Strange Devices of the Sun and Moon

by Lisa Goldstein

  As he grew older, though, he somehow lost his belief in higher powers. Everything he had accomplished had been through his own efforts; there was no need to postulate spirits either benign or malign. Anyone with enough talent and wit could have left Canterbury. If, as he’d said to Tom, he would never be called up before the Privy Council, it was only because he’d begun to cultivate those in power, like Poley and the men who had sent the letter to Cambridge.

  He appreciated the irony of it at the very moment that his play Dr. Faustus was being performed on the London stage he had lost his belief in devils, and in God as well. Yet the feeling was not terrifying, as he had thought it would be; instead he felt liberated, free to create what he wanted of his life.

  “Now you sound like Robin,” he said to Tom.

  “I sound like any man who believes in God’s justice—”

  A loud voice interrupted him. “Who sounds like me?” Christopher looked up to see Robert Greene and Thomas Nashe coming toward them.

  “—that is to say anyone in England,” Tom said, finishing his thought.

  “Listen to this man,” Christopher said to the two newcomers. “He counts Nemesis as one of the nine muses.”

  The others laughed. Tom Kyd turned to him quickly, looking angry and a little hurt. Was he so thin-skinned, then, to resent any small jest at his expense? He should have grown up in Christopher’s large contentious family, where arguments begun over dinner frequently carried over for days, the winner being the person who could outshout and outlast everyone else. His father had won most of the quarrels, but when he’d come home from the university for visits he’d surprised the old man a time or two.

  “I said only that those who do evil are punished,” Tom Kyd said.

  “Aye, that’s true enough,” Robert said as he and Tom Nashe took seats at the table. They carried beer and plates of hot chicken and bacon, and as he smelled the food Christopher realized how hungry he was. He looked around for the host or one of the serving-women but they were all busy, carrying out trays of beer or lighting candles.

  One of the serving-women dropped a large stack of pewter plates, silencing all conversation for a moment. Then everyone laughed and the talk resumed. A man called loudly to Tom Nashe from across the room; Tom always boasted that he knew everyone in London. He ignored the man and turned to answer Robert.

  “Is it?” Tom said, tearing off a chicken wing and wiping his hand on his breeches. “Then the devil’s reserved the hottest corner of hell for you, Robin. You’ve kept none of the vows you made a month ago. You gamble, you dandle the wenches on Holywell Street—”

  “Can you tell me you do none of those things?”

  “Certainly I do, but I never repented of them.”

  “Well, what of it? There’s still time to change my ways. And these things are but trifles. Far worse would it be for me to have the taint of atheism on my soul.”

  He glanced at Christopher as he spoke. The other man smiled a little but made no answer. “Do you believe in God, Kit?” Robert asked, raising his voice. He gazed out over the tavern as if playing to an audience. Or perhaps, Christopher thought, he hoped to find an informer sitting nearby.

  Tom Kyd was looking at him, his expression pleading for caution. But why should he have to remain silent, when Robert was free to spread his opinions in any company he chose? He reached over and took a sip of Tom’s beer, then pushed his hair back and looked directly at Robert.

  “We’ve had this argument before,” he said.

  “Aye, and you’ve proven yourself to be a thorough atheist.”

  “I’m only trying to make men see reason—”

  “And what makes you imagine you see more of it than other people do?”

  “Because other people don’t see reason at all. They terrify themselves with superstitions, with bugbears and hobgoblins—”

  “Hobgoblins,” said a scornful voice behind him. “What do you know about hobgoblins?”

  He turned around. A red-haired man with eyes the color of young green leaves had come into the tavern.

  “Good evening, Your Majesty,” Tom Nashe said, as the other man sat with them. “It’s true we know very little about hobgoblins. But perhaps Your Monarchship knows more.”

  “Your Majesty?” Christopher asked, intrigued. Could this be the man Poley sought? Here was good fortune indeed!

