As You Like It: the fulfilment of a promise

In Rival Poet, Will makes a solemn promise to Kit that he will show two men dressed as men kissing on the English stage before he dies. In the first version of the novel, I showed him making good on that promise, but those scenes were ultimately cut, along with many others. However, while they didn’t fit into the finished book, I was loath to part with them, and they’ve been lurking in a folder marked ‘Old’ since then.

And now the time has come to share.

 ***

Even before he opened his eyes, he knew what day it was. The 30th of May, 1603. Ten years to the day. A brand new morning in a brand new world. Nothing special.

He sat up. Last night’s beer still stuck to the back of his throat. Swallowing drily, he walked to the window, opened the shutters and looked out at the world, basking in the light of a hot spring sun and a new generation of writers. Young, hungry poets like Dekker and Heywood and Fletcher were swiftly taking the place of Nashe, Marlowe and Watson. Some wunderkind named Webster was poking his pug nose into everyone’s business, getting his speeches included in all sorts of plays. Thinks he can bombast out a blank verse with the best of us… Will smiled wryly. Was he part of the establishment now, that he resented the new upstart crows flying in from the country?

Well, so be it, then. Why fight it? It was sad to see the old world disintegrate before his very eyes. A new age was dawning, and Will was just about the only one of the old bunch who was still alive. Tom, Robert, George – they were all dead and buried. And soon Will, too, would be swept to his tomb and there would be nothing left of what he once accomplished but a few forgotten pages fluttering around the Globe.

Shaking his head, he ran his fingers through his hair. He was on a one-way trip towards death, but he still had several years left of the twenty-three he’d promised Richard. Until the day came when he was free to go, he had to step up if he wasn’t to be eclipsed. The new lads were eager and full of confidence, imagining themselves the proper chroniclers of James’s illustrious new reign, while Will was just a sad old relic from the age of Elizabeth.

Yes. She was dead. For more than two months now, the country had been in a state of suspended animation, beheaded and monarchless, flapping around but losing speed fast. The first news had sent London into temporary insanity, spurred on by the ringing bells: Queen Elizabeth was dead! James of Scotland was to be crowned King! People swarmed out of their houses to gape at the town-criers and gossip each other into a state of mindless euphoria.

The grey March skies had done nothing to dampen their spirits. The Queen’s death was fantastic news. She was the discarded carcass of a grilled sparrow, and all the people who had sworn solemn oaths of loyalty were suddenly giddy with expectation now that a new sovereign was in the pipeline. The government officials tied themselves in knots to prepare for the royal entry, gathering their troops from all layers of society, only to be stopped in their tracks by the plague.

It had been like running into a wall. Suddenly all that energy had fizzled out and people had been left glancing around them in confusion, unsure of what to do, where to go, even what to say. Postponing the royal entry, the big men had left for their country estates to wait it out, and the dregs had stayed in the city, resigned as usual to their quiet panic and superstition. Even the spring itself had seemed to hesitate as the weeks passed without so much as a glimpse of the new king.

But the plague would end eventually. It always ended. And when it did, Will must be first in line to praise the arriving monarch with bustling entertainment, to cater to the public’s reawakened enthusiasm with a topical play.

So what do people want nowadays? he asked himself as he descended the stairs and made for the thinning book market by St Paul’s. Marriages and happy ever after?

The flair for pastorals was surely coming to an end by now, otherwise that might have created the right atmosphere. On the other hand, he was hopelessly outdated anyway. Why not go for a pastoral? Maybe people would appreciate the safe embrace of nostalgia when the miasma finally lifted? Perhaps he could even revive that silly old fairy tale – what had he called it? Love’s Labour’s Lost. No, that was something else. Love’s Labour’s Won. That was it. Silly title, he’d soon changed it.

But that hadn’t saved it, because the story didn’t work either. The play had had its scattering of performances, but interest had soon dwindled. Some pirate had tried to milk it for a few drops more by submitting it for printing, but Will had stopped it in time. Not that he should mind an inferior talent getting his reputation marred by a stolen, subpar comedy, but he was loath to abandon anything: maybe one day he could mend it. If his father’s business had taught him anything, it was to save all scraps, to economise. Patch it up and call it something else. If the skin is too small to make a glove, then make a purse.

And Love’s Labour’s Won was a prime candidate.

