A Dead Man in Deptford

by Anthony Burgess

  - So, Kit said, you will have the Queen's Men making quips about Merlin the atheist?

  - There is always the Privy Council to look in on you, Greene said. It is very perilous what you are doing. Ah, Cutting that hath done his butting and eke his rutting.

  There was a shadow on Kit who sat with his back to the door. He rose with speed and turned. Ball, a black shape in the light. Kit said:

  - You, what do you call me?

  - What do I say, master?

  - You say that you like not atheists.

  - I like not atheists.

  - And am I one?

  - I know not this man, master.

  - You know me well enough to shout scandal through the streets, Kit said hotly, cool hand on pommel. Say it to me now.

  - I know not this one who threats me, master.

  - Let it go, Greene said, tooth-picking with a clean quill. Let us digest our pickled herring in peace. This one is not worth the jabbing.

  - You say jabbing, master?

  Cutting Ball's fist was about his dagger, so Kit drew and his sword whistled as it dove to nick Ball's wrist. Ball saw blood, howled, and proceeded to drink of the red trickle. Enough. Kit turned to Greene, saying:

  - You are a bad playman and you know it. I show compassion for your jealousy.

  - Be on guard, pup. Blank verse for a blank brain. Five feet to an empty bombarding line and four bare legs in bed, a pitiful prick that shies at a woman making up the limping five. Go to your hothouse and be on guard.

  OF the great events of that cold summer we knew nothing while they proceeded. Later Tom Kyd said he would make a play of them that would draw in all at the Rose, but others spoke of the danger of placing true personages on the stage, a danger Kit later engaged when he made his play of the Duke of Guise and Paris is worth a massacre. Kyd tried his hand, feeding his brain with many books and pamphlets, not many accurate as to the events, and I have some scattered pages of what was never seen on any stage:

  KING OF SPAIN:

  The lighte of war, the father of his troopes, Hero of Lepanto, no seaman braver, Valiant and unconquer'd, now alas Hath met death's conquest. Therefore do we mourne. Our Marquis, aye, of Santa Cruz is gone, And he it was that put in preparation Our strike against the enemie. Therefore you, Our well-belov'd Duke of Medina Sidonia, Do we appoint to take our shippes in hande And name you our High Admiral.

  DUKE:

  My lorde,

  Of sea and warre I nothing know. But wordes Are garboard strakes and calivers, no more. An admiral? Nay, a choice not admirable. I urge your grace to thinke againe and give The honour of sea lorde to one more fitting That will not this high honour so dishonour

  As I, a lord of lande, am like to do.

  KING OF SPAIN:

  Pish, you speake greenlie, for the English fleete Is mann'd by boles and drunken pirates who Will put to sea unbless'd by our true faith. Theyre barques are green wood, man, and all uncaulk'd, And all the saintes in heaven will conspire To dashe them on the rockes. So you, great duke, Be of good hearte, vittle your ships, ensure That to your store liste you do adde enow Of what will make the beef-fedde Godlesse quake With apprehension most deserv'd. I meane Pincers and whips, gridirons, chaines and rackes, Thumbscrewes and halters for their hanging, aye, One whole shippe fill you with well-season'd faggots To make fires for the burning of all them That wille not bowe downe to our holy priestes And make obeisance to a Lambe of God Unsullied by the heathen's tarrie handes.

  And then Kyd, turning the Rose stage into a ship, which was a fair and ingenious fancy, with sailors ascurry from and to below, which was the cellarage, and the Admiral looking out to sea from the tarrass, had thunder and lightning and a storm howling.

  DUKE:

  Well, we have now revitteled in Corunna And may proceed. This weather likes me not. What dale is this?

  CAPTAIN:

  My lord, Midsummer Eve, When they safe witch and warlock do abounde To do the Divil's bidding. In the heavens Foule cloudes do gather and the churning sea Seemes like to scatter us. There, see you not - A ship torne from its mooring and a pinnace That dragges its anchor - ah, Dios, it collides

  With a proud galleon.

  DUKE:

  Captain, we must sende A message to the King, how that the news Will reach the English and the Huguenots Whoss piracie at La Rochelle we know of. Are we thenne trulie scatter'd? Captaine, speake.