  “I see you have not yet met my friend, Your Brightness,” Tom said. “This is Christopher Marlowe. Kit, the man before you is your king. You may rise, or kneel, or what you will.”

  “The king?”

  “So he told us, the last time he was here.”

  “Ah. And by whose authority is he king?”

  “He would not tell us that. By his own, I think.”

  “But maybe there are stories about him?” Christopher said. “Stories—or legends?”

  “Aye,” the man said. “Many stories have been told about my birth. And more will be told when I come into my kingdom. But you were speaking of hobgoblins. Perhaps you would be so good as to tell us about them.”

  “I—” Tom said. “I know very little.”

  “Tell us.”

  “Very well,” Tom said. Christopher knew his friend could never resist an audience. “They tell this story in Suffolk, where I was born. Once a brownie captured a young woman, and forced her to get up on his horse, and rode off with her as night was falling. ‘Ride not by the old pool,’ the woman said, ‘lest we should meet with Brownie.’ ‘Fear not, woman,’ he said. ‘You’ve met all the brownies you’ll meet tonight.’”

  Everyone laughed but the king. “Why did the brownie capture her?” he asked.

  “Ah,” Tom said. “She was a midwife, you see, and he was taking her to the Queen of Faerie, who was about to be delivered of a child.”

  The other man nodded graciously, as if satisfied with his answer. His manner reminded Christopher of the only time he had seen Queen Elizabeth, when she had ridden to St. Paul’s to proclaim victory over the Spanish Armada. He looked magisterial, used to command. And Tom had responded without thinking to his order. Could there be something in his claim after all? Was that why Poley had been so interested in the man? London had never lacked for rumors about Elizabeth and one or another of her courtiers.

  “You’ve never told me your name, Your Kinghood,” Tom said.

  “Arthur,” the other man said.

  “Why—But then you’re Mistress Wood’s son!”

  “Wood?” The man who called himself Arthur looked confused.

  “Aye, Alice Wood. She has a stall in the yard of St. Paul’s. You know her, Kit, her station’s next to your friend Edward Blount.”

  “Nay, I know no one named Alice Wood,” Arthur said.

  “She’s been looking all over London for you. And there’s another man too, she says, who’s been asking questions … Come, tomorrow I’ll go with you to the churchyard. I know she’s been worried about you.”

  “Alice Wood is not my mother. My mother was a queen.” Arthur looked angry, dangerous; his hand strayed toward the dagger at his back.

  “If you won’t come with me I’ll ask her myself if she knows you. Perhaps if you see her—”

  “I’ll hear no more of this talk,” Arthur said, rising and heading for the door.

  “Wait!” Christopher said. He followed Arthur out into the street. The moon was hidden and the night had grown very dark; he had to strain to see. Where had the man gone? There was only blackness in front of him. He put his hand out before him but could feel nothing; it was as if the world had vanished. In the strange absence of color his eyes began to play tricks: gold sparkled against the night. The shimmer of gold moved off a little, and he followed.

  Tom Nashe’s friends had all gone home by the time he left the tavern. He stood and pissed against the tavern wall, thinking of the strange questions Christopher had asked. What was the man playing at?

  Tom had heard rumors that Christopher did intelligence work for the queen. Could that b
e true? Tom prided himself on knowing the latest news, the secrets of the highborn and low, of being on intimate terms with nearly everyone of importance in London. It galled him that there was something he did not know about his friend.

  And what of the man who had called himself king? Was he truly Mistress Wood’s son? Would it be better not to raise her hopes if he turned out to be just another of London’s many lunatics?

  “Ho!” a voice said. Tom adjusted his clothes and turned around. Arthur stood behind him. “You—the man who knows so much about brownies. Come with me.”

  “Why? Where are we going?”

  “‘Ride not by the old pool,’” Arthur said. He pitched his voice higher so that it sounded uncannily like a woman’s. “‘Lest we should meet with Brownie.’ I’ll show you brownies, if you like.”

