“Well, all right, what is it?” Shakespeare said, putting down his quill pen and turning round from his work desk to face him.
“What? I said nothing,” Smythe replied, glancing at him with surprise.
The gentle glow of candlelight illuminated Shakespeare’s face as he sighed and rolled his eyes. “I know,” he said. “You said nothing, but your restlessness spoke volumes. You grunted and you sighed, time and time again, and as if that were not enough, you keep squirming on that mattress like a nervous virgin on her wedding night. By Heaven, for all the noise you’re making, ‘tis like trying to work with a bull grazing in one’s bedroom!”
“I am sorry, Will. I did not mean to disturb you at your work.”
“Aye, you never mean to, and yet you always do.” He removed his ink-stained writing glove and tossed it on his desk. The kidskin glove had no mate, for he had made only the one, expressly for the task of keeping ink stains off his fingers while he wrote, so that people would not constantly mistake him for a scribe. It also served as a reminder that if he did not become successful as a poet or a player, there was always his father’s trade of glovemaking to go back to, something he earnestly wanted to avoid.
He sighed wearily and ran his hands through his thinning, chestnut hair. “I do not know how I shall ever manage to write anything at all with the likes of you about. At this rate, I do not think that I shall ever manage to get past ‘Act I, Scene I, Enter funeral.’”
“ ‘Enter funeral?’ Well, there’s a cheery opening. What happens in Act II? A war?”
“What, are you a critic now? ‘Strewth, you may as well be. You cannot write, you cannot act; clearly, you have all of the right qualifications. You even add a new one; you review my play before I have even written it. A brilliant innovation, I must say. Just think of all the time it saves.”
Smythe grimaced. “Never mind, go back to work if you are going to be so surly.”
“Well, now that you have muddled up my muse beyond all recognition, you may as well tell me what is on your mind, for clearly, something troubles you. I know that mien of yours when something preys upon your brain. The very air around you is turbid and oppressive. So, come on, give voice to it, or else neither of us shall have any peace upon this night.”
“To be truthful, I am not quite certain what the matter is,” Smythe said, with a grimace.
“Hmm. Twill be like pulling teeth, I see. Very well, then, what does it concern?”
“Not what so much as whom. Methinks ‘tis your new friend, Ben Dickens.”
“Ben? Why? He seems like an absolutely splendid fellow.”
“Oh, I grant you that,” Smythe replied. “He does seem like a decent sort, yet there is still something about him… something… I do not know what; I cannot quite put my finger on it.”
“You are not envious of him, surely?”
“I should not like to think so. I but bemoan my own shortcomings, as you know, and I admit them freely. Now that you mention it, however, I can see how others might well envy Ben his winning ways. To wit, those two apprentices, Jack and Bruce, his friends of old.”
“He would be better off without such friends, if you ask me,” said Shakespeare, disapprovingly.
“Oh, I quite agree,” said Smythe. “A thoroughly unpleasant pair, they were. You saw the way they looked at Molly?”
“Aye,” Shakespeare replied, with a grimace of distaste. “The way a hungry wolf looks upon a lamb. Especially that Bruce. And did you mark how she never once came near our table after those two came in?”
“So you noted that, as well. I thought you did.”
“I did, indeed. And from it I deduce that Molly is an excellent judge of character. But what has any of this to do with Ben?”
Smythe shook his head. “I cannot say.” He frowned. “And yet I feel a disquiet in my soul about him.”
“A disquiet in your soul?” Shakespeare grinned. “Odd’s blood, have you developed poetic sensibilities?”
Smythe snorted. “If so, then ‘tis entirely your fault, for you are a bad influence. The way you walk about, mumbling verses to yourself, ‘tis bound to rub off on one sooner or later.”
Shakespeare raised his eyebrows. “I mumble verses?”
“Constantly. Under your breath, sometimes even in your sleep.”
“Indeed? I had no earthly idea. In my sleep, you say?”
“Aye. Not all the time, but often enough that you wake me upon occasion.”
“Truly? How extraordinary. When I do so, would it trouble you to write it down?”
“Now there speaks a writer,” Smythe replied. “Not ‘I am sorry, Tuck, for troubling your sleep with my dreamful babble,’ but ‘Would it trouble you to write it down?’ Selfishness, thy name is poetry!”
“Oh, say, that is not bad at all! Wait, let me set it down…”
Smythe threw a pillow at him.
“Zounds! Watch out, for God’s sake! You will upset my inkwell!”
“If I do, then ‘twill be the first time that any ink was set down upon that page this night,” Smythe replied, dryly. “Sod off!”
“Sod off yourself. You are getting nowhere and you seek to blame it all on me, when in truth the fault lies entirely with you. I can see, you know. You sit there and stare off into the distance, as if your very gaze could penetrate the ceiling and look out upon the starry firmament, and your lips move as you mumble softly to yourself, and then you make a motion as if to set your pen to paper, but soft! You pause… your quill hovers as if in expectation, and then you set it down once more and stare off into the distance, and so it goes, with little variation, as it has gone so many nights of late, whether I have been plagued with restlessness or not.”
“You are a foul villain!”
“And you are a prating capon.”
“Dissentious rogue!”
“Soused goose!”
“Carrion kite!”
“Perfidious wretch!”
“Churlish minion!”
“Mincing queen!”
“Oh, you venemous monster! I do not mince! ‘Tis but a slight limp in my leg.”
“Limpness resides in more than just thy leg, methinks.”
“You abominable apparition! Ungrateful bounder! Thus you impugn me when I have spoken up for you and fed you and defended you-”
“Defended me? ‘Gainst whom?”
“Well… ‘gainst certain individuals who wouldst’ have others think base things of you.”
“What individuals? What base things? What others?”
“Nay, now, let us speak no more of this. ‘Twould serve no useful purpose.”
“Who speaks ill of me?” persisted Smythe. “Someone in the company?”
“Well, now, I did not say that…”
“Not in the company? Then who… surely not Elizabeth!”
“Nay, not Elizabeth. What have I to do with her or she with me? It matters not. Forget I even mentioned it.”
“But I do not even know what was mentioned!”
“So much the better, then. Let sleeping dogs lie. ‘Tis for the best.”
“Will!”
“Nay, I have said all that I shall say. Thus let there be an end to it.”
Smythe folded his arms and gazed at him truculently. “Ah. So I see. No one has said anything, is that not so? You are but baiting me again, as is your wont.”
“Just so, Tuck. You have found me out. See, you are much too clever for me. I cannot outwit you.”
“Nay, you throw in your cards too quickly. Someone truly said something about me, did they not?”
“Not at all. ‘Twas all in jest, I tell you. You had it right the first time. I did but bait you, as I so often do.”