Kit had no idea why Deptford, nor what he intended to do at such a meeting that would keep the threat from his door, keep him out of jail, and keep Imp safe.
Like a lame beggar trailing after a good walker, his mind limped after his lips, unable to catch up to the wit of his speech.
The meaning of the words sank in slowly. Kit was not used to listening to himself speak, even less to having to think of what he meant. How smooth he sounded, he thought, how plausible.
How strange this.
Had Kit finally become two? Had his soul, ever divided between love and hate, violence and beauty, finally cracked?
He knew not what tale he spun, yet he saw Frizer and Poley exchanging looks, at least half convinced.
Inside his own mind, Kit Marlowe screamed in despair. His mouth was not his to control.
He would save his life, that was true. Maybe even Imp’s life in the bargain.
But what would become of Kit’s mind?
His reason followed his words, made sound of them. Links fell together in his mind and he second-guessed his own ideas. Elinor Bull, a distant cousin-by-marriage of Queen Elizabeth herself, was not at all wealthy. For adequate compensation, she’d long permitted her house to be used as a safe house by the secret service.
Kit could get all those men there, each of them a servant of a member of the Queen’s inner circle.
The Queen herself, who now resided at Greenwich Palace, near enough to Deptford, was known to have grown fearful and suspicious in her old age.
If word of the meeting got to her ears—and Kit had enough acquaintance at court to ensure it would, the Queen would perforce eavesdrop on it. She’d probably send her men to arrest the whole group and let it be sorted out later. In which case, Kit could convince the Queen herself that these men were involved in a plot.
Yes, he’d trust his silver tongue to let him walk out free.
Even better, the Queen, who was said to be suspicious enough to often check such meetings and conspiracies herself, might come by herself to Deptford. In which case, in the confusion, Kit might well walk away free without even the need for being interrogated.
Kit Marlowe’s headache was gone. Never had he felt so lucid. Never had he spoken with so facile a tongue.
It was, he thought, as though he’d become a whole new man, one with a magical capacity to manipulate others.
After Poley and Frizer had left, Kit finished washing and dressed himself.
He wrote letters to his acquaintances at court and sent them off by messenger. In each one he hinted at the events to take place in Deptford, and at a plot against the Queen, ensuring he said nothing too clearly.
If he succeeded, not only would the Queen’s suspicions be awakened, but other people’s, too. Aye, when he was done, Elinor Bull’s house would be creeping with so many spies that none would be safe. None save Kit Marlowe, himself.
He smiled and set about ensuring that Will Shakespeare would be in Deptford, too—one more lamb that must be led to the slaughter for Kit’s safety.
And yet Kit, a stranger to half of his own mind, wondered what he was saving and how long before the tear in his soul widened and he went quietly into that good night of oblivion, from which there would be no return.
Scene 27
Will’s room. He sits at his table, writing. His hands are covered in ink stains, as is the top of his tottering writing table. The papers in front of him are an unsteady tower, displaying scrawled writing and checks and crosses aplenty. He has pushed back the sleeves of his black doublet. His eyes are circled in dark, bruised rings, and sweat drips from his forehead.
Will paused in his writing and looked up at his reflection, dimly seen as a ghost upon the grimy surface of his window.
His eyes looked back at himself, full of fear.
Fear, he realized, had installed itself at the back of his mind when he wasn’t thinking, and from there mocked all his endeavors at poetry.
He surveyed his work, his crossed-out sentences, his poor constructions, his unreliable storytelling.
No, this would not do at all. Will couldn’t seem to work poetry and sense into a single piece.
And yet, Will had been given money for this piece in advance. What would happen if he displeased the nobleman who’d so financed him?
Nothing good. Worse yet, Will would see himself without disguise, and know that he truly was no poet, no smooth weaver of words.
And yet Kit Marlowe made it all look so simple.
Perhaps Will should ask Marlowe’s help. He’d been so kind so far. Yes, Will thought, he would ask Marlowe.
