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"Here, sir." She had brought him to a mean door which warned Paley that it was going to turn into water and flow down the cobbles did he not hold its form fast. "Money," she said. But Paley had given enough. He scowled and shook his head. She held out a fist which turned into a winking bearded man's face, threatening with chattering mouth. He raised his own hand, flat, to slap her. She ran off, whimpering, and he turned the raised hand to a fist that knocked. His knock was slow to be answered. He wondered how much longer he could maintain this desperate holding of the world in position. If he slept, what would happen? Would it all dissolve and leave him howling in cold space when he awoke?
"Aye, what is't, then?" It was a misshapen ugly man with a row of bright blinking eyes across his chest, a chest left bare by his buttonless shirt. It was not, it could not be, William Shakespeare. Paley said, wondering at his own ability to enunciate the sounds with such exact care:
"Oi ud see Maister Shairkespeyr." He was surlily shown in, a shoulder-thrust indicating which door he must knock at. This, this, then, at last. It. Paley's heart martelled desperately against his breastbone. He knocked. The door was firm oak, threatening no liquefaction.
"Aye?" A light voice, a pleasant voice, no early morning displeasure in it. Paley gulped and opened the door and went in. Bewildered, he looked about him. A bedchamber, the clothes on the bed in disorder, a table with papers on it, a chair, morning light framed by the tight-shut casement. He went over to the papers; he read the top sheet ("… giue it to him lest he rayse al helle again with his fractuousness"), wondering if perhaps there was a room adjoining whence came that voice. Then he heard that voice again, behind him:
" 'Tis not seemly to read a gentleman's private papers lacking his permission." Paley spun round to see, dancing in the air, a reproduction of the Droeshout portrait of Shakespeare, square in a frame, the lips moving but the eyes unanimated. Paley tried to call but could not. The talking woodcut advanced on him – "Rude, ma
"What plays have you writ to date?" Shakespeare looked surprised. "Who asks this?" Paley said: "What I say you will hardly believe. I come from another world that knows and reveres the name of Shakespeare. I come, for safety's sake, in disguise as a man from Norwich who seeks his fortune in the theatre and has brought plays of his own. I believe that there was, or is, an actor named William Shakespeare. That Shakespeare wrote the plays that carry his name – this is a thing I must prove."
"So," said Shakespeare, tending to melt into a blob of tallow badly sculpted into the likeness of Shakespeare, "you speak of what I will hardly believe. For my part, I will believe anything. You will be a sort of ghost from this other world you speak of. By rights, you should have dissolved at cockcrow."
"My time may be as short as a ghost's. What plays do you claim to have written up to this moment?" Paley spoke the English of his own day. Though the figure before him shifted and softened, tugged towards other shapes, the eyes changed little, shrewd and intelligent eyes, modern. Paley noticed now a small fireplace, in which a meagre newlit fire struggled to live. The hands of Shakespeare moved to their warming through the easy process of elongation of the arms. The voice said: "Claim? Heliogabalus. A Word to Fright a Whoremaster. The Sad Reign of Harold First and Last. The Devil in Dulwich. Oh, many and many more."
"Please." Paley was distressed. Was this truth or teasing, truth or teasing of this man or of his own mind, a mind desperate to control the sense data and make them make sense? On the table there, the mass of papers. "Show me," he said. "Show me somewhat," he pleaded.
"Show me your credentials," Shakespeare said, "if we are to talk of showing. Nay," and he advanced merrily towards Paley, "I will see for myself." The eyes were very bright now and shot with oddly sinister flecks. "A pretty boy," Shakespeare said. "Not so pretty as some, as one, I would say, but apt for a brief tumble of a summer's morning before the day warms."
"Nay," Paley protested, "nay," backing and feeling the archaism to be strangely frivolous, "touch me not." The advancing figure became horribly ugly, the neck swelled, eyes glinted on the hairy backs of the approaching hands. The face grew an elephantine proboscis, wreathing, feeling; two or three suckers sprouted from its end and blindly waved towards Paley. Paley dropped his scrip the better to struggle. The words of this monster were thick, they turned into grunts and fallings. Pushed into the corner near the table, Paley saw a sheet of paper much blotted ("Never blotted a line," did they say?):
I haue bin struggling striuing seeking how I may compair
This jailhouse prison? where I liue unto the earth world
And that and for because
The scholar was still alive in Paley, the questing spirit clear while the body fought off those huge hands, each ten-fingered. The scholar cried:
"Richard II? You are writing Richard II?"
It seemed to him, literary history's Claude Bernard, that he should risk all to get that message through to Swenson, that Richard II was, in 1595, being written by William Shakespeare. He suddenly dipped to the floor, grabbed his scrip and began to tap through the lining at the key of the transmitter. Shakespeare seemed taken by surprise by this sudden cessation of resistance; he put out forks of hands that grasped nothing. Paley, blind with sweat, panting hard, tapped: "UNDOUBTED PROOF THAT." Then the door opened.
"I did hear noise." It was the misshapen ugly man with eyes across his bare chest, uglier now, his shape changing constantly though abruptly, as though set upon by silent and invisible hammers. "He did come to attack tha?"
"Not for money, Tomkin. He hath gold enow of's own. See." The scrip, set down so hurriedly, had spilt out gold onto the floor. Paley had not noticed; he should have transferred that gold to his -
"Aye, gold." The creature called Tomkin gazed on it greedily. "The others that came so brought not gold."
"Take the gold and him," Shakespeare said carelessly. "Do what thou wilt with both." Tomkin oozed towards Paley. Paley screamed, attacking feebly with the hand that now held the scrip. Tomkin's claw snatched it without trouble.
"There's more within," he drooled.
"Did I not say thou wouldst do well in my service?" said Shakespeare.
"And here is papers." He looked towards the fire with a sheaf of them. Then he went to the grate and offered them. The fire read them hurriedly and converted them into itself. There was a transitory blaze which played music for shawms.
"Not all the papers." Shakespeare took the rest. "Carry him to the Queen's Marshal. The stranger within our gates. He talks foolishly, like the Aleman that came before. Wildly, I would say. Of other worlds, like a madman. The Marshal will know what to do."