Page 47 of The Two Wills

“Sir,” I said, suppressing my own Londoner twang to sound above my true class. “Why do you address me so?”

“Tush, ’tis I, Willy. Do ’ee not recognize me?” the bearded man said.

I took my time examining his eyes and his lips beneath the beard. It was only then I recognized him.

“Zounds! Barnaby Stubb?” I gasped. “Is it truly you?”

I threw my arms around his taller and much stronger figure and was astounded how he had transformed in just four years. His scent reminded me of all those afternoons behind the blacksmith’s shop where I had given myself to him. I recalled how he held me so dear after our silent sporting, and ran his fingers through my yellow hair, calling me “sweet thing” and “dear one.”

“What a kindly surprise,” I said, releasing him. “I remember now. You had moved to Devonshire for your apprenticeship. Do you live here in Barnstable?”

“Nay, we come for the market and saw there be a play.” He smiled shyly, and I caught the blush under the beard. “I recognized your name and knew I should wait and say my hellos to a right good friend. Marry, it was a proper job, your acting, and right tragic. It drew a tear. ’Ee make a fair wench, I will say.” He laughed at this, his eyes sparkling with that boyish beauty that had so wooed me back when.

While my heart was mostly enslaved by the Poet, I momentarily became aroused by the prospect that Barnaby and I might spark something deeper and more grown given the right circumstance. The Poet, after all, was still such a puzzle. It would be nice to at least have some casual sport with this old friend.

“Come have a drink with me at the Nags Head like old times!” I begged, pulling at Barnaby’s granite-like forearm, which had become decorated with a most thrilling pelt of fur. “I’ve thought of you often and would much like to become acquainted with what you’ve been doing.”

His eyes were furtive, looking off to the side then back to me. He gently removed himself from my grasp and his joyous demeanor grew discomfited. He then raised his voice awkwardly, as if he wished someone with a farther ear might hear. “Nay, Willy, I cannot. We do must get back to Clovelly before it gets dark.”

We? It was the second time he used the plural, though I had ignored it before, but now he seemed to be emphasizing it. “We?” I asked.

He tossed his head to the side, which was when I saw a plump small lass carrying a newly born babe, and hanging onto her skirt a little boy not as high as my knee who bore the same eyes and brows as Barnaby. “That there’s my wife, Mary, with our babe, Little Catherine, only two months old. And the lad be William, who shall turn three years come Shrove Tuesday.”

“Three,” I said, realizing he must have gotten this Mary with child not long after he’d left London—not long after he had last coupled with me and said he’d remember me forever. Had forever come so quickly? Had he named his son after me or not even realized? Was he speaking falsely then or now? “I see you’ve been busy since last we saw each other in Shoreditch. How is your apprenticeship going? They let you marry?”

“I left the apprenticeship when Mary, uh, needed me, and her parents did insist we wed before any embarrassment. After that, I did join her father’s business, and thus I be repairing barrels, which is an honest living.”

“Was it not your great dream to become a brewer?”

“’Twas, I s’pose. Though I don’t remember ’ee wanting to walk upon the stage dressed in a skirt and wig neither. So we both changed paths, I guess. ’Tis child’s play to talk of dreams, anyway. But ’pon my breath, how do ’ee remember so many pretty words when ’ee speak on the stage? Mary and I agree it astounds.”

I looked at his wife and their two children with their plump pink cheeks. All three waited quietly for my Barnaby—or, rather, no-longer-my-Barnaby.

“We enjoyed your playing much, sir!” Mary, his wife, called out, her face reddening even more as she giggled shyly. “You were lovely, like a princess!” Then she curtsied, as if I was royalty. “Sorry to interrupt!”

“’Tis alright, love!” Barnaby called back. “I’ll be right with ’ee in just a moment more!”

There was love in their eyes for him, and he for them. It was a knife-prick to my heart realizing that, while he had been my first, true, great love, I clearly was not his. Though part of me wondered why Barnaby would stop to see me if our past friendship had meant nothing. Surely shame about our youthful sport would have precluded him. Was it possible that he did not even remember? When I thought about it, all our thrusting and diddling only lasted for the part of one summer, and after that first time, it was always I as the pursuer and willing sheath for his sword. When there was kissing, it was always I who was kissing him. Could it be that the friendship I had named “love” meant so little to him, it did not even stick in his mind?

My face flushed redder than Mary’s. Barnaby gestured for his wife and babes to come forth, and they waddled over, smiling, to take his arm as their master. Suddenly my longing for the Poet resurfaced. It was as if there was a giant hole inside my chest that required the possibility of love to fill it. When one hoped-for love left, another must needs take its place.

“Well, we best do make our way home,” Barnaby said. “I hope we might see ’ee again in another play someday. It was most moving to see and hear.” He took my hand and shook it. Like it had when I was a lad, his hand engulfed my own, feeling both rough and as comforting as a winter’s fire. “Be well, Willy Hughes, good friend. Godspeed and good health.”

“Good day, sir,” Mary added, giggling. “It’s been ever such an honor. Shake the man’s hand, William.” She dragged the little boy to me and indeed he shook my hand.

And that was that. I watched Barnaby and his family wander on, pulling at his small son, while his wife waddled with the weight of the baby on her shoulder: a perfect picture. I sent prayers up that his children would survive and bid Barnaby Stubb’s memory goodbye. It was not that I would deny that I’d loved him, but I knew I would no longer settle for a love being one-sided ever again.

TwentyThem Other Sonnets

Wherein Willy Hughes becomes privy to other secret and private sonnets.

Beshrew that heart that makes my heart to groan

For that deep wound it gives my friend and me!

—from Sonnet 133

Soon after my brief encounter with Barnaby Stubb, and the continued success of the new play, the company received news that the number of plague deaths in London had fallen below forty per week—this signaled the Privy Council to lift its inhibition of the playhouses. We would be allowed to return. Moreover, the Master of the Revels having approved the play, the Lord Chamberlain’s Men announced they would be premiering The Most Excellent and Lamentable Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet as their first play at the Theatre in Shoreditch and later at court. In less than a year, I had gone from a ruffian destined to have his head hanging on London Bridge before he was thirty, to a member of one of only two companies that would be playing before the Queen.