The Marlowe Papers: A Novel

by Ros Barber

  will make the sternest-stomached soul recoil,

  look anywhere but at the corpse’s face.’

  ‘What do you have in mind?’ I asked, afraid

  of your calm, phlegmatic answer.

  ‘It’s the eyes

  where we feel vulnerable,’ you said, your gaze

  proving your point. ‘A stabbing in the eye.’

  MY BEING

  How could I give up writing? You might ask

  a man to give up breathing, or a hawk

  to drop a strip of fillet in your hand

  and starve itself. I am compulsion’s fiend.

  And thought is as an irritating itch

  that can’t be reached except in pen and ink.

  I covet paper. Nothing inside is still

  till I empty out my mind and order it.

  How could I give up writing? You might ask

  a fish to give up swimming, or a horse

  to ditch his kick and neigh, his stamp and snort.

  Or ask a man brought up inside the trades

  and elevated into velvet halls

  to soft-relinquish everything he’s earned;

  swap cloak for leather apron; kneel as if

  he is a common man, and not to mind

  his life turned back to nothing.

  Rather ask

  a god to be your servant than request

  I gag myself without complaint, when words

  are all I have to stay this side of Hell.

  MY AFTERLIVES

  Two names were needed for my afterlives.

  A name to travel under, and a name

  to write beneath: believable, yet blessed

  with meaning, in the way that names can be

  when not devised by parents. For the first

  I settled on Le Doux: the gentle man.

  A name so sweet, so radically at odds

  with how my enemies would have me viewed

  that I’m disguised completely by its sound,

  the merest tap of a tongue inside a vowel.

  The pen-name, though, kept me awake for hours.

  What power might I invoke to hide behind

  when every word I write, stamped with my voice,

  might summon, like a sneeze in hide-and-seek,

  my swift discovery?

  Do you believe

  in the power of dreams? I drifted, with my mind

  hooked on the question, and when I awoke,

  the name of ‘Shakespeare’ spoke itself. A gift –

  or thus I was persuaded by the dawn –

  from the goddess Athena, warrior of the wise,

  whose shield, protected with the Gorgon’s head,

  would freeze all those who tried to look behind.

  How perfectly it works, that verbal spell.

  The Christian name delivered like a foal

  slipped all at once on to the stable’s straw.

  I knew a boy at school called William Good.

  Will I Am Good, we laughed; for he was caned

  most often. And the Will I Am came through

  as a floated prayer; the breath of my desire.

  ‘Will I Am Shakespeare, then,’ I mouthed to the face

  in the polished mirror as I shaved away

  the roguish beard I’d grown to give me age.

  ‘William Shakespeare.’ Memorable yet bland

  as a pat of butter shaken without salt.

  If the name seemed half familiar, I took it then

  as a sign of its rightness, not the distant knell

  of a long-lost conversation overheard.

  What destiny hunkers in coincidence?

  What paths are knitted for us by the gods

  who pull such strings together? Thus was summoned

  like Hecate’s curse on any future road,

  the printer’s friend who’d worn that name since birth,

  discreet as married sex. It was agreed:

  a grand idea. A cloak, an extra layer.

  The name is mine, I tell myself, it’s bought

  as a doublet’s bought. Yet worn by two, not one,

  it chafes where he narrows, rubs where I’m not free,

  itches, fits neither of us perfectly.

  Yet I am Will. I am. I say these words

  over and over, like a hopeless spell.

  Will I am Will. I’m Will. And Will is me.

  A PASSPORT TO RETURN

  Two classic narratives of thwarted love.

  A pair of poems, like a pair of gloves,

  conceived together. One, discreetly lodged

  with Field in my new name. The other dropped

  with ‘Marlowe’ on its cuff, on Kentish soil,

  to circulate in manuscript, unspoilt;

  the hero strangely living. Leander swims,

  not to be published; for his finish begins

  when my death’s undone.

  In each, the other sings,

  their source identical. Brought side by side

  the lie can be exposed: this author died?

  Then how did the matching poem come to be?

  And notice the motif: the telling scene

  embroidered on the sleeve of Hero’s dress

  from the other poem, authored by ‘W.S.’.

  So brought together, these two will confess.

  The perfect bookends of this man’s distress.

  DEPTFORD STRAND

  On Deptford Strand, the famous Golden Hind

  whose fine prow Drake encircled round the globe

  sits broken to its bilges: souvenir’d

  into a ship of bones. On breezy air,

  the blackhead gulls are circling for a spoil.

  The river laps at mud and, on this turn

  that loops a noose around the Isle of Dogs,

  slides swiftly round the bend. A hint of salt

  and fishiness betrays how close the sea

  is to this widening gullet. And to me.

