Scene Twenty Four
The true path, where Will walks. He holds the stick the lady gave him in his hand, and it pulls him, impatiently, like a child pulling an adult by the hand. Night closes in on all sides, and he is tired. He looks longingly towards piles of moss and leaves.
Will felt as though he could not walk any more. Each of his steps was dearly purchased in effort.
He took a step, and then he thought of Hamnet — alone, who knew alone for how long? — and he took another. Then he thought of Hamnet, and wondered if the lady was right. If she was right, who had been raising Hamnet these many years? He stepped forward again.
The path — a sandy way, which meandered amid trees and beyond groves — felt hard beneath his feet. His weary muscles complained over the effort of every step.
Sometime ago his stomach, complaining of long neglect, had joined its laments to the rest of his body’s woes.
Now and then it seemed to him he heard the sound of hooves in the woods, and, now and again, the sound of a voice complaining. He did not look. He did not tarry. Perhaps Marlowe’s ghost pursued Will. Perhaps it had commandeered a pale ghost horse.
Or perhaps the Hunter....
Will closed his mind against any thought of the immortal justicer. He had reason enough to fear without thinking of new ones.
By a high mound of leaves, he felt as though he could walk no more and, stopping, he whispered to himself, “O, weary night. O, long and tedious night. Abate thy hours: shine comforts from the east, that I may get to the castle and free Hamnet. My legs can keep no pace with my intent. Here will I rest me, till the break of day. And sleep, that sometimes shuts up sorrow’s eye, steal me a while from mine own company.”
Putting the magic rod — that still strained to find the magic path and follow it — within his doublet, where it pulsed and pushed like a small child begging for a sweet, Will laid himself down upon the mossy ground, his head on a mound of leaves.
He closed his eyes and, for a moment, he was back at Stratford, with his wife Nan. He sat at the broad kitchen table, and Nan had just put a bowl of soup in front of him. Across from him, Susannah and Judith sat, both miniatures of their mother, though Susannah already showed a woman’s form — as yet a shy womanhood, as reticent and unsure of itself as Miranda’s.
But there, at the broad, scrubbed kitchen table, in the small, rustic kitchen in the house at Henley street, sat Hamnet — a different Hamnet, grown and matured, looking much as Will liked to think Will had looked in his prime: with golden eyes and soft dark curls, and the first blossoming of a beard upon his chin.
Hamnet wore a bright blue velvet doublet and looked regal and full of confidence as his father had never felt yet.
Will looked at his son and smiled, happy that he had gone to London and slaved away his days and wasted his nights away from Nan and the girls. He had made Hamnet a gentleman out of it, hadn’t he? A gentleman who’d never need to be humble to any person.
But then, in the way of dreams, Will felt disturbed, and his heart misgave him that he had forgotten something or misapprehended something. Something was wrong. His plan for Hamnet had not worked as intended.
“Wish us joy,” Hamnet said. “Wish us joy, Father.”
He lifted his hand that held another’s hand. Turning his head, Will beheld -- sitting beside Hamnet on the long bench in the humble kitchen -- the elf girl that he’d met in the crux earlier this day.
She was blonde and slim and more beautiful than human girl could ever be. She was a princess of fairyland.
Now, in Will’s dream, Nan leaned over him, her warm body against his and whispered in his ear, “I always knew it would be thus, ever since I nursed her. I always knew she’d be our daughter.”
Marlowe’s ghost stood, half-leaning, against the wall of the kitchen, near the hearth hung with shining pans. One of his legs was raised, his foot resting flat against the wall.
He crossed his arms on his chest, much the same way he’d been represented in his portrait, limned while he was at Cambridge.
But one of the eyes that gazed so ironically out of the portrait that hung in the buttery at Cambridge, was now punctured and dripping gore.
And Marlowe was a ghost, dead for his fairyland love.
Will looked on Hamnet, who held the elf princess’ hand. Hamnet said again, “Wish us joy.”
Will stood up. He yelled, “No!”
Fairyland would not steal his son from him. Will would see his son successful and be able to be proud of Hamnet in the world of men. This was his son, and not Quicksilver’s to steal.
Marlowe threw back his head and laughed a high, uncontrolled laughter like a drunk man.
“Stop,” Will yelled. “Stop!” He reached for the bowl of soup and threw it, over Hamnet’s head at the laughing ghost. “Stop!”
But the laughter went on and on and on.
Will woke up, his heart beating fast, so fast it seemed about to crack his ribs and escape his chest.
The dream gone, Will found himself lying on the ground, atop moss and leaves. A leaf stuck to his face, where sweat from his dream had dripped.
But the laughter remained -- high -- coming from just past the nearest trees. There a light moved, trippingly, like a lantern carried by someone who was none too sober.
And a woman’s voice screamed, high and faltering, “Help! Oh, help me!”