Love Disguised Read online

  Meg spent her aimless days in Moorfield, London’s playground, watching the boys compete at stoolball and wrestling until they let her join their games. She gave her name as Mack. Soon she could strike the ball and fight as well as any of them. Davy Dapper and Peter Flick were the leaders, strong and unruly boys a few years older than Meg who seemed, like her, to have no parents. They never guessed she was a girl, not even when she emerged from a wrestling match with tears on her cheeks. She was not injured, but her chest ached with the longing to be embraced, however roughly. She threw herself into the next match and the one after that.

  One day the landlord forced his way into the house to demand payment of the overdue rent. Finding the penniless orphan only stirred up his rage. He thrust his whelk-studded nose in Meg’s face and shouted, “Give me three crowns, you puny maltworm, or I’ll have you thrown in the clink!”

  “I’ll give you a crown—of bruises!” Meg grabbed a broken table leg and struck the landlord above his ear. “Now get out of here, you reeking pig’s kidney!” She was learning new insults daily from her friends Davy and Peter.

  “Surly boy, you deserve to die in prison like your father!” shouted the landlord, holding his head in his hands as he staggered away.

  Meg sank to the floor and began to cry, at first without a sound and then with loud sobs. There was not a person in the world to comfort her, so it was some time before she was able to stop. She stared at her hands still clutching the table leg. It had felt so good to strike the landlord. Her own strength surprised her. Now she could imagine her mother beating the priest. Had she meant to kill him? Had Meg meant to kill the landlord?

  She threw the table leg aside as if it were on fire.

  Soon the landlord would return and fulfill his threats. Meg knew she had to leave at once. Her heart thudding, she packed a bundle of clothes and trifles to remind her of her parents: a button from her father’s jerkin, a coif her mother wore to bed. On the stoop she hesitated, then threw the bundle aside. Empty-handed, she left the crooked, sorry house on Addle Street for good.

  Or rather, for ill.

  Chapter 2

  Stratford 1580

  Will Shakespeare was a serious-looking boy with a wide, high forehead and wavy dark hair, the eldest son of a glover, former mayor, and chief alderman of Stratford-upon-Avon. That is, his one father, John Shakespeare, was all of these. The family’s house sprawled over several lots on Henley Street and was a palace compared to Meg’s half-ruined house on Addle Street. Will’s mother, Mary Arden, came from a proud family who had once owned the entire forest northwest of Stratford. But her wealth had passed to her husband at their marriage and then through his fingers like sand. When Will was a little boy she would kiss him and say, “You are all my riches now.” She taught him to read using a hornbook, and Will soaked up words as a field soaks up water.

  While not an overly pious family, the Shakespeares sometimes graced the front pew of Holy Trinity Church. The priest there, unlike his counterpart at London’s St. Alphage, did not meddle in the lives of his parishioners. But private misdeeds became public matters nonetheless. One of Will’s first memories was of a woman shrouded in white and forced to stand while the preacher denounced her sin. Thus it was in church that Will first heard the words “harlot” and “lechery.” He thought the faceless, white-clad girl with her head bowed was a ghost from beyond the grave, bound to return there after the service.

  Will’s family was a boisterous one, down through his brother Gilbert, sister Joan, and three younger siblings. The shouts of children playing and the clatter from the workshop filled the sturdy timber house, along with the smells of his mother’s cooking and the less savory odor of animal hides soaking in urine. Every night Will knelt to receive his father’s blessing and heard him say, “Remember always your duty of obedience. Revere God in heaven and your father on earth.”

  A good son, young Will worshipped his father. He retained another early memory of standing on a bench watching a troupe of richly costumed actors perform in the guildhall. He danced with excitement to see them, while his father’s arms about his knees kept him from falling.

  “I want to be a player,” Will said in great earnest. “Everyone will look at me and clap their hands.” His father only laughed.