  Arthur’s natural authority was compelling; Tom wanted nothing more than to go with him. He forced himself to stare the other man down. “Where are they? How comes it that you know them?”

  “In Finsbury Field. I’ve seen them.”

  Arthur set off and Tom followed him. He felt a little unsteady and looked up at the stars to anchor himself. Good—they were still there. No one walked the streets so late; he heard nothing but the soft pad of Arthur’s boots and his own breath. It seemed that something miraculous might happen, that wonders were about to unfold before his eyes.

  They reached Finsbury Field moments later. “Look,” Arthur said, breathing the word. He pointed.

  “Look at what?” Tom said. “I see nothing.”

  “There. And over there—look! The faeries are dancing. Do you see them?”

  “Nay.” Tom tried not to feel disappointed. An intense expression had appeared on the other man’s face, yearning and desire and more than a little fear. Did he truly believe he saw something? It would be a sorry thing for him if he did. And what would Mistress Wood say if this Bedlamite turned out to be her long-lost son? Perhaps it would be a kindness to let her go on thinking he was dead.

  He heard mocking laughter from the fields. Nay, it was a screech owl out hunting, nothing more. But now he could make out faint shapes on the grass, figures clad in white with fire in their hair. Winged creatures, impossibly small, darted around them, and they danced to music that was like nothing he had ever heard.

  “Arthur,” he said, whispering. “Look.” But the other man had gone.

  The creatures left off dancing. In a single line they moved through the fields, a strange light shining from their faces. Tom followed as they passed through Moorgate and into the city itself.

  He would never be certain how long they led him onwards, or what way they took him through the city. They wound through the dark streets like a thread of gold in a tapestry, going past churches and prisons and taverns, past the shops of cobblers and ironmongers and brewers. Into the stately groves and gardens of the nobles’ estates they walked, and not a dog barked to let its owner know they were there. He saw the London citizens asleep in their houses, and beggars and vagabonds lying on the cobblestone streets, shivering in the cold; he saw St. Paul’s, closed and desolate in the darkness. At last they came to the river’s edge and the wharves with their boats moored tight until morning.

  He had always loved London, loved its noise and smells and close-packed lanes, the excitement and vitality he could feel in his stomach whenever he walked the streets. But now he saw it in the light cast by the faerie folk, and it seemed the promised city, the city of heaven. Each turning brought him new sights sharp enough to pierce his heart.

  All the while he walked with the faeries, though, he felt that they searched for something, something they had once had and given up, something lost. As dawn lightened the east, streaking the gray water of the Thames with silver, he saw them slow and finally stop. The wings of the little ones drooped, and the horned animal, its head once held up so proudly against the sky, began to tire. What was it they sought? He wished he could help them.

  In the light of the new day they seemed finally to become aware of him. One of the women in white turned and pointed, and then a dozen of them surrounded him, laughing and calling. He backed away toward the shelter of a building but they followed him. Someone ran her fingers through his hair. He felt drowsy, wearier than he had ever been in his life. It had been a long night. He lay against the wall and closed his eyes. Their laughter was the last thing he heard before he slept.

  A fine soft rain was falling the next morning as George went into the churchyard, and the drizzle had kept the usual throng of people at home. As he passed Alice’s station on the way to his own he saw that she had not come in to work that day. Instead the young man who worked for her stood at her stall, laying cloths over the books to keep them from getting wet. She must be at the printshop, then. He felt a strange emptiness at not seeing her; he hadn’t realized until then how pleasing he found it to watch her work. When she was his he would find ways of keeping her by his side.

  Anthony Drury waited for him at his stall, nodding as if he guessed his thoughts. “What decision have you come to?” he asked.

  At his words George felt alert, renewed, all disappointment forgotten. “I’ll agree to your terms,” he said. “I’ll take your potion.”

  “I don’t have it here.”

  “Where is it, then?”

  “At my lodgings. Come.”

