- Have you any of these?
Baines took with a hard look the purse at his waist and shook a few ill-shaped pieces shilling-sized out so that they clanked dismally on the table. A drinking soldier peered, hearing the dull ring, and took one without permission to try with his teeth. He threw it down with a loud mouth-fart. Kit peered too. It had an ill-wrought Queen of England on its face. Baines said:
- That man there, see, knew it for bad goods.
- But with a right stamp and worthless metal any man could do it?
- There are many taught by Gilbert how to do it. I will kick him into the hold of the ship that takes him to the gallows. It is a foul crime and a heresy.
- I am not altogether sure of the foul crime but I am ready to be taught. Heresy is not the right word.
- I say heresy because my faith is in good money. All other faith is nothing to that, since the work of the world comes first, a man's bread and milk for his infants, and for the rest it is a matter of what governments decree. I follow the true Church but do not argue. I would not go to the gallows for faith of the spirit. My god is Gresham, and the State would agree.
- I do not know Gresham.
- No matter. All that matters is that the Spanish do not invade. Are you for peace or war?
- You mean the declaring of war? Let us have more of this murky beer. I am not for anything, a man must be passive and wait on his masters. But I am to see a Dutch butterman. Witchguard or some such name. He will say whether there is to be war or no.
- Wychgerde you mean. There will be an unlading of cloth on the Peppercorn. It will go into his warehouse and he will be there tomorrow or next day. Here is more of the murk.
They dined later in a Dutch ordinary on fish of the Schelde that tasted of mud, though the mud was well overlaid by a salty sauce. They had a beer that was clear and not murky. Baines had but two rooms over a baker's shop. The hot breath of its ovens, which rose through cracks in the floor, was heartening. Baines would not give up his narrow bed: Kit must sleep with his nose to the fumes, covered with a threadbare blanket, his head on his leathern bag. But before bed Baines took down from a shelf that held a pot and a comb and a spare boot his Greek New Testament.
- Do you read this?
- I have studied it at Cambridge. I do not read it for pleasure. It is filthily written.
- You dare to say that?
- The truth or untruth of it is not thereby affected.
- You speak of untruth, is that possible?
-There is one truth I will admit, and that is religion was founded to keep men in awe. You seem shocked.
- I am not so. I submit to believing what I am bid to believe, but I hold as a true protestant that a man is free to enquire of the meaning of what he reads.
- Amen to that. It is the Old Testament I most quarrel with. There be authors of great antiquity, some of them of India, some of antiquity some sixteen thousand years agone, and yet Adam is proved to have lived within six thousand years. And I have no great opinion of Moses, an Egyptian juggler that used tricks to keep the Jews in awe. As for his forty years in the wilderness, that journey could be accomplished in less than a year, and he kept circling round that those privy to his subtleties might die and a new generation be born to an everlasting superstition.
- You say all this openly?
- I am ready to do so in open disputation, but I am snapped off before I may begin.
- You are one after my heart. But you must learn of the primacy of money and of the foul sin of coining.
- You have then what might be termed a theology of money?
- Morality you might say, God does not come into it. Oh, he may, he may damn the coiners, it is something to be thought on. For to coin is to lie, and does not God hate a liar? It is to say that what is nothing in itself is much, for money is but a token of things made or done. And so this lie and nothingness escapes on dark nights from here to them that fight for the Spaniards, and Sidney the governor will do nothing. Pecunia is from pecus which is cattle, and cattle are a solidity. But this coined money is but air. Aye, God must come into it. Gifford Gilbert must be burned as a sinner and scream as he burns.
- Gilbert Gifford?
- You have it arsiversy. Aye, I know the other name and the man too, he was at Rheims. But it would not be possible to turn coat so fast.
- There is enough turning.
- Aye, enough. Baines had been so intent on his commination of coining that he had stripped himself entire unawares and so stood. Now he recovered and masked blushing his bare privities with his hands. With this masking reduced to one hand he masked his bare body by getting into his bed and then masked himself totally and his guest too by dousing his one candle. Kit smiled at this as he lay with his nose to the gush of baking. From the dark Baines said:
- We have forgot our prayers.
