Exit, Pursued by a Bear Read online

  Table of Contents

  At Whitehall, St. Stephen’s Day, 1610

  In Blackfriars, St. Stephen’s Night

  At Whitehall, Childermas

  On the Heath

  On Ludgate Hill

  On Friday Street

  At Whitehall, New Year’s Eve

  In Blackfriars

  New Year’s Day at Night, 1611

  Saint Valentine’s Eve, 1613

  On Watling Street

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  EXIT,

  PURSUED

  BY A BEAR

  Also by Greer Gilman

  Moonwise

  Cloud & Ashes: Three Winter’s Tales

  Cry Murder! in a Small Voice

  EXIT,

  PURSUED

  BY A BEAR

  Greer Gilman

  Small Beer Press

  Easthampton, MA

  Exit, Pursued by a Bear is no. 12 in the Small Beer Press chapbook series.

  This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed

  in this book are either fictitious or used fictitiously.

  Exit, Pursued by a Bear copyright © 2014 by Greer Gilman. All rights reserved.

  greergilman.com

  Cover illustration © 2014 by Kathleen Jennings. All rights reserved.

  tanaudel.wordpress.com

  Print edition printed in a saddle-stitched edition (isbn 9781618730954)

  by Paradise Copies of Northampton, Massachusetts.

  Also available as an ebook (isbn 9781618730961).

  Text set in Centaur 12 pt. Titles set in Caslon Antique.

  Small Beer Press

  150 Pleasant Street #306

  Easthampton, MA 01027

  [email protected]

  www.smallbeerpress.com

  weightlessbooks.com

  First edition.

  September 2014

  For the bears, in septentriones

  sempiterne.

  At Whitehall, St. Stephen’s Day, 1610

  Halfway in the air, the moon stuck fast.

  “Boy,” said the Surveyor, wearily.

  But already a fellow in a satyr’s netherstocks had swarmed the scaffolding with five or seven of his rout, all twitching at the shrouds.

  And now she toppled on her back, lay hicketing and heaving toward an exaltation endlessly denied.

  Ben Jonson—mere Poet to these Roman pomps—snorted. “I wrote her for a virgin; see, she labors.”

  “Yet she travels not,” squeaked a fairy, and was brutally suppressed.

  The Surveyor was among them, jutting with his beard. “Asini! Will you overset the heavens? Back!” He laid about him with his staff of office, like a dancing master’s, rapping at the satyrs’ shins. They disentangled; they descended. “The moon is planetary, look you, she is ductile; but with gentilezza, with decorum, with a silken thread.” The long hands were unbraiding, ordering the ropes. The great device came meekly to his pull. “See now: the tackling passes through these rocchetti—so—”

  “That by cogging she may climb?” said Ben. “A whore’s trick.”

  “It is Italian.” The moon lay now in Signior Surveyor Jones’s hands, broader than an alderman’s bowl. A drum of parchment.

  Ben, half unwilling, was fascinated: “And the candles?”

  “So: behind this wicket. But a lamp.” Smirking, Inigo Jones unlatched. “See now: this vial of glass—Venetian—that will throw the beams; the back of silvering. I have made the schema for the Prince, in silverpoint. Will have it vellum-bound.”

  “Is he a child to play with whirligigs?”

  But Inigo had done with words. He clapped his hands. “Bis, bis.”

  The smaller consort of music now was gathered, tuning; solemnly, they bleated, scrawked and mewled. The dancing master took his herd of satyrs through their footings: an antick dance full of gesture and swift motion. Up and down, up and down, went Selene, bobbing like a milkmaid in a morris jig: swift now, but barely seemlier. The antimasquers mopped and mowed; their ape-leader raved and shrieked; the fiddles clicketed and caterwauled. Absurd. Ben boomed. “My lady must beware, lest she scorch Endymion and cancel all his progeny.” Thump, thump, scrawl, twitter, thump.

  Ferrabosco leaned to him. “No one marks thy wit, Ben. Nor will heed my music. Our best invention is a serving dish for Jones’s moon.”

