The Waterfall, page 2
I spent the day working on my new play about a moneylender of Venice. George Bryan, who was to play the character of Shylock, was uncertain about a speech that he said would make the groundlings cry, which was out of sorts for a comedy. ‘Ah, but George, they cry so that they can later laugh,’ I told him. He took the thought, and we worked on how best to present the speech. Afterwards I spent some hours writing more, but I had trouble with a scene in a courthouse, wherein Shylock is bested by an old lawyer’s clever words that call first for mercy and then for its very opposite. I could find not the spirit of the scene, and my mind went to a time more than a year beforehand, when Kit had been struggling with his Faustus play in the same way.
We had only been braced together as friends for a few months then – I had come from my home in Stratford-upon-Avon to seek a life more vivid than that of a glovemaker’s son with three mewing children and a wife already turning her eye upon others. I had found work as a player, oftentimes taking the role of the faithful retainer or a comic porter. I would never play the young lover or king, I knew. But I felt it strongly that the playmakers of the day were too poetical in their minds and failing in the drama. Give me tragedy, give me comedy, but do not give me page after page of flowers.
And then I saw Kit’s Tamburlaine. A tale of nations at war, and of a man who controlled them. And his Jew of Malta, where the Hebrew is wicked, but beneath his skin you can see a human heart beat. The sheer danger of The Massacre at Paris as it depicted the killing of our fellow Protestants and agitated for the murder of those across the waters who would undermine England, all watched by an English agent who warns of what is to come. The people of our country, from the lowest drudge to the highest duke, were flocking to his dizzying plays, and with fine reason. Christopher Marlowe’s stages held swathes of history but populated the eye and ear with human lives. Such a blaze of talent he had, such soaring ambition. What I had not realized, until I met the man, was just how much of an arse he could be in person. And I write that as one of his closest friends. Forsooth, I write that as possibly his only remaining friend after what appeared to have been his long campaign to make all the others look upon him as they would an especially careless bullock that had suddenly appeared in their bed chambers.
By the autumn of the year of our Lord one thousand five hundred and ninety, Kit was composing what he said would be his highest glory, The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus, the man who dared to grasp the genius of the Heavens and was dragged down to the fiery pit for it. But after Kit’s pen ran dry of words and we had spent two full days attempting to wet it in the taverns of Cheapside and Southwark, I told him to go home and sleep it off.
‘We must act it out!’ he burbled like an ape, upending the dregs of a flagon of ale upon his crown.
‘What do you mean?’ I answered him – or at least, I thought I did. I was so drunk I might have been addressing a stool.
‘On the morrow. At midnight. Not a minute too soon, not a minute too late. The hour of the witch. Then my Mephistopheles will come!’
I thought he was talking out of his hose, of course.
* * *
Aye, I thought that right up until I was freezing my stones off beneath the clock of St John’s Church in Farringdon in the pitch dark.
‘There should be rain. Thunder. Bugger it, there should be lightning!’ That was Kit, yelling his head off against the lack of strong weather flashing about us. ‘Did you hear what—’
‘Yes, I heard.’ That was me, huddling myself and wishing I had not come.
‘And you two. Do something.’ He jabbed a finger at the others on the scene. ‘Don’t make me come over and do it for you.’
A boy aged perhaps fifteen and a girl ten years older than him were lying on the rough earth. A few sprigs of grass poked into their flesh.
‘Oh, get on with it,’ the girl muttered. ‘I have to be out of my bed in five hours.’
‘You are being well paid.’
‘Thruppence? That won’t even pay the wherry to Chelsea.’
‘Oh, does milady wish for more? Perhaps a barge and chair to remove her to her bawdy house?’
The girl sneezed. ‘The grass does this,’ she said.
Around them were a ring of six torches stuck in the ground.
‘Kit,’ I tried.
‘I can send for a cart, if you want.’
‘I do want!’ She started to push the boy off her.
‘Kit!’
