Will

by Christopher Rush

  ‘Roaring boys and nancy boys.’

  Marlowe being Marlowe, he never went up Smock Alley or Petticoat Lane but preferred certain other passages – here he became a free and familiar spirit, haunting Damnation Dyke and the Devil’s Gap. He also got into fights, most famously the Hog Lane fight in ’89 when he fought with William Bradley, an innkeeper’s son and a working villain who had an ongoing feud with Marlowe’s friend Watson. He didn’t exactly keep his head down in London.

  And in no time at all he was a member of the notorious School of Night.

  ‘They kept themselves dark – never heard of them either.’

  Founded by Ralegh – a gathering of geographers, mathematicians, astronomers, alchemists, globemakers, poets. It was attacked by the shocked Jesuits as a school of atheism. They’d been seen to tear pages out of a bible to dry tobacco on – and that’s the least of it. Others saw it at worst as a circle of wizards, at best as a respectable debating group, trying to reconcile religion with science and philosophy. In any case the members of this particular night school led dubious lives and embraced unsavoury ends – pun intended, I’m afraid. Ferdinando Stanley, Lord Strange (Lord Queer to some): poisoned gruesomely and died in agony. Henry Percy, ninth Earl of Northumberland, the scholar knight with the stutter and the long melancholy face: slung in jail by James. Henry Brooke, ninth Baron Cobham: jailed by the king for life. Richard Baines: agent, informer, assassin. Even Dr Dee, the notorious necromancer, had been asked along.

  ‘Hardly the choice and master spirits of the age.’

  And Chairman Ralegh. Brooke was actually on the block, seconds from headlessness, when he picked out Ralegh in a plot to kill the king. It was cutting it fine but his last minute fingering saved Brooke and dropped Ralegh straight into the shit, where he rots to this day, a turd among turds, festering in the Tower.

  ‘Ah.’

  Yes, you see what I mean? And then there was Marlowe. One by one the sceptics and scholars had a tendency to disappear from the scene, their inquiries cut short, invariably by a head. Wrapped up in their graves with their clever jaws clamped shut and their ears bandaged with a clout – deaf to any doubt. If they were lucky they did time. Suddenly stone walls and iron bars became the best possible place to be.

  But when the plague struck London all the goldfinches flew to the woods. Anybody with any money to spare, that is, they just lost their nerve and fled. Plague brings panic, and panic prejudice, and prejudice all sorts of atrocities, including lies and libels. Marlowe took off to Canterbury, and an anti-Flemish poem appeared at the beginning of May, pasted up on the boundary wall of the Dutch churchyard in Broad Street. It expressed anti-Jewish sentiments too and threatened throat-cutting on a Parisian if not Scythian scale. Even in his drunkest dreams and at his most tobacco-happy Marlowe could never have written it. But in case anyone doubted that, it was signed Tamburlaine. Not that that fooled anybody, least of all the government, who offered a reward of a hundred crowns for information leading to the true author of this outrage. The following day a number of arrests were made – and there, trawled up in the shoal of unwilling witnesses, was Thomas Kyd.

  ‘How fishy was he?’

  Kyd had gone on from the glories of The Spanish Tragedy to co-script Sir Thomas More – which just happened to contain an unfortunate inflammatory element, unfortunate enough to make Kyd an easy suspect. He was handed over to Topcliffe in Bridewell, where he sang out against Marlowe. He came off the rack a broken man at thirty-four with less than a year left to live, ruined in spirit and flesh, right down to the last finger.

  ‘Broken fingers – not good for a writer.’

  A severe disqualification. They invented apt punishments. And what had he been writing recently? His rooms were ransacked and heretical papers discovered. Kyd promptly swore blind and blue that the papers must have been Marlowe’s, inadvertently shuffled together with his own when they were sharing rooms in Shoreditch.

  ‘A likely story.’

  An untidy arsehole to doss down with, Marlowe, swore Kyd, and as for the sentiments, they got worse by the page, light as pipe-smoke and heard in every tavern in the town, Marlowe-talk, no question about it. Much coloured by Kyd’s blood, mind you, Kyd’s blood staining the rack –he proved marvellously inventive, surpassing even Topcliffe’s relentless encouragement. It gave the Privy Council plenty to go on and an order went out for Marlowe’s arrest.

