Nothing Like the Sun by Anthony Burgess

  'Aye, the family first, as ever.' He was bitter. 'Wriothesly before Harry. Mr WH.'

  'There is nothing wrong in marriage. It is a thing a man will enter for his name's sake. He can still be free.'

  'Are you free? If a man has to run away from his wife I see not how he can still be free. You dream in your plays of taming shrews.'

  Aye, WS thought, I am always under-estimating him, magister artium per gratiam at fifteen, commended by the Queen herself for wit and beauty. It was the beauty got in the way. The Queen seemed to have stepped into both their brains, for Harry now said:

  'As for wranglings about succession and great houses in an uproar, the Queen has set all a fine example.'

  'The Queen is a woman.'

  'Part a woman. If the Tudors will die out let the Wriotheslys also.' WS smiled at those heavy words coming from the pouting girl's mouth. He said in banter:

  'Well, they say there is no worry over the succession. All will be taken care of.' And, stepping to the window, as though to look carelessly out, he whistled a measure or two from a popular ballad. Harry knew it: 'For bonny sweet Robin is all my joy.'

  'You grow too familiar.'

  WS turned, surprised. 'Whistling? May I not whistle?'

  'It is not the whistling. Your whole manner is become too familiar.'

  'I have been schooled thereto by your lordship. I humbly cry your mercy, my lord.' He spoke mincingly and ended in a ridiculous smirking bow. It was Harry who was ridiculous; he could be as wayward and petulant as a girl in her courses. 'Dear my lord,' added WS.

  Harry grinned. 'Well then, if I am dear your lord let us see more lowly abasement and fawning. First, you may pick up your sonnet from where it fell.' He could keep no mood up for long.

  'The wind blew it, let the wind lift it.'

  'Oh, but I cannot order the wind.'

  'Nor me, my lord.'

  'Ah, but I can. And if you will not obey I will have you escorted to the dungeons to live with toads and snakes and scorpions.'

  'I have lived with worse.'

  'So. Well, you shall be whipped. I will apply a whip to thine ancient shoulders. I will raise first cloth, then skin, then blood. Tatters of skin and cloth and flesh all delicately commingled.' Even in play he had a certain lordly cruelty. Power to hurt and he would do it.

  'Oh oh, whip me not.' He wondered at himself, ancient WS. A friend, a lover, he saw himself an instant as a father; he carried on those ancient shoulders more than the weight of ten years' difference. Falling into the game, he went down to the carpet creaking, going oh oh on cracking joints, kneeling. Harry at once was there, a delicate foot in delicate kidskin placed upon the sonnet. WS saw: '... or else this glutton be, To eat the world's due by the grave and thee.' Suddenly he thrust his arms in a tight hug round the slim boy's calves. Harry's voice, high up there, screamed. Then WS brought him down, not hard on that deep pile showing embroidered green wantonness, his arms striving too late for balance, laughing, breathless. 'Now,' went WS in mock gruffness, 'I have thee.' They fought, and the craftsman's arms were the stronger.

  'No more sonnets on marriage,' panted Harry.

  'Oh no, none,' vowed that practitioner of lies.

  HE could not altogether keep his old life out of this new.

  When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl,

  Then nightly sings the staring owl:

  'Tu-who;

  Tu-whit, to-who' -- A merry note,

  While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.

  He could see her clearly, cleaning the trenchers in cold water after the Christmas dinner. It should be a good one this year: he had sent home enough sonnet-gold. He had not, however, as he had promised, sent home himself. He had had work to do, a resident playwright in a noble house, writing a play about lords who vowed three years' abstinence from love and the comedy of their breaking of that vow. 'How long will it be?' Harry had asked. And he had answered: 'Three ells.' And, as there was no company at all in London then (the playhouses still being shut, though the plague had much abated), it must be a matter of lords playing lords. The first day of Christmas brought My Lord Sussex's Men to the Rose (Henslowe recording a God Be Praised in his account-book), but that was too late. Lords must act even ladies' parts, all for an audience of ladies, and Master Florio must do Don Adriano de Armado, because of his foreign accent, while Holofernes the schoolmaster was none other than --

  (The twins would be nine years old at Candlemas. How fast time flowed away.)

  '... I marvel thy master hath not eaten thee for a word, for thou art not so long by the head as hon-hon- honorif-'

  'Honorificabilitudinitatibus.'

