Strange Devices of the Sun and Moon

by Lisa Goldstein

  “Do you think she hasn’t been watched? Do you think I’m that foolish? She’s spied on every minute, she and that demon of hers. She doesn’t have Arthur.”

  “She doesn’t—Then where is he?”

  “Margery has him. And I don’t know where Margery is. She’s clever at hiding, I’ll give her that.”

  “Well, then, I could—”

  “You could do nothing. Whatever you do will only make matters worse. Go.”

  George stood still for a minute, wondering if he had heard correctly. Was he to be let off so easily?

  “Go! Leave me, both of you. I have work to do.”

  George left quickly.

  After they had gone Paul Hogg stared at the door for a long moment. He had asked that Anthony be present while he questioned George because he had wanted to play the two men off against each other, had wanted to keep them both confused and off balance. Either one might be tempted by the red king’s vast power; he knew that he could not let down his guard for a moment in their presence.

  Though Anthony, of course, was far more dangerous than George. His desire for knowledge and wealth was too great; he burned with the need for it. He had to be kept on a tight rein, given only so much information and money and no more. Even now, Hogg knew, Anthony sometimes reverted to his former profession of counterfeiter and debased the gold coins Hogg gave him.

  George, on the other hand, George might be harmless. Hogg gave him all the gold he desired; his ambitions, so far, had been modest ones. He knew Anthony resented the fact that he favored George, that George prospered while Anthony lived in near-poverty. And Hogg encouraged this resentment, honored George in little ways, so that the two of them would not join forces and study without him.

  Not that he truly thought they had the wit to do that. Hogg had met only one other person whose learning he admired, whose talents he envied. Five years ago, when he had first come to London, when he had seen that the Fair Folk were moving and had been moved himself to follow them, he had become acquainted with Margery and had asked to study with her. But she had refused him, saying that she could not accept his methods. He hadn’t understood her then and he didn’t now: what difference did it make how he achieved his end? She had claimed to be appalled at that.

  He should not have lost his temper with George and Anthony, should not have let them see his control slip. And he should not think so much of Margery: she was a woman and suffered from a woman’s weaknesses. Her limited thinking would keep her from doing truly great work.

  He opened a book on the table in front of him and looked down the page. “It is in the marriage of the red man and the white lady that the Philosopher’s Stone is born,” he read. What did that mean? Why did all the authors of antiquity understand it, everyone but him?

  17

  The plague returned that spring. As Tom Kyd walked through the city in mid-May he heard the sound of a loud bell ringing behind him, and he turned to see a death-cart nearly on him. The driver swore and he hurried out of the way, but he was not quick enough to escape the foul odor of death that trailed behind the cart. As it passed he saw the five or six bodies in winding-sheets piled on top of each other. Other than the driver, still ringing his bell, he was the only living soul on the street.

  Once again, Tom thought, he had not managed to find a way to leave London. He knew that Christopher had gone to the country with his patron, Thomas Walsingham, and he couldn’t help but resent him for it. Kit had sent Walsingham the parts of his poem he had finished and had received an invitation almost immediately. By that time, though, the two writers were no longer sharing the room. Harsh words had been exchanged, the cause of which Tom could no longer remember. It had all grown too much: the other man’s mysterious absences, his blasphemous speech, the diversions that seemed to come just when Tom was sitting down to write. Still, Tom wished he could have read the rest of the poem.

  He passed a ballad posted on the wall of an inn and paused to read it:

  You, strangers, that inhabit this land,

  Note this same writing, do it understand.

  Conceive it well, for safeguard of your lives,

  Your goods, your children, and your dearest wives.

  He could make little of it, only that someone wanted the foreigners out of England. The author of the ballad had even given a date for the strangers to leave: July 9. Tom knew that the large number of people who had come to London had caused a struggle for the jobs that existed, and that some thought the city would be better off without folks coming in from other countries as well. But perhaps the plague would keep the ballad’s threat from being fulfilled. Tom hoped so, anyway; he did not like to see men come to blows, except in the controlled spaces of the stage. Once he reached his chamber, though, he put the matter out of his mind and began to work.

