The Marlowe Papers: A Novel

by Ros Barber

  these countries bleeding from religious wounds

  is difficult enough without the taint

  of a decade-long deceit.”’

  My dearest boy

  punches the door shut. Grunts, then slaps his head

  as if it were the King’s. ‘Not least, he says,

  that no one will believe your innocence.

  Your name is too deeply blackened. Curse the man!’

  Liz on her knees before me, takes my palm,

  anoints it with tears and kisses.

  ‘This is wrong!’

  Will Peter storms. A wasp caught in a jar.

  ‘You’ve been nothing but loyal to England. Saints alive,

  all this has come from one man’s double-cross;

  a personal vendetta. If the King

  were any kind of man at all …’

  ‘William—’

  His sister chides him, all her eyes and mind

  on me, in case his words unstitch me.

  ‘No!

  I’ll not be stifled. There has been enough

  silencing here to stuff ten monasteries

  till kingdom come. Only a damned man hangs

  the truth and lets the lie perpetuate

  for convenience!’

  ‘And yet he’s right,’ I say,

  so quietly Will Peter almost rides

  across my words, all driven by his ire –

  until the sense breaks through and trips him. ‘What?’

  ‘I fear he’s right about the name,’ I say,

  afraid of my own calmness; for the calm

  is a dressing over such a gaping wound

  I dare not look at it.

  ‘What can you mean?’

  ‘You know yourself what Marlowe meant to you.

  The name is this age’s bogeyman. “Beware!”

  say mothers, hearing children fudge their prayers,

  “or God will smite you, swearing, in the head

  as he did that Marlowe.”’

  ‘You exaggerate.’

  ‘You think so. Tell me, do those pamphlets sell

  that have Marlowe on them? No, they’re tucked away

  in back rooms for the connoisseurs of shame.

  For being Marlowe’s, dozens are tossed on fires.’

  How we shield ourselves from what we fear to see.

  A part of me has known this all along;

  steps forward only now, when the part of me

  that hoped against hope is struck entirely dumb.

  ‘And all the plays that I’ve adopted out

  beneath a name untainted by my sins –

  those plays that are lauded, loved and lifted high –

  should we shout, “This is the father! This cur, here,

  who is thought in league with Satan”? Every line

  reads differently through judgment. “To the fire

  with the atheist’s plays!”’

  ‘Or with the atheist,’

  Liz whispers to my hand. I lift her face.

  ‘Fear nothing, my sweet Liz. A king is wise

  who knows his power’s limits; that his scope

  remains outside the made-up minds of men.

  And I will bend with him.’

  Her kiss, my skin.

  I’m playing courage. Playing some strange part

  I wrote not for myself but for a man

  better than me. A man I dreamt to be.

  Will Peter stares at me as at a prayer

  whose text he can’t decipher.

  Soft, to him:

  ‘Can a king’s pardon shift a nation’s curse?

  Unpick a belief grown hoary with old age?

  No. Marlowe is fully dead. No more pretence.

  We have to live with this.’

  I stand, and he

  crumples into the chair that I have left,

  Liz watching me as if I’m darkened sky,

  holding her breath for where the lightning falls.

  I ground myself.

  ‘Hand me the letter, Will.’

  I read it as a man stands in the rain

  whose love has betrayed him, soaking to the bone

  until, into his sorrow, he’s dissolved.

  I let the words run through me like a sword

  on the battlefield – I watch my body, slain,

  fall separate from me; my spirit still

  where all of me was a blink ago, and now

  so without substance that my killer walks

  across and through me, and I’m undisturbed.

  And when those words are wholly understood

  I let our fire burn them, and the warmth

  brings a desire for liquor, which we drink,

  all three of us, talking of trivial things.

  And only later, when I’m skin to skin

  with the woman who shows such tenderness to me,

  and only when I have set desire free

  in that mock of death, that sudden, pure release

  where hope and love and sorrow close their gap,

  do I sob, and sob, and sob, into her lap.

  THE MERMAID CLUB

  ‘There is a plan hatched at the Mermaid Club.’

  ‘Whose plan?’

  ‘Ben Jonson’s.’

  Six months since I wrote,

  and in that half a year I’ve understood

  how clever writers are. How good at code;

  at understanding what’s beneath the line.

  How able, some of them, in tracking style

  back to its source like water. And how loyal

  on discovering one of their number wrongly bound.

  The knowledge grew like fungus; underground

  but quietly sprouting in the still of night.

  I saw hints in the prefaces of books.

