“What is’t?”
“My journal. Thy husband’s illness is there, my treatments of it, and all my thoughts. I’d have thee burn it.”
“Why?”
“We have been friends these three years. We’d drink a cup of ale, and sit, and talk. One day he chanced to speak of a play he’d writ, a sad play of a man who’d bartered his soul to the devil. He spoke of it as if he had forgot that I was with him: how it was writ and when, where acted. He marked not that I looked at him with wonder, and after a little, we went on to other things.”
He closed the pouch. “The play he spoke of was Kit Marlowe’s, who was killed in a brawl at Deptford these long years since.” He took the papers back from me and thrust them in the candle’s flame.
“Hast thou told Susanna?”
“I would not twice deprive her of a father.” The pages flamed. He thrust them in the grate and watched them burn.
“His worry is all Susanna’s inheritance,” I said, “and Judith’s. He bade me burn his plays.”
“And Marlowe’s?” he said, dividing the charring pages with his foot that they might the better burn. “Hast thou done it?”
A little piece of blackened paper flew up, the writing all burnt away. “Yes,” I said.
“Judith said we are to have a play,” Elizabeth said as we descended the stairs. She freed herself from Drayton’s arms and ran into the hall.
“Judith?” I said, and looked to where she stood. The Fox was at her side, his feathered cap wet with snow. He leaned against the wall, seeming not even to listen. The Frill squatted by the hearth, stretching his hands to the fire.
“Oh, grandsire, prithee do!” Elizabeth said, half climbing into his lap. “I never saw a play.”
“Yes, brother, a play,” Joan said.
Drayton stepped between them. “We are too few for a company, Mistress Bess,” he said, pulling at Elizabeth’s ribbon to make her laugh, “and the hour too late.”
“Only a little one, grandsire?” she begged.
“It is too late,” he said, looking at me. “But you shall have your play.”
The Fox stepped forward, too quick, taking the Frill by the sleeve and pulling him to his feet. “What shall we, Master Will?” he said, smiling with his sharp teeth. “A play within a play?”
“Aye,” Drayton said loudly. “Let us do Bottom’s troupe at Pyramus and Thisbe.”
The Fox smiled wider. “Or the mousetrap?” All of them looked at him, Judith smiling, the Fox waiting to snap, Master Drayton with a face taken suddenly sober. But he looked not at them, nor at Bess, who had climbed into his lap. He looked at me.
“A sad tale’s best for winter,” he said. He turned to the Frill. “Do ye the letter scene from Measure. Begin ye, ‘Let this Barnardine.’ ”
The Frill struck a pose, his hand raised in the air as if to strike. “ ‘Let this Barnardine be this morning executed and his head borne to Angelo,’ ” he said in a loud voice.
He stopped, his finger pointing toward the Fox, who did not answer.
Drayton said, “ ’tis an old play. They know it not. Come, let’s have Bottom. I’ll act the ass.”
“If they know not the play, then I’ll explain it,” the Fox said. “The play is called Measure for Measure. It is the story of a young man who is in difficulty with the law and would be hanged, but another is killed in his place.” He pointed at the Frill. “Play out the play.”
“ ‘Let this Barnardine be this morning executed and his head borne to Angelo.’ ” the Frill said.
The Fox looked at Drayton. “ ‘Angelo hath seen them both, and will discover the favor.’ ”
The Frill smiled, and it was a smile less slack-jawed and more cruel than I had seen, a wolfen smile. “ ‘Oh, Death’s a great disguiser,’ ” he said.
“An end to this!” I said.
Both of them looked at me, Fox and Frill, disturbed from their prey.
“The child is half-asleep,” I said.
“I am not!” Bess said, rubbing at her eyes, which made the party laugh.
I stood her down from off his lap. “Thou mayest have plays tomorrow, and tomorrow, and the next day. Thy grandfather is home to stay.”
Susanna hurried forward. “Good night, Father. I am well content that you are home.” She fastened Bess’s cloak about her neck.
“Will you a play for me tomorrow, grandsire?” Bess said.
He stroked her hair. “Aye, tomorrow.”
Bess flung her arms about his neck. “Good night, grandsire.”
John Hall picked up the child in his arms. She lay her head upon his shoulder. “I will take the actors with us,” John said softly to me. “I trust them not in the house with Judith.”
He turned to the Fox and Frill and said in a loud voice, “Gentlemen, you’re to bed with us tonight. Will you come now? Aunt Joan, we will walk you home.”
“Nay,” Joan said haughtily, stretching her neck to look more proud. Her ruff moaned and creaked. “I would stay awhile, and them with me.”
John opened the door, and they went out into the snow, Elizabeth already asleep.
“Marry, now they are gone, we’ll have our play, brother.”
“Nay,” I said, kneeling to put my hands in his. “I am a wife long parted from her husband. I would to bed with him ere sunrise.”
“You loved not your husband so well in the old days,” Joan said, her hands upon her hips. “Brother, you will not let her rule you?”
“I shall do whatever she wills.”
“I know a scene will do us perfectly,” Drayton said. He spread his arms. “ ‘Our revels now are ended.’ ” He donned his wide cloak. “Come, Mistress Joan, I will accompany thee to thy home and these two to Hall’s croft and thence to a tavern for a drop or two of sack ere I return.”
Judith walked with them to the far end of the hall and opened the door. I knelt still with his hands in mine. “Why did you this?” he asked. “Hath Drayton purchased you with pity?”
“Nay,” I said softly. “You cannot leave. Your daughters would be sad to have you go, and you have promised Elizabeth a play. You asked if there was aught that you could do for them. Be thou their father.”
“I will and you will answer me one question. Tell me when you discovered me.”
“I knew you ere you came.”
His hands clasped mine.
“When Hamnet died, and Old John went to London to tell my husband,” I said, “he came home with a coat of arms he said his son had got for him, but I believed him not. His son, my husband, would ne’er have raised his hand to help his father or to give his daughters a house to dwell in. I knew it was not he who did us such kindness, but another.”
“All these long years I thought that none knew me, that all believed me dead. And so it was as I were dead, and buried in Deptford, and he the one who lived. But you knew me.”
“Yes.”
“And hated me not, though I had killed your husband.”
“I knew not he was dead. I thought he’d lost us dicing, or sold us to a kinder master.”
“Sold?” he said. “What manner of man would sell such treasure?”
“ ‘The iron tongue of midnight hath told twelve. Good night, good rest!’ ” Drayton called from the door. “ ‘Sweet suitors, to bed.’ ”
I rose from where I knelt, holding still to his hands. “Come, husband,” I said. “The bed at last is made, in time for bed.”
“The bed,” he said, so weak I scarce could hear him.
“What is’t, husband?”
“I have left you a remembrance in the will.” He smiled at me. “I will not tell you of it now. ‘Twill please thee to hear it when the will is read.”
He had forgot that I sat by him when he made his will.
“John’s foul decoction hath made me better,” he said. “I am as one again, not split in two.”