  “Pox rot it for a Suffolk cheese.” A snort. “The King at least will have no eyes for lantern-lerry.” A thumb at the satyrs, sweating well now, shirtless: hairy-haunched, broad-chested, brown (with walnut juice, for want of Phoebus’ bold regard). They leapt, o’erleapt each other, clattering with their hooves. Their figures ended in collision and a heap.

  And at the rapping of the Master Surveyor’s stick, a stillness. Feet, viols, voices, sackbuts, shawms: all silent. Servants bore away the branches in the room: so it was dusk. And vanishing behind a painted crag, a snub-nosed prentice of the Master’s took a rushlight.

  One and two. And with a sweep of arms, a solemn music. Now: ascent. The Moon herself, as Peter Quince had dreamed, upsailing through the hall turned heavens, high and disposedly. Her light indwelt in her, cast living shadows on the wall: a greater faerie than was painted, sawn, or stitched.

  O marvellous.

  Mere awe. And then as if the wonder were a white stone cast into a pool, their stillness broke into a thousand waverings and ripples of delight.

  The Master in his cockscomb of a velvet cap upswept a pointing finger—marginalia to the revelation. “And look you, there is art.”

  Eclipsed, thought Ben. The spirits come when he does call for them. He bowed ironically. “Signior, I stand as Joseph with the ox and ass: a cuckold to the light.”

  A pattering and stir, as if the wind would turn—but Monsignior Mountebank held sway, all eyes upon his scene: all obscure, as Ben had written and the carpenters had made: nothing . . . but a dark rock, with trees beyond it, and all wildness. Like Moses—if the patriarch were but a tetchy Welsh Cockney with Italian airs—the Surveyor struck the rock.

  It parted with a creak and thunder, like a cart on cobblestones—and wonderments gushed forth. There the whole scene opened, and within was discovered the frontispiece of a bright and glorious palace,whose gates and walls were transparent.

  Transfixed, they all—the tirewomen, tailors, broiderers, the singing boys, musicians, satyrs, sylvans, Faies, aye, Phosphorus himself, his fiery wings half tacked—stood murmuring.

  Again the rumble and the groan.

  Sphere after sphere, thought Ben: like Jack Donne diving through his mistress’s petticoats. Now gown; now smock; now anywhere. Perspective to the cleft.

  Again, the great enchanter raised his staff. Struck once. The palace opened to his spell, discovering a nowhere, painted gorgeously. “Here within, the fairies with their lights, immingled with the ladies of the court.” A stride. “Within, afar off in perspective, the knights masquers sitting in their several sieges.” Another stride. “At the further end of all—” He’d reached an empty chariot, as brilliant as the starry Wain. “—the Fairy King, our Oberon, his carriage drawn—” He turned with arms outspread “—by two white bears.”

  “Madonna!” cried the second hautboy. “Will they eat us all?”

  Art eclipsed by nature, Ben thought.

  The Surveyor looked graciously upon his servants. “Men of the Prince’s household,” he said. “In ermine rugs.”

  Ben was beginning to enjoy this. “The play—” he said sententiously “is allegorical: the court, the nursery of princes, as a bearpit.” The Surveyor coughed. “Nay, I wrote it as the Prince conceived. His Grace had entreated with his Royal father that they dance a-horseback; he
would capriole. But then an embassage of Faerie—three most reverend goblins—would betake it to the air, mount up on humblebees. In parley, I bethought me of a tertium quid: nor earth aspiring nor air, but aether. I would set his chariot amid the stars; and in his traces, bind the Great Bear and the Less.” A downward glance at the pelts. Mothy. “For thy next, Master Jones, thou shouldst disfigure the whole Zodiac. I myself would take the Whale.”

  Beyond the further end of all, a trampling. Ben grinned: the fellow came upon his cue. A curtain was twitched back, and a paltry door behind flung open, in a waft of stink—blood, bowels, tobacco, slaver, and Left Leg. The man himself succinct and leathery: as black as an ale-jack, seamed and ravaged with old scars. Half a face. Tom Tukeler the bearward in his butcher’s coat. The one eye, sharp as a kestrel’s, cast about the room, picked out the Surveyor. Ben up-nodded.

  “Monsewer In-he-goes? From Master Alleyn.”

  “So? So? I am busy.”