  When he was about thirteen, Will realized that some misfortune had befallen his father. He stopped attending council meetings and no longer wore his black furred gown and alderman’s thumb ring. He was sometimes drunk and his nightly blessing gave way to threats. Sometimes he beat Will or Gilbert, saying, “Remember, I am your father!” as if he himself had forgotten.

  School offered Will an escape, and he gladly rose before dawn to lose himself in studying history, ciphering, and Latin. His favorite work was Ovid’s Metamorphoses with its tales of gods changing form and meddling with mankind. He was not often truant, save when a company of players came to nearby Warwick or Coventry. The master would duly whip him for missing his lessons, but his heart was not in it, for Will was his best student. Will himself hardly minded the punishment because the plays gave him such pleasure. He marveled how ordinary men, like Ovid’s gods, could transform themselves and persuade him their feigning was truth.

  As Will progressed through Stratford grammar school, the fortunes of John Shakespeare worsened. He sold some properties and mortgaged others. Creditors came to the house demanding payment, but Mary bargained with them until they went away. The bailiff delivered a summons to court, but John ignored it. He seldom left the house, and when he did Will was afraid he would be arrested. Fortunately the magistrate was an old friend of his father’s and hesitated to enforce the warrants against him.

  As his father declined, Will grew strong like a new shoot from a weak branch. His shoulders strained against his jerkin and his chin sprouted a few soft hairs he coaxed into the shape of a beard. He began to notice the female sex, their round and pleasing bodies. He would often recall the opening lines of Ovid’s poem:

  Of shapes transformed to bodies strange, I

  purpose to treat;

  Ye gods vouchsafe (for you are they that

  wrought this wondrous feat)

  To further this my enterprise.

  Restlessly he longed for change of any kind; sleeping and waking he dreamed of every sort of greatness and many a shapely girl.

  But dreaming could not dispel his family’s troubles. Often he heard his parents quarreling behind the closed door of the shop and leaned closer to listen.

  “You have also profited from my wool trading,” his father was saying.

  “But I did not condone it. The first time you were fined I warned you to stop. If only you had heeded me!” His mother sounded tearful.

  Will had often accompanied his father to the sheep fair. He helped with the shearing and filled the bags with fleece, enjoying the greasy softness under his fingers. There were now thirty or more bags—each weighing a tod, or twenty-eight pounds—in their barn. Will knew how profitable wool trading could be. More profitable than making gloves.

  “You ask who betrayed you? Why, most likely some merchant whose honest trade you have usurped,” his mother said.

  “God rot him, whoever he is! I have traded wool for fifteen years without a license. Why should the Privy Council now enforce a long-breached law? I’ll raise my rents to pay the fine.”

  “You have already done so. Your tenant over on Mill Lane, William Burbage, calls you a robber.”

  Will slipped away, keeping to himself the knowledge of his father’s lawbreaking. One moment he felt contempt for him, the next moment pity. He wanted his father to be an honest glover and respected citizen again.

  What did Will want for himself? Not to become his father, for one thing. He thought of Ovid’s Proteus, changing aye his figure and his hue, From shape to shape a thousand times. Will wondered what shape he would finally take. He might become an actor who, with a change of costume and a new manner of speaking, could be either a beggar or a king. He watched his
own mind shift as wind stirs a field of wheat, until he found that his thoughts had ripened and were ready to harvest.

  He went to his father. “I want to leave school.” The sound of his own deep voice surprised him. “I have enough learning.”

  John Shakespeare laid down his needle and leaned his elbows on his work bench. “You do not want to become an Oxford philosopher? A lawyer at the Inns of Court?” He waved a hand at these airy fancies they could no longer afford.

  Will eyed his father directly. “It is time for me to earn an honest living. To relieve our family’s troubles.”

  John Shakespeare frowned.

  Will realized it would not do to anger him. “Whatever I earn I will send home,” he said with more humility.

  “Don’t beat about the bush. What labor do you intend to do?”

  “I want to become a player.” The words rushed from Will’s mouth. “I’ll join Lord Warwick’s company if he will have me. I will gain such renown the queen herself will ask me to perform for her.”

