and beat him to death with it, just as he beat his dog.
The urge terrified her. She froze where she stood. She had nothing more to say; she must kill him, or go. She looked at him there, cowering in the shadows with his surly mastiff cur at his side, four eyes in the dark like the eyes of Satan’s little demons. Then she turned on her heel and walked away, back out into the street. She closed her eyes a moment and stood there, shaking. Her heart pounded and she felt faint. She had seen into the first circle of hell, here on Holborn Hill, just outside the city walls of London.
T HE GREAT HALL at Essex House blazed with light. Extravagant candelabra, each with dozens of candles, glowed and flickered like a sea of sparkling gemstones. Liveried servants hovered everywhere with goblets of the finest wine and trays of delicate sweetmeats. Music from two dozen viols wafted in the air above the drowning chatter of three hundred revelers.
John Shakespeare stood at the doorway, at the edge of the throng. Even at the royal court, he had not seen such splendor, and his attire-he had taken out his old court doublet of embroidered blue, black, and gold-seemed poor stuff in comparison to the magnificent clothes on display here.
“Well, well, Mr. Shakespeare, you have made it to the court of Queen Lettice, I see.”
He turned to find himself gazing into the mound of flesh that was Charlie McGunn’s ill-formed face. “
“Be under no illusion, she is the sovereign here. The She-wolf reigns. We are all her subjects.”
A tumbler bounced past, springing from hands to feet, then over again onto his hands. But Shakespeare hardly noticed. He was more astonished-dismayed, even-by McGunn’s irreverent language. If Sir John Perrot was sentenced to death for calling Elizabeth “a pissing kitchen woman,” how much worse would it be to pay homage, even in jest, to the Queen’s cousin and sworn enemy Lettice Knollys? “I should be careful of your tongue, Mr. McGunn, lest it be cut out. I fear even my lord of Essex may not be able to save you.”
McGunn clapped him hard on the back. “You are an innocent doddypol, Shakespeare. I cannot believe Walsingham ever had such a simpleton as intelligencer.”
Shakespeare had heard enough. He walked away into the crowd, taking a cup of wine from a bluecoat on his way. The viols stopped and a man took to the richly draped stage, which encompassed the width of one end of the hall, not ten feet from him. At the two sides of the stage heralds blew trumpets, and the crowd immediately hushed and turned to see the man.
He was dressed as a jester, in multi-colored costume. Bells jangled on his cap and brightly patterned sleeves. “My lords, ladies and gentleman, pray silence for the She-wolf.”
A slow drumbeat sounded and a bier was borne on stage by four men dressed as Indians from the New World. They wore breechclouts-loincloths-of soft hide, and their hair was shaven on the sides and raised into a bristly central strip from front to back, all topped by a single pheasant’s tail-feather. On the bier, a woman reclined in state. She was adorned in fine court clothes and a wolf mask. The crowd of guests roared with laughter.
The bearers lowered the bier to the stage floor, and the She-wolf alighted. With a delicate step, she threw back her head and let out a great howl, like a wolf baying at the moon. She removed her mask and spread wide her arms, her long, elegant fingers upturned: Essex’s mother, Lettice Knollys, granddaughter of Anne Boleyn’s sister Mary, and red-haired like her cousin Elizabeth. Yet far more beautiful. Her features were soft and fair, her eyes aslant, her mouth set in the warm smile that had enticed men all her adult life.
Shakespeare took a long sip of his wine and watched as Lettice, almost fifty years old but as lovely as a woman half that age, welcomed her guests and invited them to enjoy “a little masque for your delight, penned by one of our most estimable poets and players…”
Lettice left the stage to a thunder of applause and was immediately followed by a cast of tumblers and players hurling themselves onto the stage in a riot of knockabout entertainments. Then suddenly there was silence again and all the players stood as still as trees in the forest. “But hush,” said the jester, cupping his ear with a hand. “Who do we hear coming into the wood? Why, methinks it is the Queen of the Faeries.”
As the viols started up again, quietly at first, all eyes turned to the stage entrance at the right, where three figures emerged, two of them dwarves dressed as monkeys, both with chains about their necks. The chains were attached to leashes held by the third figure, black-clad like a witch with pointed hat and boils about her haggard white face.
