“I . . .” Will swallowed nervously. “I’ve always made poems, pray, to the local girls and . . . . And I admire Marlowe’s plays much.”
The dandy laughed, a delighted cackle that jangled in the air, mingling with the calls of tradespeople, the enticements of bawds. “A good thing to love Marlowe’s plays. I sometimes enjoy them myself. Do you not, yourself, enjoy them, Phillip?”
Henslowe rolled his eyes in silence.
The dandy laughed and turned to Will with sudden, giddy enthusiasm, “So, say a poem for us. A poem.” He stuffed his handkerchief back into his sleeve and stepped back, as if to make room for Will’s expansive wit.
“Declaim,” the dandy said, and waved a hand encased in pearly grey chervil gloves with a heavy golden fringe at the end that dangled over a dainty wrist.
Will glanced at Henslowe, who stared not at Will but at the other man, with something like wonder or alarm.
Would Henslowe listen? Could Will earn his place as a playwright this way?
Standing with his feet close, Will cleared his throat.
When he’d dreamed of a moment like this, he’d imagined a tiring room, the air thick with the smell of grease paint, the actors all bespelled by Will’s very presence.
A theater owner, or perhaps even a nobleman, would ask Will to recite a poem and all the actors would fall silent, all movement stop, till, in the end, nothing stirred amid props and costumes, nothing moved except Will’s voice rising and falling and dazzling all.
But Will’s reality always fell short of his dreams, and therefore, he cleared his throat and made to start.
“I have Dutch coins, and German, and French too. Change your coins here, before you set abroad,” a money changer yelled near Will’s ear.
Will jumped, but his would-be listeners didn’t move. The dandy looked attentive, the theater owner bored.
His voice shaking, Will started, in measured cadences, to speak his best sonnet.
It was the one he’d written for Nan when they were courting, the one that ended in hate from hate away she threw / And saved my life, saying not you.
When Will had finished, the noise of Paul’s had not died down. From somewhere came the high-pitched laughter of a bawd, and somewhere behind Will two gentlemen argued loudly.
“The sad ballad and sorrowful fate of Romeo,” a ballad seller called out, just to the right of Henslowe, waving a sheaf of smudged printed sheets just within the theater owner’s field of vision. “How he did kill himself for love unrequited.”
And the dandy, his eyebrows more arched than ever, looked puzzled. “A fine sonnet, to be sure,” he told Will. “A fine sonnet.” Despite the man’s words, his lips worked in and out, battling some emotion that Will feared was mirth.
With sudden heat, Will attempted to explain, “Your lordship will allow,” Will said. “That my lady’s name is Hathaway, you see.”
The small, neat mouth—whose corners trembled upward, beneath the narrow moustache, when Will addressed its owner as “lordship”—opened in a round “o” of astonishment.
“Ah. Hathaway. Hate from hate away. Why it’s marvelous, man. No more than a poet in two would think of such a clever pun, I say. What say you, Henslowe?” He turned to the theater owner.
Suspecting he was being mocked and feeling his heart droop down to consort with his worn-out boots, Will, too, turned toward the theater owner.
But Henslowe never once glanced in his direction. Instead, he looked impatiently at the dandy and flicked him on the shoulder with a shabby glove, as though to call his attention. “I think you have strange amusements, Kit.” And before the dandy could more than open his mouth for what promised to be a droll reply, Henslowe added, “And I think your time would be better employed in writing me a play that I could stage. What, with the plague raging over this winter and the playhouses just reopened, we could use a new play to pack the groundlings in. Faustus has run its time upon the stage. Give us something new. I have a new playhouse to pay for.”
In Will’s brain the given name of Kit added to Henslowe’s request for a new play, and to the name of Faustus, and as Will turned to gaze on the dandy—Will’s mouth opening in wonder, his eyes wide—he realized that this creature, with his slashed-through sleeves, his immaculate, white silk hose, his expensive boots, his lace handkerchief, and gold-fringed grey gloves was no other than Kit Marlowe, the leading playwright of the age, the Muses’ darling, the light of the London stage.
