The Playmakers (44 page)

Then there were the times when no official
invitation could be seen on the horizon, and they had to lodge for
weeks on end in an inn until a local baronet or some other
status-seeking aristocrat could be targeted and lured into hosting
the exotic monarch.

Not to mention Christopher’s love of the good
life, when he would slip away to a tavern in some seedy part of
town, and end up buying drinks for all, gambling on card games, and
putting his fantastic historical and general knowledge to the test
of anyone who dared challenge him.

Rasa did not mind these moments of
foolishness. She knew her brilliant, life-loving lover needed a
break from the stuffy constraints of the court.

She also knew he would be faithful.

Besides, if it did look like his witty mouth
was heading him toward a physical altercation with the in-house
bully, or his sublime handsomeness was unwittingly sending come-on
signals to the resident seductress, big Samuel and little Soho
would step in, diplomatically defuse the situation, and bring him
home to sleep it off.

Thus, in the early days, it had been easy.
The novelty of a black African queen arriving at the main gate,
surrounded by a colourful assortment of characters, performers and
animals, was too good an opportunity for any autocrat worth his
salt to resist.

But over the years it had become a struggle,
as animals died and were difficult to replace, carriages wore out,
Soho tragically passed away before their eyes, Samuel returned to
London, and personnel either ran off or amicably departed for
greener pastures. One had fallen into the amorous arms of an
Austrian duke.

Slowly but surely, as they zigzagged through
France and Italy, before heading northward through Germany and
beyond, the invitations began to dry up. As the entourage slowly
fragmented, the couple risked becoming a parody of themselves. As
time wore on, the once-exciting message ringing through a town that
an exotic Queen was on the brow of the adjacent hill became
dismissed with a wave of the hand and a sniffed “Oh, that old
couple.”

As they grew older, they lost their physical
allure, a situation exacerbated by the continuing problem of Rasa’s
left cheek. It had been scratched by a playful court cat as they
were leaving Padua for the last time, and at first appeared to be
only a slight wound. But it would not go away, and over the months
got worse. Despite the best ministrations of doctors, it never
properly healed. The festering sore led to a permanently drooping,
weeping left eye, vandalising the once peerless facade of beauty,
and forcing people to look away in repulsion instead of looking on
in envy or lust. She found herself constantly staring down at her
feet, rather than holding her head high, and her haughty presence,
once the keystone to their success, gradually had lost its
impact.

“If I was back in Africa, I could have this
fixed,” she would say angrily when another treatment by a physician
had failed. “My father would rub the golden sands of my home-land
on it, and it would be healed.”

By the time they had reached the land of the
Danes, where Christopher expressed his gathering disillusionment by
throwing himself into writing an angst-ridden play about a moody
prince he called
Hamlet
, there was just
the two of them left.

Now, here they were in Scotland, lying on
their backs in a secluded wood, penniless, disillusioned and tired
with it all, contemplating the Final Act.

They had considered the obvious option.

“You could continue writing, under yet
another name,” Rasa had suggested when they had boarded the tiny
fishing vessel that had taken them across from Denmark to
Scotland.

“That is a great idea, my love,” Christopher
had replied, “but it will not work. To begin with, who am I, a
stranger, to walk into the office of a producer and throw a play
down on his desk and ask to get it produced, when everyone knows
that the only scripts worth putting on these days are those from
the pen of the mighty William Shakespeare?

“And even then, I am stuck whichever way you
look at it. If I write it in a different style to that which comes
out under William’s name, then I know in my heart it will be not
worth producing. And if I write it to my usual excellent standard
and style, any right-minded producer will say …” - and here Marlowe
had put on the voice sounding like any one of the dozens of London
theatre hustlers he had worked with in the early days - ‘Oi, you’re
not trying to copy the great Master Shakespeare are you? Where’d
you get this? Get out of here, you plagiarist, you.’” He let out a
little laugh. “Oh, Rasa,” he had said slowly, “the irony of it all.
I am the prisoner of my own brilliance.”

Now, the final body blow had been struck.

“What else is there to do now that Elizabeth
is dead?” added Christopher, still staring at the sky.

They knew that this development, the death of
the Queen of England a few weeks earlier on March 24, 1603, after
more than forty years on the throne, had brought them to a decisive
moment.

“The Golden Age is finished,” Christopher
continued. “Elizabeth loved the theatre, she loved my work - well,
at least, what she knows as Will’s work. But King James, who will
soon leave Scotland to take up as her successor, is not so keen on
the theatre. The couriers tell me that there are serious economic
matters he’ll have to grapple with - the poor harvests of late have
all but ruined England, not to mention the ongoing war with the
Irish. There will be no fourteen-day challenges to write a play
from him.”

Rasa leaned across, took his hand, held it to
her face, and gently kissed it. She looked into his eyes, and
noticed that, for one of the rare times they had been on the road,
he was weeping.

This was not her Christopher. Her buoyant,
brilliant, brave Christopher. The Christopher that had strode his
way across Europe, carrying the charade to perfection, laughing all
the way.

That was it. The laugh.

He had laughed that day in Venice when St
Mark’s square - as it does - flooded.

The Venetians, who had built the floating
city-state out of expediency to thwart the horse-bound rampaging
barbarians from the north, took things like this with elements of
annoyance and concern.

But Christopher had stood on the steps of the
magnificent church and had laughed and laughed. Especially when his
hat was picked up by a small current, and was last seen heading
toward the Bridge of Sighs, the melancholy archway crossed by
thousands of prisoners taken from the nearby court to the
dungeon.

