Chapter 6 No.6

Cloux

January 3, 1519

I

am very tired after a long horseback ride. Francesco and I rode miles along the river-exploring. Where the ground became swampy we road through forest (the King's Forest), following vague roads and paths. Somewhere, in the thick of the woods, we roused an elk. The animal crashed into a ravine, and disappeared. We saw fox and squirrel, ravens, an owl. The bird was dumbwitted on a stump, too sleepy, too careless to fly. At a clearing we alarmed poachers who raced off, leaving their slaughtered buck, their bows and quivers beside it.

Tired of the thick shade and the monotony of old trees, we headed for Amboise, but soon found out that we were lost. It was a tedious ride before Francesco detected the sound of water; it was good to dismount and drink at the Loire.

Back in our saddles, we trotted along a sandy road, wide enough for a car-riage. Cecchino began to sing and whistle. There was sunlight. Evening clouds built up a sunset. Presently we saw the hulk of Amboise in the distance.

So we began the new year!

"Bonne Année!" Francesco yelled at the chateau walls.

January 7, 1519

Beatrice d'Este-Painting Beatrice d'Este was troublesome because she seldom kept her sittings. She was moody, flighty. Her sallow features defied changes in light and shade. I wanted to impart a special quality to her portrait, a sense of youth, interest beyond the face itself. I tried animals in her arms, birds, flowers.

"You're too fussy, Leonard...all this bother...let's get the ugly thing finished! You don't remember that I'm busy. When I'm late, you fuss at me. Scowl. To-morrow is the Spring Ball, yes, yes, it's tomorrow!" And she would babble on, in French, in Italian, stamp her foot, gesture, swear. Child-wife, she was child-model.

She felt I should concentrate on her favorite jewels, her rubies, her pearl snood, her diamond shoulder-pin!

"I insist," she would storm.

It was Boltraffio who painted her jewelry-when she was away from the stu-dio.

"I hope the paint cracks on her jewels," he snorted, disliking her.

When she died, in '96, I tried to visit the Duke, to present the finished por-trait. He refused to see me. Inconsolable, I was told.

Beatrice was twenty-two or twenty-three when she died; she had been mar-ried to Ludovico for seven years. Everyone said the Duke loved her profoundly. He also adored his mistress, Lucrezia. He also adored Cecilia. Love, for Duke Ludovico, was living.

Inconsolable? How long was he inconsolable?

Ginevra de Benci-I painted her in the autumn and painted autumn into her hair, painted it into the juniper trees in the background, in the dress she wore, in her eyes.

I was twenty-two!

She was a sickly person, cold; yet I admired her: she posed with patience, understanding my tedious brush strokes, praising my skill. A woman of scientific inclination, she had learned much from my friend Amerigo, her geographer father.

When I studied geography with Amerigo, at his home, she would appear from time to time, and I would try to memorize the contours of her face, the coloring of her skin in different lights, her bearing. I wanted to appreciate her personality.

Sometimes, in the studio, Ginevra would preach her father's ideas; I think she was trying to see how much I respected his concepts as cartographer. She could be rude, blunt. She tried to sail to the New World. She wanted to be the first woman to circumnavigate the world. She thought I had no right to discourage her.

"You are no sailor... I have sailed more than you!"

In her boldness, she dictated changes in her father's maps. This was forty-five years ago, when some of us believed Virtutem Forma Decorat.

Cloux

January 10, 1519

Cecilia Gallerani-It was totally different with Cecilia's portrait: the painting and the sittings went well.

As Ludovico's fourth or fifth mistress, she had learned artfulness: she was smiles, warm hands, long, slender fingers, warm embraces, kisses. Always in agreement. Soft-voiced. Fond of poetry. Music. Enjoyed eating, sipping wine, walking, flowers. When we were in bed together, she knew how, when. Her breasts were small. Ivory. Her body was compact, delightful. The shape of her skull was more to my liking than any woman's.

I like to think that all of my models are still alive...

Here is Cecilia's ermine, eating from his dish...he's very much alive...here he comes, trotting across the floor, jumping into her lap, cuddling, ready for another pose.

Cloux

February 2, 1519

Tomorrow there is to be a sumptuous banquet in the chateau, again royalty. Three hundred guests, I hear: Germans, Dutch, Austrian, Swiss, two or three British, a Greek potentate; the majority will be Parisians and the chateau people. I will have one of my puppets, dressed as a hunter, in fur cap, etc., relate my fable about the great elk of Scandinavia.

I have constructed a papier-maché lion-in yellow, black, and pink. He will walk a few steps down the center aisle of the banquet room, growl at the guests, then open his mouth to reveal a bouquet of white lilies.

Last week I was ill (my whole body ached), and I could not attend the masque ball.

At the ball, boxers fought in an arena, sawdust-floored; there were Swiss dancers and yodelers; sword swallowers performed: they are the rage now.

Michelangelo sleeps on my lap.

Cloux

February 11

Outside, as I write, a girl is singing, in the chilly, windy afternoon:

Chataignes piquantes!

Chataignes chatouillantes!

Que chatouillent la cuisse,

Mais qui piquent la poche!

Now I hear another child-an Italian, a boy of six or seven, way back in time, singing, as he runs an errand.

When I was a boy...it's true...I was happy: Mother made me happy: hand in hand we walked, at sunset time...she liked to sing as she worked in her kitchen...we sometimes sang together, "bread songs," she called them.

I made drawings for her, little gifts, on scraps of paper, a flowering geranium, a lizard, the figure of a clay dog...

Vinci...its hills, its sun, the trees, the caves, the rocks...they made me happy...grapes made me happy, the clairette, pinkish and very sweet; the yellow-green muscats, so fat...grapes, laughter...kindness...

I still taste those grapes on Maturina's table.

Cloux

In the afternoon heat, it was a long drive to Pliny's Villa, outside Rome. Enroute, I witnessed some of the wretchedness of Rome's slums; we were detained by waifs and by a number of mentally retarded. My driver's glib humor, levelled at the poor, gnawed at me until we reached the villa among its cypress and olive. There I walked through derelict rooms, some with views of the Tyr-rhenian Sea...summer rooms...winter rooms...dining rooms...library. I saw swim-ming pools, fountain, turrets, Numidian columns, Luna marble. The sea boomed and Pliny, the upright Roman, governor, senator, consul, killer of Christians, stood before me in his white toga:

P - I respect your portico mural but it must be finished by the New Year. Our banquet hall will be ready at that time...we are preparing festivities-you understand. Your unicorn motif is overdone in color...several sea creatures are neglected, it seems to me.

LdV - Then you are dissatisfied?

P - I wouldn't say that, but changes, changes might be made.

LdV - A matter of details, perhaps?

P - Correct. A matter of details. You are to consult with Valerius. He will...

LdV - And your payments? I must remind you...they're in arrears.

P - You will speak to Antonius, my secretary. This is a bad season...the har-vests are poor... I have obligations...charities. It was exceedingly hot in Rome today...good evening.

And those walls, mosaics, turrets, frescoes, pillars, arches; what sort of luck had their artisans, fifteen hundred years ago? The opulence of Pliny...the opulent sea...millions of sesterces...banquets...Nero...Otho...Titus... Can Rome become an art center?

After exploring the villa, I ate my bread and cheese by the shore, sitting on the sand. Sketchbook on my lap, I sketched seabirds and a torn shoreline tree.

Kicking aside leaves from a mosaic floor, I visioned a mosaic: in my mosaic of green, brown and white were squared circles, spirals, nudes, sea horses.

A pretty girl passed by, selling figs from a shoulder basket. I bought six, three for me, and three for the driver.

Cloux

Was it ten years ago, at Piombino, that green shadows sprawled across the walls of bayside houses, with sun, hot sun, on the bay? Sun on the moat of the town's doddering fortress, on the plumed helmets of its entry guards.

I made sketches at the harborside inn, made them on a long balcony table; I made harbor maps and drawings for a windmill; I added sketches of a spool-winding machine; I remember I evolved my machine for polishing crystals. My sketchbook filled...my ellipsograph, my new perspectograph, a pair of improved compasses.

Yesterday, as I sorted these sketches, memories came back.

And here at the chateau, I must see to it that the pale, long-legged, crooked-nosed Frog finishes my brass compass. He has kept me waiting for more than a month-these dilatory French! Can the artist live forever-like a Pope!

At Piombino, a fisherman helped me locate fossils on the beach. A small liz-ard, a multi-veined leaf. What was the fisherman's name? Giorgio? Paolo? Doesn't matter. We became friends. Bearded rogue. Fat. In his rowboat, we sailed the harbor, weathering calms and wild gusts, in and out of bays, eating cheese and bread, sipping port, catching fish, his oars a pair of misshapen flip-pers. With his tools, at his home, above the bay, I designed oars, shaped them, edged them with thin copper. When he tested them he found that he rowed with ease.

"Fine...Maestro, fine!"

Blue rowboat, blue bay.

We rigged a sail, a drab hunk but it worked. His name? Not Paolo, but Rimini. Obese fishmonger Rimini. Excellent bread was baked by his young, mute wife. Bread, cheese, wine. Rimini often sang, with his Piombino slurring, sang as we drifted, sang and rowed. We sailed far away from the odious wars, from weaponry, forts, and death.

Rimini's gulls, black-tipped gulls, followed his boat, ate out of his hands-perched on my shoulders. Ah, those wings! Those flights!

Occasionally, I slept at Rimini's thatch, where ducks always woke me. It was pleasant to wake to the quackings of Rimini's pets. His drake had been his pet for years, I won't guess how many. But I remember his glossy plumage and proud head, and how gluttonous he was.

When Rimini's pretty wife (woman) became bedridden I prescribed omitting meat. She agreed, through our sign language. Within a week she was out of bed. Rimini had a festa, to honor her recovery. Poor man, he thought me something of a wizard, an ogre, because I could explain to him what the interior of the stomach was like.

February 13

Francesco and I have spent hours at the Chateau Romorantin, where remod-eling of the old rambling building goes badly. The weather is mean. Cough weather. Stormy. Romorantin is no place to live in February. My drawing papers go limp there.

The King is seldom around; his disreputable workers look as if they had come out of a tenth century nightmare. Some have quit because of the weather; I am told that the head architect is sick.

My supervision nets me nothing, does not help the King.

Francesco groans as we make the rounds of inspection.

Enroute to Cloux the carriage breaks an axle as we near the chateau and manor house. Rain. A few days later we backtrack to Romorantin on horses. Carriages would not get through. The sun comes out... Francesco and I work in the main salon.

As I work on my rendering of the new staircase, an old pine tree crashes against a window, shattering it. Workers snigger as I jump and drop my pad. The present stair may collapse at any moment.

We eat lunch before a handsome Gothic fireplace. A woodcutter tosses on chunks... I continue working...the King appears...he is gone before I can speak to him.

Romorantin again: the Queen occupies a wing that has been recently reno-vated-she and her court. I have learned that when the King is too preoccupied with his current mistress, the Queen moves in. Up go her tapestries. Up go her pictures. In go her dogs, cats, guards, maids, pages-and favorite chef.

As Francesco and I strolled through corridors, hunting for the illusive archi-tect (now recovered), we find doors open into the Queen's suites; there is sun; the weather has improved; at one of the open doorways, Francesco grabbed my arm, and exclaimed:

"Maestro...look...look in there!"

"Where?"

"To the right...through the door...on that easel...that's your painting, your Leda and her swan!"

I can't believe what I see!

"Yes...yes..." I mumble.

"It's your painting, your missing canvas. How did the Queen get it?"

"Come...we'll find out about it...come away...don't go inside."

"But it's yours."

It was seven or eight years ago that my Leda painting dis-appeared. We blamed this one and that one. We offered a reward. The Duke promised to help...

Back at Cloux we have talked and talked about Leda. What can I say to the King?

Why has he never mentioned the picture? Had he purchased it from some-one? Had his father purchased it? Was it a gift? Or is it a copy? We could ascer-tain that if we could inspect the painting. There were too many questions for the moment. We needed to think. We needed to concentrate on our work for a few days.

We will talk to people at Romorantin...some of the Queen's girls will talk...perhaps what Francesco saw is an excellent copy.

The weather improves...but I am depressed: I will not return to Romorantin.

In the sun (cold sun), Francesco and I ride slowly along the Loire. I hope to see Magnifico.

Horses...

Francis has some of the finest horses in France. His stables are comparable to those of the Medici's.

Though I seldom ride now, except to walk the horse or shake my depression, I still visit the stables: I can spend hours there among their warm bodies: I note ears, nostrils, teeth, manes, tails, rumps, shoulders, hides, colors.

Colts.

Mares.

Stallions.

Favorites!

Sickly animals become mine: I feed them, pamper them, talk to them, comb and brush them...hostlers are sometimes irritated... I do not care...in that stabled world I become one with animal life.

I gather grain and fill a trough.

An old girl needs water: how grateful she is! This beautiful pinto needs lini-ment.

Horses...

My drawings show their illustrious qualities, their courage, their stamina.

Cloux

A young Parisian portrait artist visited me; he was wearing a new grey velvet suit (in the King's honor, he pointed out). With arms crossed on his boyish chest he defended his dedication to portraiture.

He examined my paintings with friendly admiration but bristled when I said that it is not enough to paint one thing well. I said that anyone studying a single aspect of art for a lifetime can attain a measure of perfection! An accomplished artist must paint nudes, seascapes, animals, birds, plants.

Spitting into my fireplace, coughing, the fellow said:

"Do you call your Mona Lisa and your Saint John landscapes?"

I could sense that he was annoyed by my French.

So, his handsome, goateed, disappointed face went out in the rain-rain on his velvet suit.

And I began rethinking: why have I painted few landscapes, seascapes (in the Dutch tradition); why have I painted so many madonnas? I should paint deluge scenes, glaciers, Vinci.

Rain on his velvet suit.

How can I continue my journal when it grows increasingly difficult to write? Left hand or right hand, I am troubled. I am troubled in other ways: I walk into another room and can't remember why I left my desk. Where is that sable brush Francesco brought me from Paris? I am unable to recall names. And F-sits there, perturbed, as I attempt to remember. I also forget facts, and I am at a seri-ous loss. What is to be the outcome? As I review my treatises, I am aware that they are worthy; it seems to me I have an adequate grasp of language; yet. Writ-ing is not my métier: I prefer a silverpoint or a chalk drawing or the infinite pleas-ure of oil colors. Sitting in the cold window sun, I sip Chablis...

Francesco, wearing his newly tailored suit, continues his portrait of a young woman-progressing nicely. He hates to lay down his brushes. If I have a sug-gestion it is a minor one; he absorbs whatever I say with pleasure.

