The Secret Life of William Shakespeare Read Online Free PDF Page A

died, he left us with no money.’
    ‘Why? Did he spend it all?’
    ‘None to spend. A minister’s living dies with him, and he had no estate. Oh, once he did, but it was lost in Queen Mary’s time. She brought back the Romish rites, but the Jonsons would not conform to them. For a time your father even lay in prison.’
    ‘Good,’ Ben said. ‘To go to prison for what you believe.’
    ‘So say I,’ his mother said, after a silent, still moment. ‘But that was why we needed money when he died. More than I could earn with my needle. A woman cannot shift for herself in this world, Benjamin, save she be bred up to it. Even then, it’s hard to make your way unprotected. For my sake and yours, I had to marry again. Not because I longed for linen sheets instead of hempen. No. To keep us safe.’
    And Ben understood. So far, and no further. Marrying again, very well. Marrying him – marrying Robert ham-fist brick-dust dull-wit Brett, not so well.
    Once when his stepfather tired himself out plying the strap and sat down to yawn and rub his arm muscles, Ben said: ‘As soon as I’m big enough, I shall hit you back, you know.’
    His stepfather grinned. ‘That day’s not yet.’
    ‘It will come, though.’
    His stepfather shrugged. He was a heavy, full-lipped man with colourless eyes. ‘It will come, aye. The same with our death, boy. Same with our death.’
    Not mine, Ben thought. He intended living for ever, and could not imagine anyone living with any other aim.
    What he saw in the room above the stables gave him firmer ideas about many things. His mother was a stronger woman than that poor idiot creature: still, she was a woman. Ben watched when his stepfather was in loving vein and she turned small in his embrace, offering him little kissing troubles. ‘Poor chick, how dost?’ he cooed. ‘Thou hast a world of grief on thy pretty brow tonight. Wilt let me love it away, hey?’ The back of his neck formed two precise rolls of flesh, like some pastry-cook’s confection. Ben watched his mother’s fingers caress them.
    Hempen sheets or linen, it didn’t matter.
    So he turned to the next page of the Bible. He was not devout – except about reading, and this was the only book in the house. Books were precious and expensive. The parish clerk kept his locked up in a trunk in the schoolroom. Ben might have had one to borrow – but you had to get the clerk’s favour, usually extended to delicate, sweet boys, and Ben was plain. One day, he assured himself, he would have books. He would live among them night and day. It was all his desire. And though the clerk did not like his looks, he admitted that Ben was the best scholar he had ever taught.
    And there Ben hungered for his future, beyond this dense drab slice of Westminster, where brew-houses smoked and fishmongers kept their heads down over the bloody slab. Hereabouts, his stepfather stood pretty high, being a master bricklayer. Beyond Charing Cross, where blaring London rose, lords and rich citizens alike were putting up houses in new, luxurious brick, and Robert Brett was busy in their service. He had an apprentice. The last had turned out bad, run off, become a handler of stolen goods, and ended up hanged; but the new one promised well, took his beatings, and would surely become a master himself when his seven years were out.
    And after that, of course, there was a natural successor in the family.
    Never – please, God, never. Ben had to make good his escape. Learning, learning, learning. He urged himself on. And the winter after he saw the empty giggling girl, grace descended. The clerk came home with him to see his mother, when his stepfather was at work.
    ‘Westminster School?’
    ‘Madam, you must have thought of it. To speak truth, he knows everything I do. And there is nowhere superior in the kingdom. My lord Burghley oversees it; the Queen has a special care for it. You cannot do better by him.’
    Ben sat quiet. Neither looked at him: the clerk because