Black Death

by M. J. Trow

  Marlowe could play the Biblical scholar when he had to. ‘The words are yours, Doctor,’ he smiled.

  Andrewes lurched forward, eyes bulging in his head, but Marlowe raised a hand. ‘Forgive me, Master,’ he said. ‘I have outstayed my welcome. Gentlemen,’ he bowed again, ‘I’ll see myself out.’

  For a long moment, neither man spoke after the door had slammed.

  ‘Once again, Lancelot,’ Harvey said, calmer now, ‘my apologies. Here I am, visiting an old friend and garbage like that follows me from London.’

  ‘Proctors, Gabriel?’ Andrewes was looking out of the window as Marlowe strode for the gate.

  ‘I’m sorry?’ Harvey didn’t understand at first.

  ‘Proctors of colleges are inestimable fellows, aren’t they? Good, for example, at clearing up such things as garbage that follows one from London.’

  Harvey was not a little shocked. He had never seen this side of Andrewes before and had had no idea what depths lay beneath the benign scholarly surface. He found himself hoping he never had to delve any deeper. For now, a simple grunt of assent seemed to be all the Master needed, so he gave it. Andrewes smiled icily and remained, staring out of the window, until he knew Marlowe was no longer in the purlieus of the college. Then he raised an eyebrow at Harvey and walked over to the table. ‘Rhenish?’ he asked.

  Kit Marlowe had not finished with Gabriel Harvey. There were too many unanswered questions. Even so, he would bide his time. It would be a week or so before The Massacre at Paris was due to open at the Rose and Philip Henslowe was always at his grouchiest in the run-up to an opening.

  But a certain nostalgia had hit Marlowe, one of those sorts of mixed emotions that playwrights and poets found useful. He watched the willows trailing in the Cam, the ducks squawking and flapping as the punts passed by, carrying casks of wine and boxes of paper between the colleges. He sat for a while in the peace of King’s, the magnificent beams soaring above him and he listened to the choir.

  Like all grown choirboys, he liked to think that it was not a patch on any of the choirs in which he had sung, but he really had to admit it wasn’t at all bad. There was a boy treble in the mix somewhere who would be a marvel in six months or so, as long as his balls didn’t drop too soon. Marlowe had been one of the rare ones; his voice hadn’t broken, just mellowed and matured until the day when he could simply gather up his music and move from the treble decani to the alto cantoris and then finally to the tenors. He closed his eyes and allowed the music to invade what was left of his soul. Sometimes, choir practice was better than the service; it came without all the claptrap that Marlowe tried to avoid.

  Then, something invaded his brain that couldn’t be avoided and reminded him of why he was there. ‘I know that my Redeemer liveth,’ soared the voice of the almost-perfect treble. The burial service. Morley, unless he missed his guess. So, in the midst of life, he was yet again in death and some poor soul was waiting, wrapped in his linen, for these young voices to speed him on his way. Outside the dark was gathering but, for one man at least, the dark had come to stay.

  Dusk was late to be out and about looking for lodgings. It made landladies nervous, to open the door in the gloaming to see a figure dark against the fading sky. He wandered the lanes, hoping he would find a welcoming house soon and, as he walked, he thought about tomorrow. He would visit Harvey again, this time without the pompous Puritanism of Andrewes in the background and do some straight talking. He was crossing Parker’s Piece now, the field that Trinity College had bought to feed its sheep and the setting Fall sun was gilding the turret tops of the colleges around him. Bells were tolling, summoning scholars to dinner in their halls, and Marlowe knew that the various butteries would be loud with the chatter of voices and the clatter of pewter on polished oak.

  He saw the man ahead of him, indistinct in the half-light but wearing the unmistakeable gown of a proctor. As he got closer, he noticed that the heraldic device was gone from the man’s sleeve; he clearly had no wish to advertise his college this evening. He also saw the club in the man’s right hand. Kit Marlowe was no stranger to the smock alleys of London, the murky depths by the river where the lanterns of the night Watch never shone. He felt his dagger hilt at his back and slowed his pace.