  'Oh, I cannot say that.' This was Sir John Gerrald, whose droll face singled him out for Costard. They were all remarking on the wit and the learning, the pedantry even, even when pedantry was not being mocked. This was what he wished, directing his lordly cast in the fine heavy gown that was a gift from his own lord, his friend. ('In your time, sir, perhaps Oxford men were less sportive?' A smile, a shrug in answer.) But, after a heavy night's feasting that he was forced into, for he could not plead a weak stomach all the time, nor say he was in pain or had work to do, he was sickened, veering from Arden to Shakespeare and in a manner envying that Friar Lawrence that had already appeared, duly set in a new lyric play, out of some remote cave of his brain. To be cut off, to live austere, an eremite: he sighed for that. But then he remembered his mission here, the restoring of honour to a name that had lost it, along with family fortune. And there was this damnable love, this ravishment of the senses, bursting into jealousy that, in the quietness of his own chamber, he must unload into verse to be torn up after (Harry laughing with Lord This or Sir Such-an-one, hand-touching, hand-holding) or flowing in compassion, the manner of a world-woe, when he saw tears brimming down the soft, faintly translucent cheeks as a consort of viols or recorders discoursed. Lachrymae, lachrymae.

  Music to hear, why hear'st thou music sadly?

  Sweets with sweets war not, joy delights in joy.

  'There it is again,' Harry scolded, 'finding a pretext for a marriage sermon in everything.'

  Mark how one string, sweet husband to another,

  Strikes each in each by mutual ...

  'Ordering my life for me, all of you. And yet,' said the cunning boy, 'what would you say if I did now go a-courting and spend all my time with Lady Liza? I do believe you would be out of your mind with envious rage.' WS smiled uncertainly. 'Confess now,' said Harry, leaping up with great nervous vigour from the couch where he had been lying. 'You shall confess that you do all this to please others and not yourself at all. Does my mother, then, come to your chamber and stand over you while you write, telling you to say this and say that, only, an't please your poetship, to use fine high phrases as befit a poet, and if you will not you shall out of this house and never see my son more, for, why, what art thou, thou art no better than a harlotry player?'

  'Harlotry is good,' said WS, blushing.

  'Well, is it true? Have I hit it?'

  WS sighed. 'I have endeavoured to please all save you. I have done more sonnets on this same theme. I write many at a sitting but give you one only at a time. Well, I shall write no more.'

  'Why why why? Why do you sing their tune? Nay, why do you make the tune for them to sing?'

  WS extended his empty hands like, he thought, doing it, some usurious Jew. 'I did it for money. I must live.'

  'For money? Oh God, for money? Do you not have everything you want? Do I not give you everything?' Harry stood, hands on hips, narrowing his eyes. 'For how much money? For thirty pieces of silver?'

  'Oh, this is all nonsense. I must send money home. I have a wife if you have not and will not have. I cannot disown my wife, nor my three children.'

  Harry grinned maliciously. 'Poor Will. Will the married man.'

  'I have a son. My son must grow up a gentleman.'

  'Poor Will. My poor, dear Will. Often I feel myself to be so very much older. I could speak to thee like
thine own dad.'

  'A son to grow up like you, though never to be a lord yet perhaps a knight. Sir Hamnet Shakespeare. I see in you what he may be. And often I feel that I may never live to see it, not in reality. Often I feel so tired.'

  Harry came up to his chair from behind and embraced him, jewelled hands winking in the winter light as they lay crossed on the breast of his friend. WS took the right hand in his own and squeezed it. 'I shall write no more sonnets,' he said. 'You have seen through the poor trickery.'

  Harry kissed his cheek lightly. 'Write me more sonnets,' he said, 'though not on that stale and profitless theme. And let us ride together ere spring comes to -- to wherever it is thy wife and children are.'

  'Stratford.'

  'Aye, thither. And we shall take a fine present to Lord Hamnet.'

  'You are kind. You are always kind.'

  'But,' said Harry, breaking away and striding towards the window, 'thou shalt do something for me. Another poem. And let it be a revenge on women, the whole sex.' Rain had started to fall. It was a grey day. Bare branches tapped, tapped forlornly at the window. 'Especially on these women who are so holy on marriage and the sanctity of marriage. I wish to see another book and my name on it and to hear the congratulations of my friends.'

  'What I have done is yours,' said WS. 'What I have to do is yours. But I cannot be altogether so harsh against women.'