  A few days later loud knocking interrupted him as he sat at his desk. Before he could get up to open the door two men came in uninvited, one tall and plump, with a heavy blond mustache, the other small and dark, with a face that reminded Tom of a weasel.

  “We have orders from the queen’s Star Chamber,” the shorter one said.

  “Aye?” Tom said, standing. He had done nothing wrong, he knew that, and yet he still felt himself grow cold at the other man’s words. Anyone might have misunderstood something he had said, or taken his friends’ opinions for his own. But he hadn’t been to the taverns in several months; he had stopped going about the same time Christopher left.

  The tall man picked up Tom’s manuscript and looked through it. “Beautiful handwriting,” he said. “Look here, Dick.”

  “Could you—could he put that down?” Tom said.

  “Nay,” the shorter man—Dick—said. “We have orders, as I told you, from the Star Chamber.”

  What orders? Tom wondered. Why should the queen send men to look through his plays?

  “Did you work on a play called—” Dick looked at a piece of paper in his hand. “Here it is. A play called Sir Thomas More?”

  “Nay.”

  “Listen,” the tall man said, reading from a paper he had found. “‘And will ye needs bedew my dead-grown joys, And nourish sorrow with eternal tears?’” He looked up at Tom. “‘And nourish sorrow with eternal tears,’” he repeated slowly. Foolishly, Tom found himself wondering if the man liked it.

  “Sir Edmund Tillney, the Master of the Revels, had to suppress some of that play,” Dick said, ignoring the other man. “He told us six people had a hand in it.”

  “I didn’t write it. I told you.”

  “The part about dots against foreigners. You’ve seen the libels posted around the city about the French and Flemish settlers?”

  The taller man had finished rooting through his papers and moved to Christopher’s old desk. It was hard to listen to Dick and keep an eye on him at the same time. “Aye,” Tom said a little belatedly, glad that he could give Dick the answer he wanted.

  “The queen wants her new subjects to be happy here. They’ve suffered enough persecution from the Catholics already. Wouldn’t you say so?”

  “Aye.” Where was all this leading?

  “We’re to find the folks responsible for posting those ballads. Someone suggested it might have been you.”

  “Nay, it wasn’t—”

  “Do you know who it might have been?”

  Tom thought. If he could come up with a name, he knew, the men would probably go away. But he could not bring himself to accuse anyone. He shook his head.

  “You’ll tell us if you hear anything.”

  “Oh, aye,” Tom said.

  The taller man lifted a page from the desk. “‘And Jesus Christ which was born of Mary is not counted God with me,’” he said, reading slowly.

  God’s blood, what was that? Something Christopher had written, or had paid to have copied. Whatever it was it was dangerous, very dangerous. Why had he left it here?

  Dick turned to the other man quickly. “Let me see that.”

  The tall man came ov
er and gave him the manuscript. “What does this mean?” Dick asked. “‘Not counted God with me?’”

  Tom’s heart beat very fast. He could not seem to gather his thoughts. “I don’t know.”

  “Where is it from?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know,” Dick repeated flatly. “Who would know, then? This is your room, isn’t it?”

  “Aye, but—”

  “Then it’s your manuscript. Isn’t it?”

  “Nay. I shared this room with another man.”

  Dick’s eyes narrowed with interest. Tom saw that he had been foolish, very foolish. “Who?” Dick asked.

  “Several people, really. I can’t remember them all.”

  It sounded weak to him. The other man must have thought so too, because he said, “You shared a room with them and can’t remember their names?”

  “Aye. There were many of us.”

  “But who would have had a manuscript like this one? And why didn’t he take it with him when he left?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Look here, John,” Dick said to the taller man. “See how fine the handwriting is. You have a fine hand too, Master—” He looked down at his piece of paper again. “—Master Kyd.”

