by Glenn Cooper
Harris took a deep breath. ‘Gosh, where to start? Dissertations have been written on the subject. I myself have made some contributions to the field. I will be happy to send you a detailed bibliography so that you can delve as deeply as you like. In a broad sense, let me say, however, that the similarities far outweigh the differences. In both, our Doctor Faustus summons the demon Mephistopheles from the underworld and strikes a pact to have twenty-four years on Earth with Mephistopheles as his personal servant. In exchange he gives his soul over to Lucifer as payment and damns himself to an eternity in Hell. At the end of these twenty-four rather excellent and sinful years, though filled with fear and remorse, there’s nothing Faustus can do to alter his fate. He’s torn limb from limb and his soul is carried off to Hell.
‘As to the differences, textual differences occur in all of the five acts but the preponderance of additions lie in Act III. In the B text, Act III is far longer and becomes a rather concentrated anti-Catholic, anti-Papist tract – which in and of itself isn’t terribly surprising in the Protestant hotbed that England had become under Elizabeth. Faustus and Mephistopheles travel to Rome and observe the Pope, his cardinals, bishops and friars acting like scandalously greedy buffoons. It must have been a real crowd-pleaser in its day.’
‘What’s your opinion about the reason for this addition?’ Elisabetta asked.
‘On that we can only speculate. In the A text, Faustus’s visit to Rome was there but was quite abbreviated. Perhaps whenever it was performed and the Pope appeared on stage, the audience jeered and stamped and carried on so much that Marlowe or someone else embellished Act III as part of the B rewrite to milk the sentiment thoroughly.’
Elisabetta jotted some notes on a pad. ‘May I ask about astrology in the play?’
Harris nodded enthusiastically. ‘Of course. Another subject dear to my heart. Well, astrology was extremely important in Marlowe’s day. The Queen had her own court astrologer, John Dee. In Faustus, Marlowe would have certainly been influenced by the classic ecclesiastical account of witchcraft, the Malleus Maleficarum, which posits – and I’m almost embarrassed to say that I’m able to quote from memory – “demons are readier to appear when summoned by magicians under the influence of the stars, in order to deceive men, thus making them suppose that the stars have divine power or actual divinity.” And we see the direct result of these ideas in Act 1, Scene 3 of Faustus when Faustus begins to conjure from inside his magic circle:
‘Now that the gloomy shadow of the Earth,
Longing to view Orion’s drizzly look,
Leaps from th’Antarctic world unto the sky
And dims the welkin with her pitchy
breath, Faustus, begin thine incantations.”’
Harris paused and smiled in a self-deprecatory way. ‘I could go on and on.’
Elisabetta looked up from her note-taking. ‘I’m curious about the astrological symbols depicted in the magic circle. Do they have a particular significance?’
Harris furrowed his brow at the question. ‘Stephanie, may I see the book?’
It was still on her lap. Meyer passed it carefully to him. He opened it to the title page. ‘Well, it’s the standard zodiac, I suppose. Constellations, planets. To be honest, I’ve never thought about it in a rigorous way.’ He looked up, blinking. ‘Maybe I should.’
Perhaps sensing an opening, Meyer broke her long silence. ‘I’m sure you’ve been wondering why I came to Rome with Professor Harris,’ she said.
‘I don’t know about my daughter, but I’ve been wondering why you’re here,’ Carlo said undiplomatically. Elisabetta cringed and waited expectantly for the answer.
‘Let me be open with you,’ Meyer said. ‘I’m here on behalf of the University. We want this book. We want it badly. It represents a tremendous gap in our library collection. Christopher Marlowe was a Cambridge man, one of our most illustrious and colorful graduates. Yet we do not possess a single copy of one of the early quartos of this, his most famous play. Oxford has one and we do not! This must be remedied. As a friend of the University and a supporter of the humanities I have pledged my personal resources to facilitate the acquisition of this book. Is it for sale, my dear?’
‘How much?’ Carlo chirped.
‘Papa! Please!’ Elisabetta begged, staring him down. She turned to face Meyer. ‘I don’t know what to tell you. I’m so honored that the two of you came all the way to see me. Frankly, it’s not something I’ve thought about.’