He had laughed at the pompous power of
Venice, overseen by the regularly elected potentate, the Doge. He
had laughed at its pursuit of maritime power. He had laughed at its
grasp for merchant success, and had put that down on paper in a
play that was a triumph. He had laughed in Verona, too, when he
came across a great opportunity - a story written several years
earlier by Luigi da Porto about two young people whose love,
opposed by their warring families, ended in tragedy.

“This will make a great play,” he had told
Rasa with enthusiasm. “One of my finest! I want to call it Chris
and Rasa, but we will settle on Romeo and Juliet.”

He had laughed at the sternness of the
Germans and the aloofness of the Danes. Why, he had even laughed
when they reached Scotland.

“You have to laugh. It’s so bloody cold,” he
had told Rasa.

But the internal bitterness was beginning to
show up in his work, and the gloominess of the resultant play set
in Scotland, which he titled
Macbeth
, had
shocked even Rasa.

Sustaining the furious pace, he had written
three more works and had forwarded them on to William, but now was
resigned to his fate.

“From what I can gather, William has got a
drawer full of my plays,” he said. “Stuff I have written and sent
to him ages ago is still yet to see light of day. And the last
message said it might be years before some of it gets on stage. So,
it’s pointless doing anything any more.” He picked up a muddy clod
of earth that lay nearby and hurled it angrily into the distance.
“And I don’t feel like doing any more, anyway. I’m tired of all
this travelling. I’m tired of writing. I’m tired of being a person
who does not exist. There is no other job that I want to do or am
capable of doing.

“So … it is time for the Final Act, in the
true sense of the phrase.”

His anger slowly subsided and he looked at
the face of his once beautiful queen. “Tell me how it goes again?”
he said softly, as the leaden clouds drifted slowly by.

“It was once the great tradition in my
country, hundreds of years ago,” Rasa said evenly. “My father told
me about it, many times. A long, deep pit would be dug, and those
that had been selected would climb in and lie down.”

“On a feather mattress?”

“Silly. No. They would lie on the earth, but
it was very important that they faced the same way, and were curled
up in the same position.”

“Tell me about the gold again.”

“They would take with them all their best
jewellery. Rings, necklaces, bangles. There would be gold figurines
beside them, figures of the gods.”

“Seems a great waste.”

“It is important for the journey, very
important. It is the final journey.”

“And then?”

“And then … people would stand above and
throw the soil on them … and fill the trench and bury them
alive.”

“Ooo-eerrr. Didn’t anyone get up and run
away, screaming?”

“My people are noble and loyal,” she said.
“It was the wish of the priests and the gods. Besides, my father
used to say that the sacrificed ones were always given something to
drink, some sort of potion, which made them feel good, and
confident in themselves that they were doing the right thing.”

“Just like consuming seven pints of fine ale
at the tavern.”

“Yes, Christopher. But in that case you never
wanted to lie down after it. You wanted to jump around the bed all
night.”

“And a fine time we used to have, too,” he
replied.

He laughed again.

“It has indeed been a fine time,
Christopher,” Rasa added slowly. “And now, as you want, is the time
to end it.”

“And do you want to, too?”

“I only want to be with you. Wherever you
are.”

Christopher nodded, and began the final
preparations.

His years of working as a spy had taught him
well, and he had conceived the perfect plan.

They had ridden off the main road leading
from the north-east of Scotland south to Edinburgh and had gone
miles into the forest to a secluded spot, before letting the horses
go. Then they had dug a shallow grave. “Our own version of the
Nubian pit,” said Chris.

And now it was time to settle in it.

They stood up from where they had been lying
on the grass, and despite the grey skies and chill wind, began to
undress each other.

“No,” she said, when he placed his finger
under her chin, and gently lifted her head to get a full view of
her face. “My eye, it is awful to look at.”

“When I see my Rasa, I see only beauty,”
Christopher replied.

He pulled the final remnants of her clothes
off, and stood back for a moment to admire the beautiful ebony body
for the last time. Yes, she had aged. But she had not lost the
sculptured curves, the glorious shape.

“It is getting cold,” she finally said, and
began to shiver.

“We agreed that as we came together as
lovers, we will part as lovers in arms.”

He helped her lay down in the shallow pit
first, never taking his eyes off the face, the face that had once
been the cornerstone of their success, but which had dogged them
and undermined them for three years now.

Then he hopped across, crouched down and lay
beside her.

They looked at each other longingly.

“There have been two constants in my life,”
he said eventually.

“What are they?” she whispered.

“My love for you, and …”

He opened his left palm and held a small
object only a few inches from Rasa’s face.

“ … this,” he said, with a wan smile.

It was a small silver phial about two inches
long, with a filigree top.

“Sir Thomas gave it to me while I was still
studying at Cambridge, and it has never left me since,” said
Christopher. “He said there was enough poison in it to kill twenty
men. Of course, it was meant for only one. And that was me, in case
I got into trouble while working for him. ‘You must do the
honourable thing, Christopher,’ he would say. ‘Rather than go to
the rack and wreck England with a confession.’”

“So if it can kill twenty,” said Rasa, “there
should be enough in there to kill two.”

“Easily,” said Christopher. “Are you
ready?”

“I am ready,” she said.

“I love you, Rasa.”

“And I love you, Christopher.”

They snuggled closer together.

He unscrewed the top of the phial.

They kissed.

And as their lips parted he trickled some of
the black liquid into her mouth, and then swallowed the remainder
himself.

As the potent poison took its rapid effect,
they embraced, and locked themselves in each other’s arms.

And over the years, the wild Scots wind and
rain and mud and leaves did their duty, and the great writer and
his beautiful lover were swallowed up by the earth and lost to the
world forever.

CHAPTER THIRTY