“To my own Love’s Labours Won!”

And the crowd roared.

Then Shakespeare reached under his cape and withdrew a volume of quarto size, bound in red leather, held with a blue ribbon.

“The very play, Love’s Labours Won. In a prompt book, transcribed by my own hand from my foul papers.”

” ‘Tis a thing of beauty, good sir.” Katherine held the book in front of her child. “Look you, John, see what Master Shakespeare gives you.”

The babe was more interested in the taste of his own thumb, but Robert Harvard received the book with all the awe he might muster had the rector of St. Saviour’s given him a relic of the true cross. He caressed the leather binding, thumbed the pages, and asked, “But, Will, would you not stage this play again?”

Shakespeare waved a hand. “The King’s Men have another prompt book, though the play be all out of date, and a trifle as ‘tis.”

“Would you not print it, at the very least?”

“Once a play sees print, any man may stage it, which be money from my pocket,” said Shakespeare. ” ‘Tis the reason I seldom give such gifts as this. But for the Harvards, Love’s Labours Won be a talisman of good fortune. Should you sell this to a printer—”

“Oh, never, Will.”

” — ‘twill fetch ten pounds. As companion to Love’s Labours Lost, which they say sold well, perhaps more. A good start for the child’s future.”

“I’ll never sell, Will. This takes a place of honor with me Bible, a reminder of this night and that summer’s day in Stratford.”

“Good.” Shakespeare touched the child’s head. “Let its title remind him that a happy man enjoys his summer days and knows the miracle of love’s labors.”

At that, Rob raised his mug again, “To Love’s Labours Won!”

 

 

ii

 

God gave the Harvards eighteen summers more to labor in their love, and they produced a family of seven children. Then God sent the coldest of winds.

It was in the third week of August, anno Domini 1625, that the first blast struck their son Willie, who went stumbling to his bed, chilled and feverish. Within an hour, he was vomiting. He brought up the gruel he had eaten in the morning, then remnants of stew from the night before, then streams of bile so green and viscous, it seemed that his very insides were shredding.

Then young Robbie came home freezing despite the damp heat that lay like a quilt upon London. He threw an extra log onto the great-room fire, wrapped himself in a blanket, and began to sweat and shiver all at once.

Then Kate, a gentle child of thirteen, looked up from her knitting, cried out in shock as her bowels suddenly let go, and collapsed into a puddle of her own stool.

That was when Katherine Harvard shouted up the stairs to John that he put by his books and hurry to fetch his father.

John was sitting in his favorite spot, by a window on the top floor, oblivious in the sunlight to all save his study of a Latin text on the epistles of Paul. But from the sound of terror in his mother’s voice, he knew what was upon them. Stumbling down to the great room, he was struck first by the stench, then by the heat of a roaring fire in August, then by the sight of his brothers and sister.

“Hurry, John,” cried his mother. “Hurry and tell Father. He’ll know what to do. Hurry … but don’t forget your rosemary.”

John plucked a few leaves from the sprigs hanging by the door,

rolled them, and stuffed them into his nostrils and ears for protection. Then he went out.

He ran down an alley to the galleried courtyard of the Queen’s Head Inn, which was much like the courtyards of the George or the Boar’s Head or a hundred other London inns where a man could find food and lodging. But curtains of fear hung from every railed balcony, and the drain that carried chamber wastes to Borough High Street was all but empty, for the Queen’s Head itself was all but empty, for the bubonic plague had descended, not only on the Harvard house but on all of Southwark.

John took another alley that led to the street. He moved quickly, being the long-legged and lanky sort, heir to his mother’s slender height and ready smile. People called him too bookish by half and said that he had inherited little from his father but a square jaw and a good heart. In John’s mind, that was gift enough, for he had no interest in his father’s trade. Let other men cut meat. John Harvard would study God’s word and nourish souls.

A young man of such faith should not have feared the sight of the death carts and their corpses, for it meant that souls were now rising to their reward. But the cry of “Bring out the dead,” followed by the clanging of the gravedigger’s bell, caused him to stop a moment in the shadows.