“False face must hide what the false heart doth know.”

This is the final line of Macbeth Act 1, Scene 7. Lady Macbeth has helped Lord Macbeth come up with a plan to murder King Duncan.

Mary’s white quill furiously flicked beside her face, swaying the shadows upon the wall. As she wrote the scene, she muttered as if cursing Macbeth herself. The eyes that crept up behind her shoulder were so silent she couldn’t sense Will until his breath was almost curling into her ear.

“Mother of Christ!” Mary screamed as she jumped on her stool. “Stop doing that! For the thousandth time, I will show you when I have finished.”

“Apologies, Em.” Will pouted as he twirled the frills of his collar.

Mary sighed. As she began the A for the word “Act”, the tip of the quill came down too hard and fast, casting ink up the length of the paper. With color draining from her face, Mary groaned as her head fell upon the desk in defeat. Will’s head spun around from his hunched position behind her.

“Em?” He tested. He placed a tentative hand on her shoulder. “Mary?”

Mary peeled herself off the desk. Will’s eyes widened. The ink had plastered itself across the length of her forehead.

“Eh…” Will began. Mary put her hand up.

“No, you know what?” She bounded up almost flying towards the coat rack by the door. “I need to be alone.”

“Mary…”

“No, Will.” Her hand was already wrapping around the door handle when Will screwed up his face with determination. He dived forward and spun her around. She toppled back and Will braced himself to gently prop her back up. When she regained her footing, she found herself in front of a small cracked mirror that hung slightly crooked on the wall. She tried to break free of Will’s grasp, but he held her there and gestured toward her reflection.

Mary stopped struggling as she saw the black mark that streaked above her eyes. She turned her head slightly, eyes still on the mirror. Her gaze stopped at the empty space in the mirror that Will’s head should have taken up. In the mirror, she stood alone. Completely alone.

She turned her head and her eyes met Will’s. She could see clearly in front of her a man in a bright red floor-length jacket with tasteful frills jutting out past the seams, but as her gaze wandered back to the glass, she found him missing from the setting of her small apartment. Will drifted over to her bedside table where he found a clean handkerchief and handed it to Mary.

As Mary finished wiping the ink, a knock on the door made her flinch. With her coat still on, she pulled the creaking door open.

“Going out?”

Christopher Marlowe stood in the doorway. Being six foot two, Marlowe took up the entire wooden frame. He leaned cooly upon the heavy beam and his eyes drew the distance between Mary and her desk covered in pages and ink.

Mary’s head bows ever so slightly. “One moment.” She turned and scuffled around, trying to shuffle the pages into their correct order. While she was busy, Marlowe’s eyes wandered but never landed on the other man who stood right in front of him.

Will’s eyes were narrowed and, being a full six inches shorter, his nose pointed up at Marlowe’s searching face. “Hello, Chris,” Will’s voice slid darkly between his gritted teeth.

Crash!

Both men’s heads whip up just in time to see the ink pot’s final descent to the floor. In her rush, Mary paid it no mind. Instead, she presented the pages to Marlowe.

“Here,” She whispered. “Take them.”

Will whipped around. “Ask him” His voice was a whisper, but it wouldn't have mattered anyway. Marlowe had heard nothing.

Mary ignored him.

Marlowe gave a smirk and a nod. “Thank you.” He folded the pages and tucked them under his arm. “Well,” He said. halfway out the door. “Have a lovely day. I am sure someone will come by at one time or another to tell you how it all goes.”  He turned, pausing for a moment.

“Oh and Mary?”

“Yes?”

“What is the name I am to use instead of my own when I present these pages?”

“William Shakespeare,” Mary muttered.

“Pardon?”

“William Shakespeare!” Her voice rose, her words sharp. Timid, yet they forced themselves out in a way that threatened he dares to forget them.

“Ah, I see. Well, have yourself a wonderful day my little dear. I’ll try to give these lines carefully to the boys tomorrow in case they are absolutely dreadful. Can’t have them thinking I’m some kind of idiot.” Marlowe scrunched up his face into a plastered smile under squinted eyes. His foot finally fell from the last front step and walked into the stream of people and horses that made up the moving wall along the street.

Mary never crossed the threshold, but she stared after Marlowe for as long as she could. She knew she would be standing there every day, waiting. No one would ever come. She couldn’t count the number of pages she had put into his hands, but none of them ever came back to her. No one told her anything. She never knew the size of the crowd, who was playing who, or how the words rolled off the actors’ tongues. Mary never went to any of her plays, of course. It was like watching one’s children fall down a well you built yourself.

