Mistress Shakespeare (5 page)

He was handsome too and wore a fool’s motley with the diamond-shaped harlequin designs in bright hues. Not only did he prance along the railing but bent over it forward or backward and put his hands upon the rail as if his backbone were as limber as a lute string. He’d somersault onto his hands and walk the board railing before cartwheeling back to his feet. Will and I were both in awe. From the bridge and banks came wild applause and cheers. As we stared up at the man, it seemed only the sky and battlement banners were above him and all the earth below.

He sang a song, evidently in Italian, full of words I didn’t know but which Will guessed meant things like sweet and love—
dolce
and
amore
, I remember that well. I mouthed those sounds silently, thrilled I now knew words in my mother’s language.

“Look! Look, he’s coming off the bridge this way!” I cried to Will when the queen’s retinue went back inside and the bankside audience drifted away to other pursuits. “Will, please, hold the horses for a moment. I must try to speak with him, to see if he knew my mother, if he could be kin to her and me.”

“Bring him back over here,” Will insisted as I thrust my reins at him and darted off through the thinning crowd.

“Master Tumbler, do you speak English?” I cried as I caught up with the Italian. I sounded breathless. He had seemed so tall and robust balancing above, but now I saw he was quite short and thin. Up close, his costume looked gaudy and worn.

“Aye, lad, what is it then, ’less you’ve come from your master to beg a show.” Though he sounded weary and vexed, he spoke in a lovely, lilting way, pronouncing little words like
it
or
is
as if they were
eet
or
eez
.

Still perspiring from his exertions, he seemed to gleam. Such a handsome face with bronze skin, dark eyes and sleek eyebrows framed by hair so black it shown blue in the sun. My heart went out to him, for he had like coloring to me. He had evidently noted that well too, for he said, “Or do you ask, because you are
Italiano
too, my boy?”

“I’m part Italian because my mother was, but she died years ago. Her name was Anna Rosalina de Verona, and her family were tumblers. She could walk a taut rope, even at St. Paul’s in London. That’s where my father first saw her. He’s there now on a trip, but he’s missed her horribly too.”

He smiled as his eyes flickered over me. He motioned me away from the little rabble of children who had followed. I was about to tell him my friend Will wanted to meet him too, but all that flew right out of my head when he said, “Ah, but you resemble her greatly, our Anna Rosalina. Had she not told you of me, her cousin Bruno de Verona? And, do I not detect a beautiful young woman in that lad’s shirt and hose and breeches,
si
?” he asked with a light pat on my hip.

I nodded so hard my pinned-up hair bounced loose from my cap. He spoke good enough English and was kin to my mother. His very voice haunted me with long-buried memories of how she spoke. I began to cry.

“Ah,
bellissima,
a woman indeed, so slender, so light and lovely with her feelings brimming over,
si
? Come, come with me and let us talk of her, our poor, departed Anna Rosalina. Ah, her loss is such a shock to me also, but did you ever think to learn her craft then,
cara bella
?”

“Of tumbling or ropedancing?” I asked as I swiped at my wet cheeks with Will’s shirtsleeve and followed him away from the lake. “I had thought of it, dreamed it,” I admitted.

I felt I danced with Bruno de Verona even now upon the bridge railing in the sky with the queen’s courtiers clapping in approval and awe. Once I glanced back, hoping to see Will, to gesture him to follow, but I saw him or the horses nowhere. I could not let Bruno go, not someone who had known the beautiful cloud dancer who had left such a hole in my heart. I had to know everything about her.

We walked into a field, set off by trees but not far from the castle where many small tents were staked and roped in the ground, perhaps the temporary abodes of the queen’s carters and servants who could not fit within the bursting castle walls. At this close range, I saw the tents were muddied and tattered.

“You make a very pretty boy, but I could use an Italian-looking maid to train to my talents, to know and respond to my arts,” Bruno said with a wink. “Come, sit within.” He swept his arm gracefully toward one tent staked a bit off to the side. “We shall share some sweet ale and talk of the queen of England and your queen of a mother. Families should keep together,
si
?” He lifted the flap of the tent and smiled again at me, teeth and eyes gleaming.

