Read Shakespeare's Rebel for Free Online Page B

faced south-west. ‘Yet if you desire to be so again, may I suggest that you suck upon the neck of your cloak?’
    He sniffed, caught the sour hop of beer, an undernote of whisky, was briefly perplexed as to how he’d managed to spill any of that precious liquor; wondered, even as he scented it, if she might consider standing him a tot. No! He shook his head. ‘Tess . . .’ he called, stepping after her.
    She was leaning forward. Against this brick wall that the sun caught and heated she conjured fruits that should not grow in England. Certainly not in the garden of a tavern in Southwark. He had seen pomegranates there; while the cloth she tugged aside now protected a lemon tree. She’d wash in lemon juice in the season, to remove the taint of the tavern – a perfume he preferred to any of Araby.
    Without looking up, she spoke, gesturing to a barrel nearby. ‘There is water there, if you wish to drink.’
    He gave a weak smile. ‘I do not drink water, Tess. Do you know what fish do in it?’
    She did not smile, nor look up. ‘Not in this water, I warrant, for it falls from heaven.’
    He glanced over. A gutter ran along the wall, beneath a sheltering jutty, a pipe running down. He licked dry lips. ‘I’d prefer a beer. Small beer,’ he added hastily, seeing the line of eyebrows rise. ‘One of your sweet, light brews.’
    ‘Then why did you not enter the inn by the normal way and purchase one?’ Still she did not look at him.
    ‘Because the men at the door wear livery. Its hue is tangerine.’
    ‘Which signifies?’
    ‘Which signifies that they are of the camp of the Earl of Essex. Or of one of his followers.’
    He emphasised these last words. ‘Ah.’ She unstooped, looked at him. ‘And what do you signify from that?’
    ‘Only this.’ He felt the fear surge within him and, as usual, converted it into anger. ‘That a certain bankrupt knight, poor in everything but fat, of which he has excess, has attached himself to the Earl of Essex’s cause and, emboldened, has then presumed upon a lady’s innocence to woo her, dared to think he has won her. And falsely won, dares to rule her in her work, in her life . . .’
    His voice had lowered. Hers dropped to match it as she interrupted. ‘You are the one who dares! Scaling my wall like a thief, reeking from your debauch. You the one who presumed upon my innocence, took it without a thought to consequence, took me from my gentle life, from the love of my family, from all respectability with your attentions . . .’
    ‘Nay, Tess, it was not like that.’
    ‘Aye, John, it was!’ she stormed. ‘You swear to your great love. You borrow sentiments and verse from your playwright friend Shakespeare. You weep into your whisky of which you have excess !’ She paused, glaring. ‘You are a player, John Lawley, not just upon the stage where they will no longer allow you, but in everything. You play at war, you play at love, you play at fatherhood. You’d have played the husband if I had let you and you would have failed in that as in all these others. You are as sudden and brief as these,’ she said, flinging the snowdrops into his chest. ‘Well, I want something else now. Someone. One who can give me all you took with your . . . playing.’
    Unusually, his anger quailed before hers. Looking down to where some snowdrops clung to him, showing even whiter against the beige doublet, he mumbled, ‘You said you’d never marry, Tess.’
    ‘Well I changed my mind!’
    He looked at her, the colour in her cheeks, the plucked eyebrows raised in fury. Saw, most especially, those eyes that had first bewitched him. Lines radiated from them that cares had worn. He had carved many of them himself. Yet he saw a sadness there too, that she was failing to entirely mask with her anger. Not just regret for the life he had taken from her, nor for all the times he had failed her since. The sadness lay in what she was doing now. In this furious rejection of him. So beyond the rage,