The Marlowe Papers: A Novel

by Ros Barber

  ‘A maid? Certainly not! Though it heartens me’

  – he crosses the room to open a chest of drawers –

  ‘that your vanity’s survived such tragedy.

  No, but your shaven face is soft enough

  to make a widow of the plainer sort.’

  ‘The sort no one will look at?’

  ‘That’s the plan.

  Best not to draw attention to the man

  in woman’s clothes, by making him beautiful.’

  ‘It’s risky, still.’

  ‘I regard your biggest risk

  as wearing my mother’s hair.’ He throws the wig

  into my lap. ‘I stole it years ago

  for some revels at Gray’s Inn. You’ll find the itch

  is somewhat testing. Like the woman herself.’

  ‘And if I look male?’

  ‘I will not let you out.’

  But ‘out’ is what tugs me, strongly as a hook

  this fish has swallowed and life is winding in:

  the street with its hum of voices, and a stink

  as homely as my armpits – even now

  I’m savouring the ride to Gracechurch Street,

  past a dozen taverns I know well enough

  to stumble from, and maybe with a glimpse

  of someone I might know.

  But then, the show.

  And all the bloody deaths that it entails.

  And all the ghosts that curse and swear revenge.

  And me without a sword to fight for them.

  ‘I wish that you had booked a comedy.’

  ‘Could you have laughed?’

  ‘I’d rather laugh than cry.’

  He comes to join me, looking at the street,

  which, this midsummer evening, light as noon,

  is filling up with revellers and song,

  the shriek of swifts and martins, stitching roofs

  in gentle loops.

  ‘Yet welcome what tears come.

  They’ll only enhance your womanly disguise.

  Now don’t be long. See? There’s the coach outside.’

  As he turns to go, I halt him. ‘Wait! Will he –

  the man from Stratford who is playing me –

  will he be there?’

  My host laughs. ‘Have no fear.

  He comes to London only twice a year.

  More often, and he’d be fending off requests

  to rewrite scenes. You will not see him there.’

  Curious, glad and sorry, I stepped in

  to the sludge-green dress, arranged the wig with care.

  Persuaded by my metamorphosis,

  I left that house obsessed with who I’d see,

  and not concerned enough with who’d see me.

  THE THEATRE

  Perfumed and powdered, I am led inside

  on Anthony’s arm. The smell of roasted nuts,

  of beer and sawdust, brings me close to tears.

  My place. My home. Yet no response to me.

  No hush, no cheer, no recognition sound;

  no lump in the throat to correspond with mine.

  As though a hound I’d raised up from a pup

  forgets his old master, trotting past my scent

  to sniff the hands of new adopted friends

  I choke unnoticed on the loss. There’s cheer

  around me, and I in a bubble of different air,

  mull how the past included me. Our seats

  are cushioned and shaded in the balcony.

  Anthony pats my hand, and grins. ‘Not long.’

  Then, surprised to see me suffering, ‘What’s wrong?’

  I wave his concern away. There are no words

  in the moment ever. Only emotion’s saw

  hewing and hacking at the grain of me,

  which won’t for hours make verses worth their keep;

  no words that I won’t have to labour for

  in the quiet distillation of no sleep.

  Those who don’t write – or, like dear Anthony,

  knock off a poem when the Muse allows –

  imagine we who live and breathe the pen

  are eloquent and better-equipped than them

  in the face of feeling, to describe that pain.

  How could they know it’s we who are struck dumb,

  and ill-equipped to process what we feel,

  are urged by that loss to find our horror’s name?

  For this we scratch while others safely dream.

  Not to be known is such a slicing pain

  I find myself half wishing for a cry

  out of the crowd, a finger quivering:

  ‘It’s Marlowe!’ and the sudden press and throng

  and even swift arrest, even the rack,

  the hangman and the slit from throat to prick

  seems longed-for resolution, comforting

  against this bitter nothingness, this blank.

  In my nostalgia, I forget to fear.

  Dick Burbage sidles on: the crowd falls quiet.

  Some offstage music ruffles him; his eye

  ranges with joyful hatred, drilling deep

  into the groundlings. Now he grins and limps

  to the centre of the stage. Here come my words.

  Later, later, I shush my heart. I want

  to be alive to this experience,

  however sharp. And taste the blade go in,

  the better to know the fruits of human sin.

  INTERVAL

  All through the gasps and jeers, the groundlings’ boos,

  I entertained this suicidal prompt:

  Throw off the costume, let what happens come.

  But then, and then … I pulled upon the thread.

