Marlowe was lonely without Nashe and Peele. Now was the time that he needed Peele’s laughter and Nashe’s merry taunts; he wandered from quiet tavern to tavern, and was served grudgingly by maid or tapster, who fingered the empty glasses gingerly lest plague be stuck to them. He found no one, until at last, in the Walnut Tree in St. Olave Street, Southwark, he met George Chapman.
Chapman, very drunk, was lounging against the bar, trying to see his fellow-drinkers clearly above the warts on his nose.
“Jolly pleased to see you, Kit,” he said complacently. “What’ll you have? Can only afford beer.”
“My drinks,” said Marlowe, happy at having found a friend.
“Heard about Tom?” asked Chapman suddenly, closely watching the maid draw the wine from the barrel as if to take his eyes from her would bring about some terrible calamity.
“Tom? Which Tom? Not Nashe?”
“Nay, nothing could happen to Tom Nashe, too tough; Kyd, o’ course. Who else would the gods choose for a butt?”
“What’s happened to him?”
“In the Tower,” said Chapman, pleased to see the difficult process of wine-drawing completed to his entire satisfaction and the glasses safely before him on the wet-ringed bar. “Being tortured,” he said casually, “so I’m told, roaring with the lions, having his legs pulled, being racked by the holy God-damned Star Chamber.”
“That’s not true!”
“Yes, it’s true.” Chapman swallowed his wine slowly, with great and obvious delight, then set down the empty glass, hiccupping. “Buy us another, Kit,” he said, “like a good boy.”
Marlowe bought another round. “But tell me, George,” he said, “what on earth has Kyd done?”
“Kyd’s done nothing,” said Chapman, again intently watching the maid, like an alchemist gazing at his crucible during a dangerous operation. “The fools got him for those attacks on strangers — you know ’em? One was glued to the Dutch Churchyard t’other night. You listen; I know it well:
‘You strangers that inhabit in this land
Note this same writing, do it understand;
Conceive it well for safeguard of your lives,
Your goods, your children and your dearest wives.’
That’s only the end of it. Now, I ask you, Kit; Tommy was a rotten poet, but he wasn’t quite as rotten as that, was he?”
“But he didn’t write it!”
“Of course he didn’t! We know that. But somebody’s got to have their legs pulled or old Whitgift’ll burst a blood-vessel, so they picked on Tommy, thinking the author of The Spanish Tragedy must be a pretty bloody lad, which he’s not, by a long shot. Buy us another, Kit.”
“All right, all right! By God, George, we must do something! We can’t let Tom be tortured for something he never did!”
“Reminds me,” said Chapman, rolling round and gazing owlishly at Marlowe, “they’re after you, too.”
“Me!”
“Ay, you! Hurry up with those drinks, brach! and less damned cider in it this time, I want Rhenish as it comes from the Rhine!”
“You’ll get a punch on them warts, that’s what you’ll get,” said the maid, a coarse, ungainly wench, slapping the glasses in front of him. “Be respectful if ye can’t be respectable.”
“Couldn’t possibly be respectable with you, sweet-lips…”
“Look here!” Marlowe caught him by the shoulder and dragged him round. “What are they after me for? Do you mean to say they think I wrote that rubbish!”
“Nay, who’d think you’d write that! Even old Whitty isn’t as daft as that. They want you for blasphemy.”
“My God! Blasphemy! They burn you for that, don’t they?”
“I suppose they do,” said Chapman with a look of blank surprise. “They might burn you, but they hang you first of all, I think. They don’t let you burn really. That’s a thing I’m not sure about. They hang you first of all for some things, just as they put a light to the faggots, but I’m not sure about blasphemy. Mighty cruel business. I never realized before. It’s bad, Kit, really bad.”
“Damn bad! And I haven’t written anything I want to write.”
“That’s terrible!” Chapman wagged a doleful drunken head. “And Hero and Leander’s the best thing you’ve done.”
