The Marlowe Papers: A Novel

by Ros Barber

‘Excuse me. I was sent by Jaques Petit.’

  Anthony’s Gascon servant. ‘With a message?’

  ‘With just myself. I do apologise.’

  She rises. ‘Chevalier Harington is out?’

  ‘Until tonight. The servants let you in?’

  ‘With a letter from Jaques, who suggests I could be nurse

  to Chevalier Harington’s infant girl.’

  Her eyes

  have the promise of storms; a power that augurs change.

  ‘Where should I wait? I don’t know where to go.’

  I sell my afternoon into her care.

  She spills her story out as if her trust

  were won just by my asking for her name.

  ‘I go by Ide du Vault,’ she says. ‘Why laugh?

  What’s funny?’

  ‘Sorry, the name comes to the ears

  as Hide the Fault, in English.’ Hide the Fault.

  Much more of a giveaway than Louis the Sweet.

  She looks ashamed. Her eyes drop to her lap.

  ‘That is the name I’m given for my sins

  by a wicked man. A joke at my expense.

  I see. And now I can’t escape the joke,

  for all my papers bear it.’

  ‘It is false?’

  She looks at me accusingly, my twin.

  ‘No falser, I know, than yours.’

  ‘What do you know?’

  ‘Just that you’re not a Frenchman,’ she replies.

  ‘Your accent’s true: but the lascivious gaze

  a Parisian would deliver has betrayed

  you, by its absence, for an Englishman.’

  So dangerously smart; so unafraid.

  Yet vulnerable, for in the next rich braid

  of the beautiful tale she’s weaving, she reveals,

  ‘I’m hiding from my husband.’

  ‘You are married?’

  ‘Unfortunately, yes. Though in that name

  I shan’t be known, I’m Madame Vallereine.’

  So open, so bare, a field prepared by plough

  for whatever seeds Fate plants; the ruffled wind

  is lost on her. Her tongue reels out her woes

  and reels me in upon them. How Monsieur

  had betrayed her publicly, then set a slur

  against her name to furnish his excuse –

  ‘And all the eyes of Paris were upon me.’

  Hers fall into her lap again. ‘And he,

  believing his own story when he drank

  began to beat me also for the shame

  I brought on to his head. Such wicked men—’

  She broke her thoughts. ‘I shouldn’t speak of him.

  He is a curse that gives me nightmares still.

  For there are men who prey on women’s minds.

  I only hope you are not one of them.’

  I try to look softer. ‘I was raised with sisters

  and a mother I respected.’

  Though her head

  shakes at this point in open disbelief

  it’s not my information, but her own

  losses she’s moved by, like a weather vane

  bothered from both directions.

  ‘Do go on,’

  I press her, gently, noticing a tear –

  a tear as fiercely wiped as though it comes

  from the scoundrel husband.

  ‘So one night I fled

  to a nunnery in the hills. I did not say,

  of course, I could not tell them I had wed

  two years before. It’s true I told them lies –

  but also true, I gave my heart to Christ.

  Still, when he found me—’ Here she blanches white

  and I will stop. For though a woman’s tongue

  will often shake off secrets, that report

  does not become the listener’s currency.

  What matters is the love that had begun

  to surge through my veins, like running down a hill

  with the wind behind me, sure her body was

  calling me with its longing; love so strong

  that it washed me from my reason. I was won

  the moment she lied to me and hooked the truth

  of my own pretence. She was both warming sun

  and rain on the shoots of hope, perched on that stool

  with all the beauty of a ruined nun.

  THE GAME

  My mistress plucks my strings, and I am played

  as expertly as any lute. She first

  encourages, then shoos my love away,

  reluctant to intensify my thirst.

  She promises nothing. Sweet as nothings are

  an urgent need for something keeps me up

  long past the hours where lovers sigh at stars,

  wishing my love were pure, and not corrupt.

  Wrapped in her arms, with all my hope unwrapped;

  between her legs, and breathing in her must,

  she chides I mustn’t. I am free, yet trapped,

  a moth who beats his own wings into dust.

  As she completes me, so I fall apart.

  Love then, my Muse. For she has all the art.

  PETIT

  December chills the sheets. Much warmer they

  become when doubly occupied. She stops

  resisting me, my garrulous, lovely Ide,

  to obtain my furnace in her bed. The month

  brings more than sharpening frost and softening thighs.

  A party descends, two weeks before the feast

  is due to start, some forty men and maids

  on horse, on foot, in carriage. It’s the Earl

  and Countess of Bedford, daughter of Sir John.

  With Jaques Petit. He is a stick-limbed man,

  plucked from his mother’s dugs too soon, a face

  like a smear of butter on a stale bread roll.

