Rotten at the Heart Read online

  CHAPTER 4

  I was late to the theatre the next day, as both my secret charge from Carey and the attack on my person had left me vexed and so unsettled in my constitution that I could neither write nor sleep. A candle and much paper was wasted in my attempt at the first, and not a little port wasted in my attempt at the next. Only in the blush of dawn did I at last meet the embrace of Morpheus – which was not gentle, but instead a fierce slumber poxed with dreams that so infected my thinking that my mind felt as a mouth that had consumed some corrupted thing. I was so sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought that, in passing the court whence the swordsman had sprung the night previous, I gave it so wide a birth that I stepped in some filth dropped to the street from a window overlooking that court from the far side. I cursed my foolishness, knowing better than to walk so near the buildings, and there being nothing to fear in the court by the light of day save a drunk seated against the wall. He raised his head briefly at my passing, watching me with baleful eyes set astride a monstrous nose that had suffered greatly, I think, from some dire insult. It progressed from his face in such volume and varied direction as to appear a kind of growth.

  The company was in mid-scene when I first reached the opening to the stage, and so I held back to the shadow to observe. Once known, I would be beset by inquiries concerning my meeting with Carey, and any further rehearsal would be of little value, all fixed instead on news and speculation. Burbage, at least, was of a better mood, and he, being more relaxed, put also Jenkins at his ease so that their scene read well and the production seemed ready.

  At the scene’s end, Burbage makes speech to Jenkins, and did so now with such soft art and subtle gesture that methinks the supplicative adoration that lit Jenkins’s face was only half pretended. At their embrace I felt a stirring in my own heart of my remembered youth, when love still seemed a wonder and had not yet suffered from the poor ministrations to which I since have made it subject. When their embrace broke, there was an uncommon silence in the company, all recognizing that awkward spell we cast when we with only men perform those moments that do a woman’s place require.

  I stepped forth. “Did we at last shave Jenkins’s ass, Burbage, that you can now speak to him so sweet? Or have you found in his manly wool a fond remembrance of those sheep with which you so oft make congress?’

  The tension of the scene’s soft words and long embrace were broken and the company roared in relief that I knew was less the product of my words than of their timing. Burbage turned, smiling, crossed the stage in his actor’s graceful pace, and seized me by my shoulders.

  “The prodigal scribe returns! And by his words I am afeared we now know his appetites and all must wonder, when he makes that soft talk with which he hath undone so many dresses, whether he means ‘I love you,’ or ‘I love ewe’.”

  And again the company bellowed, and we were bathed in that good fellowship that is so oft only expressed in our barbs and taunts.

  “But come,” said Burbage, taking my arm and leading me to the edge of the stage, where we were seated and the company formed around. “What word from Carey?”

  It felt unnatural to speak false to my fellows, so I hewed my words to be true in their facts if not in their spirit, for I was not at liberty to share Carey’s mission. “He wishes to continue his father’s place as our patron, and such matters as will make it official should conclude within August,” I said, full knowing that such conclusion hinged on my unsure ability to put at ease his mind on the matter of his father’s death, and that I was giving all present certain hope when instead they were in uncertain peril.

  “Huzzah!” cried Burbage, springing from his seat to his feet with his special grace, so that he could take his stance, and his words became his performance – that being, I have learned, his only true speaking. For Burbage, all the world is a stage.

  “Will, we did just this morning suffer the company of some members of the Admiral’s Men. Alleyn, of course, two other players, and Henslowe – who continues to feed those dogs from his purse and, if we credit rumour, will have funds in another theatre in Bankside. They did sweetly false pretend condolence on our sponsor’s death, but swaggered about the boards as though measuring them for their own use. And I answered that our good Will had already made congress with Carey, and that I knew no other – certainly not among their number – with the charm or wit by which to so certainly assure our fortunes.”

  Heminges, while seeming much comforted by the news of Carey’s blessing, seemed also less certain that fortune shone as our sun alone. “They, too, have seen Carey,” he said, “or they were on their way to. Or at least so they say.”