  Again John Shakespeare laughed at his son’s ambitions. “An honest living? A player is no better than a vagabond. Would you shame me thus?”

  Will’s retort came quickly. “You have already shamed this family by breaking the law with your wool trading.” He could feel his neck and face growing hot. “And by selling Wilmcote, the last of Mother’s estates, which was to be my inheritance.”

  John Shakespeare stood up and thrust aside his worktable, spilling its contents to the floor. He seized a strip of hide. It whistled through the air, snapped against Will’s skin, and wrapped around his arm like a whip.

  “Remember I am your father! You dare not speak to me so.”

  Will pulled his arm free and clenched his fists to keep from striking back.

  “You will leave school,” said John Shakespeare. “But it will be to learn my trade and none other.”

  You’re a tyrant! Will wanted to shout. But I am a rebel and will not submit!

  “But Father, I am not meant to be a glovemaker,” Will protested.

  His man’s voice betrayed him, changing back into a boyish squeak.

  Chapter 3

  London 1580

  When Meg left the house on Addle Street for the last time she could think of nowhere to go but Moorfields, where she told Peter Flick and Davy Dapper that her house had burned down, killing her parents.

  “Did ye set the fire?” asked Davy. He seemed disappointed when she said no. He told her he had been apprenticed to a carpenter but ran away because the work was too hard. When he smiled Meg saw his teeth were starting to rot.

  “I’m an orphan too,” said Peter. “You’re better off with no father than with one that beats you.” He showed Meg his broken nose. It made a clicking sound when he moved it from side to side.

  When dusk fell she simply followed Davy and Peter through the city, across the great bridge to Southwark, and down Crooked Lane to the sign of the cock, a ruined shop they called their den. There she slept on what remained of the second floor, a narrow loft reached by a ladder. The boys’ den was crammed with broken bits of furniture, empty sacks, and moldering cloth. The single window was always shuttered, making it dark within, though here and there could be seen an unexpected gleam from a piece of gold braid, a ring, or an embroidered purse. Meg wondered but dared not ask how Davy and Peter had come to own such rich trifles. She was simply grateful for a place to sleep and companions against her loneliness.

  Meg continued to pretend she was a boy. She had seen girls her age strolling along the wharves who were already bawds. She understood what had happened between her mother and the priest. She did not tell Peter or Davy that her mother was a murderess, though she suspected this would raise her in their esteem. Her companions talked much about crime. Davy had even been arrested. Through him Meg learned that the magistrate’s mercy had a price. If her mother could have paid it, her father would still be alive. The sight of beggars saddened her, and when they were kicked and spat upon it roused her to anger.

  Davy and Peter often resorted to St. Paul’s Church. Meg accompanied them and was filled with amazement. No one prayed but rather strolled in a great crowd up and down the nave as casually as if it were a street. Peter thrust a purse into her hand and whispered, “Run!” She obeyed, fleeing so fast that her heels kicked her rump. When the boys caught up with her they were gleeful.

  “How were we to know he was a fleet-foot?” Peter said as they congratulated each other. “He’ll be an asset to our trade.”

  Meg asked what that was, for she had never seen them labor or trade in anything.

  “Our business is to unburden persons of that which they take no proper care of,” Davy explained, showing his black grin.

  “Why, you are thieves!” said Meg.

  “So are you,” said Peter, scowling. “You’d be dead as a doornail if you hadn’t been stealing food all this while.”

  Meg fell silent at the truth of his words.

  “Come, you minnow!” said Davy, prodding her. “What wrong is there in relieving the rich of their excess? We will show you how it’s done.”

  Meg, who was tired of being poor through no fault of her own, consented. It became her job to spy out a careless or aimless person and signal to Peter where the gull wore his purse. While Davy engaged him in conversation, Peter, with a flick of a knife against a horn-covered thumb, cut his purse strings. He passed the purse to Meg, who stuffed it down the front of her trousers, where its weight caused her no small discomfort. Her mind was also uneasy, but she put aside her misgivings rather than offend her only friends.

