Tamburlaine Must Die

by Louise Welsh

  ‘There’s only one way to save myself. I must find this person who calls himself Tamburlaine and put his head where he would put mine. In a rope necklace.’

  *

  Grizzle asked, ‘Did you sort those books you jumbled?’

  And we told him, ‘Aye.’ Though they were scattered across the floor of his stockroom like a booby trap.

  He’d known us liars and complained, ‘You take advantage of me. No doubt half my stock is under your arm, just as half my gold is with your creditors.’

  I looked at Blaize and he twirled his fingers, aping madness. As we walked away from St Paul’s, I caught him fingering a vellum-bound volume. He met my look and smiled.

  ‘Something I found amongst the cheap stalls.’

  I stared hard and evil at him, then we both laughed, pleased to be back in each other’s company. Still, I hoped that for once Blaize was telling the truth, because I couldn’t shake the feeling that to rob the blind man would be to invoke misfortune.

  *

  These days new alehouses spring from the bones of old, so fast it is barely worth learning their names, if names they have. There are so many unlicensed places. Inns not consecrated by bush or painted sign. Alehouses that draw the initiated through their doors by secret badges, a red lattice or a chequered board. Blaize and I were in search of such a place. Somewhere near the Dutch church and the start of my troubles. A tavern where drink was cheap and loose talk might reveal news of my nemesis.

  Our journey was accompanied by the constant clanging of church bells, a sound that plagues our city, so regular Londoners ignore the peals. But that day it seemed impossible to shut them out. Each chime jolted my bones as if they marked out my last hours. As we walked, I considered shaking loose of Blaize. But he had scented the angels in my pocket. And there was something in me that wanted to keep him close. Maybe I was tired of being alone, maybe I felt safer knowing where he was. Whatever the reason, we were yoked together that afternoon. I told myself a man in company strikes up conversation with strangers more easily than a lone fox and kept Blaize near.

  At last we found a rough, dark place, a cave of a pub crowded with men. The din of their talk stretched into the street. A deep rumble rising to crescendos of laughter and dispute. The occasional woman’s voice climbed above the men’s, piercing the low babble with boozy shrieks. As we entered the smoke-scented gloom, I recognised it as a nest where poor men and rich rogues sup together, searching for the deliverance alcohol can give. I felt my spirits lift. It was a kind of coming home and I realised I would delay justice for the sake of a good drink.

  In the corner a hump-backed fiddler scraped out a tune that was more counter chord than true. He met my eye, then lowered his gaze to his bow, moving with the music. Two Africans in tattered livery, their skin faded from black to grey, slumped together over drinks, click clacking in their own tongue, planning escape or maybe reminiscing on sunshine lands. The tavern was one step up from a cunny-warren and fostered women to suit most tastes, buxom and thin-boned, stern-silent feigning sober, jolly drunkards who shivered their breasts towards you for a draught of Spanish wine, or something less fine. And if you wished another kind of company, the means to detect it would be here.

  Spies are advised to stay sober. A little alcohol may sharpen the wits but too large a dose kills judgement. It helps the flyest fail, renders the slyest stupid and apt to let slip secrets. It makes us careless of codes, a poor fist in a fight. It helps us forget what we need to remember. Spies are warned not to fog their senses. They need the concentration of tightrope walkers, the keen eye of an archer.

  I knocked back a cup of ale and then another. Blaize followed my example and soon we were three cups down and the strain of the last day was easing. I had met a thousand near-deaths through drink, and felt the pull towards one more. I just hoped it wasn’t a dress rehearsal for the real thing. We were on our fourth cup when Blaize reached into his jerkin and drew out a small envelope.

  ‘I forgot to give you this.’

  The fiddle sounded low. A woman gave a high laugh as she left the tavern on the arms of two men. I hesitated over the anonymous seal, noting it was unbroken.

  ‘What is it?’

  Blaize shook his head but I persisted.

  ‘Where did it come from?’

  ‘A boy passed it to me a week or so ago.’ Blaize swilled back his drink and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. ‘He came into the tavern where I was drinking, asking for me by name.’ He adopted the faltering voice of a nervous youth, ‘‘‘Thomas B-B-B-Blaize actor, friend of Christopher M-M-M-Marlowe,’’’ here Blaize made a comic flourish, ‘‘‘p-p-p-p-p-playwright of this parish.’’ I thought at first it must be some message from you, but when I identified myself he asked whether I would be willing to deliver this. I saw no harm and accepted it as a favour.’