  What he did not see was the man behind him and he had no idea what happened next. He felt a sickening blow to the back of his head and he went down, his dagger half out of its sheath, blood trickling over his collar. He felt a boot thud into his ribs and another into his back. He grabbed a swinging foot and threw its owner over so that the proctor hit the hard ground with a crunch which echoed as his head made contact. He cursed, so he wasn’t knocked out, but down was half the battle. Another club came down, this time from directly above and for Marlowe, there was nothing but blackness over Parker’s Piece.

  Tom Sledd was not chained to a wall and, as far as he could tell, nor was anyone else. That was the good news. Other than that, even with his normally resilient nature, he couldn’t really see anything to be pleased about. All around him were men and women in varying degrees of starvation, filth and degradation. They were wearing clothes, presumably the clothes they had been wearing when they entered the Hell that was Bedlam. Far above him, the roof was open to the sky and he heard the tolling of a bell. That would be All Hallows on the Wall, he guessed. Or it could have been a death knell. Sledd tried to keep his mind off his undoubtedly parlous situation by trying to work out how long each one of his fellow inmates had been incarcerated by the degree of raggedness of their clothes. It depressed him to discover that he could tell how long some of them had been there by whether their clothes were out of fashion. For instance, he asked himself, looking at a man in the far corner who was talking animatedly to a chair, who has worn a collar like that in the last thirty years?

  When Jack and Nat had hurled him through the door, he hadn’t been too worried, being sure the mistake would soon be rectified. After all, he was perfectly sane. True, he worked for Philip Henslowe for what other people might describe as a pittance. True, he worked with actors who drove him to distraction on any given day; making them do as they were asked was like herding cats. Worse, probably. But, those things aside – and the fact that for some years he had stood in front of crowds of people whilst wearing women’s clothing – those things aside – and the fact he spent at least half an hour a day talking to Master Sackerson, who happened to be a bear. Those things aside, he was perfectly normal.

  But now he had had a chance to look more closely at his companions and he was less sanguine. The man who had the straw mattress next to him was sitting calmly with his legs crossed and his back against a wall, writing on a tablet with a tattered quill pen. He had ink in a small bottle, which he held crooked in his little finger in the manner of scribes everywhere and he seemed oblivious to the chaos around him. His clothes were looking grubby but were of recent cut and his hair had not yet become long and bedraggled. Tom had engaged him in conversation when they were eating their gruel that first morning and he had been very civil and not a little amusing. But sane, certainly.

  ‘Good morning,’ Tom had begun. Not an original greeting, perhaps, but it was all he could come up with, given the circumstances.

  The man had looked up at the high window where the late Fall sun was trying its best to shine through the grime and cobwebs. He had turned to Tom and flashed a lovely smile, one which transformed his face, if only briefly. ‘It seems to be,’ he said. ‘It’s sometimes hard to tell in here.’

  It was nine coherent words in a row more than Tom had heard since he had arrived, so he persisted.

  ‘May I ask why you are here?’ he said, politely.

  ‘Oh, no,’ the man had said, sipping his gruel as if it were finest consommé. ‘We don’t ask that sort of thing here.’

  ‘Ah. But …’ How did one say ‘but you don’t seem mad’ without giving offence?

  ‘I suppose you’re thinking that I don’t seem mad,’ the man said, solving the dilemma. ‘I d
idn’t think I was but,’ he shrugged, ‘my wife thought otherwise and so, here I am.’

  Sledd and Mistress Sledd occasionally did not see eye to eye. But to think of her having him put in Bedlam – impossible. ‘Your wife?’

  Again, the man shrugged. ‘I suppose I can be a bit annoying at times. Poets are.’

  And there the conversation had ended. The attendants came round to collect the gruel cups, kicking and slapping as they went when anyone got in their way. When it was Tom’s turn, he tried to explain, but just got a cuff around the head for his pains. He fell back on his lice-crawling mattress, stunned. From his left, he heard the poet murmur, ‘And that’s the other thing we don’t do here. We don’t say it’s all a mistake. Only madmen say that, or so Master Sleford tells us.’

  Tom covered his head with his arms and wept. A sane man in Bedlam would soon be as mad as the rest.

