Tamburlaine Must Die

by Louise Welsh

  ‘I thought perhaps some influence or friendly feeling had worked for me amongst the Council.’

  He leaned forward, like an eager schoolmaster congratulating a poor student on mastering a times-table.

  ‘And so it did. Have you thoughts on who might have spoken for you?’

  I kept the curiosity I felt from my voice.

  ‘Aye sir, but I don’t feel obliged to share my thoughts with a stranger.’

  ‘In that case I will tell you, and you can judge if we are of like mind. Lord Cecil spoke of you as one who had done good service to the Queen.’ Relief must have shown in my face. The man leaned closer. ‘He spoke well for you, well enough to keep you from gaol, but those who know about such things thought his defence circumspect and wondered if he kept you at liberty because you know so much of his world.’ He was very close now and whispering. His breath tickled my cheek. ‘The dwarf Cecil keeps you safe, but only so long as you are of use, and that time is running out.’

  ‘Time is always running out.’

  ‘True, but yours need not end so soon.’ He leaned back in his chair. ‘Another voice was raised in your defence. That of my master. His words carry great sway.’

  ‘I would like the opportunity to thank him.’

  ‘The opportunity may come.’ The smile was back. ‘Meanwhile be satisfied he has your welfare at heart.’

  I chose my words carefully.

  ‘It is always good to have an ally, but difficult to accept aid when ignorant of the source.’

  ‘Surely a man in your position will welcome aid from any quarter?’

  ‘Not without knowing the price.’

  The man opened his hands, laying his soft pink palms before me, beginning negotiations with all the craft of a market trader.

  ‘The price is one you can pay while gaining credit and releasing yourself from the difficulties that presently menace you.’

  I feigned disinterest.

  ‘I may escape them anyway.’

  ‘My master is a good friend, but he would take it most hard should you refuse to assist him.’

  ‘The difficulty remains. If I do not know your master, I cannot trust his promises or his threats.’

  He smiled.

  ‘His threats are promises.’

  ‘Then let him proceed.’ I got to my feet. ‘I might work for Mephistopheles if I thought the bargain well struck. But I will not attach myself to a man too cowardly to reveal his identity.’

  He looked up at me.

  ‘Though the prize be your life?’

  I stepped towards the door but something held me within the room. Perhaps it was the hope that he might save me.

  ‘I live yet.’

  He spoke with dreadful seriousness.

  ‘None of us know the hour, but few rush towards it.’

  ‘Alliances with absent men won’t increase my span. I’m not friendless. I’ll take my chances.’

  ‘Aye, and perish.’

  ‘If it be so, it will be so.’

  I turned to leave at the same time as a second door at the back of the room opened. The noise made me turn, just as a man I recognised entered.

  The absence of the Privy Council did not diminish his authority. My old interrogator was wearing the same austere robes of the previous morning. On his head was a soft hat of black velvet. It gave him the look of a necromancer, though I feel sure that was not his intention. The old man nodded to his deputy, who returned the greeting. Then he turned to me. His voice was mild and stern.

  ‘So you would work for the Devil, Master Marlowe?’

  For a second I thought he was about to declare himself Lucifer come to tempt me. I shook my head, half to refute his charge, half at my own folly.

  ‘It was an expression forced from me in an ill-considered moment.’

  ‘Aye, but you are a man for sale.’

  ‘I am a poet.’

  ‘And a spy.’ I kept silent, wanting to know what he had to say. ‘There has been enough jousting of words in this room. Sit.’

  He pointed to the chair I had just vacated and I obeyed, trying not to look too much like a trained dog. He sighed as he eased his old bones into a seat, sandwiching me between the two men. When he turned towards me, the pain of rheumatics distorted his features and I wondered if old age was a goal worth fighting for. He wiped a hand across his face.

  ‘Do poets have many friends?’

  ‘Some.’

  ‘And spies, how many friends can they afford?’

  ‘You ask the wrong man.’

  ‘I would have thought it a question you are ideally suited to answering.’ He smiled. ‘A spy can’t afford any friends. Not one. Even his wife may be in the pay of the enemy.’