- Take them as said.
- Aye. Jesus Christ in a manner offended against good money by beating the bankers in the Temple. Have you thought on this?
- Never.
- I think much on Christ.
- As a man should.
- I think on him and the beloved disciple John and ask why he must like better one than the eleven others.
- A man may have a particular friend, it is in nature.
- Did they then lie together?
- Christ was a man. A man may perform the act of Sodom. Ergo Christ may have done this and thought it no shame.
- But that would offend the Godhead in him. Would it be so offended if he lay with Mary the Magdalen?
- This is no time for speculation of Holy Writ. I have had a long voyage. That fish does not sit well.
- Aye, a fish. They turned Christ into a fish. It is a kind of false coining.
Kit feigned sleep but Baines muttered. Before sleep came to either there was a noise on the cobbles without and below: it was of troops being marshalled for a night march inland, and the cries of ancient or sergeant were loud. The setting off was ragged and there was swearing in the ranks. The shogging feet distanced, and Baines through the dark spoke, saying:
- The Holy Ghost filled Mary the mother of Christ while that she was yet unmarried. Does that render her dishonest?
- Some say so. Why do you raise these matters?
- There is none to whom I may speak here. Your coming is to me by way of being a chance of the opening up of minds. It is the primacy of money that sets up my doubts. For bishops and others that feed us with the faith are paid but produce nothing. They are not as brewers and bakers and shoemakers. They eat the substance of them that work and themselves do none. This is dangerous talk, that I know.
- With me you are in no danger.
- That too I know. And in such security I sleep.
This meant little. Kit tossed while the baking fumes came up and Baines breathed deep and steady. Baines was up at dawn and Kit would fain have slept longer, but there was the matter of meeting this Dutch butterman. They went, Kit tottering somewhat, to the tavern of yesterday, and there Baines was nice in the ordering of right English lamb's wool, though it was no cold morning. The beer hot and roasted apples pounded in, then ginger, nutmeg, cinnamon, cloves, then there were your apple shreds floating in beer as shorn wool flew in a windstorm. Kit got the reward his nose of the night claimed in fresh bread and Dutch butter. The butterman, he at length said.
They walked to the warehouses that lined the quay, and Baines spoke Dutch, Flemish rather, and got shaken heads from warehousemen. He is not here, he said unnecessarily. They say he is at Zeebrugge or else Knocke. You must go thither.
- Are they not very close to Ostend? Will there not be Spaniards about? Is it safe for an Englishman?
- Not safe. We had best go back to our discussion.
- When does the Peppercorn sail?
- On the evening tide, they say. You are eager to go home? You cannot be blamed. Perhaps my talk wearies you.
- No no no no. Would it be a manner of false coining if I took home the supposed
words of a Dutchman I have no strong desire to meet? Mr Secretary wants war, well, let him have it.
- It will begin with robbery, Baines said. Spanish gold pouring in in ships of English pirates. And fools will think that an augmentation of wealth whereas it will be the opposite. Let us sit there under that elm and shake heads at the folly of the world. Look at those fishermen there with their morning catches. They are base fellows neither of wit nor worth. And Christ's apostles were fishermen. What think you of that?
AND so, with no nod from Mynher Wychgerde, Kit sailed back to Deptford on the Peppercorn, took a boat to London Bridge, and made a false report to Mr Secretary. Then he found Tom Walsingham alone at Scadbury. Frizer was at some distant task, beneficent alike to master and servant, that entailed coneycatching. Kit took the whole house as an unravished bride. He lay with his love in every room that invited. Then, weary but elated, he rode back to Cambridge. He patted in his breast a sealed paper, given to him by Walsingham, that was marked To Whom It Concerneth. At Cambridge the man was swiftly demoted to schoolboy.