  Yet Anthony sends him; and with him, a list

  of friends who will descend here presently:

  a Christmas to crown all Christmases!

  A glow

  must shine from me as I extricate myself

  and this knowledge from the room; first Jaques Petit

  attempts to trip me on the stairs with ‘What

  did my master say of me?’ I freeze. The sheer

  effrontery is baffling. ‘If he

  had wanted you to know, assure yourself,

  he would have scribed in French,’ I say. His flinch

  is measurable. His spine contorting like

  a sausage shrinking over flame. ‘But you

  will recommend me to Sir John, perhaps?

  To stay for Christmas?’ And a smeary smile

  is plastered on with effort.

  ‘When he asks

  to see me,’ I say. ‘He’s with his daughter now.’

  I’m turning on my heel when he remarks,

  ‘Be careful with the woman.’

  ‘Woman, sir?’

  ‘Miss Ide du Vault. Her tongue is very free.

  I do not think it wise—’

  ‘Excuse me, sir,’

  I interrupt, ‘but you exceed your place.

  Did Anthony speak of Miss du Vault?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Then neither shall we. Good day, Monsieur Petit.’

  The manner of the Frenchman bothers me,

  but I brush it from my mind, as one might brush

  a cobweb from a velvet sleeve. My friends,

  Southampton among them, coming here! Again

  the joy so strong it draws into my path

  its opposite – the darkness of my love,

  who is pouting more than usual because

  of Jaques Petit’s arrival. He it was

  who gave her the punning name, apparently.

  ‘He’s full of evil, as an egg-bound hen

  is full of egg,’ she says.

  ‘Sorry, my love?’

  ‘That stupid man you left not seconds ago

  fawni
ng and crawling. Petty Jack. The spy

  from Anthony Bacon’s house.’

  ‘Shush! He’s no spy.

  Anthony’s sound. We’re friends. The man is just

  obsequious. Loves Anthony too much

  and the rest of us too little, for the threat

  or competition that we pose. My love—’

  ‘Love is for later on. The letter he brought.

  It lit you like a candle, and you ran

  away from us all to read it, like a cat

  who caught a bird. Since I share all with you –

  most intimately – what will you share with me?’

  ‘My body,’ I say, stroking her shoulder.

  ‘No,

  you cannot sell me what’s already mine.

  I have your body. I would know your mind.

  The letter. What moved you?’

  ‘It is just some news.’

  She waits.

  ‘Of friends,’ I say.

  She’s waiting still,

  her tongue ticking against her palate.

  ‘Friends

  who are coming to visit.’

  ‘So!’ she says, and smiles.

  ‘I will know more, but not in corridors.

  The rest you will tell me when we are alone.’

  With her tongue on my thigh, unholy in its course,

  intent on torturing out of me the name

  that most delighted me. ‘So he’s an earl?’

  A fire is blazing in the grate. A touch

  of her lips, like coals.

  I groan, ‘So you’re a nun?’

  She laughs like broken glass. ‘A woman has

  so many faces. I have worn the veil.’

  ‘You didn’t learn this at the convent.’

  ‘No.’

  She leans back on her elbow, drags her hair

  across my belly like a paintbrush. ‘No,

  the skill is natural. It comes from liking.’

  ‘You have experience.’

  Her eyes grow dark

  as if turned inwards. ‘What have I to sell

  except the thing men most desire, myself?

  My flesh is only ever a hired mount.

  My heart, I’m saving.’

  ‘Saving for me?’

  ‘Perhaps.

  If it pleases me. And then I will move on.

  Perhaps I’ll move on now,’ she teases, ‘go

  to the other wing and find myself a man

  who does not keep such secrets.’

  ‘Ide—’

  ‘Not Ide!

  Call me my name, Lucille. And tell me yours.’

  ‘I can’t. It’s dangerous.’

  She makes a noise

  like swallowing poison; turns her head away

  when I see her eyes have filled with sudden tears.

  She shrugs off the hand I reach to her, ‘No good,’

  she says. ‘No good, we do not use the names

  that we were born with. Lovers should be true

  to themselves, they should be honest.’

  ‘Ide—’

  ‘Lucille!’

  She’s half across the room now, every inch

  as naked and angry as a trodden snake.

  More blaze in eye than grate. ‘My name’s Lucille.

  And what is yours?’

  She looks so beautiful,

  my sulky temptress, that the ache for her

  might almost conquer reason.

  ‘Here. Lucille.

  Come back to bed.’

  Her skin, so biscuit brown,

  shivers a little.

  ‘Not without your name.

  I do not sleep with strangers any more.’

  The fire spits some gobs upon the hearth

  of wood it has rejected, all in flame.

  ‘There is a tale attached to it,’ I say.