“Many good simples for all illnesses,” a shrunken man in a black cloak called out, walking between them and away, waving a large, dark bottle. “It cures the French Pox, the ague, and the plague.”
Kit Marlowe laughed.
“In time, my dear Henslowe, in good time. I’ll write another play.” Marlowe smiled on the theater owner. “But first I’ve promised my lord Thomas Walsingham to write a long poem on the sad tragedy and most sorrowful death of Hero and Leander.”
Philip Henslowe made a rude noise at the sad tragedy. “And on their romping, perforce, beneath a silken sheet. No. Don’t answer that.” He waved away Marlowe’s attempt at speech with a hand clad in a glove dark with wearing. “Don’t answer that. It doesn’t bear discussing. I know why lordlings care about long-dead lovers. More honest, I say, to write for the people.”
“And make sure plenty of blood spurts, to make the populus throw its greasy cloaks in the air,” Marlowe said softly. “More honest that might be, Henslowe. But not nearly so profitable.”
Marlowe swept his hand left to right through the air, describing a perfect arc and as though signifying the futility of human life. “Stay.” He held Henslowe’s arm as Henslowe made to turn away. “Soon as I’m done, I’ll write you something new. A piteous doomed romance, maybe. Or would you prefer a revenge tragedy, like Thomas Kyd’s?”
Kit’s eyes acquired a faraway look as if he were reading in the entrails of his future for plays not yet written. “Perhaps I could write on the legend of Hamlet, the Dane, and how he avenged the murder of his heroic father.”
Henslowe sighed. “Write on what you will, so long as you write. Marlowe’s name on a playbill still draws them in.”
Marlowe laughed. “For which you pay me enough to buy the buttons for one of my doublets. No. Mind not. I’ll write my poem for Walsingham and get my money there. I would be finishing my poem even now at the lord’s home of Scagmore, had not urgent business called me to London yesterday.” He sighed and grinned. “Be gone with you. When I have my play, I’ll come searching.”
The playhouse owner patted Marlowe on the shoulder, as if acknowledging a joke or thanking Marlowe for a favor.
“But pray what did you think of my poem?” Will asked. His voice, strangled and small, did not carry very far and missed Philip Henslowe altogether, as the theater owner turned his back and disappeared amid the throng.
“He didn’t listen to your poem,” Marlowe said and smiled at Will as though this too were droll.
Will’s stomach twisted in hunger. Did Marlowe not understand that this was Will’s very life in the balance of the theater owner’s attention?
“They never do. Why would you wish him to? They know nothing of poetry, the unfeeling philistines. Theater owners listen only to the soft tinkling of coins, the whisper of gold.” Marlowe adjusted the gilded fringe on his gloves, and bent upon Will a look of disarming honesty. “No, do yourself better, friend. Write a long poem. Know you the classics?”
Will’s mouth went dry again. Marlowe, who had translated Ovid’s Amores, asked if Will knew the classics. Even the Amores, Will had read in translation. “I have little Latin and small Greek,” he stammered.
“Well, then, enough, I say. Write yourself a long poem, say on the subject of Venus and Adonis, and have the lovers disport in the glades of Arcadia and any nobleman will give you coin for it. What, with your clever punning style . . .”
“But my lodging—” Will started, intending to explain that he was already overdue in paying for that and must ma
ke some coin or perish.
“Your lodging is not convenient to gentlemen’s abodes?” Marlowe asked.
Will shook his head. “I lodge in Shoreditch, at Hog’s Lane,” he said. “Over the Bonefoy hatters there, and I—”
He would have said more: that he owed money to his landlord, that soon he would be turned out, that he hadn’t eaten in a whole day, that he knew no noblemen, no one who might help. He might so far have forgotten himself as to ask for the help of this stranger, of this crowned, gilded king of poets. And Will less than a peasant
But before he could speak, two men emerged from the crowd, like wrathful gods from stormy waters, pushing aside money changers, ballad makers, and smirking, tightly corseted bawds.
The men flanked Marlowe, one on either side.
Will stepped away from them.
Somberly dressed, in black with no adornments, the two men looked like Puritans.