Will had no more than stood up and started toward his door when someone knocked on it.
With his hand on the latch, Will thought he smelled, through the door, a smell very like Silver’s. He hesitated.
The thought of Silver—of how forward, how brazen the elf lady had been—still made Will tighten his fists in anger.
That Silver thought he would be an easy mark. She dared . . . . She’d endangered Nan. Oh, the idea galled him.
The knock sounded again, impatient.
It could not be Silver, after all.
Silver would have come in by now, through her magic means.
He opened the door.
Marlowe stood on the precarious perch atop the steep staircase.
“Ah, the man himself,” Will said, and smiled at Marlowe’s slightly startled expression. “I would have gone see you.”
“You would?” Marlowe asked.
He sounded eager, anxious, perhaps a little too eager and anxious. Yet, he smiled smoothly and his grey eyes sparked with humor.
Will could swear that the heavy smell of lilac came from Kit. Was this the new fashion in London? Perfuming oneself like the fairykind?
No, normal people didn’t know of the fairykind. Will forced a smile, pushed thoughts of the supernatural world to the back of his mind, and told himself he wasn’t worried about Silver.
“Truth is,” Marlowe said and grinned, “I need your help, friend Will.”
Friend. The great Marlowe had called Will his friend.
On this word, Will forgot his misgivings at Kit’s strange smell.
Kit had called Will his friend, and on this friendship, Will dared fund his hopes. Certainly more than on any world of fairy.
“I will gladly help you with whatever you need,” he said, and smiled. “Provided you lend me your help.”
“Surely, you may have it. But I need your help, Will, with attending me to Deptford tomorrow, where I am to pay some creditors a debt I owe them. I would fain have a friend to witness my payment. Would you do it, Will?”
Will looked up. “Gladly,” he said, and smiled. As he said it, he thought of all the times he’d been cozened in London, of how easily he’d so often lost money and purse and all.
But surely, he had no reason to fear this from Marlowe. Marlowe had already proved himself Will’s friend so many different ways.
Will had been afraid that Kit wanted him to second Kit in a duel or to help him with a rhyme, or something else for which Will was wholly unqualified. But to witness something, Will would do well enough.
His eyes were as keen as the next man’s.
“And you wish my help with . . . ?” Kit prompted.
Will sighed. He explained his interview with the Earl of Southampton and how unwarrantedly the earl had thrown money at Will’s untested poetical skill.
“I’ve never tried anything this long before,” Will said. “All my poetry has been sonnets, and I find that when it comes to this, I am wholly unprepared.
“No, I was not born under a rhyming planet, nor can I woo fame in festival terms. As for the subject, well . . . Leander the good swimmer, Troilus the first employer of panders, and a whole bookful of these quondam carpet-mangers, whose names yet run smoothly in the even road of a blank verse, why, none of them will do for my verse.
“Marry, I cannot show wit in rhyme; I have tried: I can find out no rhyme to
‘lady’ but ‘baby,’ an innocent rhyme; for ‘scorn,’ ‘horn,’ a hard rhyme; for ‘school,’ ‘fool,’ a babbling rhyme; very ominous endings.”
Kit laughed.
He touched Will’s arm, and in that touching, Will saw the palm of Marlowe’s hand and upon his palm a mass of bubbling blisters and burst blisters that showed raw flesh.
He stared at Kit’s hand till Kit looked down at it. Will would swear Kit looked surprised.
But how could a man take such injury and not notice?
Kit grinned at Will, a forced grin that showed all his teeth and made him look, for a second, like a wolf, a carnivorous animal. “Aye, a burn, a burn, ’tis but a burn I got, upon my spit.” He grinned, but his grin seemed hollow. A baring of teeth against the world and little else besides.
After Kit had left, that grin haunted Will’s thoughts.
How strange it all seemed.
Will had wanted to come to London and be just like Marlowe, and now he wondered if Marlowe was as Marlowe wished to be.