  ‘The stuff of drama, Will. You should have written about it.’

  Haven’t you learned anything, Francis? He was staying in Chislehurst at the time, at Scadbury, the house of his patron, Thomas Walsingham, cousin of Francis, his now extinct employer. When the Queen’s messenger entered the room Marlowe was sitting writing, penning a reasonably respectable erotic poem about Hero and Leander, the first pages of which had already been in circulation for some years. Henry Maunder showed him the warrant and brought him out of his text and into the real world: the dangerous world of politics and the law. He was brought straight into the presence of the Privy Council in Whitehall and ordered to report to them daily until further notice. And that is what he did. He had little choice in the matter.

  Nine days later the Privy Council found themselves looking at a document written by double agent Richard Baines of the School of Night – a note of no fewer than nineteen accusations made against Marlowe and quite a damning catalogue of his pernicious practices and opinions. The usual blasphemies, with several interesting extras: Moses was a juggler, Christ a bastard, his mother Mary a fornicator, Gabriel a pimp, and the Holy Ghost a client. Barabas was a better man than Jesus, Mary Magdalene a whore, the same as her sister Martha, both fucked by Christ – who also buggered St John the Sodomite Evangelist. Added to this, hell was a fable and the whole of religion invented for one purpose only: to hold men in awe and keep them in their place. As for the blessed sacrament, Christ would have done better to have instituted it in a tobacco-pipe and had a smoke instead.

  To continue: Marlowe himself smoked like a winter chimney and was a practising homo and guilty a thousand times over of the capital offence, the cynosure of bumboys and pole-star of London’s buggers. All deadly data, though much of it may have been a smokescreen to divert attention from his real preoccupation – intelligence – while the Council, privy to his Secret Service work, had let him alone. But the Baines note went on: ‘The said Marlowe not only believes all this but he persuades others to believe likewise and has in fact shared his opinions with certain great and powerful men, who shall in due course be named. All Christian men ought to see to it, therefore, that the mouth of such a dangerous man be stopped.’

  Baines had written out Marlowe’s death warrant. He had only three days left to live. On 30th May he reported early to the Council, then he went straight to Eleanor Bull’s house on Deptford Strand to meet his destiny – two inches worth of dagger, itself worth twelve pence according to the coroner’s report. Death from a one-shilling dagger, driven into the brain just above the right eye.

  ‘Jesus, what an end!’

  It was quick. Danby accepted the depositions of Poley, Skeres, and Frizer, the three men left of the four who had been in the room. The fact that they were three shits to a man was legally immaterial (even shits may speak true). But what they asked Danby to believe is that Frizer, pinned in on both sides by his two fellow turds and with his back to Marlowe, managed to reverse the situation – including his own trammelled carcass – and kill the Prince of Cats, thereby saving his own skin. Meanwhile, Agents Skeres and Poley sat there – so they swore – and gaped like codfish, these operators from the most dangerous occupation in Europe, while the fight went on inches from their ears. That was the scene so happily swallowed by the Royal Coroner – but mocked in every pub from Eastcheap to Norton Folgate and Drury Lane.

  Marlowe was a pawn and a patsy who came between the pass and fell incensèd points of mighty opposites, Ralegh in one corner and in the other Poley’s employer, the Earl of Essex. Or: Poley was a nancy boy and the ki
lling was sexual, according to what turns queers on – and off. Or: Marlowe was sleeping not with Poley but with altogether bigger buggers (watch out, O womanly Walsingham, cousin of dead Francis!) and was about to blow the whistle. After all, queerness was a capital crime in the England of our Virgin Queen, where old buggers got to bend over the block if they got caught. Or perhaps this: Marlowe knew too much about certain other men in high places – powerful men whose weaknesses lay not in their pricks but in their consciences. He knew the secrets of their souls, knew their opinions on dangerous subjects – religion, for example, none more perilous. He knew who had enrolled in the School of Night and exactly what answers they had given to the eternal questions. And nobody knew just whom he might have slept with or what they might have said. The pillows may have been deaf but Marlowe wasn’t – not to pillow talk. And the Privy Council began to lose sleep.

