The Birth of Iago
London, 1590
The Curtain. A rehearsal. The frantic bang of a door flung back carelessly. A man runs in, his mud-spattered cloak, flying wide behind him -- by his livery, one of Oxford’s men -- tells the tale of a hard ride through the streets of London. He looks up at the stage, hollers my name:
“Shakespeare — I thought I’d find you here!”
I stand silent, wondering: when would my heart stop thumping at the sound of my name shouted from a distance? How far do I have to run?
“Thomas has fallen ill and we have a performance at the palace this evening!”
At this, all of the other players surge forward.
The man flaps a hand as though waving flies from a plate. “They asked for Shakespeare.”
Should I believe him? No tenure at Cambridge was necessary to discern myself — mocked amidst the meagre groats of wit in the label ‘Upstart Crow.’ I wonder: was this truly an impromptu invitation to court? Or was it an elaborate practical joke, yet another malicious plucking at my feathers?
“What is the play?” I ask.
“King Leir.”
I want to roll my eyes — that play again ... it needs a rewrite! — but do not. “And Thomas’s part?”
“Perillus. Do you know it?”
I nodded.
“Fortune’s smiling on you tonight, Will!” someone cries.
Fortune, I think, always begins shitting on a man by smiling at him first.
“Performing for the queen herself!” This is accompanied by a slap on the back so hearty that my eyes water with pain. “Lucky bastard! Break a leg!”
The only man more hungry and vicious than an actor is a writer. I take the steps instead of dropping down from the stage as I usually do. I keep an eye peeled for anyone who might trip me up and, indeed, break my leg. At the entrance, I crane my neck, peek out. Two horses of a calibre that a playwright can neither afford to hire nor keep stabled are waiting in the street.
I decide: I will go; and, if bloody Oxford himself is not at the bloody gates, I will not even dismount. Maybe I’ll steal the bloody horse and ride hard for Stratford.
But Oxford is on the pavement when we arrive, grim-faced and tapping his foot. He grabs the bridle as soon as I’m within reach, drawing a snort of protest from the horse. He wastes no time with pleasantries.
“Do you know the lines?” His knuckles are shiny pebbles as his hand snatches my arm.
“I wrote some of them,” I remind him.
“Good man!” The slap on my back, this time, is not painful.
We go with such speed through that rabbit warren of a place that I don’t have a chance to crane my neck like a country yokel and goggle: up at dun-coloured ceilings whose soft curves and peaks soaring above my head belie the tons of stone from which they have been carved and can come crashing down. Beneath my feet flash patterned and polished floors as rich with colour as a flower garden. On the walls: dark, gleaming wood runs from floor to ceiling here, delicately veined marble there.
Lending their own colour are men who seem to be littered everywhere, fabric flowing over their bodies like water. Crisp white waves of cotton rise up from thick, embroidered doublets to skim their chins, fall down like sails swollen with wind to their wrists. Plush velvets swing from shoulders, golden braid dangling from careless knots that swung at their waists where velvet surges again into voluminous hose that billow to their knees.
Oxford slices through them like the keel of a boat, nodding curtly to the greetings that come his way, every line of his body signalling than he has no inclination to stop. I am conscious of myself in my thin fabric and well-scuffed leather trotting in his wake — like a little dog, I think. But I dare not lag too far behind nor presume to walk at his side. I can feel the prick of assessment — I have no velvet, no artfully arranged cords of embroidery to thicken my doublet and turn aside the point of a man’s glance — as we sweep through the crowds; feel those eyes glaze and go blind the way The Quality does when something that doesn’t matter (a horse, a servant, a chair) interrupts their vision.
At last, Will, I mock myself, you have arrived.
The play is a success: the queen smiles, claps, rises from her seat, turns her back, forgets Leir and his daughters. We players linger behind the curtains like bones on a dinner plate, trying to spot the newcomer at court whose looks are turning everyone poet. Someone points.
I recognize the red spirals of his hair, the girlish mouth, instantly: Oxford’s companion at The Curtain all those years ago. I watch, fascinated: his Cupid’s bow mouth curving on only one side as though he was smiling when what he really wanted to do was sneer; his bright, golden-brown eyes that put candlelight to shame, turning to this person, that person, saying a few words then looking away … Always to the same place.
I follow his glowing gaze, see only a gaggle of women. And then one of them turns.
I draw back, startIed. Her. The black-skinned girl — she, too, is at court; and, judging by her dress, one of the queen’s ladies.
I might have just shaken my head — who but the nobility would dress such a creature in silk? But then she turns and looks straight at the lovely boy as though, even with her back turned, she knows exactly where to find him. The pitch of her eyes only cast a glance at him — but he is quiveringly alert, watching for it, catches its arcing fall with the grace of a palm cupped to check for the first drops of rain. Only his perfect, pink Cupid’s bow moves, one corner ticking upward; then his smallest finger curled inward, the most subtle and intimate of beckonings.
She saw.
Her dense lips stretch thin, press deep the tiny caves that form in her cheeks when her mouth curves in the smile that sends the acknowledgement of his signal back to him, her pearl earrings — rich jewels, in an Ethiop’s ears — glimmering coolly against her skin.
They begin to move in unison, their silent dialogue going unnoticed by almost everyone around them though the Great Hall is cluttered and slick with supplicants, sycophants, and servants. From my corner behind the musicians, I stretch my neck up from its collar like a fowl blindly seeking the hand that will ring its neck, watching them as they do their dance: turning, making their excuses, murmuring, smiling, gliding, leisurely and yet deliberate, the pristine swan-white of her dress floating out under the archway only moments ahead of the forest green of his cape and pantaloons, the oil and water of apparently indifferent strangers, trickling in the same direction, but apart -- separation that abides and flies.
Two gods, I think as they slip beyond my gaze, my hand itching for a quill, a pot of ink as black and round as her eyes; two gods who float amongst us, a tune that only they can hear sliding a sheet of air between their feet and the ground that the rest of us walk upon.
I feel my hands tremble, my fingers begin to uncurl — reaching not towards them, but what is them: the very thing that poet after poet scores the page with — but in the flesh, not in the stale issue of ink and paper, the fleeting strutting of an afternoon upon the boards.
The story there — I can feel it, the itch in my fingers: for a quill, the crackle of paper, a pot of ink as black and round as her eyes … The desire to to sail after them, to discover their world, uncover the riches they keep buried there is so strong that I do not know my eyes have forgotten to blink until they began to burn with tears.
It was then that I decided: I would know this boy; and her -- I would have her, too. Two as one; the master-mistress of my passion.
I would not rest until I had them both.