Thomas Norgate, Master of Corpus Christi, sat at a paperloaded desk that yet found room for a human skull. This grinned without mirth at Kit. Norgate was a cold man and, even on this summer day, had his casement tight shut to enclose, like precious frankincense, the smell of himself and his frowsty learning. Coldly he said:
- What are you - Merlin or Marlin or Morley?
- Merlin is a magical name. Some call me by it.
- Well or ill bethought. You know one Thomas Fineux?
- A boy of Dover. A gentleman pensioner, so called, and but begun here. He was hanging about me and I thrust him off.
- I am told he has been going into the woods at midnight and praying, God help us, that the devil may appear. Is this your work? He says that it is.
- I told him to go to the devil more than once. He seems a literal-minded youth.
- This fits to a pattern. You have not yet gotten a title. It argues a rejection of orders. Why is this?
- I have not yet found a rector willing to accept me as a curate. I search and search but vainly.
- I put it to you that you search otherwhither and with false intention. I put it to you that you are joining the Catholics here.
- Never that. I have listed names of the papishly inclined and was minded to submit this roll of infamy but it is become lost among my papers.
- So what is this of your travelling to Rheims? Your absences have been noted. They are in excess of what is allowed.
- I paid one visit to Rheims, another to Paris, one final one, from which I have returned, to the Low Countries. On business which I may not divulge on high instructions.
- You are but a student, sir, and may not speak so highhanded. I have information from Thomas Lewgar that you talk loosely of religion.
-This is the malice of one who thinks himself to be a poet but is no more than a deplorable rhymester.
- Well, after much consideration, and with an unanimity of opinion that may not be gainsaid, the decision is that your Supplicat is not to be entertained and you may not proceed to Magister Artium.
- This, if I may say so, is an outrage and an injustice. I have fulfilled all obligations for the degree.
- This may be so, but the unsoundness of your religion, your frequent absences, and the derogations of your fellows forbid the granting of it. Your baccalaureate is intact, your mastership denied. There is to be no argument. You may leave.
Kit did not leave. He drew from his breast a sealed paper.
- Master, be good enough to read this. It is not addressed specifically to you, but you it concerns.
- In my good time I will read it.
- I would that you read it now, and aloud. I know not its content but do know that I am in some measure its subject. In what measure I wish to know.
- You may not give me orders.
- I beseech you.
Norgate grumblingly broke the seal and spread the parchment. He read to himself first and then to Kit. He had a wart of some size on his left cheek. This, while he read, he irritably scratched.
- Whereas it was reported that Christopher Marlowe (so that is your name) was determined to have gone beyond the seas to Rheims there to remain, their Lordships think it good to certify that he had no such intention and that in all his actions he has behaved himself orderly and discreetly, whereby he has done Her Majesty good service and deserves to be rewarded for his faithful dealing. Their Lordships request that the rumour thereof shall be allayed by all possible means and that he shall be furthered in the degree he is to take this coming Commencement; because it is not Her Majesty's pleasure that anyone employed as he has been in matters touching the benefit of his country should be defamed by those who are ignorant in the affairs he went about.
- The Privy Council, Norgate then said in an aliger voice. What have we at Cambridge to do with the Privy Council? They must let us alone here, we govern ourselves, we are by way of being totally autonomous. (The plethora of is there made his tongue titubate, yet it was a brave show.) We rejected that farm of wines, we will reject other things.
- The Queen's name is not there, Kit said, but perhaps that of the Archbishop of Canterbury is.
- Well, Norgate later said, some thirty seconds, it shall be considered.
Kit was not to forget that date, July 4, which was called Commencement but was truly a triumphal end, and yet in a manner it was a commencement for now, gowned and hooded as magister, mark that, artium, of arts a master, proceeding to music, M.A., he might begin a few years of achieve and mastery, bringing to the playhouse the firm ground or pinning of his learnedness matched to his own fire, yet but a few years, alas, a very few, alas alas, a very very few.