He knew what the trouble was, too. It was Rosalind. She was just such an airhead, such a simpering, stupid girl, and he had no idea how to make her interesting.

He reached the book market and ambled along the stalls, listlessly picking up a volume here and there, remembering how he’d once lighted on Romeus. But now everything on sale looked boring. They still pandered Robert’s old rant, trying to scrounge a few extra coins out of his dead carcass.

Will sighed and strolled on. Mustn’t think of that now. Must concentrate on the play. Must create new parts and discard all the old ones: Puck, Mercutio, Richard II, Arthur, Poins… all the various shadows that had paraded over the stage, showing Kit in all his different guises. Mischief maker, wildcat, broken king, helpless boy, tempter…

He shook his head, trying to clear it. So. Rosalind. Off to the forest of Arden. Lovey dovey. Fine.

No. Not fine. He threw down an amateurish pamphlet in disgust. She couldn’t travel alone into the woods. She would be raped, mugged, murdered. He rubbed his forehead. So, another girl in disguise? Well, why not? People seemed to enjoy it, and it solved a lot of problems. Besides, he could relate. He had lived with a disguise practically his whole life.

Staring up at the crows circling the shingle roof of St Paul’s, he forced himself to keep thinking creatively. He needed two girls. One dressed as a boy, then, and one as a… shepherdess.

No. No shepherds.

He laughed suddenly. No shepherds in a pastoral?

A shepherdess, then. Kit would have liked that. A memory surfaced unbidden – him and Kit in bed, just talking, fully clothed and still, somehow, making love.

Something rose in Will’s throat. I’m not going to cry. It’s just a date. A number. Thirty.

The age he never reached.

He clenched his eyes shut. The scene in his head refused to dissipate. He even heard voices now, murmuring laughter and repartee. He’d promised Kit to show two boys kissing in a play, and Kit had scoffed and told him it would never happen.

A shiver ran down Will’s back. Rosalind. The missing link. The boy as girl as boy… She was the key.

He opened his eyes and stared at the books on the table without seeing them. Rosalind in boys’ clothes… but this time, he wouldn’t stop there. People had come to expect funny situations arising from mistaken identities, but what if he showed them what could really happen? What if Rosalind went further than anybody else? If she was caught up in her disguise, even worse than Viola, if she actually decided to court Orlando, because she had no way of revealing her true identity but still had to be with him?

It might just work. It might. But how to make Orlando play along in a way that the audience would accept? Maybe by having him know that the masculine disguise concealed his one true love. But then the whole point of the play would disappear. Something else then. Maybe he could pretend?

Yes. He could pretend. Orlando was pining for his Rosalind so much that he didn’t care that it wasn’t her. He just closed his eyes and embraced what he thought was a boy, and thought of her. Made himself believe.

It wasn’t unthinkable. Will remembered the young men he had followed into dark alleys during the years following Kit’s death. They had all worn his face. And even as Will’s chest ached with ancient grief, he knew now that he must do it, must see it through. This was the answer to the promise he had made more than ten years ago.

 ***

 “You need a break from that.”

Richard had approached soundlessly through the leaf-fall. Now he stood, hands at his sides, trying for the commanding stance that worked so well on a stage. In real life, it was nothing short of ridiculous.

Without even looking up from the sketches of Troilus, Will just muttered a faint “Hm?”

But Richard was not to be put off by his friend’s determined melancholy. He sat down beside him on the lawn and attempted conversation. “Pastoral going well?”

Will made a face. “With these surroundings? Splendid.”

Richard chuckled. They were staying at Augustine’s mist-shrouded house in the aptly named Mortlake. The word had an ominous ring to it, as if the very clouds hovering over the water were a pestilent fume, and yet they spent the autumn here to avoid the plague. So far it had worked. “At least it’s doing Augustine good.”

Will averted his eyes and tried not to think about the way their friend’s health seemed to be silently deteriorating. He never complained, and never hinted at the truth, but something was eating away at their second-in-command – something more than the recent death of his son. As if the grief had turned into an ague and was devouring him from inside, and his friends would one day find him an empty husk. But the seasoned actor soldiered on, refusing to give in, even though the October cold seemed to have settled in his bones, making his movements slow and laboured.

“The body can only live so long without a soul to animate it,” Will muttered, but Richard chose to misunderstand.