  “I was a scrivener.” Tom said quickly. “No doubt whoever owned this manuscript paid another scrivener to copy it.”

  “Aye? It looks like your handwriting to me. What do you think, John?”

  “Aye, to me too.”

  “Nay, I—”

  “Such things are easy enough to check,” Dick said.

  Were they? How would they find out something like that? But however they did it they would discover that he was innocent, and that was the important thing.

  “Aye,” John said. “The rack.”

  “Nay!” Tom said, backing away. “Nay, I told you it’s not mine. Don’t—Please—”

  “Whose is it, then?”

  “I dont—”

  “Whose?”

  “A man named—named Christopher Marlowe. A playwright.”

  Both men looked interested at the word “playwright.”

  “And where is this man now?”

  “With his patron, Thomas Walsingham.” Once the words had been spoken it was easy enough to continue. “In Kent. I don’t know exactly where—I haven’t seen him for months. Years, really.”

  Dick picked up Tom’s pen and began to write something on his piece of paper. “Kent, did you say?”

  Despite himself Tom felt relieved. They would go after Christopher and leave him alone. Kit could explain the doctrinal complexities in the manuscript; he knew how to argue theology, after all. And perhaps no harm would come to him; to hear the man tell it he had been in worse situations than this one. Tom moved toward his desk, eager to return to his work.

  “We’ll have to take you with us, of course,” Dick said.

  “What? Where?”

  “To Bridewell.”

  “Bridewell? But—but I’ve told you everything I know.”

  “Have you? Torture’s best for that, I’ve heard.”

  Tom looked toward the window. He could run, escape them, hurry down the London streets and go—where? Where could he hide? But his hesitation gave the bigger man time to seize his arm and turn him roughly, then pinion both arms behind his back. The man tightened his hold, forcing Tom toward the door and outside. Tom nearly cried out in pain.

  The streets were empty; nothing moved. London looked like the painted backdrop representing the city of Rome that Tom had once seen in a play. No one was there to watch his humiliation as his captors led him toward the prison; he felt grateful for that, if nothing else. Dogs nosed through the piles of garbage in the streets, and squeaking rats, bold enough now to appear in daylight, scurried on ahead of them.

  The two men led him through Ludgate and down Fleet Street for a little while, then turned south, toward the river. Tom had never seen Bridewell and could not help but notice how large it was, covering nearly the same area as Paul’s. Once inside his keepers turned him over to a jailer who entered his name in a book and led him into a large common room holding a dozen people. At other prisons, Tom had heard, a bribe to the jailer ensured better lodgings and plentiful food. There was less corruption here, then, but that fact did not work to his benefit. He realized, almost despairing, that that was the kind of thought a criminal would have.

  A few prisoners looked up incuriously as he came in, then looked away, staring at nothing. Tom felt revulsion at the sight of them. Cutpurses and horse-thieves, he thought. And what am I? Not a criminal, though, not that. I’ve done nothing wrong.

  The jailer left. Men and women in the blue uniform of inmates passed through the common room on their way to the tasks assigned them. From where he stood Tom could see a large courtyard, where prisoners worked at grinding corn or beating hemp. They won’t have me working, then, Tom thought. Nay, I’m here for torture. He shuddered.

  He found a place to sit against a wall. The wall was stained and filthy; probably countless people had rubbed against it over the years. No one spoke, either to him or to one another. One man sang a ballad until someone else threatened him with his fist. They all seemed spiritless, content to wait out the months or years they had to serve.

  An hour later one of the jailers came to fetch him. Nay, not a jailer—he was too well dressed, and he carried himself like a man of authority. Someone sent from the Star Chamber, then. He went with the man without question, even allowed himself a grudging hope. They’ve realized the mistake they’ve made, he thought. They’re going to let me go. The man turned a corner and went through a doorway, and Tom followed.

