Ill Met by Moonlight (36 page)

Indifferent to all but their present happiness, Nan and Will had already left.

Quicksilver could see them on the path to Stratford, two dark shapes now revealed, now hidden, by the intervening dark trunks of ancient trees. Attenuated echoes of Will’s chuckle reached him.

Taking a handkerchief from his sleeve, Quicksilver wiped the lady Ariel’s eyes, then rounded on the orchestra where each musician stood like a statue, horrified and moved by all he’d seen.

“Strike up your instruments, and let there be music,” Quicksilver said. “It is your king who orders it. This is his wedding and not his funeral.”

Quicksilver squeezed Ariel’s hand and smiled. Everything was well. Everything was well. Will had his wife and, having somehow escaped the price of elven love, the youth wanted for no more.

And, as the first tentative notes of a dance tune sounded, Quicksilver took Ariel in his arms and led her a-dance.

Epilogue

Scene:
the same foggy, otherworldly place we saw at the beginning of this play, but now the gentleman who introduced the play stands bent over a smaller stage where, as though in miniature, the forest of Arden looms and Nan and Will and their cat walk through the forest. Nan and Will hold hands, and Will holds Susannah.

T
he narrator leans over the scene and signals the audience to silence, with a finger to his lips. His other hand still covers his bleeding eye. Something very much like a smile curls his lips upward. But it’s a sad smile, full of meaning that no one can decipher. “Watch,” he says. “Watch, now. Jack shall have Jill. Naught shall go ill. The man shall have his mare again, and all shall be well.” His hand gestures at the diminutive stage. “The man and the woman walk through the enchanted forest in safety. The king has his throne and his queen, whose righteous love is rewarded. Will has his Nan and his baby daughter.

“Even as he walks through the forest, he’s thinking he’ll be a better husband and a better father and even—in the loving kindness of his heart—a better son. He’ll learn the glover trade from his father and never again stir from Stratford.

“But as he walks and makes such plans, the tune he just heard, the spectacle and fury of the fairy dance and the horror and power of elven strife seep into his blood, kindle strange fires in his brain. Fantastical tragedies and mad farces hatch within him like eggs, laid by some mystical insect and waiting only the right time to let their wondrous, magical engendering come to life.

“Quicksilver’s love had its price, after all. Returned or not, it had a price. Everything does. But who paid that price? And is Will—who will leave wife and daughter and mother and father behind and trade his small domestic happiness for a spotlight in a world made stage—better or worse off than if he had never come across the unexplained marvels of elvenkind?

“Who is to say? Look.” Again the narrator points at the stage at his feet. “Look. He puts his arm around his Nan and tells her that from now on she is all his desire, the sum and crown of his days. And she laughs and leans into him and tells him that he’s her king, the only one she wants. They don’t know that this happiness is already doomed, that their love is already poisoned. They think they have the future before them, the small future of mortal beings. And maybe they do.” The narrator looks up at the audience, and smiles and, for the first time, removes his hand from in front of his eye, showing a whole eye, healthy and sparkling grey. That eye, like its twin, is filled with unholy mirth. The blood that stained his collar vanishes. His angelic smile contrasts with the deviltry in his eyes. “Maybe they do. Maybe it is what you think you know of their future and your past, that which is an illusion. Maybe Will settled down in Stratford, and plied his father’s trade, and became a master glover and a dealer in wool. And perhaps I, Marlowe, never died in a tavern brawl, with a dagger through the eye, and was, and am, hailed as the magnificent playwright of Great Elizabeth’s age. Or maybe, just maybe, both stories—the play you watch and the play you live—are just tales told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

On those words, the narrator vanishes, a thing of air, a wisp of dream returning to the land of what never happened.

Author’s Note

I
n writing this book I tried to stay as close as possible to historical fact (elves excluded), but I have taken some liberties with what we know of Shakespeare’s life, with geography, and with tradition.

On no better evidence than John Aubrey’s theory to the effect (in
Brief Lives
), I chose to make Shakespeare “a schoolmaster in the country.” Though this theory is “supported” by his apparent familiarity with the profession, exhibited in plays such as
Love’s Labor’s Lost
and
The Merry Wives Of Windsor
, just as many biographers assert that his often legalistic turn of phrase points to his apprenticeship as a law clerk. However, since these are Shakespeare’s “lost years,” meaning that we have no evidence at all of what he might have been doing—and since his plays betray a familiarity with too many professions for him to have worked at all of them—he might well have been a butcher’s apprentice, a law clerk, his father’s helper in the glover shop, or a dozen other things.

I took poetic license with the geography (as Shakespeare himself often did). I enlarged Arden woods to become Arden Forest—as did Shakespeare in
As You Like It
—and placed both Shottery and Wincot (Wilmcote) in places where Will needed to cross the forest and pass by the elf palace to reach either of them.