“Yes… You know, I actually thought Gloriana would live forever. That ‘Beauty’s Rose’ would never die.” He winked at Will, who acknowledged the quote with a weary grimace. He knew that this was just a preamble to something else, that Richard was angling the stream with seeming disinterest, only to hook the trout with one decisive flick of the wrist as soon as its attention had been caught. Will knew his methods, but was too tired to resist them.

“Well, it just goes to show…” he began, but fell silent, unsure of what it went to show. That even monarchs were mortal? That God was finally fed up with having a spinster on the throne? That even Protestantism couldn’t save you? He snorted and flicked a spider from his hose. “It’s hilarious how everyone thinks everything will be better now, just because he’s on the throne. The mob is a fickle creature.”

Richard looked at him sideways. “You sound as if you miss the old bitch.”

Not her. Just her time. “She had her moments.”

“It’s time for a change.”

Will scowled. “I’m too old for changes.”

In truth, he was only thirty-nine years old, not exactly what you’d call ancient. But maybe it had nothing to do with actual years, and more with fighting. He was tired of fighting, in body and spirit. He had spent his life shadowboxing an imagined foe, and the minute he realised that she was not in fact the enemy, she died and someone new took her place. A new joker, a wild card, an unknown entity. Was Will supposed to use the rest of his years in pursuit of his secrets, probing his depths, straining at the borders of his patience, testing his waters? For what?

No, he had no welcome for the new king, the strange northerner whom everyone described as debauched and appallingly ugly.

“It’s a new start,” Richard said, determined to be positive. “We all need it.”

“New…” Will grimaced to himself. Such a simple word. One syllable, three letters. But it summed up his entire career: new. That was what he dealt in, that was his true trade: the new. Something new every week, if not by his quill then by somebody else’s. New, new, new. It didn’t matter that the stories they churned out had been told countless times before, as long as there was a new title and a new twist to the plot.

Well, there was only so much newness in him. At some point it had to stop. He had to stop. Maybe that was why he felt so old. Everything new had been taken out of him.

“At least he’s a man,” Richard shrugged, as if that were an unassailable advantage.

“Don’t be so sure,” Will smiled wearily. “I’m not even convinced she was a woman.”

“All monarchs are of an undecided sex. Just like Rosalind.” Richard’s voice was light, but Will felt his scalp cover in hot prickles at the thinly veiled hint. His friend had read the drafts and had seen right through him as usual.

“Well, even Christopher grows older,” Will defended himself.

“So put him in breeches for the whole play?” Richard asked, eyebrow pointedly raised.

Will avoided his gaze. “It’s one solution.” But beneath the banter, Will knew that Rosalind was shaping up to be the truest woman and man he had ever written. As if Kit and his sister Annie had joined forces. A tomboy and a half-man, combined to make the perfect human being.

“You need inspiration,” Richard said, and his tone indicated that he was finally nearing his true motive for seeking Will out on this foggy day.

“Like what?” Will humoured him.

“Like new acquaintances.”

Will groaned and put his quill back in the inkpot, which balanced precariously on the uneven lawn. He stretched his creaking fingers, numb with cold and damp. “Isn’t one of the reasons we’re here that we don’t want to meet any people?” he muttered. “Remember, people have the plague.”

“Not this one. He lives down the road.”

“Still.”

He felt exceedingly churlish, and he had no wish to meet anyone. He enjoyed being on his own, alone with his thoughts, with his depressive plots. Between making additions to the light-hearted pastoral, he succumbed to the darkest impulses in his writer’s psyche, channelling faithless women, deceiving villains, corrupt rulers and ungrateful children. The bleak surroundings were actually helping.

The others – actors at heart but without anything to act in – were quietly going crazy. But why they wanted Will to be a part of their desperate search for entertainment was beyond him.

To deflect Richard’s invitation he tried for an unassailable argument. “You do want me to work, don’t you?”

Richard made an impatient noise. “Yes, but work smart, not hard.”

Will looked at him, amused despite himself. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You’re twice as intelligent as everyone else. You only need to work half as much to reach as far as they do.”

Will shook his head, immune to Richard’s flattery. “Which means that if I work as hard as everyone else, I’ll reach twice as far?”

“Well…”

“And if I work twice as hard, well…”

Richard shrugged moodily. “So we’ll be the only ones to know, then.”

