A Dead Man in Deptford (18 page)

- I say heresy because my faith is in good money. All
other faith is nothing to that, since the work of the world
comes first, a man’s bread and milk for his infants, and for
the rest it is a matter of what governments decree. I follow the
true Church but do not argue. I would not go to the gallows
for faith of the spirit. My god is Gresham, and the State would
agree.

- I do not know Gresham.

- No matter. All that matters is that the Spanish do not
invade. Are you for peace or war?

- You mean the declaring of war? Let us have more of
this murky beer. I am not for anything, a man must be passive
and wait on his masters. But I am to see a Dutch butterman.
Witchguard or some such name. He will say whether there is
to be war or no.

- Wychgerde you mean. There will be an unlading of cloth
on the Peppercorn. It will go into his warehouse and he will be
there tomorrow or next day. Here is more of the murk.

They dined later in a Dutch ordinary on fish of the Schelde
that tasted of mud, though the mud was well overlaid by a salty
sauce. They had a beer that was clear and not murky. Baines had
but two rooms over a baker’s shop. The hot breath of its ovens,
which rose through cracks in the floor, was heartening. Baines
would not give up his narrow bed: Kit must sleep with his nose
to the fumes, covered with a threadbare blanket, his head on his
leathern bag. But before bed Baines took down from a shelf that
held a pot and a comb and a spare boot his Greek New Testament.

- Do you read this?

- I have studied it at Cambridge. I do not read it for
pleasure. It is filthily written.

- You dare to say that?

- The truth or untruth of it is not thereby affected.

- You speak of untruth, is that possible?

-There is one truth I will admit, and that is religion
was founded to keep men in awe. You seem shocked.

- I am not so. I submit to believing what I am bid to
believe, but I hold as a true protestant that a man is free to
enquire of the meaning of what he reads.

- Amen to that. It is the Old Testament I most quarrel with.
There be authors of great antiquity, some of them of India, some
of antiquity some sixteen thousand years agone, and yet Adam is
proved to have lived within six thousand years. And I have no
great opinion of Moses, an Egyptian juggler that used tricks to
keep the Jews in awe. As for his forty years in the wilderness,
that journey could be accomplished in less than a year, and he kept circling round that those privy to his subtleties might die
and a new generation be born to an everlasting superstition.

- You say all this openly?

- I am ready to do so in open disputation, but I am
snapped off before I may begin.

- You are one after my heart. But you must learn of the
primacy of money and of the foul sin of coining.

- You have then what might be termed a theology of money?

- Morality you might say, God does not come into it. Oh,
he may, he may damn the coiners, it is something to be thought
on. For to coin is to lie, and does not God hate a liar? It is to say
that what is nothing in itself is much, for money is but a token
of things made or done. And so this lie and nothingness escapes
on dark nights from here to them that fight for the Spaniards,
and Sidney the governor will do nothing. Pecunia is from pecus
which is cattle, and cattle are a solidity. But this coined money
is but air. Aye, God must come into it. Gifford Gilbert must be
burned as a sinner and scream as he burns.

- Gilbert Gifford?

- You have it arsiversy. Aye, I know the other name and
the man too, he was at Rheims. But it would not be possible
to turn coat so fast.

- There is enough turning.

- Aye, enough. Baines had been so intent on his commination of coining that he had stripped himself entire unawares
and so stood. Now he recovered and masked blushing his bare
privities with his hands. With this masking reduced to one hand
he masked his bare body by getting into his bed and then masked
himself totally and his guest too by dousing his one candle. Kit
smiled at this as he lay with his nose to the gush of baking. From
the dark Baines said:

- We have forgot our prayers.

- Take them as said.

- Aye. Jesus Christ in a manner offended against good
money by beating the bankers in the Temple. Have you thought
on this?

- Never.

- I think much on Christ.

- As a man should.

- I think on him and the beloved disciple John and ask
why he must like better one than the eleven others.

- A man may have a particular friend, it is in nature.

- Did they then lie together?

- Christ was a man. A man may perform the act of Sodom.
Ergo Christ may have done this and thought it no shame.

- But that would offend the Godhead in him. Would it
be so offended if he lay with Mary the Magdalen?