  ‘Get him to Deptford,’ says one of them (let’s fashion it thus) – ‘I have a cousin has a house there, close to the water. We could have a watery death, could we not? But no, wait, let’s think. Tell him he can take the tide tomorrow, lie low in the Low Countries. It will be a night tide too. Tell him to wait there all day. Tell him what the fuck you like. Wine him and dine him – grand style and gratis. Hold hard there, though – on second thoughts don’t say it’s on the house, he’ll smell a rat if the food and booze come free and he’ll hear the fatted calf sizzling a mile away. Soft, let me see… I have it! Fill him with drink, all day long, wine sufficient to convince, and let him ply his music – then present him with a monstrous bill, one he’s sure to quarrel with. A quarrelsome man is Agent Marlowe and a short-tempered guest at parties – a fiery cat. Go to it, then. Find out how much he knows before you eliminate him. Pump him and see what spills, and don’t miss a drop – or you’ll be for the short drop yourselves. Very well then. After that bring him down. And make sure he doesn’t get up again.’

  So Skeres the swindler, Frizer the shadow, and Poley the knife (perjurer and double agent to boot) go into action. An unholy trinity and each one a Judas, they spend the day with Marlowe and help him to eat his last supper, Dr Faustus fashion. Betrayal is the name of the game. The demi-god is about to go under, the star of the stage, farewell.

  Come, thick night and pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell, that my keen knife see not the wound it makes, nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark to cry ‘Hold! Hold!’

  Afterwards Frizer exhibited his hurt head, a brace of grazes. As if the Cat’s claws wouldn’t have produced a lot worse if they’d really been out that day. But ’twill serve, sir, ’tis enough – the script continues. Danby slaps on the whitewash, pockets his backhander, Frizer gets his Queen’s pardon and goes straight back into the service of Walsingham, Poley and Skeres slip off into the shadows, their natural element, shadows that they are, Eleanor Bull (for the record) says sweet nothing, nor any of her servants (all gone deaf and blind that day apparently) – only the three hit-men have their say. And Marlowe’s body is taken into the churchyard of St Nicholas on the first day of June and deposited in an unmarked grave. Laid to rest.

  But the rest is not silence. Destiny never defames herself, said Nashe, but when she lets an excellent poet die. His pen was like a poniard. Each page he wrote on was like a burning glass to set all his readers on fire. He was the wittiest knave that ever God made – and in comparison with the tongue’s impunity he held his life in utter contempt. Goodnight then, sweet Prince of Cats, come short on angels, I suspect, to sing thee to thy rest.

  ‘And that was it, Will?’

  A casualty not of the plague, but of the plague of politics, that leaves none of us untouched. In Marlowe’s case the touch was mortal. Once more, then, farewell the mighty line. Hard to imagine that the Rose would never ring out with new words, phrases fresh minted from the Marlowe mind, now he lay dead, dead shepherd, fresh dead in Deptford. The theatres too stood dead after that, as if in mourning.

  ‘Hard to imagine all of that, stopped.’

  But imagine it all the same, Francis, come with me once more through the empty streets, past the idle unshuttered shops, past the vast black scabs of earth, scarring the green fields, those ugly anonymous monuments to the dead in their mass graves. Come with me through the silent watches of the nights, when being in London was like being locked in a charnel-house, when the cobbles rang to the rumbling tumbrils as the corpse-gatherers made their grisly rounds, gleaning God’s frightful harvest during the terrible flame-lit night.

  These are the images that lit up Marlowe’s death, Francis, pictures that stay with you for the rest of your life. Nashe made a poem out of them.

  ‘Or the plague made a poet out of Nashe?’

  Not the greatest versifier, you may be right, but the pestilence may have pulled out of him this one poem I often wish I’d written.

  ‘Really? How does it go?’

  Stick it up your nostrils, Francis, this Nashe nosegay, and remember London in 1593, In Time of Pestilence. Sample the scent of death.

  Adieu, farewell earth’s bliss,

  This world uncertain is;

  Fond are life’s lustful joys,

  Death proves them all but toys,

  None from his dart can fly.