  FIVE

  When Marlowe started to come to, he had no idea how long he had lain there. The sky was darker, but that could mean it had just been a few minutes; sunset didn’t last long in Fall, even across the big skies of the Fens. From long practice, he lay still while he assessed the damage. He took a deep breath. It hurt, but not enough to suggest a broken rib. He tried a cough and the result was the same. He gingerly extended one leg and then the other. Not broken, though one thigh would have the mother and father of a bruise when he checked, of that he was sure. His arms likewise. The proctors had been careful to avoid his face; they didn’t want him to be wearing the badge of their encounter around the streets. This was a loudmouth, they knew, and he probably had friends in high places. His sort always did.

  He rolled onto his hands and knees and stayed there for a moment, head low, waiting for the spinning sensation to stop. As the ringing in his ears subsided, he heard footsteps approaching, breaking into a run. A hand came down on his shoulder, making him wince. Then a voice, a voice he knew.

  ‘Kit? Kit, is that you?’

  He turned his head and a familiar and beloved face swam into view. He closed his eyes tight and then opened them. There, in the faint light from the lantern that the man had laid on the ground, was the worried face of Michael Johns, late of Cambridge, London, and anywhere else that learning was to be found.

  Marlowe coughed again and struggled to his feet. He was still muzzy and he staggered against the man who had so often had his back. Johns laid a gentle arm across his shoulders and picked up his lantern. ‘Don’t try to talk,’ he said, gently. ‘My lodgings are nearby. Let’s get you there and we can find out what the damage is. Slowly, now. Slowly. You’re safe now.’ He looked left and right. ‘Whoever did this to you has gone now. In fact,’ his voice was reassuring, ‘I am sure they have been apprehended. As I came around the corner, I saw two proctors running in that direction.’ He pointed ahead. ‘They will have the miscreant in their hands by now, I’m certain. You remember how the proctors always get their man, I’m sure.’

  ‘Well, where the bloody hell is he?’ Philip Henslowe had not shaved this morning. He hadn’t washed either. And his breakfast was a pint of Bastard.

  Will Shaxsper looked at him. ‘Are you talking about Tom?’ he asked.

  ‘Of course I’m talking about Tom,’ Henslowe growled. ‘Do they have this at the Curtain? The Theatre? No, only at the Rose could the stage manager disappear days before an opening. When did you see him last?’

  The Warwickshire man thought fast. Today he was the Prince of Condé, cousin to the King of Navarre. He owed Marlowe a favour and the costume was rather fetching. Nobody would notice his Midlands accent – the groundlings would just assume they spoke like that in Condé. Was that a place? Shaxsper didn’t know. He wasn’t a University wit and, beyond the leafy fields of Stratford and the stews of Southwark, he didn’t have much of a clue. What he did have a clue about was that he had last seen the missing stage manager near the New Churchyard by Bedlam, keeping an eye out for the night Watch. What he also had a clue about was that digging up bodies at dead of night, with no authority whatsoever, was against the law. He couldn’t name the statute, but he knew it was all in there somewhere of the Thirty-First Something-Or-Other of Elizabeth, By the Grace of God, Etc. Etc. and it was probably a hanging offence.

  ‘Well?’

  Shaxsper’s thought processes were never swift and Henslowe was losing patience.

  ‘A couple of days ago,’ Shaxsper lied. ‘Chatting to Master Sackerson.’

  Henslowe threw his cup, contents and all, across the stage. It hit a flat and sprayed red all over the painted Bastille that had taken two days to build. ‘We’ve got a play to put on and Tom Sledd is talking to a bloody bear?’

  Shaxsper looked affronted on Master Sackerson’s behalf. After all, he was Henslowe’s bear.

  ‘Morning all,’ a cheery voice called. The Duke of Anjou had arrived.

  ‘Good of you to call, Burbage.’ Henslowe was thundering across the stage in the opposite direction to the second greatest actor of his day.

  Richard Burbage pulled a face at Shaxsper. ‘Somebody’s got his Venetians in a twist this morning,’ he muttered. ‘Where’s he off to in such a hurry?’

  ‘I heard that!’ Henslowe bellowed. ‘If you must know, I’m going to check whether that bloody bear has eaten my stage manager. And while we’re talking about worthless layabouts who don’t earn their keep …’

  ‘Were we?’ Burbage mouthed at Shaxsper, who shrugged.

  ‘Where in Hell is Kit Marlowe?’