“Damn Hero and Leander. It’s things I haven’t even thought of…”
“If they get you, I tell you what I’ll do! It’s a bargain — I’ll finish Hero and Leander for you! Now, buy me another drink.”
“What have they got against me? It was Baines, the rat!”
“Mayhap, it was Baines, mayhap not. What I heard was this. Listen carefully before I forget.” He leaned forward and whispered hoarsely. “They were looking for the fellow that wrote those stranger-libels — you know? — and they pick on Tom Kyd, God only knows why. They bust into his room and they pull the place to bits. Didn’t need much pulling, if I remember rightly, it was a’most falling to bits. Well, they find nothing ’bout strangers, but they’re not going to disappoint old Whitty, so when they come across a long thing about what a foolish lad God looks when peeped at by a Machiavellian, they grab Tommy for that and put him on a rack and pull his long legs longer. Well, poor old Tom — what do you expect? — tells them it was you that wrote the things; that’s all I know. Buy us a drink.”
Marlowe flung an angel on to the bar. “Keep on buying drinks out of that,” he told the girl, “till it runs dry.”
“Gold!” cried Chapman, goggling at it, “golden angels! You must have sold your soul after all. Hope you got a good price for it.”
“What was it of mine they found?”
“Something or other ’bout something. You ought to know. Kyd said you left it behind you when you stopped living with him!”
“Oh, I know what it is — childish stuff, some copyings from John Proctor’s Fall of the Late Arian. Ralegh lent me the book and I made a few notes out of it. It can’t be anything else. Why! the book’s highly moral! I just copied a few lines of a thing he quoted in it!”
“Tell the Star Chamber that, not me,” said Chapman.
“Poor damn Tom, the innocentest fellow alive! What’d they pick on him for?”
“If I was you,” said Chapman solemnly, “I’d get patronage.”
“He had nothing to do with the libels or with Proctor, yet they pick on him!”
“Patronage,” insisted Chapman, “patronage.”
“Oh, shut up!” Marlowe finished his drink, and almost ran from the tavern. He was determined to find Chomley, it was Chomley’s fault, and Chomley must save Kyd.
*
Finding Chomley, however, was not so easy. All that day, he searched for him, but in none of his usual haunts was he to be found. Marlowe risked his neck wandering into murderous quarters, into Whitefriars, Alsatia, the thieves’ sanctuary, to the south of Fleet Street and east of the Temple; into other sanctuaries where even constables dared not show their faces: the lower quarters of Westminster; Turnmill Street, outside the city walls to the east of Fleet Ditch; the north side of the Strand; the many-chimneyed Coldharbour, in Dowgate Ward; the Savoy; the brick-kilns in Islington; St. Martin’s Church — next to Whitefriars, the most dangerous of all —; but nowhere could Marlowe find Chomley.
Exhausted by his wanderings, when he was about to give up the chase, he met scar-faced Younge in the highly respectable tavern, the Fleur-de-Luce, talking to a sniggering little scrivener from Cornhill called Shore.
“Gorn walking,” was all that Younge would tell Marlowe. “He asked yer to go with him. I was with yer when he asked yer. Don’t blame nobody but yerself.”
“But where’s he walking to?”
Younge and Shore exchanged obvious winks. “Walking,” said Younge, “taking a walk. Can’t a man take a walk without everyone asking where he’s gorn?”
“I must know,” said Marlowe desperately, “it’s important.”
“Better men than you wan
ter know, but they ain’t knowing.”
“But I’m his friend.”
“So’m I, so’s he, so’s a hell of a lot of us, but we don’t know where he’s gorn.”
At last, Marlowe gave up asking and, in despair, wandered out into the night, through the plague-haunted city, alone.
*
He knocked at Alice’s door in Watling Street, and she met him in the parlour; he sat down dolefully on a velvet-mounted stool before the fire and covered his face with his hands.