  We meet at ten on the path up to the door.

  Frizer’s eyebrows greet me, and he nods

  at Nicholas Skeres. Frizer is strangely calm

  for a man prepared to stage some murderous rage,

  only Nick Skeres betraying signs of nerves

  Frizer will shortly douse with beer. A twitch

  as Eleanor Bull invites us: ‘Gentlemen.

  The room’s upstairs,’ she says. ‘Young Martha here

  will show you up. Dinner is pork and beans.

  I’ll serve you there myself around midday.’

  Frizer enquires, ‘Is Master Poley here?’

  ‘He’s been delayed. He’ll join you presently.’

  How does she know? ‘He arrived here yesterday.

  Come from The Hague, or somewhere. He went out

  first thing this morning, “tying up loose ends”,

  he said I was to tell you. Never fret,

  Master Poley is most reliable.’ She pats

  me on the arm as if I were her son.

  ‘I expect you’ll want some drinks.’

  ‘Small beer,’ I say.

  The window rattles with a puckish breeze

  as I stand there looking down upon the lawn

  lined by whispering bushes, and the path

  that I expect him on.

  ‘A friendly wind,’

  says Frizer unexpectedly. ‘So long

  as it keeps up its direction.’

  He returns

  to playing patience, Skeres pouring a glass

  of warm ale down his gullet. Here we are.

  This is the house from which I’ll disappear

  and swap my comforts for a dead man’s clothes,

  give up all public substance, with my name

  sloughed off like the reptile’s skin he has outgrown.

  Kit Marlowe dies here. And with that thought, a pang

  for a younger self who dreamt of being hailed

  a wonder of the age, but now is holed,

>   like a galleon in warfare, and will sink

  to the mud of history beneath a lie:

  the coward conquest of a wretch’s knife.

  Poley arrives at last. I hear his smooth

  placating patter in the hall downstairs;

  the laugh of Mrs Bull, charmed to her corset.

  ‘Good fellows,’ he greets us, making sure the door

  is firmly shut behind him. ‘Excellent news.

  We have our substitute. John Penry’s dead.’

  And I must break this narrative to pause

  and say a prayer for Penry, whose young wife

  had begged for clemency. Who was condemned

  for tracts he hadn’t written; for belief

  that his eloquence might turn the hearts of men

  to a different church. And almost, we were twins

  exchanged at death, not birth; for it was speech,

  and love of liberty that brought us both

  to a silencing. And had he not, in truth,

  been executed hurriedly that May,

  I might have joined him in a common grave.

  Our only difference, this twin and I,

  was the influential aspect of our friends.

  ‘Backgammon,’ Poley says. ‘You’ll have a game?

  With money on the side perhaps?’ He throws

  his cloak over a chair. ‘Come, come, man, sit.

  We have three hours to kill before the corpse

  can be delivered. A penny down to start

  us gently?’

  So we play away the hours

  as though the time has no significance:

  I lose two shillings in distractedness.

  Food comes at noon as promised, though I have

  no kind of appetite.

  Poley seems charged

  with a strange kind of enjoyment. Full of meat,

  he stretches – ‘Time for a little fresh air, perhaps?’ –

  as though he must put on the play for us,

  though we are actors too. ‘A gentle turn

  around the garden?’

  The breeze is playful still.

  We walk in quiet conference; ahead,

  Poley and I, the other two as close

  as midday shadows.

  ‘The north side of the house

  is windowless,’ says Poley. ‘By the gate

  that backs on to the lane, there are some shrubs

  that grow there thickly. Enter them as though

  you must relieve yourself. You’ll find a trunk

  containing Penry, separate from his clothes.

  Leave yours behind, use his and flee from here

  to a barque named Pity’s Sake, which waits for you

  on the eastern pier.’

  ‘That’s it?’

  Rob Poley smiles

  that noose of a smile he saves for lethal words.

  ‘This is goodbye. The three of us will dress

  the body in your gear. I’ll keep the Bull

  and her Martha occupied with pleasantries

  while Frizer and Skeres lump-shoulder in their friend,

  the loll-headed drunkard who must sleep it off.

  That’s you.’ He brims with the beauty of his art,

  the joy of his own deception. ‘Go. Be gone,’

  he says, ‘before we wheel around again.’