- This is no time for speculation of Holy Writ. I have
had a long voyage. That fish does not sit well.

- Aye, a fish. They turned Christ into a fish. It is a kind
of false coining.

Kit feigned sleep but Baines muttered. Before sleep came to
either there was a noise on the cobbles without and below: it
was of troops being marshalled for a night march inland, and
the cries of ancient or sergeant were loud. The setting off was
ragged and there was swearing in the ranks. The shogging feet
distanced, and Baines through the dark spoke, saying:

- The Holy Ghost filled Mary the mother of Christ while
that she was yet unmarried. Does that render her dishonest?

- Some say so. Why do you raise these matters?

- There is none to whom I may speak here. Your coming is
to me by way of being a chance of the opening up of minds. It is
the primacy of money that sets up my doubts. For bishops and
others that feed us with the faith are paid but produce nothing.
They are not as brewers and bakers and shoemakers. They eat
the substance of them that work and themselves do none. This
is dangerous talk, that I know.

- With me you are in no danger.

- That too I know. And in such security I sleep.

This meant little. Kit tossed while the baking fumes came
up and Baines breathed deep and steady. Baines was up at
dawn and Kit would fain have slept longer, but there was
the matter of meeting this Dutch butterman. They went, Kit
tottering somewhat, to the tavern of yesterday, and there Baines was nice in the ordering of right English lamb’s wool, though it
was no cold morning. The beer hot and roasted apples pounded
in, then ginger, nutmeg, cinnamon, cloves, then there were your
apple shreds floating in beer as shorn wool flew in a windstorm.
Kit got the reward his nose of the night claimed in fresh bread
and Dutch butter. The butterman, he at length said.

They walked to the warehouses that lined the quay, and
Baines spoke Dutch, Flemish rather, and got shaken heads
from warehousemen. He is not here, he said unnecessarily.
They say he is at Zeebrugge or else Knocke. You must go
thither.

- Are they not very close to Ostend? Will there not be
Spaniards about? Is it safe for an Englishman?

- Not safe. We had best go back to our discussion.

- When does the Peppercorn sail?

- On the evening tide, they say. You are eager to go home?
You cannot be blamed. Perhaps my talk wearies you.

- No no no no. Would it be a manner of false coining
if I took home the supposed words of a Dutchman I have no
strong desire to meet? Mr Secretary wants war, well, let him
have it.

- It will begin with robbery, Baines said. Spanish gold
pouring in in ships of English pirates. And fools will think
that an augmentation of wealth whereas it will be the opposite. Let us sit there under that elm and shake heads at the
folly of the world. Look at those fishermen there with their
morning catches. They are base fellows neither of wit nor
worth. And Christ’s apostles were fishermen. What think you
of that?

AND so, with no nod from Mynher Wychgerde, Kit sailed
back to Deptford on the Peppercorn, took a boat to London
Bridge, and made a false report to Mr Secretary. Then he found
Tom Walsingham alone at Scadbury. Frizer was at some distant task, beneficent alike to master and servant, that entailed coneycatching. Kit took the whole house as an unravished bride. He
lay with his love in every room that invited. Then, weary but
elated, he rode back to Cambridge. He patted in his breast a
sealed paper, given to him by Walsingham, that was marked To
Whom It Concerneth. At Cambridge the man was swiftly demoted
to schoolboy.

Thomas Norgate, Master of Corpus Christi, sat at a paperloaded desk that yet found room for a human skull. This
grinned without mirth at Kit. Norgate was a cold man and,
even on this summer day, had his casement tight shut to enclose,
like precious frankincense, the smell of himself and his frowsty
learning. Coldly he said:

- What are you - Merlin or Marlin or Morley?

- Merlin is a magical name. Some call me by it.

- Well or ill bethought. You know one Thomas Fineux?

- A boy of Dover. A gentleman pensioner, so called, and
but begun here. He was hanging about me and I thrust him
off.

- I am told he has been going into the woods at midnight
and praying, God help us, that the devil may appear. Is this
your work? He says that it is.

- I told him to go to the devil more than once. He seems
a literal-minded youth.

- This fits to a pattern. You have not yet gotten a title.
It argues a rejection of orders. Why is this?