  ‘I have no wife.’

  ‘No,’ he smiled again, ‘you don’t. Well then, your closest companion, your patron, even.’ I tried to keep my face blank, but perhaps it betrayed my fear, for the old man’s eyes widened. ‘Yes, no brotherly love in your profession.’ He smoothed his beard thoughtfully. ‘Not even amongst brothers.’

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘I want to ease your difficulties.’

  ‘And in return?’

  ‘Bring us Raleigh.’

  *

  Raleigh changes any room he enters. Sometimes it is as if a window has been opened. Sometimes as if a door has slammed. Soldier, sailor, spy, Raleigh has lived many lives since he left his father’s farm. Alchemist, courtier, bard, not so long ago he was the Queen’s darling. He still trails a touch of her magic, though he forsook her favour for the love of a lover long past a maid. Adventurer, chronicler, knave. Tall and spare, Raleigh has the curly hair and rose-gold sheen of the boglanders he ran to ground in Ireland. But he is more muscled than they. His body is a canvas for fine fabric, and you can be sure that when courtier Raleigh bridged a puddle for the Queen, the cloak he forfeited was a fine one.

  Raleigh is all style and some substance. His pointed beard has a natural curl that men who spend an early morning hour with a barber and hot tongs can never quite achieve. A large pearl bobs recklessly from his left ear, reminding us of the buccaneer beneath the poet. He is high and low. He can rape and kill, woo and versify. He has thrown bishops from their livings and gilded the way to new worlds. Raleigh is the most calculating of men, and reckless with it.

  Raleigh is a fine pirate and a bad spy. He’s adept at fiction and poor at deceit. He can weigh smoke. Challenge God. He keeps company with wizards and magi, earls and the Queen’s advisors and finds they are the same men. He has dealt in slaughter and massacres. Settled Virginia and lost the new world. He is the conquered man who will write history and so win the last battle, a fine friend and a better enemy.

  *

  I sat back in my chair and shook my head.

  ‘I have enough enemies without adding Raleigh to the ranks.’

  ‘Raleigh is more general than foot soldier. How do you know he’s not marshalling what remains of his powers against you right now?’

  ‘He has no need.’

  ‘He might if rumours suggested you were about to betray him.’

  I remembered the old gaoler’s advice. His hints of powerful men who might buy my life with theirs. My thoughts had drifted on that tide more than once. But if talk was already circulating of how I might damn Raleigh, I was as good as wrecked. I feigned bravado and said, ‘I’m not so desperate I’d conjure the betrayal of a man I hardly know. All that stands against me are vague rumours which, having no substance, will die of their own accord.’

  The old man nodded to his assistant, who rose in wordless understanding and retrieved the document he had been signing when I entered. He laid it before me with the assurance of a man revealing a trump card.

  There in front of me were all my blasphemies of the night before, black on white, crawling across the page. The clerk who transcribed it had a fine hand. But his twirling capitals and curving curlicues were nothing to my flourishes. The pace of the evening was in my talk. It was a
shame it had not been illuminated by the monks of old. They could have punctuated the text with gilded cups of ale. Here one drink sponsoring mild dissension, a second embellishing the theme, a third, fourth, fifth promoting profanities which might hang me. My own words ripped at my body, a stone in my stomach, claw at my throat. The sensation seemed like an augur of the gallows and the quarterman and for the first time in this strange adventure I panicked. I snarled, ‘What lies are these?’

  And moved to grab the page, but the younger man was quicker. He whisked the paper swift from beneath my reaching fingers. As my palm hit the table the old man moved, faster than I could have guessed, stabbing his knife into the back of my hand, with no more hesitation than if it had been a lump of wood or slice of fruit. He marked his aim, slick-sliding into the difficult channel betwixt the bones, straight through it seemed. I roared and the knife withdrew as fast as it had pierced. The servant who’d first brought me dived into the room. He took in the scene, relaxing as he noted it was my blood and not his master’s that pooled the table.

  ‘Marlowe has had an accident, perhaps you could oblige him with a bandage?’