  Investigations, friends called to account:

  your certain execution at the end.

  I may not care to live, but love my friend.

  And love, as if summoned in another form,

  to seal my commitment to the raft of life,

  weaves like a spring breeze through the drinking crowds.

  Anthony whispers suddenly, ‘Don’t speak!’

  And there, making straight towards us, is my past –

  the Earl of Rutland, whom I barely know,

  and the Earl of Southampton. If his beauty shone

  in that garden once, then it is blinding now.

  And the three years since we parted in the lobby

  of my employer’s and his guardian’s house

  seem shallow, thirsty years, and he a draught

  both delicious and refreshing. Though at first

  he doesn’t see, sees only Anthony.

  They greet each other. Being feminine

  I’m less important and uninteresting.

  I’m able to take him in, this sweet mirage

  who’d pass for a girl more easily than me

  for all his adopted swagger. Then he sees.

  Stops dead.

  ‘Excuse me,’ he starts.

  ‘My lord, may I

  present Madame Le Doux?’

  ‘Why, enchanté.’

  Something has passed between us. Is that eye

  so suddenly fixed on mine because it sees

  what others can’t? Did I communicate

  so accidentally, in the way I stared?

  He kisses my hand, at no point looks away,

  and I’m almost shaking. ‘Comment allez-vous?’

  Though he’s turned twenty-one, he bears the cheek

  of a schoolboy with an earl’s authority.

  ‘I’m afraid,’ says Anthony, ‘her voice has gone.

  A terrible summer cold. You know how travel

  can weaken the system.’

  ‘Yes, indeed I do.’

  He smiles. I swear he knows.

  ‘She is the wife

  of a friend of mine,’ Bacon adds. He’s feeding rope

  to a man long overboard.

  Southampton’s face

  is a fairgroun
d of delight. ‘May I enquire

  how long she’s staying with you?’ I am lost.

  He knows, he knows!

  But Anthony holds firm.

  ‘A month or so, I think. There’s no fixed plan.’

  ‘I’ll call on you soon,’ Southampton says, elated

  at discovering me.

  ‘We may be leaving town,’

  says Anthony, nervously.

  Southampton shifts

  as a summer sky will thicken up with cloud;

  takes my host’s hand. ‘Sir, I seem frivolous.

  I apologise I can’t mask my delight

  at meeting a lady so exceptional.’

  His eyes address me. ‘But I am dedicated.’

  To Anthony, ‘Truly, dedicated to

  the same good cause as you. The life of a friend

  is no mere bauble. If dedication serves

  as a token of trust, then you must let me call.’

  To the Earl of Rutland, ‘Come, we’ll take our seats.’

  He leaves me speechless, Anthony in sweat.

  With dedication, he picked out the word

  that signifies precisely what he knows.

  For in order not to draw the hounds upon

  those hands that helped me slip out from the noose,

  and needing to launch my pseudonym in print

  with works protected by a noble name,

  with his permission, granted through his kin,

  I dedicated both those poems to him.

  A CHANGE OF ADDRESS

  ‘We have to get you out of town.’ My host,

  turning his back as I step from the dress.

  ‘I believe he can be trusted.’

  Bacon sighs.

  ‘Gossip follows him everywhere. As dogs

  will follow the heels of every butcher’s boy,

  his beauty drags jealous tongues in tow. Besides,’

  he turns for a moment, catching my bare skin,

  then studies the wall again, ‘I have to move.

  I’m sunk with debt. The agents I maintain

  abroad for the Earl of Essex from my purse

  have proved too costly lately. And the rent

  is two months overdue. I’m taking rooms

  in Essex House, at my lord’s invitation.

  I can’t bring you.’

  I button up my shirt

  and feel him watch me. ‘I should leave you, then.

  Go back on the road and take my chance.’

  ‘No, no,

  I have a plan,’ he says, grasping my hands.

  ‘Come, let’s go down for supper. I’ll explain.’

  He’s generous with wine. ‘So is this plan

  that I pass out, you stuff me in a sack

  and throw me in the Thames?’

  He shakes his head,

  amused. ‘A Kittish joke. Not every kit

  that seems unwanted ends up bound and drowned.

  But the play restored your humour. I am pleased.’

  He tears some bread with difficulty. He

  has the gout again.

  ‘That cough of history

  is not the last,’ I say. ‘I’m put in mind

  of another Richard.’

  ‘You knew many Dicks,’

  says Anthony, gamely.

  ‘No, the royal sort.

  Tell me your plan.’

  He has to finish chewing.

