The Secret of the Rose

by Sarah L. Thomson

  Light faded from the window, and the sky outside turned gold, then rose, then purple, then black. And Master Marlowe still did not appear. At length I took off my shoes and doublet and unwrapped the bands around my breasts, gently rubbing the sore spots where the linen had chafed the tender skin. I hid the strips of cloth, along with the rosary, under the pallet and fell asleep listening for the sound of Master Marlowe’s footsteps on the stairs.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  AUGUST 1592

  I never heard Master Marlowe come in that night. But when I woke in the morning, he was lying, facedown and snoring quietly, under the blankets of his bed.

  The straw pallet had not been overly comfortable. I sat up, stiff and sore, rubbed my face, stretched, and began to consider the complicated matter of getting dressed. I had slept in my shirt and breeches, for modesty, and with Master Marlowe in the next chamber, I did not dare take off the shirt to wind the linen wrappings about my breasts again. He seemed thoroughly asleep, but he might wake at any moment, and the door between the rooms was not shut fully.

  In the end I pulled my doublet over my head, stuffed the strips of linen inside it, and tucked my rosary back into the bag around my neck. Then I made my way downstairs. I passed the second floor, where Mistress Stavesly slept, and the bakery, where the smell of fresh bread in the air was almost enough to chew and swallow. In the yard behind the building, I found what I had been hoping for—a privy. There, in the stinking darkness, I adjusted the wrappings to my satisfaction, then came outside, fully Richard once again.

  And Richard needed to decide what to do. Master Marlowe had not looked likely to stir anytime soon, so I was obliged to set about my role as a playmaker’s servant without any guidance from him. My new master, as far as I could judge from yesterday, did not seem to be a patient man. If I wanted to stay in his service for even a brief time, it would be wise to prove myself worth my keep.

  There were a few wooden buckets, I noticed, in one corner of the yard. Fetching water was surely a servant’s task. I found the public conduit near Bishopsgate, filled a bucket, and lugged it back, knocking the rim against my knee at every step and spilling water down into my shoe. I’d never thought much before about how heavy water was, and I felt a touch of remorse to think of the times I’d scolded Joan for her slowness when I sent her to the well.

  In the lodgings once more, with Master Marlowe still snoring, I dipped my hands in the water and scrubbed my face. No soap; I would have to make do without.

  What next? I looked around at the bare room and rubbed the toe of my shoe over the gritty floorboards. The room had not been swept in weeks, surely. I went downstairs to beg a broom of Mistress Stavesly.

  The big brick oven at the back of the bakery filled the shop with a heat that seemed solid, as if I’d walked into a wall. Mistress Stavesly was just sliding a batch of loaves on a long-handled wooden platter into the oven’s open mouth. She wore only a sleeveless bodice over her skirts, and sweat ran down her face from under her cap. “Thou’rt starting early to work,” she said in answer to my question. “Aye, take a broom and welcome. My daughter Moll can show thee. Here, Moll!” The girl who came shambling up in answer to the call was a head and more taller than I was, ghostly white from head to toe with flour. “Moll, show Richard where a broom is. She’s half-witted,” Mistress Stavesly explained to me. “But if thou’lt say anything twice or three times over, she’ll understand.”

  Moll did not seem to mind the words. She only looked curiously and shyly at me from behind the tangles of dark hair that hung in her eyes.

  “A broom, please?” I asked. She blinked, as if considering my outlandish request, and then brought me to a corner of the shop, where a broom of neatly trimmed twigs leaned on its bristles.

  “I’m Moll,” she announced abruptly.

  “Aye, I know it,” I answered. She was looking at me expectantly, and I realized what she wanted. “Oh, I am Richard. My thanks for the broom, Moll.” She beamed as if I’d given her a shilling.

  I used the broom to knock cobwebs down from the slanted ceiling and shake the spiders outside, and then began on the floor. But as I swept under the table, I paused, and glanced cautiously into the other room. Master Marlowe slept on. I set the broom against the table and looked at the papers there.

