Shakespeare's Christmas and Other Stories. Arthur Quiller-Couch
goes to sleep. The tambourine no longer clashed. Balanced high on the point of her uplifted forefinger, it too began to spin, and span until its outline became a blur. Still, as the music rose shriller and wilder, she revolved more and more rapidly, yet apparently with less and less of effort. Her scarf had become a mere filmy disc rotating around a whorl of gleaming flesh and glancing jewels.
A roar of delight from John Shakespeare broke the spell. The company echoed it with round upon round of hand-clapping. The music ceased suddenly, and the dancer, dipping low until her knees brushed the floor, stood erect again, dropped her arms, and turned carelessly to the nearest table.
"Bravo! bravissimo!" thundered John Shakespeare. "A cup of wine for her, there!"
The girl had snatched up a crust of bread and was gnawing it ravenously. He thrust his way through the guests and poured out wine for her. She took the glass with a steady hand, scarcely pausing in her meal to thank him.
"But who is your master of ceremonies?" demanded the page's piping voice.
William Shakespeare heard it and turned. "He is my father," said he quietly.
But John Shakespeare had heard also. Wheeling about, wine-flask in hand, he faced the lad with a large and mock-elaborate bow. "That, young Sir, must be my chief title to your notice. For the rest, I am a plain gentleman of Warwickshire, of impaired but (I thank God) bettering fortune; my name John Shakespeare; my coat, or, a bend sable, charged with a lance proper. One of these fine days I may bring it to Court for you to recognise: but, alas! says Skelton—
Age is a page
For the Court full unmeet,
For age cannot rage
Nor buss her sweet sweet.
I shall bide at home and kiss the Queen's hand, through my son, more like."
"Indeed," said the page, "I hear reports that her Majesty hath already a mind to send for him."
"Is that so, Will?" His father beamed, delighted.
"In some sort it is," answered Herbert, "and in some sort I am her messenger's forerunner. She will have a play of thee, Will."
"The Queen?" Shakespeare turned on him sharply. "This is a fool's trick you play on me, my Lord." Yet his face flushed in spite of himself.
"I tell thee, straight brow and true man, I heard the words fall from her very lips. 'He shall write us a play,' she said; 'and this Falstaff shall be the hero on't, with no foolish royalties to overlay and clog his mirth.'"
"And, you see," put in the page maliciously, "we have come express to the Boar's Head to seek him out."
"That," Herbert added, "is our suit to-night."
"Will, lad, thy fortune's made!" John Shakespeare clapped a hand on his son's shoulder. "I shall see thee Sir William yet afore I die!"
If amid the general laughter two lines of vexation wrote themselves for a moment on Shakespeare's brow they died out swiftly. He stood back a pace, eyed his father awhile with grave and tender humour, and answered the pair of courtiers with a bow.
"Her Majesty's gracious notion of a play," said he, "must needs be her poor subject's pattern. If then I come to Court in motley, you, Sirs, at least will be indulgent, knowing how much a suit may disguise." The page, meeting his eye, laughed uneasily. "'Tis but a frolic——" he began.
"Ay, there's the pity o't," interrupted a deep voice—Kempe's.
The page laughed again, yet more nervously. "I should have said the Queen—God bless her!—desires but a frolic. And I had thought"—here he lifted his chin saucily and looked Kempe in the face—"that on Bankside they took a frolic less seriously."
"Why, no," answered Kempe: "they have to take it seriously, and the cost too,—that being their business."
"'Tis but a frolic, at any rate, that her Majesty proposes, with a trifling pageant or dance to conclude, in which certain of the Court may join."
A harsh laugh capped this explanation. It came from the dancing-girl, who, seated at the disordered table, had been eating like a hungry beast. She laid down her knife, rested her chin on her clasped hands, and, munching slowly, stared at the page from under her sullen, scornful brows.
"Wouldst learn to dance, child?" she demanded.
"With thee for teacher," the page answered modestly. "I have no skill, but a light foot only."
"A light foot!" the woman mimicked and broke into a laugh horrible to hear. "Wouldst achieve such art as mine with a light foot? I tell thee that to dance as I dance thy feet must go deep as hell!" She pushed back her plate, and, rising, nodded to the musicians. "Play, you!" she commanded.
This time she used no wild whirl down the room to give her impetus. She stood in the cleared space of floor, her arms hanging limp, and at the first shrill note of the pipe began to revolve on the points of her toes, her eyes, each time as they came full circle, meeting the gaze of the page, and slowly fascinating, freezing it. As slowly, deliberately, her hand went up, curved itself to the armpit of her bodice; and lo! as she straightened it aloft, a snake writhed itself around her upper arm, lifting its head to reach the shining bracelets, the jewelled fingers. A curving lift of the left arm, and on that too a snake began to coil and climb. Effortless, rigid as a revolving statue, she brought her finger-tips together overhead and dipped them to her bosom.
A shriek rang out, piercing high above the music.
"Catch her! She faints!" shouted Kempe, darting forward. But it was Shakespeare who caught the page's limp body as it dropped back on his arm. Bearing it to the window, he tore aside the curtain and thrust open a lattice to the dawn. The unconscious head drooped against his shoulder.
"My Lord"—he turned on Herbert as though the touch maddened him—"you are a young fool! God forgive me that I ever took you for better! Go, call a boat and take her out of this."
"Nay, but she revives," stammered Herbert, as the page's lips parted in a long, shuddering sigh.
"Go, fetch a boat, I say!—and make way there, all you by the door!"
VI
"Tut! tut!—the wench will come to fast enough in the fresh air. A dare-devil jade, too, to be sparking it on Bankside at this hour! But it takes more than a woman, they say, to kill a mouse, and with serpents her sex hath an ancient feud. What's her name, I wonder?"
The candles, burning low and guttering in the draught of the open window, showed a banquet-hall deserted, or all but deserted. A small crowd of the guests—our apprentice among them—had trooped downstairs after Shakespeare and his burden. Others, reminded by the grey dawn, had slipped away on their own account to hire a passage home from the sleepy watermen before Paris Garden Stairs.
"Can any one tell me her name, now?" repeated John Shakespeare, rolling to the table and pouring himself yet another glass of wine. But no one answered him. The snake-woman had folded back her pets within her bodice and resumed her meal as though nothing had happened. The burly drummer had chosen a chair beside her and fallen to on the remains of a pasty. Both were eating voraciously. Francisco, the pipe-player, sat sidesaddle-wise on a form at a little distance and drank and watched them, still with the horror in his eyes. One or two women lingered, and searched the tables, pocketing crusts—searched with faces such as on battlefields, at dawn, go peering among the dead and wounded.
"But hullo!" John Shakespeare swung round, glass in hand, as the apprentice stood panting in the doorway. "Faith, you return before I had well missed you."
The lad's eyes twinkled with mischief.
"An thou hasten not, master, I fear me thou may'st miss higher game; with our hosts—your son amongst 'em—even now departing by boat and, for aught I know, leaving thee to pay the shot."
"Michael and all his angels preserve us! I had forgot——"
John