Struck with sudden fear, Alice knelt before him and tried to draw his hands away. In her mind hammered one thought: It has come, the plague, the plague, we must both die, I will not live without him…
She was so relieved to hear the truth that almost she laughed. “We’ll have him out soon enough!” she cried. “A cup of metheglin to cheer you, Kit? My lord’ll soon have him released.”
“Ay, but when does he return?”
She glanced up from the cabinet where she had been pouring the wine from a silver bottle. “Not till next month,” she murmured, “and to-day is —?”
“The nineteenth,” answered Marlowe, gazing sorrowfully at her. “For over twelve days Tom’s got to be drawn upon the rack, while I sit doing nothing! It’s not for myself I fear, they’ll do naught to me, I can explain that Proctor book easily enough; but I must get Tom out of it. Whatever I get, I deserve. He’s so childlike, so innocent. How cruel fate is!”
“Always the innocent must suffer,” said Alice, bringing the glass to him, “the child for the parent, the wife for the husband, the citizen for the courtier… What other proof’s needed that there is no god? Surely no god could look blandly on all this pain!”
“A mighty cruel god!” He gulped in the rich musky wine, almost flung it down his throat, and with shaking hand, returned her the empty glass. “But I’ll do something!” he cried. “If only Ralegh weren’t in disgrace! I daren’t go to him, the only noble Englishman, the only man in Parliament to stand up against these damned foreigners stealing the bread out of our mouths. He’s hated enough already for his marriage and suspected of treason and atheism. Who else is there?”
“Nobody, save my lord.”
“Your lord! what’s the good of your lord to Kyd when he’s miles away in Italy or somewhere! We want some one nearer home.”
She watched him fearfully, the glass still in her hands: it was stained with the red wine as if she bled into it, for she held it pressed against her heart. With terror, she waited for Marlowe to say what he was edging towards. He was afraid to say it. He repeated again, “Who? Who?” and ran through the names of all his influential friends; she was determined not to help him. Let him say it himself, if he dared.
At last, getting no aid from her, he blurted out awkwardly, “There’s only Walsingham.”
“I’ve been waiting for that,” she said sadly.
“It’s not her I want to see. Don’t you understand? She’s close with Cecil, and Cecil’s the one man to help us. There’s nothing else I can do. I must get to Scadbury.”
“And break your promise?”
“This is no breaking of promises. I don’t want to see her, I’m going for my friend’s sake. You wouldn’t want me to desert my friends, would you, love?”
“I’d like you to desert everybody — for my sake.”
“Don’t make a conscience-problem of it…”
“Then don’t shift like a Puritan. You know why you want to go!”
“For Tom!”
She laughed. “For Tom, for Tom? To undo a Tom, a Tommy Walsingham! Nay, Kit, don’t lie to me. You could see Cecil yarely enough if you wished.”
“The most difficult man of the world to see! Cecil, Lord Burghley, Lord Treasurer, he’s the most important man in the realm!”
“I’m glad I tested you,” she said wearily. “Go to her, Kit. I’ll not try to stop you.”
“Please, Alice, don’t be stupid.” He rose and clasped both her hands in his, taking away the glass and putting it on the table. “You know that I love you beyond everything and everybody.”
“I know only that you itch to go to Scadbury.”
“Not to see her, I never want to see her again; it’s for Tom’s sake. What else can I do?”
“See Cecil yourself.”
They faced each other, gazing into each other’s eyes.
“All right,” he said suddenly, sighing, “I’ll not go. I promise.”
“Please go if you wish. Don’t think I’m trying to hold you back. But if you go to her, Kit, it is to her; you’ll never see me again.”
“I have given my promise. I’ll not go. I’ll call on Cecil by myself in the morning.”
“And you will dine with me?”
He looked reproachfully at her. She did not trust him, she wanted proof that he would stay in London.
“All right,” he said, “I’ll dine here. I’ll come between twelve and one.”
“And sup with me to-night?”
Sadly, he nodded agreement.