‘But the book is clearly yours,’ Meyer said, pressing on. ‘I mean, it’s yours and the decision to sell it rests with you, does it not?’
‘I have no personal possessions,’ Elisabetta said. ‘I was given the book as a gift to the Church. I suppose if someone were to buy it, the funds would go to my Order.’
Meyer smiled politely. ‘Well, then. Now that we’ve seen it and Professor Harris is initially happy with its authenticity and condition, perhaps when we return home we can send you an offer in writing. Would you then entertain a formal offer?’
Elisabetta flushed. ‘You’ve been so kind to come and speak with me. Of course. Send me a letter. I’ll speak to my Mother Superior. She’ll know how to respond.’
When the visitors were gone, Elisabetta slumped wearily on the sofa, surrendering to her fatigue. She removed her tight veil, ran a hand through her short hair and massaged her throbbing scalp. Her father shuffled back with a fresh cup of coffee and a look of paternal concern on his face.
‘You need to sleep. No one goes through a night like you had without a need for rest. Have your coffee. Then go to your room.’
Elisabetta took the cup. ‘You sound like you did when I was a child. “Go to your room, Elisabetta, and don’t come out until you’re ready to say you’re sorry.”
‘Someone had to give you some discipline,’ Carlo said. ‘Your mother was a very soft person.’
At that moment she could almost see her mother through her misty eyes, young and beautiful, passing from the hall to the kitchen. ‘I still miss her so much,’ she said.
Her father sniffed defiantly – his way of saying he wasn’t going to let himself succumb to emotion. ‘Of course you do. We all do. If she hadn’t died maybe you wouldn’t have done what you did.’
Elisabetta stiffened. ‘What did I do?’
‘Became a nun.’ She could tell that once it was said that he regretted it but it was clear he meant it.
‘Maybe you’re right,’ she said evenly. ‘Maybe if Marco hadn’t been killed, maybe if mama had been alive, maybe, maybe, maybe. But things happen in a life, God has ways of testing us. My answer to his tests was to find Him. I don’t regret it for a minute.’
Carlo shook his head. ‘You were a beautiful vibrant girl. You still are. And you’ve hidden yourself away behind your nunnery and your habit. I’ve never been happy about this. You should have been a wife and a mother and a scholar. That would have made your mother happy.’
Elisabetta fought the urge to be angry. He was stressed by the events of the past few days and she forgave him. ‘Why have you spent all these years going after Goldbach?’ she asked.
He huffed a laugh. She knew he was smart enough to see where she was going. ‘Because it’s my passion.’
‘And it’s your quest,’ she added. ‘Well, my passion, my quest, is to be with God, to feel Him deeply within my soul. To honor Him with my work with the children. That’s my passion. That’s what makes me happy.’
The door buzzer went off. It was like the bell that signals the end of a boxing round. They both seemed relieved.
‘Have they come back?’ her father said, scanning the room to see if their visitors had left anything behind.
He answered the intercom and came back to the living room to tell Elisabetta that her Mother Superior, Sister Marilena, was here to see her.
Elisabetta rose and hastily put her veil back on. She greeted Marilena at the door.
‘My dear,’ Marilena said with concern, grabbing her hands. ‘I’
ve been so worried about you. Word came to us of your ordeal last night.’
‘I’m all right,’ Elisabetta said. ‘God was with me.’
‘Yes, yes, I’ve been giving thanks all day.’
Elisabetta took Marilena to the sitting room. The kettle was whistling again in the kitchen where Elisabetta had sent her father.
‘Such a lovely place,’ Marilena said, glancing around the room.
‘It’s where I grew up,’ Elisabetta said.
‘So warm, so cultured. Everyone at the school has been worried about you.’
‘I hope it’s not a big distraction,’ Elisabetta said.
‘We’re strong enough in our mission and our faith not to lose sight of what we must accomplish with the children and with God.’ Then Marilena laughed. ‘Of course it’s a distraction. You know how we talk! Even my mother can speak of nothing else.’
‘Tell mama I miss her,’ Elisabetta said, realizing with a start that she’d just said something similar.