  Holds up a finger, swallows, sips some wine

  and spills the arrangement: through a maternal aunt,

  his relative is Sir John Harington,

  a cousin of the Sidneys. Friend to poets.

  He has a son in need of tutoring.

  ‘In Rutland?’

  ‘At Exton. Burley on the Hill.

  A fine house. Far enough away from here

  to save you from pryers. But close enough for friends

  to visit at Christmas, when I hear he lodges

  over a hundred guests.’

  ‘When should I go?’

  ‘Tomorrow,’ he says. ‘My instinct tells me so.

  I always heed my gut, when it persists

  in griping pain. The last three hours were Hell.

  To you, my friend.’

  Our glasses rise and kiss.

  HOW RICHARD II FOLLOWED RICHARD III

  My brain’s at work. What further history

  chews on the flavours I have licked from life

  like the tale of Bolingbroke? First, sent away

  on the lies of false accusers, by his king –

  that second Richard, limp as the third was lame –

  and banished into exile, suffering

  the loss of his native tongue, and his good name –

  anguish as known to me as my own hand.

  Then he returns, still loyal, yet conquering

  the rank injustice that set him aside.

  And just as my Faustus captured my own doom,

  perhaps this script could write me back alive.

  No, dream, but do not plot, dear Posthumous.

  The way back into life is hard and strange

  and doubtless more complex than I write some lines

  and let God make them true for me. But this –

  the thought of where I’ll start, the opening scene,

  inspires me. Imagine this, my dream.

  BURLEY ON THE HILL

  If I must be imprisoned, let it be

  in a house like this one. If I must be kept

  from all that once informed me I was free,

  then give me marble floors, a sweeping drive,

  three dozen colonnades. A stable block

  more sumptuous than my father’s cobbling shop.

  Give me its broad façade, its generous arms

  embracing those invited to approach;

  its lofty chambers where the words of kings

  can echo back from ceilings, magnified;

  this hilltop seat, its broad commanding view

  laying the country out like a tablecloth:

  perspective, now, on all that I have lost

  and all that I might conquer, given room.

  CORRESPONDENT

  A fine place to retire, if I were old.

  A good position, if I favoured sleep

  and didn’t mind oblivion. A house

  to settle in, as dust upon a stair.

  Safe as a nut, for who can even find

  the county on a map? Rutland’s a fleck

  in the eye of God, and I am holed in it,

  hugged in the murder of inconsequence,

  and teaching numbers to a three-year-old.

  My host, discretion’s knight, is deathly kind.

  With paper freely given, I retreat

  into the grand adventures of my head:

  the plots and coups that forward history,

  where I would be, with sword instead of pen,

  in a finch’s blink. Your letters urge me, Wait.

  For Elizabeth to die? I could be dead

  myself before the pampered girl expires.

  My loyalty to her strung up this noose

  that tightens slowly, day on gag-bound day;

  the suffocating knowledge every play

  my heart creates, lifts high another’s name.

  You ask if I, now well restored to health,

  would not be more content in Italy,

  with drier reds, and weather as a friend,

  and not so tempted by the closeness of

  the familiar haunts and homes of those I love.

  I answer: this master keeps an open house.

  All visitors welcome. There is here a man

  who used to count your friendship as a jewel,

  and how the sight of your face would bring relief

  from endless lake and hill and cloud and sheep.

  I sing and pretend and play the perfect guest.

  I chant the alphabet for a rich man’s son.

  I finish the play
that no one knows is mine.

  Your letter arrives, saying you will not come.

  NOTHING LIKE THE SUN

  Some dark wind huffed and made her manifest.

  The first week of October. Coming in

  from a stroll by Rutland water, I am met

  by notes as strangely tuned in to my heart

  as a mother’s lullaby: faint in the hall,

  but strong, insistent, as they beckon me

  towards the drawing room where at the keys

  of the virginals, a woman sits and plays

  such melancholy music that my eyes

  begin to fill. If she has noticed me

  she doesn’t break her step: indeed, she starts

  to sing just as I wander through the door,

  as though I am the ear she’s waited for.

  The song, in French, seems penned, alone, for me.

  Sweet bird in exile – so the first line goes –

  why do you sing so distantly of love?

  Do you not know the cage has an open door?

  I paraphrase; perhaps if I had seen

  the words on the sheet I might find I was wrapped

  in some sorcerer’s illusion and the song

  was a list of gizzards, scales, and contumely.

  How could I tell? For watch me, I’m entranced.

  She comes to the end and halts. ‘Monsieur Le Doux?’

  ‘How do you know my name? I don’t know yours.’