*
Did he wish to see Awdrey? He swore to himself that he did not, and knew that he lied. Already his pulse jigged merrily at the thought of gazing once more on her waxen beauty; he swore that it was for Kyd’s sake that he wished to go. That was truth, but there was another truth, deeper than that. He wished to see Awdrey. It was all past now, yet his heart ached for one last look upon her beauty. He could not leave England without seeing her again. He loved Alice, but Awdrey was the one twisted about his heart; she was more to him really than Alice, if only because mentally he had never attained her.
He had promised not to go to Scadbury, but already his mind was working out ways of outwitting Alice. If he left early to-night he might catch his friend at Clement’s Inn before bedtime and borrow his horse again; then if he left London very early in the morning he could reach Scadbury and return well before midday. To-night, he could sleep at some inn, as the thief-takers might be watching for him at his house…
He smiled at Alice during supper, and she was breathlessly happy that he had given in to her; but she doubted the troubled introspective look in his eyes and wondered what he was thinking of.
Chapter XV
IN THE NAME OF THE QUEEN
Early morning found Marlowe racing along the road to Chislehurst. He had borrowed the jennet easily enough and had slept all night at the Belle Sauvage at Ludgate. After a hasty breakfast of bread and cheese and beer, he had set out soon after dawn, just after six o’clock. It was very cold, and the dew lay heavy on the grass when he had cantered over the Bridge and was flogging his horse through Kent, along rutted roads and over fields. He did not stop at any inn for a drink, did not pull in his horse once all the way to Scadbury, and arrived there sticky with sweat and parched for wine.
This was his first disappointment: both Thomas and Awdrey had gone out hunting, and nobody knew when they would return.
Nervously he wandered about the house, gazing at the paintings, playing tunes on virginal and cittern, reading books in Walsingham’s library, going from room to room, crushing the rushes on the floor, unable to sit still.
He must get back by noon even if he did not see Awdrey. He must not disappoint Alice. She would leave him; she was proud-stomached and very jealous of Awdrey. Always she was ready to catch him up on any slip of the tongue and to accuse him of still loving her; if she knew that he rode this day to Scadbury she would never forgive him.
Would they never come?
*
At last, eager to do anything to break the fearful monotony of waiting, he called a servant and asked for food and wine.
They laid a cold ham-and-chicken pie for him in the Winter Parlour, and the girl, Mary, served him. She seemed very nervous and loath to go. She would pause every now and then as she wandered vaguely about the room, tidying the hangings and arranging the plate on the buffet; she would turn towards him as if trying to gather courage enough to speak to him.<
br />
“What is it, child?” he asked at last. “You haven’t grown shy of me, have you?”
“Ye’ll not be angry with me, sir?”
“Sweet child, I couldn’t be angry with you.” He swung round on his stool, a piece of cold pie in one hand, and gazed, smiling, at her. “Tell me everything,” he said gently; “you know I’m your friend.”
“It’s because I know you’re my friend,” she answered nervously, “that I would speak to you. Ye’ve been very kind to me, sir. Ye’re the only one who’s spoke nicely to me and treated me like a human. So I hope you do not think it saucy of me, but, sir, ye have an enemy.”
“Many enemies, child. What name does this one go by?”
“We maids hear more than we’re meant to, sir; Madame talks much to me while I dress and unrobe her, and she says more’n she means sometimes. And we hear murmurs, words behind hangings as we clean rooms, stray remarks that, put together, mean much.”
“Yes, yes, what about me?”
“I dare not tell ye, sir, lest you be angry.” She gazed pleadingly at him. “But fear that Frizer!” she cried, “he is the very devil unloosed. He leaves evil where’er he goes. I should’ve been married long since but for him. I had a good man who loved me wondrously — Drue Woodleff — and Frizer cheated him out of his lands. Drue’s taking it to the courts, but he’s too simple, he’ll have no chance ’gainst Frizer and his sly friends like Skeres.”
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