As I stand in his room, before his easel, watching his brush, appreciating the light, I think:

"We are moderns...we are scientific artists. The face, a. b. c. d., responds to light on opaque pigment, as we have determined. We realize that a shadow can distort; we must estimate the value of each overlay..."

Then, sitting down, aware of the pleasant viridian background in Francesco's painting, my eyes blur: I feel like I am falling asleep: then, the river horse, my Magnifico, appears inside the pigment.

Yesterday, or the day before, Francesco learned that my Leda is a copy, pur-chased by the King's father, five or six years ago.

I do not miss the dirt and stink of the botteghe or the sink holes of Florence, Milan, and Rome. Too often they smelled alike. Botteghe was spilled glue, dust, roaches, flies, antique casts (how quickly they got broken), rusted pots, rags, gold leaf (always being stolen), sketches, frames, saws, chalk, nails, rats. Someone was always leaving food around, wine bottles; there were broken bottles, cracked pestles, chunks of clay, mineral samples, stools, grease, brooms (that nobody wanted to use), mauled papers, waste paper...brushes...brushes...brushes.

To paint, to write, to think.

Life's chiaroscuro!

Under chestnut trees, in the grove near the chateau, I sat alone on a bench, aware of the evening's beauty; as I sat there, the sun became a red ball behind a string of pines. I felt that Caterina was beside me, she and Magnifico. I think I

stood and shoved my fingers into Magnifico's tangled mane as Caterina whis-pered to both of us. It was almost dark but I could outline the oval of her face-her mouth and eyes smiling. Around us, in the grove, the wind was dropping leaves. The night promised to be cold...

Cold.

I looked at the Milky Way, as Caterina and I had in Italy, from our bench in our small garden, while the city slept. She said something to me about our daughter.

"Who will..."

For some reason, a reason I can not understand very well (a fumbling rea-son), I have gone through some of my luggage. I have come across some drawn work Mother made: flowers and angels, in perfection: punto en aria. How white the threads-after all these years! I see no lace like hers. She was first or second at every annual festa.

And my father left me a legacy also: his is a literary legacy of four curt letters, notary letters: our home life, under his coercion, slowly disintegrated. Coercion and promiscuity. Fatal combinations. But why glance at ruins? I glance at them because they are a part of me.

Francesco has repaired my portable bathtub. Soon I will be able to luxuriate again.

I hope there are sunny days ahead... I am reading Aesop... Confused, I feel I am repeating myself in my journal; I must check through my pages. Weariness says I must stop writing and yet as I write I think of the sun in the garden below and the peacocks below and I think of the sun that has burned for me for many years and I think of the shadows I have observed, the shadows of weeping wil-lows, the shadow of a lifted marble arm and hand, the shadows of birds... I think of spring foliage coming...the first spring flowers and there is a wonderful haze in these thoughts tied in with the sun...the haze makes me feel I am young; I am

able to climb hills, ride Magnifico; tomorrow I start a painting of Hercules firing his arrows at the Stymphalian birds. As I put away my journal some of that light blurs in perspective, and I think how light bends at night when lamps are lit.

I seem...

Cloux

The date, does it matter?

My right arm has become paralyzed. Gradually. It has happened gradually. Now I can not manipulate my fingers. For a while I could manipulate one or two. I hoped they would recover. I think this affliction began on the strenuous ride from Milan to Amboise. I think it began in the monastery where I was stricken for a while.

The King's physicians have tried to help...they are trying to bring back mus-cular control. They have prescribed herbs, poultices, hot concoctions. Strange, very strange, to have a hand that hangs by my side, a hand that does nothing, that is already dead.

Cloux

March 2, 1519

The greater one is, the greater one's capacity for suffering. It should be that the greater one is, the greater is one's capacity for courage and understanding. Why do we suffer?

Nec spe nec metu.

Cloux

March 5

Fifty years ago...fifty!

Whether it was chiaroscuro, sfumoto, encaustic, or other technique, I was sincere. Few days were long enough.

Florence, fifty years ago...it was my town. I fitted in. The place is no longer the same. The guilds are different. The workshops are different. Most of my friends are dead or gone. There is another kind of politics.

A half century ago life was adventure: life was new: friends were new, work was new: there was love. When I was accused of homosexuality some of that libel pervaded my thinking for years. A personal plague. How easy it was to brand a man in those days: the "telltale" box hung on the church door. You wrote your accusation and dropped it in the slot and scurried off.

So much of life is focused on sex, is wasted on sex. I have been a masturba-tion man. For long my body has nothing to share with any woman or man. I am immersed in thought. In my bed I have loneliness as mate. I patronize no one.

One of the chateau gardeners, a Venetian, who has been very friendly with me, has presented me with a caged oriole. In a woven reed cage, painted black.

Black!

I carried the cage outdoors, into the morning mist; I set it down. The bird fluttered, trembled. How long had it been captive? I knelt. I could see where he had chipped off black paint with his beak.

Black!

I opened the door.

A male, he battered the reeds with all his strength, found the opening, and hurtled into the sky.

I have forgotten more than I can recall: perhaps this is true of most of us who have lived a long life. Many of the things I have forgotten I have wished to forget. I find it hard to live and harbor grudges, but it is also lack of wisdom to erase the mind; then it may be necessary to experience our mistakes again: that's being trapped twice; a fox avoids that.

As for survival, I have survived because I found something to discover: dis-covery is the key: new sinew, new mineral, new color, new face, new canal, new lamp.

In Andrea's studio I discovered perspective. There is so much about per-spective that eludes one-a continual challenge.

Perspective may be the most important of all the art dis-ciplines. In this branch of science, the beam of light is best explained by mathematics and phys-ics. Since the axioms are long I will abridge them now:

There are three branches of perspective: 1 - The first deals with the reasons for the diminution of objects as they recede, and is known as diminishing per-spective. 2 - The second deals with the way colors vary as they recede. 3 - The third is concerned with the way objects in a picture must be finished in relation to their proximity. I amplify these three in my treatise on perspective.

I have admired hands, respected them for their capabilities. As I dissected, I marveled at their intricacy and perfection... I admire all classes: the feminine, the masculine, children's hands. I made drawings of my own hands, in the days I could squeeze the crabprongs of a horseshoe with ease. I remember Mother's loving hands, Caterina's sensual hands, Andrea's clever, slender fingers. There have been clay and bronze and marble hands. The hands of beautiful women have appeared in my dreams. I can perceive, as I write, the hands of Christ and those of His disciples.

Perhaps there will be a few, reading this journal, who may care to know some of my thoughts about painting:

a - All colors, when placed in the shade, seem of equal degree of darkness. b - All colors, when placed in full light, seldom vary from their essential hue. c - The eyes, out-of-doors, in a illuminated atmosphere, perceive darkness behind the windows of houses which nevertheless are light. d - The eyes perceive and rec-ognize objects with greater intensity in proportion as the pupil is dilated.

Sleep is a curious thing-resembling death.

Sometimes it is totally blank, as death must be; sometimes we see destruction. Flames rise. Buildings collapse. Sometimes we hear animals talk. Without mov-ing, they run away from us. Sometimes we fall from great heights-without harm. Sometimes we talk to those who are unseen. Sometimes we meet those who can't speak. If we do not sense death in our sleep we may sense confusion. Confusion in black and white. Or grey. We dream of bucolic scenes in grey, a grey stream, a grey tree, grey boulders. We stroll through grey air, grey birds in the sky.

Now, in color, a great hawk threatens us. Angels appear. There is a cave with a ragged mouth. It wants to swallow us. Now cadavers threaten. Enemies besiege us.

Now, a friend appears-a childhood friend, unchanged by time.

Christ descends from the refectory wall-leaving a terrible hole.

Cloux

March 4, 1519

I am writing very slowly now.

While painting The Last Supper I lived at the Santa Maria delle Grazie some of the time, working day after day, often sleeping on the floor, on a bench. I painted by day and at night, with the help of lamps and candles, placing lights on benches, on tables, on my scaffolding. I was altering forms, changing colors, imparting greater age to a face, lessening the impact of a gesture.

I might stay an hour, or remain for days: Ai, Matthew's eyes might move; Luke might raise his arm; John might turn his head-or so it seemed. I was always there when the light was good; during inclement weather I might shove my key into the lock, and shut the door. A few grapes, some nuts, bread and wine... I didn't need much food. With a basket or a bowl beside me on the scaf-folding I would go on painting.

I was forty-three.

When Christ's model became ill and finally died, I retouched His face, imparting what I had learned while observing the dying man. I remember: to soften the shading I retouched with a lamp in my hand, holding it close to His face.

As I painted there were two dead men watching me.

I discovered Judas when he was drunk. I found him in a borghetto, slumped at a table, a big table sticky with spilled food and wine. Flies. Sipping wine at another table, I sketched him. So it was: I would not have to hunt any longer. That night, although he was drunk and unsteady, I got him to my studio and put a robe over his rags. We talked, we ate. His name: Carlo Macchini.

Carlo came and went. He never accepted a soldi.

Came and went, usually a little drunk. Kindly.

He was an assistant baker. Hated his boss, hated his job. Hated.

When I had completed his face in the fresco, he contemplated it for a while, shrugged, patted me on the shoulder, walked away...not a word... I never saw him again.

Before I finished the fresco, Luke had died. The last I heard about Peter was the news that he had added another child to his big family. Ninth. As for Mark...he was living with a prostitute. Sick. No job.

I made many sketches of each man: filled sketchbooks. I worked them into my cartoon...slowly, slowly. I wanted the faces to express the gravity of life; the clothes that they wore must not distract; the food on the table must not distract. I made the tableware similar to that used by the monks as they ate in the room. It took me almost a month to arrange the food and dishes. Twenty-six hands must tell their story but not overdramatize.

I strove for simplicity: that resolution haunted me. So many times, when rain drummed on the roof of the refectory, as I sat alone, I heard that word: simplic-ity, simplicity of color, design, shadowed by the past.

And while I painted, the beautiful refectory was flooded by a storm: I saw water two feet deep: pigments were washed away, brushes were lost.

Ai, I see it now: at least one of the disciples should have had a scarred face, should have been crippled perhaps. Life, in those Galilean days, did not let one escape unscathed. Out of the twelve, one would have suffered.

But there, there they are, with their Lord.

I had a brief letter from Salai today. If he had remained, we would have made our bicycle.

Tomorrow, I...

On my birthday, my friends, Father Luco Pacioli, Phillip, Donato Bramante, Abbaco Alberti, Peter, Francesco, John, Toscanelli, Andrea, Luini, Credi, friars, priests and many artists, gathered at the Grazie, and we burned lamps and can-dles for the first showing of The Last Supper. Standing on a bench, Father Luco said:

"Milan is indebted to our Leo...to him and Il Moro and the prior and his people. We have watched the fresco come to life. For three years we've seen it move along. It has meant something special to each one of us. It is Leonardo da Vinci's miracle. A symbol of man's desire for a better life."

How well I remember those words!

In Milan, my Salvator Mundi attracted crowds when it was exhibited in my studio. King Louis had expressed his public approval of the painting and the curious had to be satisfied. Since General de Galen had come to Milan to deliver the painting to the King, I asked his protection. Onlookers came out of the alleys as well as the palace. Alley folk jeered. They shouted "Christ the Juggler;" they called Him "El Puto"..."the glassy-eyed Gascon."

Riffraff threw mud and garbage.

I had to cover the painting...but that was yesterday...the jeers and criticism should remain in the past.

Here, at Amboise, at Cloux, all is respect, a respect that originates with King Francis. Courtiers and guests and workers often approach me in the gardens; we pass the time of day. I get along best with the gardeners because there are new plants and flowers to examine and sketch. Sit me on a bench and I am lost by a bed of flowers. An old maestro, toothless, stooped, a man from Padua, knows how to please me with a leaf, a flower, a seed.

"These roses I grew in my own garden...what colors!"

Thinking of Jesus, here in repose, I realize the Savior lacks an aura of gentle mysticism, the aura of my Jesus at the supper table. The globe He holds in His hand lacks the obvious meaning of brotherhood-the great concern of the dis-ciples. My Savior's eyes are not the eyes of a shepherd from the hills. He has a city man's face. He is younger than the Christ at the table. His benediction is for all men and yet carries a sense of restraint, perhaps a sense of doubt. Perhaps it is my own doubt, a doubt that I feel keenly at Amboise, a doubt that seems based on my inability to bring together the meaning inherent in my studies, my optics, my hydraulics, my engineering work.

Dreams...dreams...

It is evening, and the kite comes. He grips me in his talons and helps me fly, over the Arno, over the town; he becomes my black-brown-grey kite with wings 18 feet long, wings of wood, cloth, wire. I hear the wind.

Francesco has been amused when I describe my experience with the kite; however, it is too old a dream, or experience, for me to dismiss. How many times it has encouraged me.

As I write, I hear someone calling my name.

April 2, 1519

Again, my health is failing rapidly. I can not continue my work with my trea-tises. I can not write my journal. Sometimes I can not speak. My vision is going. Francesco and I had begun to bring ends together; I had hoped for days ahead because there is so much to accomplish.

At night, in my room, the walls become a mural of Amboise, the manor house, the Loire, old bridges, royalty, paintings, rearing horses, Francesco, wings, rocks, caves, Galilean faces...like maddened bees.

Cloux

April 3

Yes, most of my years were years without sexual intimacy. I experienced ecstasy but it was often bitter later on. So, I comforted myself with sham com-fort. I gained time through my solitary living and lost time that could have made me more human.

Yes, I had a woman for three years.

My own illegitimacy was often slammed at me...bastard da Vinci...that stigma harms the mind.

Dedicate?

Of course, dedication...but I have explained...art, music, sculpture, geology, mechanics...not one is bastard.

DEDICATE:

A priest outlaws distractions. What is an artist but a priest! Joyous children, sick children, they are part of most married lives...that little girl on your lap, sucking her thumb, kissing you, stroking your beard...she...she is dead.

Here, at the chateau, there are hall mirrors, mirrors in ornate frames: the art-ist observes himself in those mirrors: he also sees a rusty spatula and shredded brushes: sometimes, late afternoons, I see in those mirrors, someone in Milan, I see her smiling, I see the spiral of her yellow hair.

I hear her laughter.

I hear...but that is our staircase creaking. Or is it Francesco working in his studio?

Food has become tasteless.

What is wrong with my chateau wine?

Maturina scolds.