With that lugubrious remark, he rose to leave. Will could tell that he expected to be called back. Closing his eyes and leaning back on the trunk behind him, he debated with himself. Despite everything, curiosity got the better of him, just as Richard knew it would. So there was some life left in him, then, that he could feel his mind quicken at the promise of a puzzle?

“What?” he murmured, the question mark a mere wisp.

He could almost hear Richard smile as he turned back. “We’re going to have our futures told.”

Will made a face. “Futures.”

“Yes. You do still have a future, you know.”

“And you’ve located a fortune teller in this ghost town?”

Richard laughed, the secret adventure a glittering gem behind his eyes, sparkling with mischief. “Yes. One that Elizabeth herself consulted.”

Startled, Will looked up. He couldn’t possibly mean…? But Richard nodded in answer to the unspoken question.

“Oh…”

And just like that, Richard flicked his wrist and the trout was caught.

***

It had been Jack’s idea, of course, being the youngest at heart. When he had learned that Doctor Dee, the famous court astrologer, lived close by, he had gone into a childish craze, demanding that Augustine introduce them. Augustine had been understandably reluctant, but under the untiring onslaught of his friend he soon confessed that they were indeed briefly acquainted. He had tried to argue that the poor old man probably wanted to be left alone, but Jack made a convincing case for the contrary, claiming that Elizabeth’s death had not been good for him. Banished from court because King James tended to get nervous around practitioners of the occult, Doctor Dee had no steady source of income to support his property in Mortlake, and was naturally on the look-out for new customers.

It had been impossible to resist, even for someone as stubborn as Augustine, and now that the rendezvous was arranged and the four friends were shown into Doctor Dee’s parlour, Jack was giddy like a child.

“Welcome,” the ageing occultist greeted them and shook all their hands. His voice was deep but soft, and despite his flowing robes and long beard, he looked decidedly non-mysterious. He did have a curious little hat on his head with symbols that Will had never seen, but his eyes twinkled good-naturedly amid a matrix of fine lines. “Tea?”

“Do w-we dare?” Jack giggled excitedly, but received the cup without qualms.

“So, you boys want your horoscopes cast, then?”

His guests exchanged glances. Their host didn’t exactly beat around the bush.

“Oh, I’m sorry, you want to chit-chat for a while?” Doctor Dee shook his head in amusement. “Better not. I’m an old man. I might die before we get to the important part.”

“Surely–” Augustine began his polite objection, but Doctor Dee waved him off.

“I have no trouble accepting my imminent death.”

They stared at him in confusion, and he laughed.

“Don’t worry. I’ll survive the evening. I still have a few years left, thanks to this place. So…” He slapped his knees in an age-old gesture of getting down to business. “Who’s first?”

Despite his earlier enthusiasm, Jack suddenly seemed reluctant to pioneer. Glancing amongst themselves, the four men hesitated. Doctor Dee waited, and then he scanned the small group until his eyes snagged on Will. “Shall we?”

Will rose on shaky legs, disconcerted at having been singled out. He followed his host into another room, a small one with only two chairs and a rickety table, covered with a few nameless instruments. Around the walls, there were a few bookshelves, but not as many as Will would have expected of such a learned man.

“Oh, yes,” Doctor Dee said, seeing him look. “I was robbed.” He breathed in as if to continue, but fell silent, suddenly looking very tired. Will wondered if he should offer his condolences, or ask for details, but he had the feeling that Dee didn’t wish to talk about it, so he said nothing.

A moment passed, and then the old man rallied. “So, this session… I wouldn’t want you to be disappointed. Or shocked. You see, I only tell the truth, and some people can’t handle that. Can you?”

Will swallowed, remembering Aunt Joan and her reading of his hand. But she had known him, inside and out. They were related. This man was a complete stranger. He couldn’t possibly know anything. Unless…

Will cleared his throat nervously, eyes darting around the room, half expecting the devil to appear, Faustus fashion, from a trapdoor in the floor. “You sure this is quite…?”

Doctor Dee smiled faintly. “… kosher?”

Will frowned at the unknown word.

“Consistent with our faith,” Doctor Dee clarified with a small grimace, as if sharing a joke with himself.

“Our faith?” Will repeated.

Doctor Dee quirked an eyebrow. “You’re wondering which one I’m alluding to.”