  THEY did not go to Stratford. Instead, WS worked at his poem of Lucrece and Tarquin, and Harry took to low company, drawn into it, in life's sly irony, by another poet. The poet was George Chapman, older by some four years than WS, and he had ventured on his first plays this rare time (rare in two years) of the Rose being open. He had done a ranting tragedy for Sussex's Men -- Artaxerxes, in which Cyrus the Younger, second son of Darius, had raving speeches which smacked of WS's own Holofernes, though not in parody. Harry was much taken by his black-bearded loudness. Summoned to the Lord's room, as WS himself had once been, again in a frosty January, he tickled Harry by being most undeferential. Florio did not like him. As for bonny sweet Robin Devereux, Earl of Essex, he was busy with things other than the pertness of poets and players.

  'Will,' said Harry, 'I am in love.'

  WS put down his pen carefully. He stared for full five seconds. 'In love? In love?'

  Harry giggled. 'Oh, it is not marriage love, it is no great lady. It is a country Lucrece in Islington. She is the wife of the keeper of the Three Tuns.'

  'In love. In love. Oh, God save us.'

  'She knows not who I am. I have been with Chapman. She believes I too am a poet. She will have none of me.' He giggled again.

  'So the seed stirs at last. Well. He is in love.' Then WS began to laugh. 'And what thinks the husband of all this?'

  'Oh, he is away. His father is dying in Norfolk, and yet he will not die. It is a slow quietus. I must have her, Will, before he returns. How shall I have her?'

  'I should think,' said WS slowly, 'that your new friends will help you there. The Sussex men are, I hear, a wenching crowd.'

  'They are not. They are all for boys. There is a house in Islington.'

  'Well. Well, well. In love.' He picked up his pen, sighing. 'I have a poem to write, a commission of your lordship's. My mind is wholly taken up with the harm that comes to those who force the chastity of noble matrons. I should think like harm will come to the authors of lowlier essays.'

  'You mock me now. Write me a poem I can give to her. You have written sonnets enjoining me to love a woman, now write one that shall persuade a woman to love me.'

  'Your friend Master Chapman is perhaps less busy than I that he can take you drinking to Islington. Ask him, my noble lord.'

  'Will, I have no taste for this mockery. George cannot write that sort of verse. She would never understand any poem of his.'

  'Can she read?'

  'Oh yes, and write too. She has a good hand in making out of a reckoning. And as for George, he too is busy enough with a poem. He is lodging at Islington, at the Three Tuns, writing it. It is far out, he says, from the distraction of those who admire him.'

  WS was amused; disturbed, a little jealous, but still amused. 'The distraction of his creditors, he would say. I have a mind to come out to Islington to see this innkeeper's wife who has all my lord's heart.' He had a mind too to see this Chapman.

  'Ah, she has such a white skin. And a very tiny foot. She has a waist a man could span his two hands withal. She is black-haired and black-eyed.'

  'She is out of the fashion, then.'

  'These great ladies chase a man. She does not. She thrusts me away. She thrusts all men away.'

  'Including Master Chapman?'

  'George is only in love with himself. That is why he amuses me. He too is writing a poem, as I say, though not to my commission. He says he will honour me with its dedication.'

  So. He had very much a mind to see this Chapman. 'Well, when shall we go thither?'

  'Tonight. This night. You shall see her this very night.'

  It was a fair ride out to Islington, where Canonbury Tower was being new-built by the Lord Mayor. A cold ride, too, that sharp night, the road ringing. They were both glad of the warmth of the fire of the inn.

  'Is she not beautiful?'

  'Hm.' Her eyes accompanied, in merry mockery, the chaff she was handing back to a table of three guzzling citizens (they had ravaged two whole fowls between them and were tearing at cheese and black bread); she was country-wholesome, a new experience for his friend. Well, he must learn that he could not have everything he wanted. 'I would say,' he said, 'that she is any man's meat. Perhaps you are somewhat too young and pretty. Perhaps she will take better to an older, uglier man.' An older, uglier man came heavily downstairs, yawning, showing stained teeth, his black hair all a tangle. Jowled face, mean eyes. This was Master Chapman. He and WS eyed each other like fighting cocks.

  'Ah, Harry,' said Chapman loudly. He took a seat at the rough well-scrubbed table near the fire, yawning. 'Poetic labour is hard labour,' he said. 'I have been taking a nap.'

  'Homerus dormitat,' giggled Harry. 'Sometimes your verse reads like hard labour.'

  Chapman ignored this. To WS he said, 'When comes Alleyn back with the rest of the Strange snipperados?'

  'I hear nothing. I am cut off this whole year from playhouse news.' WS grinned. 'Snipped off, let us say.'