I think of those hungry days as apprentice, when eating was such a pleasure! I think of our kitchen, at Vinci. Mother's. Fresh bread. Milk from that blue pitcher.

Paix, paix, Satan, allez, paix!

Machiavelli is here. Unexpected.

He is enroute to Paris to collect a bad debt. A man owes him 600 livres. I have offered money. Niccolò is proud, too proud.

He has malaria and shuffles about in a great coat though it is warm. Last night by a studio fire he huddled in his coat. Perhaps Dr. Pedretti can help him. We'll see tomorrow. As we sat by the fire, sipping wine, he railed about politics at home--wretched deceptions. Scoundrels!

Most of his three days have been spent in bed. In his elegant clothes he bowed before the King. The two got along well. Lying and vying. Francis has offered one of his carriages for the trip to Paris.

Niccolò has lost weight. He was always skinny but now he is a shadow of himself. He resents my paralyzed arm...says it is God who is to blame. Then laughed-or was it a sneer?

He thinks Amboise is a true haven.

He is wonderfully clever with his tongue, Latin, French or Italian.

Sometimes loneliness has embittered me.

Last night I asked Francesco to come to my bedroom, though it was late. He came and sat by my bed. He understands my sickness; and he also knows he is going back to his Vaprio.

It was a cold night. A fire burned in my fireplace.

Francesco wore his grey wool gown, stared at me sleepily, flames on his thin cheek bones, on his hands, bringing out their veins.

Cloux was forgotten as I talked of home and my mother and my first days in Florence, at the Verrochio, first days so different from Francesco's first days when Florence had more patina. I rambled on about Milan and my paintings and the siege and Milan's bombardment and deaths-pell-mell thoughts. Francesco brought cups of wine. For us this was a father/son relationship. We two had been father and son since we left Italy, since Francesco cared for me during the big snow at the monastery. It pleases him that King Francis often addresses me as "Mon Père."

Ivory-faced madonnas...regal pomp...commissions that failed, com-missions that succeeded...my flying wing...I was reliving my life! Francesco asked about the men who had posed for The Last Supper. Faces, thoughts, words...flooded. We talked about Peter and James and Matthew; we found drawings of Jesus and He seemed real in the firelight.

Francesco added two or three logs to the fire.

He brought in a wine bottle and refilled our glasses.

Wind gusted smoke into the room.

We talked about Paris and our trip there. I told him that Rome was far more interesting than Paris. I related the story of the mirror-man, at the Vatican apartment: that story involved me in anguish. I stopped talking, to listen to the wind.

We talked of fishing in the Loire...when?

"Tomorrow," I suggested.

"It's tomorrow now," he said, laughing.

"How time gets away from us."

"Maturina will be rattling the breakfast dishes soon."

"Then you had better get some sleep."

"Good night, Mon Père," Francesco said, and laughed that good laugh of his.

So, you won't paint again! Where you are going you won't hear the pestle grinding pigment. How insignificant my sketches, my trees, faces, water...as a boy I thought every sketch would open up the world a little more.

It was only a month ago I made the four small bronze horses, moulded the graceful contours of Andrea's face...it was only a year ago that...

I hate the body's frailty, that dead arm! Work was life, but no, there were hours to prowl the hills, to climb the Alps, to sit by the sea. Maturity came dur-ing those hours as well as during the hours of work. I remember, while painting The Supper...

I remember a little plant in the evening light, that frail light that shadowed the corolla. I remember a sorrel leaf, I remember a small fern. Small? What is small versus big? I should know.

A madonna in the evening light-her smile.

And the world shrugs.

Pigments reveal how I have erred...tell me green, tell me saffron, tell me roy-alty, tell me death.

And you, red chalk, speak!

Cloux

We think we are learning how to live but we are only learning how to die.

I, Francesco Melzi, write:

Maestro Leonardo da Vinci is dead.

He died at Cloux, in the manor house,

on May 2, 1619.

He was sixty-seven years old.

Cloux

April 4, 1519

DURING THE LAST WEEKS OF

LEONARDO DA VINCI'S LIFE,

I, FRANCESCO MELZI,

RECORDED THE MAESTRO'S THOUGHTS,

AS HE DICTATED THEM:

"Y

ou ask me what my apartment was like in Milan? It was an apartment of tapestries and antique furniture, paintings, mine and others. Sculptured pieces. I bought many things at the Thieves' Market. My Camjac tapestries covered three walls. Made the room warmer. My paintings covered the fourth. This was my sala. A large stained glass window faced the street. You remember that street, of course. Lodi Street. Western exposure. Hot in summer. Dusty. But my apartment was on the fourth floor, had a wide, shaded balcony. There was a small courtyard of plants and a pair of little tiled fountains with squirting fish. Sometimes the courtyard was a refuge. Cypress. Old ones.

"With my big iron key, I stepped into my rooms. Five. My studio had good light. Of course I painted the walls black. You would have admired my Roman pieces, heads, busts. You, my friend, were living in Vaprio then."

We moved his bed into the sun, and pulled open the drapes. He enjoyed lying there. "Spring is beautiful," he said.

Cloux

April 5, 1519

Da Vinci talks to me with difficulty. However, I go on:

"Perhaps those years in Milan were the busiest years of my life. Irrigation projects, The Last Supper mural, easel paintings, the horse...yes, the horse... cartoons. I tried to interest the authorities in an ideal city. I made models for them. Planned double-decked streets. Vehicles would use the lower level, pedestrians the upper. There would be proper sewage. I wanted to show men that the plague might be avoided through sanitation."

He has eaten a little fruit, and sipped some wine.

"In Milan, I went on with my anatomical studies, this time working in a clean hospital, with proper light. I had adequate leisure. I dissected male and female ...eight or ten cadavers...over the years. Made my drawings in various media.

"Illness laid me low...

"I never trusted physicians. They know nothing of anatomy and less about illnesses. I suffered alone-with my servants. They fed me, administered my concoctions...my kidneys. Nature cured me. After about six or seven months I was able to get about, to walk, stride along. There was kindness then...but kind-ness is your specialty...your kindness has never failed me."

Cloux

April 6, 1519

"Remember this-I was forced to work for Cesare Borgia. Remember, Vitelli and I tried to refuse him. Refusal was impossible. We were like hostages in Bor-gia's camps. Of course we wanted to escape...planned...we were afraid. Pay was high. So...we continued ours jobs as cartographers. Close friends, fellow artists, we looked to each other for support.

"As I sketched Borgia I realized his animosity. Vitelli and I were aware that his soldiers disliked us. They made it pretty obvious most of the time. I talked to Niccolò Machiavelli about this antagonism. He scoffed. Laughed at me.

"Yet Borgia, always demanding, arrogant, worried us. He went out of his way to annoy Vitelli. I tried to play down his swaggering. I tried to play down our apprehensions. Then...then, he had Vitelli strangled. Strangled in Borgia's tent. Enraged, afraid, I left that night. Niccolò provided my horse. He rode with me. We escaped through the rain. Our horses fast. Solitary roads...hoof beats... I remember. Vitelli murdered. In the tent.

"We said little as we rode.

"At an inn we dismounted, drank, warmed ourselves. Niccolò could not jus-tify his Prince.

"Ai, that murderous rain! His name, his face, that Borgia face, assassination rain!"

It is late as I finish writing down his words. He is in pain. Last night he slept very little.

April 7, 1519

"No, not purgatory and not hell...

"I esteem the horse and the dog because they are free of perversions...no misa, no confessional...

"Animals exact little...make no covenants.

"I can't forget the Papal wars, the crusades, the Savonarola fanaticisms.

"When did robe and aspergillum exorcise evil?

"I'm still searching...but, in this world of ambiguity, I think there is no answer."

Today...only these words, as I sat by his bed. Visitors annoyed him. Several times he asked for his mother.

Cloux

April 9, 1519

It is afternoon. The sun is low. Da Vinci speaks:

"When the old French King saw my Last Supper he was determined to remove the entire wall of the refectory, and have it transported to Paris. He discussed it with engineers and architects who said it was impossible.

"What a study...the King is scarlet, pompous, in a very bad humor, his syphi-litic face grey. Flailing his arms, as he stood before my mural, he roared at the men around him, kicked a dog that had wandered in.

" 'Your fresco can't remain in this wretched refectory!' Everyone was amused.

"Later, when I painted his portrait, he was affable. I painted him in profile, a good study, in good light. He insisted on having a book on his lap. Ovid. I remember he said:

" 'In Amboise, I have a collection of fine books...Ovids.'

"He was willing to pay any price for my Madonna of the Yarn Winder. So, he paid...and carried it off to Paris."

Stroking his beard, da Vinci watched rain streak his windows. Lifting one arm, he said: "No more today, Francesco, no more talk."

Cloux

April 10, 1519

"Come, let's get on with it...I have something to say:

"My deluge drawings express weight, gravity, power, fury, terror. The over-turned, whirling chunks of masonry, the enormous waves, defy. This is the end of man. I believe such a cataclysm is going to overcome the earth.

"The drawings were inspired by my visits to the sea, by my trips to the mountains where I saw avalanches. Sound...the crash of falling boulders, the crash of a raging ocean...they warn. Finality-in one form or another-sur-rounds. We can't escape.

"Rage, rage...much of life is rage...desperate rage.

"Here, far inland, I can hear the tumultuous sea!"

Sometimes I can barely make out his words. I served his supper. He ate very little. He remarked about the pigeons cooing on the roof.

Cloux

April 12, 1519

Royalty have visited us. Alone with me, da Vinci said:

"Yesterday, I dreamed that the sun was coming through my window at Vinci...there were bunches of grapes on our table...bare table, in the sun. Caterina was sitting opposite me, her hands in the sun. I seemed to be about thirty years old. She seemed to be about the same age. Our dog lay on the floor, waiting for me to take him out.

"I felt imprisoned by the sunlight, happily imprisoned... I was imprisoned by the beauty in Caterina's face. My eyes followed the grain of the table, mixed with the bunches of grapes, went out into the street, returned to her face, her smile.

"...You have asked me about happiness. Does anyone know what happiness is? It is so often illusory. For you, Francesco, it's a woman...or a swim in the lake. For me it was always work. If a great discipline haunts a man throughout his life...well, he's lucky. You have seen me happy. You didn't throw in your lot with a bitter man.

"We see King Francis...we watch him...he is eaten up with regrets...he is scheming, plotting...worrying...battlefields gnaw his guts...if we want sanity there are Vaprios, little rivers, little hills."

He asked me for another cover.

Cloux

This was our last conversation-on April 23rd.

Melzi - I heard that you created a mirror machine while you were in Rome.

Da Vinci - I tried to amplify the stars-study them.

Melzi - Please explain.

Da Vinci - A series of mirrors and lens.

Melzi - To catch the light?

Da Vinci - I could position the mirrors and the lens. You have to visualize them, in a shallow cradle, some pieces one and two inches square, some pieces two and three inches square, most of them concave, all specially ground, to fit together like an eye, to focus like the eye. They could be raised or lowered, tilted, under a lens which I could also focus.

Melzi - They brought the sky closer?

Da Vinci - All of the mirrors and lens were destroyed by the man who had cut and polished them. He smashed them. Malice...fear...envy...

Melzi - A bitter experience, Maestro!

Da Vinci - That's how it was...in Rome. The Pope learned of these experi-ments and ousted me from the Vatican.

He fell asleep.

Cloux

May 20, 1519

A

s requested in Maestro Leonardo da Vinci's will, sixty men, each carrying a lighted taper, accompanied his coffin to St. Hubert's chapel, on the evening of May the 4th. Royalty, chateau-pages, soldiers, visitors, servants made up the procession from the manor house to the Amboise chapel. It was a cloudy, threatening evening. The chapel bell tolled.

A bearded priest, in black vestments, performed the requiem. Royalty crammed the chapel. The royal green flag, sewn with hundreds of white sala-manders, blanketed the casket. Wreathes of roses and carnations leaned against wall cabinets where there were lighted candles. Men chanted a Gregorian chant.

The Maestro was buried close to the chapel, under chestnut and cypress, buried by torch and taper light. The chapel doors were wide open as someone played the organ. Six men lowered the coffin.

Leonardo's death was the saddest moment of my life.

When King Francis returned to Amboise, later in May, I walked with him to the burial place and he laid flowers on "Mon Père's" grave. Fog filtered the grove and dripped on us. A hard day for the monarch.

King Francis has retained all of da Vinci's paintings.

I was willed his drawings, sketches, journal, treatises, music, and correspon-dence.

Soldiers accompanied me on my return to Vaprio.

Villa Vaprio

July 13, 1519

My father and mother welcomed me home.

Father gave me a northlight room, on the third floor. I will place my easel near the windows that face the Adda, face the little bridge where the Maestro used to fish for temolo.

I have hung my copy of his Mona Lisa on the entry wall and have laid his red velvet cloak over the back of a chair.

I am arranging some of his drawings on a center table.

There is ample space for his Anghiari cartoon on the inside wall. I have ordered broad shelves for his books and his small bronzes, his drawings and treatises, his brushes and pigments. I will purchase a leather box for his corre-spondence.

I will do what I can to bring order to his writings.

Under this stone are the

remains collected during

excavations outside the

royal chapel of Amboise.

It is surmised these are

the bones of

Leonard da Vincy

1452 – 1519

Author's note:

This epitaph was placed on da Vinci's grave in later years.

Shakespeare's Journal

To my Elizabeth,

for her loyalty, love and genius

Henley Street

January 28, 1615

T

o invent can become an aberration, a mystery, at times a queru-lous searching to remedy an irremediable loss. Shall we say there is a larger purpose? Must there always be a purpose and justifica-tion? I can not believe that. Then, there can be stumbling, burial, burial violets around a grave, an absence. These thoughts must be weighed, re-assessed, subtracted from physical ailment and sickness of mind. Surely the stage was not intended for a single player.

. . .

Stratford

February 2nd, Candlemas – 1615

On Christmas last I sang carols with Ellen and her friends, in her London apartment, candlelight on her frosted windows where trees, like menhirs, lis-tened. Some of her friends were drunk and raucous parasites; some were manikins; some were overly friendly; some, Countess Bardolph, Lord Fenton, Lady Page, were perfumed bores; the Irishmen were troublemakers...

The Captain of the Guard requested a dance, and musicians appeared on a small wreathed stage, a candlelit tree at one side. Sprigs of ribboned mistle-toe decorated the window drapes and the frames of all Ellen's paintings; she wore a sprig and her Scot mouth met mine under the portrait of a highlander. Caroling and wine went on and on:

Joseph and Mary walked

Through an orchard green,

Where were cherries and berries

As thick as might be seen...

