The Marlowe Papers: A Novel
Page 13
across his temples. Me: ‘It isn’t hard
from what I understand. John Poole described
the process in some detail.’
Richard Baines
picks up the thread. ‘I’d truly like to see
how easy – or hard – it is to press a coin
that is persuasive. If Marlowe would tell us more.’
‘Morley,’ I say.
‘Of course. What did I say?’
‘Another name.’
Gifford objecting then,
‘I have no metals. Until my bill is paid.’
‘We do have metals. Why, this pewter spoon
would make five shillings.’
‘Poor ones.’
‘All the same.’
How did I miss that Baines knew both my names?
We needed wax, and clay, and crucible.
Inn candles were purloined for wax; the clay
brought from the shoreline by an eager Baines.
‘I don’t believe I have a crucible,’
said Gifford, and moments afterwards,
‘What’s this?’
Baines lifted the unused prop from Gifford’s things.
‘Is this not a crucible?’
Defeated, ‘Yes.’
The fire in the room was lit and fed.
Enthusiastic, Baines laid out the tools
while Gifford stood and contemplated flames.
‘Now, what shall we copy? Who has got a coin?’
We’d nothing between us higher than a shilling,
and Dutch at that.
‘You don’t have something English?’
Baines asked. His eyes most pointedly on me.
I part supposed – misreading his intent –
he meant whatever coinage we produced
might go to Stanley’s English regiment.
And sewn inside the lining of my coat:
a dozen English coins. But something said,
Just shake your head. They’re for emergencies.
‘No matter,’ said Baines, ‘press on.’
The mould was made.
My mouth gave out instructions, word for word
almost as Poole had given them, my mind
well used to memorising sentences.
Gifford was rattling in his skin. His hand
shook like a beggar’s cup. More ale, more ale
to still it. I drank too. Baines stayed as dry
as a heath in summer, cracking tiny smiles
whenever I looked to him.
‘Please, can you help?’
Gifford addressed me. Steadier of hand,
I poured the liquid metal into moulds.
We waited and drank some more.
And, ‘There. It’s done!’
One coin is uttered; an imperfect fake,
and yet the birth of it, miraculous.
‘Bravo!’ I say. Gifford hides his surprise
in a slow, professional nod. He’s passed the test.
‘The method seems sound,’ says Baines. ‘Though I’ve seen Poole’s
and they were sharper.’
‘With a little practice,’
says Gifford, ‘I would do better.’
‘Would you, now?’
Baines rubs his chin. He contemplates the shilling
by the hungry fire.
‘Except I would not coin,’
Gifford says, hastily. ‘Not as a rule.’
‘Because?’ says Baines.
‘It is a capital crime!’
He starts to pack away the crucible,
the evidence.
‘Well, let us celebrate
your show of skill in any case.’ Baines pulls
from his trunk a bottle of liquor.
‘From the monks
at a certain bolthole in the heart of France.’
Two logs on the fire. By the time they have collapsed
into their embers, breathing dragon bones,
Gifford is snoring heavily in a chair.
The liquor’s warming. Baines is tight and quiet,
turning the shilling over in his palm.
‘More of this would be useful.’
I agree.
‘And do you figure this act is treasonous?’
I couch my answer in philosophy.
‘All men are equal under God,’ I say.
‘Beneath God’s gaze, I’ve as much right to coin
as the Queen of England.’
Something slips apart
in the fire; provokes a brief, unruly flame.
‘Sir William Stanley, whom you wish to meet,
would like to have this knowledge you possess.
Poole’s knowledge. And he’d pay the goldsmith, too,
past his objections. I could take you there.’
I said I would be happy to be taken.
His hand slid to my knee.
I took a breath
and told him it was time I went to bed.
The liquor knocked me out, but how long for
I couldn’t tell. What woke me was the cold
of Baines’s bony body in my bed,
rubbing against me. I pretended sleep
and lay as unresponsive as the Fates
as he wheezed and grunted. Praying silent prayers
that all my duties for the Queen would not
include forced penetration. By the dawn
he’d satisfied himself, or given up.
And more than once I’ve wondered, had I let
the bugger in, if I would be here now.
Baines, in the morning, like a change of sheets,
betrayed no inkling of the night before.
As if his memory were wiped by drink,
he gave out nothing, even in his eyes.
‘Stanley is outside Flushing. You will need
your passports.’