Marlowe took three paces at speed, about to hoof the boy back down. ‘I’ve paid for this debauchery. We’re going to see it through.’
‘Kit! For God’s sake.’
He relented and knelt to the girl. ‘But dearie, we are creating a history. A tragical history. For a few hours, you will be Joan of Arc.’ She blinked in golden ignorance. ‘We must summon a friend to be our audience. His part in the story is as central as the wizard’s.’
‘Another one?’ the girl said. ‘I’m not—’
‘He will do nothing but watch.’
‘Who is he?’
Kit’s crooked smile stretched to the back of his head. ‘The Devil. Beg him for mercy when he comes.’
And that was the end of the night. The two youths upped and ran as much as if Kit had sprouted horns himself. I blamed them not one inch. ‘Run, then!’ he had yelled at their behinds.
Strangely, the memory helped me to write the trial scene with which I had struggled, for it made me wonder: were those who spoke of mercy, but did not grant it, more wicked than those they accused? Yes, I thought they were.
* * *
Within a minute of the clock of St Botolph’s striking eight that night, there was a hammering on my door.
‘For once, Kit comes in good time,’ I said, and Alicette laughed. And when I opened up, there he was. But he had a curious expression upon his face.
‘Can we dine elsewhere?’ he burst out.
‘Where?’ I asked, surprised, though why I should have been surprised by anything he did was itself a strangeness.
‘Bermondsey. I am meeting… some people.’ I noticed that he had something tucked under his arm, a bundle wrapped in what seemed to be sealskin. He followed my gaze and thrust it into my hands. ‘Take it. It is for you.’ I felt a roughness on the surface – grains of sea salt, I thought.
‘Bermondsey?’ After a full day’s working, I was not keen to leave my comfortable home. To delay my decision, I opened the package. Inside were a scroll and a silver coin. The coin was a guilder of the Low Countries. The traders at the docks often used these pieces, and they were well known and commanded respect. ‘What is—’
‘The manuscript,’ he said impatiently.
I unrolled the paper. It was new and had kept dry in the sealskin. Curiously, it was topped with a cartoon of two outstretched hands. Each digit bore a word written in uneven letters up its length.
If I eat, I live. If I drink, I die.
But below the picture were the lines that were the meat of the meal.
I, Christopher Marlowe, born in Canterbury in the sixth year of our splendid Queen’s reign, do bequeath all my worldly goods to my friend Will Shakespere. He may dispose of all said chattels as he wishes. He may burn them if the mood takes him. He may throw them in the sea to stun the fish. He may…
‘Were you in an idle humour when you composed this?’
‘I was, yes.’
I read the rest of the lines. They continued in the same ironical vein.
‘Thank you for the gift, if that is what it is meant to be,’ I said.
‘That is not quite what it is meant to be.’
‘And this?’ I flicked the coin in the air and caught it.
‘Neither is that.’
‘Oh-so-many secrets, Kit.’ I looked again at the inked cartoon. If I eat, I live. If I drink, I die. ‘And what does this mean?’
‘When the time comes, you will know,’ he replied.
‘Heaven’s tears, Kit, it is like talking to the Sphinx.’
‘This is my last will, Will.’ And even in his impatient humour, he could not stop himself laughing at his own jest, as if it were the first time I had ever heard it in my life. ‘Ah, and it might soon be all that is left of me.’
‘Why so?’ I asked, exasperated with his evasion.
‘Come to Bermondsey.’
I had had my fill of him by then. ‘I will not.’
His face fell, all jest gone from it. ‘Will, I know not what to do. Tell me my path.’
‘Your path? How would I know?’
‘You will know if you come to Bermondsey.’
God save me, against my better judgement, I took pity on something within his expression. ‘Bah!’ I said. ‘I will come.’
He clapped his hands to my shoulders. ‘I thank you.’
I betook myself to the scullery and, taking a dry biscuit with cheese, slipped the sealskin package behind the trunk that contained our dishes. ‘I am ready,’ I said, wearily.