Some deep-set instinct made me hesitate. I stooped to peer inside the dim, empty interior, then, still bending over, glanced about to see if anyone else might be near. The area was greatly deserted at this mid-afternoon hour; the few folk I saw seemed busy about their tasks.

“Come, come. Do you not expect a tumbler to give you a tumble?” he said with a laugh and gave my bum a shove that toppled me to elbows and knees inside.

That shattered the haze of my daydream. I had overstepped and now this man would too. Suddenly sprawled beside me in the dim tent, he turned me face up and covered my mouth with a dirty hand. His other clutched hard at the crotch of my—of Will’s—breeches.

I tried to kick and bite. He cursed in Italian and pulled his hand back. That gave me a moment to scream, and I did, screeching out I know not what as I now recall the dreadful scene I myself had caused. As we struggled, the man spoke to me in soothing English, then Italian, his tone harsher, his hands harder. I believe I screamed Will’s name again, again, for all the good it would do me.

Then he was there, my friend, my hero, yanking the flap up so daylight streamed in to make my tears blur my vision. Somehow Will ripped the tent half down, or the horses did. I never asked him later. I tried to forget it all, especially how stupid I had been, how desperate.

But I never did forget how Will charged one of our horses at the man as he tried to scramble away from the tent on all fours, then got up to limp crookedly into the bushes as the much ado brought others to the scene. I shall always recall how Will helped me straighten my clothes and did not say that he had told me a maid could meet with dangers here.

Rather, claiming to be my brother in most convincing style, Will drew me and our two mounts away from the whispers and prying eyes. He held me on his horse ahead of him until I stopped shaking. Then, with a quick kiss on my cheek, he boosted me up on my own mount and led me quickly on the road toward home.

CHAPTER THREE

In the autumn of 1577
a great comet streaked across the English sky, provoking many predictions of woe from ministers and soothsayers alike—even from the queen’s astrologer, the famous Dr. John Dee. ’Twas said that the heavenly torch portended famines, plagues and wars, so even the most stouthearted hunkered down, expecting the worst. Some were looking for the signs of heavenly retribution or the end of the world in daily events.

I hardly cared a fig for all that talk as I was finally looking less the lanky girl and more the blossoming woman. My father’s endeavors were prospering enough for me to afford a brass mirror and a pretty piece of fabric and, now twice a year, a book from the sellers’ stalls at St. Paul’s Cathedral. Another blessing was my three good friends.

But soon it didn’t take a comet to convince me that things were taking a turn for the worse. The wool trade that propped up all of us midlanders collapsed; poverty, like a wolf in the fold, devoured rural profits and properties. People began to murmur against the queen’s rule, especially in our part of the country where the pope was still revered by those who could not abide a monarch as head of the Church of England. Just as my family helped support old Father Berowne, other folks hid former priests as servants so they could celebrate the Mass in secret.

However, Will’s next-door neighbor, the one east toward Bridge Street about six doors from where I stayed, may have caused his own dire misfortune during this comet-cursed time. Despite his tailoring trade and ownership of several local properties, the man had to leave town when it was discovered he had two wives, one here and one in Oxford. Will said the Stratford aldermen had charged this William Wedgewood with “marrying another wife while his first was still living.” A stiff fine and shameful public penance awaited him, but where he had fled to, no one knew.

Will’s great catastrophe was that his father had to withdraw him from school. No longer a city councilman, John Shakespeare could not keep his sons in the King Edward VI Grammar School for a free education. In past years, he could have afforded such for Will, Gilbert and, later, Edmund too, but not now, for besides making gloves, Will’s father had invested much in wool trading. Besides, Will was needed part-time in the glovery since Gilbert was bound to Kat’s father as an apprentice in the haberdashery.

Will had bravely joked that at least now his spastic hand would come only from too much stitching, but I knew he was deeply grieved to leave his formal learning. The Shakespeares owned a Bible and a prayer book but little else. I started sneaking Will the few books I owned for his sparse free time, but soon his father hired him out to work mornings as a lawyer’s scrivener, despite his hand cramps.