  I am sick, I must die.

  Lord have mercy on us!

  Rich men, trust not in wealth,

  Gold cannot buy you health:

  Physic himself must fade,

  All things to end are made.

  The plague full swift goes by.

  I am sick, I must die.

  Lord have mercy on us!

  Beauty is but a flower

  Which wrinkles will devour;

  Brightness falls from the air,

  Queens have died young and fair,

  Dust hath closed Helen’s eye,

  I am sick, I must die.

  Lord have mercy on us!

  ‘He rather caught the mood, didn’t he?’

  He made hell sound almost heavenly. And that’s a poet’s job. He saw it as Summer’s Last Will and Testament.

  ‘Ah, Last Will and Testament! Now there’s a phrase!’

  We’re nearly there, Francis. Enjoy your pie first. It wasn’t Nashe’s last will anyway. A decade was left in him. He survived, in spite of his poetic farewell, but still died young at thirty-three, and left us this lyrical picture of a city in crisis. Peele had gone before him, and Kyd before Peele, and Greene before Kyd, and Marlowe before Greene, all in their twenties and thirties. It’s as I told you. London was lethal but youthful. Nobody lived long.

  ‘And what were you up to, Will?’

  The plague brought Titus to completion. And if you think it black, you’ve never known the plague. If there were reasons for these miseries, then into limits could I bind my woes. If the winds rage, does not the sea itself go mad?

  ‘I’m not sure what you mean.’

  I am the sea, Francis, I am the sea. Like Titus I supped full with horrors. I felt the cold winds go over me – as I do now. Hark how her sighs do blow.

  36

  ‘It’s this pie I’m sighing for.’

  Then sigh no more, fair Francis, here comes the harbinger of pie, if I’m not mistaken.

  Alison’s dark eyes peeped round the door and her sweet lips asked Master Collins if he’d care to come down to supper.

  ‘And you, Will, can you make it?’

  Alison can bring me up a small portion – if you can spare it, Francis. Tell your mistress that Master Collins will be down shortly.

  ‘I’ll be down right now, old man, if you don’t mind.’

  The lawyer was off the truckle-bed and standing between me and the door, rubbing his hands again, but now with a vigorous impatience.

  Just a moment, Francis, before you disappear forever into that coffin down there –

  ‘Don’t! Not while I’m eating.’

  You’re not, not yet.

  ‘I am in fancy, except you’re keeping me from it. What’s your question?’
<
br />   Little Alison. I’d like to leave her something, in my will. What do you think would be appropriate?

  The legal frown came on, intensified by hunger.

  ‘Quite inappropriate, I have to say. She’s just a girl. It would be appropriate to leave her nothing. Don’t you have other servants – more senior ones?’

  Yes, of course, you know I do.

  ‘Well then, are you leaving them anything?’

  There’s no need – they’ll be kept on.

  ‘And the maid too, I presume?’

  I suppose so.

  ‘Then what are you talking about? I advise against it. Think of the questions it might raise, the whispers, after you’re –’

  Dead.

  ‘After you’re gone – which I am now, anon, for supper!’

  Return post-haste, Francis.

  ‘I’ll return post-pie.’

  And send Alison up with a slice for me.

  ‘Will do.’

  There it is again, the laughter from below, floating up from the world I’m leaving, shedding it stitch by stitch, like lendings coming off at last. I can hear Thomas Russell getting merry, and Susanna’s laughter coming through, even above that voice, shriller than all the rest. Must you laugh, even as your father dies? Of course you must, they go together, no shadow without sunshine, our sweetest songs are laced with woe, my sweet Susanna.

  ‘Master.’

  My sweet Alison.

  She was standing by me, holding a plate of Francis’ precious pie. Her voice was ever soft – as even Francis observed, a lovely thing in woman.

  Never mind that now, Alison, put it aside. There’s something I want you to do for me.

  She smiled shyly. Not what you’re thinking, angel eyes, I thought. They were the eyes of an angel off duty.

  Take this key – (I slipped it from round my neck) – and open the dresser, the big one over there, left hand door, top shelf. Bring me the purse that’s there. Don’t be afraid.