  With Meg’s small share of the purse she bought herself a simple doublet and hose and a velvet cap. She was keeping a close eye on her slim body lest it grow round and betray her. The way Davy and Peter talked about women caused her to blush, even made her a little fearful. She dropped the remaining coins through the grate of the Wood Street jail so the prisoners could purchase bread or a blanket from their jailers.

  Davy and Peter spent their larger share on the fashionable clothing gallants wore and lost the rest gaming.

  Not every day was given to cutting purses. Some days they enjoyed innocent pranks. Meg’s favorite was to climb the belltower in the yard of St. Paul’s. There they scraped off the pigeon dung with a knife and dropped it on the heads of passersby, whose outrage left the trio weak with laughter. But when a rival band of roisterers moved into the churchyard, Davy and Peter decided to seek out a new haunt across the city. What drew them to the Boar’s Head Inn were the people crowding into the front gate. Whether the entertainment was a cockfight or a troupe of jugglers, a crowd meant an opportunity for thieves to ply their trade.

  They paid a penny each to enter the innyard. The benches and galleries overlooking the wooden stage were nearly filled.

  “I expect to be many times repaid,” murmured Davy, rubbing his hands together.

  “To it, Mack. Spy out a gull,” said Peter.

  Meg nodded toward an old man with his purse dangling in full view.

  “I’ll greet him now,” said Davy. “Follow me, Peter; stay close, Mack.”

  But Meg’s eye was caught by the movement on the stage. Two soldiers charged each other, their swords clashing. One groaned and blood seemed to spurt from him as he fell down dead. The very timbers of the stage shook.

  “No, let’s watch this action,” said Meg. “I’ve never seen a play.”

  The victor began to deliver a lofty speech, whereupon the dead soldier sat up and thrust his sword into him. Meg gasped and stood on her toes, trying to see the wound.

  “Come, Mack!” Peter’s horn-thumb tapped the underside of his palm.

  “Go snare him yourselves,” she said in vexation.

  Onstage the players ranted, fought, embraced their queens, fought again, and died a second time. Meg clapped until her palms hurt. She forgot about Davy and Peter, her petty crimes, her lost parents, everything but the present moment. The hostess of the inn passed before her
carrying a pitcher of ale in each hand, her teeth as big as a horse’s as she laughed at the stableboy trying to juggle oranges. One bright, round fruit fell to the ground. A woman seated beside Meg grabbed it and tossed the boy a penny. The players uttered words such as Meg had never heard before, words that fell on her ears like the measured beat of a drum. The woman with the fragrant orange leaned against Meg, called her “sweet boy,” and offered her a slice of the fruit. Here was a new world of comfort and good cheer, and Meg’s heart stirred with longing to be in it.

  “Heigh-ho! Seize those scoundrels!”

  Meg looked aside to see Peter and Davy pushing their way through the crowd. They leaped onto the stage and off again, pulling down the curtain on the startled actors. Two men pursued them across the stage. The audience roared with laughter, thinking this was a part of the play, until the actors began to curse.

  My friends are in trouble, thought Meg, jumping to her feet and running after them.

  “There goes a third one!” Meg heard the man’s voice behind her and felt someone grab her cloak.

  “I’ll make you pay, thief!” The man’s stinking breath assaulted Meg. He twisted the fabric at her neck, choking her.

  She screamed. “Peter! Davy! Help me!”

  They glanced over their shoulders at her but did not stop or even slow down.

  Meg struggled against her captor. She managed to untie the cloak, leaving it in the man’s hand as she fled. She ran until the cries and footsteps behind her faded into silence. Peter and Davy were nowhere to be seen. She turned right and left, calling their names in a low voice. She was in a maze of narrow lanes, where she wandered until she emerged on the riverbank. Before her the swift-moving water glimmered in the twilight; the bridge was only a short distance away.