The Diary of William Shakespeare, Gentleman by Jackie French Read Free Book Online Page B

sensible, with a grave manner I like.
    â€˜I care not for it,’ said Judith, not even looking at him. ‘Father, what were you saying?’
    â€˜My hound, Flight, has puppies, if you would care to see them after dinner,’ offered Harold.
    â€˜No, I thank you.’ Judith turned instead to Parson Roger, who had been asked with his wife to make up the table. I could have boxed her ears.
    â€˜Why did you not show the young man some courtesy?’ I demanded, when the chairs had deposited us at home, it being once again too wet to walk and the road too rutted from the recent rains to take the carriage.
    She shrugged. ‘He is like that man in your play, Father. The hunchback king who called out for his horse.’
    â€˜King Richard? You compare a dead villain to a sensible young man?’
    The silly wench wrinkled her nose, which is a long one. ‘I did not care for him.’
    Did the girl think I could shake a fig tree and have husbands fall out of it like ripe fruit?
    â€˜You could have offered him courtesy even so.’
    â€˜And let him hope he might be mine?’
    I could have told her that Harold Thomas might have his pick of wives, all of good standing and family, and that she, at thirty, was as sorely short of suitors as she was long of nose. The time has come when she must settle for a lame rooster, or none at all.
    I had thought to write of another Judyth tonight, not the stubborn daughter I have now. But I am angry and my digestion is upset. The pheasant we ate at dinner was well flavoured but hung perhaps too long. I would not write of Judyth except when I might remember her with joy, and share some private tears with the cold weeping wind, and pray for my father’s sin, and mine, the sin we did thinking we did good.
    I shall take a draught and write no more of that tonight.
    Dinner: a good estate provides an excellent table. We ate a saddle of mutton with wine sauce; the pheasant with black liver sauce; a smothered hare; a chicken blancmange; wafers and cakes. Second course: ducks, roasted; a young kid; turtle soup, the turtle brought live from London town, the like of which I have not tasted for ten years; a cherry pie. Third course: fried larks; sweetmeats of marzipan; sugared plums; and small figures made of sugar, most fine, which made my wife exclaim at the skill of making them. (She, at least, gave our hosts their due even as my daughter put me to the blush.) French claret wine to drink, and a device of brass and silver that moved along the table, dispensing rose water for the guests to wash. I must ask my agent to order me one like it made in London, adorned with the Shakespeare crest.
    Bowels: uneasy still, so I have ordered a second chamber pot for the night.

Saturday, 31st October 1615, All Hallows’ Eve
    Today it rains again, all wild, wet, weeping wind, as it has rained since St Jude’s day, the gales sweeping leaves along as if with vast damp brooms, spoiling what little wheat harvest there is left. St Jude is the patron saint of hopeless causes. Today I warrant there will be many who see a hard winter ahead and pray on their knees indeed.
    My wife and the maids are preserving quinces and the winter pears in verjuice and making winter wine, as well as pickling forced asparagus, which I like much; and pickled green apples, pickled crabs, pickled soft pears, broccoli and salsify and cauliflower, and straining flagons of birch wine. Later Judith joined them, in high colour from visiting her friend Catherine, the fish merchant’s daughter, who shares her dancing lessons. The girl is too much taken up with visiting her friends lately, instead of helping with the autumn work of the household.
    After dinner they roasted apples by the fire and threw the apple peels to see the initials of the man Judith will one day marry. If the peels be right, he shall have the initials ‘SS’, for so the peels looked no matter how she threw them.
    Much knocking at