  No wonder Master Marlowe had wanted a servant who could write a fair hand. The sheets scattered about were closely covered in a spiky writing that would have been hard to make out even if half the words had not been heavily scored through, blotted, or smeared. I didn’t dare touch the papers; Master Marlowe might notice if they’d been rearranged. But one in particular caught my eye.

  It was tucked under another page so that I could see only a corner, but it was not written in a language I had ever seen. Not English or French or Latin. Might it be Greek? Was Master Marlowe so learned? I bent closer to peer at a jumble that looked like bird tracks and worm castings. And then I remembered the symbols that the player Nick had chalked on the stage floor yesterday. That was a play, a fiction, an illusion. Was this truth? Was Master Marlowe worse than a Protestant? Did he, like Faustus, practice black magic?

  In the next room, the ropes beneath the mattress creaked. I jumped away from the table and snatched at the broom. When Master Marlowe appeared in the doorway, running both hands through his rumpled hair, I was industriously sweeping the dirt from the floor into the fireplace.

  “Ah, Richard,” he said, yawning fit to crack his jaw and squinting as though the light hurt his eyes. He was still wearing his hose but nothing else. I fastened my eyes on the floor. “Hard at work, I see. Fetch some water, then.”

  “There, sir.” Without looking up, I pointed at the bucket in the corner.

  “Thou mayst be worth thy keep after all,” Master Marlowe said, as if surprised. “Fill up that basin, so I can wash.”

  I filled the wooden bowl with water, found soap and linen towels where he told me to look for them, and kept my eyes studiously elsewhere as he knelt on the floor of his bedroom to scrub his face and hands clean and run handfuls of water through his hair. Shaking his wet head like a dog, Master Marlowe got to his feet and looked at me curiously. “What, boy, art ill? Thou’rt red as a poppy.”

  I dreaded his sharp eyes, but I could not keep the heat back from my cheeks. “Only a bit warm, sir,” I said feebly. This was a complication I had not thought of when I’d entered a gentleman’s service.

  “Aye, ’twill be a hot day. Here.” Picking up his purse from where it lay on top of a heap of his clothing, he tossed me two pence. “Go downstairs and buy a loaf from Mistress Stavesly for breakfast. And some ale from the tavern on the corner. Enough for thyself as well.”

  I must harden myself, I thought, as I seized two tankards off the shelf and made my escape. I must somehow learn to act as if the sight of a half-naked man was nothing new to me. Or Master Marlowe would surely start to wonder why his new servant boy blushed so easily.

  To my relief, when I returned with the loaf of bread still warm in my hands, Master Marlowe was dressed, not in the magnificent velvet he had worn yesterday, but in a plain workaday doublet of dark green broadcloth, his wet hair pulled neatly back to the nape of his neck.

  I need not have been so scrupulous about not disturbing Master Marlowe’s papers, for he simply swept them aside with one arm to clear a space on the table for the food. There was only the one stool, and I did not dare to claim a space, uninvited, at the table with my master. I took my bread and tankard of ale and sat on a corner of my pallet.

  Master Marlowe was silent while he ate, the quick chatter of yesterday gone. Changeable as March wind, Mistress Stavesly had called him. I sat without speaking, so as not to disturb his mood, chewing the creamy yellow manchet bread with appreciation. It was fine and soft enough that it needed no butter to sweeten it.

  “Well, then,” Master Marlowe said when his meal was over, and he got up from the table. “Let me see thee prove thy boast.”

  I swallowed my last mo
uthful of bread hastily. My boast? I’d hardly said a word all morning. But when he nodded at the stool he had been sitting on, I understood what he meant.

  Master Marlowe did not spare money on his work, I thought as I seated myself. The quills scattered about looked the best, made from the third or fourth wing feathers of a goose, and the paper he scribbled on so carelessly had probably cost two or three shillings for half a ream. I did not see the page with the strange symbols I had noticed earlier.

  “Write this out for me,” Master Marlowe said, pushing a sheet of paper over the table. I picked up a quill and frowned to find the point crushed and dull. A clerk must respect his pens, my father always said, as a carpenter respects his tools. A blunt knife is more likely to slip and cut you than a sharp one, and a blunt pen is more likely to skip and catch on the paper, scattering ink far and wide.