‘Mine is on me,’ Gifford said.
‘You’re sure he will pay me just to see this coin?’
Baines was packing clothes for travelling.
‘For your trouble, yes. And confirming how it’s done.’
‘My passport’s with Governor Sidney,’ I replied.
Baines tied his bag up smartly. ‘Yes, of course.
You came in by the port. To the governor’s, then.
We’ll call in on the way.’
And so we slipped
through snowy streets to Robert Sidney’s house.
I put Baines’s speedy limping down to cold,
to the icy leaks of less-than-perfect boots,
so blind was I to the fate he planned for me.
BETRAYED
‘You must arrest this man!’ Baines flings at me
a shaky arm. ‘Go on! Arrest this man!’
‘No! On what charge?’ I startle as the guards
take both my arms behind my back. ‘What charge?’
‘This man’s a traitor. Counterfeiting coin
of the realm. Sufficient crime, I think you’ll find,
to hang you,’ he says, switching his words to me.
Gifford begins to leave. ‘And this man too!’
Baines says decisively, through crumbling teeth.
‘He is a goldsmith, and he struck this coin.’
As guards take Gifford’s arms, Baines struts across
and slaps upon the desk our one Dutch shilling.
I glance at Gifford, but his eyes are fixed.
The embassy clerk in charge considers it.
‘A sorry thing,’ he says, soothing his beard.
‘It wouldn’t pass. It’s pewter.’
‘It’s a test.
With practised skill they meant to strike in silver,’
Baines is insistent. ‘And the Queen’s own coin.
They’re traitors, both.’
‘This man is lying,’ I say.
‘We struck this coin, agreed, but for a wager.
To see the goldsmith’s cunning. Let me see
explain.’
But we would not be seen alone.
Sir Robert was very busy. A two-hour wait,
messengers running in and out like bees
depositing nectar; visitors summoned forth
and clacking their leaving heels across the tiles:
all more important than three feuding frauds.
Even though two of us might meet our death,
the crime was ‘petty’ treason. Common. Small.
Gifford was steeped in silence, staring down
at a spot that looked like blood just by his feet.
I rehearsed what I would tell him, any words
that would keep me from the gibbet. Richard Baines
was impatient, jiggling his legs like rattling sticks,
and yet each time he caught my eye he grinned,
like a cook who holds a lobster by its claw.
Finally we were summoned.
‘Very well.’
Sir Robert surveyed us with the saddest eyes
I’ve ever seen in government. He seemed
as under water as a drowning man
whose white face sinks away from you.
‘I have …’
the effort was painful ‘ … understood the claim
and counter-claim. Now speak one at a time.
First, Master Baines.’
Baines rises to his feet.
‘I’d prefer you sitting,’ Sidney says.
Baines sits
reluctantly. His voice scratches the air
like a thing that claws the door to be let in.
‘These two men struck that coin upon your desk.’
The sorry thing that looks more like a stain.
‘This man’ – his bony finger points at me –
‘is an enemy of Her Majesty, who means
to go to Rome.’
‘I do not!’
‘Sir, sit down,’
warns Sidney, for indeed I’m on my feet.
‘You mean to go to Rome!’ I finger Baines.
‘Sir, he is the Romish agent.’
‘Sir! Sit down!’
The governor’s anger silences the room.
I melt to sitting.
Sidney takes a breath
of perfect patience. ‘Master Gilbert next.’
Gifford says only, ‘They both pressed me to it.
They wanted to know my skill.’ Eyes earthwards still.
Behind the governor’s head, the worthy spines
of perhaps three hundred books are calling me
to confess myself a poet. ‘Like your brother,’
I imagine myself saying, ‘in whose tomb
I saw Sir Francis buried.’ But my tongue
is stuck in my cover.
‘A scholar by profession?’
He reads the notes taken on my arrest.
‘Marley,’ he says. (I gave the family name;
poised as it is between the poet’s and spy’s.)
‘You pressed the goldsmith to demonstrate his skill?’
‘We both did. For a wager.’
Sidney clacks
the roof of his mouth. ‘A very risky bet
to take with a man who’s clearly not your friend.’
‘I did not think—’ I stop and realise
the truth of that. Sidney seems sadder still.
‘You’re aware that coining is a capital crime?’
I nod.
‘Why should this agent want you dead?’
Baines’s objection he stops with stony eyes.
