“How did the battle fare?” Kempe asked with only a modicum of interest. “And Sidney?”
“Well: we won. Sidney’s concern, as far as I was able to determine, was more for women than for fighting—or for theatre.”
One of the men chuckled. “Always has been.”
And most in the pub relaxed.
But Kempe pressed. “What did Sidney say about our play?”
“He has rededicated it to the Queen,” Marlowe began, “and, I believe, the ending is quite different from the previous incarnation.”
There it was. If these men were involved in the plot to kill Elizabeth, they would understand that the end of the play would also mean the end of the Queen. Marlowe tried to watch every face, read each expression.
The man who had laughed spoke up. “Do you know what parts we are to play?”
“That’s up to the other man,” Kempe snapped. “The one who’s organized us here.”
Marlowe did his best not to betray confusion. What other man?
But everyone else in the place nodded, somewhat solemnly, and Marlowe knew better than to press that issue.
Luckily, Went the innkeeper appeared from the kitchen bringing Marlowe food and drink.
“This is the gentleman,” Went announced to everyone, “who picked me up on his horse, carried my sacks of grain—and him a stranger to me.”
“Some of us know Mr. Marlowe,” Kempe said.
Just then Marlowe spied a face he recognized. It was the boy who had played the part of Anna in his ill-fated presentation of Dido at The Pickerel Inn. That seemed a hundred years ago. What was his name?
He tried to look away, but Marlowe smiled and said to him, “I never did give you your fee for helping me with that monster of a piece in Cambridge, did I?”
“Kyd payed me, sir,” the boy squeaked.
“He did? Good. I must remember to thank him.”
“If he survives the Tower,” Kempe said under his breath.
“Kyd’s in the Tower.” Marlowe shook his head; feigned amazement.
“You’ve been away,” Kempe said as Marlowe sat down. “Something’s afoot at The Curtain. Kyd’s taken, as well as poor old Ned Blank.”
“Do we know why?” Marlowe asked.
Went set down the food and drink in front of Marlowe and stood by, waiting to hear Kempe’s response.
“I would imagine someone caught them cavorting,” Kempe said softly.
Others nodded.
“Thomas Kyd is my friend,” Marlowe said plainly. “Whatever else he is, he’s the finest poet of our day, and does not deserve such treatment.”
Everyone nodded.
“Ned’s the one what showed me how,” the boy who played Anna lamented. “A mentor to me.”
“Well.” Marlowe lifted his tankard. “Their health, then. And let them out of that damned prison.”
Everyone assented. Marlowe picked up his plate, still standing with his back to the bar, and dug into his food.
“But we’ve assembled here of a purpose,” he said to Kempe, his mouth full.
“Aye.” Kempe nodded. “We’re to get our parts, and the lines, and a bit of added instruction from our progenitor. But then you’d have the script with you, would you not?”
“I would not,” Marlowe answered. “I was to get it from Sidney’s wife, Frances Walsingham, tomorrow.”
Kempe sat back. “I was told that another woman had it.”
Marlowe nodded. “Penelope Rich.”
Kempe stared, eyes steady. “Is your appearance here is a bit coincidental, or did you know about this meeting?”
Marlowe shook his head, still eating vigorously. “Went offered me a free meal. What poet ever turned that down? And, in truth, this place has a reputation for actors.”
“And you say you’ve just been in the Lowlands?”
“I was there,” Marlowe affirmed, “killing Spaniards—while you were playing carrier pigeon.”
Marlowe’s voice and demeanor had not changed even though his attitude had. It took Kempe a moment to realize he’d been insulted.
“Listen, boy,” Kempe bristled, “I was riding little ponies like you when you were sucking your mother’s teat.”
Marlowe set down his tankard. “I don’t care to hear about your amorous adventures with ponies. And as to my mother’s anatomy—”
Without another breath Marlowe tossed his plate aside, drew his dagger, and strode to Kempe’s table. Before Kempe could rise, the point of Marlowe’s blade was pressed just under Kempe’s ample chin. A single tear of blood grew there, like a droplet of red rain.