Mummers paid Ellen a call, accompanied by a dancing jester wearing furs. By now it was snowing and the storm sprinkled the jester and the costumes of the torchlit merrymakers with him, as they trailed about, singing. A glass of wine with Ellen... Egypt, it seemed an easy dive to the bottom of the deep, to pluck drowned honor, but there was Ann, pinch-faced, wanting to scourge, and sting with pismires.

Joseph and Mary walked through their orchard bewitched, and Ellen's thick tree burned with its candles; the Yule log burned and cat-spat; thick-eyed musing came with scalding wassail; then more dancing and then sleep at their side... Later, I'll tell her about my play, my plans, secrets of the stage, boyhood delights... I'll reveal the wildness of the world, and beyond this, the tranquility of poetry itself.

She'll share her Edinburgh, her theatre, her books, her home by the lake, her work for the priory library.

She told me:

"Life is to hold warmly in our hands. It is to be made better for our passing."

Her intense face considered mine: the fine lines of her mouth, those eyes, lochs, and then there were her dark, dark hair, her perfume, the pressing of her fingers into my sex...necessities and no better...

Carols continued while snow stuck to her window panes and the pine boughs put resin on the air...a day and then another, her hair on her pillow like a fern...and nothing else was needed.

On the blue frozen Thames

skaters zip past people, booths, flags.

A giant ox roasts on a giant spit.

Arm in arm, Shakespeare and Ellen skate:

Over a glassy spot in the ice they peer down

where a blue cloak floats:

fish below.

Singing carolers pass on skates.

Henley Street

February 8, 1615

O

ne year the Thames froze and above London Bridge it became a market, hobbled with ragged booths, stalls, flags and streamers, peopled with courtiers, beggars, soldiers, priests, merchantmen and their families. An ox was roasted-and as it steamed and smoked-walkers clustered around the carcass as if it were Holland. Skaters spun close, stopping to chat or buy and eat, then spun away over the ice.

For days the surface was free of snow and one afternoon I brought Ellen, and we skated arm in arm, the sky unblemished; we swished between ice-bound frigates, toqued sailors leaning over, waving and jeering. It was almost Christmas and carolers sang around bonfires. Royalty had set up tents and we were wel-comed there, the tents and flags reflected in the ice, purple, red, yellow-pen-nants squares gay-men and wenches tippling-musicians trying to keep their feet warm, strumming bravely.

Ellen, in plaid scarf, yellow cloak and jeweled tam, stands alongside a striped purple and gold tent, laughs alongside the scabby hulk of a frigate, warms her hands before a fire. Ellen...your face is real... I can reach out and take your hands...you smile and sway in the wind.

Singing with the carolers, your breath puffs its toadstool alongside my mush-room, and we laugh and hug each other. Inside a carpeted tent, we toast "Was-sail!" and glance at velvet cushions heaped in a corner.

Henley Street

Stratford

Mine was the wish to bind society together, expose the floor of heaven, make immortal real, show man's folly and labor, extol faith and uphold beauty. Beauty, as I felt it at the outset of my career, is no longer here: it is a long way from Ve-nus and Adonis to Henry VIII: there were grim diversions, rude and costly failures: my goal it seems is beggared: if I had the capacity I would reach back to beauty and carry it forward with greater maturity: I am thinking of poetic beauty.

Farewell! You were too dear for my possessing,

for such riches where is my deserving...?

I lost sensibility and communion in pursuit of plot and character for the rico-chet of horror and death, for the mockery of crime and subterfuge.

At times, I was in sleep a king-but on waking, no such man.

I have been awake to my losses a long while: there was no recouping them in France and Italy, alone with hegemony of rocks, promontories, beaches, hierar-chy of seas assailing nakedness...here in Stratford, here I have illness as exchange.

Sallow yellow:

Men, women and children dying in the streets:

Church bells tolling.

Three men drag a dead youth to the Avon River,

pitch him in.

Church steeple, reflected in the water, sways:

The church registry lists column after column of dead:

Not a sound.

I

n Stratford, the plague moved down Mill Lane, Butt Lane, Rother Street, jumped to Henley and then Church Street. Father and I worked on Mill Lane: finding Charles collapsed by the whipping post, we lugged him out of the sun...shivering...sweating...vomit-ing...and we could not find anything to cover him, and he begged us for a cover.

"Something to cover me, Will...just something?"

"But there's nothing left for you."

"Everything used up?"

"All used, Charles."

"So many of us sick?"

"Lie still. I'll bring you hot sack. That'll help you feel better...there's a rug..."

"I'll see if I can find something to cover him."

"No, you're tired. I'll bring hot sack and a cover."

Pigeons swooped low, then rose: were they afraid?

Six people had died that day.

During the week twenty-six died, men, women, and children. Our town heard the bell toll morning and afternoon and evening. At times the tolling seemed to be right in my ears; at times I forgot it, bringing water or food, medicine or cover, anything to help. Father and I worked together as much as possible...his word or nod kept me going.

The Avon seemed blotched and diseased for there, there was the plague's mucous caulking the water and the water was grey and beaten and unmoving, locked in its own foetidness, dead by the weir, dead by the church and under-neath the bridge.

Stratford

February 14, 1615

I remember the plague, how, with our theatre closed, I worked to aid the sick and cart away the London dead. Appleton...I remember his red beard, his cough, his scared grin. Meerie, talking Irish, blamed us, saying "there's narra a plague in Ireland-it's your filthy London-you damn filthy foreigners!" Miller cursed the altar and the saints behind his head, as he struggled to breathe. And that gar-goyle-like fellow, Fackler, crawled off to die or recover, we never learned: he said the open field was the proper place to get well, or die.

The Cheney twins died right outside the Globe: they had been working as stage hands: clever lads from Sussex, faithful, hard-working: they got sick on Tuesday; as the bells tolled on Thursday evening they were dead, dying a few minutes apart, their hands clasped, eighteen years old, flax-headed, tall.

Why did that young woman, with hair to her waist, run about laughing, eating handfuls of earth? Why did that Dorsetshire man stab himself with a dirk? How did the graves of the Boothby children get left open, deserted for days? Was God in the heavenly lectern those days...to save us of our sins!

For days the sun chewed us in Blackwell. It gave us a chance to kill some of the rats. Caesar, don't let one bite you! Worms crawled out of the earth. Caesar, beware! Whenever I passed our cemetery I smelled new, raw earth-as terrifying as the death smell. 'Sblood, how many deaths does it take to satisfy the earth?

Youth-

What is this vomit, this black gunk pouring out of your mouth? Are you only fourteen...with death on your face?

This is our boy, Slade, who walked to school last week and fished where I fished.

"Papa, let's carry him into the shade. We'll cool his hot face and give him water. Our medicine has to make him well. We need him, to grow up and catch perch and pike, and marry Jenny."

Papa is washing his face. There's fruit. There's sleep. There's tomorrow. There's kindness. There's forgetfulness.

Best to cover him.

I'll cover him. There, that blanket may keep him from shivering. His mother's sick too. I'll rub his hands and arms. Water, Papa, give him some. There!

"Papa, you get some rest, while I stay with Slade. You'd better go home and turn in. You didn't sleep much last night. Things are better now. No. I'm not hungry. I'll eat later."

I'll sit with you, boy, and we'll deny harsh fortune. Did you ever see a play, boy? The play's the thing: it takes you out of yourself. Listen...I'll recite some lines for you...

Farewell! a long farewell, to all this...

This is the state of man: today he puts forth

The tender leaves of hope; tomorrow blossoms,

And bears his blushing honors thick upon him;

The third day comes a frost, a killing frost;

And, when he thinks, good easy man, fully surely

His greatness is a ripening, nips his root,

And then he falls, as I do. I have ventured,

Like little wanton boys that swim on bladders

This many summers in a sea...

Farewell, he's dead.

Papa, you and I have lost him. He'll never race across the fields or pack his creel or kiss a girl on the bridge. The plague has killed him.

Was it you who wanted a new cap?

Now you'll have a cap of dirt.

I throw my heart against the flint of time. O sun, burn your great spheres... I importune death a while. The passing of so small a thing should make a crack at least. Stained with his own blood...

Grey yelping dogs chase a coach through London fog:

Fog drips from coach lamps, from trees, iron railings.

Someone in the fog screams and

a cloaked figure stabs Ellen

as she gets into her coach.

Ellen's cloak, blood, fog,

Shakespeare's anguished face.

Henley Street

February 20, 1615

F

og, that old-year-treachery, steals round my house, thief at every window: renegade, despot, carrion-maker.

That night the fog mauled us after we left the theatre, Ellen and I. I thought of throwing my cloak around both of us, as we walked along: dark blue cloak in white fog. Instead of covering both of us I cov-ered her...

The play had been well played, Alleyn up to form, Marlowe's lines appreci-ated by a better than usual audience, some of them royalty. Tambourlaine usually appeals to royalty. This was Crown night, Christ's crown, hell's crown, fog on every thorn, thorns sticking through our laughter, to be remembered, in that cloak, bastard thorns.

Like dogs they followed us as we left the theatre, late, our arms around each other, the cloak flapping, fog leaving us inconspicuous. I saw her carriage ap-proaching, inching the fog, fog through the spokes of her wheels. And then out-cries, and Ellen beside me, falling, and as she fell I turned and saw my cloak slide with her, lantern and dagger on the road, misericord.

Here it is now: yes, here it is: I have it, pricking thing for future pricking, if need be: long, needle-pointed: Toledo steel: the right length to kill her-or me.

Laughter and fog, spines and theatre, the royalty of crime in a London gutter; time doesn't remove them, can not remove them.

When we could we located guards-trustworthy men-and with a constable informed her servants and posted guards. Later, Jonson and I sat with her doc-tors and learned a little more about pain. I went for Ellen's brother and he came, a cold young man who resembled Ellen, a slight fellow in handsome black. Hand on sword, he drew himself up, face ashen, mouth trembling...

"I'll comb London for them...get them..."

Jonson often visited her, his words and thoughts the stuff for those days, my brain run dry, bats coasting out, Enobarbus memories:

Why, sir, give the gods a thankful sacrifice. When it pleases their deities to take a man's woman from him, it shows the tailors of the earth; comforting therein, that when old robes are worn out, there are members to make new...so grief is crowned with consolation.

Did I write that?

Henley Street

February 26, 1615

I am not able to write poetry and yet I must write, must tell the teller, crush the shards of illness. What is life, the undone and the done, the foolish and the great? I hate drowning in real and invented apprehensions but mine is the stum-bling, after the play, after the com-pliments and the celebration, a mixture more brew than sanity admits.

My pen jerks and my hand wavers and my head aches, and I watch faint light creep into the sky, exacting a promise from me to defy pain.

I hate sleeplessness on a foggy night like this, for there is something in the fog that makes death come alive, that sears the sordid into the mind...what was the cause: contorted memories? Am I afraid to die, be laid in straw or committed to a sulfurous pit?

Give me my rope, put on my crown...

Memory is for me acting in a dissolve, cloud of rain, concatenation of noth-ings, performing yet recalcitrant, ambiguous and poor. Here, in this town, this room smelling of spilled wine, the candles ugly, I see a woman, the filaments of yesterday's straw tangled in her hair-selling love for a price. Why is love obtuse, ruthless, rain-buried, eerie and demanding, slinking one to the other?

Stratford

March 2, 1615

I write with rain across my oriel, and the fire almost out in my fireplace, and my loneness sniveling in its pot. I am sick of self-pity. I taste with wretched ap-petite, so be it! To be generous, hungry, guiltless, and free...what would I give!

Pincers, pinch harder at the rushes, keep the light burning as long as possible, for each of us.

At my age, I am guilty of longings that I can never realize: dreams hawsered to nowhere. I have been guilty of this all my life. I copulated with commas. I hunted dreams on paper-cheap privateer! I was priest, pharaoh, general, slave, glutton. Paper is a sickness, a sweltering fever, clammy forehead, thudding pulse, ague within ague: so I am a man of paper, elongated, soggy, contorted, multiple of calligraphic speculation: paper bones, paper heart, paper skull, paper blood, paper penis.

Listen, isn't that time rustling a sheath of paper?

Snow buffets Shakespeare's cottage:

Snow enters a window.

There are varnished ceiling beams,

varnished furniture,

books and manuscripts.

A stunning woman appears, smiles, fades,

beckons seductively, disappears.

Henley Street

March 5, 1615

Y

esterday it snowed, and during the afternoon I fell asleep and dreamed I saw King Henry and Shallow crossing the fields be-yond my windows.

"O God, that one might read the book of fate," I heard King Henry say, as I followed, hidden from view. "I wish to see the revolution of the times make mountains level, and the continents, weary of solid firmness, melt itself into the sea and, other times, to see the beach girdle the ocean..."

"There is a history in all men's lives, figuring the nature of the times de-ceased..."

Was it Shallow who said that?

Though I am confused, I recall the gaunt face of Alleyn as he spoke those lines, that stormy night, when our theatre rattled. He was infirm with fever and yet played on; he seldom let us down.

Winter is here again, to make our beds uneasy. Oh, for a muse of fire that would ascend the brightest heaven of invention, and return me to my youth!

This is a document in madness because pain seldom leaves me...

Oh, to be young and tumble a naked woman on a bed, quarrel desperately and make up, burn the night learning and unlearning lines, defy the elements, dally along the Thames, out-shout the gulls, see a mermaid behind a rock.

Youth has such powers! Youth's rule rules his own court by championing a hundred causes, ordaining and cancelling, defying and acknowledging, digging canals, raising temples.

Slave of every beautiful woman he meets, he presents her with lasting riches and eternal potency. He conquers every country for her: his grail, his fleet bat-tering an endless Armada to bring her into port, no gale too wild.

Henley Street

Monday, '15

When I taught school at Snitterfield, Jonson came now and then to prime my Greek and Latin. He used to say, "You should have done a lot less fishing in the Avon, boy! Why, these fellows will never learn, not the way you teach. See, they grin at you. They love you. Call them churls, cane them; make them scat when you appear!"

Away from school, Jonson would slip into theatre talk and urge me to rejoin him: "Your poems are remembered. You have to come back, Will! I'll find you a patron. Now's the time to write plays... I'll help you put them on the stage."

I told him I was afraid of the London plague. He scorched me with a "haw-haw." "Teaching's your plague, man!"

Henley Street

April 20, 1615

Teaching was forgotten at Fair time, good food, acrobats, cockfights, gam-bling-there was something to keep us spellbound spelling laughter! Games and dances went on at all hours. Cinquepace was the fast, new step. How I liked it! There were plenty of pickpockets but I had nothing to pick but my loneliness. When I danced with a red-cheeked girl there was sperm in every movement-those giddy curls and hot hands, the smoke of sizzling fish, howls of the stinking bear baiters.