Will felt himself colour.

“Well,” Doctor Dee sighed, the slightest tinge of impatience in his voice. “You’ll be happy to know that whichever seems pertinent to you, I endorse it.”

“You…?” Will began, but fell silent, unsure of what to say.

“Protestant, Catholic,” Doctor Dee shrugged. “It’s all one. The angels don’t care. It’s all just framework, you see? Function and form. A soul doesn’t change because of language, or because of a building. If you’re searching for Truth, it’s in here.” He prodded at Will’s chest with his index finger, and Will’s eyes caught the meshwork of veins that covered the back of his hand. Like tiny creeks, all combining to make one big river.

He shivered. This place was getting to him. “But… predicting the future,” he swallowed. “Does God really want us to know?”

There was the slightest hint of a smile on Doctor Dee’s face. “If He doesn’t, why did He create the stars?” He fiddled with a strange-looking instrument and then picked up a quill and a piece of paper. “Date and time of birth, please?”

Will wanted to get up and leave, but his body wouldn’t obey him. “Twenty-third of April, afternoon. Holy Trinity had just tolled three…”

Doctor Dee looked surprised at the detailed information, but then he nodded and wrote. Will wouldn’t have known about the exact time, of course, if not for Aunt Joan and her memory for details.

Retrieving a thick volume from one of the shelves, Doctor Dee consulted some kind of table, full of numbers and strange glyphs, and then wrote some more. The candles flickered over the scribbles taking shape on the paper, and Will felt sweat pearl and run down his back.

“Well, I can tell you already, there’s a clash of personalities in you. You were born under Taurus, the ox, which makes you strong-willed, purposeful and practical, but you also have a strong lunar influence…”

“… which makes me mad?” Will laughed nervously.

“Which makes you skittish. Driven by your intellect. These two extremes battle for supremacy within you. Sometimes one side wins, sometimes the other. There is no telling which will have the upper hand in any given situation. You may stick to a thought or an idea or a person, and the next minute you’re somewhere else in your head.”

Will baulked at the veiled accusation. “I’m not disloyal!” he burst out.

Doctor Dee was unruffled. “I didn’t say you were. Just… easily influenced. Able to pick up the thoughts and feelings of others.”

“Easily led?” Will translated, still needled.

“Empathic,” Doctor Dee corrected him.

“Wordplay.”

“At which you excel. But I’m a man of numbers.”

“Well, numbers don’t rule my life.”

“No? This year means nothing to you, then?” Doctor Dee’s eyes were deathly serious when they pinned Will to the chair, and Will felt his throat close.

“Not really,” he whispered weakly, unable to convince even himself.

Doctor Dee looked at him with something akin to sympathy. “Something must rule our lives,” he said. “So why not numbers?”

“We can rule ourselves,” Will objected, but it didn’t feel like his own words. He rather felt as if he was acting out a script written beforehand by his unsettling host.

“Yes, we have a measure of free will,” Doctor Dee agreed. “But only within very clear boundaries. As humans, we obey, we adhere to the rules of life, we eat and drink and work and sleep, otherwise we don’t last. We keep to our trade, fill our place in the Great Chain of Being. But we also fight it. Without the fight, we’d have no soul. We resist the rules, the chains, the boundaries, even as we thrive on them. The secret is in the balance. Every choice we make must restore the balance. That’s why the right choice for one day is the wrong one for the next. That’s why truths change. You understand?”

Will could do nothing but nod. Doctor Dee watched him for a while in silence, and then a thought seemed to come to him.

“Let me ask you someting. Are you content with King James’s rule?”

A cold draught seemed to sweep through the room. “Content?” Will gasped, scandalised. “He’s the King! It’s not for me to question him.”

“Of course, of course…” Doctor Dee looked away, seemingly searching for better words to convey his meaning. Clearing his throat, he conceded, “It’s not our place to question a king, you’re right. But is he really a lawful successor?”

Will felt himself go rigid. He’s as dangerous a teacher as Master Jenkins, he thought. Making me argue for the deposition of a monarch.

“I know, you’re thinking neither was Elizabeth.”

“There was no such stuff in my mind!”