As for tradition, my most egregious violation is perhaps the matter of William Shakespeare’s marriage, as everyone
knows
he was unhappy in his choice of wife. However, the supposed marital discord rests on very scant and ambiguous evidence: the fact that Anne Hathaway married late, William Shakespeare’s absence in London for most of their married life, and a bare-bones, coldly worded will, in which Anne is only mentioned to be left the second-best bed.

This matter of the will can be easily dismissed as William Shakespeare employed no words of affection for anyone in his last testament. In fact, if we believe Ian Wilson (
Shakespeare: The Evidence
, St. Martin’s Griffin edition, January 1999), the will read like other wills drafted by Francis Collins, William Shakespeare’s lawyer, and therefore bore the mark of the lawyer rather than the will-maker.

As for Anne’s small legacy, Anne was left—from all we know—to the affectionate care of her eldest daughter, Susannah Hall. Besides, at the time of Shakespeare’s death, Anne would have been in her sixties, an advanced age in Elizabethan England. It is quite possible she simply wasn’t competent or strong enough to administer the estate. In that case, his leaving her the second-best bed—which might well have been their marriage bed—was no more than a gesture of affection, a reminder of their happy marriage. There is simply not enough evidence to judge the Shakespeares’ conjugal happiness or lack thereof from the will.

As for Shakespeare’s working in London, while his family remained in Stratford-upon-Avon: London at the time was not considered a healthy place for children. Even today, it is not unusual, in many parts of the world, for men to go some distance away to seek their fortune, while women stay behind to raise the children. Besides, it is quite clear that Shakespeare always intended to return “home” when his career in London was done, and it’s possible he visited Stratford often during his career.

Anne Hathaway’s late marriage is another matter. Judging from his plays, Master Shakespeare nurtured a fondness for spirited women, though in his day such women were less than universally appreciated. Perhaps Anne
did
scare away all suitors but Will.

Ultimately the best measure of their marriage is that he chose to spend his London-earned money in buying the best place in Stratford-upon-Avon for his family and that it was by his wife’s side that he decided to pass his waning years.

Of all the Shakespearean biographers I have studied, the ones I resort to most frequently and in whose work I can always find the answer to any nagging questions are, in no particular order: A. L. Rowse (
William Shakespeare, A Biography
, 1995, Barnes & Noble Books;
What Shakespeare Read—and Thought
, 1981, Coward, McCann & Geoghegan); Peter Levi (
The Life and Times of William Shakespeare
, 1989, Henry Holt); Dennis Kay, (
Shakespeare, His Life, Work and Era
, 1992, William Morrow); Robert Speaight (
Shakespeare, The Man and His Achievement
, 1977, Stein and Day); Stanley Wells (
Shakespeare, A Life in Drama
, 1995, W. W. Norton); Ivor Brown (
Shakespeare
, 1962, Time); S. Schoenbaum (
William Shakespeare, A Compact, Documentary Life
, 1977, Oxford University Press; [and my personal favorite]
Shakespeare’s Lives,
1991, Oxford University Press.

There are many other, excellent biographers but these form the essential core of my research.

Also used as references were
Daily Life in Elizabethan England
, by Jeffrey L. Singman, published by Greenwood Press;
The Elizabethan World Picture
, by E.M.W. Till-yard, published by Random House’s Vintage Books division;
The Vanishing People, Fairy Lore and Legends
, by Katherine Briggs, published by Pantheon Books;
Celtic Fairy Tales
, collected by Joseph Jacobs, published by Dover Publications; and
Life in The English Country Cottage
by Adrian Tinnis Wood, published by the Orion Publishing Group.

For sheer fun, I recommend
The Complete Works of William Shakespeare
, available in several affordable editions and—to deepen one’s understanding and enjoyment of them—Harold Bloom’s
Shakespeare, The Invention of the Human
.

The credit for accurate historical details in this novel belongs to my references. The errors are all mine.

As my final justification, I will say, like Alexandre Dumas: “It is permissible to rape history on condition that you have a child by her.”

Whether this
first heir of my invention
proves malformed or not, I will leave to my readers’ judgment.

Sarah A. Hoyt

Colorado, 2001

About the Author

Sarah A Hoyt has published over twenty novels and a hundred short stories.  If you enjoyed this book, please look in Baen's WebScriptions page for her Shifter's series (
Draw One In The Dark, Gentleman Takes a Chance
) or her science fiction (
Darkship Thieves
.)  For more of her fantasy, look for
Heart of Light, Soul of Fire
and
Heart and Soul. 
Those interested in historic mystery might wish to check out Sarah's
Musketeer Mysteries
, under the pen name Sarah D'Almeida.  Her contemporary mysteries, under the name Elise Hyatt are
Dipped, Stripped and Dead
and
A French Polished Murder.

For samples of all of Sarah's work, check out Sarah's website at
http://sarahahoyt.com
.