* * *
At the edge of the water, by the huge and foreboding Bridewell Hospital for wayward women, where the Fleet flows into the Thames, we found a wherryman huddled into his cloak. He seemed aggrieved that we should employ him in his trade and huffed and puffed like the north wind when we scrambled aboard his boat.
‘Penny a man to Bermondsey,’ mumbled this Charon.
I pointed at Kit.
‘Aye, yes,’ he grumbled, fishing in his purse for a pair of coins, and we set in for the half-hour’s journey downstream to the southern shore of our great artery. The many swans that dabbled on the water were white ghosts in black times. As we passed through the shadow of the Tower, the great stone keep that William of Normandy built, it seemed to glower down upon us, and I wondered which souls condemned to the gallows were watching us through bars and wishing they had just five minutes of our years outside those heavy doors. A fool is the man who lives for tomorrow, never seeing today.
‘You have not told me whom we are to meet,’ I said. Kit glanced my way, then set his sight back on the dark horizon. ‘Tell me.’
‘Men.’
‘I did not think it would be apes. What men?’
‘Scoundrels.’
I was beginning to think I should depart and leave him to his own affairs. ‘More, Kit, or I return to my pipe and Alicette.’
‘Ach,’ he muttered. ‘Men with intelligence of affairs into which I would pry.’
It was his evasion that bolstered my interest. ‘Boatman, turn about. We go back to Bridewell.’
‘Penny a man to Bridewell,’ he said with little concern.
‘A cheap price. He will pay.’
‘Ach!’ Kit muttered once more. ‘Very well. Keep your bearing.’ He sat closer to me and lowered his voice. ‘I have taken on work. Work of a secret nature. I have done it before.’
He was not speaking of playmaking, I knew that. ‘What work?’
‘It began long before you and I met. When I was at Cambridge.’ He watched Charon closely, but the boatman seemed deaf to our speech.
‘Continue.’
‘There was a club of radicals. Young men with heretical thoughts on political and religious life. One of my tutors asked me to tell him what they said. I kept him informed, and he paid my fees through the university.’
‘Who was he?’
He turned his face to me. It was more shadow than flesh. ‘John Whitgift.’
I was taken aback. I knew not that the Archbishop dealt in such matters, though the royal court is surely a nest of spies. ‘He sends you on your errand this night?’
‘My errand this night is part of my duty. Though when all is said and done, it is not the Lord of Canterbury that I serve.’
‘Who is it, then?’
‘England, Will. England.’ And even in the dark, I saw his eyes glitter then. ‘Well, England and Kit Marlowe.’
We followed the river, passing a few merchant ships coming or going with the tide, and tied up at St Saviour’s Dock in Bermondsey, once owned by the warrior Knights Templar. Lolling against a battered carriage with a driver was a thin, beardless fellow in cheap garb, smoking a pipe. ‘Nicholas,’ Kit said with an obvious foul taste in his mouth. ‘Who let you out of the Clink?’
The fellow grinned to show not a single tooth in his head. ‘Mashter Marlowe,’ he slavered, his tongue twisting about like a dying snake. ‘I have not been in that plaish for yearsh.’
‘More’s the pity.’
‘Oh, a-ha-ha-ha,’ cried the thin one with as much true mirth as a hyena. ‘Yesh, yesh, it ish a pity. Yesh, it ish. I have been ashked to take you to meet shome gentlemen.’
‘Have you?’
‘Aye, aye, I have.’ He waved his arm at the carriage, which was fully enclosed and had grille windows. ‘And who ish your friend?’
‘Master Will Shakespere. A playmaker of growing repute.’
‘Ish he now, ish he now?’ He stroked his beardless chin.
‘Aye,’ I said. ‘I am.’ A revulsion against this creature was growing in my stomach.
The man smiled genially. ‘Come then, let ush be on our way.’ We all climbed into the carriage. Its benches were wet even though it was a dry night.