  Luckily there was a small ivory-handled knife among the clutter on the tabletop. I was conscious of Master Marlowe watching critically as I cut the pen to a fresh, sharp point, but I did not let him hurry me. He propped a hip against the table and folded his arms while I licked my fingers, rubbed the pen’s tip to soften it, and uncorked the tiny lead bottle.

  The smell of the ink, sharp and bitter and black, made tears sting behind my eyes for just a moment. I could almost hear my father’s voice, as if he stood behind me: “Good, i’faith, very good, Rosalind…” I blinked and looked over at the scribbled sheet of manuscript Master Marlowe had given me.

  The first line was a speech for a character named Dumaine. I felt a chill creep into my heart as I saw what Master Marlowe expected me to write, and looked up from the page to find his steady eye on me.

  “What is the play to be called, sir?” I asked, amazed to hear the smooth tone of my own voice.

  “The Massacre at Paris,” Master Marlowe answered.

  The Massacre. The time of horror, some twenty years ago, when French Catholics had murdered their Protestant neighbors in the streets.

  I put my eyes back on the fresh, clean sheet of paper before me and steadied the pen in my hand. Did he know? Was he watching to see if my cheek would grow pale or my hand would tremble? I bit down on the inside of my lip and put the tip of the pen to the page. The ink flowed easily, the letters black and neat. I moved my hand slowly and smoothly, listening to the faint rasp of the quill against the paper, and looked back at the words I had written.

  DUMAINE: I swear by this to be unmerciful.

  ANJOU: I am disguised, and none knows who I am,

  And therefore mean to murder all I meet.

  So this was what he thought of us—that we, the faithful, were murderers and traitors, thirsting for the blood of innocent Protestants. But I kept my face expressionless, my hand steady. If this were a trap, I would betray nothing. If it were no trap—if Master Marlowe truly had no idea what faith I cherished—then I must not give him the slightest hint.

  “Let me see,” said Master Marlowe, holding out a hand and snapping his fingers for the paper.

  I blew gently on the wet ink, still glistening, and picked the page up by the edges to hand it to him. He took it delicately and raised an eyebrow while he studied it.

  “So thou toldst truth. Where didst learn to write such a fair hand?”

  “My father taught me, sir.” My voice, respectful and mild, sounded like someone else’s in my ears. What would my father have said, had he known that the pen he’d taught me to hold would write such words of my fellow Catholics?

  “Well enough. I think I’ll keep thee, Richard.” Master Marlowe waved me off the stool and sat down himself. “When I’m done today, thou’lt write out the scenes I’ve finished. It will save me hiring a clerk for it.” He shuffled the papers on the table, found what he was looking for, and began to scrawl on a fresh sheet, pressing down so hard that my nicely cut pen was reduced to a shapeless blob in an instant. I watched him for a moment, but he seemed to have forgotten that I was in the room.

  After a while I took up Mistress Stavesly’s broom again.

  I swept the bedroom and straightened the bed and emptied the bowl of water out the window. Then, reluctantly, I picked up the chamber pot. A few weeks ago, I would never have touched such an object. But now…

  Now, I told myself firmly, I had no choice. But still, I could not keep my nose from wrinkling as the stinking contents of the pot followed the wash water out into the street. I wiped my hands on my doublet and turned thankfully to more pleasant tasks, picking up Master Marlowe’s clothes from the floor. The buttons on his velvet doublet clinked softly together as I brushed and folded it and laid it, along with his breeches and hose and linen shirt and collar, away in the chest. I wondered if I could find a rag to dust with.

  “Richard!”

  I jumped. “Yes, master?” I came into the doorway between the two rooms to find Master Marlowe scowling at me.

  “Thou’lt fidget me beyond endurance. Go away.”

  “Yes, master.” I hesitated. “When should I return?”

  “An hour. Two. What thou wilt.” He turned his attention back to the paper on the table, but I was bold enough to speak again.

  “May I have your leave to visit my father, sir?”

  “Thou hast my leave to visit the devil, so thou dost it elsewhere than here,” he said impatiently. “Stay!” I had started for the door, but he got up suddenly and stalked into the bedchamber. When he came back, he tossed something to me, something small and round that flashed in the light as it flew through the air. I caught it between my hands. It was a shilling.