  At first he thought that the room held only a table, and he wondered why it should be so lacking in furniture. Then he recognized the rack. He struggled but they were ready for him, both his keeper and the man who tended the machine. They forced him down and tied his legs to the foot of the table and his arms up over his head. Nothing in his life had ever made him feel so helpless, so exposed. The torturer took his place at the head of the table. Tom tried to look at him, hoping to guess by his expression what might be coming next, but they had tied him so that he could see nothing.

  “Is this manuscript yours?” the man from the Star Chamber asked from somewhere near his feet.

  “Nay, I told you—”

  He gasped. A sharp pain traveled along his arms and legs. At first he could not grasp what had happened to him, and then he realized that the torturer had moved the wheel a little.

  “Is it yours?”

  “Nay.” Another turn of the wheel. “It’s not! I’ve said—”

  “Whose is it then?”

  “I told you—”

  The wheel turned again. His body felt on fire. Flames licked at his joints. Each point of agony was a star; he had grown huge, as vast as the crystalline sphere of the heavens.

  “—it’s Christopher’s, not mine,” he said. Had they even heard him? It was difficult to speak against the pain, to make his voice carry from such a vast height.

  Another turn. Red-hot wires connected each of the stars burning in his joints. “Do you think us fools, then?” the questioner said. “Why should we accept your story as true? How do we know you shared a room with anyone?”

  The torturer worked the wheel again. Tom collapsed inward, into a tight shell of pain smaller than a man’s hand: He could barely hear the questions. “Whose is it?”

  It’s Christopher’s, he said, or thought he said. Christopher was the one responsible for the pain that coursed through his body, that sang in every joint. The atheist, the blasphemer: they should summon the man and punish him for all his sins, punish him as Tom was being punished. And if they didn’t he would see to it himself that the other man suffered. God’s justice would be done.

  “It’s Christopher’s!” Tom cried. “He’s the one you want, not I!” Then he fainted.

  The summons to appear before the Star Chamber did not worry Christopher ov
ermuch. He had been called in front of various authorities in the past and had managed to talk himself out of worse situations. More troublesome, perhaps, was the idea of going to London during the plague season, but that could not be helped. He made his farewells to Thomas Walsingham’s household and rode to London with Henry Maunder, the man who had delivered the warrant for his arrest.

  They arrived in London by midafternoon, too late for that day’s meeting of the Star Chamber. He and Maunder parted company and he was left to his own devices. He wandered through London with no goal in mind and found it deserted, the playhouses closed, Paul’s abandoned, the taverns empty.

  Hungry now, he made his way toward Cheapside, passing along the way three or four houses with quarantine notices posted on their doors. Best get this business over with and go back to Kent, he thought. London’s no place for the living these days.

  A few stalls on Cheapside had remained open and he bought a meat pie and a bottle of ale. He had nearly finished eating when he heard whistling somewhere behind him, an eerie sound in the empty street.

  He turned. Will Ryder stood there, improbably dressed in a black cloak and tall black hat topped with a black plume. “Will!” he said, embracing the other man.

  They stepped back, each regarding the other. Will looked thinner, less stocky, and had golden freckles across the bridge of his nose. His foolish hat had been knocked into the mud of the street.

  Will smiled; that at least hadn’t changed. He looked very pleased, very certain of his welcome, and at that Christopher remembered where the man had been for almost a year.

  “I hear you’ve turned Papist,” he said, and immediately regretted the coldness in his voice.

  “Nay,” Will said. “I was curious about them, nothing more. Come, let’s not talk theology just yet. Shall we go to my house?”

  Christopher followed the other man, his pulse quickening, content for the moment to lay all questions aside. In the cold manor they embraced again, more forcefully now. Christopher undid the other man’s cloak. “You’ve lost your hat,” he said softly.

  “I know,” Will said.

  Their lovemaking was hurried, almost desperate, as if each thought the other in danger of disappearing once more. Later they did it again, slowly and languidly, then lay in Will’s bed and talked. “Why did you go to Rheims?” Christopher asked.