“It would be a great loss to the London theatre if you were unable to speak your lines,” Marlowe said softly. “But if I push this knife a little harder, it’ll push through the fat and slice your tongue. And there goes your diction.”
Kempe was very still. “Your reputation for being quarrelsome is well founded, I see,” he allowed. “They say you killed a fellow student at Cambridge just because you didn’t like the color of his codpiece.”
“Ah, you mean Walter Pygott.” Marlowe nodded. “He was a bully and he deserved what he got.”
No need to explain that he hadn’t died at Marlowe’s hand. It was good to have a reputation as a rash brawler. And overreacting to Kempe’s insult had very neatly changed the subject from Sidney and the Netherlands—a subject too risky to pursue.
“Well, I’m not certain I deserve this blade at my gullet,” Kempe said, “but now that I think of it, it may have been some other breast at which you have sucked. You have a reputation with les femmes as well, do you not?”
Marlowe pressed the point just a little. “Reputation is a false imposition; got without merit; lost without cause. I prefer the observation of deeds over the idle gossip of fishwives, street whores, and actors. So I will say this: though your reputation is that of our nation’s finest clown, I have seen you act. And my observation is this: every good thing ever said about you has not done you justice. You are ten times the actor they say you are, and more. You are a man of true greatness. And so I completely forgive you reference to my mother’s teat—especially as I am so very familiar with that part of your own mother. There.”
The dagger was gone and Marlowe offered his hand, grinning.
The entire crowd burst into applause and laughter, including Went and Kempe.
“Ah, well said!” Kempe shouted. “With that golden tongue, you couldn’t be nearly as bad a poet as they say!”
Marlowe sat back down, still smiling. “I don’t know—ask that boy there. He was recently in a play of mine that nearly got us both killed, it was just that bad.”
“It’s true,” the boy told everyone, laughing harder. “In Cambridge.”
Everyone roared again.
There, thought Marlowe. My scene was well played. I am one of them now.
* * *
Midmorning on the road to the Bell Inn, Gelis slowed the horse, and his cart creaked to a halt. His wife was asleep in the back; his son was on the seat beside him.
The boy looked up at his father.
“Why did you stop?” he asked.
“I’m not quite certain,” Gelis answered absently. “Something is not right.”
Growling, his wife called from inside the cart, “Why have we stopped? Have we arrived at the Bell?”
“He says something’s not right,” the boy answered.
“I am vexed by my debt to Leonora Beak,” Gelis mumbled.
“It’s paid!” she cried.
“There’s something more afoot,” Gelis insisted.
“I’m hot,” the boy complained. “Could we at least get out of the sun?”
Gelis sniffed and then urged the horse forward toward a stand of trees up ahead. As he did he wondered at his uneasiness.
“Something’s troubling my brain,” he said to no one in particular.
“It’s probably just rattling around in that big empty skull you call a head,” his wife answered. “Maybe your bra
in’s come loose, eh?”
“It’s about Lord Grem.”
His wife instantly poked her head out from the cart, between her husband and her son.
“I’ve asked you not to speak the name of the Weird King,” she admonished. “Did I tell you that he come into the kitchen when I was cooking and made some odd pronouncements over the food?”
Gelis turned to his wife. “Odd pronouncements?”
“He says, ‘I hear you’ve had business with one Christopher Marlowe.’ And I says, ‘No business.’ And he says, ‘But Gelis knows him.’ And I says, ‘No.’ And he says, ‘That is not what was told to me.’ And I says, ‘Well.’ But then, it was only a little later that he and his band of hooligans was shooting at us on the road. I think he was spying on us from the Bell to London, nearabouts.”
“That’s the Weird Folk,” said the boy. “They know things others don’t.”
The cart stopped again.
“You spoke with Grem at the Bell Inn?” Gelis asked.
“Aye,” she affirmed.
“Why wouldn’t you tell me that before now?”
