit Marlowe, looking like a pale, gaunt ghost of himself. He’d thrown a hood over his head and had his hands on his sword hilt and belted dagger. Will’s hand instantly went to his sword too, for we had not seen Kit since we’d made him look the fool in front of Dr. Dee.

“What’s the matter?” Will asked as Kit took his hands off his weapons to pull us away from Richard. Will motioned to Richard to give us a minute, then the three of us huddled against the stony skirts of the cathedral.

“Whatever is it, man?” Will asked again. “And we’ll leave Anne out of this, if you have some issue with me.”

Kit shook his head, but I wasn’t certain he had even heard Will’s words. “They’ve turned on me,” he said, “on all of us.”

“Slow down,” Will said. “You’re not making sense.”

Kit was breathing raggedly and sweating. He must have run here for some reason, then stumbled upon us. “Start over and explain,” I said.

“’S teeth, they’ve broken into my rooms and taken Kyd,” he said in a rush and seized Will’s wrist. “We’ve been living together, but they took him.”

“Tom Kyd?” Will prompted.

“Hell’s gates, who else? He was down on his luck for not selling any plays—’s bones, aren’t we all, but I took him in. Someone—I swear, I know not who—nailed a libelous note to the door of the Dutch church, attacking them, the French and the Jews. ‘Like the Jews,’ it said, ‘you eat us up as bread, so fly and never return . . .’ I don’t know what else.”

“Lines from your play,” Will said. “But I still don’t follow you. You didn’t—”

“No! I said, no! I admit Tom drinks like a fish and says things he shouldn’t here and there, but the worst of this mess is that the libelous note was signed ‘Tamburlaine’!”

“Who could miss that?” I asked. “But that doesn’t mean you wrote it. As for an attack on the Jews, just because you wrote
The Jew of Malta
—”

“So the authorities came to question you?” Will interrupted.

“Because I’ve done things for them—the government—they’ve always given me a long rope, but now I fear they mean to hang me with it. I thought things were bad under Walsingham—may he rot in hell—but, I swear, Robert Cecil’s worse.”

I wished I’d told Will what I knew about Marlowe’s spying for Walsingham, but perhaps he knew, for he just nodded at Kit’s admission.

“But if they’ve taken Tom Kyd,” Will said, when Kit looked furtively about, “this might affect all of us.”

“That’s what I’ve been saying. They might mean to sweep us all up, but I’m their chief target. They took Kyd because he lived with me, and they’re hoping he will nail me—crucify me, rather. They ransacked my rooms and took papers, plays, my poems. They are looking for me, but they took him to question under duress.”

“Torture?” Will demanded. “Under torture, who knows who he would name? He’s been such a tosspot these last years, he’d say anything for a drink, so why torture him?”

“Because the powers-that-be are panicked! I didn’t write that note, but they know I’m an iconoclast—hell’s gates, all playwrights are at heart. I just heard there’s a warrant out for my arrest. Cecil will blame us writers, however much Her Grace likes pretty plays at court. The Puritan city fathers hate us. We’ll be the perfect scapegoats for all of this. When I was the darling of the masses, they dare not touch me—but now that someone else is beginning to take my place in this stinking land . . .”

For one moment, I thought he meant to strike Will, but he only swung his arm out as if to encompass all of England. He accidentally hit my shoulder.

“Sorry, Anne,” he said, looking into my eyes at last. “Sorry if I . . . ever hurt you. Will, you brilliant bastard, watch your back as I must mine.”

He ducked between us and darted off.

“He’s overturned,” Will whispered, “but this does bode ill for all of us.”

“Does Tom Kyd know you dislike the queen?”

“If they torture him, what he truly knows hardly matters, for he’ll say anything they want. I can’t believe it’s come to this—an excuse to get rid of writers if they so choose,” he muttered as we walked slowly back toward Richard, who had moved on to a more distant bookstall. “Because, my sweet, if they probe my past, they can bring me down not only with my Arden connections but an extra marriage to boot.”

“An extra marriage to boot,” I echoed, kicking at a bladder ball some child had dropped. It skidded under a stall and bounced back out.

“Like us—resilient,” Will said, not looking at me, speaking out of the side of his mouth.

“But do you think we should stay away from each other, at least for now?”

“I won’t give them that—or anything. Without giving in to them, we must be clever and careful, both of us, that’s all.”

“Things will get better. I’m sure they will!”