They were not the sort of men that Will expected to see with a playwright.
Marlowe looked at one, then the other. His whole face contracted, aged, soured, as if he’d tasted bitter gall.
One of the men had narrow-faced, thin looks that reminded Will of a rat in a house with a fast cat. The other one was round, but old, his face wrinkled and his chin sporting only a dismal growth of beard, like grass striving to thrive on poisoned land.
Will expected Marlowe to dismiss them or make fun of them.
Instead, Marlowe turned to face them and gave them his full attention and a weary look. He bowed to each one in turn. “Gentlemen?”
“If you would come with us,” the small one said, his voice echoing with an incongruous boom.
Marlowe smiled, an oddly forced smile that lacked the mobility of his amusement and the malicious quickness of his teasing. It looked like the grin of a death mask, like the drawn lips and vacant eyes of a final rictus.
Funny how, when people died like that, their neighbors said they’d gone to their reward smiling. Will would never believe it again.
Marlowe bowed as a statue might bow, all stiff poise and graceful dignity. “I am, as always, at the council’s disposal, am I not?”
The three of them walked off, the two men on either side, hemming in Marlowe. Despite Marlowe’s smile, his easy walk, he looked like a prisoner led to the gallows.
Will stared after them, blinking. It couldn’t be. What would a playwright be arrested for? His writings?
No. The Queen’s censor approved all plays, did he not? So, how could something libelous get on the stage?
No. Those men must be Kit Marlowe’s friends, and Will’s foreboding the fruit of his own sick thoughts.
Hunger gnawed at his entrails like a sharp-toothed rat, and all dreams of work in the theater had vanished before Will’s eyes like a lacy fog that—lifted—uncovers dismal reality.
He rubbed his calloused thumb and forefinger across his eyes, trying to thus remove the veil that tiredness and faintness dropped in front of his vision.
Earlier that afternoon, to evade his hunger, Will had taken a nap. In that sleep, a strange dream had visited him, a dream of womenlike beings, who’d hailed Will as a great poet and forecast such a great future for him.
In this, his dismal waking reality, such dreams must be dismissed with a smile and a shrug. But tears prickled hard behind his eyes at the loss of that dreamed greatness that had never been his.
He retraced his steps through the thronging multitude, past a woman selling grilled chicken meat, to the Si Quis door again.
But the notice for the horse holder job was gone, as was the man who’d pointed Henslowe out to Will.
Will would find no work in London. He was too simple a man for this town. In Stratford, respectable men were honorable and people acted as they seemed. Nothing had prepared Will for the widespread deception he’d found in the capital. Each day in London, it seemed, Will had been ill used by someone. His purse had been cut, his meat begged away from him, his bread shorted, his room overcharged for.
Yet, he could go nowhere else. He lacked the money.
He’d die in London.
He might as well return to his lodgings. If he were lucky, his pious Protestant landlord would already have gone to bed and would not demand the rent that Will could not pay.
Thus, Will would have a bed for yet another night. A postponing of the harsh fate he could not avoid forever.
Scene 2
Arden Woods, near Stratford-upon-Avon. These ancient trees are all that remain of the primeval forest that once covered all of the British Isles. As befits their antiquity, the woods are the run of fairy kind and the abode of elf. On a clearing, amid the trees, a tall translucent palace rises, more graceful and perfect than any built by mankind. And in the gold-and-white-marble throne room, the King and Queen of Elvenland sit on their gilded thrones, and receive a centaur ambassador from the far-off reaches of their realm. Tall, regal-looking, Quicksilver sits on the throne, his long blond hair combed over his shoulder. He wears a magnificent suit of dark blue velvet and pale blue silk stockings. Queen Ariel, smaller than her husband, and paler, sits next to him, wearing a white dress that makes her look at once too innocent and too young for the heavy crown that rests upon her head.
Running steps approached the throne room of Fairyland.
“Lord,” a breathless voice called. “Lord, our boundary is breached.”
Quicksilver looked away from the ambassador of the centaurs.
