Free The Diary of William Shakespeare, Gentleman by Jackie French

forever to mark her coronation, and still kept. Our servants visit, or sleep, or sport. It is an inconvenience to be servantless all day, but a glad one. I count myself most blessed that I met Her Majesty, and my wit had blade enough to please her.
    Winter begins to shut us in, edging away the smiling face of day as we pass into the gloomy realm of the year’s night. But we do well at New Place. My wife has ordered apple wood to scent the air, and keeps the fires well stoked. Today she checked the butts of strong beer to see us through the winter. Her face still be misshapen, but the pain has eased.
    I walked down to see that the hothouses were closed upon the asparagus and cauliflowers, mint, tansy, sorrel, celery, endives and cardoons to give us plenty for the winter, for though Stratford be rich in markets, those markets have wealth in wool and mutton only; not like London, where a man may buy a lemon or basket of potatoes or a butt of Rhenish wine. Yet our plenty reminded me of what I do not have, and makes me long for London; not just the wine, but wit and women and laughter with good friends.
    But friends will come from there for Christmas Eve and Day, and I back to London with them till Twelfth Night. Till then I must content myself with neat hothouses of fat cauliflowers, apple-wood fires and this, my book of words.
    And memories.
    Thus Judyth and I began, and thus continued, day upon day, kiss upon kiss, poem upon poem, each word climbing to heights I had never seen, much less aspired to reach; until the hour I fell into the sea of those green eyes and asked her, ‘Will you be my wife?’
    The world hung still, as if the winds had left it. Would she tell me yea, or nay? My heart no longer beat.
    She took my hand, my calloused glover’s hand with its thick ridges from the knife, scissors and needles, in her soft one, calloused only on one finger from the pen, like mine.
    â€˜Of course,’ she said.
    The larks sang and the sun danced and every leaf about us whispered, ‘Love!’
    We were young to marry, but not too young to plan it. True, I had not even my journeyman’s papers, nor money to support a wife. But I was the eldest son, and my wife would live in my family house, which I must inherit. And Judyth had her dowry. The three fields were in her brother’s name, but she would have their rent for all her life; a matter of six pounds a year. It would not raise her family’s estate to marry me — a glover is a poor match for a merchant’s daughter — but it would be no great disgrace.
    â€˜I will tell my brother I will marry no other,’ she said, her face so fierce with love that I believed even the wind would bow to her. ‘Not if a prince come riding by, or Mark Antony himself to woo me.’
    â€˜I wish I were a Mark Antony or Caesar, to be worthy of a wife as you. You would really marry an apprentice glover?’
    â€˜I would marry a poet,’ she said softly. ‘Who else could I marry but one like you?’ She smiled. ‘You do not realise the miracle you are, Will Shakespeare. For you are not only a poet, but a man who will listen to a woman’s poems too. How could I marry a man who wanted me only to ornament his table and his bed, to bear his children?’
    I flushed at the word ‘bed’. We had kissed, but not lain together. I would not profane our love by more. But to be married, to lie flesh to flesh each night . . .
    â€˜We will be poets together,’ said Judyth. ‘One day perhaps a book may bear our
     names: Poems From a Lover to His Loved, and From Her to Him .’
    â€˜You truly think your brother will agree if I ask him for your hand?’
    â€˜Arnold is a good man. He will need persuading, but he will agree at last if it makes me happy.’ She hesitated. ‘Your family will welcome me?’
    I kissed her hand. ‘How could they not?’
    How could they not indeed? My parents must delight