  CAPTAIN:

  My hearte is heavie, good my lord, to see This curse upon us. Doth God turne his backe On this endeavour which in holinesse Of spirit and intente we did embark on? There is much sicknesse here among our men And well you know our putting back to port For refit, nay, and reinforcement too Yells in the winde as it were God's own worde. Let us seek peace on honourable termes. Such is my plea.

  DUKE:

  Do that and we are lost. The King, may heaven protect him, obdurate And obstinate, aye, and of volition deafe To all but speedie victory, will not have it. I hear such stories of the English fleete, How the ships leap like greyhounds, how their guns Bristle about like hedgepig quilles, that know I am made sicke yet, sicke or not, obey A summons that will lead to more than sicknesse. Is Parma coming from the Netherland? Has there been news?

  CAPTAIN:

  No news. The winds from north And east and west and south forbid it.

  (That touch was Kit's, who loved to believe that news was made up of the cardinal compass points.)

  DUKE:

  Dios, Cristo, Maria, see us tempest-tost. Grant us your aid or certes we are lost.

  And then Tom Kyd moved his play to Devon, but briefly, that he might have dry land between two naval scenes, and here he had (this was most dangerous) Lord Howard of Effingham, our High Admiral and patron of our company, with Sir Francis Drake that was his deputy, awaiting the Spanish fleet that did not come.

  HOWARD:

  How many troops has he?

  DRAKE:

  My lord, they say Some fifteen thousand heading for Tor Bay, A most commodious harbour.

  HOWARD:

  Tush, not so. Stubborn and ill-advised our Devon ports Where winds secluded are they do ignore, So saith this signal. Portland or the Solent Must be their aim. We followe.

  DRAKE:

  Aye, my lord.

  Kyd returned lovingly to his flagship scene and had the engagement fought out as from the Spanish view.

  DUKE:

  Here safe in Calais roades, I am advis'd Our brother Parma who is lodg'd in Bruges Saith all is readie and the Narrow Seas Await with loving zephyrs our approach.

  CAPTAIN:

  Your grace, you have but land-eyes, see you not The English fleete assembled?

  DUKE:

  Where, where?

  CAPTAIN:

  There. Mine eyes that temper'd are to the sea-gaze Spie England's shippe-force, less than a sea-mile, Galleons and merchantmen and men of warre. They seeke engagement.

  DUKE:

  No, they cannot.

  CAPTAIN:

  Yea, With most pernicious treacherie the windes Veer and the tyde is running to theyr wille. Fire, I smelle smoake, see flame, now what is this?

  DUKE:

  They have sette some shipper aflame. 'Tis burning tarre Assails our noses. Dios, what be those That make like ambulant helles toward our fleete? They burne our pinnaces. Wilde, 'tis a wildernesse Of crashing woode and fire. Their cables cut, Our captaines lose all order.

  CAPTAIN:

  Gales arising Speake something divilish. That is not Goddes winde.

  DUKE:

  Theyr Godde, captain. All is done, our fleete All broken and a maze of fire, and they That with cut cables have escap'd its wrath Like to be now by Boreas' hideous breath Swift driven to the dragons of the north And shipwrack in the frozen Orcades.

  It was too brief, there was not enough for the traffic of two hours, and to have brought in, as Tom Kyd intended, triumphant Gloriana striking a medal and granting the victory to the winds of a protestant God that loved the En
glish and hated the Church his own son founded would have met her scorn (I am no boy) and shut the Rose down for ever. True, she was no boy, she was all of fifty-five years and raddled and lacking teeth, and she did not show herself at the thanksgiving service at Paul's on September 8, that was the morrow of her birthday. There was a sermon delivered by a lawn-sleeved bishop at Paul's Cross and this spoke of the Queen's happiness, though in truth she was far from happy, for her great love was dead.