There she was, two weeks later, watching the trickle of men wander down the road. She could spot them as actors right away. Something about their air, the way they carried themselves, and the copies of her script that were gripped tightly in their hands.

Mary sighed.

“You should go, you know.”  Will stood a little ways away behind her.

“Not today, Will.” Mary’s glance fell from the men to the dusty road just outside her door.

“I cannot believe you, Mary.” He said, adjusting his jacket. “All my work, and to never see it? Not even a rehearsal?”

“Your work?” Mary turned with fury. “Your work? You hardly do a little more than barely anything!” Her voice and face were hot with rage.

“I don’t think that made any sen-”

Mary cut him off.

“All I do is sit there.” She flung her hand in the direction of her tiny desk and chair. “Words! All I do is write words! I never hear them uttered except from my own mouth and the pathetic one you have hanging off your face!”

“Well, I sort of like my mouth,” Will said meekly, but Mary ignored him and carried on.

“Page after page!” She started frantically grasping at her parchment. A couple she threw behind her without thinking. “And what does that three-inch fool do?” Her eyes wide she stared at Will.

“Er… what does he do darling?” Will backed a little farther into the corner. Any projectile she would have felt compelled to hurl would go right through him anyway but he thought he better not take any chances.

“That walking plague sore won’t even let me read my own lines on that holy, bloody stage!” With a terrific thump, Mary fell dramatically backward onto her bed. Which wasn’t more than a small cot where she had placed a few thick blankets. They broke her fall well enough. Her hands soon moved to her face as she began to cry.

Will stood stock still for a moment in case she caught a violent second wind. But it never came. She just lay there, covering her reddening face, and let her exhausted body collapse into the cot.

Finally, he decided to move a little closer. His voice was still low so as not to startle her, but strong enough to make sure his words broke through the wall of anger she put up around herself.

“Mary, you listen here.”

She uncovered her puffy eyes and blinked.

“I do not haunt your blessed soul every day for hours on end, I do not whisper those pitiful words in your ear when you’re stuck, and I most certainly do not hold myself back from possessing that foul deformity and marching his carcass into the river just so he can take those words from you and pass them off as his own. It should be you bringing the words to those actors. They are yours... In a sense mine. Both. I don’t care! Either way, the one half of the world that travels to see your plays should see you in person right along with them.”

Mary sniffed, her eyes seeming to look at something beyond the floor. Beyond the world.

“What is it that you want?” Will asked.

“I want–” She choked. “I want them to see my face. My face Will.”

“Then go.”

Mary squinted against the sun. The wide-open markets let in a lot more light than the tiny windows that were scattered through her apartment. Just beyond the stalls, the Globe sat as if on a throne amongst the lower roofs.

She peered between the doors to watch as actors fumbled around on stage saying their lines. One in particular had abandoned his script and was spouting nonsense into the air above him. She leaned in closer, trying to hear what he was saying. But the echoes gleaned through his words and made it impossible to discern any of them. Mary could feel the grain of the wood press into her ear when a hand appeared at her dress collar and pulled her backward.

“What do we have here? A little lady?”

Mary stumbled as she tried to regain her footing. Four men stood around her swaying back and forth like snakes trying to match her rhythm.

“I have come to watch.” Mary forced her voice to settle despite the stone she could feel forming in her stomach.

“Play’s not for a couple more days sweetheart. Are you sure you’re not confused?” The man who stood in front of her was tall and lanky, but his arms and shoulders told a history of manual labor.

“Yes, I know, I wanted to watch the rehearsal.”

The men around her chuckled.

“Go home. No one watches rehearsals, especially women.” The man’s eyes traced over Mary. Her face burned but she stood up straight.

“I will not. I am here to watch the rehearsal.”

When his hand connected with her cheek the searing feeling on her skin did not start immediately. It wasn’t until she was on the ground, dust billowing around her skirt, that she blinked into the gathering pain.

“I said,” The man crouched and brought his voice down. The heat of his breath wrapped around Mary’s head like a chokehold. “Go home sweetheart. And come back in a few days. If you can find a penny.”

The man sighed as if Mary was just something he had just swiped off his shoe. He groaned as he rose back up to brush off his hands. He turned around and walked through the Globe’s front door.

“Will!” Mary screamed as she entered her apartment. “Will, where are you?

There was nothing; not a sound, not a shimmer of the air. Mary collapsed, cupping her bruising face. Warm tears fell; the salt slithered through her cut cheek like a knife.

“Will.” Her voice was so small now. “What do I do?”