  I held my hand against my chest, aware of the blood ruining my doublet, but too seared by pain to let go. The steward returned with hot water and a dressing, which he applied with battlefield expertise. The old man smiled.

  ‘Perhaps I should have mentioned, this is not the only copy of the document. They are signed and witnessed and coupled with the charges already against you …’

  He trailed off as if too polite to mention the consequences should my blasphemies be revealed. The old man’s tone betrayed nothing of the drama between us, but I fancied there was a better colour in his cheeks. ‘There is a need for blood. It will either be yours or Raleigh’s. Raleigh’s would suit me best, but yours will do should circumstance insist.’

  I spoke through gritted teeth.

  ‘What is your proposition?’

  ‘If you sign an affidavit against Raleigh we will destroy this document and aid you in your current difficulties.’

  ‘And if not?’

  ‘No one can help a man who will not help himself.’

  *

  They gave me two days. I clutched my bandaged hand and stared at the scores on the table wondering if they had all been gouged by the old man’s knife. His tone was mildness and business now, weighing the cost of my life as a merchant weighs his stock.

  ‘You would be well advised to sign immediately. We would remove Raleigh and with him any threat he may pose to you.’

  ‘I’ll take the two days’ grace.’

  ‘At the end of that we will send someone to meet with you. You can sign and watch the evidence against you burn, or take the consequences. The choice is yours.’

  ‘Are you Tamburlaine?’ I asked, half dazed.

  And he laughed.

  ‘Put that impostor from your mind. Whoever he might be, his threats are nothing compared to ours.’

  ‘Death is the same whoever brings it.’

  He gave me a last look and asked, ‘Do you really think so?’

  *

  That night I followed the Thames out of the city. A full moon lit my progress, hanging low in the sky as if the weight of its silver was dragging it from the firmament. The moon man’s face gaped, eyes shocked wide, mouth frozen in a warning scream. Around him stars glowed brilliant as any theatre backcloth. I looked up at the heavens and felt alone. Below me the river pressed on, dark and relentless, swirling with secret currents. I wondered how many deaths it held. Pregnancies and broken hearts, murders slid beneath its tide, drunkards, debtors, kittens and cuckolds all lost. I wondered if the day would ever come when the dead would rise from its embrace and face their persecutors. I repeated to myself the final line of Baynes’s note to the Council, ‘I think all men in Christianity ought to endeavour that the mouth of so dangerous a member may be stopped.’ And vowed that if I were murdered to drag my dead body from whatever grave it were thrown in and hound my foes beyond mercy.

  *

  Priest Parsons said Raleigh ran a school for atheists, where men learned to spell God backwards. But I doubt Raleigh would entertain any incapable of that poor trick. All of one summer I was a frequent visitor to Sherborne, the palace the Queen had plucked from a bishop’s living when she was Raleigh’s Cynthia. There was no conjuring done there. But Raleigh was host to amazing men. When he swapped one Bess for another and so lost influence, things that had only been whispered against him began to be said out loud.

  Men like me were poison to Raleigh’s reputation. But he thought us worth the risk. It was at his house that I met Thomas Harriot, who had ventured to the new world. Harriot told us that these new lands were awash with antiquities, which preceded Moses’s time and that the natives there had histories of their own which recorded no great flood. Under Raleigh’s roof we questioned the composition of souls, smoked tobacco and got drunk on dangerous talk.

  Though it would grieve me, I was willing to betray Raleigh to save myself. But Raleigh’s star had risen and fallen so many times, I wasn’t sure that to be the agent of his demise would secure my life. Yet rumours that I was out to dispose of him would certainly be a death penalty. Men do not live as long and as close to the sun as Raleigh has without being ruthless enough to dispatch rivals, however much he might like their verse. After all, poetry can be pressed between the pages of other works while the poet’s head grins on a spike or lolls in a ditch.