PART TWO
Am not, so I suppose I must suppose, yet done with supposing, though from now, which is the latter half of the year of grace or otherwise 1587, I have Kit much in my sight as a citizen of London. More than that, and indeed in especial, he has become one of us, the playmakers, the feeders with bloody or farcical fodder of the maws of the seekers of diversion. He came to live on the upper floor of a house, no more than a cottage, in Bishopsgate Street at the corner of Hog Lane, not far from Tom Watson's dwelling, though Watson was now a tutor to the son of William Cornwallis in their great house in the Bishopsgate region (spying too belike, since the Cornwallis family was Catholic, and with the smell of Spanish invasion all about, such had still to be watched). Here elms rustled, and the turning of the spars of the three windmills of Finsbury Fields made a soothing music for the eye. The Theatre and the Curtain were near, this was the playman's district, though the latter was near done for and the former yielding in trade to our new playhouse across the waters.
For, though later than he had foretold, Henslowe was now able to view with proprietorial pride the completed edifice of the Rose that had supplanted the roses long planted on the site. The Rose smelt of no roses, rather still of size and paint and the armpits of the groundlings added. It lay between the bearpit and the bullpit, which resounded with snarls and the tearing of collops of flesh of the baiting dogs that yelped their descant. Here blood spattered on to the dirty jerkins of them that paid to behold the entertainment of biting and rending, but that was a prized prize, see I have here and I will not wash it off blood from the veins of Sackerson or Harry Hunks and the hounds that have no name. And here too were Henslowe's brothels, where no blood was let save that of twelve-year-old virgins, very costly and only for the better sort. The blood let on the stage of the Rose was in manner of a second letting, blood already let of pigs and enclosed in bladders themselves enclosed in the garments of our players who, in the comedy of killing, must gush out their lives to the mob's applause.
We who played there thought the Rose a fine structure. Its plan was much the plan of the innyards wherein our trade had its ignoble genesis. That is to say, there were upper and lower galleries all around though with no bedchambers behind, furnished with benches from which the shilling
-payers could look down on the penny-payers. And the stage itself had its upper gallery, called the terrace or tarrass, and above that a tower with a flag that flared in the wind during the two hours of performance. The stage was a platform that thrust into the midst of the standing auditors, pillared so that the roof or heavens, zodiac-painted under, might be supported. There was a trapdoor that opened on to the cellarage, which could be our Christian hell or else a cooler pagan underworld. At the rear of the stage was the space we termed the study, wherein players might be disclosed at study, talk, or murder, for it was curtained or uncurtained according to need, and the curtain was a fine embroidery of roses stitched on by Henslowe's whores in their not ample free time. Exit and entrance were by left and right doorways. None could ask better for our swift traffic of the afternoon: here were all the possibilities of speed and change, here is Scythia, here is Persia, or not, here is nowhere but the fire of words, and that fire could rain down on the groundlings who gaped up or flare on the highest payers, gentlemen of the Inns of Court, that had their chairs as frame to the action. And beyond our noise was the noise of dogs and bears and bulls and the imagined noise of them that came to their blissful dying in the trugging houses of Henslowe.
Well, here we had Tamburlaine, that Kit had been working on all that while while feigning his divinity studies or, not so feigning, snouting out the dissidents on Mr Secretary's instructions. It was a thunderstorm to our stage. Oh true, we had Tom Kyd's Spanish Tragedy, that pleased ever, but little else save ill-wrought clanking scrannelpipe confections, of which Tom Kyd's Hamlet Revenge was one. It could not hold, its mad prince was but Hieronimo writ small, its one memorable cry Blood is a beggar was a poor pennyworth, and if the script was lost to the future it would be no hardship. But with Tamburlaine, in which I played the divine Zenocrate, there were voices that spoke to a world greater than the playhouse, for they were voices that bade us better comprehend the times and question old assumptions. What was Tamburlaine? No more than a nothingness that rose to universal power through a thrust from within, not a favour bestowed from without. So here was Cosroe:
A Dead Man in Deptford Page 12