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those years ago when she was nurse to her. ‘If we can get him here, if we can talk to him, we’ll tell him about Illyria, how it used to be. He won’t deny you when he knows the whole story. How can he? Now, you look tired. You should go to your bed. We’ll worry about Master Shakespeare in the morning.’

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    6
    ‘That that is is’
    Will took off his doublet, loosened the neck of his shirt and poured himself a mug of ale from the barrel he kept in the corner, ale brewed at home and brought down for him from Stratford by Will Greenaway on the weekly wagon train. He’d ended up going back with Forman after all. Now it was late and he had no work done. He lit more candles and sat at his table. The room seemed warmer by candlelight; shadows masked its emptiness. He liked this time of night. It was the time when the city stilled itself and it was possible to hear both close and distant: the calls of the wherrymen down on the river, the churning of the waterwheels at the sides of the bridge, a man’s shout, a woman’s laugh, cats fighting, a bear’s groaning growl from the bear garden. Far away, a dog was barking; much nearer, in the street below his window, a couple were making love against the wall of the Clink.
    He often wrote at night, the days being too full of other business. It seemed easier to breathe the air. The stink of the city abated and it was possible to detect the salt tang as the tide changed, or the cleaner scent of the river water that had flowed past reed and willow on its way to London. The smell reminded him of Stratford. He had been in the city for more years than he liked to think about, but he still missed his home, particularly now when the year was finally turning towards spring and the trees growing green with new leaf, particularly today. It’s home I long to be, home for a while in my own country, where the oak and the ash and the pretty willow tree, are all waiting there in my own country. The snatch of song chided him. After Christmas the weather had made travel difficult, but he must go home soon. His father was sick, not expected to see the year out, according to Anne, and he wanted to see how the work on his new house was progressing. Anne was a strong woman and very capable, but it was not fair to leave everything to her.
    Perhaps he would go when this play was done, or he might take it to work on there. Sometimes he wrote better in Stratford, away from distractions. He opened his desk box and took out what he would need, using the small sharp penknife to cut a new nib into a goose-feather quill. He had plenty to do. He looked at the sheaf of untidy pages that made up the play he was reworking, cross-hatched with overwriting, scored with crossings-out. The fair copy was piling up very slowly; his Danish prince would have to wait for his first outing, however impatiently.
    Will was a part-owner in the Globe and involved in everything, sharing the management of the company with Burbage, writing the plays, acting if need be. The present piece had to come first: changes to tomorrow’s performance. He pulled the play book for As You Like It towards him, but still he did not write anything. He sat musing, brushing the feather, trimmed down into a V shape like an arrow’s fletching, against his bearded cheek.
    Finally, he took out his table book. It was the place where he caught ideas, lines of verse, snippets of conversations he heard, before they had a chance to flee. He dipped the quill in the inkwell and began to write. He had to note down the story told him by the girl and Feste, had to clear it from his head before
he could start anything else. There was more to be known, Forman had hinted as much, but he would start with the prelude to the girl’s own story: her mother’s arrival in the country. He liked disguises; he liked twins and the confusion caused by them. Most of all, he liked Feste.
    He wrote quickly. Moments like this were rare; they were always accompanied by the same