Ruled Britannia Part 25

Marlowe snorted. "I hope I must not wait so long as that." He hugged the breath out of Shakespeare, and kissed him half on the mouth, half on the cheek. "You give good counsel. I'll take it, an I may."

"I'll pray for you," Shakespeare said.

"Belike 'twill do me no lasting harm," Marlowe answered. Having got the last word, he hurried away. The fog m.u.f.fled his footsteps, and soon swallowed them. Shakespeare sighed. He'd done what he could. If nothing else, he'd talked Marlowe out of his blind panic. That mattered. It might matter a great deal.

"It might," Shakespeare muttered, trying to convince himself.

He made his way through the thick, swirling mist to the Widow Kendall's house. His landlady sat in the parlor, poking up the fire. "I wondered if we'd lost you, Master Will," she said as he closed the door behind him. "Thick as clotted cream out there."

"So it is," Shakespeare agreed. Beads of fog dotted his face and trickled from his beard, as sweat would have on a hot day.

"Will you waste my wood, to give you light wherewith to write?" his landlady asked.

"An it serve my purpose, madam, I reckon it no waste," Shakespeare said with dignity.

"Nay, and why should you?" the Widow Kendall replied. " 'Tis not you buying the wood you burn."

"Not so," Shakespeare said. "I buy it with the rent you have of me each month." She sent him a stony stare. Not wanting her angry at him, he added, "Be that as it may, I need no wood tonight. I finished a play at my ordinary, by the fine, clear light of the candles therein."

"I am glad to hear it," Jane Kendall said, "both for the sake of my wood and for the sake of your rent. So long as you keep writing, so long as your company buys your plays, you'll pay me month by month, eh?"

"Just so," Shakespeare agreed. Where Marlowe was pure, self-centered will, the Widow Kendall was equally pure, self-centered greed.

"And what call you this one?" she asked. "Will't fetch you a fine, fat fee?"

"Very fine, G.o.d willing," he said. As he had with Kate, he fought shy of naming Boudicca for her.

"Good, good," she said, smiling. His money, or some of it, was destined to become her money. "Is this the play on the life of good King Philip, then? That surely deserveth more than a common fee, its subject also being more than common."

He shook his head. "No, that will be a history--a pageant, almost a masque. The play I just now finished is a tragedy." That much, he thought he could safely say.

"I'll tell you what's a tragedy, Master Shakespeare," the Widow Kendall said. "What I needs must pay for firewood--marry, 'tis the bleeding of mine own life's blood . . ."She went on complaining till Shakespeare took advantage of a brief lull to slip away to his bedroom. Jack Street lay on his back, his mouth wide open, making the night hideous. Me? I snore not, the glazier had insisted. Shakespeare laughed quietly. Street might not be able to hear himself, but everyone else could.

After a moment, the poet's laughter faltered. So far as he could tell, Street recalled nothing of the argument they'd had at Easter. Whatever Cicely Sellis had done to him, its effect lingered. Maybe it wasn't witchcraft. Shakespeare had yet to find another name that fit half so well, though.

He put his papers and pens and ink in his chest, and made sure the lock clicked shut. Then he pulled off his shoes, shed his ruff, and lay down on the bed in doublet and hose. His eyes slid shut. Maybe he snored, too. If he did, he never knew it.

When he woke the next morning, Jack Street's bed was empty. Sam King was dressing for another day of pounding London's unforgiving streets looking for work. "G.o.d give you good morrow, Master Will,"

he said as Shakespeare sat up and rubbed his eyes.

"And a good morrow to you as well," Shakespeare answered around a yawn.

"I'm for a bowl of the widow's porridge, and then whatever I can find," King said. The porridge was liable to be the only food he got all day. He had to know as much, but didn't fuss about it.

Shakespeare couldn't help admiring that bleak courage. "Good fortune go before you," he said.

King laughed. "Good fortune hath ever gone before me: so far before me, I see it not. An I run fast enough, though, peradventure I'll catch it up." He bobbed his head in a shy nod, then hurried out to the Widow Kendall's kitchen for whatever bubbled in her pot this morning.

Shakespeare broke his fast on porridge, too. Having eaten, he went up to the Theatre for the day's rehearsal. He worried all the way there. If inquisitors came after Cicely Sellis, would they search everywhere in the house? If they opened his chest and saw the ma.n.u.script of Boudicca, he was doomed.

And another question, one that had been in the back of his mind, now came forward: even with Boudicca finished, how could the company rehea.r.s.e it without being betrayed? The players would have to rehea.r.s.e. He could see that. When word of Philip's death reached England, they would--they might--give the play on the shortest of notice. They would have to be ready. But how? Yes, he saw the question clearly. The answer? He shook his head.