Stratford

Trumpets blared... I heard them days after the Fair.

I stayed on as long as possible in Snitterfield, to contribute what I could to my family's upkeep in Stratford. Then came the day when the school board asked me to find another job; so it was back to London again, to Jonson and his half-ass promises, back to city trumpets, strumpets, rattle of carriages, pismire poverty, paunched patrons and perfumed snowballs for the Queen's masque...

Stratford

While I was at Snitterfield, I had the companionship of a girl whose fourteen years should have been double fourteen to equal her double sight for fox, hawk, raven and snail: she was unreal because she could bring me to the brink of fan-tasy by gesture or word: "Hush, there, over there, in the grass by the stile." Her flip-smile had the best of both pook and pagan. What she wore seemed a part of her blondeness, a blondeness often eerie with an eeriness that worried me, to be quickly saved by her smile or laughter. Her low voice set the stage for confi-dences-thread between goldenrod, rabbit lying in the entry of its burrow, lark rising.

Faith and I had lingering afternoons and saw the first of fog before dark, heard the last of bird sounds before sleep: her house next door to mine taught me, by window and door, the wretchedness of her life: her father's drunken beatings, kickings, savagery: so, to escape the village clod we escaped together, to sit by a woodland stream and hear words by leaves as they sifted down. Faith had her legs in the water, up to her knees, or lay on the embankment, the color of her flesh gleaming. Her beauty was not a pair of breasts but a pair of hazel eyes and a dimple in her chin. She was tall, a cathedral figure in caenstone, the stone so alive yet ecclesiastical, erect, her posture one of graceful expectation: repose flowed from her: her thin hands lifted to her thin face: her hair straggled to her shoulders and down her back or was combed into a flaxen haycock. I thought my teaching infinitely poorer than hers and went with her whenever possible, helping her withstand the disgrace at home.

I thought many times of going back to see Faith Stanton but even the changeless changes and woodland jewels, claiming socketless eyes, reflect only images of the mind. Drunkenness outlives beauty-the clod burying haycock, bog and girl.

Henley Street

Goddamn my hair!

My hair, with its copper and red, used to say: This is your world, boy!

Damn my wrinkles! My gallows neck!

My face was once all right.

Now one cheek has begun to cave in under my eye, the wince of lechery, no doubt, and meteors, no less. Lines around my mouth give the impression that I have never had a good time-never laughed. My eyes, when I swivel them in a mirror, warn me that grave changes are taking place inside and that denials will get me no-where: grey hairs, wrinkles, poor vi-sion...they are the roistering gift of time, markings on the stone, to remind myself that I am here, that escape is never, that courage is all that counts, humor with its leg lifted on the monument, peeing on vanity.

The sullen bell called me to school and I went reluctantly, leaving my fishing pole behind the door, pike and trout lost to me. Early morning was almost beyond endur-ance; I rubbed my eyes and stumbled downstairs, to eat amid yappings, survive, survive.

I did not resent school when Hunt read aloud in Latin, reading masterfully, giving us Caesar, Antony, and Cleopatra. When he read, I wandered beside the pyramids, the Nile dotted with boats, ibis, and heron; I tramped battlefields, fought with black spears piercing the hot, dusty air. It was along the Avon that I sensed man's struggle. I saw. Heard. As the water grew greener and greener and deeper and deeper, the air motionless, the past was there, Hunt's past, Cleopatra's...her barge, like a burnished throne, burnt on the water; the poop beaten gold, purple the sails, so perfumed that the winds were love-sick with them; the oars were silver, which to the time of flutes kept stroke...

When I dared I got away early and went to fish or loafed at the mill pool where I hung my feet in the Avon and counted dragonflies, my line thrown as far as I could throw it. Sitting on a mossy mound, I heard the warblers and lark spell morning into warm sun.

Thirty-five years ago!

Summer:

Naked swimmers, five boys, penis fun, laughter:

Naked girls in bushes along the same river bank:

Church bells in distance:

Behind a copse boy and girl kiss and squirm.

Henley Street

May 4, 1615

G

rowing up, our greatest fun was swimming, our greatest anguish church. From church, as quickly possible, we got into nakedness, rival of summer lightning. We swam the Avon in laughter and row-diness, three, four or five of us, and if others were at our favorite pool we chased them off, our penises flying, rocks and yells going everywhere. We scared them half to death, or, if we were in proper mood, we adopted them, kids like us; we swam and climbed on them and trampled the ooze of plants, and the ooze slicked our bodies over their bodies: I can feel it almost like a lover getting ready to make love: and that's about what we did: we made love to the day and we made love to the water: we yelled and slapped it and cuffed it into obedience, and orgasmed it, and tore our legs till blood pricked, and then we swam and I was pretty good and I out-swam some though some out-swam me, and we swam until we felt cool and easy, and then lay on the grass by the mill, to watch the swallows and gape and groan, like lovers after their bout in bed: our spirits ebbing for the nonce, then rising to dress and yell and pull and sing and chase each other home.

How I reveled in summer haying.

Usually, I loaded a small wagon pulled by Burt, Burt eying me, snuffling at me as I pitched the hay: he was getting old and the grey of his wooly hide was shedding outrageously; he lifted each black hoof slowly, often fetching a fart. He liked working the field alone but I preferred working with others. Stripped to the waist, hatless, I forked and grunted and Burt pulled and farted. Some of the time I had to sing, the smell of hay and sun inspiring my songs: sometimes, when I worked with others, all of us sang, horses perkier for our merriment.

Mildred was as good at the fork as I: working side by side, we often bumped and her blue eyes would widen and light up: pretty, blonde, barefooted, she wore a blouse, skirt and Dutch apron: our field ended at the river, an apple grove along the other sides. Two or three of us, in teams, harvested Papa's hay each season: I still smell the timothy and the girl.

Wonderful, wonderful and most wonderful...and yet another.

Henley Street

May 10, 1615

Choir singing was boring-just sucking melancholy out of song-and when-ever I could, I skipped it and went off with Becky. No matter how icy, there was fun, hands linked, our runny noses beatific: Becky, whose giggle alerted every boy, was my girl whenever we could steal away and turtle hunt-that was our joy: tirelessly, we combed the creeks and river, staying long past staying time, scolded but not caring.

I see her giddy black eyes, brown mop, skinny legs, tiny hands and tiny feet-barefooted beside me, wetting herself to the legpits, screeching or silent, often too silent, wading lustily. She loved to steal apples, raspberries, strawberries, turnips, hungry from morning till night. I peeled turnips for her and we munched them on a stile, then raced one another, slithered downstream:

"There's one, see, on that log. Be quiet!"

"I'll get 'im."

"No, let me. It's my turn. He's tiny. He's for me."

"Go slowly."

A few times Becky and I rang the church bells for the sexton; together, we stole buns and cookies at home, but best of all we stole happiness, books in running brooks.

She married a seaman and lives in London: I warrant you there are eight chil-dren, a happy family-God bless t'em! I would not change the story.

Henley Street

Mother-memories of you are mostly memories of songs you used to sing when sleep was near, lovingly, patiently, sung in my room, close to the varnished beams, curtains drawn, as you sat or lay beside me or rested in a nearby chair.

Our favorite song was "Happy be thou, heavenly queen...man's comfort and angel's bliss...of all women thou hast the prize..."

And I remember each word of Sanctus-and hear each word as you sang it lingeringly; sometimes your hand kept time; sometimes your fingers covered mine.

Stabat Mater Dolorosa...

So many years have lapsed that I have forgotten how you looked, only your eyes and thin figure and voice remain: I hear you when you called us in from play: "Too-lee-looly-loo," you called, shepherding your six for supper and bed.

I roam about, room to room, stooping for a bedroom doorway, floors creaking, the varnished beams always the same, three floors of thinking about me, windows you used to look out of, beds you used to make-or was that an-other house, another time, another illusion? My house, your house, our house-who owns, who makes traitorous gifts, decisions, contracts, to pile millions of acres of dirt on top of us later?

At the Globe, when I was young, I received quite a visitor! Ben Jonson brought Sir Francis Drake. Ben was a sharer of friends. I was dumbfounded but "El Draque," contemptuously at ease, sat on my backstage table, his plumed hat and red gloves flung on top of a litter of plays. He and Ben discussed a masque Jonson was to produce.

Young as I was, it took courage to speak to "El Draque" because even his purple hat shocked me. But I managed to ask about his attack on Cadiz. Lines warped his mouth, and he said, stroking his corn husk chin:

"It was a matter of guns...we singed the King's whiskers through our superior armament. Ah, good winds too. We had great luck! Don't you believe in luck? When you write a play, isn't it luck, lucky weather, luck with your players, luck with your attendance, the right kind of royalty attending at the right time?"

I saw him again after the defeat of the Armada, at a crowded Thames an-chorage. Wounded, he looked older, livid scar on his cheek, the fire dead in his eyes, his expression one of cynicism and fatigue. He wore a squat, official hat. No rings. Leaning against a spattered capstan, he seemed smaller than I had remembered him; he did not recognize me.

"Our fire ships forced the Armada out of anchorage, broke up their plan!" he said, talking to a group of officers.

"Put yourself on a fire ship," he boomed. "You're at the rudder. She's aflame-flames are roaring aft! Your whole ship's blazing but somehow you bugger her against a Spanish hull. You're beaten off. They're afraid you have a powder mine in your hold. There's cannon shot! You dive overboard. It's a long, icy swim. Most men never make it out of that water...

"What we needed was more gun shot, more ammunition, kegs and kegs of powder; then, by God, we'd have run them clean to Spain, run them, not waited, our guns useless. We had to sit it out, wait-no powder. We didn't dare take a chance. Think of it, everything to our advantage but we dared not move. We had to bluff."

I wrote down his words-but I still hear them, it might be five or six years ago, not thirty!

Deceptions of mind bother me: unrehearsed, the brain bedevils and stacks lie on lie...in the lays of time. I turn my glass and am alone, the cuckold of myself reflected in three hundred sixty-five mirrors. My spirits, as in a dream, are bound up, and like the Armada, strewn on shores and still more rocky shores...

Henley Street

May 18, 1615

Memory's snowfall rattles every door and window in my house. Was it the once lost winter thirty years ago in London? From door to door, I begged for work: my hands blue, legs quaking, face frost-galled. Belly empty, pocket empty, I harried taverns, bakeries, homes. People mistrusted me, that wild-haired kid, goat-bearded-doors slammed in my face. Blinded by snow, I headed for the Thames, for the bridge-shelter there. On the way, I passed a tavern and opened a door: a crowd of young men faced me: I asked for work and was given a scul-lery job, supper and a mat by the stove: I'll never forget the warmth of that mat by that stove: I wanted nothing more: cherry voices and warmth: it all comes back!

A piece of bread in one hand, I fell contentedly asleep. An elephantine man, with florid face and scraggly beard, wakened me roughly.

"Next time you go to sleep don't let the rats share your bread," Falstaff guf-fawed.

Stratford

May 23

Falstaff helped me find an old cloak and helped me borrow boots and gloves. He got me a stagehand job. Later, he showed me where I could purchase stolen things, sharing his room with him: ribaldry, punning, gargantuan laughter, thiev-ery, friends, foolishness, foppery, wit and wine. Little did I think of using him in a play during the weeks I lived with him. In those days, I had never written a line.

Like an umbrella, his character sheltered me from depression: he introduced me to Marlowe, Kyd, Jonson. Years later, I introduced him to Alleyn and Bur-bage; Burbage wanted him on stage but Falstaff had his own stage where he could dupe and bedevil, unmolested by paid gapers. By then, he was getting old and liked puttering and sleeping best.

Those were mad times, those days with Falstaff, and yet, behind every laugh lay the threat of poverty, the knife blade of quarrels, reason gone unreasonable. Night after night we went to sleep hungry. With glue and nail we pieced our shoes together, for one more day. With needle and thread we patched our clothes. Falstaff pulled my wisdom tooth to save the barber's fee: "Open wide, yell! There, I've got it, Will, spit now. Spit, boy."

In a few ways Falstaff resembled my father: both were unassuming, generous, dilatory: their fat portraits hang side by side in my mind: the last I heard from my friend was a brief word from Dover where he was working for a shipbuilder and lived in a shanty by the sea.

He would have roared at his role in my plays: he would have objected to his cowardice, upheld his zeal, begged me for a thousand pounds, and tried to bribe me for the address of a pretty woman.

Friend...you were eel-fish, bull's pizzle, dried neat's tongue and stockfish! When you were born the front of heaven was full of fiery shapes and the goats ran from the mountains.

Henley Street

May 25, 1615

A cockroach creeps about my room, an X on its back, the only roach branded in my roost. I see it in the morning, when I sit down to write. It favors a corner, where there is a deep crack, in case of an intruder or wrath on my part. It has a stiff carriage-much more so than any of the others. Ruler, no doubt, with excessive responsibilities! So I have decided to call it Bill. Certainly all other roaches seem afraid of this Conqueror. When I find it on my table, I make a pass at it and it leaps with a scut. It eats paper-old and new. It munches leftovers, liking cheese best, though I think the cheese is pretty well divided between the roaches and the mice.

Henley Street

May 26, 1615

Why am I disliked in Stratford? Is it because I drive a hard bargain? Is it be-cause I have assumed, at least at times, an actor's air? They say I stand aloof but is it possible to cross the Avon to their side? My side is Ptolemy's, Priam's, Cleo-patra's, Coriolanus'. We four are difficult to appraise as we walk along Henley Street. The local folk have never heard the creak of chariot wheels.

Lonely...I have been lonely and am lonelier now, but which is lonelier, the pod with one pea or the pod with aliens? True, I have sued for money; true, I have acquired property. And the city man and country man mistrust one another: the writer fits in nowhere: yet, since this is home, I try to accommodate myself, say "yes" to Mr. Combe, and help if I can. "Yes, M."

I never could introduce Ann to Londoners and she has been unable to intro-duce me to Stratford people. If I were well, if I could write, I would spit on Avon.

Combe is the only person in S. who has seen any of my plays; however, when I talk with him, he confuses scenes and characters; his appreciation is based on pride that says "I can speak of Shakespeare." A Puritan, he patronizes incoming Puritans more than most, helping them infest this town, making it a sawtooth of moral crud, chair and whip in line, summoning whispered inquisitions.