Scene 28
Tyburn Square, midday. Walking back from Will’s, Kit chances upon an execution. The gibbet is mounted midplaza. Official-looking buildings—their stone facades imposing, hem in a varied crowd of Londoners. Vendors and sightseers circulate. On the gibbet, a man stands between two executioners.
Kit stopped, staring at the gibbet.
He knew the man upon it, the condemned man.
His mind, searching, brought forth a name.
John Penry.
Kit reeled. John Penry had been arrested, of course and Kit knew he would be put to the question. But—condemned?
Around Kit, the crowd milled and swirled. A few souls watched the gibbet attentively, but most were there to see and be seen, for a meeting point, for a break in routine.
“An orange, ducks, fresh off the ship from Spain,” a woman in dark garments said. She thrust a golden fruit in front of Kit’s eyes. “A penny, no more.”
Kit sidestepped the proffered orange.
His eyes upon Penry, Kit neared the gibbet. The executioners were demanding a last speech of the prisoner, last words, a token of repentance.
Kit stared, fascinated.
But for him, Penry wouldn’t be here. But for him, Penry might be well, walking the streets, minding his own business.
How he looked, too, how much thinner than he had in his Cambridge days. And his arms hung in an odd way, within their long black sleeves.
Had Penry been broken on the wheel?
Something like remorse tore at Kit’s conscience, something like empathy knocked and hit upon his mind, with no more effect than a moth flying at a glass window.
He felt sorry for John Penry, well enough. Yet Imp must be saved.
With that thought he looked up, and chanced to meet Penry’s eyes, and in Penry’s eyes he saw a hint of recognition, a hint of gratitude.
Gratitude that, of all their Cambridge fellows, Kit had come to see Perry’s end? Did Perry think Kit had come to lend him comfort? Oh, Kit wished he could.
Something almost like a smile twisted Penry’s pale lips up, and he nodded toward Kit as he said, “God have mercy on us all. I have no more to say. God have mercy on us.”
On those words, the executioner kicked Penry’s feet out from under him.
Penry fell from the platform that supported the gibbet, and the noose tightened.
A spasm, a gasp, and a body was carrion.
A nearby church bell tolled dolefully.
Kit felt something—breath? life?—fly by. It felt like warm wind, like a sigh.
Old women rushed to the gibbet to collect pieces of hair and bits of nail, to conjure upon.
That pious Penry should be used for black magic beggared the mind.
Disgusted, heartsick, not knowing why he felt so hollow, Kit turned and walked away.
He had been forced to turn Penry in. He had been forced to save himself and Imp, and Penry was their only salvation.
But no matter how many times Kit repeated these words to himself as he walked amid the festive crowd, he kept hearing Penry’s earnest words, God have mercy on us all.
Kit shivered and wished he still believed in a God of whom to ask forgiveness for what he’d had to do.
Scene 29
A narrow Elizabethan alley, dark and murky. It is nighttime and only faint lights of candles shine in some windows of the five-story buildings that loom overhead, on either side, obscuring the view of distant stars, the cloud-flecked sky. Through this alley, Kit Marlowe stumbles, looking like a somnambulist.
It was midnight on the clock, and Kit bumbled abroad, not sure where he was, walking the dark alleys in a restless search for something he couldn’t understand.
He felt as though some dark core of his soul had control of his body, and he were a horse that the rider impelled on and on, with fierce jabs of spurred boots.
The horse knew not where he went, nor did Kit. Only that he must go on and on, breathless and tired, longing for sleep, longing for rest, but craving . . . craving something he could not explain.
Where was he?
Nothing in the houses around him gave him a hint of his whereabouts. The houses were tall and narrow, not mean looking, and yet not great. The muck underfoot smelled no worse than it did anywhere else.
And yet, muck and mud though it was, it made Kit wish to lie down in it and sleep, he was so tired.
Stumbling he walked.