  “When?” I asked.

  “From here they were to Somerset, by Carey’s own invitation, if they be not false. And Henslowe has oft with his purse secured such blessings as he could not by merit.”

  This news troubled me, but I took pains to make it light, as I could see no gain from making unsure the minds of my fellows. “Carey is soon to be Lord Chamberlain and, by such office, will have truck with all the companies, even still remaining our good sponsor. That the Lord Admiral’s Men should envision this invitation as some chance at a better patron than they now hold is no surprise – for they have never met a noble arse up which they would not stick their tongues so far that, should such lord sup soup, they do taste onions. Be at ease, sirs. Remember, Henslowe’s purse may seem swollen to us, but it is a flea’s sack compared to Carey’s.”

  Which was greeted with general tittering of approval, although Heminges’s face was still clouded.

  “I do not know Carey, Will, but if he be a dog, then he may harbour fleas. They asked after you, too,” he said.

  “As they would,” I said, “my being absent.”

  “It was the manner of their asking,” Heminges said. “A chiding, as though they expected your absence and were trying to cloud us with thought of such ills as your absence could portend.”

  I bowed slightly to him. “I was late abed, having written much into the night. I am true sorry if my tardiness caused you worry.”

  He shook his head. “We all know your habits and your hours, so your tardiness offered no concerns. It was the slyness of their manner. Henslowe said that we did on you too much depend and asked Burbage if his steady diet of Shakespeare had not yet clumped his bowels, whether he would not prefer to ape words from some fresh quill.”

  “To which I answered,” said Burbage, “that, should they find such words as worth this ape, it would be the first time in my remembering. Their dross is better suited to George Alleyn and his fellow monkeys, monkeys being smaller, while we apes require words fitting our stature.”

  “And did Alleyn receive this well?” I asked. Alleyn was the Admiral’s Men’s leading player and, while slight of stature, famous for his readiness to take insult and for his ease to temper.

  “Not well,” said Heminges, “though whether in offence to Burbage’s words or to Henslowe’s overture – by which he may have taken that Henslowe would prefer Burbage as his player – I do not now. Both, I should imagine.”

  I made a shrug. “Still, I hear only the usual sort of banter and nothing to give alarm.”

  “It was Henslowe’s last words, Will, given over his shoulder as he and the other players dragged Alleyn to the street. He said he preferred several playwrights in his stable such that he could saddle whichever horse to which the public gave its current favour. And that, by having many, he did not have to love too well any that he must leave e’er long, Saying to that in these days no man should count on another’s company far beyond the morrow, and that, with you even now absent, and at a time of such crisis as Carey’s death presents, should we not wonder if we had packed too much of our fortune on the back of a single ass.”

  Heminges paused, looking a long moment into an unseen distance. Then he turned back to me. “There is villainy in that man, Will, and he gave me chill. It was his smile, as though he knew some ill that I yet did not.”

/>   And it gave me chill, too, to wonder by what magic Henslowe expected me away. He was a new sort of creature to which London gave rise: a man of no talents who himself could produce no product, no art, no service of want to his fellows, and yet did somehow attach his purse to others’ endeavours. And in such fashion that his grew fat whilst theirs ended thin, as though by some perverse alchemy through which he did transmute by avarice alone the labours of others to his own gain. As he had no art, he also had no scruple.

  Bankside, being across the river and yet convenient to both the bridge and the many boats that ferried there, was newly swollen with all manner of entertainments, which were now banned within the city proper. And if the now-deafening jingle of coin there exchanged was the new music of Henslowe’s attentions, then those of us who lived by such entertainments should best take good care to mind Henslowe’s dance.

  CHAPTER 5

  As I had thought, the Company was of no mood to return to rehearsal, our discussion of my audience with Carey and the portents of the Lord Admiral’s Men’s visit being too much of mind. The Company retired to one of the Shoreditch taverns in that human habit of turning what little news we have over continually in hopes of finding from some new angle a benefit we had not at first uncovered. But I was of no heart for this talk, knowing I must be false and my mind still infected with the pestilent mood of the previous evening’s adventures and morning’s unseen dreams. So, I took my leave and made toward the Royal Exchange on Threadneedle Street where I could distract myself with an even fouler task too long avoided.