Doctor Dee looked at him as a father might look at a deceiving child, giving him the opportunity to take back his lies and escape the rod. “An ambitious man such as yourself cannot choose but question authority. Don’t play games with me. I have your whole soul laid out before me right here. I can even tell you how your affair with Marlowe will end.”

Will choked on air. Staring wildly, he stuttered, “I-I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Doctor Dee looked vaguely vexed. “This is a science, you know. Let me hazard a guess. Based on these calculations… He’s an Aquarius, isn’t he? Well, I’d say you had a very tempestuous relationship, passionate, never static. You were fated to be drawn to each other, but unable to find peace in a world which forced you to play different roles. In one sense, he was an innocent victim to the spider’s web he got tangled up in, but being such a charmer, such a… seducer…” He pursed his lips. “Someone was bound to get hurt, and when you entered the scene, stealing all of his attention…”

I was hurt under your arm. Will swallowed and swallowed, but his throat was too dry. A pair of star-crossed lovers. A man whom he had held in his heart of hearts. And Doctor Dee still referred to him in the present tense. As if he were still a part of this world.

“I’m sorry,” Doctor Dee said, shaking his head. “I’m being inconsiderate. Focusing on the negative. He does love you, after all.”

Will felt an objection quicken and die in his throat. He wanted to scream that Kit loved no one any longer, that he was decomposing in an anonymous grave in the suburbs, but he couldn’t make a sound. Maybe a mystic like Doctor Dee didn’t see death as the end. Maybe he meant that Kit’s soul still loved Will.

The thought made something break and bleed inside him.

“And he’s not the only one,” Doctor Dee went on, oblivious to his turmoil. “People actually listen to you. You can influence events, Master Shakespeare, should you choose to do so – and James has many enemies.”

Will was too conflicted to reply.

“I can imagine what you’re thinking. ‘Dee has a personal grudge. Is he trying to snare me into some scheme for his personal gain? Preying on my vulnerable mind while I’m sick with grief?’ Well, you needn’t worry. I’m resigned to my fate, and another monarch wouldn’t change anything at this late date. I’m not telling you what to do. I do believe in free will after all. I’m just warning you. Preparing you. James will be challenged. The Catholics are displeased. The novelty of coronations soon wear off. When that day comes, are you going to use your talents to support him or to weaken him?”

Will was shocked out of his ability to speak with any kind of coherence. “I… couldn’t…”

“Oh, please. You’re too old to be bashful. You have the ear of London. You can sway them either way. You’ve used it before. And believe me, something will happen, and soon. You have to know which side you’re on before the time comes for a showdown. When the Privy Council looks at your current plays, will they see unflinching royalism or subversion?”

Will sat very still, staring incredulously at the serious man before him. How did he know about Macbeth? How had this consultation got so out of hand? Why had he agreed to come? Why…?

“Why are you telling me this?” His voice was a mere whisper.

Doctor Dee’s face softened into a dazzling smile. “Because you’re such a conflicted person,” he chuckled. “Always with the choices! I’m letting you know what the important choice will be. I’m not making it for you, but I’m pointing your gaze in the right direction. All the minor decisions you make every day, I know they’re taking their toll, but at the end of the day they’re not that important. This one is.”

“Are you in league with Poley?” Will blurted, and this made the astrologer burst into boisterous laughter which echoed disrespectfully between the stone walls, shaking the dust from the musty books.

“No,” he said, wiping his eyes. “I’m too disgraced to be in league with anybody anymore, and that lunatic would be the last man on my list.”

When his mirth died down, the two men sat in silence for a while, Will battling demons of all kinds and Doctor Dee smiling, patiently waiting for his guest to come to some sort of checkmate with himself.

Finally, Will managed an unfinished question. “What will happen, you know, if I…?”

Doctor Dee’s face darkened. “I don’t want to sway you.”

“But you said something would happen. What did you mean?”

Doctor Dee grimaced, obviously regretting having revealed too much. “The usual,” he muttered between clenched teeth. “Disgruntled nobles trying for a coup.”

Will frowned, remembering the failed attempt at Elizabeth’s throne two years back. “’Trying’.”

“Yes.” Doctor Dee’s face was impassive, refusing to reveal the outcome of the anticipated insurrection. He was making Will choose sides without enough to go on. Like father, caught in the crossfire between Leicester and Edward Arden. Like the Queen herself, balancing her suitors and walking the tightrope of foreign affairs by endless equivocation. Like Kit, getting the best of both worlds. But none of them had actually made a choice, at least not outwardly. They had paid lip service to a worthy cause, and then belied those promises with their actions.

