Little Will saw her do it. He knew too how to interpret such a look. Had Father been naughty?
"You are not selling more of the timber, John?" asked Mother.
"Say the word, Mistress Mary Arden of the Asbies," says Father grandly, "and I stop the bargain with your Cousin Lambert where it stands. 'Tis yours to say about your own. Though nothing spend, how shall a man live up to his state? But it shall be as you say, although 'tis for you and the boy. He is the chief bailiff's son-his Dad can feel he has given him that, but would have him more. I have never forgot your people felt their Mary stepped down to wed a Shakespeare. I have applied to the Herald's College for a grant of arms. The Shakespeares are as good as any who fought to place the crown on Henry VII's head. But it shall be stopped. The land and the timber on it is Mistress Mary Shakespeare's, not mine."
But Mary, pushing little Will aside clung to her husband's arm, and the warmth in her tender eyes deepened to something akin to yearning as they looked up at him. With the man of her choice, and her children-with these Mary Shakespeare's life and heart were full. There was no room for ambition for she was content. Had life been any sweeter to her as Mary Arden of the Asbies, daughter of a gentleman, than as Mary Shakespeare, wife of a dealer in leathers? Nay, nor as sweet!
But she could not make her husband see it so. Yet-and she looked up at him with a sudden passion of love in that gaze-it was this big, sanguine, restless, masterful spirit in him that had won her. From the narrow, restricted conditions of a provincial gentlewoman's life, she had looked out into a bigger world for living, through the eyes of this masterful yeoman, his heart big with desire to conquer and ambition to achieve. Was her faith in his capacity to know and seize the essential in his venturing, less now than then? Never, never-not that, not that!
"Do as you will about it, John," begs Mary, her cheek against his arm, "only-is it kind to say the land is mine? We talked that all out once, goodman mine. Only this one thing more, John, for I would not seem ever to carp and faultfind-you know that, don't you?-but that Bardolph--"
"He's a low tavern fellow, I allow, Mary-of course, of course. I know all you would say-his nose afire and his ruffian black poll ever being broken in some brawl, but he's a good enough fellow behind it, and useful to me. You needs must keep on terms with high and low, Mary, to hold the good will of all. That's why I am anxious to arrange this matter with Burbage to have the players here, if the Guild will consent--"
"Players?" says Will, listening at his father's side. "What are players?"
"Tut," says Dad, "not know the players! They are actors, Will-players. Hear the boy-not know the players!"
But Mother strokes his hair. "When I told you a tale, sweet, this very morn, you went to playing it after. I was the Queen-mother, you said, outside the prison walls, and you and Brother were the little Princes in the cruel tower, and thus you played. You stood at the casement, two gentle babes, cradling each other in your arms, and called to me below. So with the players, child, they play the story out instead of telling it. But now, these my babes to bed."
III
The next day things seem different. One no longer feels afraid, while the memory of Gammer's tales is alluring. Will remembers, too, that greens from the forest were ordered sent to the Sadlers for the making of garlands for the Town Hall revels. Small Willy Shakespeare slipped off from home that afternoon.
Reaching the Sadlers, he stopped on the threshold abashed. The living-room was filled with neighbors come to help-young men, girls, with here and there some older folk-all gathered about a pile of greens in the center of the floor, from which each was choosing his bit, while garlands and wreaths half done lay about in the rushes.
But, though his baby soul dreams it not, there is ever a place and welcome for a chief bailiff's little son. They turn at his entrance, and Mistress Sadler bids him come in; her cousin at her elbow praises his eyes-shade of hazel nut, she calls them. And Gammer, peering to find the cause of interruption and spying him, pushes a stool out from under her feet and curving a yellow, shaking finger, beckons and points him to it. But while doing so, she does not stay her quavering and garrulous recital. He has come, then, in time to hear the tale?
"An' the man, by name of Gosling," Gammer is saying, "dwelt by a churchyard--"
Will Shakespeare slips to his place on the stool.
Hamnet is next to him, Hamnet Sadler who is eight, almost a man grown. Hamnet's cheeks are red and hard and shining, and he stands square and looks you in the face. Hamnet has a fist, too, and has thrashed the butcher's son down by the Rother Market, though the butcher's son is nine.
Here Hamnet nudges Will. What is this he is saying? About Gammer, his very own grandame?
"Ben't no witches," mutters Hamnet to Will. "Schoolmaster says so. Says the like of Gammer's talk is naught but women's tales."
Whereupon Gammer pauses and turns her puckered eyes down upon the two urchins at her knee. Has she heard what her grandson said? Will Shakespeare feels as guilty as if he had been the one to say it.
"Ay, but those are brave words, Hammie," says Gammer, and she wags her sharp chin knowingly; "brave words. An' you shall take the bowl yonder and fetch a round o' pippins from the cellar for us here. Candle? La, you know the way full well. The dusk is hardly fell. Nay, you're not plucking Judith's sleeve, Hammie? You are not a lad to want a sister at elbow? Go, now! What say you, Mistress Snelling? The tale? An' Willy Shakespeare here, all eyes and open mouth for it, too? Ay, but he's the rascalliest sweet younker for the tale. An' where were we? Ay, the fat woman of Brentford had just come to Goodman Gosling's house--
[Illustration: "'Ay, but those are brave words, Hammie,' says Gammer"]
"Come back an' shut the door behind you, Hammie; there's more than a nip to these December gales. I' faith, how the lad drumbles, a clumsy lob--
"As you say, the fat woman of Brentford, one Gossip Pratt by name, an' a two yards round by common say she was, an' that beard showing on her chin under her thrummed hat an' muffler, a man with score o' years to beard need not be ashamed of-this same woman comes to Goodman Gosling's, him as dwelt by the churchyard. But he, avised about her dealings, sent her speedily away, most like not choosing his words, him being of a jandered, queazy stomach, an' something given to tongue. For an hour following her going, an' you'll believe me-an' I had it from his wife's cousin a-come ten year this simple time when I visited my sister's daughter Nan at Brentford-his hogs fell sick an' died to the number o' twenty an' he helpless afore their bloating and swelling.
"Nor did it end there, for his children falling ill soon after-a pretty dears they were, I mind them, a-hanging of their heads to see a stranger, an' a finger in mouth-they falling sick, the woman of Brentford come again, an' this time all afraid to say her nay. An' layin' off her cloak, she took the youngest from the mother's breast, dandling an' chucking it like an honest woman, whereupon it fell a-sudden in a swoon.
"An' Goodwife Gosling seizing it, an' mindful of her being a witch-woman, calling on the name of God, straightway there fell out of the child's blanket a great toad which exploded in the fire like any gunpowder, an' the room that full o' smoke an' brimstone as none could-Save us! What's that!" cried Gammer.
[Illustration: "'Save us! What's that!' cried Gammer"]
What, indeed! That cry-this rush along the passageway! Will Shakespeare, with heart a-still, clutches at Gammer's gown as there follows a crash against the oaken panels.
But as the door bursts open, it is Hamnet, head-first, sprawling into the room, the pippins preceding him over the floor.
"It were ahind me, breathin' hoarse, on the cellar stairs," whimpers Hamnet, gathering himself to his knees, his fist burrowing into his eyes.