Page 41

I was uncertain if it was his turn to pretend ignorance, or if, in fact, he had not seen me. Was I completely mistaken at what I thought I’d seen in his face? Or was he merely trying to make disappear his sin and mine? Was this his game—to make all three of us ghosts?

“I think the summer fairies have tipped into my daydreams, sir,” I stammered. “What did you want to talk about?”

“I wanted to say that I’m most disappointed in you.”

“Sir?”

“You haven’t been concentrating during our play-building practice lately. When you’ve been speaking Juliet’s role, your mind has been like a flibbertigibbet. If your heart is not all the way committed to the role, then I cannot know if the fault is your unbaked performance or my clumsy writing.”

I blushed at my humiliation. “I’m truly sorry, sir. I’ll do better today.”

But his tirade was unfinished. “And beyond all that,” he said even more sharply, “you were very rude to my friend Rose yesterday. I won’t have the apprentices being rude to my guests.”

For some reason these words stung me more than his previous. Was that all I was to him, a lowly apprentice like the rest? I thought to confront him and get this whole charade over. But instead, my cowardice made me join him in this pretend reality.

“Rude? Me? She’s the one who interrupted my rehearsal!” I mewled, copying the sort of petulant actor’s fit I had seen Burbage do. “How am I supposed to concentrate when any such nobody is allowed to just prance in?” My face grew hot and small tears filled my eyes, even though I was playacting. “And then both of you laughed at me when you saw how upset I was. It stung my feelings most stingingly, sir.”

His face softened. “We weren’t laughing at you, lad. It was simply an uncomfortable moment between two strangers. People laugh to quiet such feelings. Rose is a very wise woman and of a just temperament … in her own way. I truly believe the two of you would be fond of each other if you talked.”

At that point, the devil took the reins of my tongue. “Fond of her?” I spat. “The other players say she’s of a very low nature, a wanton, and a blasphemer!”

“A pox on the other players for their jealous gossip! They don’t even know her! So like small minds to prejudice others against a stranger. And shame on you, lad! Rose was trying her best to be polite.”

“Shame on me, sir?” I stammered. There was much I wanted to say but couldn’t. Instead, I took another tact. “Am I the one who is married? Doesn’t the holy book say bedding a woman who isn’t your wife is called adultery? I am afeared for your soul, sir.”

The Poet became very still; his eyes studied me. Finally, he said, “I am married, of course.”

“Doesn’t it torment you, sir?” I said. “To have a goodly wife at home, loving you and your children, while you go out sporting with other men’s wives? Shame, sir, shame!”

At that point in my prosecution, I was near to breaking out into either tears or laughter. I was too aware how I, of all people, had no right to cast stones from my holy whore’s pulpit. Was I not a liar, a thief, a con, a sodomite, a bastard on a quest to steal the Poet’s heart? But still I held my imperious glare, while the Poet began to squirm.

“This isn’t really your business, lad,” he said as he folded his arms across his chest. “But, as a matter of fact, I love my wife very much and do spend my love—of a kind—on her and my children.”

“You love her, yet you make a cuckquean of her?”

“One isn’t a cuckold or cuckquen if they have agreed to the arrangement.”

I was stunned. “So, your wife, she too …?”

“We shall not speak more of my wife. And these words you use—cuckhold, wanton, adultery, marriage—all words created by religious hypocrites trying to control. Blurry words with blurry meanings—arbitrary and ugly and meant to diminish the complexity of what occurs in a marriage.”

I could bear his slippery words no longer, and my young man’s heart blurted, “But what about one true love, sir?”

He scoffed. “A trifling bit of nonsense. And who says there is only one? Are man and woman only permitted a thimble-sized portion of love? Are we to be so limited in our passions to one or two or ten?”

“Ten, sir?” My breath had left my body. “At once?”

“My point is, if there is one you love, have at it, but must we all to be so limited to some all-agreed-upon flavor for our sport? You of all people should understand this.”

For a second, he looked at me again in that way that said he knew me, which caused my heart to rattle like a tortoise shell drum. Was he including me in his desideratum of love or did that wished-for-place have room for only him and her and her? Was this what he had meant when he once spoke about those who had a “varied nature” for loving?

“So, you love her as well then?” I asked.

“Her who?”

“Her … that dark-eyed woman with the rose in her hair.” I could bear it no longer. I thought, finally—finally, if he sees how forthright I am, he’ll be true with me, he’ll settle once and for all whether he might love me or not. “Please stop pretending you didn’t see me watching you last night at the cliffs.” There were tears in my voice. “She’s not a good woman. A good woman wouldn’t let you do such things you did to her and she to you.”

I knew he understood that my pious allegations were but the moans of a wounded young man in love. I had no care for his mortal transgressions any more than I had for my own. To my young mind, we were both equally damned for our unconfessed lusts. His eyes softened, and he chewed his lower lip, as if he were searching for better words with which to alter the scene into something less tragic.