The centaur ambassador shrugged his broad human shoulders, while the glossy black legs of his horse half tip-tapped uneasily on the marble floor.
The ambassador had been in the midst of one of the long speeches beloved of his people, mingling Greek and English with artless effusion.
Now he, like all of the court, turned his attention to the broad-arched entrance to the palace, from which a breathless voice called, “Milord, milord, a breach. A breach in our defense.”
An elf careened through the marble archway that opened to the outside of the palace.
His eyes wide with fear, his breath ragged, a tall, dark elf male stumbled into the room to collapse, prostrating himself in a panting heap on the red velvet carpet in front of the throne.
The centaur ambassador cantered away from the newcomer, closer to the magnificent lords, the bejeweled ladies of Fairyland that, in two sparkling aisles, lined the room.
The ladies’ fans moved nonstop, their lips whispering fast behind those fans, of the shocking alarm and what it might betide.
Quicksilver rose to his feet, recognizing the elf, whose sturdy body betrayed human origins, but who wore the green velvet of Quicksilver’s own private guard, and whose black hair sported the golden coronet of a prince of Fairyland. “Malachite?”
This was Lord Malachite, Quicksilver’s childhood friend, his milk-brother, raised with the king at the feet of the late fairy queen, Titania. A trusted friend, a keen advisor.
Quicksilver’s pulse sped in alarm. Brave Malachite thus alarmed? What could this bode? Decorous Malachite disrupting a royal audience? It could mean nothing good.
As the whole court recognized Malachite, the elven ladies’ fans moved faster. Whispers rose from amid the elven gentlemen. Queen Ariel gasped and leaned forward. Her small, rosebud mouth opened in startled alarm.
Malachite knelt, gasping for breath, and half raised his face, his mouth working, trying to say something for which he had no breath. His great jade-green eyes were full of that speaking force which eyes have when lips lack the strength to utter.
Ariel stood and rested her arm on Quicksilver’s. Together, the sovereigns of Elvenland descended the ten marble steps from the platform on which their throne sat. They flanked Malachite, who, still kneeling, managed to draw in full breath that whistled through his words as he spoke.
“If your majesty pleases,” he said, turning wide eyes to Quicksilver. “If your majesty pleases.” He looked at Ariel. “Our defenses have been breached.”
Quicksilver knit his brows. If y
our majesty pleases. What a phrase. He pleased no such thing. Not sure what Malachite meant, yet he was sure it betokened no good. “The defenses?” he said. “What defenses, man? Speak.”
For they were not at war, nor were there defenses around the realm that another realm might break through. No. Nor such realm as might wish to do it.
“The defenses to Avalon, milord. The defenses set around this palace, around this forest.” Malachite gulped in air like a starving man will devour food. “The living defenses that ever protected our kind from evil beings abroad.”
Still kneeling, he straightened so that his knees supported his weight, the rest of him upright. His earnest face, with its too-sharp nose, its jade-green eyes, faced Quicksilver.
“While we were on patrol, we sensed it, Igneous, and I, and Birch and Laurel. And then we ran to the place where right away we saw the breach blooming in our magical defenses, evil resounding through it.”
The muttering of the court stopped, every breath suspended.
Quicksilver shook his head. He could not doubt Malachite. Yet the defenses could not be broken.
These magical wards and spells and dread enchantments of which Malachite spoke had been placed around the capital of the magical kingdom, time out of mind, by Quicksilver’s ancestors.
They protected the source of the hill’s magic, the collective strength of hill power, the core and Soul of elvenkind.
Humans and other natural creatures could wander through the defenses, in and out of the forest, and disturb nothing. Most humans, blind, ephemeral creatures that they were, couldn’t even see the fairy palace and that great, gilded land that coexisted along the human world like two pages of a book, touching but never mingling.
But any enemy with ill intentions would be kept out by these defenses, unable to come near the ancient, sacred palace of elvenkind, unable to touch the living force of their magic, the fountain of elf power.
There was no record, ever—either in Quicksilver’s memory, or in the collective memory of his race which, as a king, Quicksilver held—of the defenses being disturbed, much less broken.
All Night Awake Page 2