Voices from the Past Part 120

Everyman knows the exquisite desire for a woman; he also knows the ravening need...when there is no woman.

With Ann opposite me at supper table, I peered outside at the leaves, beyond the oriel, and denounced myself as I ate, enumerated my festering faults. I tasted little, wishing for sensible words and tranquil mind. But there was no shutting the door.

"Eat, Will," she said, and I nodded, but dared not glance at her, to find the stranger and myself. I resented her as if her infidelities were yesterday's, as if my side of life could be ruled out, as if we were young...

Patience has not helped. Only forgiveness can.

Leaves drop from the trees and the kettle bubbles and we feed ourselves, grieving. Our shields are in place but the lances were broken years ago. Our visors are down, our plumes awry. Our horses have been killed in the field. Without pennons, we move our gauntleted hands in rusty bewilderment, slow-gaited with many, many abysmal hungers.

Henley Street '15

I kept a stray in my London apartment: after feeding him while on one of my strolls along the Thames I could not shake him: Pericles had a soothsayer's mug dripping with ignominious grey whiskers, a privateer's baleful eye, a silver-grey hide, a black tail, three white feet, a black-booted foot, and a bark like a tin pot clipping the pavement. When it came to food, Pericles was greedier than Shylock for a pound; piercing me with piratical eyes, he sat up, wagged for pity, then slumped in grief, moaning better than any stage madonna. Pericles and Jonson became the best of friends: pieces of bread or cheese from Ben's pocket ordained him lord and master.

Along the Thames, Pericles flew after every bird, yapping incessantly; it seemed to me he could run all day and never tire. When left to guard the apartment, he kept to a mat inside the door, gradually sheathing it with a coat of silver-grey hair.

Shakespeare and Ashley meshed in fog:

They duel in a fog meadow.

Fog blows away before Julius Caesar's ruined castle

among rocks and weeds.

Shakespeare's dog tangles with Ashley,

caroms against Shakespeare:

Shakespeare falls.

November 7, 1615

F

og sopped the gra.s.s and weeds when I fought my duel, by Caesar's castle. I could barely make out Jonson, Pericles, and friends, among the pines and bush below the castle ruins. Phantasma? I asked myself.

Ashley and I had quarreled over money: as one of the King's Men he had cheated me roundly; now he faced me, privateer, poet, rich man's b.a.s.t.a.r.d who would defy immortal Caesar: on twelve-foot legs, bearded, cloak over shoulder, rapier in hand, fog creaking against him, he closed in. On stage I had dueled many times; today I must put fakery to test.

As Ashley and I fought I heard Pericles barking and heard voices, saw Ashley's men and my own, now in the fog, now out of it, shifting distorts.

My rapier hilt felt icy; the whip of steel on steel had a ring to it I had never heard. I hated the fog, telling myself I must make it serve me: it was to my advantage as well as his. Our blades spat fire. I drew back. The ruins caught the inserting sun and stood distinctly above us: in my inner sight Caesar's legions were amused at us.

Other watchers appeared-grinning. Death is always grin- ning.

Ashley drove me back, steadily, steadily, forcing me toward the base of the castle where blocks of stone menaced, strewn amidst thick weeds. I fought to keep my footing and tried to beat him off. He was fighting savagely: his blade had a whiteness about it I couldn't understand. I felt that whiteness slice my white belly: so, stumbling over Caesar's masonry I was to die.

But I am 'gainst self-slaughter and somehow drove him in front of me and got yards away from the wall, deflecting blow after blow. Ashley was fighting like a privateer with a cutla.s.s, each blow shoulder-down. My wrist felt beaten. I parried a series of terrific blows and then staggered.

At that moment, Pericles hurled himself on Ashley, playing, growling, jumping joyously; with a bound he leaped at me and before I could call off the dog or beat him off, I fell. As I came to my knees, Ashley was waiting and shoved his blade into my groin.

The fog and woods...they were there in that pain, and Jonson's voice was there...my rapier, I kept thinking, where is it? Will they pick it up? I felt that months had pa.s.sed, that I had aged a mult.i.tude of years, like the stone, like the battlement: age, that alchemy, filtered through the fog and sun...

I remember them carrying me.

Henley Street

November 8, '15

Jonson took me to his apartment in his carriage and bragged about his Holland duels and the men he had pinked. As I lay in bed, feverish, during the days to come, father appeared, expressing pity-the pity he had shared with the plague-stricken. "You there, you, boy, I've something for you. This will help you." I understood. I cared. I wanted to talk to him. I wanted to sit with him underneath our apple tree and feel the summer's sun.