  ‘And you must hear the whole tale in my arms

  if you’re to have my name. For they are one,

  the name, the story, and they must be held

  between two lovers, closer than the child

  that might come from that union. Lie down.

  I promise you, you will be satisfied.’

  So in her bed, with all the house asleep,

  kissing her neck to warm her up to me,

  I make her promise on a future child

  (which I may plant in her, should luck decree)

  to keep to herself the story I’ll reveal

  or know her tongue itself will be the axe

  that severs her lover’s head, and turns these lips

  cold and unyielding as the winter ground.

  The thrill of being entrusted with my life

  quickens her sighs, and she responds as wild

  as I have known love, tugging me inside

  and reaching instantly that mounded peak

  few women ever climb: two stops of breath,

  then blushes flooding to her chest and cheek

  like soldiers running on to battlefields

  when war is over. Softened,

  ‘Tell me more,’

  she says, half satisfied. ‘What is your crime?

  What do you hide? Who are you, man of mine?’

  WILL HALL

  Come. Am I stupid? Maybe for as long

  as it took to watch her climax on the thought

  she could be the death of me. A woman’s tongue

  is looser than a man’s, and half as loyal.

  Desire, which might have told her everything,

  grew sober to feel her hot, unruly mouth

  feed fiercely on my danger. So I switched

  the name in an instant. And the name I gave

  bore ounces of truth for being worn before

  in government service; so nudged past her doubt,

  though she did repeat it twice: ‘Will Hall? Will Hall.’

  And chewed on it, momentarily. ‘How strange.

  I had an inkling of another name.’

  ‘What name?’

  ‘Oh, you would laugh at me.’

  ‘Not so.’

  ‘I thought perhaps I was kissing Kit Marlowe.’

  ‘Why him?’ I say too quickly. Then, ‘Who’s he?’

  ‘You silly, the man who wrote the play,’ she says,

  ‘about the Paris massacre. There is –

  you must know, there is rumour that he lives?’

  My heart is beating like a captured bird.

  ‘He died in a house in Deptford. In a fight.’

  ‘He was a wanted man. It is too neat.

  I like to think he lives,’ she says. ‘Don’t you?’

  ‘Not if you’d leave my arms for his,’ I say.

  ‘What made you think I was him, anyway?’

  ‘I don’t know. Something. That you hide away

  all day in your room, just writing – don’t deny!

  The ink is here on your fingers, look!’ She holds

  my hand to my face for evidence. ‘And that

  you pretended to be French. He wrote in French.

  And the name, Le Doux, I thought could be a joke

  that one so dark could call himself “The Sweet”.

  So why are you hiding? What for, the pretence?

  Who do you run from? What is your offence?’

  I tell her a little of my narrative.

  The part that does belong to William Hall,

  the government agent who was sent to Prague

  to mix with necromancers, alchemists,

  and sniff out the Catholic plot that cursed an earl –

  my former good Lord Strange – towards a death

  of sudden twisting poison. She is quiet.

  ‘But why must you hide?’

  ‘So I will not be next.’

  ‘And what do you write all day?’

  ‘Religious tracts.

  Pamphlets to turn the Catholics from sin.

  I publish them beneath a pseudonym.’

  ‘I�
��ve seen such things,’ she says. ‘They are’ – she smiles –

  ‘useful to wipe oneself upon I think.

  What a pity you’re not Kit Marlowe.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because.

  For him I have a passion. You, perhaps,

  have grown a little stale for me.’ She turns

  her back as though she’s keeping shop and must

  now tend another customer.

  ‘Lucille.’

  She doesn’t answer. ‘When I write those tracts

  I make things up, you know.’ The fire now

  is burning lower, crouching in its grate,

  but my bare need is fuelled by her rejection

  and I must heed the ache. ‘Imagination

  can be a place to stoke desire, Lucille.’

  She breathes as though asleep.

  ‘We could pretend.

  I could be any man you want.’

  ‘Of course,’

  she sighs into the pillow.

  ‘I could be

  pretending to be Will Hall.’ Her shoulders shrug.

  ‘I hope so. William is my husband’s name.

  I have too many Wills already.’

  Yes,

  and one more than she knows. ‘Perhaps you could

  imagine me Kit Marlowe.’

  Now she turns

  and smiles with teeth.

  ‘So tell me I am right.’

  ‘You’re right, Lucille. You found me out.’

  These words

  unlock her like a casket full of jewels,

  and I have her glittering eyes, her ruby tongue

  suddenly willing. ‘You are famous, then?’

  she coos, stroking my cheek. ‘Oh, infamous.’

  ‘Tell me again how famous!’

  ‘You yourself

  had heard of me in France.’ ‘Yes, as a rogue!’