Suddenly Marilena turned serious. She had the same expression on her face that she wore when preparing to give parents a bad report on their children. ‘Mother-General Maria called me today from Malta,’ she said somberly.
Elisabetta checked her breath.
‘I don’t know where the decision was taken, I don’t know why it was taken and I certainly wasn’t consulted. You’re being transferred, Elisabetta. The Order wants you to leave Rome and report to our school in Lumbubashi in the Republic of Congo. They want you there in one week.’
SEVENTEEN
London, 1586
THE YOUNG MAN cast nervous glances around a walled garden dominated by a mulberry tree which had grown too large for its small patch of greenery.
‘Who did you say owns this house?’ Anthony Babington asked.
‘A widow woman,’ Marlowe answered. ‘Her name is Eleanor Bull. She’s known to Poley. She’s one of us.’
They were in Deptford, on the south bank of the Thames. It was early summer and the preceding weeks had been overly hot and humid. Fetid organic river vapors hung unpleasantly in the air, causing the delicate Babington to sniff at a scented handkerchief for relief. He was twenty-four, fair and beautiful, even with his face scrunched from squinting into the afternoon sun. Marlowe overfilled Babington’s mug with beer and the froth ran onto the oak table.
‘I must say, Kit, that I don’t know how you find the time to do everything you do – engaging in your Master’s at Cambridge, writing your ditties and pursuing, how shall I put it, other activities.’
Marlowe frowned in displeasure. ‘I don’t deny that there scarcely seem to be enough hours in the day. But as to your first point, I have an arrangement with my Master at Benet to be away from college for certain periods as long as I maintain my academic obligations. On the third point, my conscience demands that I pursue these “other activities” and on the second point, I do not write ditties. I write plays.”
Babington showed his sincere mortification. ‘I’ve offended you. I did not mean to do so. I am overwhelmed, sir, at your industry and accomplishments.’
‘You shall come to my opening night,’ Marlowe said magnanimously. ‘Come, let us turn our attention to weightier matters. Let us talk of restoring the true Catholic faith to England. Let us talk of dear Queen Mary. Let us talk of that dry hag Elizabeth and what is to be done with her. We have vast sunshine, we have beer, we have our own pleasant company.’
They had met through Robert Poley, one of Walsingham’s men, not a run-of-the-mill toady but a choice cut of meat. Ruthless and cunning, he had matriculated at Cambridge in 1568 as a Sizar but had not received his degree because as an alleged Catholic he’d been unable to swear the necessary oath of allegiance to the Queen’s religion. Yet apparently he wasn’t so principled as to deflect the entreaties of Walsingham’s recruiters and he quickly became one of the Secretary’s most useful operatives, an informant who easily wheedled himself into Papist plots in England and on the Continent and for the right compensation even permitted himself to be imprisoned time after time. Her Majesty’s jails, he insisted, were the best places to meet Catholic plotters.
During Lent of that year, Poley arranged a supper meeting of young Catholic gentlemen at the Plough Inn, near Temple Bar on the western edge of the City of London. Anthony Babington, an acquaintance of Poley, was invited along with two strangers whom Poley had vouched for, Bernard Maude and Christopher Marlowe. Naive and hapless, Babington was the only one at the table that evening not in Walsingham’s employ.
Over ale, wine and whispers, Babington was made aware of certain plans. Mary, Queen of the Scots, had been imprisoned at Elizabeth’s pleasure for eighteen years for fomenting revolt against Elizabeth’s Protestant reign and for offering herself up as the rightful Queen of England and restorer of the Pope’s primacy. Following the collapse of the Throckmorton plot against the crown, Mary found herself in her strictest confinement yet, at Chartley Hall in Staffordshire, isolated from the outside world by Puritan minders who reported her every twitch to Walsingham.
Here was Poley’s news. Catholic agents in France, Holland and Spain were passing along their assurances that the Catholic League and the great Christian princes of Europe would commit a force of 60,000 men to invade the north of England, free Mary and assert her rule. Thanks to the genius inventions of Kit Marlowe, a brilliant young recusant recently allied to their cause, a method of communicating with Mary had been devised. Marlowe had imagined a way to smuggle letters to Chartley Hall, hidden and sealed waterproof within kegs of beer, and he had also devised a clever cipher to encrypt them in the unlikely event that they were discovered.
