Page 48 of The Two Wills

Through all the thrilling news, rehearsals, and preparations, the Poet sent me more of his private sonnets: half love, half mystery. At night his words wrapped me in a blanket of hope while I slept. But in the light of day, when he’d give me notes or new lines, he never said another word to me about his feelings. It felt as if I were starving while my lips were pressed against a luscious cornucopia.

“This is just the start, lad,” the Poet told me as we spoke of all the good news. “Now that we’ve been invited to court, we’ll have more money available to put up more plays. You and I will create glorious worlds together. Just you wait! I’m nearly done with another new one, which we will start working on next month to premiere at the court during the holiday season. It’s a comedy this time—at the Crown’s request—and the main role again will be a lady that will fit you beautifully.”

The night before we were to return to Shoreditch, I went to the Poet’s rooms to see if he wanted to show me this new comedy. “Hey-ho!” I called through his door. “Sir, it’s Hughes!” I listened for grunting in case he was in the midst of some private business but heard nothing. “Oi, I’d love to see any pages you might have of the new play for me. Sir?”

There was no answer. I knocked with my fist this time. “Sir? Are you awake?” I supposed he might be drunk since the company had been celebrating the end of our summer tour at a nearby alehouse. I jiggled the handle to the door and it swung open, seeming to invite me to enter. So I did. The room was empty. His clothes were strewn about with his hat and wide collar tossed upon a chair. On the floor sat his second pair of britches and boots with mud on them.

I stepped over to his bedding, which was in a tumble, and sniffed the sheets. The idea that my face was touching the cloth that had touched his naked body made me momentarily swoon. His writing desk was filled with papers, which I assumed were the new comedy he had been writing for me. I picked up one of the pages with a long speech, which I knew had to be for my character. In it, the lady spoke of how she might disguise herself as a boy and call herself Ganymede. Ganymede? The name I was oft insulted with in the muck house at the Nags Head. I had once told the Poet of my shame at having been called thusly. Is this a compliment or an insult? I knew his process of writing plays wasn’t always so planned or deliberate. He had told me as such one evening, after a performance.

“Your plays,” I’d asked. “How do you know what to write? How do you choose what word is the better word?”

“That’s a good question, lad,” he’d said. “If I was to be truthful, I’d say I don’t completely know. I always start the writing the same way. I find some pre-existing poem, history, or play that I think might provide a good idea or displays some grist for what interests me. I take what I need from that to form my own. Then I might pinch ideas elsewhere, salting and spicing the idea. Maybe from my own life or some current event …”

“Or from us?” I asked. “Us players? Do we give you them ideas too?”

“It’s been known to happen once or twice,” he said with a wink. “Next, once I know the story’s aim, I’ll go ahead and start writing the most important speeches for the main characters, assuming I already know exactly what they’re going to say and do—but as I write, something extraordinary happens.” He lowered his voice in a hush. “My ink pot suddenly splashes, the paper begins to flutter, and suddenly my quill pulls me like Pegasus, forcing my hand across the paper in all sorts of directions I didn’t expect. The characters, like angry fairies and sprites, take over the writing completely, thrusting their tiny spears into my brain and demanding I follow wherever they want me to go. This goes on until I’m done, almost as if I am writing under an enchanted spell, and suddenly, in just a matter of days, I have come to the end, and I am spent. It’s the most wondrous, magical thing.”

I returned the new speech to its spot on his desk, and noticed a large volume titled Plutarch’s Lives, with several sheets of fresh paper having been stuck between its pages. I was near certain that they must be yet more of the honeyed sonnets he had written for me. Hence, I reasoned, I had a right to read them. Not only because I had been their progenitor, but because I had worked so hard to become literate in such a short time. Who would deny me the chance to exercise this hard-won gift? I gently slid one of the papers from the book. I could see by the state of the writing he was not yet finished. There was much crossing out, until these lines, which seemed to be the only ones he wanted to keep:

In faith I do not love thee with mine eyes

For they in thee a thousand errors note;

He was always fashioning lines like this that expressed his disbelief at just how beautiful I was.

But to my heart that loves what they despise,

Who, in despite of view, is pleased to dote …

What now? Who despised me? Was it the other sharers? Burbage? Alex? The sonnet felt so different than the others the Poet had written for me. It was almost insulting, but at the same time passionate. Was I tormenting him the way he tormented me? But then came the line:

That she that makes me sin awards me pain.

She? She? I staggered. I looked through more of the poems and fell upon the words dark skin, wiry hair, black eyes. These were indeed for Rose. Oh, how I wished the return of my illiteracy! But when did he write these? I considered they might be from months ago, before he cast her from his sight and began writing me his more loving sonnets.

To give flesh to my hopes, I tore through the other loose papers in the book and then, when I could not find more, on his desk. Amidst several contractual documents, I discovered a packet of letters tied with a red ribbon. I carefully opened one. The signature at the bottom was an elegantly drawn “R” and the date was just before we began the tour. It was filled with the most sinful and wanton writing. The next letter I read was from late July, from just before she had disappeared. In it, she vowed never to betray him with anyone else in the company—“especially Burbage.” Why would he insist on her loyalty? Weren’t both she and he already married?

I cast that letter aside and looked to the most recent, sent only days prior. It suggested for them to rendezvous in secret once he returned to London. She’d known of our return before he’d informed the company.

So this is truly why he is so excited about our going back to London? “Fie on both of you!” I hissed out loud to the sonnet filled pages.

What stung most was how I had fooled myself into believing that I was the only one to whom he was writing sonnets. Alex was right; I was not special at all. The Poet made us all feel as if we were. When I looked again at the sonnet he had written her, I saw how hers had far more correction markings than mine—proof that he was struggling to get the words right. Those he wrote to me barely showed any cross marks.

I recalled my younger self when I had first fallen in love with Barnaby Stubb. I wanted to bring him a bouquet of posies but felt as if all I had plucked were too green or haggard. I wanted the bouquet to be as perfect as my love for him. I spent two hours plucking and casting away hundreds of flowers. Thus were her sonnets being fretted over by the Poet. My eyes dampened with rageful tears.

Later that night I woke Little Goat and bade him follow me to a private spot where we might talk. He had indicated earlier that he had something to confide in me. I also intended to confess all that I had discovered. I found a spot in the darkest corner of a graveyard. Hoot owls cried, gravestones glowed, the wind shushed through the black branches of an ancient elm. It was the perfect place to share secrets—or plan treachery.

“What is it you intend?” Little Goat asked, always putting my needs before his, but I could tell he was excited to tell of something that made his boyish cheeks ache with joy.

“You first,” I said. “Mine, I believe, will require your keen attention. So empty your mind now, what is the good news you want to keep secret?”

Little Goat proceeded to tell me that he had received a letter from his beloved mother that recounted how his father had left their home for good due to his shame of brokering Little Goat’s kidnapping by the Children of the Chapel.

“She says she misses me terribly,” he said, his voice trembling with joy. “She wants me to come home for a visit as soon as the holy days after the New Year. She wrote that, when she even thinks about embracing me, she weeps.”

He went on to explain how he didn’t want Sam to know of his plans, since Sam was an orphan and Little Goat didn’t want him to feel even more wretched than he already did. Their mutual loss of family was a comfort to poor Sam.

“I’m so excited,” Little Goat said. “I can barely breathe!”