Mr. Shakespeare's Bastard (6 page)

“And so I did. A small neat hand, and I wondered reading it whether this Eliza was anything like her sister. Was she as pious and severe? And what was this Frenchman like? I would be sharing a house with those people. Suppose the husband looked at me a certain way? Made secret demands away from the eyes of his wife? Weren’t Frenchmen great fornicators? Yet what was left for me in Worsley? Whispers and catcalls and life next to a woman who hated me despite what Jack thought, a woman who just wanted to be rid of me. She was passing me on to her sister, and probably without telling her the truth of my circumstances. How she would square that with God I did not know nor care. As I read Eliza Boyer’s words, I could see in their arrangement something of her sister. Eliza wrote that I would need to work hard and not expect too much
except my board and a modest wage; they had an infant daughter and some of my duties would lie in looking after the child. She would see in time how I worked out. The wording was cold and precise and sounded very like something your Aunt Sarah might have written.

“Still, I was encouraged. For the first time in months, I could see something beyond the terrible visions in my dreams, and now I was to go and live in London, a place I had never imagined even seeing. Yet hadn’t Goody Figgs read my hand and predicted a journey within a year? After reading the letter I felt as though I wanted to get out of bed and walk through the wet fields and woods to her hut to tell her so. But I knew I wasn’t strong enough yet and there would be time to say goodbye to the old woman, for when I asked Jack when I might go, he said, ‘In a few weeks. As soon as the roads are dry and I can arrange a place for you with a carrier. Davey Jessup, perhaps. He goes into London and sometimes will take a traveller. There is time enough to think on it, Lizzie. But just imagine now. London. You will be living in a great city.’ Before he left the room he looked down at me and smiled. ‘I think you might say a word of thanks to your sister-in-law about this. I know she can be difficult, but she is not a bad woman and she has your best interests at heart.’

“Or, as I’ve said, she just wanted to get rid of me, Aerlene. You could take one or the other reason. Jack’s sweet temperament
chose one and I the other—but what did it matter anyway? I was going to London to start my life again and I vowed to myself I would be careful about men, and if this Boyer was forward with me I would defy him. I would lead a chaste life and a solemn one. At night before sleep in those weeks of waiting, I imagined the streets and churches and shops, the palaces, the great river that was said to run through the city. Why, people from all over the world went to London! The Queen herself lived there, and perhaps I might see her one day in some procession or another.

“When my health was restored and I had thanked my sister-in-law for getting me employment in London, my thanks acknowledged with only a nod, I visited Goody Figgs. Goody’s expression never changed, whatever you told her, and so she greeted my news as if it were nothing. Had she not predicted a journey? She never said as much, but I could tell she had great faith in her own powers. I drank a cup of her horrible tea and felt again light-headed, as if I’d swallowed a liquor, while she told me to beware of the French pox in London. I didn’t tell her about Philip Boyer, for I had no intention of ever again lying with a man. I smiled as the old woman stirred the fire and told me to watch myself in that city. ‘I have heard it is filled with the French pox, so mind your honey-pot, girl. Scour it well and apply this ointment before you lie with a man.’ She handed me a small bottle of something that smelled
horrible, and that I later threw away, for I didn’t altogether trust Goody’s nostrums, remembering the story of a girl who had nearly died from something prescribed by the old blister. ‘And stay away from gentlemen,’ she added, her back to me as she bent across the fire. ‘They lie with too many and are all pox-ridden, so I’m told. Settle for less. You’re better off with an honest joiner or a green grocer’s boy. But always remember to scour well, for neglect will hasten woe. Those who carry the pox have a sorry end.’ And then, as if the idea of my lying with joiners or gentlemen or greengrocer’s boys was amusing, she began to cackle, and perhaps it was her awful tea, which had properties for lifting the spirit, because I too laughed. I judge we both might have been a little off in our heads from the tea. Oh, I shouldn’t be telling you such things, Aerlene. You’ll think ill of your poor mother.”

I told her that I would never think ill of her, for I loved her too much. But I wanted her to go on with her story. How did she get to London? What awaited her there? How did she meet my father? She smiled, but I could see she was weary enough.