- I have not yet found a rector willing to accept me as
a curate. I search and search but vainly.

- I put it to you that you search otherwhither and with
false intention. I put it to you that you are joining the Catholics
here.

- Never that. I have listed names of the papishly inclined
and was minded to submit this roll of infamy but it is become
lost among my papers.

- So what is this of your travelling to Rheims? Your absences
have been noted. They are in excess of what is allowed.

- I paid one visit to Rheims, another to Paris, one final one, from which I have returned, to the Low Countries. On
business which I may not divulge on high instructions.

- You are but a student, sir, and may not speak so highhanded. I have information from Thomas Lewgar that you talk
loosely of religion.

-This is the malice of one who thinks himself to be a
poet but is no more than a deplorable rhymester.

- Well, after much consideration, and with an unanimity
of opinion that may not be gainsaid, the decision is that your
Supplicat is not to be entertained and you may not proceed to
Magister Artium.

- This, if I may say so, is an outrage and an injustice.
I have fulfilled all obligations for the degree.

- This may be so, but the unsoundness of your religion,
your frequent absences, and the derogations of your fellows
forbid the granting of it. Your baccalaureate is intact, your
mastership denied. There is to be no argument. You may leave.

Kit did not leave. He drew from his breast a sealed paper.

- Master, be good enough to read this. It is not addressed
specifically to you, but you it concerns.

- In my good time I will read it.

- I would that you read it now, and aloud. I know not its
content but do know that I am in some measure its subject. In
what measure I wish to know.

- You may not give me orders.

- I beseech you.

Norgate grumblingly broke the seal and spread the parchment. He read to himself first and then to Kit. He had a wart
of some size on his left cheek. This, while he read, he irritably
scratched.

- Whereas it was reported that Christopher Marlowe (so that
is your name) was determined to have gone beyond the seas to
Rheims there to remain, their Lordships think it good to certify
that he had no such intention and that in all his actions he has
behaved himself orderly and discreetly, whereby he has done Her
Majesty good service and deserves to be rewarded for his faithful
dealing. Their Lordships request that the rumour thereof shall be allayed by all possible means and that he shall be furthered
in the degree he is to take this coming Commencement; because
it is not Her Majesty’s pleasure that anyone employed as he has
been in matters touching the benefit of his country should be
defamed by those who are ignorant in the affairs he went about.

- The Privy Council, Norgate then said in an aliger voice.
What have we at Cambridge to do with the Privy Council? They
must let us alone here, we govern ourselves, we are by way of
being totally autonomous. (The plethora of is there made his
tongue titubate, yet it was a brave show.) We rejected that farm
of wines, we will reject other things.

- The Queen’s name is not there, Kit said, but perhaps
that of the Archbishop of Canterbury is.

- Well, Norgate later said, some thirty seconds, it shall
be considered.

Kit was not to forget that date, July 4, which was called
Commencement but was truly a triumphal end, and yet in a
manner it was a commencement for now, gowned and hooded
as magister, mark that, artium, of arts a master, proceeding to
music, M.A., he might begin a few years of achieve and mastery, bringing to the playhouse the firm ground or pinning of
his learnedness matched to his own fire, yet but a few years,
alas, a very few, alas alas, a very very few.

Am not, so I suppose I must suppose, yet done
with supposing, though from now, which is the latter
half of the year of grace or otherwise 1587, I have Kit
much in my sight as a citizen of London. More than that, and
indeed in especial, he has become one of us, the playmakers, the
feeders with bloody or farcical fodder of the maws of the seekers
of diversion. He came to live on the upper floor of a house, no
more than a cottage, in Bishopsgate Street at the corner of Hog
Lane, not far from Tom Watson’s dwelling, though Watson was
now a tutor to the son of William Cornwallis in their great house
in the Bishopsgate region (spying too belike, since the Cornwallis
family was Catholic, and with the smell of Spanish invasion all
about, such had still to be watched). Here elms rustled, and
the turning of the spars of the three windmills of Finsbury
Fields made a soothing music for the eye. The Theatre and
the Curtain were near, this was the playman’s district, though
the latter was near done for and the former yielding in trade to
our new playhouse across the waters.