Monday

What fools we mortals are, for I who wrote of shrews married a shrew who is more shrewful than any Kate from Padua. I laugh at my own defeat, a shrew beside a shrew, players nodding at my marital bewilderment, I, the drunkard drunk on illusions. Shall we list her infidelities-country-man at Fair, con-man, neighbor? Shall we name names?

Shakespeare and Ann, at ruins of Kenilworth castle,

copulating in the grass, happy in their bucolic lust.

The two trudge, hand in hand:

Ann ups her skirt and they flop again, giggling:

"Twins," she says.

Henley Street

I

married a shrew and yet thirty years ago, Ann and I knew hot jol-lity at Kenilworth, the grass a hide under us, pigeons reconnoitering castle walls, a falcon lawing the sun. Since Ann and I had a few days for ourselves, we had ridden to K. She was Sweet Villain, and when we pastured the horses and unstuffed our knapsacks, we stuffed ourselves, and sacked ourselves, gorging in sun, the horses stomping and snuffling beyond us. Sweet Villain pulled up her skirts after we had drunk more than we should and I was glad I had not married another. She said "Your hair's redder," and I said "Your hair's yellower," meaning where, and our laughter went bounding.

We sacked that old busky castle from wall to wall, writing on scalded plaster, pushing over abutments, throwing rocks at a fox. From some crater corner, we looked up, our heads dusty, holding each other sexround, our fierceness there while falcons fought, clipping each other, beaking one another, feathers falling. Kenilworth and kings: we smelled unsavory dungeons but pushed our falconry over them, our naked seel better than intercourse of power and time: among the marl, we viewed puffs of smoke from country homes, saw water gleaming, a windmill turning, sheep among sheep, their woolly backs humping toward a rainy sunset.

Soon, soon, time was to tear away our love, but we did not suspect: we were the confidents, our jollity amusing because fastened to laughter, no wrack or confusion: it was slap of hands on bare buttocks, "ah" over breast, mouth suck-ing, suckling, surprising, surfeiting, back again for more: the taste of love's bite the waist around, the hand up, down, and the grass its hide browner, browner than our flesh, her flesh ignited from within, so burned for me.

Stratford-on-Avon

June 1, 1615

We ate off wooden plates, tulips blooming in the garden, blue and white Chi-nese plates hanging on the wall, and lilacs blooming in the garden...in a dream I confronted him and he was monarch and he said to me: I am Hamnet, come, we'll go to the guild chapel and hear the sermon...it was a cold sermon but hon-eysuckle was blooming in the garden...orioles were singing above the oriel. Col-umbine, ferns, and lilies were on the cabinet: she said to me: Come, Will, eat! I said to her: listen, I hear the pegs moving inside the beams: that is for integrity. Ivy grew on the east wall of my house in those days.

Henley Street

June 3, 1615

Alone, following the Roman wall, as it girdled London, I used to speculate where the Roman gods had gone; thinking, as well, of those of Egypt and Greece...time with a scroll on his back, asking alms. Smashed bricks, memento mori, along that vast, yellow, unweeded garden, were questions in their own right, broken, to be kicked aside, as are our own questions concerning mortality.

Gazing at the Thames, I hoped for hope from the wide wall, wider river and broader mystery. I went over my plays...Ulysses...Cleopatra...Prospero... The wall, with its imperialism and legion of whispers, said "no, master, no," speaking in the voice of Lear's fool.

Ellen and I climbed the castle where Caesar lived, the tallest site in London, the Thames below, flowers and vines crawling over ruins, the walls of yesterday saying "Et tu Brutus."

Danger knows full well that hate is doubly dangerous: we are two lions lit-tered in a day, and the litter of stones crumbles underfoot, but Ellen cries out to me, and I catch her by the arm.

There is a white sail on the river...

Ay, me, how fine a thing the heart of woman! I thought it then and think it still, the very best of her is gentle subtlety: it is this that takes a man in.

A flock of blackbirds lit below us, covering the fallen stones like black hail.

We went many times to that castle and walked along its ancient yellow walls; she asked me for poetry and I repeated lines: what were they, I wonder?

Now...most noble one...the gods stand friendly today, that we may, lovers in peace, lead on our days to age:

I am constant as the northern star, of whose true-fixed and resting Quality there is no fellow in the firmament...the skies are painted with unnumbered sparks...they are all afire, and every one doth shine; but there's but one in all doth hold his place: so in the world...

The stars came out, a summer's night on Caesar's place, and we heard frogs and the tittering of lovers, ourselves loving that place, our flesh, that empirical wisdom. We went so often we called it "our castle."

Henley Street

June 5, 1615

At Christmas skirling bagpipers, piping a waulking song, greeted us at Dunira. Ellen's room, in a squat tower, faced a narrow lake with ragged shore pines and a small island, wild geese and ducks resting on the water, cold, cold, moss blue water.

Sun crossed the bear rugs and tiles of her floor.

Her bed was canopied with green velvet embroidered with golden shields and crossed spears, seen on her coat-of-arms.

She called my attention to the pulls on the heavy drapes, each pull a carved ivory ball enclosing a ball inside another.

Hand in mine, she showed me her collection of silver, gold, and ivory fans, fans from Egypt, Greece and India, arranged on her walls, some open, some in cases, flabellum with bone handles, Venetian lace fans, tomb fans with gold-encrusted ribs, a Greek fan like an acanthus leaf. I can see the movement of her lips as she described them; I can see her hand, pointing.

We often walked around the lake and through the pollarded garden, its cy-presses like stone columns: we walked the moors until Christmas cold sent us shivering to the big fireplaces where we talked and ate and sang and drank.

Someone kept the fire blazing in her fireplace and we would sink down on her bed or lie on the bear rug and make love, the firelight skirling her ivory, her fans and the canopy's yellow silk lining.

Hugh opened our door one morning very early, while we were busy making love, and with a boisterous laugh he said:

"I just finished with my woman; when you're done, we'll go hunting. The horses are saddled. Better lock your door next time!"

Hugh-his huge body on a huge hunter-led us hunting along a loch, where the ocean, squeezed as in a glass case, shuddered, as though resentful of its trap, as though it considered everyone as intruder. I was awed by the water's dark and the chasms menacing it. Deer eluded us and while we followed the loch, I lost interest in the hunt for the quarry of sea and earth, spirit and well-being.

Hunting, walking, eating, drinking, love-making, this was the happiest time of my life. Her brother's acceptance amounted to adoption; he often came to my room and talked at length, sharing intimacies; the only misadventure during my stay was an attack of hungry peasants who swarmed the castle court, shrilly de-manding food, some in kilts with silent bagpipes.

Ellen and I visited the ruins of a sprawling Cistercian abbey on her Dunira property; there, under the vaulted archway, where roses climbed, I felt inspired, and, staying on I wrote Cymbeline, scenes and words coming easily, happiness a constant companion: the sweetness of her personality seemed altogether mine. Words and flesh-they were mine, in that sun and cloud world of Dunira.

The weather settled into a steady spell, my room overlooking garden, lake and bluecap forest. London might have been at the bottom of the sea: I could not have cared less. Its dirt and beauty-I never missed them.

Visiting the abbey frequently, we met several of the monks who resided in a section of the refectory; their geniality contented us and we lingered with them, in their herb garden, by a fountain-pigeons about. A marvelously tiny man, spry though old, gave us a parchment book, one he had rubricated, pleased to see us in love.

Hugh accompanied us occasionally to bring food for the brothers, making the short trip with donkeys carrying loaded panniers. He, too, would linger, sharing our mood.

Abbey garden, fountains, vegetables and herbs in rows:

a collection of rare fans on a wall:

Hugh and Shakespeare drink at a refectory table:

a peasant enters and Hugh beats the man

who is asking for alms:

skirl of bagpipes.

O

n the Scottish coast the sunset prowled the lowtide combers, roll-ing cloud into cloud, wave into wave. The clouds absorbed orange with yellow and the yellow took on red, the red brooming low, sweeping shoreward, reaching the sand at our feet.

Is it true that we saw the sunset together, her arms around me, the rocks be-yond us red, the sunset extending for miles? The moon rose out of a rust-colored sky?

Stratford-on-Avon

June 11, 1615

"Darling, ours is a supreme happiness and we must cherish it," she wrote me long ago.

For years I kept her letters in my desk at Blackfriar's house, to lose them when the place burned: waxed, ribboned and perfumed letters, from France, Italy, and Scotland. I could rewrite some of them from memory-some.

At the time I received her letters I thought that a number of them had been detained much too long and I thought several of them had been tampered with. I put this aside as fancy for I was willing to be blind. As I think back it's odd I never suspected censorship. And why was it I never knew till later that she and her family opposed the Queen?

The knife of one's own stupidity cuts deepest!

A year or two after the attack on her, when she was back in Scotland, she wrote that Hugh was assassinated in Glasgow-an Elizabethan courtesy, some-one said. The shock was more of a shock coming from her: Hugh dead, big Hugh, with his cleft beard, bushy eyebrows, and mop of greying hair: the bigness of his Dunira castle comes to me, along with his hospitality.

For years I was driven half insane by a dream of an enveloping cloak: the cloak swallowed my house, trees, sun, and stars: I heard a woman scream inside this luminous thing. Behind the folds was a bearded face, coming closer and closer.

Henley Street

I was headed for home when I met Ellen and the autumn sun favored us, potentates meeting by a river, our kingdom the leaves along the shore, the ash red, our introduction friends, our hopes instantaneous. I saw beneath her gloves to her veined hands; I saw her veined breasts beneath her dress; I saw beneath her smiles the invitation, rebuffs, wiles...

Yet who dares to know royalty outside the theatre!

Home, I reminded myself, is Stratford; but, who among us remembers home and fidelity?

I loved home once, my Ann, my children, and the sharing of the things a man wants to share. I loved these in my groin and the raves of sweetness summoned me, over and over, till I was worn out and imperious insomnia stalked and kept me at my desk or sent me.

How can it be, in the midst of aged foolishness, Ellen appears, to convince, to distract-those devil eyes of hers and that black hair and her white, white skin begging love. When she speaks, I listen: I turn and listen: I turn and listen again for she is theatre, its hush, its compassion, its folly.

Jonson was right to introduce us; he thought to kill my pen and wit. It was his plot to make me plotless-great jest! He was right, for sleepless nights swept around and the pulsing indirection of sex carried me to her for yet another ren-dezvous.

Did I ever come to my senses: was it a week, month, or year? Was it she who nailed the fog over my soul? Ah, crucifix between her breasts, so soft, so im-paled! What graciousness!

London was too small for us for everyone perceived the unperceivable, im-paired our pairing and yet...but all this is past and the last seat empty.

We thought to escape to Rome, that eternal place for eternal mouths. She of-fered me money and I refused. At the theatre she begged me to accept, for us, for time, for love...and I accepted. On stage I swore to testify but I hugged my testament and my lines faltered.

We have played our parts too often, our thighs packed with wax, our mouths with honey; we bring it to the hive; and, like the bees, are murdered for our pains.

Henley Street

June 18, 1615

For months I kept at the writing of Antony and Cleopatra-Ellen seldom out of my mind. Yet the writing was an abatement of anguish, scenes lifting me out of maelstroms, Antony's turbulence alleviating mine. Apartment and theatre were all I allowed myself, sharing time with Jonson, dividing mutual crusts.

Rain-rain-when has it rained more! It was well I had the Egyptian sun to keep my bones warm.

Some scenes evolved easily; others fought me, full of sound and fury. I could not visualize certain scenes on the stage and sometimes strange actors walked the boards and stole my lines, fixing them with their own personalities. Alleyn stalked as Caesar, and I had to re-write again and again.

Baxter affronted me with his buffoonery and I had to cross out his lines. Phips-our cheerful homosexual-had Cleopatra in his perfumed arms, jeering at me. Kempe jigged.

On top of all this, insomnia set in and never left me for weeks. March – April – May, it was the warmth of May that unlocked its crossbow and shot me out-doors, to sit and sit for hours.

There, in the sun, my shirt open, shoes off, grass alive, lilacs alive, birds twirping, I knew I could make Antony and Cleopatra successful. There in the sun people and river came alive. The sun's gnomon wrote. I bowed my head and waited. At my desk, I hurled my sentiency... alive, it must come alive, to hurl aside life's muddle: alive: these people from the past must speak: nothing is more remote than yesterday: speak to them: make them chroniclers: break their sleep.

The Thames with anchored and sailing ships:

Ellen and Shakespeare on board a coaster,

leaning on the taffrail:

She settles her tam and quotes from Two Gentlemen of Verona.

They talk of Naples as sailors leer at them

from on top a stack of boxes.

Henley Street

June 20, 1615

E

llen and I sailed the Thames, the water stippled with gulls; our hands locked, we stood at the stern and hoped for a smooth voy-age, with love, our rudderbar credulous to us, the wind mild and lasting. In Venetian wine there would be happiness, we promised each other...

But why are you lost to me and I alive?

Ellen-what is this, that reaches round us and never arrives; what is this that promises return?

Ours was a proper departure, landing us on the Italian shore, love in a town of disinterested people.

Perhaps I want the impossible: yes, yes, I want that time when we were there in Naples, when we strolled the seaside; when we sailed the waterlanes and walked Roman streets and her fountains watched us with sleepy eyes, spray beaded on some bronze arm.

I dislike borrowing things and yet I'm borrowing memories, borrowing time, those bronzes, our return, our boat bucking seas, sending us north, ice off the larboard, back to reality, debts, conniving. We said good-bye but our good-bye was postponement. Our wheel became St. Catherine's. At a gypsy teller's tent there was a kind of double silence.

I lived for my work, starved for it.

With my pen I quartered the earth and green pastures and made them live for her and the witchcraft of hope, to shake off sadness and burst the anarchies of soul.

Incorrect to heaven, some say.

June 22, 1615

What a cocked up play, my Coriolanus. To fill my pocket! To fob off bad for good, that was it. I leaned on one crutch and fought with another-and fell. Too many of my plays were crutched. I borrowed too much from Plutarch and oth-ers. I worshipped royalty. I was too conventional, too romantic, borrowing plots, borrowing, borrowing, double sure, never sure, cocksure.

Henley

Midsummer-day

And I must guess the identity of her attackers-or why they wanted her life. Christ, we had our list of suspects. And what came of our grim suppositions? Nothing. We said: was it robbery, I prithee? Jealousy? Hatred? Politics? We said. We have said and I go on saying. Thrift, Horatio, thrift...and I have not saved.

Henley Street

June 26, 1615

Hamnet...

Today is your death day.