She raised her eyebrows. “Didn’t like to worry you. It was strange there at the inn, and the red doctor was there, and the innkeeper wounded. Then the wild girl Leonora shows up—who knows what’s on her mind. I kept it to myself.”
“Why?”
“I keep things to myself!” she snapped. “You worry too much!”
“You do worry,” the boy agreed.
“Shut it,” Gelis said gently.
“I’d feel better if we was headed back to Scotland,” the wife said, disappearing back into the cart. “Don’t care to go to the Netherlands. Don’t like the Dutch Travelers. They’re too clean.”
* * *
It was noon in London when Kyd and Ned Blank stumbled out of their cells in the Tower of London. No word of explanation for the release was offered, and none asked. They both walked as fast as they could out into the sunlight and tried very hard not to look anyone in the eye.
“Bugger a bung hole,” Ned swore once they were a few blocks from the Tower. “What in the name of Christ happened to us?”
“Were you questioned?” Kyd asked, walking faster than Ned.
“Not one single whisper the whole time. You?”
“I spent all my time shivering and praying,” Kyd admitted.
“This was all about that mess you got me into,” Ned scolded, “puffing off to the Netherlands and cooking up trouble.”
Kyd stopped and put his hand on Ned’s shoulder.
“I’m sorry, Ned,” Kyd said earnestly.
Ned turned to see Kyd’s face, a mask of contrition. “Sorry? Take your hand from my shoulder and your influence from my life.”
He shook free and raced away, disappearing into the crowd.
Kyd stood in the street, crowd shoving past him.
After a moment a young, red-faced man in brown apprentice clothes bumped into Kyd. The boy was carrying twenty or so tin pots.
“Move!” the boy screamed.
“Wrong man, wrong day, wrong tone,” Kyd said loudly.
Then he spun around and shoved his dagger into the boy’s gut—three times. As the boy fell, Kyd grabbed a pot.
Boy and pots clattered to the ground, but Kyd was already down the block, pot under one arm, steering for the nearest pub or the nearest fight, whichever came first.
* * *
At that same moment, Marlowe stood at Robert Rich’s door, pounding on it. After a moment the familiar servant appeared.
“Ah,” the man said with unabashed disdain, “Mr. Marlowe again.”
“Lady Penelope,” Marlowe snapped, devoid of manners.
“In the garden. If you will allow me—”
Without waiting for guidance, Marlowe brushed past the servant and ran.
“I know the way,” he called.
Racing through the house and out into the garden, as he had before, he found Penelope sitting on the same bench, dressed all in gold, staring into a looking glass and whispering to herself.
“Penelope,” he said, slowing to a quick walk as he approached her.
She turned. She smiled. “Marlowe.”
“Sir Philip left a certain manuscript with you,” Marlowe said, all business. “It’s a masque, The Lady of May. You know the one I mean.”
“Marlowe,” she repeated. “Where is Philip?”
“Still in the Netherlands. I am to realize his play for the Queen.”
“So abrupt.” She seemed hurt.
But that was one of her tricks. She pouted as if it were her profession. She would feign a wound, her victim would attend to it, and she would have him.
“I must have the most recent rewrites today,” Marlowe continued coldly, “in order to rehearse the company. The performance is only days hence.”
Penelope lowered her voice. “And the play’s the thing wherein you’ll—”
“Yes, so Kyd says in another play,” Marlowe interrupted. “The deed will be done near the end of the piece. As planned.”
All guesswork on Marlowe’s part, but how else would a good piece of theatre operate? Save the climax for the end, build to it, and then, just before the thing was over: catharsis—in this case, the death of a queen.
“I have it in a hidden place, of course,” she whispered. “In my bedchamber.”
“I’ll wait here in the garden while you fetch it,” Marlowe said at once.
She looked away. “There was a time when you would have raced me to my bed.”
“When I was a child I behaved as a child,” Marlowe answered. “When I became a man, I put away childish things.”
“That’s all I am now,” she moaned, “a childish thing?”
