Ink and Steel

“Traveling priests and cottage intrigues,” he said, lacing his points with hands that almost didn’t tremble. He heard her indrawn breath and rolled over it, refusing to look her in the eye.

“I would not fight with you, Annie.”

Her shoulders went back and she whirled on him, whispering so her words would not carry. “Well, and what if I would fight with you, Master William Shakespeare? Or shall I put that want on the shelf with all mine other wants, and will you talk to me of duty?”

She leaned forward, hands on her hips, her hair still unbraided and tangled over her shoulders. The little room seemed even closer as she stamped one bare foot among the rushes and then threw up her hands in exasperation at his silence. He felt as if he might choke on all the things he could not say to her.

“Annie, my love.”

“Go back to London,” she said, and turned away to open the door. “If your plays are more to you than your children. Go.”

“It’s not …” he began. But the door swung softly shut behind her, and Will let his mouth do the same. Damn, he said, and narrowly avoided punching the wall.

A sunny afternoon followed Will from the graveside. Fleeing its relentless cheer, he pushed open the door of Burbage’s Tavern and nodded to the landlord in the cooler, airy common room. “Good day, Bill.”

“Will.” He hesitated, a rag in his hand, and cleared his throat. Three or four other men sat about the lower level of the tavern, the silence hanging between them redolent of an interrupted conversation. “I’m sorry.”

“We re all sorry,” Will said into the heavy quiet. He nodded up the smooth-worn wooden stairs. “Have you anyone at work in the gallery today?”

“Not until suppertime. Sit down over here.” A gesture at one of the long trestles, flanked on both sides by sturdy benches. “I’ll see you get some dinner, for all the bread’s gone cold by now.”

“They fed me at home,” Will lied, taking a seat in a sunbeam, which caught flashes of silver from the coin that he fussed. He couldn’t face choking down bread and cheese before these pitying men.

“Ale would go kindly. Served warm, and in a leather cup.”

“Ale it will be. Is there news from London, Will?”

Will shrugged. “There’s starvation in the streets, want and privation, consumption and plague. The usual, only worse.”

“Preserve us from cities.”

Footsteps from the more occupied corner of the tavern, and a voice unexpected enough to knock the shilling from his fingertips to clatter on the trestleboard. “Oh, Master Shakespeare. Surely if London were so unhealthy as all that, none of us city rats would ever return, given a view of the country and a breath of fresh air.”

Will held the mouthful of ale until it could trickle past the tightness in his throat. He laced his fingers under the table and let the silver spiral, jingling, to a stop.

“Master Poley,” he said, and didn’t look up. “What brings you to Stratford?” Expecting the easy charm, the intelligencer’s lie. Surely Poley wouldn’t try to start an argument here, surrounded by Will’s childhood friends and his family’s neighbors.

“I came to look in on your family,” Poley said, swinging a leg over the bench opposite Will. “I’m a father myself. It seemed the least I could do, considering the care you’ve taken of Mary. And little Robin, too.”

Will did raise his eyes then, and dropped his voice. “Am I intended to understand this as a threat?”

“Understand it as you wish.” Poley’s trustworthy smile turned Will’s stomach. The intelligencer held up a pair of silver tuppence to catch the landlord’s eye, and traded them a moment later for a cup of wine.

“Have you considered how much your family must miss you? How much the worst it would be if anything should befall you in London, so far from home? Cities are dangerous.”

“And your family? Do you consider the future of your son?”

Poley just smiled, and it struck Will like a kick in the gut. I am not like this man. I am not like this man. But how, then, do we differ?

Will unlaced his fingers, lifted his tankard with his left hand, and only touched the ale to his lips. He wiped his beard to cover the smile.

“My wife may curse me to my face,” Will said. “And I can’t deny she’s a reason to. But neither my Annie nor your Mary will cross the street not to catch mine eye.”

“My Mary?” Poley turned his cup between the flats of his hands, scraping the board. “I haven’t a virgin thought in my head. Many a cheerful one, but not of Mary. Take her.”

“Tis not so.”

“Pity for thee, Will. She’s a wildcat.”

“I’ll not be thee’d by thee, either. Master Poley.”

“Ah.” The shilling lay shining between them. Poley picked it up, balanced it on edge.

“An old one. A toy. Too debased to spend. It rings fine.”

“It’s shaved to half its size,” Will said, as Poley made it jingle against the table again, the note of silver bell-clean.

“But the loyalty it buys is a whole loyalty, no?”

“Your point, man?”