Letters from plotters had already been sent in this manner and Mary had given written replies of general encouragement. However, she had been cautious. None of the plotters were personally known to her. They needed someone whom she knew and trusted.
Enter Babington. In 1579 he had been a page to the Earl of Shrewsbury who was then Mary’s keeper. She’d been fond of the boy and five years later he’d been entrusted to deliver several packets of letters directly to the hand of the Scottish Queen. Though he’d dropped out of the dangerous game to take up a gentleman’s life in London, his views were well known among her sympathizers.
So the question put to Babington that night was this: will you join with us? Will you help the good Lady?
His response delighted the spies. How could this treason succeed, he whispered, if Elizabeth remained alive? She was popular among her misguided subjects. Wouldn’t she be able to rally her armies and effectively counter the invaders? Wouldn’t the plot go better if she were brought to, as he put it, a tragical end?
The others assured him that one of their number, a John Savage, was planning to take care of just that and in a giddy response Babington sealed his fate by clinking his mug around the table. Marlowe, who was fresh game and unknown to the likes of Walsingham, would be his go-between. The two young men smiled at each other like fine co-conspirators and there followed another clinking of drinking vessels.
There were sounds from inside the house. Babington started to rise in alarm but it was only Mrs Bull returning from her shopping. She stuck her head out the window and asked if she should bring out a tray of food.
They supped and drank until the shadow of the mulberry tree grew long and dark. Marlowe had news to report which he told Babington had been passed directly to Poley from the French Ambassador to England, Guillaume de l’Aubespine. Invasion plans were taking shape. French, Spanish and Italian armies were committed to the holy task. There were strong indications that English Catholics would also rise to arms at the first sight of foreign troops carrying the Papal colors. What was required was the final assent of Queen Mary, to be obtained by Babington.
Marlowe withdrew the implements of his trade from the portable writing case at his feet. He shaved a quill with his best knife, opened the lid of his ink pot and amused Babington no end by blotting the beer from the table with his rump before
placing the case upon the dry spot and laying a few sheets of parchment on its leather pad. ‘Would you care to dictate?’ Marlowe asked. ‘I am a most excellent scribe.’
‘You, Kit, are the author. We have well discussed what must be transmitted. Perhaps you can compose.’
Marlowe agreed, saying he would refrain from flowery prose in favor of plain language. As he scratched the parchment he read aloud:
First, assuring of invasion. Sufficient strength in the invader. Ports to arrive at appointed, with a strong party at every place to join with them and warrant their landing. The deliverance of Your Majesty. The dispatch of the usurping Competitor. For the effectuating of all which it may please Your Excellency to rely upon my service.
Now forasmuch as delay is extreme dangerous, it may please Your Most Excellent Majesty by your wisdom to direct us, and by Your Princely Authority to enable such as may advance the affair; foreseeing that, where is not any of the nobility at liberty assured to Your Majesty in this desperate service and seeing it is very necessary that some there be to become heads to lead the multitude, ever disposed by nature in this land to follow nobility, considering withal it doth not only make the commons and gentry to follow without contradiction or contention but also doth add great courage to the leaders.
Myself with ten gentlemen and an hundred of our followers will undertake the delivery of Your Royal Person from the hands of your enemies.
For the dispatch of the usurper, from the obedience of whom we are by the excommunication of her made free, there be six noble gentlemen, all my private friends, who for the zeal they bear to the Catholic cause and Your Majesty’s service will undertake that tragical execution.
‘Are you well satisfied with this concoction?’ Marlowe asked when he was done.
Babington’s throat seemed raspy with anxiety. ‘It seems to properly convey our knowledge of the affair and our requests for the Queen’s blessings.’
‘Then I will place it into a cipher forthwith. While I undertake the task you might ask the Widow Bull to bring us more beer. I will drink only for thirst. The process of substituting letters for numbers and words for symbols is ever taxing and my head must remain as clear as Narcissus’s reflecting pool.’