Just like Will.

He leaned his head in his hands, and words that he’d never planned to tell anybody came tumbling out of his mouth. “The same old shit just continues, on and on,” he sighed. “Nothing is ever new. The Queen is dead, long live the King! It’s all one. Birth and death, birth and death, all the people in a stupid procession from cradle to grave, all deluded into believing they can make a difference, or that somehow they matter. They don’t! It’s all fake. Nobody shows their real self. We’re all pretending, doing our desperate little jig of life during the short time that is afforded us and then – nothing. It seems so important, so hectic and filled with meaning, but in the end… there’s just death.”

Doctor Dee said nothing.

“Paradoxically, I’m in this profession because I want to say things.” Will gave a short, bitter laugh. “And that’s the one thing I can’t do.”

“No?”

“Which means that… I betray myself – every day! Because I am who I act. It’s my actions which define me regardless of my personal thoughts. If I don’t act on my beliefs, it doesn’t matter what I believe. If I outwardly adhere to the Protestant faith but secretly believe in Catholicism, I’m still a Protestant to the world. And if there is no God, there is no one to see what I secretly think. What I am.”

“But you’re not a Catholic.”

Not stopping to wonder how Doctor Dee could possibly make such a claim, Will said, “That’s just an example. What I mean is, whatever the area, if I don’t follow my inner truth, I lose my claim on it. As soon as I don the mask, I become the mask, because that’s the only thing the audience sees. They have no interest in what I believe off stage. So when I follow rules I don’t believe in, and act on those rules just to save my own skin, I’m no better than whoever invented them. Because I am only what I show, and thoughts are worthless without the deed.”

Doctor Dee cocked his head as if to object. But then he gave a little nod, and his eyes glittered with all the joy of a fellow foreigner hearing his native tongue for the first time in many years.

“If I condone the state’s actions,” Will went on, “I am the state. Even the hangman does what others tell him, but he does wield the knife. Without him, no one would cut open the traitor’s stomach or pull out his entrails. Even if he just follows orders, his hands are painted red with the victim’s blood. If he didn’t perform the act, that person would live, no matter what the Privy Council decided. So if everyone refused to do their bidding, they would have to do it themselves. It’s us. We’re the ones who give them their power.”

Doctor Dee nodded sagely.

“And I’m afraid of becoming this person that I’m impersonating! What if I play this part for so long that ‘I’ disappear? What if I argue for a case I don’t believe in for so long that I lose the ability to discern my own opinions? If I disguise myself until I don’t know what is the disguise and what is me? I’ll become Walsingham, or Poley. Thoughts are nothing. Actions are everything. It doesn’t matter that I once believed in something better, that I’m really not this person, because if I play this person… this person is who I am.”

Dee nodded again, but not in agreement. “You do say what you mean in your plays, though.”

Will leaned his head in his hands. His forehead was damp. “Do I?”

“Yes. If people know what to listen for, they will hear.”

Will shook his head against his palms. He had had ideals once, but they were long since buried in the practical concerns of adulthood. Had he betrayed the child he had once been?

“I’m not so sure that people do hear, though,” he choked out. “It’s hidden too deep.”

“So what is it that you truly want to say?”

When Will didn’t answer, Doctor Dee shuffled his papers together and put them away. Then he turned and smiled, for all the world like a father who was sure his wayward son would settle down and become his own man. “You’ll be alright.”

 ***

Not a great fan of the arts, King James still ended up summoning the famous Chamberlain’s Men – or the tatters that were left of them after this plague-ridden autumn – to Wilton House for an impromptu performance.

“I suppose the boredom of country life finally wore him down,” Augustine  grinned as they scurried to arrange their props. There was a murmur of chuckles, but it died down sooner than it should. Darting glances among the Men revealed their unspoken fear: somehow this play had them rattled like superstitious schoolboys. Perhaps they too had got the Choice lecture from Doctor Dee, and were afraid that this play was somehow sealing their fate.