  Where Shake-speare fell in two, as though it led

  these soldier authors to a private fight,

  I knew who knew, how far the knowledge spread.

  How it spread safely I can only guess.

  A voiced suspicion to a friend, a shush,

  and each initiate sworn in with an oath

  and a prick of blood. It seems I have more friends

  than the tree outside has pears. The Mermaid Club

  is the name they’ve chosen. William Peter grinned

  to tell me of its existence, share the name.

  ‘You are the mermaid. Mythical, never seen.’

  ‘Half girl half fish?’

  ‘Leander, as you wrote him.

  But Leander Club sounds too much linked to you.’

  ‘And what is their purpose?’

  ‘Build so great a myth

  around the silent author of these works

  that the Turnip rattles in the heart of it,

  falls out like a weevil with the smallest shake.

  To ensure his claim is stumped at every turn.

  To keep you safe, and lift your plays so high

  no flames can touch them.’

  He sat on the bed

  where I’ve lain weeks now like a sunken ship

  unmoved by tide, unable to expel

  the heaviness inside me. ‘Honest aims,’

  I said. ‘What motivates them, do you think?’

  ‘An admiration for your work.’ His glance

  alighting on all the crossings out upon

  the papers at my bedside; on this play

  I have so little heart for.

  As I stacked

  their smudgings together, ‘How do they propose

  to prevent him being William Shakespeare? Given

  he is?’

  ‘But not the author.’

  ‘Known to us

  and the Mermaid Club. But he has passed for years.

  And well enough for Heminges and Condell

  to believe his inkless fingers are the source

  of their meat and gravy.’ Will reached for the hand

  withdrawing from him.

  �
��Liz!’ I called. ‘Dear wife!’

  She came, as she does. ‘We have wine in the house?’

  ‘It’s midday. Will you eat?’

  She asked so timid

  I knew she expected ‘No.’

  ‘Perhaps some bread.

  But mostly wine,’ I said, and watched her wince.

  The bread came quickly. ‘Don’t forget the wine!’

  I called, breaking a little off. ‘My boy,

  whatever the Mermaid Club cooks up, he has

  the name. We rented him like lodgings, left

  my precious belongings there. And when he sees

  I can’t be back to claim them, sure as cats

  kill mice, they’re his by default. Ah, the wine!’

  ‘Stop sending him plays, then.’

  ‘God!’ I ruffled his hair

  with violence. ‘Beautiful boy. Would that I could.

  But he is my only means to reach the stage.

  You think I should write, but keep my creations close?

  Though pus beneath the skin builds to a boil?

  I write for all the world, and he’s the tap

  through whom the writing pours. You know this, Will.’

  We drank. Will only to keep me company.

  He fudged and flailed, said it was all in hand,

  that every mind was devising measures.

  Today,

  he imparts the plan. Master Ben Jonson’s plan.

  ‘A lawyer friend of Marston’s, Thomas Greene,

  will keep him in check.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘He’ll lodge with him

  in Stratford-on-Avon.’

  ‘What if he objects?

  Or his wife does?’

  ‘Then the fake will be revealed

  for what he is without revealing you.

  In Stratford they know nothing of the claim

  he is a playmaker, nor that his wealth

  comes so much from the theatre, with all

  the immorality the stage implies:

  actors who make dishonesty an art,

  pet boys, loose trulls, et cetera. He would

  be ruined.’

  ‘And you are quite a ruin yourself,’

  I observe, of his dusty face and clothes. He feels

  self-conscious then, and crosses to the bowl

  of water by the window; washes skin

  free of the dirt kicked up on London Road.

  ‘Marston and Greene have drawn up documents

  and he has signed them.’

  ‘Why would he do that?’

  ‘To protect his honour and his income. Greene

  will simply ensure that nothing due to you

  is passed to the Great Pretender.’ Dries his hands

  and pats his cheeks. ‘Tell me you’re pleased with this.’

  ‘So Greene is his legal shadow?’

  ‘Close as fug

  to a beggar’s armpit.’

  I rise from the chair

  where I’ve sat all morning, wrestling with a scene

  that won’t reveal its story.

  ‘And yet still

  he will be credited,’ I say. ‘His shares

  in the players’ company and in the Globe

  will see to that. He need not say a word

  when blind assumption follows him around.’

  The window shows me England, undisturbed

  by my lack of recognition. June unfurls,

  full of its own perfection, ripe and green.

  ‘Assumption has kept you safe these last ten years,’

  Will Peter replies. ‘And we rely on it.’