“Tomorrow, child,” she said. “I’m all out now. Get me up to my bed.”

I sometimes used to share Mam’s bed, but her sickness had induced a restlessness in sleep and often she would talk or cry aloud or thrust an arm about as if tormented in
her dreams. Once I lay down beside her in hopes of offering comfort and was almost myself asleep when her arm lashed out like a whip and struck me across the face. I feared my nose was broken, and though it wasn’t, it was yet sore for days. Thus it was best to leave her by herself, and I slept in the truckle bed nearby. I missed lying beside Mam; I remembered the bolster of her big, soft breasts as I lay listening to her breathe and sometimes murmur words or softly laugh in her sleep. But all that would soon be gone from my life.

T
HIS HAS BEEN A
cold, wet spring with the weather so foul that Maypole Day was cancelled. Under Cromwell, the day itself is no longer the frolic it was in olden times, but it is still celebrated after a fashion, and so the young of the village are disappointed this year. Mr. Walter is also out of humour, and with good cause, since many fields have not yet been seeded because of the dampness. We all seem vexed by one thing or another. I myself have been hampered all week by gravel in the kidney; for three nights now I have paced about my room drinking ale in hopes of moving the stone along, in time staggering off to sleep, only to awaken an hour later to piss. Still I must try not to complain, as many throughout the land are suffering from plague. This morning Charlotte told me that Mr. Thwaites was in Oxford Wednesday and saw posted the Bills of Mortality for London. Nearly six hundred for the week just past. Bristol too is sorely
afflicted and Southampton and other coastal towns. We must be thankful that it has not touched us here, so when Charlotte asked me to pray with her for deliverance from the sickness, I said I would, though I told her it was too arduous to get down on my knees and back up again—I would make do with a bowed head from my chair. The truth is I haven’t prayed much since childhood; yet I wanted to please Charlotte because she has been diligent these past weeks and even says she is enjoying the labour of taking down my words. She is a good girl and I am often too hard on her. So I closed my eyes in the chair, thinking myself not unlike the King in
Hamlet,
who prays with empty words while the Prince looks on, postponing his revenge. And did the King too not recognize the futility of his gesture?

When Charlotte arose, I said, “On Monday, my dear girl, we shall get my mother to London, you and I.”

She smiled. “I look forward to that, Linny.”

Despite the weather and the plague, Charlotte alone among us is happy, for, I now believe, she is in love.

W
HEN
M
AM WENT TO
London over seventy years ago by horse, the journey took two full days with an overnight stop at Wycombe. For the poorest traveller, the walk was four days, three if your pace was firm and you weren’t accosted along the way. Mam told me that she could not exactly recall the month she left Worsley, but reckoned it was late May or early June in the year 1587; everything, she said, was fresh and green and the weather fair. Uncle Jack put her in the company of the carrier Jessup, who did regular trade between Woodstock and London. My uncle paid the carrier, but Mam thought Jessup might be doing it more as a favour. As she told me, “From the beginning, I could tell this Jessup didn’t like me. I am certain he had heard of me and thought I was little more than a bawd. I rode behind him on a poor, thin horse, a more miserable-looking beast you couldn’t imagine, though it was gentle enough. There were three other men
with their packhorses carrying goods, mostly lambskins and linen. Your aunt Sarah went so far as to wish me Godspeed, reminding me to pass on greetings to her younger sister. We left at first light and your uncle Jack rode with us as far as Oxford. When we parted he was in tears, as I’m sure he thought he would never lay eyes upon me again. He had provided money for my lodgings along the way and a piece of paper with directions to Boyer’s shop on Threadneedle Street, warning me to set the words to memory in case I lost the paper, as he knew how careless I could be about such things. ‘And mind your money,’ he said. ‘London, I’m told, is thick with thieves.’ But I knew that much at least and had made little pockets in my petticoat to secure the coins.”

“How did you feel, Mam?” I asked. “Were you frightened going off to London like that by yourself?”