  The man’s tone angered George. Why hadn’t Anthony simply brought the elixir with him? He thought that the other man meant to draw him deeper into this strange business, and he was reluctant to follow him. His only concern was with Alice: he had no interest in Anthony’s obsession with Arthur or his counterfeit coins (if Alice spoke true) or his obscure knowledge.

  But he would not get the promised potion unless he went along with him. “Very well,” he said.

  He closed his stall and followed the other man. They walked together through the empty churchyard, and then Anthony led him out onto Cheapside. Past the Eleanor Cross they went, past a small crowd watching expectantly as a man was tied to a cart and then flogged through the street. Anthony turned left off Cheapside, then right, then left again, and soon George was lost in a maze of dark alleys and passageways. The streets here were muddy from the morning’s rainfall, and garbage overran the ditches; he smelled excrement and rotting food. Houses closed together over him, blocking out the sky.

  Something moved in the shadows. George turned, afraid, but he could see nothing there. Anthony stopped, though, and made a complex gesture with his left hand. “Come,” he said.

  “What—What was—”

  “It will not trouble us further.”

  He began walking again, and George followed. The houses to either side of them grew shabbier, meaner. This was a part of London George had never seen. He was about to ask how much farther they had to go when the shape he had seen earlier came forward out of the shadows, making no sound. This time when he looked directly at the thing it did not retreat. He saw a creature the color of sea moss, with a long snout, sharp ears and webbed fingers and toes. It opened its mouth in a snarl, showing uneven pointed teeth.

  It turned and moved with a certainty of purpose toward Anthony. For a moment George could not speak, fascinated by the thing’s horrible grace. He must have made some kind of noise, because Anthony stopped to look at him. The creature dropped back and crouched on its haunches like a cat, preparing to lunge. Muscles slid over bones as smoothly as water gliding over rocks. For what seemed like a long time Anthony stood and did nothing. Then he drew complex sigils in the air and spoke a few words George did not recognize. The creature hissed and fell back toward the shelter of one of the houses.

  “What—” George said.

  Anthony made no reply. George realized with amazement that the other man looked shaken, almost haunted. Growing bolder, he said, “I told you before I will not traffic with spirits.”

  “Not—spirits,” Anthony said. His breath came in little gasps. George noticed, shocked, that the symbols Anthony had traced in th
e air still glowed, silver fading to tarnished green.

  “Not spirits! Why, man—”

  “The thing you saw is not a spirit, but as natural as you or I. We have performed certain experiments—”

  “We?”

  “You will meet the others when you’re ready. We question the nature of things. What is true and what false.” The man’s rhetoric seemed to steady him.

  “That’s too deep for me,” George said. As far as he was concerned what he saw with his own eyes was true, and everything else didn’t matter. And he knew, with more certainty than he had ever known anything in his life, that the thing he had seen had no part in his everyday world. “But that creature had an unnatural air about it. You’ll not tell me—”

  “Don’t speak of what you don’t understand. When the time is right we’ll tell you more.”

  George scowled. He wanted to be out of the filthy maze of streets and back at home before nightfall, and he wondered uneasily if the thing still watched them from the shadows. But he knew he could not find the way back on his own, knew too that he needed Anthony to get what he had been promised. He vowed that when Alice was his he would have no more to do with the other man.

  Anthony turned in at the most rundown of the houses. “Here it is,” he said, unlocking and opening the door.

  Dozens of burning candles lit the room beyond. George got a brief glimpse of what looked like a monstrous mechanical being, with a hundred iron arms snaking out from a central core. Then he heard a high shrill scream, and the green creature fell on Anthony from the rafters. It grabbed hold of his arm and pushed itself up toward his face in a strange fluid motion. George backed away into the street and closed the door.

  Another scream came from the room, and then silence. After what seemed like a long time the door opened and Anthony came out, blood streaming from his arm.

  “Has it gone?” George asked. “Are you badly hurt?”

  “Take it,” Anthony said. “Quickly.” He held out a small earthenware jar in his unwounded hand.

  “I—What do I—”

  “Quickly!”