  We may say that with no impugning of her virginity, though this has been seen as a virtuous lie, a raising of her to the rank of the Mother of God or the goddess Diana, or else a device of diplomatic dealing that rendered her a prize of alliances. That the Earl of Leicester, the Lieutenant and General of the Queen's Armies and Companies, was her one true love may not be gainsaid, but now he had died after the stiff work of raising troops to meet the invading Spaniard and was, some say, poisoned by the salty waters of the springs of Buxton that is in Derbyshire. Well, he was dead, and there was thus a great emptiness in the procession to Paul's, and it seemed that Sir Walter Raleigh, in his bravery, having done as good work as Leicester but greatly hissed, faced the dapper Earl of Essex as one gamecock faces another in enmity, but these, being men of ambition, yearned to fill that emptiness and by God one or other would soon do it.

  It was Leicester that had picked out Dick Tarleton, a swineherd on his estate, as a rustic witty clown to please her majesty, and he had risen to head of the company that bore her name. Now, one week before the rejoicing, he too was dead, lying on the lousy second bed in Em Ball's house in Holywell, a pace or so from Burbage's Theatre where he had played. The Queen's Men, despite their high name, were now nothing, and the Admiral's rose much, no little helped by the thrashing of the Spaniards by my lord Howard. The Admiral's banner waved high above the Rose from the turret, and it was Kit's play of the victorious early autumn that was itself a victory for the craft, for its like had not been seen before. He had read the life of the German necromancer John Faust, not yet in translation but extempore rendered by the Wizard Earl, and here he had him on the stage, calling up the devil and selling his soul for a few years of pleasure and knowledge. I would not play Helen of Troy, I was beyond it, and Ned Alleyn gave me though grudgingly the part of the servant Wagner, who is a sort of Faustus in a lesser figure.

  - We will have a woman, Kit said. There be some of Henslowe's girl goslings that will for a shilling parade naked.

  - We cannot, we cannot, Ned headshook, there has never yet been a woman on the stage. And to have a woman naked would close us down.

  - Draped, not wholly bare of the arse and bubs. Walking across the tarrass first with no words. Then, with no words, below.

  - And then I kiss her. Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a.

  - You would prefer to kiss a woman than a boy, unlike some.

  - Joan would not like it, even in play.

  - A boy then, well-draped.

  Now this Doctor Faustus had somewhat in it that was beyond itself and attached to Kit as it were a nimbus that was more than atheistic, being truly devilish or demonic. When Faustus stood in the dusky grove of what was in truth a bright afternoon, conjuring Mephistophilis, his words were:

  Orientis princeps, Belzebub inferni ardentis monarcha, et Demagorgon, propitiamus vos, ut appareat, et surgat Mephistophilis. Quid to moraris? PerJehovam, Gehennam, et consecratam aquam quam nunc spargo, signumque crucis quod nunc facto, et per vota nostra, ipse nunc surgat nobis dicatus Mephistophilis.

  And this Latin, doubtless donated by the Earl of Northumberland, though understood only by the learned, had an effect of great devastation among the vulgar, who cried God's my life and Heaven save us, and one or two covertly made Faustus's signum crucis, though to a holier end. One woman in the lower gallery screamed and swooned when Rob Gratton appeared as a devil. And at one performance where I was not present, being plagued by a toothache and having handed my part to young Theo Hawkes, who did it not well, there were cries that there was another devil on the stage that was not in the company, and again there was screaming and swooning. It is to the point here, I believe, to say that there were more of these devils when we played out of London, during the closings for plague and fear of riot and the like, than in the city itself, for London the great capital was mostly above being afraid of devils. There is in Dulwich, which is a ride south from London, a great college called Alleyn's of God's Gift, which was founded in this wise. We were playing at Dulwich and the devil appeared grinning during my scene with the clown, and there was an outcry, we intermitted the play and, at Ned Alleyn's command, spent much of the night in praying and fasting. And Ned vowed some great monument of gratitude for our delivery from diabolic infection or the true Luciferian toils, so, when he had money enough, the foundation was set in hand and the College is there for all to see and for boys to be instructed under a master who shall, till time's end, be named Alleyn or Allen, and, as a kind of ironical aegis, both Christopher and Lucifer remain as its ever more shadowy presidents.

  Christopher or Kit was known about the town, pointed at as one that could raise the devil with Latin, and with Greek call back Helen of Troy from the dead, and his frequent knocking at the door of Durham House was noted and speculation raised about what devils were to be conjured in the turret study whence black fumes floated. In truth and as ever the talk and disputation were on what undying truths could animate a new age unshackled from superstition and cleansed of blood and bigots, with men marching forward to reason's pure dawn.