  In Stratford, the day was marked at each turn by only those faces I knew well, but in London, the unexpected meeting of any acquaintance is a curiosity. And so I found it passing strange to notice also on Threadneedle Street that man I had first seen that morning asleep against the wall in the courtyard near my rooms, his nose marking him for my remembrance. He paid me no mind as I purchased first my papers and then my inks, and he, too, did make a purchase, and could thus be only about his own business. Yet somehow his loiterings at this booth and that kept him always in my view, and me in his. I made note not only of his nose but also his size and bearing and manner of dress so that, should he seem too oft in my company, I could take proper care.

  My purchases complete and this minor distraction addressed, I steeled myself finally to make to the end of the arcade and the fishmonger’s stall, at which I had some hard business I would at last have done.

  I am at heart unchurched, though I do bend my knee in whichever direction the Crown commands for my own safety’s sake. Still, I am not unfaithed. I am each day reminded, if only by an unexpected flower, a happy fragrance, a gifted tankard, of the unearned and pervasive benevolence that girds us each against the pestilence of our banal condition. What beauties we enjoy we neither fashion nor earn, and yet they alone save us from the living damnation of our petty grubbing.

  In that spirit I had, on a June day, like Saul, confronted a grace so bedazzling that I did, for a time, suppose a new faith. On that day, I also had made to Threadneedle Street to secure the supplies of my writerly habits when the girl in the fishmonger’s stall at the edge of the Exchange called out in her sparkled voice so as to gain my attention and perhaps my commerce. In seeing her I felt as though suddenly gifted with some new sense, felt both with my heart and from lower down, such sense as to make the eyes and ears and nose and tongue and skin feel envy that they can only each in part experience what I could feel in total.

  Her eyes shone with a blue innocence to make one imagine there be some other world painted in a palette beyond our imagining, these eyes only having escaped to our drab sphere to remind us there be gods. The gentle sweep of her shoulders and neck rose to support a face and head of such perfect proportion and aspect that the sight of them fell on my eyes like a smell and roused in me some appetite so unfamiliar that I did not at first think to call it lust. A cascade of hair – coloured both in saffron and in a blush of red echoing the flame she had already in me kindled – seemed spun by angelic spiders that could in their web secure the affections of all who looked on it. And twin swales coloured with both cream and light disappeared behind the cover of her rough dress like a temptation to madness, so that you would either have her or tear from your own body those now needless orbs you knew your eyes to be.

  I am wifed but, being most times a bachelor in London whilst she is in far Stratford, I have treated the surly bounds of that churched alliance with the same elasticity to which they so oft have been stretched by even our most royal personages, and with the same diligence and honour with which our churchmen protect their pledged chastity. For I can envision no God who would from a poor scribe demand fealty beyond that of those kings and priests that he hath, in wisdom unbound by human frailty, chosen with his own hand. And while these august men have oft plucked the first buds from God’s flowering, womanly harvest, I instead have dallied only with those flowers already fully and freely in bloom. It has been a mutual kindness we have bestowed upon the other, a corporal mercy by which we have shared in those delights so heavenly granted and, having done so, caged the more savage beasts of our less holy appetites that would loose themselves unbound on less willing flesh. And thus conscience does make lechers of us all.

  And then I beheld the fishmonger’s daughter and in that moment abandoned any pretence, any costume of thought, by which previously I had made polite my ravening lust. That she was scarcely beyond a child mattered not. That our first casual mutterings revealed her unschooled and naïve – an innocent who could be led, and trustingly, into a forest of words within which I could ease her loose from the tethers of her moral bearings and lead her to betray to me, solely for the amusement of my trivial wants, that which to her was most precious and the province, through the agency of a husband, only of God – this mattered not. For the flame of her beauty, like the magic fires of Sinai, consumed not itself, but burned away instead all that it was not. In my mind was left only my desire for her, any contrivance of decency charred to nothingness in the face of this seductive inferno. I knew only my longings and my own gifts. Having been told in countless beds that I am comely of both face and form, that I have an easy wit, and that I speak words that lay lightly on the ear, I would now with these godly tools ply for Satan that unplied flesh.

