A Dead Man in Deptford (30 page)

- All friends here. I take it thou wilt spend Yule with
a dog in the manger.

- I am not thou.

- Friends, Kit, thou art thou and I to thee am thou. With
Ingram here the case may well be different.

- I will not thee and thou him, Frizer said with lofty
humility. It is not deference but difference.

- I will thou thee, Greene cried, thou famous gracer of
tragedians that hast said with the fool in his heart that there
is no God. Yet all must meet him that will mete out condign
punishment. Be warned. A pot of Malmsey.

- Oh, for God’s good sake, Kit said, again seeking his
way out.

- God, Greene said, he useth in manner of an expletive
lacking a signification of ontological import. He will not buy
me a pot. So let him proceed out into the darkness.

Kit was let leave, but old Shilliber called him to pay. Kit
threw silver on to the table for what he had consumed and what not. Greene bowed him officiously to the street and followed him.
He bawled:

- Ball, Ball. Butter-cutter. And there was Ball with his dagger
out. Come, Greene said, it is Christmas and we must love our
enemies. Ball did not clearly understand. Cutter, Greene said,
do to him what he did to you. The wrist he writeth his tragedies
withal, nick only. Kit had no sword (sine die) to draw. He put up
fists. This to Ball was a convenience. He struck with his dagger
and drew blood from the right wrist. The blood pumped. Kit
remembered a lesson from Warner. Not the vein, not. He ran
pumping blood. All of his body would be out through that one
grinning mouth. The candles from within had shown it. He ran
to another candle, one within a doorway. Tom Kyd was at the
door. Help me, Kit cried. I lose blood, I will lose it all.

- You are bleeding over everything, Kyd protested within.
It was, as I know too well, a very mean dwelling. Kyd had
decked it with a little holly for his Saviour.

- That kerchief there. Knot it tight.

The knotted kerchief was deeply embloodied. “Tighter tighter.
Kit lay on what had been my bed, fancying he might soon meet
the God of whose existence he was unsure. Weak, he was weak.
Another, cleaner, bandage. Kyd rummaged and found an old
shirt of mine, torn, abandoned. The bleeding eased, thanks be
to God or someone, something. The wound was tightly bound.

- I had thought, Kyd said, to spend my Christmas alone.
I bought some boned beef, it may be enough for two. Mistress
Heywood made me a pudding that will go in the pot. I was on
my way out to buy pottle ale. It seems you have an enemy. This
season should be all forgiveness. I forgive you.

- For what you forgive me?

- For overbearingness and unlawful pride.

- Oh my God.

- Your God, aye, and the God of all. That blood is staunched
but not Christ’s that floweth over all the world.

- Greene feigned to forgive me too but I was slashed just
the same. See, the blood starts once more but not so much. I
am thirsty. Get your pottle ale, I have money.

- I forgive without feigning.

- Forgive for success. I do not like jealousy.

- I am not jealous. I am he that wrote The Spanish Tragedy.
You may stay a day or so and help me with the new work.

- Help the great Thomas Kyd? The honour is extreme.

- Only God is great. All honour to his Son that is born
this night.

- Amen. Kyd nodded and left the little jail of a bedroom.
He seemed to forget totally Kit’s wound. Kit left the bed where
I had slept and which had been untouched since my leaving to
see with mild curiosity the chamber where Kyd had made his one
masterwork for the playhouse. This had its pallet with a stained
pillow and a mound of rags of sackcloth for blankets. The two
candles had no sconces but were affixed by their own wax to the
few bare portions of the table which was mostly deep in paper.
There were plays abandoned - Alexander and Roxana, Have at
You Mad Knave, The Tragedy of Vitellius, Moses and Pharaoh,
The Comedy of Perkin Warbeck. Kyd, seeing Kit enter, was eager
to lift towards him hands filled with manuscript as with flowers
carelessly yet lavishly uprooted, saying:

- This is a great poem on St Paul.

- Who will buy it?

- All who love God.

- And all who love poetry?

- The poetry is in the fervency of belief. Read.
Kit read the sheet proffered.

- You want my help in what capacity, poetic or theological?

- That is but a draft. I have worked long at it, I need
a fresh eye and ear. Your bleeding has stopped.

- Saul did not smite the Christian Hebrews. He smote only the Greeks who had turned to Christ. Of these St Stephanos was
the first.

- I am no master of arts in divinity.

-And I am no lover of the turncoat Saul or Paul. A
juggler only. Raleigh’s man Harlot could give him lessons.
Why not call your poem Fast and Loose? Fast-bound in devotion,
loose in form. And he that was fast or speedy to persecute was
loosed from his obligations by a fit of the falling sickness. The
title could have manifold meanings.

- That is blasphemy but I am not shocked. I am not
shocked by a dog’s yapping or an owl’s hooting. I will write
Greekish blood. I thank you for your help. I will eat my boned
beef and pudding alone.

Kit felt shame and pity. He said:

- That was foolish. I am somewhat lightheaded with the
loss of blood. How do you live these days?

- Botching and collaborating. It is not easy. I am back
to the noverint’s work for the odd shilling. I cannot seem to
conceive a play entire. Give me the plotting scene by scene and
I can manage the verse. Can you lend that help?

- Alas. But Sir Walter will pay well for your Italian hand.
- That atheist?

- Not so. All his work at present is confuting the Arians.
He needs the chief Arian arguments copied out the better to
refute them. I have them in a book. I can bring the book. I
can show what must be copied. Can you do that?