  She brought sweet wine, glowing. She was certainly pretty enough. Harry did a furnace-sigh. Well, this was new: his lordship in love with an alewife. He must be cured; a good swift cure, like a Lowestoft herring's. 'This,' said WS, 'seems a cleanly enough inn. It would be cold riding back. Let us lie here tonight.' And he closed one eye at Harry. Chapman said:

  'Your Venus poem had a good epigraph.' He mouthed the Latin loud, sounding round brown vowels:

  ' "Vilia miretur vulgus: mihi flavus Apollo

  Pocula Castalia plena ministret aqua." '

  Then he belched gently though long on his first draught of wine. 'Whether a man can maintain two writing sides I know not. One will corrupt the other, doubtless.'

  'Perhaps the better will corrupt the worse,' said WS. Harry's eyes could not leave her. 'Well,' to Chapman, 'I am glad you at least like the epigraph.'

  'Oh, the rest was well enough. There was a sufficiency of lusty country matter in it. Each of us has his own way. One way is not another. We must do as we can, remembering the parable of the talents.' He then took a large swig and, his mouth dripping, looked Harry full in the eyes and declaimed:

  'Presume not then, ye flesh-confounded souls,

  That cannot bear the full Castalian bowls,

  Which sever mounting spirits from their senses,

  To look in this deep fount for thy pretences.'

  'You are welcome,' said WS, 'to my full Castalian bowls.'

  'To Night,' said Chapman, raising his near-empty Castalian bowl. 'Night is my mistress and my muse. To her I drink.'

  'To her I drink,' said Harry, flesh-confounded, languishing in ridiculous de
sire.

  'We will go to bed soon,' promised WS, smiling.

  THEY rode back to Holborn next morning in sharp sunlight, jewelled cobwebs on the bare branches, their breath going up, as they spoke, like the wraith of speech. 'Well,' said WS, 'I knew it would be easy for an older man. It is very much a matter of experience. Women will ever go for the experienced man. They can oft see experience in a man's eyes.'

  Harry looked unbelieving, then aghast. 'But you did not. You could not. Her chamber-door was locked.' He was pale. 'No no no, you are joking.'

  'To you it was locked, aye. I was not asleep though I snored. It was a fair counterfeit of sleep. I am, after all, a player.'

  'But you could not. She would not open for any man.'

  'I went out while you were sleeping fast.'

  'I was not sleeping fast. I hardly slept at all. I thought you were going to the privy.'

  Not the privy, not all the time. A quiet half-hour by the embers below. 'Oh, it was no trouble. I knocked and she asked who, and I said I was the Earl of Southampton, the older man who was growing bald. She opened at once. Ah, the bliss. Such warmth, such whiteness.'

  'No no, you are lying!'

  'As your lordship pleases. Well, I have shown you the way. All you need do now is to follow.'

  That would teach the young puppy.

  IV

  ' "... THE WARRANT I HAVE OF YOUR HONOURABLE disposition, not the worth of my untutored lines, makes it assured of acceptance. What I have done is yours; what I have to do is yours; being part in all I have, devoted yours ..." '

  Harry left off reading it aloud.

  'And now,' asked WS, 'what of Chapman?'

  'Chapman may stuff his tutored lines down a privy. This is better than Venus. I did not think it possible, but it is so.'

  Yes, better. WS knew that, knew too he could go no further in that heroic vein. Restless, he bit his nails. The players were returning to London after so long a wandering absence. Alleyn had left Strange's Men and was, only figuratively as yet, flying the old Admiral's flag over a nearly new company; Lord Strange had become the Earl of Derby only to die of (so many said) witchcraft: Kemp and Heminges had come off tour to approach Lord Hunsdon for his patronage. Lord Hunsdon's Men. But Lord Hunsdon was the Lord Chamberlain. WS had a hunger for a tarter diet than this perpetual honey of overpraise. Those of Harry's friends who had read Lucrece in manuscript had swooned all about its author in a perfumed langour of adulation -- oh, the commodious conceits, the mellifluous facetiousness. Now that manuscript had become proofs; in a week or so the proofs would be a book; the Inns and the University men would start their gushing. WS caught a momentary image of himself writing verse of a very different order: yes yes, it speaks well but must be cut, it holds up all action; I cannot say that, it is not in my character; what is this here? -- why, man, they will never comprehend it. He had mastered a form, had proved himself to himself, but now seemed called to settle to living in a filigree cage, fed on marchpane (his back teeth ached), turning out jewelled stanzas for the delectation of lords, a very superior glover. Spring always brought this restlessness. Stratford had been in his mind. Even in the writing of Lucrece there had come Stratford images. 'Back to the strait that sent him on so fast.' The strange back-eddy under the Clopton Bridge. And he had gone to see it again, showing himself, an earl's friend, in red cloak and French hat, mounted on an Arab.