  He downed the last of his drink and called for more. I hesitated, unsure why I was so reluctant to fracture the wax.

  ‘Did you ask the boy who sent him?’

  ‘A stranger who offered him a farthing, I added another for his trouble and sent him on his way.’ Blaize laughed, toasting me with his refreshed glass. ‘I won’t trouble you for the return of the coin.’

  I gave him a weak smile and unfastened the envelope. Inside was a piece of plain white linen. I turned the scrap over in my hands for a moment as if hoping its unmarked surface hid some trapped communication, which would warm and reveal itself to the heat of my palms. I looked at Blaize and he took it from me, examining both sides, searching for something I might have missed. He shook his head and returned the strange message.

  ‘Some obscure jest?’

  I stuffed the envelope into my jerkin.

  ‘Which comes fast on threats to my life.’

  ‘No,’ he smiled with relief. ‘It was given to me before you returned home, prior to this adventure.’

  I took the scrap of fabric from my pocket and held its blank face to him.

  ‘Perhaps it’s a comment on my writing. The sender thinks my work empty?’

  Blaize laughed, his large teeth seemed to shine in the gloom of the bar.

  ‘Aye, no doubt it’ll be something like that.’

  ‘Nonetheless I’d rest easier if I knew who it came from.’

  ‘And I wish I had a secretary to mind my business.’

  I flicked at his ankle with my scabbard. He dodged the blow and bumped a fellow standing behind him, splashing the man’s drink onto the floor. He was an old scurvy peasant and we out-stared his annoyance until he grumbled into a corner with the dregs of his drink and we forgot the message in the next round of ale.

  I cast my gaze around the bar wondering who best to fall into conversation with. I was hoping for a group of men whose confidences could be bought with drink and wit. But my eyes were drawn to a lone stranger. A small man in black hose and doublet, with a cape of the same shade lined in red. His face was indistinct, hidden in the tavern shadows and the broad brim of his hat, but I could make out deep watchful eyes and a grey goatee beard. I thought he might pass for the Devil and smiled to myself, for had Old Nick requested my soul in exchange for earthly peace I would have obliged and thought him the worse for the bargain.

  I nudged Blaize and said, ‘That cove seems over interested in us.’

  Blaize looked behind him.

  ‘He’s about to fall into his cups and stares at us for some focus.’ He laughed. ‘The serving girls ignore him. You and I are the North Star that will guide him to the bar and another drink.’

  My friend was usually shot through with suspicion and I wondered at his new-found tolerance. I shook my head.

  ‘It’s more than that.’

  I glanced back at the man, but he’d scented he was at the centre of our discussion and began to rise unsteadily from his seat, his sword tangling him lewdly like a third leg. Blaize laughed at the man’s awkwardness. But pretending you’re unfit to handle a sword is a trick as old as Adam. The stranger’s clumsiness p
ut me on edge and I felt my hand drifting towards my weapon.

  Blaize noticed and whispered, ‘Think before you start trouble.’

  ‘If trouble comes looking, it will find me.’

  ‘Aye,’ he hissed, ‘and you’ll be as pleased as a dog in a doublet, until you find yourself in clink.’

  Any player will tell you it is hard to fake drunkenness. The man staggered a little as he stepped towards us and I thought his acting overdone. He noted my hostile stance and tut-tutted, raising his arms in mock surrender. Some men at a nearby table spotted him for a soak and laughed, drunk themselves, but sharp enough to relish another’s humiliation. The man paid them no mind and continued corkscrewing towards us. As he stepped from the shadows I could see the ravages drink had wrought, the broken nose skewed half across his face, the scarred mouth sliced in drunken descent against the rim of a tavern table, the deep lines that long restless nights had etched around his eyes. I remembered talk from France, that he had been subjected to the strappado and wondered less that I hadn’t recognised him. If Richard Baynes was the Devil, he was as tormented as any of his subjects. He offered us a black-toothed smile.

  ‘Is this how you greet admirers?’