The only times I saw him privily for long periods the next summer was Sabbath afternoons. I rode behind him on his horse as he went to his cousin Edward Arden’s Park Hall to borrow books from the fine library there. I simply waited for Will an hour or so just outside the gates; he always came out with some sort of sweet for me. Twice I had lovely conversations with the Ardens’ elderly gardener, a man amazingly learned for his calling. He always lifted his hands in the sign of the cross and gave us a blessing as we left.

As we jogged back to Stratford, sometimes I read one of the newly borrowed history or poetry books to Will. He would not let go of his ambition to be a poet, which, indeed, was about as likely as my dancing on a rope or the queen being elected pope.

But the increasingly complicated rhymes Will and I used to spout to try to top each other now went by the wayside as did other merry pursuits. It seemed to us and to Dick and Kat that our childhoods had streaked off into the black sky with the comet’s tail.

“My father has to mortgage another piece of rural property,” Will told the three of us at an increasingly rare meeting by the river. “After all, he has five children to feed, and, as eldest, I hope to help him.” He sighed heavily and glared down at his seal ring, maybe thinking there was no way in all Christendom his father could afford such a gift for him now. “One of his hopes was to buy great Clopton House in town, but, by the rood, we’ll be blessed to keep the Henley Street house and shop now. We’ve stopped making wool-lined gloves, and few can afford even the unlined ones anyway. Still, he sends the expensive rabbit-lined ones to Edward and Mary Arden when I borrow books there.”

Dick put his big hand on Will’s shoulder. “And I know your sire must be paying fines for not attending church,” he said. “Hell’s teeth, I wager those can add up too.”

“Though my father and the Ardens privily favor the old faith, that doesn’t mean he’s not loyal to the queen!” Will cried. He yanked away from Dick, his voice strident. Kat and I took a step back. Not only was Will proud, but he had a temper. “At least the Earl of Leicester’s not about as much,” Will plunged on. “He’s sticking close to court and queen like a burr on—or up—her skirts.”

Kat gasped, and I frowned. I didn’t like the way Will disparaged the queen, but I held my tongue. Since his rescue of me at Kenilworth, I was fiercely loyal to him. I fancied his affections too, but struggled to keep him from noticing in these tough times. Still, with Will Shakespeare, who delved into everything people said and did and could recall all that was spoken, I thought perhaps he knew. Sometimes we would finish each other’s thoughts and sentences, and then we’d gaze at each other with a certain surprise and recognition of—of I know not what.

Kat was far gone in whirls over Dick too, but he cared for naught but his own advancement as an apprentice to a London printer. He had great plans for escaping the midlands, spreading learning abroad through his calling and making a pretty penny too. Already Kat was ruing the dwindling days before he’d leave Stratford. Her parents had their eye on the widowed eldest son of the miller for her, though he was cross-eyed, stuttered and was nigh on twenty years her senior. I urged her to speak to them about Dick if he’d but vow to send for her when he was well established in London.

But we had some good times those years too. All England rejoiced at the news that Francis Drake, who hated the vile Spanish as much as they hated him, had circumnavigated the globe. Will loved the sound of that all-encompassing mouthful of a word—the
globe.

To celebrate Drake’s feat, huge bonfires were lit on hilltops, and some managed to dance and sing, including the four of us, down on the riverbank. At least, we told ourselves as we pressed our hands together, holding them high and walking in a ring-around as if we circled a maypole, we never went hungry, not for belly food or for the food of friendship either. Though we didn’t mingle our blood from pricked fingers then, that moment the four of us again celebrated our friendship cut deep into my soul.

But grievous times cut short our joy. Brutal winter came with flooding and cold. Da said even the Thames overspilled its banks and flooded Westminster Hall. Worse was the death from weak lungs of Will’s sister who bore the same name as I. It was the first time I’d seen Will cry and was touched that he trusted me enough to sob on my shoulder. He’d never faced a loss of life, though I’d carried such a burden on my back since I could remember. It was also the first time since that last awful day at Kenilworth that we’d clung to each other. They said still waters ran deep; I supposed that was the way of it with Will and with me too, so what would happen if those tides would ever meet?