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I looked again at the pages of too many words and sighed.

“Don’t worry, Hughes. I know it seems a lot, but this is your lesson. Just start to sound it out. You’ll start to recognize the shapes.”

I did as he said and worked my way through Juliet’s speech.

“What’s … here?” I pronounced. “Ah yes. What’s here. I know those words.”

Slowly but surely, I began to recognize patterns in the letters and was becoming a champion of the shorter words like “cup,” “see,” and “lips,” along with all the forms of the verb “to be,” which the Poet told me were trickier than other verbs due to their conjugational tomfoolery. For hours we worked on the speech until the shapes of every word became like landmarks on a pathway home—the combination of letters was just that, reminders of a word itself and hints on how to pronounce it. It then occurred to me that words on the page were like the master of the book shouting out your lines from the tiring house. We worked for two more hours, our legs pressed against each other, often laughing at my mispronunciations. He never was cruel in his corrections. But at the end of the time, while I still had to be prompted, I had the speech memorized and performed it for him.

JULIET:

What’s here? A cup closed in my true love’s hand?

Poison, I see, hath been his timeless end.—

I recalled the sorrow and anger I felt when my Barnaby had been stolen from me.

O churl, drunk all, and left no friendly drop

To help me after!

I imagined what it would be like to find the Poet dead here and allowed tears to come to my eyes.

I will kiss thy lips.

Haply some poison yet doth hang on them,

To make me die with a restorative.

Here I leaned down and kissed the pillow most tenderly.

Thy lips are warm!

When I finished, the Poet stared at me a long time, and I could see that his own eyes glistened with emotion.

“Well done, lad,” he said. “As I had hoped, you took her spirit as your own.”

He stood up from the bed and pulled me to him, cupping my head to his chest. I felt his heartbeat and the heat of his skin through the thin cloth of his shirt. He blew his breath into my hair and sniffed deep as if I were a babe, and he wanted to smell the scent of my birth. I sniffed him in return, breathing in the scent of his body. It was not the embrace of a lover, yet it was also not only the respectful affection of a fellow actor. For that warmest of moments, I pretended he still might become my beloved, as well as the father I’d never had, a father who wanted me and was pleased with me. It was a strange, beautiful, and unsettling moment. One that I would return to over and over again, mostly at nights, to soothe myself to sleep.

FourteenThe Expense of Spirit

Mistress Rosalind Williams tells of her sojourn into the countryside wherein she encounters the Poet for the third time.

Th’ expense of spirit in a waste of shame

Is lust in action …

—from Sonnet 129

While our world believes it proper for a woman to deny herself all, I have rarely been one to deny myself anything. And so, I have accepted the Poet’s invitation to rendezvous with him during his company’s tour—though I will not inform him of this fact beforehand should he have changed his mind.

I journeyed to Dover on Friday and have taken rooms on Beach Street at the White Cliffs Inn. It’s a fair price, mostly clean, and with a marvelous view of the Narrow Seas. The town itself is not large, nor is there much merry-making, but there is clean salt air, no sign of the pestilence, and the fresh fish are most appealing. Better still, there are handbills for the Lord Chamberlain’s Men posted everywhere in the market square. They will be performing three plays by the Poet, along with another by Dekker. I inquire from the innkeeper if he knows where the players might be housed. He is most ungracious.

“Fie on them poxy players,” he grouses, his bloated Madeira-infused face reddening. “The townsfolk won’t let them scoundrels into their rooms for fear of the plague and other mischief. They’ve been forced to set up camp in Mister Martin’s old barley field and will be performing their devil plays outside the city limits.”

“Oh dear,” I say. “Is the encampment far?”

“Not much more than fifteen minutes’ ride from the Dover Castle if you’ve got an animal. Though, ’pon my word, godly folks wouldn’t think much of a lady traveling to see them rascally jackanapes.” He then shakes his head. “Even one such as you.”