After you died I went to the shore and the sea's clods of wood and detritus infused in me a loneliness that nothing has every wiped out: a wrangle of foam goes on and on inside me; the grey that topped the abyss of ocean finds a darker grey in me; the gulls are sleep-flying for you.

Hamnet, my son...

Prince of my house, I loved you. We had such fun. Good day, sweet boy, how dost thou, good boy? May flights of angels sing you on your way. When you died, Stratford teemed with monsters. Your hand in mine, such a cold hand, you said adieu. What God was this to snuff you out at eleven. Grief stiffened me: I feel it today, when there should have been a birthday party not a remembrance. The sea rolls back on me as I sit here, my legs unable to move, pain working in me.

The Queen and her killings...time and its murders...they are alike! The unfair-ness of life, O what angels sing the truth? What angels! Go, fetch me a quart of sack; put a toast in't.

God took him from me...damn the God that steals your son.

King of grief they might have called me. Now, all is mended by many years: ours be your patience, your gentle hand lead us, and take our hearts.

I had thought to leave him something beside my father's coat-of-arms. I had thought to introduce him to the theatre, have him think about my plays, have him know the better part of London. He would have been a friend of Drake's; perhaps he might have sailed on Raleigh's Virginia voyages. Perhaps Jonson might have taught him Latin. Perhaps is my treadmill, and I wear it thin.

He went to a few plays with me and thrilled to them. He respected me. Loved me. What were his thoughts, as he died? To be such a short, short time on stage! Was he resentful, bewildered? I think he was confused because of the great fever. Good God, what was the use of his flowering? It was an error of the moon...it makes men mad.

To thine own self be true, they say, and I, still harping, I ask your credent ear to listen: we shall not look upon his like again?

Speak... I go no further.

Stratford-on-Avon

Flowers in my hand, I thought to visit his grave, but as I limped across the yard, thinking of the bone house and how each of us ends there, remembering those underneath my shoes, under the tree, under the threatening sky, I laid the flowers on another's grave, and the dove carved on that granite nodded, as it were, pecked me across the grass, among the weeds, reminding me of other men's grief.

That woman, over there on her knees, isn't that Nancy Richards? I recognize her shoulders and the back of her head. Her father died last month.

What stupidity, this crawling, mewing, kneeling, this unresurrectable world, with weeds that smell of dust.

I remember a king's grave in Denmark, with falcons carved on it, falcons of black marble, perched on top a branch, carved black centuries ago.

I walked through the rain, moving as fast as my legs would let me, my soul full of discord and dismay, wishing I had not gone, resolved to confine myself to myself, incarcerate my grief in my writing, or, if I could not write, be ennobled, not afflicted as other men are with contagion.

The fault, dear Brutus...

After his death, the dissentious Judith and Ann used to side against me: "He's no good, Judith," Ann preached vehemently. "What does he care for any of us! He's always away in London. You've heard him say that life's but a walkin' shadow. We're just so many shadows to him!"

I would stare at Judith after one of Ann's outbursts; I would look at her and through some sort of necromancy I would see Hamnet's face-I would remem-ber our fun, our fishing, our swimming in the Avon.

It was not the constant conspiracy of Ann and Judith that drove the final nail; it was Judith's resemblance, same color and texture of hair, same blue eyes, same half smile, same propensity to giggles, same way of rubbing her hands on her clothes. I had always favored Hamnet because he and I had shared more. Now, now that Judith lived, I could not accept his death. Of course I never wanted her to die. As long as the twins lived there was accord. If death must steal one of them...but I couldn't, wouldn't choose. Yet, in ugliest anger, I had shouted my preference. And she knew I often saw Hamnet when I looked at her: I've seen her run when I stared at her: I've heard her cry: "Mama, he's looking at me that way!"

"These are my twins," I used to say, showing them to people. Twins-for how long!

I bought her a goonhilly pony, an excellent pacer, and taught her to ride. I got her a lamb and a puppy, I brought her gifts from London. I brought her things from France and Italy. There was little chance to get through to her because of Ann. If I won Judith for a while, I lost her when at work in London. She never wrote to me...or Ann destroyed those letters. During my years in the theatre, in London and touring the provinces, all those years, I re-ceived no note. She never expressed a desire to see one of my plays, seemed disinterested in my life in the city-unless it was to suggest I bring something when I came home.

Home?

July 1, 1615

I am that wanderer of night, full many a morning have I seen flatter the mountain tops with sovereign eye...

There's memory, that's for remembrance; pray, you, love, remember...and there is pansies; that's for thought...there's fennel for you, and columbine; there's rue...you must wear your rue with a difference.

Through the years they mangled those lines! How cold to hear them back-stage! How cold to hear them now, here, in my room, echoing from varnished beams, off-stage in my oriel of yesterday.

But I should not have gotten sick: I should have stayed in London to the end, fought the Puritans, fought the King, the tax collectors, the players of the shrew's men!

Pain shut me out: the body must have its moments of solace-the mind its soothsayer!

I would give you violets...but they are planted around a gravestone.

I was a young man when I wrote those lines; like Ophelia I ride on bawdy repetitions, error on error.

The table of my memory is dusted with crumbs.

Off-stage, the wind gushes; on-stage, there's a frenzied pitch of "no!"

Chorus, players!

This love, this royalty by jackanapes brought to earth, the stage to my back: what can a man affirm in such a position: flight? I speak to her and she puts her fingers on my lips and holds her beauty like a whip over me. The curtain came down quickly: fie, the curtain often comes down swiftly, manipulated by fury, a last sound snapped out, muffling resolution, covering courage...

There is a curtain for love and one for hate: there is a curtain for youth and another for age. And when we finally realize these things we are dotards, and our realization laughs.

The executioner's curtain is no doubt the swiftest. The jig maker's safest. The priest's dullest. The mariner's loneliest. The lover's saddest.

Henley Street

July 8, '15

These pages are so unlike my plays and sonnets and yet I have to struggle to get anything down! Here is my mock dukedom; since I can not write any longer I look back across time from the shelf of my memory, longing to improve my existence: I am certain that the old word-chattels gladly deserted me, looking for a young man, no doubt, an upstart from Snitterfield, enroute to London, riding a brood mare, humming...hey, non nonny...

...Heaven mend all!

Henley Street

July 9, 1615

Elsinore has a tongue of land that licks at time, a place that ends with defeat, its castle and its people falling into apparitions.

Usurping night, Elsinore made me face the northern ocean, irresolution. There was no illusion to being there: rain cusped out of sky: the snow fell: it was a bitter time to see the place, a blastment. I had shaken off that incessant pain that stabbed the roof of my skull each time I leaned over, that writhed through my eyes: I would rub my eyes and feel something click in my brain as if it had fallen into place again. But I was still weak from this ailment and tired from long journeys and longer thoughts. I was filled with new dreads, especially here, under the rain. Irresolution: it is wrong to deny it for there is no denying its power.

There is something like death, being alone in a foreign land. With determina-tion grappling, the loneliness and death-sense grip harder. So I felt that I was borrowing from everything around me.

It is a custom for some of us to think and yet I turn against that custom. It is better to live, simply as simple people live. I wanted to live without the paper-world, to shun its distortions, escape its death head, the charnel house of yester-day.

As I stood on that tongue of land, I heard the slobber of the sea: I heard old men whisper: I heard old passions. My blood was young and yet I could not get away. The porches of my ears wanted friendship, I, the kind hand, the kinder mouth.

"If you were here there would be reason enough. Without you, there is no more than walls and sky and food. To be sure, I eat. To be sure, I move about. You understand what I mean. I find that there is so much in life that never gets said. When I am with you I am unable to say it...old plaint. I try to convey with my presence-that is help. You, too, have this desire, and have expressed it. When we were in bed, mating, there was a beauty in that union that suf-ficed...until tomorrow. Then, caught up in time, I sensed the old longing, to share the unshareable, to reach the unreachable. Here, in this cold room, I am trying to make life a little more livable, for you, for me."

So I wrote her.

Stratford

Years Ago

At Oxford, it is pleasant to recall, I stopped at Duvenant's inn frequently, the rooms and meals much to my taste. Madame Duvenant, dressing like someone from an Inigo Jones' masque, her rosy sex refreshing, greeted me with a favor-able eye. Veal, shoulder of mutton, rabbit, green fish...gingerbread...straw-ber-ries...claret: she knew my favorites, sharing my meals and bed. When I arrived, tired by travel, she had someone look after me, prepare my meal; then, we en-joyed each other's company in the dining room she kept for private use. A Lon-doner and play-goer, she fixed her lusty eyes on me, hand on my arm, and made me feel I had never been away. She asked no promises, required no letter-writing, no payment. "It's late. Will, shall we go up to bed?" Why are there so few generous women?

Henley Street

July 13, 1615

I'd like one more ferry trip across the Thames, in the morning, the water dark, Sly at the oars, telling me about the latest girl, of the girls he has ferried, girls he wanted to love but could never love, old, old Sly.

"There's one, Will, you just can't beat. She's about this tall, tiny around the waist, and she makes you know, before you know it, that she can be had for very little, very sweetly done too, that's the game of it...that's the game of her, that little one, Portia, they call her. Portia, the one with grey eyes and small mouth. When she stands up beside me in the boat to pay her fare, I groan. It's terrible being old, Will, when you can't do it any more. And I want to do it to her, to be young again. That Portia, she comes mostly in the evenings, I guess you know why. But she's not always alone, but when she's alone, we talk. That she, she is little around the waist but has melon breasts, the kind, you know how they are. I will give you her address, if you want. Shillings, now Will! But she's not one you'll forget, I warn ye. That mouth of hers and them eyes of hers. Faggots for her, that's it, Will, faggots for men who see her..."

The boat shifts, Sly's oars are cracked, his old face crisped from the sunny crossings, the winds and fogs. He's been boatman for forty-odd years, he says. He has worn out a dozen boats, which he builds himself, to make them stout enough. Sun on his boat, the water dark...

I'd like to cross once more with him, though he's been dead a long time, cross with other boats around, small boats and schooners, some with sails un-furled, seaward bound.

St. Swithin's Day

If I knew where I was going to die I wouldn't go near the place.

Stratford

July 20, 1615

Today, warm sun and silence were mine and pain alleviated: I hoped for re-covery, hoped to write again, hoped that my memory might outlive death half a year; so shall I progress, ant-wise, day by day: ants, as you creep over the wood-work, stumble against the grain, think of me and the words I summon: convic-tion me to another Rosalind: the Touchstone will unblacken and reveal pure, pure gold: alchemy of ruffians and angels:

Tongues I'll hang on every tree

For the souls of friend and friend...

The sword in my chimney corner has not been unsheathed for years: when I bought it I thought I had the keenest blade in London, sharper than my rapier: when I carried it I liked to give it a flick now and then, to catch the eye of a woman: I kept it polished: it saved my life in a street fracas: Hamnet liked it: he used to shoulder it and parade about: I thought it would keep me young forever: I thought it would cut across time, loosen parchment and paper, let flood a bevy of immortal words above a sea of faces...

...for Thomas Combe.

The Roebuck on the Atlantic, bucking water,

sailors topmast, Raleigh in his cabin,

one eye on the compass, another on a manuscript:

Books line the walls; a monkey chitters:

the Roebuck pitches:

Raleigh's jewels flash on his hands:

"Mermaid," yells a bow sailor.

Henley Street

July 24, 1615

I

had thirty-five days at sea with Raleigh:

How he commands, respected by his seamen, each crewman called by name. There is adequate leisure aboard his frigate. I never saw anything done "on the double" as aboard an Essex ship where the captaincy seemed insecure.

On board the Roebuck I kept at my writing, lolling and writing on deck or passing hours in his cabin where I gave up to his booked walls: volumes in French, English, Italian, Greek, manuscripts in Latin and Hebrew, his literary world broader than mine.

In his cabin, under his table lantern during bad weather, during squalls, I wrote an act and then, at Raleigh's urg-ing, read it aloud. Feet propped on a mother-of-pearl chest, he listened gravely, smoking his clay pipe, brandy in reach, his comments as mellow as his drink, Oxford accent to my liking.

Ere we were ten days old at sea I had written several scenes-writing in the sun and spray, sitting on coils of rope, a gun lashed in front of me, gulls mewing.

"Mermaid...mermaid," a sailor yelled aloft, and we scuttled to the starboard rail, to see something break water and then submerge, its pearly back toward us.

She swam and dove, flipping in and out of swells, the bubbles foaming around her, making off at a 40 degree angle from our stern, pearl or green grey, though I never saw her distinctly.

The excited sailor who had spotted her claimed that he had seen her face... "such a beautiful face!"

Raleigh appeared.

"They're deep swimmers," he said, as we leaned far over, hoping she might reappear. "She'll likely stay down a long time. Must have powerful lungs, those mermaids."

He told of other mermaids: he had heard one call through fog and mist on the Orinoco river; he had seen one off the Cape, near a small island; he said that seeing a mermaid spells luck.

He went on talking of a trip upriver, jungle river, heat, crocodiles, green birds, monkeys with beards, butterflies, solid white butterflies, bigger than your hands: his descriptions sent my brain going: I too was the Queen's favorite, Shepherd of the Ocean, sailing a Golden Hind: I would find El Dorado in Manoa.

His accent sometimes thickened to a brogue and it was difficult to follow. Talking of his travels, his eyes grew nervous, searching, searching, seeing inside, greying: his arms gestured.

We leaned against the taffrail, as the ship heeled under a wind, white caps racing after.

His Roebuck is splendid, new, well-equipped, faster than others of design. He and his navy draughtsmen spent months on her, and she cost him a fortune.

On this run we fired new cannon, firing them to test their recoil, trying a de-vice designed by his chief gunner: for Mr. Ames the firing took place after dawn, when the ocean was smooth; I was wakened five or six mornings; the great ship rolled in protest and rigging and beams creaked. One morning I was on deck to witness the testing.

Legs spread, soap on him, he rode the swells, while a sailor threw water over him, a sexful man, proud, and that same pride was at dinner in his cabin while being served among his officers and it was there while he read to me at the same table, eatables cleared, read me from the Greek poets, Pindar's ode on boxing, Simonides and his Perseus imprisoned in a chest at sea, Anakreon: reading the Greek and then translating as if it were his tongues.

It seemed to me he might be fit to govern the new world...a great, wise colo-nist...