  He touches the small of my back as though he means

  to push me, fatherly, gently, in to swim.

  In a pool of my own reality, perhaps.

  I turn to him. ‘You must think me stone-headed,

  repeating the story I have told to you.’

  ‘And do you not need reminding?’

  ‘Yes, I do.’

  ‘You must believe, you are Will Shakespeare now.

  People,’ he takes my hand, ‘they love your plays.

  Your new work speaks to humanity with a depth

  that must come from your circumstance; the pain,

  perhaps, or the perspective granted by

  this exile you are forced to. Your new work—’

  ‘Not this new work—’ But he is undeterred.

  ‘The plays you have finished in these last four years

  surpass for greatness all the plays yet written.

  If you’ve lost heart, gain heart. Believe it’s true.

  The future will right this wrong,’ he says. ‘It will.

  So long as your work survives, and Marlowe’s too,

  posterity will see how Shakespeare blooms

  out of the bud of Kit.’

  ‘Posterity?

  Some promised future that will never come?’

  I turn from him again, and when he speaks,

  his voice has softened passion into care.

  ‘You may not live to see it, Kit, it’s true.

  But come it will. We’ll leave too many clues.

  Not least the silent Stratford man whose hands

  are legally bound. He will not claim the plays,

  and no one will ever testify he wrote.

  When all who were involved are safely dead –’

  ‘Including me?’

  A pause.

  ‘Including you –

  your safety is all our care.’

  And I have stopped

  his speech, it seems. I turn, and see a tear.

  ‘Go on,’ I say, more gently. ‘When we’re dead?’

  ‘It will not be a hundred years, I swear,

  before intelligence will sift the truth

  and you will be restored your every work;

  all credit to your name, and every play

  and poem yours again.’

  ‘I’ll wait that long

  if we’re eternal.’ I reach for the wine

  that’s never far away.

  ‘Then believe we are,

  and decades just a blink when we are souls.’

  He is so beautiful. ‘That is the plan?

  This plan’s as long as the sort that built cathedrals.’

  ‘And they were built,’ he says. ‘And are admired.’

  ‘And you believe I’ll be admired too?’

  ‘Your friends will see to it.’

  I touch his face.

  A frisson. A shiver. He looks to the door

  as if his sister might walk in and see

  our tenderness. I say, ‘It’s market day.’

  A kiss as juicy as the purple cherries

  my wife is haggling for.

  ‘Oh, Kit,’ he breathes.

  ‘I’d forgotten who you were.’

  ‘Yes. So had I.’

  EXIT STAGE LEFT

  One tale before I go. A tale of drink.

  A London tavern where a stranger sits

  lining his guts with ale. He shouldn’t be

  so close to the playhouse. But the play is his,

  It’s mine, he tells himself; this time out loud

  from the look on that wench’s face. He’s here to feed,

  to re-create those nights worn years ago

  when he revelled in glory seeded from his pen,

  full-grown and showering blossom on his head.

  Weathering admiration. Not long now

  till the groundlings enter, high on their own applause.

  Another beer while he’s waiting. Then, sweet joy,

  they’re spilling through the doors, full of his play,

  rattling with the violence of the scene

  where the hero dies, the mute face of the Queen

  as she poisons herself.

  And how he breathes it in,

  leans back against the wall, closing his eyes

  imagining how each word is due to him,

>   until he hears:

  ‘’E’s odd that ’Amlet, though.

  ’E shoulda killed the King two hours ago.’

  The man has a nose bashed as a cobbler’s awl.

  The stranger’s swallow sticks as the men agree,

  and he contradicts them, under his hand. They hear.

  He might have drunk up then, and left. But no.

  Good Lady Drunkenness has slipped her hand

  half up his thigh, encouraging desire

  to be a part of almost anything,

  so no, he argues. And they argue back.

  And the five of them (for there are five of them)

  all hold the same opinion: he is wrong,

  and they tell him so.

  ‘Aha, but you are wrong’

  (and he may have slurred a little), ‘I should know.

  I am the author.’

  A decade’s secrecy

  snuffed in the puff of a pointless argument,

  as gossip said his life was.

  Idiot.

  Perhaps you are surprised it took this long.

  But a decade built me to the point: this snap,

  this wild attempt to resurrect myself

  unthought-through, yet imagined many years

  through long nights painting my head’s scenery

  where thought played every possibility.

  And now to find what’s on the untried page.

  ‘You’re Shakespeare?’

  ‘No, he’s not. I’ve seen the man.

  And he isn’t fond of drinking, that I know.