  A scabrous bill outthrust. “On New Year’s Day at night. Item: one couple o’ white bears to hire, six pound, with chains and wardens—”

  “Bears?” Almost a squeak.

  “By command o’ Prince Harry. Two bears, with their attendant wardens: the same to have privilege o’ the buttery. Item: three pistols, balls, and powder—”

  “Pistols? Will not the beasts be muzzled?”

  The one brow lifted. “Nick Held, Noll Parrett, and I come along with. The Queen, she would have pistols, being it’s the King in eggshell. Say I, this brace o’ cubs are Master Alleyn’s cosset-lambs. Master Henslowe, he dotes on ’em above his daughters. He’d not lose ’em for a nest o’ hypocrites. If they are slain—say, mauling o’ the prince’s jacket—”

  The Surveyor paled; assented with his hands. “So then: you three are of the progress; but you must be suited with the rest.”

  “O excellent, as city sylvans!” cried Ben. “And the perfuming?”

  The bearward stared about the room, at garlanded and skirted boys. “’Leven pence. Each. No wings.” Another reckoning stare. “And let the ladies not bring lapdogs in. The wench-bear’s peevish.”

  Most excellent. Inches of cynosure, flapdragoned.

  “Are they . . . accustomed to music?”

  “Drum and trumpet? From their leading-strings. They abhor a lute. But will rise to a fiddle and will dance a measure. I taught ’em so.” Another reckoning glance: there were haunches in it, forepaws, questing snouts. He shoved the chariot two clothyards back. “Fish, we diet ’em, fat cod like very bishops. Aye, and porpoise o’ Sundays. They do eat half Billingsgate for breakfast, wives and all.”

  “So?”

  “Your bear now, is a great expostulator of your whoreson bearshit. And if the Queen tread in’t. . . .”

  “Can they not be—save you—purged beforehand?”

  “That ’d be behind. Your worship has our leave to try.”

  Very small. “Fasted?”

  “What, would you have them craunch the princes’ heads? Like apple-johns?” The bearward thrust his bill at the Surveyor. “Shovellers is ha’penny. You may rig ’em out as elves.” Hobs, ob., thought Ben. And with a shrug for epilogue: Exit, the Bearward. But at the curtain, Tukeler turned. “You ladies—and you lily-livered mawkins o’ the court—need not fear. The bears are very Chapel Children, meek as milk; have played twice to this court in Mussydoor, by turn and turn. Master Alleyn, he will call ’em foul names out o’ grammary: the brother’s Die-o’-Jennie’s—which is no blazon for an honest whore, much less her house—and the she-bear’s Clyster. I call ’em Jug and Toby.” And he clapped the door behind.

  The Surveyor stared after, his wand sliding sideward in the crook of his elbow. Then he drew himself up, and twice or thrice clearing of his throat, said, “Gentlemen and women, men and boys: well begun. There is nooning in the buttery.” And with the prospect of ale and gossip, capons and cattery, the masque dispersed. A few still lingered by the fires, or in corners, murmuring. Nothing in the playing space but a powdering of sequins.

  Ben thought his rival drooped; but when he turned, the Surveyor was himself again, spruce as a puppet. A spark of satire here and there had scorched his wizard’s robe; touched nothing of his damned complacency. As good wound water with a gun.

  “So. There is the masque in three inventions: lux mobilis, machina versatilis, scena ductilis . . .”

  “Circus maximus—”

  “Thy bestiary? They will speak of nothing else.”

  “Indeed. Not thy whirligigs.”

  “Far less thy wording.”

  A hit.

  The Surveyor spread his hands. “The court—and those who envy them—will talk of gallantry: with whom the Queen danced, and the Prince. The bears will be a nine day’s wonder—what of that? There is no artifice in bears. And none to praise—”

  “But God?” A perilous quiet, like a great wave drawing out.

  “Just so: but God.” A perfectly dismissive piety. “A masque is nothing else but pictures with Light and Motion. Thy words are but the string on which to hang my pictures; I may buy it by the yard. And I—”

  The wave rushed in.

  O shows! Shows! Mighty shows!

  The eloquence of masques! What need of prose

  Or verse, or sense to express immortal you?

