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Give warning to the world that I am fled.

—from Sonnet 71

To say my nearly twenty years with Barnaby have been happy is too simple a description. While there has been much joy, our time together has also frustrated, inflamed, faded to near death, and found strength yet again. Of course this is all to say, we have made a life together.

I often thought about the Poet over the years, as one does with those who break one’s heart so brutally. I would wonder if he still thought of me after so long. Sometimes I’d visit the taverns in Barnstaple where touring companies of actors would drink, and I’d listen to gossip about the London playhouses. I learned that Burbage had grown even more famous and intolerable in his arrogance. Beeston could still be a bully but found his way to moments of kindness too. The comedian Will Kemp had been fired from the King’s Men; no doubt for drunkenness or perhaps for disregarding the stage poet’s lines too many times. Little Goat and Alex remained with the company, and, once both were of age, admitted their secret childhood affection for each other, which grew into something greater. This pleased me enormously since I was the one who had shepherded them in love’s direction. I had long since lost contact with those dear old friends, being that all of us were more the sort to read lines rather than write them.

Concerning the Poet, there was little news, other than he had stopped writing, was the wealthiest of the sharers next to Burbage, and rarely came to London. In all the years he never reached out to me, nor I to him. While I hated to confess it, this unfinished scene caused a hole in my contentment.

Then one day, I received an anonymous letter in an unfamiliar hand. It informed me of the Poet’s death. He was only two and fifty years old. For a long time, I stood numbly staring at the words on the paper. It had never been my intention to seek him out again, having closed that chapter of my life so long ago. However, I’d sometimes play out a reunion with the Poet in my imagination, where I’d run into him on some street. He’d say a pleasant hello, and I’d assault him with a blistering speech about how he had hurt me so grotesquely during our time together. I’d also alert him to how happy and better off I was with Barnaby. Of course, the performance of my rebuke would be most fiery, along the lines of old Queen Margaret’s harangues in the King Richard III play. Alas, our dramatic scene would never be played. The finality of death, being the gravest of punctuation marks, ruins not only the chance for revenge but the desire for it.

The letter indicated that there would be a funeral in Stratford, and I would be welcome to attend. There was no signature, but being in an incredibly florid hand, I determined the letter had to be from his good wife, Anne, who had been so kind to me all those years ago. Did this prove that the Poet may have mentioned me again in those intervening years? Or was this me just hoping to know what would never be known?

I told Barnaby of the letter, and he insisted I attend the services. “Estranged from him or not,” he said, “the man lived in ’ee heart for a time, not to mention gave ’ee a career. If I hadn’t seen ’ee on that stage as Juliet, I might never have stepped forward.”

It would be a long day’s ride up to Warwickshire, but I figured if Anne took the time to write the note, it would be most unkind not to make the journey.

Forty-FourEpilogue

Wherein our story is most assuredly concluded.

Like as the waves make towards the pebbl’d shore,

So do our minutes hasten to their end.

—from Sonnet 60

When I arrived at Holy Trinity Church in Stratford-upon-Avon there was a throng of mourners outside clustered in a grey drizzle. At the doorway to the church stood Anne and her daughters along with several of the sharers from the King’s Men, most prominently Burbage weeping like a babe. Down in the yard, I noticed several of the company’s hired men, other poets, tiremen and tirewomen, a dozen of the old gatherers as well as housekeepers, builders, relatives, and what I assumed were the more notable townsfolk. Neither Alex nor Little Goat was present, the reason for which I did not know, but more likely the need for them to be earning their keep on the London stage.

My heart leapt when I recognized my old master, Augustine Phillips. Nearing eighty, he was much withered and used a cane. I longed to embrace him but did not want to draw attention away from Anne, who was at that moment being forced to play the part of dutiful wife to a dutiful husband. I feared that if I became too obvious it might set off a fluttering of cruel gossip amongst those who still remembered how much I had once loved him. I hid myself with my hat and coat, snuck around the rabble, so that I might slip into the church unseen, and thereby pay my respects unnoticed.

There is little to be said about what I saw inside, for the closed coffin was readied to be lowered into the tomb beneath the flagstone of the chapel—a place of great honor. I was glad I could not see his old and infirm face, for it would mar my memory. I laid my hand on the box, but when I heard the crowd enter, I fled to the back of the chapel, behind one of the archways so I might listen to the proceedings unseen.

The minister said what was to be expected. “Good father, faithful husband, remarkable poet, virtuous servant to God the Father.” Four falsehoods, one truth. The stories of the dead are always so incomplete, leaving out their hidden heartbreaks, their quiddities and profundities, their shits and sniffles that truly make up a life. What did this church father truly know of the Poet? What did most of the mourners know? I became embittered by the whole funereal circus. How could Anne just stand there and allow the lies? How could Burbage? How could any of us?

I could bear it no longer. I had intended to find a quiet moment to offer my condolences to Anne but resolved to send her a letter instead. I needed to leave the stifling church at once, before it smothered me in incense and lies.

I pushed through a crowd of mourners gathered at the door, and gasped for breath as I felt the air hit my face. Unfortunately, there were still dozens of oglers milling about the yard, mostly admirers of the Poet who had not been able to secure a place inside. Wanting to be utterly alone, I made my way for the street, but something caught my eye. Standing off and away from the crowd I noticed a woman wearing a long, green velvet cloak with the hood pulled over her head. It was, as if, she too was hiding her identity. It didn’t take much to conclude it was my long-ago nemesis Rose Williams. But why would she be here? Hadn’t the Poet wounded her as much or more than me? Had Anne sent her the same mysterious letter? I pondered whether the Poet’s wife was an even more cunning and perverse creator of drama than her husband. Or was it that Anne simply wanted the company of others present who knew a deeper truth about her late husband?

Before I could make an escape, she began to wave and cry out, “Hughes!” As she rushed toward me, she nearly slipped on the damp stones. When she reached me, she doffed her hood, and we stood face to face for the first time in over two decades. I was astonished. She had to be nearing sixty, yet her skin was as smooth as a woman much younger. Her black eyes were clear and sharp, and her posture was as regal as ever. The only signs of time’s brutal passing were the distinct crease betwixt her eyebrows, and that her signature red rose now sprouted from a mound of pretty, ash-colored curls. For a few silent moments, we merely looked into each other’s eyes, the weight of all that had passed between us lingering in the air.

“Let’s find a place to talk in private,” she finally said.

We walked to the damp graveyard’s far corner, stopping near the burial stone for a four-year-old boy—his entire life the same length as that which I had spent with the Poet. Gazing at Rose again, I tried to recall the hatred I had felt for her so many years before. Yet, I couldn’t even summon the memory of that foolishness. As much as the years may harden our bones, they may also soften our ire. At least toward some.

The wet tree branches blew their new buds softly above our heads. Their leaves would soon burst open, dressing them like Rose in a green velvet cape. They’d only wear it for a short summer season, after which it would turn gold, then brown, then fall to crackles upon the ground. A year from now they’d blossom again, performing that same play over and over until the tree, like all of us, would turn to dust.

“Did you know he died on his birthday?” was all I could say for some reason. “He always loved that sort of thing, where an ending brings back a taste of the beginning.”

“Always a poet first and foremost,” she said with a smile. It appeared that she, too, held no grudge.

“You look marvelous well,” I said.

“As do you,” she said. “You’ve turned into a fine man. Do you still act?”

“No. I stopped. I no longer felt joy from pretending to be what I was not. Now, I’ve become a school master.”

She scrunched her nose as if she smelled something peculiar. “You? A school master?”