- Perhaps. I will see. Is it in reality some atheist trick?

- Devout as you would wish. A humble search for truth.
The slashing of the Arians, the logical confirming of Christ’s
divinity. Will you do it? Your admirable Italian hand.

- I will see.

That was unwisdom on Kit’s part, as time would show.
And where was I that Christmas? I had found Tom Kyd
very wearisome with his moans at what he termed the hell of
dramaturgy and indeed also his envy at the acclaim Kit’s work
had earned. I had abandoned the Lord Admiral’s Men through
dislike of Alleyn’s imperiousness and had discovered the talent of song with Lord Strange’s Men, as also the skill of comic gallantry
in what young noblemen’s parts I was granted. And I was lodged
now with the new player and playmaker (botcher, collaborator)
from Warwickshire, a mild man but ambitious, who sucked me
dry, but ever with a mild smile, of all I knew of the craft. He
moaned this Christmas, indeed wept, because he was absent from
his three children that had ever loved the games of the season and
the gifts. He moaned less that he was absent from his wife.

LENT came and the playhouses were closed, but Henslowe
and Alleyn, in their money-loving cunning, found that they
might, without censure, play The Rich Jew of Malta at the
Cross Keys in Gracechurch Street. This was but an inn with a
fairsized yard, the stage no more than a set of creaking boards
resting on empty barrels not well roped together, so that when
Barabas was told that he had committed and he proceeded to
complete the accusation with fornication, but that was in another
country and besides the wench is dead, he began to roll off as
towards that other country. But all was secured and all rolled
well to its end with Barabas falling from the upper gallery into
the seething cauldron with

Tom Watson was with Kit in the yard; both wished to be among
the groundlings. Tom had been found to have killed Bradley in
self-defence and recommended for the Queen’s pardon, which
he graciously got before Shrove Tuesday. He had written some
of The Rich Jew in Newgate, cheering his heavy heart with most
bitter comedy.

- So the Admiral’s and Pembroke’s are joined together here?

- Aye, lofty men that are friends and became so when
they presided over the murder of Mary of Scots.

- Say not murder so loud.

There seemed to be no informers here. Kit let his eye in
panorama roll over the cram of chewers of sausages and nuts,
drinkers too of ale, the Cross Kevs being about its primal function, and wondered to himself what message they were receiving
from the bawlings of Ned Alleyn whose great nose of pulped and
painted paper was, like the barrels, insecure and had at times to
be held fast by hand. They knew no Jews, an alien race of myth
that had killed Christ and made money through usury. They
were in leather and broadcloth, holding in their unwashed odour
like precious incense, though it escaped in whiffs and slamming
underarm blasts. Some held wormy cheese in one hand and a
knot of garlic in the other, teeth champing and eyes on stage,
a sort of divided animals. Were they then to be taught naught
but gross comic murder, language mere noise (but was it more
in the endless Sunday sermons they were whipped to attending?),
history a gallimaufrey of rivalry and blood? They wished diversion, no more. Diversion filled no empty heads, save with ride
in triumph through Persepolis and avaunt avoid Mephistophilis
and (so it would be now) master I’ll worship thy nose for this.
The Countess of Pembroke had, so the Wizard Earl had told
him, urged the need to use the playhouse to refine and instruct,
following Garnier and such. History, she had said, was at least
knowledge.

There was a prayer for the Queen at the end, might she be
protected from filthy bugaboos and foul atheistical papishes and
puritanicals, and then all rushed to leave, clumsy clogs clattering,
keep thine elbow to thyself, what sayest thou bully, chill deal thee
one, out on it, thy nose is like his though it will not come apart if
I tweak it, and so forth. Then Kit, turning himself to leave with
Tom Watson, saw Baines and another. Baines said:

- Well, there you have it, the diseases of money of which
I spoke that time, the dire sin of amassing wealth contrary to
Gresham. I am glad to see you both out of Newgate, that was no good spell. I was away after, as you may know. This is Mr
Chomley, a Richard like myself.

- Chomley?

- Chumley or Cholmondeley, there be many spellings and
soundings. I am happy to see you, Mr Marlin or Morley.

- Marlowe will do. There be many soundings and spellings.

- I have long admired, Cholmondeley said. He was an intense
dark young man in dark doublet well cut and unstained. Kit felt
he could not greatly like the maroon eyes that seemed to melt in
admiration most factitious. The eyes seemed greatly under the
control of him who had them. Admired you for poesy and for
boldness also.

- Boldness?

- Come, if I do not presume, and let me buy you some
potion apt for one I admire. They have wine at the Black Bull
and we may broach a bottle. And your friend.

- Watson. Kit, I must go to my wife.

- And you no wife, Mr Marlowe, a free man. Shall we then?
So at the Black Bull on Gracechurch Street on an afternoon
of Lent, a fine season for the fishmongers, they sat, Baines and
Cholmondeley facing Kit, and a bottle was broached. The wine
was not good, it had a flavour of nose-dropping when the throat
catches it, but Kit drank and listened. Cholmondeley said:

- Boldness I said. There has been a man hanged for boldness
each hour of the London day. You have been courageous in your
boldness and remain, as I said, a free man.

- Bold in my boldness, so?

- If more were so bold then the world might grow less
fearsome. That courage encourages. I would be bold too.

- Then be bold.

- Bold to say that there is no God, that all comes from an
accidental seed, that sin is a fabrication of such men as would
have others tremble in fear, that religion is a lie.