  “An advance on thy wages,” Master Marlowe said, sitting back down. “Thou’lt need it to give to the jailer. Take it and begone.”

  I snatched up Mistress Stavesly’s broom and all but ran out the door before his abrupt generosity could reverse itself.

  Mistress Stavesly lifted her eyebrows when I returned the broom and asked her the way to Newgate Prison. But she told me how to find it, and kept a customer waiting to be sure that I understood her directions. Eagerly I set off into the London streets.

  Already everything seemed less strange, the crowds less threatening. My new clothing, which had made me feel so bare and vulnerable yesterday, in truth rendered me nearly invisible. I was just another shabby servant boy in a city full of them. No one paid me the slightest heed.

  I made my way down Bishopsgate Street, as Mistress Stavesly had told me. But where Threadneedle Street branched off to the southwest, I hesitated.

  By all rights I should continue south, cross the bridge, and go to the playhouse to find Robin. I was still angry with him, and yet—it was his father, too.

  But Master Henslowe had said there would be rehearsal in the morning, and I had only an hour or two to spare. If I made my way across the river now, and then Robin could not go to Newgate with me, I would have spent nearly half the time I had, and to no purpose.

  And besides, I needed to speak to my father about Robin, about how to coax or reason or order him out of the playhouse. I could hardly do that with my brother present.

  I set off, determined, down Threadneedle Street. After all, if Robin was busy learning his new trade, that was his own choice and no fault of mine. I broke into a run, as if I could outpace the shreds of guilt that still clung to my heels.

  By the time I reached the broad avenue of Cheapside, I was out of breath and had to slow to a walk again. I passed shops selling hats, stockings, lace, birdcages, buttons, needles, earrings. None of it held any interest for me. I could see the back of St. Paul’s Cathedral to my left, rising over walls and rooftops, but I hardly spared it a glance.

  What will our father say when he sees thee? What could I tell him, how could I explain my breeches and doublet? I could not reveal what had nearly happened to me two days ago. It would break his heart to know of the danger I had been in, the disgrace he could no longer protect me from.

  What-will-I-tell-him, what-will-I-tell-him jogged in my mind to the rhythm of my feet upon the paving stones as I turned up Ne
wgate Street. No ideas came into my head, but I found I hardly cared. It did not matter. Nothing mattered except seeing my father at last.

  There was the prison. My quick steps slowed a little. The street led straight up to the prison’s gateway, and I felt as if I stood in a river with my legs braced against a current that wanted to sweep me away through that gate and into the darkness beyond.

  Mere fancy. It was just a heavy stone building, built over the roadway as if there had not been enough space for it elsewhere. It was foolish to let dread churn in my stomach. I’d known well enough my father was in prison. I could not let the sight of that prison, looming dark over the street, stop me in my tracks.

  There was a door set in one wall of the dark tunnel underneath the building. As I approached it, a filthy hand, no more than skin drawn tight over bones and knuckles, shot out of a barred window to seize hold of my elbow.

  “For pity’s sake, some bread,” a voice whined. “Have mercy, young sir, ’twill be to the credit of your soul….”

  I fought back the urge to shriek and wrench my arm away. My father might be reduced to this one day. No, I would never let that happen. But still, I answered civilly.

  “I am sorry, friend. I have nothing to give.”

  The hand dragged me closer to the bars, and in the dimness inside I could see a wolfish face, as thin as the hand, half hidden in greasy hair and a long, straggling beard. “Have pity,” the prisoner begged, as if he had not heard a word I’d said.

  “I am sorry, I—”

  “Pity! Pity!”

  “I have nothing!” I pulled my arm away; although the man clung desperately, he had no strength to hold me. Other hands were thrust out of the window, other voices pleaded. Guilt clutched at my throat. I had still a few coins in my purse, and a master who, strange though he might be, would probably feed me tonight. Should I give all I had to these starving wretches? But I could not. I needed—my father needed—what little money I had. Shutting my ears to the calls for bread and meat and mercy, I hurried past the window to the heavy oak door, bound with iron.