  I felt Blaize’s pride twitch. A peacock’s tail that might unfurl full fan if coaxed. Baynes bent into a bow that almost toppled him. Blaize nodded, graciously accepting the salute. But it was not Blaize that Baynes’ dark tunnelled eyes looked on. It was me.

  ‘Master Marlowe, your plays do well.’ His voice was thick with drink. ‘I think of late you have given me as much pleasure as my wife and with none of the aggravation.’ He dissolved into merriment at his own wit. ‘I’d be honoured if you’d join me in a drink.’ He caught the barmaid’s eye and signalled deftly for three refills. ‘A toast to theatre.’

  Blaize drained his draft in one long gulp, hiding his expression behind his cup. He set the empty vessel back on the bar, then wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. When he spoke, his voice was laced with perfect patience.

  ‘So, you know each other well?’

  ‘Tolerably.’

  I thought back to the little Dutch town of Flushing where we had shared a room until Baynes, unnerved by the business in hand or hoping for preferment, I was never sure which, accused me of coining and blasphemy. I’d counter charged and we’d been dragged back, under guard, to London, both of us guilty and unwilling to hang. Though it should have made me cautious, the memory was reassuring. I’d faced disaster before and lived to meet it over again. I might yet survive to hang another day and this faithless spy, who’d played the priest for both sides, who slid and slipped through the darksome edges of several cities, might be the key to unlock Tamburlaine.

  Baynes gave me a wink designed to exile differences to the past and raised his cup toasting our friendship, unsure of Blaize and ready to slip with espionage ease into any role assigned. I lifted my own drink, returning the salute. The rims of our cups touched and our eyes met. I smiled that I could think him Lucifer; he was at worst a minor Devil, inclined to wickedness but without the wit to execute it unaided.

  ‘Master Baynes is an habitué of the theatre.’

  ‘I visit as often as I can.’ The little man beamed at Blaize.

  ‘He likes its twists and turns, though sometimes it can frighten.’

  ‘Aye, I have been frightened near to death on more than one occasion.’

  Blaize knew we spoke in riddles but could not fathom our purpose.

  ‘Sometimes I wonder that we call them plays,’ he ventured.

  Baynes spluttered on his drink.

  ‘True enough, it often seems no game.’ I gave Richard Baynes a warning look, not wanting Blaize tangled in the kind of affairs with which this imp concerned himself. He caught my meaning and changed tack, asking Blaize, ‘And you, Sir, are you also a writer?’

  ‘I’m better known for treading the boards.’

  ‘It’s a wonder I have never seen you. But no mind, we have met now and that calls for further libation.’

  I stepped in to retrieve my friend’s reputation.

  ‘This man is one of the finest players in London.’

  Blaize scowled at my speech. His Adam’s apple bobbed as he gulped back more ale. Baynes appeared immune to his distress. He laughed and clapped the finest player in London on the back better to stir the pot of his hubris.

  ‘Then I have most definitely seen you. It’s just that I don’t remember!’

  Blaize’s darkening looks, bitter as an abandoned bride’s, should have warned me, but when Baynes dismissed Blaize and returned to me demanding, ‘Now what about your poor damned Faustus?’, I found myself laughing at his attentions and the actor’s distress.

  Baynes slammed the surface of the table. Our drinks trembled in their cups, miniature oceans on the edge of a storm.

  ‘Could he not be saved? Zounds! Surely God would be merciful to such a learned man?’

  In these times when men turn the talk to religion, it is safer to draw it to something else, like their mother’s whoring, their father’s cupidity, children’s stupidity. Better to compare his sister’s breasts and holiest parts with his wife’s, than discuss Christ or the apostles. I knew to be beware of Baynes and his like. He and I had fished for traitors in our younger days using blasphemies for bait. We were the same kind of men. And that should have been warning enough. Yet, who understands you like your twin? The room swam and I was at one with the tavern dwellers, the prostitutes and sinners. I was with my own kind and this low place suited me better than all of Walsingham’s luxury and Raleigh’s philosophising.

  Baynes swore on Christ’s wounds and I answered, ‘God abandoned his own son. Why should he be more merciful to Faustus? They weren’t even close kin.’

  ‘No,’ the little man wagged a finger at me, and though his words were pious his tone was all dissent. ‘’Twas the Jews killed Christ. The same dark race as pollute our land now.’

  It was nothing I hadn’t heard before and my retort was well rehearsed.

