Jonson took me to his apartment in his carriage and bragged about his Holland duels and the men he had pinked. As I lay in bed, feverish, during the days to come, father appeared, expressing pity—the pity he had shared with the plague-stricken. “You there, you, boy, I’ve something for you. This will help you.” I understood. I cared. I wanted to talk to him. I wanted to sit with him underneath our apple tree and feel the summer’s sun.
“The fault, father, is not in our stars, but in ourselves,” I said to someone. “Yours is a fair name, fairer than mine...
“I am singularly moved when the sway of earth shakes like a thing infirm... this is not a dream, father.”
On Jonson’s bed, I went through hellish days—thirst, hunger, the bungling doctor bungling me, cold, cold remembering, sweatful forgetting, spouting delirious lines from plays... I accused the world of every crime, and managed to include my own.
I was afraid alone, yet distressed to have others overhear my ranting. The bed boards gaped and between each board I sweated another chill.
“Will, here’s your supper,” Jonson said. “Will, here’s breakfast. Will, I’ve brought you a book.”
Pericles licked my hands. Lying under my bed, he thumped his tail, saying: “Get up, master, there are birds to chase along the Thames.”
–S–
Without asking me, Jonson wrote to Ellen, and she came from Edinburgh. Was it her coming that pulled me through? Her care, beauty, her hands, her smiles of reassurance? Love put on its Oberon and scrubbed the grey out of the windows.