  I wasn’t reckless in my preparations. I’d disguised myself as best I could, tying my hair back and dressing in working men’s clothes. It was not the first time I had worn this guise and I liked myself well enough in the simple cloth breeches and waistcoat. But it seemed, as I’d watched my reflection shave by candlelight, that I was no longer the handsome dramatist who had beguiled Walsingham a few short days ago. There were lines where there had been none before. And it struck me that if this adventure saw my death, I would not die a young man.

  *

  Mortlake, there’s a dread about that name. The village has no pond, but I fancy there must have been one once. Some stagnant tarn so wreathed in mist and bloated with bodies that the villagers filled it in, though they could not banish its name. I’d muffled my horse’s shoes with sacking, but the dull thud of his hooves sounded loud against the deathly quiet of the hamlet. No lights shone from windows, no dogs barked at my approach. All were abed, tucked safe and warm between the sheets, and it was eerie to be the only man moving in that deserted place. I guided my horse along the main street, turned towards the church and saw, frozen on the opposite side of the road, a dark-robed figure standing tall and slender in the moonlight.

  Despite the losses he had suffered since we’d last met, his sixty years sat easy on Dr Dee. The old magus opened his garden gate, making no comment on my disguise, and invited me through with an abstracted air I knew belied the sharpness of his wit. The geography of Dee’s home is hard to fathom. Under the doctor’s hand his mother’s simple dwelling has sprouted long winding corridors which wrap around and through themselves, budding new rooms, branching into halls, encrusting the old house in a labyrinth where somewhere hides his library, laboratories and secret oratories. The house was wreathed in smells as complex as its map. I thought I could detect sulphur and dung in the mix and decided to analyse no more. Dee’s sure step led on and I followed, wishing I had a trail of pebbles or ball of string to aid my return. He spoke a little as we walked, glancing back over his shoulder to cast reassuring smiles laced with pity. His Celtic lilt gave a freshness to his speech. But they were inconsequential words, designed to put me at my ease and I replied in dull fashion. Soon he fell silent and the only sound was the fall of our footsteps and the soft sweeping of Dee’s robe. Eventually, when we were somewhere near the centre of the house, he led me into a small octagonal room lined with books and bade me sit. He busied himself at a stove and I wondered what kind of necromancy he was engaged on. When he joined me at the table he passed me an
herbal tincture. I smelled it, then took a sip. The liquid was warm and bland. Dee sensed my hesitation.

  ‘Nothing intoxicating or entrancing, just a mix of peppermint and other herbs good for digestion.’

  ‘You think my stomach out of sorts?’

  The doctor’s beard descended half his chest, seeming soft and white as swansdown against his dark artist’s robe. He smiled tiredly. Lines of age and hardship, which had seemed absent before, revealed themselves. He took a sip of his own draft.

  ‘It does no harm and might do good.’

  I nodded and took another drink, though it tasted so filthy I thought only intoxication could excuse it. We sat in silence. In the next room a row of stills bubbled mysteriously.

  ‘Do your researches go well?’ I asked.

  He lowered his eyes.

  ‘They near their end.’

  His meaning came to me and I marvelled at the ease in his voice. But then Dee is somewhere over sixty and I am not yet thirty. Perhaps it was no wonder my tone was not so sure.

  ‘I fear my days may also be nearing their end. There are plots against me.’ I hesitated, drawing my hand across my brow, massaging my temples. Dee nodded at me to go on. ‘I’ve been asked to hand Raleigh to a faction of the Council in return for documents which incriminate me.’ The old man nodded again. His calmness irritated me and I snapped, ‘You don’t seem surprised.’

  ‘Why should it be surprising when men who deal in danger and then seek out more jeopardy find themselves the agents of each other’s doom? Raleigh has already been here on the same business.’

  I felt regret and relief that our paths hadn’t crossed.

  ‘What did you decide?’ I asked.

  Dee spoke softly.

  ‘Whatever influence I had is as diminished as my fortunes. We are entering a new age and all I can offer is guidance. I advised Raleigh as I will advise you. Make a pact through me.’

  ‘Easy counsel, I’ve no desire for Raleigh’s blood but if the choice is his or mine, I won’t hesitate.’

  ‘He said the same.’