  ‘The Jews were his own folk and knew him best. They had the choice between Christ and Barrabas and chose Christ, though Barrabas was a thief and a murderer. I can only suppose Christ deserved all he got, though being the bastard son of a whore, it’s no surprise he turned out bad.’

  I placed my pipe between my teeth and started to light it. Baynes shook his head, his clever grin caught in the light of my flame. His eyes gleamed red, like a devilish cleric coaxing an inverted catechism from a new wrested soul.

  ‘You can’t think it so.’

  I took a draw and puffed smoke into his face.

  ‘Oh I do.’ I was enjoying myself now. ‘The angel Gabriel was but a bawd to the Holy Ghost. Did he not solicit Mary and was not Christ the result?’

  Baynes feigned shock.

  ‘But Christ gifted us the sacraments. He made us safe in God’s love.’

  ‘An evil love that requires his own child’s blood as sacrifice.’ I forgot my mission to discover Tamburlaine. The drink had lifted my senses until I delighted in the kind of blasphemies that set sober men reciting prayers or singing hymns, because it is unsafe even to think these truths. I stared Baynes in the eye and whispered, ‘If Christ had any sense he would have made more ceremony of the sacrament. The papists have the best idea. They know the theatre of religion. They make a spectacle of the thing. I’d rather watch a show by some papist priest with a shaven crown than a hypocritical Protestant ass.’ Blaize laughed, goading me to further outrage. ‘Christ knew nothing of theatre. Better he should …’ I took another pull of my pipe searching for inspiration. ‘… Better he should praise God with tobacco than wafers.’

  I raised my cup to the room and felt all-powerful, cursing Christ and his vengeful father to a man dressed in the Devil’s colours.

  Baynes hissed, ‘But surely as a man of letters you must love the Bible. Is it not the finest book ever written?’

  If I had been sober, I would have marked he slurred less now th
an before. But the thrill of drink and danger was on me. I laughed and told him it was filthy done and were it up to me I would much improve its style. My tomfoolery cheered Blaize, though he had heard it all before. He laughed and coaxed me on.

  ‘Tell him what you think about the apostles.’

  And so it went, I spinning blasphemies, Blaize encouraging my outrages and the small man remonstrating irony as he fed us ale, until he emptied his purse, the night drew dark and we sallied into the street.

  Blaize reeled down the alley and stood against the wall, muttering to himself as he fiddled with his codpiece. His mumbles ceased and I heard the splash of his stream hiss against the wall. He sang softly as he pissed. A child’s lullaby. For some reason the song lowered my spirits. I rallied all my optimism and slung an arm around Baynes, declaring him my new brother and all past differences forgot. The small man returned my hug and I thought him full of filial love. Then the mood changed. His body stiffened and I realised his small frame was more vigorous than I’d supposed. Suddenly he was pressing his poniard into my waist, letting me feel its point, pushing hard enough to pierce my doublet, but no further. He held my arm in a lock I would not have believed him capable of. Then he put his face close to mine and I thought I smelled a whiff of sulphur. I gasped against the shock of his attack, gathering my breath to call for Blaize. But Baynes pressed the knife deeper, piercing my flesh, slicing a cut along my side, stopping, but promising more should I make a noise. For a full second the street was silent save for our ragged breaths and the sound of Blaize’s stream. Then Baynes spoke. His voice rasped, full of hatred and disgust, so different from the smooth tones that had eased blasphemies from me.

  ‘You’re a wicked man. Make your peace before you die. Your time is coming soon.’

  He spat on my face and pushed me away. His footsteps rang slow and insolent into the dark streets beyond. The drink heaved within me and I bent over on the roadside, retching into the gutter. When I turned, sword in hand, ready to stick him through, Baynes was nowhere to be seen.

  *

  Blaize weaved from the alley just as Baynes’s steps died into silence. He tucked himself safe within his breeches, laughing at my distress, then flung his arm under mine. His touch came too fast on Baynes’s betrayal and I struggled against him. But he held me upright, half crutch half rudder, steering me I knew not where. He staggered and fell, pitching me forward. I heaved again and felt my head grow clearer, though my heart felt sick with stupidity and fear. Blaize struggled to his feet and misreading my dread for melancholy said, ‘I have a room nearby and on the way we will collect a cure for your malaise.’