  Johns’s rooms in Jesus College were not palatial, but they were clean and quiet. The walk there had not reached Marlowe’s conscious memory and, had he known how gruelling it had been, he would be glad. At the end, Johns had been all but carrying him, no mean feat for a man whose heaviest load on any given day was a quill; but love and fear will always find a way. Marlowe was now reclining in the only comfortable chair, a cushion in the small of his back to ease the bruise there, a cup of warm ale within reach of his uninjured arm.

  ‘Is there any point in my asking what happened?’ Johns asked.

  ‘I’m not sure I really know,’ Marlowe said. ‘I imagine that Dr Andrewes may be behind it somehow, or Gabriel Harvey. Both? I don’t know.’ He turned his smile on Johns. ‘I annoy a lot of people, Michael.’

  ‘But, Kit, you say you had only been in Cambridge for one day!’ Johns had not forgotten Kit Marlowe, not for one lonely second, but he had forgotten how he could drive a person mad with his insouciant way of looking at things.

  ‘One day is plenty,’ Marlowe told him. ‘But, yes – it was clearly Andrewes or Harvey. I had come here to ask after Robert Greene …’

  ‘Greene?’ Johns remembered him too, but with no fondness. ‘What is he up to these days, other than stealing other men’s work?’

  ‘He’s up to being dead,’ Marlowe said, bluntly. ‘Poisoned, or so John Dee believes. And what Dee believes, so do I.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Johns, and men like him meant things like that, ‘but I wouldn’t have thought that Greene’s death would interest you in so far as you would come all this way,’ Johns pointed out.

  ‘In the normal run of things, no.’ Marlowe winced and shifted as his back stabbed him. ‘But he sent me a letter before he died.’

  ‘What did it say?’

  ‘I have it here. Could you just look inside my doublet, there? That’s right. The inside pocket.’

  Johns fished out a much-folded piece of cheap parchment and handed it to Marlowe.

  ‘No, no,’ Marlowe waved it away. ‘You can read it, if you like.’

  ‘May I?’ Johns unfolded some wire spectacles from inside his gown and perched them on his ears.

  ‘Out loud, if you would, Michael,’ Marlowe said. ‘I can interrupt at the relevant places, then.’

  Johns cleared his throat. ‘“To Christopher Marlowe, Dominus of Corpus Christi College, poet, playwright, friend to the afflicted …”’ Johns looked up at Marlowe, his eyes big and round behind the lenses. ‘That’s laying on th
e flattery a little, isn’t it, Kit?’ he asked. ‘I thought he hated you.’

  ‘He did. So that’s why I carried on reading.’ Marlowe waved a hand and Johns continued.

  ‘“Kit, I know we have never been friends, but you are the only man in London, nay, in the country, to whom I can write and be understood. I know someone is trying to kill me. Don’t ask me what brings such a thought into my mind. Some will tell you that I am mad, but I am not or, at least, no madder than erstwhile. But sometimes, I lose time. Sometimes but a minute or two, sometimes a day. And in that time, a demon comes to me, grinning at me and asking if I have spoken with God. I know that you will say that no one can send a demon; that demons are not at the behest of man. But this demon comes, Kit, I know he does, and he is sent by man. You know I have not been a good man, Kit. My wife has left me, my beloved Doll, and Fortunatus looks at me as if I were dead to him. My life is reduced to one room, my company to my landlady and what family she may have with her at any time. They come in droves sometimes, Kit, and all but drive me insane, with their whispering outside the door.”’

  Johns broke off. ‘He is – was – just mad, Kit. He was always unbalanced, even when he was a scholar here. It was well known that he walked a razor’s edge.’

  ‘He wasn’t mad like this, though, Michael,’ Marlowe pointed out. ‘He was a fraud and a liar and had no morals. But this letter is that of a man frightened by his own shadow. And whatever else he was, I never knew Robert Greene to be afraid.’

  ‘“Kit,”’ Johns read on, ‘“I know you know all the workings of men’s minds, of how one man can make another see things that are not there. If you can stop this madness, I beg of you, although we have never been friends and never can be now – for I fear I am dying – come to my lodgings and save me if you can. Yours, in God, Robert Greene.”’ Johns let the paper drop into his lap. ‘Kit … there was nothing you could have done.’