I splutter, ‘Sir, my purpose …’
Falter there.
For the noose is sooner put around the neck
of government traitors. ‘Sir, I cannot speak
openly of my purpose. But wish to say
I’m very well known to the Earl of Northumberland.
And also my lord Strange.’
I watch his face
register the significance of these names:
two earls of Catholic family whose claims
to the English throne are watched by those like me.
‘Excuse me, sir,’ Baines says, ‘but who he knows
is not of relevance. The man should hang
for counterfeiting coinage of the realm.’
Sidney considers once again the coin,
a thing inconsequential in itself,
handed across a bar, or flicked into
a beggar’s hat. But here, potential doom,
the tiny price a man’s life hangs upon.
He raises his eyes, surveys all three of us.
‘Of this realm,’ Sidney says, ‘but not his own.
The case is not so clear.’
‘Sir, it is clear!’
Baines senses he has tugged a little hard,
and the hook not quite inside the lip; and here’s
a chance I might swim free. ‘Excuse me, sir,
but to counterfeit’s a crime in any land.
Simply imprison him, let a judge decide.’
Sir Robert Sidney rises like a spark
sent up the chimney. ‘I will not be told
my course of action by – what are you, sir? –
a snivelling groveller whose loyalties
are not detectable.’ Those words are like
the lifting of a boot that pressed my chest.
I thank him with my eyes, and anger him,
it seems, a little more. ‘It is not clear,
and I will not unravel it from here.
Lord Burghley will decide what shall be done.’
He ties the papers. ‘Masters Marley and Gifford,
you remain under arrest. As prisoners
you’ll sail tonight for England. Master Baines,
you will go with them.’
‘Am I prisoner?’
Baines asks, most aggravated. ‘Sir, I have
important business here.’
Sir Robert asks,
‘And what is more important than the law?
Than justice being done?’ Baines cannot say.
He’s fleshed in secrets. ‘You will go with them.’
The river’s frozen, sullen as it’s wide.
The town sits on the river like a toad
swallowing flies. We are its meal today,
and half digested, we’re pushed out to home.
RETURNED TO THE LORD TREASURER
Before we reached London, Baines had slipped away.
Along the Strand, the air was a mist of rain,
which flecked and relieved our faces with its cold.
Burghley was livid.
‘Now, what have I left?
Two unmasked agents and a scheme undone
which took four years to put in place.’
‘My lord—’
‘Don’t my lord me.’ He vibrates like a bee
that can’t decide to sting us. ‘You are dead,’
he says to Gifford. ‘I cannot have you hanged
without unravelling a dozen lies
that serve to protect Her Majesty. Though God
knows I am in the mood to have you hanged
for your destructive interference.’
‘Sir—’
His attempt to speak is severed by a hand.
‘Expressly, Gifford, you had been retired
and put out to pasture. It was not your place
to be in Flushing, let alone intrude
on matters of delicacy.’
‘I saw a chance
to be of some service.’
‘Only to yourself!’
Burghley dismisses him to wait outside.
‘And you.’ He turns to me. ‘Can you explain
what violent arrogance possessed your brain
to demonstrate how counterfeiting’s done?’
‘I thought – I felt – if he was Catholic,
and keeping Stanley’s gate, then it would
prove
that I was close to Poole, might be of use.’
‘You set the hook by which he wound you in.’
He turns to the desk and thumps it. Rubs his fist
and returns to stalking, up and down like thread
from my mother’s darning needle. ‘Can’t be fixed,’
he says, as though he too perceives the hole
I just imagined. ‘You are too well known.
But not as an agent. No.’ He meets himself
on coming back. It seems they have agreed.
‘You were on Her Majesty’s business. An arrest
on petty treason necessitates your death –’
He pauses for breath. Perhaps to make me sweat.
‘– which plain incompetence does not deserve.
Yet your release …’ Again he ventures short
and this time, won’t complete. ‘You’re on your own.
I recommend a daily dose of prayer
that no news of your liberated state
gets out to Baines.’
‘Then I am free to go?’
‘For now, you’re free. Return to tutoring.’
Crossing the marble entrance hall, I hear
a gentle voice behind me: ‘Marlowe, sir.’
The Earl of Southampton, hair down to his waist,
and dressed as if Tuesday morning might be host
to some fine occasion.
‘I enjoyed your poems.
Remiss of me to let so many months