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“You may call me Will, Mistress. I’m the ordinary poet with the Lord Chamberlain’s Men. Also an actor, though that’s not my primary concern these days.”
“So, you are that ordinary poet,” I say, having heard rumors of his prolific penning, among other procreative proclivities.
Many of the wives associated with the playing companies have talked of this young, handsome, actor-poet. They say he is married to an older woman up in Warwickshire whose well of passion has run dry, which is why he enjoys the pleasure of other men’s wives. Of course, people love to spread such easy gossip to make sense of the world. They speak of me and my husband, Jamie, the same way, but their facile theories are far from the truth. Real stories of love (or lust) are not like any play or book. They are much more expansive, more complicated, and far more interesting.
“Shall we sneak away to the Inn where I stay so that we may finish properly, Mistress?” he asks.
“As they say, ‘Per multum cras, cras, crebro dilabitur aetas.’”
“God’s teeth!” He laughs and takes my face in his hands. “A beautiful woman who knows Latin! I am undone!”
He kisses me lusciously on my neck and breasts. But then, as his fingers massage back inside me, the church bells ring, and his expression grows frustrated. He abruptly removes himself from my person.
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
“Was that five bells?”
“Yes, why?”
“Damn it!” He begins lacing up his britches with much panic.
“What’s the matter, sir?”
“I’m sorry. I must go, Mistress.” We wiggle out from beneath the stage’s lip, stumble to our feet, and grab each other for balance in the midst of the crowd. Now standing, his lips are at the height of my nose.
“Are we done then?” I ask, unable to mask my disappointment. I consider myself usually above such sentimentality, but I sense there is much more to pull from this Englishmen’s well.
He smiles in a way that makes my skin shiver. “I hope not.” He then lifts his fingers to his mouth—his fingers which have most recently been inside my body—and tastes whatever wetness remains. “I’m already drunk on you, Rose, and wish to be drunk again and again. But I must be off now, I’m afraid. I’m late for a meeting at the Curtain playhouse. I’m looking at a new apprentice.”
“And this boy is more important than me?” I say, somewhere between pout and seduction.
“Absolutely nothing could be more important than you. And he’s not a boy, but rather a very beautiful and talented young man; eyes like the bluest twilight, golden haired, and an incredible ability to impersonate anything or anyone. He is exactly what our company needs.”
His reverie about this pretty apprentice has annoyed me. He notices.
“But worry not, Mistress. You and I are not finished. We shall find each other again, I’m sure of it.” He kisses my hand, does a little hop, and is off.
I stand in the middle of the yard, thrown into confusion both by his abrupt departure and by how desperately I want him again. My heart and body are in disarray. Was this Englishman’s ardor true or false? In the realm of passion, do all poets lie? Or is it I whose heart dissembles? It matters little, since I am now determined to have all of him. I also predict, before it’s all over, there will be agonizing but glorious scars.
FiveBlush, Blush
Wherein Willy Hughes speaks the Poet’s lines for the first time.
O, blame me not if I no more can write!
Look in your glass, and there appears a face
That overgoes my blunt invention quite,
Dulling my lines and doing me disgrace.
—from Sonnet 103
Two days hence, I made my way along Hewett Street to the Curtain playhouse. It was one of the grandest arenas of the day and able to host some two thousand souls.
As soon as I stepped through the main gate, I could tell it was different from the other arenas I had visited. For one, it smelled much better without the stench of dung from bull or bear-baiting. One was still able to detect the less offensive stink of beer, piss, and rotted vegetables strewn about. Yet there was also another scent that morning I would come to know and cherish, and that was the odor of recently sawed wood and freshly applied paint—the sniff of a stage, freshly primed for performance, the perfume of my future self.
My hands began to shake. I so wanted to fulfill the Poet’s belief in me, but I worried that once he heard me speak his pretty words, he would promptly toss me out the door. At least I would get to see him again and perhaps gain more clarity as to the nature of his own true heart.