He was among the first of the company to get to the Theatre. Richard Burbage paced across the stage like a caged wolf--back and forth, back and forth. He nodded to Shakespeare as the poet came in through the groundlings' entrance. "G.o.d give you good day, Will," he boomed. "How wags your world?"

Even with only a handful of people in the house, he pitched his voice so folk in the upper gallery--of whom there were at the moment none--could hear him with ease.

"I fare well enough," Shakespeare answered. "And you? Wherefore this prowling?"

"I am to be Alexander today," Burbage reminded him. "As he pursues Darius, he is said to be relentless."

He waved a sheet of paper with his part and stage directions written out. "Seemed I to you relentless?"

"Always," Shakespeare said. Burbage pursued wealth and fame with a singlemindedness that left the poet half jealous, half appalled.

Laughing, Burbage said, "It is one of Kit's plays, mind. A relentless man of his is twice as relentless as any other poet's, as an angry man of his hath twice the choler and a frightened man twice the fear. With his mighty line, he is never one to leave the auditors wondering what sort of folk his phantoms be."Shakespeare nodded. "Beyond doubt, you speak sooth. But come you down." He gestured. "I'd have a word with you."

"What's toward?" Burbage sat at the edge of the stage, then slid down into the groundlings' pit.

In a low voice, Shakespeare said, "Marlowe is fled. I pray he be fled. Anthony Bacon, belike, was but the first boy-lover the dons and the inquisitors sought. An Kit remain in England, I'd give not a groat for his life."

"A pox!" Burbage exclaimed, as loud as ever--loud enough to make half a dozen players and stagehands look toward him to see what had happened. He muttered to himself, then went on more quietly: "How know you this?"

"From Kit's own lips," Shakespeare answered. "He found me yesternight. I bade him get hence, quick as ever he could--else he'd not stay quick for long. G.o.d grant he hearkened to me."

"Ay, may it be so." Burbage made a horrible face. "May it be so indeed. But e'en Marlowe fled's a heavy blow strook against the theatre. For all his cravings sodomitical--and for all his fustian bombast, too--he's the one man I ken fit to measure himself alongside you."

"I thank you for your kindness, the which he would not do." Shakespeare sighed. "We are of an age, you know. But he came first to London, first to the theatre. I daresay he reckoned me but an upstart crow.

And when my name came to signify more than his, it gnawed at him as the vulture at Prometheus his liver." He remembered how very full of spleen Marlowe had been when Thomas Phelippes pa.s.sed over him for this plot.

"Never could he dissemble," Burbage said, "not for any cause." In an occupied kingdom, he might have been reading Marlowe's epitaph.

"I know." Shakespeare sighed again. "I sent him down to the Thames. I hope he found a ship there, one bound for foreign parts. If not a ship, a boatman who'd bear him out of London to some part whence he might get himself gone."

"Boatmen there aplenty, regardless of the hour." Richard Burbage seemed to be trying to convince himself as much as Shakespeare. After a moment, he added, "What knows Kit of . . . your enterprise now in train?"

"That such an enterprise is in train, the which is more than likes me," Shakespeare answered. It was also less than the truth, he realized, remembering the copy of the Annals Marlowe had given him. But he said no more to Burbage. What point to worrying the player? If the Spaniards or the English Inquisition caught Marlowe, he knew enough to put paid to everyone and everything. And what he knew he would tell; he had not the stuff of martyrs in him.

"They seek him but for sodomy." Yes, Burbage was trying to rea.s.sure himself. Sodomy by itself was a fearsome crime, a capital crime. Next to treason, though, it was the moon next to the sun.

"The enterprise"--Shakespeare liked that bloodless word--"goes on apace. Last night, or ever I saw Marlowe, I wrote finis to Boudicca."

"Good. That's good, Will." Burbage set a hand on his shoulder. "Now G.o.d keep Boudicca from writing finis to us all."

A SQUAD OF Spanish soldiers at his back, Lope de Vega strode along the northern bank of the Thames, not far from London Bridge. Not so long ago, he'd taken a boat across the river with Nell Lumley to see the bear-baiting in Southwark. He kicked a pebble into the river. He'd crossed the Thames with his mistress--with one of his mistresses--but he'd come back alone.

He straightened, fighting against remembered humiliation. Hadn't he been getting tired of Nell anyway?

Now that he was in love with Lucy Watkins, what did the other Englishwoman matter?

One of the troopers with him pointed. "There's another boatman, se?or ."

"Gracias, Miguel. I see him, too," Lope answered. He shifted to English to call out to the fellow: "G.o.d give you good day."

"And to you, sir." The boatman swept off his ragged hat (which, in an earlier, a much earlier, life had probably belonged to a gentleman) and gave de Vega an awkward bow. "Can't carry you and all your friends, sir, I fear me." His gap-toothed smile showed that was meant for a jest.

