Page 2

“A coney-catcher is it?”

“Fie on thee, ruffian!” I cried. “That hurts!”

It was then that the brutish popinjay reached under my apron with his free hand to feel for the pudenda of which I was not in possession.

“What’s it?” he cried, shoving me away from him. “Hiding a sword where there should be a sheath? Counterfeit! Thief!”

I knew it was time to perform my scene of ravaged victim. “Help!” I screamed. “Help me! This brute has taken my virtue—!” But before I could continue, he walloped me on the side of my head, and I fell into the muck.

“Ow!” I yelped.

“Now you shut it with that caterwauling, boy! I see your plot! Now give me back my coins before I call the constable!”

I tried to run, but he used his brute actor’s strength to subdue me, then reached into my pocket, retrieving not just the coins he had paid me, but my own purse containing all that I had saved in hopes of escaping my miserable existence.

“Wait!” I cried, trying to get up again. “That’s my money!”

“Well, then, you shouldn’t try and pass yourself off as a lass, you prick-bearing, poxy-arsed knave!”

With his boot, he shoved me back into the shit, then shook my stolen purse in his fist, laughing most cruelly before making his exit. My head throbbed with indignity and frustration. I couldn’t call out for the constable, since, if the famous actor were to report me, I should surely be punished most unjustly. I had no recourse but to let him escape with all that I had. I wept fervently.

But once the sobbing ebbed, an angry fire raged in my belly. Burbage had not only stolen all my money, but my very hope of escape. I went to bed hungry and could barely sleep. I vowed to take my revenge upon him one day—not only him, but all actors, for it was their entire vile profession that I blamed for my misuse.

Little did I know at that time how soon this drunken brute’s destiny and my own would become so tightly knotted.

TwoThe Ordinary Poet

Wherein young Willy Hughes tells of an early childish love and then describes the moment he first laid eyes on the Poet.

To me, fair friend, you never can be old,

For as you were when first your eye I eyed.

—from Sonnet 104

My first great love was a Cornish boy named Barnaby Stubb. I had encountered him down by the Thames; he had just finished bathing. While he was but fifteen years old, he already had a fit man’s body with a full head of hair above and below. I was only fourteen at the time, but when his sparkling green eyes caught me spying on him, it made my heart go skippity-skip. But as I turned to walk away, I soon found his brawny hands grab my arm roughly. The next thing I knew he was dragging me behind the blacksmith’s shed, and I was certain he was going to thrash me. But when I began to cry, he pulled me to him most warmly and spoke sweetly, “There, there, pet. But soft now. I won’t hurt ’ee.”

Then he kissed me wetly and, being more experienced than I, laid me upon the ground to teach me how to diddle.

And so it was for the rest of that summer. We would meet in the same place every afternoon, before my own work began. He could be as rough as any other boy in Shoreditch, but when we were alone together he was gentle and most kind. While most of our sport involved what could be successfully accomplished in a matter of minutes with our mouths and hands, I did allow him one night to enter me in the way of the Greeks. Like all he did, he went most slowly and affectionately, and I (eventually) enjoyed it very much.

Barnaby’s family had only recently relocated to Shoreditch from Cornwall where he worked as a drayman for his father, hauling beer and spirits to taverns and alehouses. Though he dreamed of becoming a brewer’s apprentice and to one day become a master brewer himself. Or that is what he had told me one afternoon just after we had finished our pleasure and lay spent in each other’s arms.

“Why a brewer?” I asked, sniffing the little hairs that were newly grown on the back of his meaty wrist.

“I fancy the smell of the yeast and hops,” he said. “Not to mention, Jesus hisself was a brewer of sorts. Did he not turn water into wine? Don’t say I said that. But ’tis a miracle what happens in them barrels. Mix a little this, a little that, and by my troth, ’ee have made the most delicious beverage in all of England.”

I could listen to Barnaby talk for hours. There was a warm and jolly music to his voice. I said little myself for I didn’t have the upbringing he had, although, as time went on, I would eventually surpass him in eloquence.

“And ’ee?” he asked. “Have ’ee an eye on an apprenticeship or profession?”

I shrugged. “Not a clue what I’ll become other than what I already is.”

I must have looked sad when I said it because Barnaby cuddled me closer. “Don’t ’ee worry, I’ll take care of ’ee, boy-o. We’re friends for life, we is.”

I would not claim that Barnaby was loyal to me. There were certainly girls and other boys like myself who wooed him. But I knew he found me precious, since he came to me many times over that summer, and even after he was satisfied, would always stay longer, holding me closely as we lay in the stickiness of our sin.

Alas, the in-between times of our friendship were less assuring. Barnaby would disappear from my life for days at a time and would never claim our friendship in front of others, sometimes disavowing me completely, acting as if he had no idea who I was. This hurt dreadfully, and I wept barrels of tears each night before I slept.