  Abristle like a porcupine, Ben advanced on the Surveyor. Jones jutted with his chin as if he would hold him at beardpoint; yet fell back. The poet jabbed an inky finger at the architect’s paunch. “I am no juggler, sirrah. There is nothing up my sleeve: no whirling whimseys nor kickshaws of smoke. I build with words: which will outlast thine exhalations as the firmament a falling star.” He had backed him to the crag: no further.

  “I have written, sir, a pattern for princes; my Silenus a tutor, a Chiron for wisdom. And thou? hast turned all virtue into braveries. Wouldst make of Jove’s temple a babyhouse. Dollmaster Jones.” Now Ben pressed the very nap of his velvet.

  The beard struck. “The bears, at least, will be muzzled.”

  “O thou block of painted porphyry! Thou thing of tinsel! Thou alchemist, thou ignis fatuus, thou bubble-pipe, thou glow-worm!”

  “Off me, sir.”

  “Thou night-pollution of a meteor, thou jelly . . .”

  “Lout.”

  “Conjuror.”

  “Ruffian.”

  “Lick-fig.”

  “Bricklayer.”

  “Surveyor. Eat carpentry. Fart wasps.”

  From the great doorway came a high voice calling out. “Is that the bear?

  Both turned like filings to a lodestone; and in turning, bowed the knee.

  A pale and pointed boy; a puny, hirpling boy in grey-blue and vermilion silk; a paraquito in a rookery of tutors: Charles, the younger prince, the Duke of York. He was pointing at Ben.

  Ben raked his hair upward; the Surveyor all but espaliered himself in bowing.

  “Is that the b-bear?” And to a hoodie crow amongst the tutors, “Thou didst fable me it wad be real.”

  Hoisting himself by degrees, as he might a tun, Ben shaped himself to speak.

  But the prince had caught sight of the fairy palace, and was gazing up in admiration. He walked toward it. He wielded his body with great care, Ben saw, as a child might a pen: a thing to be practiced. His great rosettes hid shoes of brass and leather. Brazen-shod: like a puny Achaean.

  All butter now, the Surveyor stood before his market-stall of wonders. “A triumph, your Grace. For a prince.”

  “I am not he.” A silence. “My brother Wales will ride as Oberon.”

  But he the wonder is of tongues, of ears, of eyes. Ben’s words. His yard of string. York’s worship.

  Now turning to his tutelary corbies, hand on hilt, the prince said, “I will play in this masque. I am na babby. I am b-breeched these five years, and in the second book of Livy. I can dance.”

  The youngest of the crows, a Scot, said carefully, “Your Grace has made great progress in that art.”

  Wheeling,
almost pink with pleasure, the child caught Ben off guard. “Thou, sirrah. Will there be bears?”

  “There will be two: white bears, as soft and heavy as a snow, as fell as January, one beyond the other, like the mountains on the edge of Thule. They have waked. There is old fire in their bellies; yellow moonlight in their seeking eyes; blood only in their minds.” And leaning close, he whispered. “They are for a prince to tame.”

  All there were silent, gazing out where nothing was.

  The satyr slept. Kit Marlowe, rising on his elbow drowsily, regarded him, asprawl on leaves, his sweeter parts displayed like grapes for the plucking. Pleasures proved, he thought: and kissed. Above them in a bank of thyme, two faun-cubs—vixens—curled about each other, scuts to noses, murmuring.

  Kit rose, and cast his gown about his shoulders: that he kept, in token of his mastery here, his kind. Alone among his fellows here he knew his nakedness, and he rejoiced. He took his staff, and striding down with it beside the falling brook, with its endless changeful musics, he came upon the seacoast of Bohemia.

  A flawless cove; a quartern moon of gold. Beyond it lay a stormless yet a lively sea, its azure melting into air, its waves a changeful endless tabbying of green, and greyer green, and white. There were set great ships upon it with their bellied sails, and banners forked like serpents’ tongues. All show: for his delight. None here would ever make its landfall.

  Kit stared out at it. He turned, surveyed the compass of his kingdom, with its woods, fields, groves, and temples: his Arcadia, unvarying in all its endless variations of delight. Then walking out between the land and water, with his staff he dragged a circle in the sand; within, a pentacle. Stepped back.