We set off, the two horses clipping on the cobbles of the wharf. We rounded a large, tumbledown building that might have been an abandoned store, and steered out onto a high road, passing a few late sailors and the women who serve their wants. All the while, the creature Nicholas was burbling to himself. Eventually his sounds resolved into human words.
‘Ah, but I regret that the gentlemen we are meeting will be deshiroush of a degree of shecrecy.’
‘What are you babbling?’ I demanded.
He reached to the windows and folded shutters across them, blocking entirely our view of the outside world. My hand went to the poniard in my boot, but Kit stayed me.
‘All will be well,’ he said, though I was not of his mind.
‘We do but travel, shirrah. No more than that.’
‘Will, for my sake.’
I relented.
We travelled for hours through what felt to my rump to be city streets, then country lanes. Expensive beeswax candles gave us light inside, but we had little use for it, for we spoke not a single word during that time, until the wheels seemed to turn from rural mud onto stones once more and the coachman pulled his beasts up.
‘We are arrived,’ said our little Mephistopheles.
‘I had guessed that,’ I replied.
‘Mashter Shakeshpere will have his jesht.’ He opened the door. The moon was fully overhead, so we must have been on the roads for three or four hours, and its light fell on a country cottage. It looked shut and dark to me. ‘After you, Mashter Shakeshpere.’
I was tired and pained by the journey such that my limbs barely worked, but I was able to stumble out onto the pitted highway. I stretched my stiff back and thought that I would betake myself to the roadside to empty my bladder. I was turning to tell my companions so, when two burly shadows seemed to rise from the ground itself. Sensing danger like a dog, I started to yell a warning, but at the very moment the sound formed in my throat something heavy and wooden cracked onto my crown. My knees gave way, and I found myself in the muddy ruts. I tried to lift my head, but another hard swipe of the weapon to my skull and a guttural ‘Stay down’ kept me in my place as the two shadows flew into the coach. Despite their order, I tried to stand and shout, but neither my legs nor my voice lifted. And all I saw was the coachman hie the horses away into the gloom.
I lay there groaning until my brain came to itself and I could stand and walk. Knowing nothing of where I was, I chose the direction that the coach had gone. Yet it was hard and very slow going in the total dark, such that I gave up after less than an hour and rolled myself into a ball by the roadside, there to rest until the dawn when I might make better progress.
* * *
Thus it was that my eyes blinked open to find myself on a bed of daisies and cowslip. For a full minute, I was at beautiful peace in that bucolic natural garden. But then my memory began to return. ‘Kit?’ I said, lifting my head. There was no one on the road, which stretched as far as I could see in each direction. I heard sheep somewhere, but they were not in sight. At least I could walk well enough.
I knew not even which county I was in, so choosing a direction of travel was like throwing dice. I chose to go north, for that was more like to be towards London, unless we had crossed the Thames without my knowledge.
I found blackberries along the way and drank from a cool stream, which aided my head. And I gained luck when a shepherd in a field pointed my way to the village of Sidcup. When there, I begged a little bread from a young wife sitting in her cottage window. I asked if she knew of any coach that had passed by late at night. She had no idea of what I spoke, and I thanked her. I tried to sell my boots for a cart-ride to London, but was met with only laughter. They told me it was eight hours’ stride, and I resolved myself to the walk, passing the grand old Eltham Palace, another of the fat king’s homes, on the way. The sound of boys gaily practising tilting on horseback drifted out from its gardens.
When I finally reached the streets of London, pestilent as they were, and my feet so sore I would have walked on my hands had I been able, I felt my heart lift.
Yet I was greatly afeared for Kit and knew not where he was lodging or any other way to find him. So as soon as I crossed my threshold, I sent notes to all our friends asking urgently for news of him. All I could do in the waiting time was betake myself to bed for the rest that I needed. My mind and body were so ruined that as soon as I fell upon my bed, I was dead to all the world.
* * *
The next day some replies had come but only saying that they had not heard of Kit for months. I went then between all our remaining acquaintances, to the theatres north and south of the river, to every tavern and stew that I knew he frequented. Nothing.