  Penry is in his underclothes, and pale

  as the winding sheet he lacks; a crumpled ghost

  of indignity. One eye is not quite closed,

  gleams jealously as I adopt the clothes

  his wife had stitched, that he had buttoned up

  to go to the gallows, opened at the neck

  for the hemp to tighten on his throat; which wound

  would be concealed beneath the awkward ruff

  that you ensured I wore. Oh, guilty thief,

  who slides on so efficiently his shirt,

  without its preacher’s collar, and the gift

  of being alive, in front of Death itself,

  and slips on to the lane as casually

  as one engaged in some delivery

  of goods, and not himself.

  The eastern pier

  is poking its sullen finger through the flow

  that now sweeps swiftly seawards. There, the boat

  Poley had named jerks hard against its ropes

  as though concerned to leave, knocked by a breeze

  still keen for France. On the vessel sits a boy

  picking his teeth distractedly, who swings

  his legs round when he sees me, calls a word

  to the boat’s invisible skipper. From below,

  as unexpected as a perfect bloom

  emerging from a plant that seemed diseased,

  you show yourself. An innocent mirage

  but, for a breath, I let myself believe

  you’re coming with me, though your face says no.

  ‘Your papers. And a letter you must give

  to the Flemish contact. Certain points in France

  where you’ll link with the network. And the name

  of a guide who’ll safely take you through the Alps.’

  You tuck them inside my jacket, and your hand

  so warm, so personal, I want to grab

  your wrist and keep it there, close to my heart.

  Instead, I watch you like a wounded child,

  saying goodbye to me. ‘And I will write

  when it’s safe to do so. Not for several months.

  I’m bound to be watched. But, Kit, please write to me.’

  And I am wordless, powerless to speak

  the sentences that stampede to be said

  and trample upon each other. In my head

  I tell you my every feeling in a form

  that changes the ending; thankful, warm with love,

  we sail together.

  In truth, I stand there, dumb,

  watching us both as if we’re on the stage

  forgetting our lines; have stumbled on a scene

  that I stayed awake, not writing.

  ‘Kit, be safe,’

  you say, your hand extended to my face

  and almost touching.

  ‘Master Walsingham.’

  The young boy, come like a shadow to your side.

  ‘Father thinks we should go.’

  The hand withdraws.

  ‘I leave you then. The trunk has all the books

  you asked for. Paper, ink.’

  ‘My manuscript?’

  Perhaps the waves’ unsteadiness beneath

  the thin shell of the boat reminded me

  of those lovers separated by the strip

  of the Hellespont.

  ‘I have a copy of it,

  and you have yours,’ you answer, ‘to complete

  when I, and other friends of yours, secure

  an end to your exile.’

  ‘Tom.’ I grasp your hand.

  ‘I shan’t forget your help.’ We grip goodbye,

  brief as the pat the farmer gives his cow

  before it’s sent to slaughter.

  ‘Take my cloak.’

  Though you read my shiver wrongly, I was glad

  to wrap myself up in the scent of you

  when the salt tang of the sea unleashed its spray.

  And half across Europe, something of you stayed

  in the practical fibres of that everyday

  reminder of you. The smell of Kent lay thick

  like turf inside its hem. Sometimes I swore

  as I slept beneath it, you were lying with me.

  And then I’d wake, from the stare of John Penry.

  I FORGET THE NAME OF THE VILLAGE

  There is a village, shadowed by the Alps

  where early evening paints the snow as blue.

  I still play French in northern Italy,

  nodding ‘bonsoir’ when I’m bid ‘buona sera’

  and traipse the lane towards m
y rented room,

  letting the creak of snow beneath my boots

  return me to the quad on Dido night.

  ‘Poley.’

  He must have seen me long before

  I noticed him. Already looking bored,

  he’s taken in my clothes, my health, my mood,

  and need not ask me.

  ‘So. You’re still alive.’

  ‘Another year. And yes. No thanks to you.’

  He squints for a sun that set an hour ago.

  ‘How did you conjure that? Without my help,

  you would have swung last year.’

  ‘Without your help

  I wouldn’t have been projecting for the State

  and stuck my neck out.’

  Poley’s like the snow

  on the field beside us, untroubled by boot or hoof.

  ‘If I suggested work when you were broke,

  you didn’t have to take it. I was clear

  about the risks involved. Who serves the Queen

  must travel with the currents, like the tide

  is pulled by the moon – you poets have compared

  her to the moon, I think. You may wash up

  on a foreign shore and find yourself alone.

  Unfortunate, but true. Yet see the light.

  You could be dead.’

  ‘I am dead.’

  Poley’s face

  shows unimpressed in the December gloom.

  ‘And yet, you’ll shortly take me to an inn

  for something mulled, while I recount to you

  the tale of your revenge. And think on this:

  no poet is ever valued till they’re dead.

  I’ve brought you greater fame than you could buy

  idling your hours in meadows. If that fame