Lope smiled back. Some wherrymen took their boats out into the Thames empty to keep from talking to him. He'd do what he could to keep this one happy. With a bow of his own--a bow he was careful not to make too smooth, lest it be seen as mockery--he said, "Might I ask you somewhat?"

"Say on, Master Don. I'll answer."

Better and better, de Vega thought. "Were you here on the river night before last?"

"That I was, your honor," the boatman replied. "Meseems I'm ever here. Times is hard. Needs must get what coin I can, eh?"

"Certes," Lope said. "Now, then--saw you a gentleman, an English gentleman, that evening? A man of my years, he would be, more or less, handsome, round-faced, with dark hair longer than mine own and a thin fringe of beard. He styles himself Christopher Marlowe, or sometimes Kit."

He looked for another pebble to kick, but didn't find one. He did not want to hunt Marlowe, not after spending so much time with him in tiring rooms and taverns. But if what he wanted and what his kingdom wanted came into conflict, how could he do anything but his duty?

The wherryman screwed up his face in badly acted thought. "I cannot rightly recollect, sir," he said at last.

"That surprises me not," Lope said sourly, and gave him a silver sixpence. He'd already spent several shillings, and got very little back for his money.

Nor did he this time. The boatman pocketed the coin and took off his hat again. "Gramercy, your honor.

G.o.d bless you for showing a poor man kindness. I needs must say, though, I saw me no such man." He spread his oar-callused hand in apology.

A couple of Lope's troopers knew some English. One of them said, "We ought to give that b.a.s.t.a.r.d a set of lumps for playing games with us."

Maybe the boatman understood some Spanish. He pointed to the next fellow with a rowboat, saying, "Haply George there knows somewhat of him you seek."

"We shall see," Lope said in English. In Spanish, he added, "I wouldn't waste my time punishing this motherless lump of dung." If the boatman could follow that, too bad.The trooper who'd suggested beating the fellow said, "This river smells like a motherless lump of dung."

He wrinkled his nose.

Since he was right, Lope couldn't very well disagree with him. All he said was, "Come on. Let's see what George there has to say." Let's see if I can waste another sixpence.

Gulls soared above the Thames in shrieking swarms. One swooped down and came up with a length of gut as long as Lope's arm in its beak. Half a dozen others chased it, eager to steal the prize. De Vega's stomach did a slow lurch. A pursuing gull grabbed the gut and made away with it. The bird that had scooped it from the water screeched in anger and frustration.

Boats of all sizes went up and down the river. "Westward ho!" shouted the wherrymen bound for Westminster or towns farther up the Thames. "Eastward ho!" shouted the men heading towards the North Sea. Westbound and eastbound boats had to dodge those going back and forth between London and Southwark. Sometimes they couldn't dodge, and fended one another off with oars and poles and impa.s.sioned curses.

"Consumption catch thee, thou gorbellied knave!" a boatman yelled.

"Jolt-head! Botchy core! Moon-calf! Louse of a lazar!" returned the fellow who'd fallen foul of him.

Instead of trying to hold their boats apart, they started jabbing at each other with their poles. One of them went into the river with a splash.

"Not the worst sport to watch," a Spanish soldier said.

"S?-," Lope said, and then went back to English, calling, "You there, sirrah! Be you George?"

"Ay, 'tis the name my mother gave me," the wherryman answered. "What would you, se?or ?" He p.r.o.nounced it more like the English word senior.

De Vega asked him about Marlowe. He waited for the vacant stare he'd seen so many times before. To his surprise, he didn't get it. Instead, George nodded. "I carried such a man, yes," he said. "What's he done? Some cozening law, an I mistake me not. A barrator, peradventure, or a figure caster. Summat shrewd."

"Whither took you him?" Lope asked, excitement rising in him. Marlowe wasn't (so far as Lope knew) an agent provocateur or an astrologer, but he was a clever man--though he might have been more clever not to let his cleverness show. "Tell me!"

Now George looked blank. De Vega paid him without hesitation. The boatman eyed the little silver coin, murmured, "G.o.d bless the Queen and the King," and made it disappear. He nodded to Lope. "As you say, sir, not yesternight, but that afore't. Ten of the clock, methinks, or a bit later. I'd fetched back a gentleman and his lady from the bear-baiting at Southwark. . . ." He pointed across the Thames, as if towards a foreign country.

"I know of the bear-baiting, and of crossing the river," Lope said tightly. He knew more of such things than he'd wanted to. Shaking his head didn't make the memories go away. "What then?"