And the path they were treading truly was a dangerous one. This was their first royal performance under the new King, and they weren’t showing a reliable classic like Merry Wives or The Shrew. No, they flew headlong into the unknown with a play that seemed to unravel the very fabric of reality. Despite the fact that it was a comedy, there was plenty in there to give offence: an evil and illegitimate ruler, that James could imagine to be a portrait of him. The rightful duke holding court in the wild – an allusion to Scotland?

It felt like uttering a phrase in a foreign language, and waiting to see what it meant from the reaction of the native speaker.

Concealed behind the curtain, Will watched as the play unfolded. The words flowed, natural and unencumbered. The scenes wove into each other, perfect like flowers opening to the sun.

And yet he realised that it wasn’t working. The carefully crafted verse beat its wings a few turns around the room and then dropped to the floor, unheeded and unapplauded. The King was yawning and drinking, chattering with his queen. His nobles followed suit, puppets that they were. The contrast to Elizabeth’s rigid court was striking, and Will found that he preferred hers. I really am growing old. Kit would laugh at me.

Kit…

When he’d died, Will had vowed never to put quill to paper again, and yet the opposite had happened. The ink had swallowed all his grief. Like the sea, its hunger was endless. Words were his only solace, poetry his only life buoy. Lost in a dark and hollow place that had no name, the only thing he could do was to describe it.

He was jarred out of his reverie by a sudden hush on the other side of the curtain. No one was chattering or chewing or burping or slurping. He looked up, strained his ears. Not even the actors could be heard. Had they forgotten their lines? Was the King angry?

Getting up from his chair, Will crept towards the slit in the curtain, dreading what he would see. He reached it just in time to see Orlando and Ganymede kneeling, and Celia holding a hand over them in mock benediction. When he squinted to make out the audience, he could see King James’s mouth hanging open, moisture glistening on his nether lip. His queen sat beside him, stone-faced, and Will remembered something Kit had once said about the Scottish king, about how he wouldn’t hang the likes of us.

Could it be…?

Guilty creatures at a play…

Will swallowed and gripped the curtain.

“I take thee Rosalind for wife,” Orlando breathed into the unnatural quiet. It was supposed to be a funny scene, a handfasting version of the bed-trick, but something had changed. Richard’s voice was raucous and soft at the same time. Will felt his stomach turn and his chest grow wings. The moment was sacred.

“I might ask you for you commission,” Christopher whispered. “But I do take thee Orlando for my husband.”

The impossible was happening. They were going to kiss. They had refused during rehearsals, citing their clothes as reason: How can we kiss if Christopher is wearing the Ganymede costume? It’ll feel like kissing a man! Will had said nothing, hadn’t called their ridiculous bluff. He’d only shrugged and told himself that it had been a wild gamble anyway.

But he remembered wearing his male apparel and still melting under Kit’s eyes, still growing hot and cold in his arms, still throbbing with lust. They couldn’t know, but kissing between men was possible. Even in a doublet and hose.

And now it happened. Richard leaned in and reached for Christopher’s lips with his. Christopher relaxed in his arms and even gasped, falling open for his fellow player. Will struggled to go on breathing. This trumped anything Kit had ever accomplished. He’d had Ganymede sit on Jove’s lap for a couple of minutes, he’d let Edward II pine for his Gaveston. But he hadn’t shown this: two men, dressed as men, losing themselves in each other.

In the grips of the story they were acting out – how else could it happen? – their mouths pressed together. Will’s stomach bottomed out at the sight. Still, after all these years, his breath still hitched at the memory of those lips, the way they yielded to his. As if there was a Paradise on Earth. As if there was salvation to be had from a fellow human being. As if sinning was the natural state of man.

Ganymede and Orlando parted and opened their eyes, looking dazed. Nobody made a sound. Everyone knew that beneath the boy’s masculine clothing, there lurked a female character, but they also knew that an illusion was being dispelled. That this was a direct comment on the fact that all the time, in full view on the English stage, men were kissing. The only thing that made this kiss different was Orlando: he was the only person in the room who believed the youth before him was a boy.

And he still kissed him.

After a long pause, Christopher cleared his throat to find his voice. “There’s a girl goes before the priest,” he grinned, breathless. “And certainly a woman’s thought runs before her actions!”

As Will strained to see through the gloom, he thought he could make out a happy smile on the face of the King. And, like a flutter of premonition left over from his visit to Doctor Dee, he knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that the Chamberlain’s Men had made it through.

They’d made themselves new.