  - And yet, Thomas Harlot said, reason has its limitations. He stroked Kit's arm, for they were now friends, saying: Why should one line of poesy be better than another? Reason cannot hammer together a frame of adjudication. Why did the flue of my arms start up when Faustus cried that he saw Christ's blood stream in the firmament? I have hardly met this before.

  I had and have pat: To believe that a nature subject to these infirmities is God or any part of the Divine Essence is folly.

  - And the objections are inept?

  - Whether deliberately so I have never been sure. I can bring the book.

  -Too much, Sir Walter said. Copy out the pages that are pertinent to our Brunonian thesis and bring those.

  - I will. If I am low in spirits this day it is all a proposito. I received a gleeful letter from one that was a fellow student and is now curate of a parish. A foolish fellow and a bad poet. He witnessed the burning of one that had once been my tutor in divinity, a Mr Kett that held that Christ was not God yet but would be after his second resurrection. It was folly, yes, but held in sincerity. Well, he has been burnt alive at Ipswich, dressed in sackcloth, leaping with joy in the flames, clapping his hands and crying Blessed be God. I would join with the Puritans if I thought they were of a lesser vindictiveness than the bishops.

  - So Kit mourns for Kett, Harlot said, stroking. All the martyrs will in time be vindicated, for whatever cause they were burnt. For us here assembled, and others of our kind in the cities of Europe, it is essential to avoid martyrdom.

  - There is too much talk about, Kit said. There is leaking.

  - If there is that, Raleigh said bluntly, it will be from one that cannot keep sealed under drink what has been said in sobriety.

  - You mean?

  - We are a sober company addicted only to tobacco.

  - I see. I am not wanted.

  - You are very much wanted, Hariot said, and he gripped Kit's arm. But you must learn discretion.

  - Aye, I made a song about that once, and that was in drink. How would it go now?

  I analyse and find in Christ's blood nothing to excite, and yet the poetic supposition that that blood is the dying light of the day, as also the force of that word firmament, make as it were a fusion of elements that finds its analogue in the constitution of chemical compounds. Something new is made and the outlawed term miraculous coyly intrudes.

  - I have spoken before, the Earl of Northumberland said, of the occult power of words, and you would not
accept it. Streams in the evening sky, it would not do. Firmament has occult strength beyond analysis.

  - Leave this, Sir Walter said, and think of what you may prepare for the making of a book while I am away in Ireland. You see this damnable tome of a thousand pages and more extolling the truth of the Church of England - I do not have it here, I will not have it - and now the Brownists are peppering the bishops to, I may say, the Queen's secret delight though she may not say so. To arraign alleged truths unproved is in our office, meaning that the great book itself must, gently ever gently, submit to the probing of reason.

  - It cannot be done, Warner said, it could not be published.

  - Not in Antwerp, Basle, Geneva?

  - Never Geneva.

  - It is, I think, Harlot said, the divinity of Christ that must, gently in your word, ever gently, be questioned. His blood may stream in the firmament but it is the blood of a man. We are always coming back to Bruno and his one great sun flaring in that firmament.

  - Denials of the divinity, Warner said, can be set forth and then ineptly countered. That is one way of the gentle inserting of the dagger. It has been done in the past. What was that book of Queen Mary's day? A Blast Against the Arians, some such thing.

  - A Catholic book of course, Kit said, dark and depressed, of which I have a copy. The Arian heresies are clearly set forth only to be attacked. I studied it at Cambridge and have never been sure of its true intent. I can bring it. I remember it said something of the gospels showing Christ as a man subject to hunger, thirst, weariness, fear and the like, and these words Now I must go. I settle to my trade, which is not dis-put-at-i-on. I have a play to make.

  And the play he was making lacked discretion totally. The Duke of Guise that had driven the King from Paris had been on the King's orders, for now his gallic majesty was back, assassinated by thugs hired cheap. And the King had kicked the dead head of Guise over and over, complaining then of blood on his shoes. Here was Kit working on what he called The Massacre at Paris, which, if presented, would have the French ambassador raging at court and without doubt close the Rose for ever. But here he was with