On our trip we visited Madeira Island, disembarking at noon, the cambers keeling us into warm, shallow water, the weather perfect. I had a carcanet that I was determined to give a girl, in exchange. The priest, in the town, was very de-termined to detain me: to please him, I had to see the hairs of the Virgin, treas-ured in a box: the coil of hair kept the convent free of famine, he insisted: with his gigantic paunch I felt he might cause a famine of his own: he had a tree-filled, bird-filled cage he wanted me to see, strung with brass wires, where hundreds of birds lived. Negro girls, naked except for the cloth pad underneath the calabash shells they carried on their heads, wandered past the cage to see the birds, and found me most amusing. Their smooth, dark features, slick jet hair, round waists and small breasts were delightful. The priest had to leave-called by the convent bell. I gave the youngest my carcanet: the bushes slid about us, our hands to-gether, the leaves cool, the cool stream cool beside us, giving us water in our hands: birds in the aviary whistled and sang, while she fondled the carcanet and lay with me: I had never had anyone so young, accomplished, kindly, wooing, mouth tasting of fruit: she peeled fruit taken from a bush and we ate together: she filled her calabash at the stream and left me, lying, dreaming of her smiles and stroking hands...

Stay illusion.

I liked sprawling in my bunk, the ocean light illuminating the ceiling, a book or two beside me.

From above came the pad-pad of barefoot sailors, shift of rigging and cord-age, yaw of boom, sough of wind and flap of canvas; from below came the gur-gle of seas and jab of crested rollers that sometimes held the ship suspended for a moment and then permitted her to careen as she drove down inclines steep enough to shake the reaches of the sails.

When I dozed I felt the vastness, ringed vastness, and I was monarch through nearly closed lids: I was ruler of my inconsistencies: I dreamed an island, chained by surf and reef, where life was incredibly carefree, a warmth of flowers, fruit-women.

At night, in the bunk, oil lamp swinging, I imagined the uncharted waters be-neath us, porpoise and whale, creatures that pursued us as we floated across a valley, across a hill where coral studded the top: I saw monsters pass and re-pass, dark blue, grey, orange, fins fluted like fans close to our keel. Streamers of kelp and seaweed tangled crab and shark and I fell asleep, my play forgotten, the lamp burning, burning, burning...

Screaming, a seaman plunged from our topgallant, to die on deck while we were outrunning a storm.

Raleigh had his body wrapped in canvas and tossed overboard. No ceremony. Giant, wind-wracked combers.

"Do you know his name? Is there any record?" I asked.

"Timothy Parkes."

"Where was he from?"

"Dover. He was wanted there for murdering two women."

"Was he a good seaman?"

"No. And he was eaten up with scurvy."

And Raleigh's face said: "What kind of ship can an officer command sailored by rogues?" But he was all man: I saw him, in his canvas sack, as all men, fal-ling...falling.

There was never another voyage for me after Raleigh's...nor was there ever another Sir Walter. I should have been his champion. He needed me to fight for him. I have often shut my eyes and seen his books and sensed the cradling lull of his ship and felt the grace and power of him standing beside me: books, beams, a pointed beard, a swinging lamp, smell of oakum and ocean.

To think that I witnessed his trial and made no attempt to defend him...to think that I saw him in prison...to think...cold venison! Cry your mercy!

Henley Street

July 28, 1615

At the Mermaid Tavern, Raleigh laughed over his ale, his lanky body screwed on a rickety chair, the wind and rain howling, people coming and going, their clothes soggy, the wind gusting inside with each arrival. Most newcomers made for the fireplace, stamping and shaking out their coats; boots and leggings steamed.

Grinning, Raleigh lit his pipe, a dozen men around our table, elbowing Ben Jonson and me.

"Come on, Ben, smoke another, and you, too, Will."

Raleigh's coat was ripped, where a sword or cutlass had slashed; he pushed a tobacco pouch and pipe toward me.

"I'll drink with you-but not smoke," I said.

"Try again. You'll learn to like it."

"You experiment," I said. "Once was enough."

"But I'm not experimenting. I've smoked on the long watches. It settles the blood and calms the mind. The Indians..."

"We know about the Indians," Jonson said. "Just remember, we're not Indi-ans!"

"You might better be! Here, lad, bring us more ale! Let's drink!"

"Here's to your return! London's London with you around."

"Have you seen my new play?"

"What play is it?"

"The Winter's Tale," I said.

"What-a chilly play on top of this miserable weather! Why a month ago I was basking in the sun...you and your plays! Is this Denmark and another Ham-let? Tell me, Will, was Hamlet named for your son-are those lines in his honor?"

Jonson interrupted and answered for me:

"When my boy died I wrote something for him. I was in prison then and the jailer grabbed my manuscript and spat on it. Bah, that's the kind of crassness that shakes you. I've forfeited goods in payment of my stupidities but I haven't for-feited my hatred of injustice! It's another kind of injustice when a boy, a stripling, dies. Will made Hamnet into Hamlet, an outcry against this world."

He drank his ale and I saw him examine his thumb, where they had branded it when he was in prison; he nodded to himself; I suppose his thoughts were of his boy, a victim of the plague...

Jonson eats poorly. Prison treatment has hurt him. His hair is greying, par-ticularly on one side, sweeping down, showing when he talks with gusto. Teeth are missing. Today he wears a suit of black wool, his cuffs clean, his collar clean. He hardly seems one of us.

Raleigh's sword scrapes against the table as he leans forward, talking of his voyages. His is a perpetual struggle with storms and mutinies and his flashing eyes convey a courage one has to take into account. He has sent the idlers pack-ing and smokes with his pipe in the bowl of his palm, its brown the color of his hands, the five or six rings on his fingers blazing: opals and rubies, I am told.

I am also told that if he sold the jewels he wears he could pay for the con-struction of a ship-of-the-line.

Henley Street

July 30, 1615

I came across several old letters this morning. Raleigh's is hard to decipher:

Portsmouth

March 9, 1608

Will Shakespear-

We have taken an old carrack, the Madre de Dios, and spoils clutter her deck as we lie at anchor in Portsmouth Bay, spoils, things the Queen would grow sullen over, wanting them. Some of them bloody and soaked with spray, they have a cheapness about them, a liar's eye. You and Ben would know how to laugh and knock them about. Here's a green gem in a brooch a negro queen must have worn, its horse's eye staring through a slash of sail canvas. Here's a rope of skulls carved in brownish ivory; here's a tiara ornamented with pale yellow gems I can't iden-tify...a pile of brass bracelets alongside a smashed cutlass. As for me, I'll take the wind in the rigging and a clear landfall.

How are your plays going this season? Sometimes, when a sea rages, Macbeth howls in my ear, Othello lifts his hand as stars dive below the washed horizon.

Shun the Queen's condemnations. It is usually her free-dom-seldom ours. Stay clean!

But if I could write like you I would try to destroy political chicanery, though meddling with the Crown may spell my doom.

Well, I will make London late next month, and see you at the Tavern.

Raleigh's pen dug into the paper, and the signature has almost disappeared for lack of ink.

The Tower

Will Shakespear-

When I scribbled verses on a window, our Queen was pleased. I did not know-my crystal would not divulge that I would become a chemist in the Tower, alchemist of solitude. I thought the compass mine, shrewdly boxed...

London

April 9, 1593

Will-

For years I have been planning an expedition up the Ori-noco, to locate a gold mine. The fabled mine is near Spanish settlements and these may present hazards to any English force. A Spaniard, a Captain Berrio, is entrenched there, along the River. The expedition will tax my resources but I am deter-mined for the sake of the Crown: to carry out my plans I will require several shallow draft frigates and several small boats; there are no accurate maps and the mine is in fever jungle. Cer-tes a month or two will go into exploration, hacking this way and that. The roguish crew of prison perverts will contribute their share of com-plications, no doubt of that, my friend. Con-sole yourself that you will never know such an experience as dealing with deckloads of cutthroats. To be a voyageur you must condone scapegoats, assassins, rapists, thieves...but you know our maritime history. I have been accused of bad voy-ages...who has not made bad voyages who dared voyages? If this expedition can be materialed the victualing will be a matter of months. Wish me well...wish me God's speed.

I am contributing ￡3,000, and it seemeth to me this Empire is reserved for Her Majesty and the Nation. I can find the gold King of Cundinamarca: el hombre dorado. Who knows, as in Sergas de Esplandián, we may reach the Island of California, in-habited by Amazon women with passionate hearts and great strength, where there is abundant gold.

There were other letters in this vein, about his future. As explorer he was to the manner born. Thou canst not be false to any man-his letters seemed to say.

The Tower

Like our ship Revenge I am surrounded by an armada of enemies, all my pikes splintered. In the beginning of the fight I had a hundred for me; volleys, boardings, and enterings have done their damage...this composition and exile are the dullest and longest in the history of our Tower; the book I am writing is for Prince Frederick, a slow, slow tacking about; yet you, who respect writing, realize the salvation. Tell me, friend, that I will fare well with my History of the World...

It is still my error that I never assisted him: it was my error to have shut my mind: there are many I could have helped as I went along. But to pass by some-one great-that is great misfortune.

I hear him telling about how he burned the town of San José; I hear him telling about the treachery of the Tarawa Indians; his terrible thirst when his ship ran out of water at sea; he is boarding a Spanish frigate, raiding for guns...

'Sblood, the Spanish are a cruel lot, chaining the caciques, scorching their naked bodies with hot bacon, beating them, starving them, decapitating them...

The Tower

Write to me, lad, before thought's relicts utterly obsess me and the ghouls remove me in their stinking chains. I have seen and heard them, ghouls and ghosts of this town and tower, seen and heard them cringe and bully, nightlong. Stones multiply their menace. There's an old seadog from Dublin crumpled in a cell here, a grumbling bag: he claims he used to sail with me; by his own confession he is the murderer of his crippled father. He is to be freed in the Spring. Freed? Free-are we ever free, my lad? When I sniff the brined air I am hard put not to cast myself off the Tower-I still hope to see the sails double-reefed and porpoises rising off the bow...

Later he wrote bread-bread-bread. "Time drives the flocks," he said: "I am reading the Amoretti... have you read Spenser recently?

"None can call again the passed time," he wrote. I repeated those seven words. I repeat his bread...bread...bread...it is not bread we want. I did not care. Who cares now?

Henley Street

August 1, '15

What times we had, Raleigh, Marlowe, Jonson, and I, Marlowe and his wit, Raleigh and his tales of the sea, Jonson and his satirical pomposities in Latin or Greek. Then, then...Marlowe's murder crept through our veins and left us dumb or feverish, our very gatherings viewed with disapproval.

Hail drubbed our windows, the chill of complicity and duplicity spread over cobbles, the clatter of horses' hooves meant torture on the spit of tomorrow: these were hitched to our beads of sweat.

We had seen our share of slings and arrows. Was it important who killed Marlowe? We weren't sure. All threads of evidence were thin threads! We praised Marlowe, shuffled through our worn pockets to bury him-Raleigh at sea now. We excused, blamed, made our exodus.

Ann said, with scorn:

"It's the company you keep! London! Always London!"

As if our plays could be produced in Stratford!

"It's men who blaspheme God who find the gutter! Listen to what people say about Raleigh! He'll have a bad end!" So they prophesied over sour beer.

Chris Marlowe was squat, dark, tousle-headed, many-freckled, with wretched teeth and poor eyes. He weighed far too much for a small man-his clothes were sacks at times-his body lost inside for all its bulk. He had character and a voice that conveyed character-his speech superior to many actors. He could memo-rize lines quickly, and speak them sincerely, interpreting with sound thinking behind them. When nervous he picked his teeth and jogged his foot, when writ-ing or talking, not on the stage. He slumped in his chair habitually, as if he had been on his feet for days. When he spoke, there was Marlowe, bringing you to attention, his eyes serious, the warmth of him coming to you, a piece of cur-rency.

Stratford

Marlowe and I worked throughout the night, troubled by reeky candles, rain and chill. He kept us grinding by saying we'd soon see the sun cross the roof tops.

The sun...where was it?

Our playwriting went badly as we worked at rephrasing, changing, cutting, adding. I would write a scene and he would recompose it, or he would start out and then I would revise. We had to have our three acts finished by noon, for our players.

Red-eyed, Marlowe sipped ale, his quill chronicling, squeaking, or head on his arms, he snatched a fragment of sleep.

Rain over the house, over the mansard, clicking against the glass, sounding colder and colder, dampening our spirits and our paper, making my knees and ankles ache...rain.

I wanted to toss myself on the cot and smother myself with blankets and call it a day. Marlowe said we'd soon see the dawn. God's bodkins!

In that four-square room, cluttered with Greek and Roman masks, posters, books, and dirt, we wrote Titus over and over. When the manuscripts were ready for the theatre even the rain sounded tired.

In those days, for economy's sake, we often cut each other's hair, sitting in the doorway or on the steps, when the weather was good. Draped in sheet or towel, I sat on a chair while Marlowe snipped. Scissors and comb usually put him in a whistling mood. Gently puffing a tune, he scissored away-the slowest bar-ber in London. He liked to complain about the color of my hair, saying he wished it was as black as Othello's so he could see it easily.

"I've cut so many bad lines from your plays this job should be easy."

Chris was better at barbering than I. He said I didn't keep my mind on my work.

"If I had the money, I'd certainly excuse you. Come on, no more time out for jotting down lines. Let's get through this mess. Presently, it will be dark. I never trust you by candlelight."

In separate crimson frames:

Sir Francis Drake, Sir Walter Raleigh, Ben Jonson, Shakespeare:

A mirage of Armada, sails rattling, guns roaring...

At sea, Sir Francis tells yarn of brave seamanship:

a man stabs another in the eye with a dagger.

Silence.

Stratford

August 5, 1615

S

pelling God backward gets dull after a while: at the clandestine meetings where Raleigh, Greene, Marlowe, Drake, Jonson and others crucified everyone's beliefs, they gradually dulled their ar-rows, for me: I thought: Lucifer can smell too strongly of sulfur too often. "Am I not a mighty man who bears a hundred souls on his back!"-talk like this was to little purpose, to my way of thinking. How much saner to keep convictions to one's self: Yet some, surly as a butcher's dog, paraded their beliefs. Gulled, I never went too often: the suite, in the Duke's Thames house, had about it an air of trouble brewing, trickery, and the abrupt appearance of men-at-arms. The talkers walked or sat about, under brilliant chandeliers, shad-owing their shadows on the polished floors, starched cuffs thrown back over satin sofas. Whiffs of cologne and perfume over-topped the whiff of garret. Rapiers shimmered. The Queen, if she chose, could do away with each of us: a nod of her wig. I seriously suspected all their pattery, branding it half-hearted conspiracy, mistrust and defamation. The passage of time has confirmed, not denied my feelings: perspective has brought out the folly of guffawings at creeds.

St. Grouse's Day