Work Text:
Anne Shakespeare held her newest grandchild on her lap and laughed. The first girl born to one of her daughters, although they had a brace of sons between them, and Judith had just told her what her name was to be. Not "Anne" for her, although that would have been reasonable, nor Susannah for her sister, or any one of the perfectly respectable names just waiting to be plucked from the branches of her or Will's family tree.
No, this new soul was going to go through the world with the name of 'Viola.' She looked at Judith, trying to see if her daughter knew, had somehow guessed...but her eyes were guileless, showing only delight in having managed to shock her mother, and the shadows of exhaustion that had never quite left her eyes since her first child was born.
"Viola," she said, laying a finger tip on the child's nose and watching it wrinkle in reaction, "a name you found in one of your father's plays, I imagine?"
Judith beamed, "Isn't it lovely? I was torn between Viola and Miranda, but Viola just sounds so much prettier. Do you like it, mama?"
Anne smiled and handed the baby back to her mother before she started to fuss. "Yes, love, I like it very much indeed. Now go and let your sister have a turn with her - you know she's been waiting and waiting for a little girl to spoil."
As she watched Judith walk away with the baby, humming a song that Anne had sung to all of her children when they were small, she settled herself against the chair and let herself drift back in time. She took out the treasured memories and unfurled them along her senses, one by one. Her nose filled with the smell of sawdust and paint, and the indescribable sent of the London public confined to a small space. She heard herself reciting lines over and over, committing to memory her husband's glorious words, and then saying them again in front of the crowd, imbuing them with as much truth and honesty as the pretty lies could hold. She felt the cheap-dyed fabric rough against her skin, and she saw again the laughing faces of the audience and the surprised joy that lit Will's face like a sunrise.
It was not something they could have risked more than once, nor a secret they had ever shared with any but each other, but the gift of knowing that part of his world from the inside was a joy that had sustained her through all the long years alone in Stratford.