  And so began my artful campaign. My first gentle affirmations of her beauty. A brief touch; a lingering touch; a first, chaste kiss. All the while I oiled her fall with subtle reminders of how many imagined sins she already had committed – until, still within the bounds of any commandment, she felt herself so foreign to the deserved love of God that she thought herself already damned and surrendered completely to me on a borrowed bed, gifting a mattress soiled with the effluent of a thousand whores the sacrament of her unspoiled blood as I plunged once more into the breach.

  I gorged on this ambrosial apple unsated, gaining no sustenance. I was become a beast hollowed out by unholy hungers, mad with ravening, debasing the child through acts previously only imagined. After this carnival of perversity, whatever ethereal light had informed her features was instead transmuted into dead ash – her eyes less animate than those of the fishes she once had offered – and she was become a mirror that held only horrors for me. In it I somehow saw both this wilting thing that spread her now rot-mottled pedals with torporous indifference and that rare perfect flower that had first opened unto me with trembling, fearful resistance. And I now wept to think what I had done to a creature of such beauty, and how she had for a time made me think there be a heaven and that I might be worthy of it.

  And in my shame, I visited our borrowed chambers no more, despite her messages of increasing desperation – each asking what offence she had given that did cause my absence and assuring me of her still tender affections, each reminding me of that grace she did somehow still possess and that I had lost forever.

  And so, steeling myself finally, I visited her stall to make what apologies I could and try to convince her that what virtues
she may think she had surrendered I had truly stolen. She was faultless in our tawdry enterprise, and it was my true hope that her aspect could regain such light and blessing as I had, in my wanton cruelty, put out.

  But her stall at the end of the Exchange stood shuttered. When I inquired of the tanner at the stall next, I was told she had the day before thrown herself from the bridge, thus making to the river an offering of the only gift I had not yet taken.

  And so I continued with my business. No doubt the revulsion I felt would in time recede, the proximate gravity of this vile exercise would shrink far enough away that it would no longer pull the tide of my guilt to consciousness. Thus would I live my days in such comforts as my poor memory allowed, forestalling that torment I suffered at this moment until such day as I shuffle off this mortal coil and am reacquainted with my true bride – who, with dead eyes, will joyfully lead me to her befouled mattress, where I shall be made to suffer full for my sins, and for all time.

  And so I returned to my quarters, the light again failing as I turned up Bishopsgate, armed now only with my bundles and taking no heed of the gaping dark on all sides. Should I hear again that urgent rush and see that flash of steel, I thought simply to surrender my neck to the blade rather than my back to my mattress – being after my last sleep and this day’s news much afraid to confront what dreams may come. But sleep I must, as tomorrow I was to report again to Somerset to begin my inquiries.

  At my door, the landlord awaited bearing a message from Stratford. My son, Hamnet, was ill, and Anne wished I send home some funds for his care.

  Thinking on Anne, I found myself overcome with fond remembrance of my youth, when first we met. I thought on the flowering of spirit her smile had then engendered. I knew now that such lovers as I had entertained in my years in London were just convenient vessels into which I had emptied my lust. In the fishmonger’s daughter I had in sooth revisited the ghost of my own Anne’s youth, and I wanted nothing more than to be again that besotted lad in his springtime, first meeting the wonders of both heart and flesh, not this jaded thing that now, even surrounded by the full promise of both, could no longer feel their warmth, neither on my flesh nor in my heart. I soft remembered that day when, when, betrothed but not yet wed, Anne gentle granted me her favours and I partook of that communion that pales the sacrament of any church into wanting sickness. Now, having broken faith with that communion, I in wanting sickness lived.