She looked up and on her desk lay her white quill and part of a fur blanket she had cut up a few nights ago.

The Globe was just that, a world inside a world. Stretching walls of balconies and seats reach to the surrogate roof of sky. Down below, several humans mill about waving their arms around the space, trying to make it seem larger than it is already.

“Prithee…and the like.”

“Erm…Ed, I do not see that line in the script.” A tall man who had been mulling over the lines stopped pacing around the stage, leaving the white feather in his cap to wag slightly.

“I don’t really know,” said Ed, who was substantially shorter than the other so he had to direct every word up into the heavens. “I thought it sounded nice.”

“This is why I do not pay you to think.” A gruff voice came from the yard below. Christopher Marlowe sat on a small pile of wooden boxes trying to follow along with the script.

“I know,” said Ed. “I just thought it added spice.”

“Spice?” Marlowe pinched the bridge between his eyes. “This is not the palace kitchen, Ed.” He made sure that the last syllable was as sharp as he could make it. “This is a theater. And I work far too hard for some little actor to be making things up as he goes along.”

“Well,” Ed started, getting indignant. “Maybe I should just become a writer myself and come up with my own plays.”

“Well, maybe you should!” Marlowe roared.

Ed screwed up his face and threw his script onto the stage with all his might. As he marched down the yard and out the door, he angrily sidled against another young man who had been trying to come in.

“Oh excuse me, is everything–?”

“Bah!” Ed shouted and, with a final wave of his hand, he was gone. In his place stood a young man, short in stature, with a thin yet respectable mustache above his lip and a white feather tucked neatly into a cloth cap. His bright doe eyes stood out against his dirtied face, which poorly covered a bruise that ran along the side of his cheek. He turned and scanned the space in wonder.

“Hey, boy!” Marlowe called from across the yard. “Can you read?”

“Yes,” he squeaked. Hurriedly the boy cleared his throat. “Yes, I can.”

“Brilliant. Come here.” Marlowe gestured up towards the stage. He thrust the script Ed had thrown into the boy’s hands. Without a second glance, the boy took the script and hurriedly clambered up the stage. He had just found his footing at the top when Marlowe called up, “Hold just a moment there boy.”

The boy froze; his shoulders tensed.

“What is your name?”

“My name?”

“No dear boy, his name.” Marlowe threw his head towards the taller man on stage, his voice dripping in sarcasm. “Of course yours.”

“Mar…Er–Mateo. Sir. Mateo.” Mateo’s hands seemed to tremble. The corners of the script fluttered from the shaking. Marlowe raised an eyebrow.

“By pitch and tone, I hear you are not yet quite a man. But you shall stand in fine until we can find a proper Macbeth.”

“Macbeth? I play Macbeth?”

Marlowe paused. “Yes, why do you ask? Have you heard that name before?”

Red heat started forming down Mateo’s face.

“I–, well, I had merely glanced at these pages here sir. That name comes up quite a bit. I just assumed it was a character of importance.”

“I see.” Marlowe sighed and returned to his makeshift chair among the boxes. “Carry on from where you were John.”

The tall man nodded and turned to face Mateo. The boy jolted as he looked up into John’s face, but said nothing.

“Who dares receive it other,” John had made his voice light and airy. Yet it still filled the arena of brick and timber. Several weeks had now passed. The stage light from the sun had disappeared and was replaced by warm, glittering lamplight around the stage. The seats that were empty upon Mateo’s arrival had since been filled. The yard squirmed with groundlings as the short ones did their best to see over the unrelenting stubbornness of the tall ones.

“As we shall make our griefs and clamor roar upon his death?” John’s voice rang true just as it did when that great den had been empty.

Mateo’s voice then joined in with John’s echo. “I am settled, and bend up each corporal agent to this terrible feat. Away, and mock the time with fairest show; false face must hide what the false heart doth know.”

Then Mateo exited.

Through all those weeks, Mary had said those lines without a mere glance down at her pages. No one, not even Marlowe had noticed. She now stood firm in line at the stage’s apron right next to John in his laces and frills; her feet rooted to her place on stage. She placed the cloth cap with the white quill back on her head after her final exit.

The show was over. A chant rose from the audience.

“Shakespeare! Shakespeare! Shakespeare!”

The cry crashed into monstrous applause and cheers as Marlowe made himself visible among the line of actors. For a moment, Mary saw a flash of red in the audience. But in the very next instant, it was gone. With that, she could feel a final hot, bitter tear fall as she watched Marlowe step from behind the line and embrace the audience. His face shining and clear in the lamplight.