“Bow down, bow down, kneel one and all,” the jester said. “It
Shakespeare was aghast. One of the monkey figures had a long white beard; the other a hunchback. It was plain for all to see that they were meant to be William Cecil-Lord Burghley-and his son, Robert. As for the Queen of the Faeries, ancient and haglike with red hair and a whitened, pox-ridden face, it was intended to be taken as none other than Her Majesty, Gloriana, Queen Elizabeth of England. This was high treason. This could cost a man or woman their bowels and their life. You could be put in the Tower just for watching and have your eyes scraped out with a spoon for laughing. Shakespeare looked around him, expecting to see mouths agape in outrage. Instead he saw a sea of faces creased in laughter and hands coming together in deafening applause.
He watched what followed in a kind of trance. Half of him wanted to flee as far and as fast as he could and never return for fear of being separated from his head, yet the other half was fascinated. Could Elizabeth’s credit in England have fallen so low that her courtiers dared stage such a masque behind her back? And doubly astonishing was the thought of who was behind it: Elizabeth’s most favored pet, the Earl of Essex himself, in league with his mother, the She-wolf Lettice.
As he looked around the hall, Shakespeare saw faces of great fame: Essex was at the center of things, surrounded by a pack that included the Earls of Southampton and Rutland; the brothers Francis and Anthony Bacon; the dashing and dangerous Sir Henry Danvers and Gelli Meyrick-all known to be his close associates at home and on the field of battle. Somewhere in the distance, too, he saw Charlie McGunn, conversing like a conspirator with Essex’s straight-backed military aide Sir Toby Le Neve. Nearby, Essex’s sister Penelope Rich-four years senior to her brother-talked animatedly with the handsome Charles Blount. And then, with a mixture of relief and alarm, Shakespeare saw his own brother, William, in a group that included Essex’s wife, Frances.
On stage, the hag rattled the chains of her monkeys. “I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman,” she said, her voice ringing out falsetto like some eunuch from the seraglio. The crowd laughed with brazen humor, then the hag’s voice turned deeper, like a market stall holder calling out his wares, and she-or he-threw up her skirts to reveal a pair of bare, hairy legs and a pizzle that would not have shamed a bull. “But I have the balls and prick of a king, and of a king of England, too.”
Shakespeare, horrified, made his way through the crowd of revelers to his brother’s side. He nodded toward the stage and spoke quietly in his ear. “William, I hope this is nothing to do with you.”
His brother raised an eyebrow. “It’s that fool Greene. Look at him over there, preening with his villainous friends as he puts his neck further into the hangman’s halter.”
Shakespeare followed his brother’s eyes. The playmaker Robert Greene was holding court with his mistress Em Ball and various other unsavory characters. This summer revel of Essex’s had certainly brought out a curious array of pleasure-seekers. Will touched him on the shoulder. “Take care, brother.” Shakespeare raised his eyebrows. “And you,” he said softly. He watched as Will wove his way toward Southampton, where he was immediately welcomed by that group. He, in turn, switched his gaze to a settle at the side of the room. Frances, Essex’s pretty mouse of a wife, was there now, sitting alone, fanning herself.
“Mr. Shakespeare, how lovely to see you,” she said as he approached to pay his respects.
He remembered her from her childhood days when, as the well-loved and cosseted daughter of Sir Francis Walsingham, she seemed like a perfect doll, assisting her mother, Lady Ursula, with her embroidery and the running of the family’s households in Seething Lane and Barn Elms. Shakespeare had always liked her quiet ways and vaguely thought that, in a previous age or another place, she could have made a rather splendid Mother Superior in a convent.
“It must be five or six years, my lady.”
“Oh please, Mr. Shakespeare, you always called me Frances as a girl. It seems very strange to me now to be called aught else by you.”
Shakespeare smiled. “As you wish, my lady.” He thought she did not look at all well, very pale and drawn.
“There,” she said. “You see, you cannot even manage a little thing like that.”
“Well, you would have to call me John by way of return, and that might not be at all proper. People might