Marlowe’s gaze was stern. “You know what is at stake in this matter.”
“That’s a man for you,” she protested as she stood up. “When intrigue walks in the door, love flies out the window.”
“The script,” Marlowe insisted.
“I shall fetch it as instructed,” she said, brushing by, not looking at him, “and return with all haste.”
“Penelope,” Marlowe sighed. “Robert Rich is the envy of every other man in London. You are his jewel.”
She stopped but did not look back.
“A jewel is a hard thing,” she said softly. “It may cut glass. It must also sparkle whenever a light is shown upon it, whether or not it feels like shining. A jewel is a possession, Kit. Nothing more.”
With that she swept across the garden walk and into the house.
THIRTY
That afternoon at The Curtain Theatre, dozens of actors had gathered, in costume, to rehearse Sidney’s newly revised piece called The Lady of May. Marlowe examined the assembled from a place in the shadows, but the makeup and costuming hid all true identity. So he plunged into the afternoon’s slanting light and began.
“I have the new lines,” he announced as he took the stage.
The theatre was empty save for the actors who were all on stage. The light would fade in an hour or so. The work must happen quickly.
The group fell silent as Marlowe cast his eye about, looking for any familiar face under rouge and powder and wig.
When one of the men dressed as a shepherd came forward into the light, Marlowe saw that he was Kempe.
“We were given our roles by the master of the revel,” Kempe said, “after you left The White Gull to fetch the script. I am to play the chief shepherd and to have a brief moment of cavorting, juggling, and a bit of abandoned dance.”
Marlowe nodded. “Where is he, the master of the revel?”
Kempe looked about then smiled. “He’s here.”
Marlowe stiffened. “Where?”
“He prefers to remain in character,” Kempe said, grinning.
Several of the others laughed.
From the back of the crowd a voice boomed, “He doesn’t trust you, Kit.”
Kyd, dressed as a forester, barged his way through the crowd.
>
“You’re out of your cell,” Marlowe observed casually, hiding his surprise.
“And in need of coin,” Kyd affirmed. “Else I would not be seen dead in this obscene, ill-fitting costume.”
The rags were indeed poorly constructed: a loose leather vest festooned with the carcasses of birds, and a hat two sizes too small that was tied to a ridiculous green wig.
“Well,” Marlowe sniffed. “You’re sober. That’s something.”
Best not to indulge in familiarity. There was no telling what Kyd was really doing amongst the cast.
“I’ll be drunk soon enough,” he replied.
“Now tell me, pray,” Marlowe continued, “why the master of the revel would not trust me, and why he would not stand where I stand to instruct the cast?”
“Our master mistrusts you for three reasons,” Kyd answered. “He fears you may be here to steal lines from Sidney. He knows that you left Sidney in the Lowlands. And he wonders if you did not betray me to Walsingham, who put me in the Tower.”
Marlowe smiled. “These seem more your fears than anyone else’s. I therefore posit that you are the master of this piece.”
“Well,” Kyd laughed, “you may posit what you will—the rest of us know better.”
Marlowe cast his eye about. “Then why listen to me at all?”
The boy who had been in Marlowe’s ill-fated Dido piped up. “Well, you have the lines, you see.”
Why would the master of the piece not show himself to Marlowe? Or was Kyd lying? Was he actually the force behind the play’s presentation to the Queen? Best to play along for the moment. It wouldn’t have been the first time that the man guiding the play had hidden himself in the cast. Kyd did it all the time in his own plays.
“Very well,” he sighed. “We have five other foresters, five other shepherds beside Kempe. Can you gather together here?”
Marlowe indicated a spot stage right. Men began to move.
“But we begin with the supplicant. Who is to play that part?”
A thin older man in a drab gray dress approached. Marlowe handed him a page.
“You first approach the Queen,” Marlowe told the man. “We will be in the gardens at Hampton Court, as you know.”
“Yes,” the man said softly, his voice like a woman’s. “My daughter, the Lady of May, has two suitors.”
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