Thoughts of life as food, of living force, living strength as fodder, streamed through Kit’s mind, making him crave—crave life? Or death?
Kit thought of John Penry’s shuddering, suspended from the gallows. He trembled and licked his lips.
Impulses and thoughts for which he had no name used his body for their lair.
Ahead, on a low window, a light flourished.
Kit rushed, put his hand against the door trying it.
What would he do if he got in? Why did he wish to get in? Thoughts of biting living flesh, the longing for fresh blood upon his tongue, the need for something else—for the life that fed some power, some weakening strength. His thoughts shocked him before they were even words.
Kit pulled his hand away from the knob. What madness was this? What was happening to him?
“Soft, soft,” Kit said. “What light beyond yonder window breaks. Oh, go to sleep whoever you be, maiden or man, or child. Go to sleep, stay safe from such as me.”
His words, though whispered, caused a sound behind him—a scuffling sound, like someone faltering.
Kit turned around.
And looked into Poley’s well-meaning eyes, Poley’s calm, agreeable face.
Poley and Frizer had followed Kit again.
Kit felt no fear, not even anger. Instead he thought of Poley’s and Frizer’s lives and strength, and craved those lives like men crave food.
Kit craved killing.
Tear, slash, eat, drink the life, Kit’s mind cajoled, and Kit recoiled at the thought.
Kit bent his knees, not knowing what he did, and crouched like an animal about to spring. His hands formed into claws, and as he watched, he swore his nails grew longer.
Something else must be happening to him, something visible in his countenance. Kit’s features must have changed, because Poley whispered softly, “Marlowe.” And Poley’s voice vibrated with trembling fear.
Kit looked up at Poley and bared his teeth, feeling a crazed hunger, a need to kill. His reason screamed at him to stop.
What loss would Poley be? Kit told his reason. What loss to the world?
He could not answer. But just then, as he meant to spring, someone else approached, walking stealthily along the narrow dark street.
Someone who’d been following Poley as he’d been following Kit?
This person walked with uncommon majesty, with squared shoulders, a confident stride.
It was a woman dressed in a gentlewoman’s attire.
Closer, she hesitated, her commanding walk halted. A beam o
f moonlight shone up on her features.
Kit saw the face on every coin, the pattern handed out for painters to draw the Queen.
The Queen.
But the woman wore a dress of dark stuff, and her hair was white and not the red of the portraits, and Kit wasn’t sure.
Within him the demand for life and strength, the hunger for the fluid substance of breath that had consumed Kit’s inner core, now changed.
It changed to a snickering joy, a happy smugness.
Kill the Queen, the something whispered. And the game will be won.
Kit screamed at his own thought, a muffled, strangled scream.
The woman stopped, staring at him.
She screamed at whatever she glimpsed in Kit’s features. Something within Kit sniggered.
The Queen blanched. Her hand at her throat, she stepped back. Poley half moved forward, and made as if to talk to her.
Kit stared Poley in the eye. Poley stepped back, against the wall, actually paling in his fright.
The Queen turned and ran unsteadily down the street, tottering on high heels.
Yet, Kit recoiled, sweat beading on his skin. The fight within him was similar to the fight within a starved man who wishes to fast.
Part of him wished to kill Elizabeth, wished to kill her more than he wished to draw the next breath.
Yet Kit knew what would happen if Elizabeth died here, without descendants, with no appointed successor.
The many pretenders to the throne, from Spain and France, Scotland and principiates in Germany, would fight it out for England’s Crown. When they were done, there wouldn’t be two villages in the country that would be together, belonging to the same lord.
Whence this dark need to kill her, then? Whence this craving?
His own impulse scared him. He arrested his movement with overwhelming willpower.
Scared of himself and his darkest urgings, Kit Marlowe stepped back, and back and back.
Poley, across the alley from Kit, made a strangled cry, and took to his heels as Elizabeth had, running down the alley with scarcely more grace than the aged Queen.
All Night Awake Page 21