But things got worse.
We heard Tom Kyd had been put to the rack and had named Marlowe as guilty of all charges, including being a heretic and blasphemer as well as inciting the citizens of London to riot. Edmund Tilney, the queen’s Master of Revels—and truth be told, the government censor—had treated Marlowe with kid gloves for years, no doubt at the behest of the now deceased Walsingham. Now Kit’s plays, past and present, were brought in as proof that he wrote “with application to the times,” meaning in a nutshell that some of his work criticized the current government.

Kit was found, arrested and stringently questioned, though not under duress. He was finally released but was instructed, Will heard, to report every day to the authorities—a sort of house arrest.

“Perhaps Kit still has a few friends in high places,” I told Jennet as we washed and dried the bottles of wine John was digging up from their herb garden. I was grateful that their home had not been harmed after I had fled during the plague. “I just hope,” I went on, “Will’s friendship with the Earl of Southampton helps to keep him above the fray. The fact that the queen’s own cousin, Henry Carey, Lord Hunsdon, has taken on the players in place of Lord Pembroke should provide protection too. They’ll be known as the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, since that’s Hunsdon’s title. Things just have to get better for London’s players.”

Despite closed theatres, Will continued to write plays. Though he sent most of his profits from
Venus and Adonis
to his family, he kept some back to publish a second classical poem,
The Rape of Lucrece
, which did not do as well.

It was not three weeks later that someone knocked on the door to my privy staircase after dark, late May it was. I’d been preparing for bed; my hair was loose, and I wore naught but my night rail and robe.

Barefoot, I padded to the bolted door. “Who’s there?”

“I.”

From that whispered word, I knew Will was in trouble. He’d vowed never to come to me here, lest we be spied upon.

I opened the door, and he darted in, then closed it and shot the bolt. With but a quick glance at me, he turned away and scanned the room, evidently to be sure I did not have little Kate with me or to ascertain that the drapes were closed. I had not yet replaced the one I had used for Maud’s winding sheet. I watched in consternation as he blew out my single candle, pulled the top sheet off my bed and draped the half-covered window. Ordinarily I might have made some jest about his rush to get in my bed—with all of our fervent coupling over the years, we had yet never shared a real bed—but I pressed my clasped hands between my breasts and waited.

He came back to me, sat us side by side on the end of the bed and said, “Kit’s been killed.”

“What?” I could not believe it. I felt stunned, sick to my stomach. My thoughts flew to the fact that both Jennet and I had once wished him dead.

“I don’t know all the details—supposedly in a tavern brawl in Deptford. I dined at Southampton’s house tonight and word came to his lordship there.”

“Where’s Deptford?”

“Out by the docks not far from Greenwich Palace. But the thing is, he was stabbed to death in a tavern house run by a widow who has family connections to the queen’s former spymaster, Francis Walsingham. Now the widow’s working for his heir-in-terror Robert Cecil, for all I know.”

“Will, that night I was half conscious in Kit’s chamber,” I went on, hating to bring that up again, “I heard him whispering to Mr. Mercer—the same man who questioned me and my men about the Ardens and you. Kit called Walsingham Wally, and it sounded as if he didn’t want to play their games anymore. He no doubt didn’t want to play them for Robert Cecil either.”

I expected a tirade that I hadn’t told him I’d overheard sooner, or a jealous snit, but his response showed me how truly distressed he was. “Ah,” he said with a swift intake of breath. “It’s a damned spider’s web, all of it. ’S bones, how dare they close the London theatres and then stage this covert spy scenario of their own,” he muttered and got up to pace. He’d made the room so dim he hit his shin against my only chair and swore, but continued, “Anne, there are things I want to say—things I
must
say in my plays.”

“And yet you must tread carefully.”

“Yes, but I
need
to say these things. I even have an idea for a play with a Jew in it, but one in which I shall try to show that are people like everyone else. After all, Jews bleed, they feel, they love. And I’ve been helping to coauthor a play with several other playwrights, thinking they could not threaten all of us, but they have.”

I stood and rushed to him. In the dim light, he looked like a spectre, with only his seemingly disembodied face and hands visible. I threw my arms around him. “You’ve been arrested and questioned too?” I cried.

“No—not yet. Thomas Dekker and I were summoned before the queen’s watchdog Edmund Tilney, who—believe it or not—is related to Lord Strange, yet we still got hauled in.”

He held me to him with his chin resting on the top of my head. With my arms wrapped around his waist, I could feel his words when he spoke. Despite his despair, he radiated heat and strength.