P. Chisholm - A Plague of Angels

As they followed the company indoors, Dodd distinctly heard Shakespeare moan softly to himself.

***

Supper at Southampton House involved more mysterious meats in pungent sauces, leaves doused in oil and vinegar decorated with orange nasturtium flowers, decorated pies, astonishingly smooth-tasting wines. It all gave Dodd a bellyache just looking at it being laid out on the sideboard by the servants who carried it in, and of course every bite of it was cold after the palaver of serving it up and displaying to the Earl and then passing it around. It seemed courtiers showed their importance by making even the simplest things pointlessly complicated. Did they have three servants to wipe their arse, Dodd wondered, once the wine had started to work on his empty stomach.

Shakespeare seemed to have latched onto him again and was sitting next to him at the second table in the parlour, continuing to explain something about how playing was in the way you moved and spoke, not just in gestures and rhetoric. For instance, if you were playing a learned man, it wasn’t enough to wear spectacles, you had to look abstracted as well. Dodd nodded politely to all this unwanted information and tried not to yawn.

The Earl was laughing at something Mistress Bassano was telling him.

‘Mr Shakespeare,’ he called to them across the room. ‘A fair lady has just made a serious complaint against you. What have you to say?’

Shakespeare paused in mid-analysis of the contribution clothes made to a play-part, swallowed what he had in his mouth whole, and stood up.

‘What was her complaint, my lord Earl?’ His voice had changed. It was clearer, less flat, less dull.

‘She alleges that you used the fair muse of poetry to tell lies. I had heard better of you. Can it be true?’

Shakespeare paused, looking narrowly at Mistress Bassano who had a cruel expression on her face, rather like a cat torturing a mouse, and then at the Earl who was half laughing at him. Now that was an interesting sight to see, Dodd thought, because something inside the man shifted, you might almost say hardened. It was as if he came to some decision.

‘My lord Earl,’ said Shakespeare judiciously, his flat vowels filling the parlour full of overdressed people quite easily. ‘I’m sorry to say that it is true, if she means the poor sonnets I sent her the other day.’

‘So you admit the crime of corrupting the muse?’

‘I do, my lord. The bill is foul. The sonnets I made to her praise should never have been sent.’

Mistress Bassano, who had clearly been expecting a pleasant few minutes of poet-baiting, now looked puzzled.

‘Then you apologise to the lady?’ pursued the Earl.

‘I do, my lord. Unreservedly. I should never have said that her hair outrivalled the dawn nor that her voice put the birds to shame.’

‘And what will you do for your penance, Mr Shakespeare?’

‘Why, with the lady’s permission, I’ll read another of my poems.’

Perhaps because he was sitting right next to the man, only Dodd saw the tension in Shakespeare.

‘Compounding your crime, Mr Shakespeare?’ sneered the Earl.

Shakespeare smiled quite sweetly. ‘No, my lord. Telling the truth.’

‘A truthful poet. An oxymoron, to be sure?’

‘Not necessarily.’

‘Mistress Bassano? As Queen of the company, do you allow this?’

Creamy shoulders shrugged expressively. ‘He may embarrass himself again, if he wishes,’ she said.

The Earl waved a negligent hand to Shakespeare, who fumbled in the front of his doublet for his notebook, brought it out and opened it. The adenoidal voice filled the room.

’My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun,

Coral is far more red than her lips’ red:

If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun:

If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.’

Carey began by staring in shock, but then he smiled. The Earl laughed. Shakespeare let the titters pass round the room and continued.

’I have seen roses damask’d, red and white.

But no such roses see I in her cheeks:

And in some perfumes is there more delight

Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.’

The whole room was laughing, except for Mistress Bassano who had locked her stare on Shakespeare. The player ignored her.

’I love to hear her speak, yet well I know

That music hath a far more pleasing sound;

I grant I never saw a goddess go,-

My mistress when she walks treads on the ground.’

You had to admire what the player was doing. He paused for long enough to let the laughter die down again. And then for the first time he looked Mistress Bassano full in the face, like a man taking aim with a loaded caliver, and gave the last two lines.

’And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare

As any she belied by false compare.’

Even Dodd applauded with the rest of them. Shakespeare shut his notebook with a snap, sat down and finished his wine, studiously ignoring the way Mistress Bassano was staring at him. You could see she was angry but also that she knew better than to show it.

When the supper was done they walked in the moated garden amongst lavender and thyme and blossoming roses while pageboys of remarkable beauty scuttled between them with silver trays of jellied sweetmeats and wild strawberries dusted with pepper. Shakespeare was beckoned to the Earl’s side, and walked respectfully amongst the box hedges talking to him, nodding his head in agreement, occasionally making him laugh.

‘Enjoying yourself, Dodd?’ Carey asked, his voice a little slurred with drink, interrupting Dodd’s thoughts as he stood beneath a well-pruned tree and stared into the magnificent copper sunset.

‘Nay, sir,’ said Dodd. ‘Why, are ye?’

Truth was a weapon it seemed these courtiers had no armour against. Carey blinked and his superior little smile slipped slightly, but he didn’t answer, just strode off amongst the rose bushes, his left hand leaning on his sword hilt to tilt it away from catching on the flowers. Dodd folded his arms and leaned against the tree trunk. Away across the fields you could see the women folding up the linens that had been laid out on the grass and hedges to dry, before the dew came down to wet them again, and those gloriously fat London cows gathering at their gates ready to be brought in for milking. An old church poked its battered tower out of a small wood to the west.

‘Whatever have you done to Will Shakespeare, Sergeant Dodd?’ asked a throaty voice beside him and Dodd looked because he couldn’t help it, to be rendered instantly dry-mouthed again at the soft bulge of woman-flesh against red velvet stays.

‘What?’ he asked, coughed and took a deep breath. ‘I beg pardon, mistress, I dinnae understand ye.’

‘Will says you gave him the best advice he ever had.’

Dodd wrinkled his brow and then shook his head. ‘I cannae remember it. Might have been the other night when we were drunk.’

‘Of course.’

He couldn’t help it, he had to ask. ‘Are ye no’ angry with him, for his new sonnet?’

A maddening smile curved between Mistress Bassano’s lightly powdered cheeks and her dark eyes sparkled. ‘Oh, I am,’ she purred. ‘Enraged, infuriated.’

God, who could make head or tail of women? Dodd had no idea what to say.

‘I wanted to speak to Robin again,’ she continued. ‘But I think he has gone to play primero with my lord Earl.’

‘Ay, nae doot.’

‘You can tell him for me. You can tell him not to trust Will, for he has been taking money from Mr Marlowe and providing information on my Lord Hunsdon in return.’

Dodd stared at her, trying to work out whether she was telling the truth or just trying to make trouble for the player. Both, perhaps? Mistress Bassano smiled again, rather complacently, and met his eyes without a tremor.