Mam said, “Yes, I was frightened. Of course I was, but a part of me was happy too. I told myself that I was having an adventure. I had a little money and prospects and a place to stay when I got to London, so matters were not so bad. It was cheering too that I would no longer have to endure the gossip and looks of people in Worsley. No longer have to put up with tavern louts calling me names, or children leaving turds on our doorstep. In London, not a soul knew me, or how I had so far lived my life. And even had Sarah told her sister the true account of my habits, the Boyers had
accepted me and I was determined to work hard in their service, earn their trust and lead a good life. So in sum, I have to say that I was probably happier than I was sad to be leaving, though I knew I would dearly miss my brother.”

I was trying to picture Mam on that ill-fed horse, following the back of the carrier Jessup, who didn’t much like her. She told me that on the road she saw all manner of rough folk and she felt sorry for those on foot. Men and their women with children, turned out from who knows where or why, with little more than the rags on their backs, filthy with living in woods and fields.

Looking down at them as she passed, she thought herself fortunate. “There were many far worse off than I,” she said, “and there they were in the dust of that road. I saw a blind man led by a young girl—his daughter, I suppose—and half-mad men gibbering to themselves and making faces. Some gave us terrible looks and others offered hands outstretched for alms. From time to time Jessup cracked a whip above his head and so too did the other carriers, yelling to those afoot to stand aside. I remember one woman with terrible sores and blemishes about her face, a child at her breast as she walked on the side of that road in dirty bare feet. I don’t believe I had ever seen a more wretched-looking soul on the face of this earth. I wanted to give her a penny, but the carrier behind yelled, ‘Give her nothing, Missy. Not a groat or we’ll be harnessed to her all the way to London.
Mind my words.’ And he cracked that whip again to scatter those about him. At the time I thought him heartless, but he knew his trade and perhaps he was right.

“I recall too there was trouble that morning, and though I didn’t think it my fault, Jessup didn’t like it. On the edge of a village a drunken man was dancing a jig in the middle of the road, twirling around like a child’s top and dressed outlandishly in layers of clothes; though the day was warm, he had on an old canvas doublet and a long coat and a bonnet with brightly coloured feathers. A kind of roadside jester singing and dancing and expecting money for it. A ragged devil of a creature, perhaps a former soldier, for he had but one arm, the other a mere stump at the elbow; the long coat had only the one sleeve and I could see that naked lump of flesh where once a healthy arm had been. He may have been an Abraham man pretending to be mad for pennies, but Jessup was having none of it and nearly knocked him over as we passed. Drunk or not, the fellow was nimble and jumped aside at the last minute, cursing Jessup and all of us. Then as I passed, he looked up at me and grabbed my ankle and called me a filthy name. I could smell his foul breath, and he wouldn’t let go of my leg as he tried to run his hand over me. But we had stopped, and Jessup jumped down and applied that whip. Such a hiding he gave that man, I thought he might murder him. The man crawled away into the bushes beyond the verge like an animal to
escape the blows, dragging himself along with only one arm for purchase. Worthless creature that he doubtless was, I still pitied him. Before Jessup climbed back on his horse, he gave me the darkest look, as if I had invited that beggar’s hand on my leg. I told him I was sorry if my presence had caused trouble, but he said nothing, turning his broad back to me and cracking the whip, and on we went.

“In the late afternoon, we stopped at a respectable inn in Wycombe, where I ate supper and shared a room with a farm woman who had walked from a village ten miles away. Jessup ate with the other carriers and drovers at a long table, and they soon grew loud with drink as men in taverns do at the end of the day. This woman—and it’s odd, but I still remember her name, a Mrs. Earle—was a widow who had lost her husband within the month. She told me he had received a hurt with scythe or axe. A bad wound in his leg which had broken the shinbone and the wound became infected. Within a fortnight his leg below the knee had turned black as charcoal and smelled of rot.

“She fetched the doctor, who had the man drink as much ale as he could hold, and then they laid him on the kitchen floor with two others holding him down while the doctor began to saw at his leg above the knee. ‘I couldn’t bear to look,’ she said, ‘and he wasn’t drunk enough, poor fellow, and so awakened screaming. In all my days, I never heard such shrieks,’ said Mrs. Earle. ‘I covered my ears and
fled from the house. The children came too. We stood in a field and listened to the howling, and then finally it was quiet and when we went back into the house, he was dead. The doctor told us that the hurt from the cutting must have stopped his heart.’