"Why, then, sir, I bethought myself, should I hie me home, for that it was a foggy night and for that curfew would come anon, or should I stay yet a while to see what chance might give? Fortune brings in some boats that are not steered, they say. And my boat--the wight whereof I speak, you understand--"

"Yes, yes." Lope fought to hide his impatience. Did this ignorant wherryman think him unable to grasp a metaphor? "Say on, sirrah. Say on.""I'll do't," George said. "This wight came along the river seeking a boat. 'Whither would you?' I asked him. I mind me the very words he said. He said, 'You could row me to h.e.l.l, and to-night I'd thank you for't.' Then he made as if to shake his head, and laughed a laugh that left me sore afeard, for meseemed 'twas a madman's laugh, and could be none other. And he said, 'Why this is h.e.l.l, nor am I out of it.' I thought him daft, but--I see you stir, your honor. Know you these words?"

"I do. I know them well. They are from a play, a play writ by the man I seek. That your man spake them proves him that very man. Were he mad or not, you took his penny?"

The boatman nodded. "I did, for a madman's penny spends as well as any other. He bade me take him to Deptford, to the Private Dock there, and so I did. A longer pull than some I make, for which reason I told him I'd have tuppence, in fact, not just the single penny, and he gave it me."

"To Deptford, say you?" That was a shrewd choice. It was close to London, but beyond the city's jurisdiction, lying in the county of Kent. Till the Armada came, it had been a leading English naval yard; even now, many merchant ships tied up at the Private Dock. Lope knew he would have to go through the motions of pursuit, but any chance of catching Marlowe was probably long gone.

"Ay, sir. Deptford. He was quiet as you please in the boat--even dozed somewhat. I thought I'd judged too quick. But he was ta'en strange again leaving the boat. He looked about him, and he said, 'h.e.l.l hath no limits, nor is circ.u.mscribed in one self place; for where we are is h.e.l.l, and where h.e.l.l is there must we ever be.' I had a priest bless the boat, sir, the very next day, to be safe." He crossed himself.

Had he been a Catholic while Elizabeth ruled England? Maybe, but Lope wouldn't have bet a ha'penny on it. He also made the sign of the cross. "I think you need not fear," he told the wherryman. "Once more, Marlowe but recited words he had earlier writ." He wasn't surprised Marlowe had quoted his own work. He would have been surprised--he would have been thunderstruck--had Marlowe quoted, say, Shakespeare. The man was too full of himself for that.

"Are you done with me, sir?" George asked.

"Nearly." Lope took out a sheet of paper and pen and ink. He wrote, in Spanish, a summary of what the boatman had said. "Have you your letters?" he asked. As he'd expected, George shook his head. Lope thrust paper and pen at him. "Make your mark below my writing, then."

"What say the words?" The boatman couldn't even tell English from Spanish. De Vega translated. George took the pen and made a sprawling X. De Vega and one of his soldiers who was literate witnessed the mark. George asked, "Why seek you this fellow?" Maybe, despite the sixpence, he regretted talking to a Spaniard.

Too late for your second thoughts now, Lope thought as he answered, "Because he is a sodomite."

"Oh." Whatever regrets the Englishman might have had disappeared. "G.o.d grant you catch him, then. A filthy business, b.u.g.g.e.ry."

"Yes." De Vega nodded. He meant it, too. And yet, all the same, no small part of him did mourn the pursuit of Marlowe. True, the man violated not only the law of England and Spain but also that of G.o.d.

But G.o.d had also granted him a truly splendid gift of words. Lope wondered why the Lord had chosen to give the same man the great urge to sin and the great gift. That, though, was G.o.d's business, not his.

While he spoke in English with the wherryman, the soldier who'd witnessed the man's statement told the other troopers what was going on. One of them asked, "Sir, do we go down the river to this Deptford place?""I think we do," Lope answered, not quite happily. "I hope the Englishmen there don't obstruct us."

"If they do, we give 'em a good kick in the cojones, and after that they won't any more," another soldier said. The rest laughed the wolfish laughs of men who looked forward to giving the English another good kick.

George's boat wouldn't hold Lope and all his men. They had to walk along the riverside till they found a wherryman who could take the lot of them to Deptford. De Vega paid him, and off they went. "Eastward ho!" the boatman cried at the top of his lungs.

Though Deptford lay just down the Thames from London, Lope was conscious of being in a different world when he got out of the boat. London brawled. Deptford ambled. And he and his troopers drew more surprised looks and more hard looks in five minutes in Deptford than they would have in a day in London. London was England's beating heart, and the Spaniards had to hold it to help Isabella and Albert hold the kingdom. That meant they were an everyday presence there. Not in Deptford; once they'd closed the naval shipyard there, they'd left the place to its own devices.

Lope hadn't been asking questions along the wharfs for very long before a sheriff came up to question him. The fellow wore a leather tunic over his doublet to keep it clean, a black felt hat with a twisted hatband, slops, hose dyed dark blue with woad, and st.u.r.dy shoes. The staff of office he carried could double as a formidable club. He introduced himself as Peter Norris.