All Night Awake (18 page)

He would, too, if Kit could make enough rumors fly ahead of Will, of Will’s ease with a sentence and the way his words could set the blood aboiling.

And Kit could do that, having enough acquaintances and even well-disposed friends amid the servants and retainers, the hangers-on at Southampton House.

“Here,” he said. “Here. I know there’s a party at Southampton House today.” There was a party at Southampton’s house every day. And Southampton was a devotee of Essex, as close to him—many said—as man could be.

Kit lifted his hand and gestured to the serving wench, mimicking the action of writing midair.

The serving wench hurried over, carrying ink horn, paper, and ink well. She lay it all upon the grease-stained table in front of Kit, and Kit grinned, and handed her a couple pence as a thank-you.

“I am known here,” he told Will, seeing Will’s amazed stare.

“Would that I were known thus,” Will said. “Would that I were known to need pen and ink anywhere.”

Kit elbowed him gently and grinned. The thought crossed his mind that he looked like his own father with his guild friends in the tavern, late at night. Kit had never had friends like that, never experienced the supportive, quiet security of male friendship.

One brief moment of intense desire, intense love, with the elf so long ago, and since then the whole world had gone drab and grey-looking so that nothing mattered, nothing. And human affection, human friendship even, also was taken to mean nothing.

“There will be a time,” he told Will. “There will be a time when you will find your reputation as a poet flying ahead of you.” Dipping the pen in the ink, Kit wrote rapidly. What he wrote didn’t so much matter, as long as it identified the bearer as Will Shakespeare. Before Will ever got to Southampton House, Kit must lay the groundwork that would make Will’s name known there.

He would do that, promptly, as soon as Will was gone.

For now he wrote an introduction, and he sealed it with the wax brought to him by the wench.

Handing the paper to Will, Kit felt as though he were handing the country man a death sentence, sealed and ready to be delivered by the condemned man himself.

Not that it would be that easy.

Will must still say, in that august company, things that would incriminate him—best if they would incriminate Southampton also and, through Southampton, Southampton’s protector, Essex.

“Make sure you deliver that to Gildenstern,” Kit said. “He is the Lord Southampton’s secretary and he knows me passing well. He will admit you to his lordship’s presence.”

Will ducked his head, while he slipped the paper into his sleeve. “I thank you, Master Marlowe. I thank you as I cannot express. Why you’d take so much trouble with such as I . . . .”

Kit smiled magnanimously and patted him on the sleeve, but looked away, looked into the far distance, finding that Will’s easy gratitude made even hardened Kit feel guilty.

He’d thought his conscience more jaded. He’d thought himself harsher. He turned away from Will and said, “Well, and well. It is what I can do. And call me Kit. Aren’t we much of an age and aren’t we in the same profession?”

Will gave him a quick, amazed glance, as though shocked at hearing himself admitted to the lofty company of Kit’s own status.

Before he could pour forth more thanks that would further make Kit feel like a two-face Judas, Kit spoke. “So, tell me of yourself. Your tongue proclaims you from Warwickshire and you mentioned Stratford, a fine market town, if I remember. You said your father was a merchant there . . . did you not?”

“A glover,” Will said. “A glover.”

Kit felt a sudden pang, identifying with Will more than he wished.

A glover was much like a cobbler, a skilled worker with a small workshop. He could well imagine that Will, like himself, had grown up with the smell of tanning hides, the cutting of the hides, the fashioning of them, and aspiring to poetry the whole while. He made a face. “Ah, the smell of tanning leather, the suede, the fine chervil.”

Will looked up surprised and smiled, the first genuine smile that Kit had seen from him. He’d finished his food, picked the ribs of the lamb clean, and now held his tankard of ale within the clasp of his two hands as if warmth came from the ale to his hands.

Noticing the tankard mostly empty, Kit gestured for the wench to refill it. “My own father was a cobbler,” he said. Something he’d not admitted to strangers in a very long time. Bad enough how they’d taunted him with his origins at Cambridge.

The wench refilled Will’s tankard and topped off Kit’s.

The food here was passable, but the ale, sweet and tangy, was worth coming in for, worth whatever the price.

Kit drank it, savoring it. “So you have no great relatives either, no one with power and money, that would justify your aspirations as a poet?” he asked.

Kit had no hope. Chances were that Will didn’t have, even at a remove, the sort of relatives that would be involved in any court intrigues.

Though rural families were peppered through with gentility, as full of noble relatives, as sprinkled with bastards of lords and royal retainers, as a rabbit peppered with shot—yet, Will Shakespeare would be the one who had none.

Again and again, life would make Kit find his own way, do everything on his own.

Nothing would be free, nothing freely handed to him.

Will shrugged, the movement straining the worn-out fabric of his doublet and showing the shirt beneath. “No. My mother comes from gentry. Local gentry. The Ardens.” He drank his tankard dry. “Robert d’Ardennes, her ancestor, owned all the land thereabouts and the wide forest in it.”

Kit again gestured for the wench, and leaned forward, waiting for Will to say more, waiting for Will to reveal more of these Ardens. Local gentry were good. Local gentry often placed maids in the Queen’s court, or married them to soldierly lords who were much at court.

“But they’re Catholics,” Will said as soon as the wench, having refilled his tankard, walked away. “Recusants. One of them was even involved in the Babington plot. We . . .” He shrugged. “We would not associate ourselves with them. My father is a good Protestant.” He made a face and looked as if he would bite his tongue as he added, “He was an alderman, when I was very young.”

Kit grinned, finding in this again a resonance of his own life, one he’d not expected to find with this provincial clod. “My father was a constable,” he said. And grinned. “I mock you not. Marry, a provincial constable, full of his own importance and misapprehended words, who thought being called an ass was high praise, and often used words too large for his mouth, sentences whose meaning he didn’t know.”

Kit remembered the last time he’d met his father in that capacity, the last time he’d met his father. “He arrested me, once. When someone attacked me and a friend, and my friend killed one of the attackers.”

Kit remembered his father’s brutality when questioning Kit, and how he’d preached on dishonor and shame. Kit could no further worm his way into Will’s confidence. Not tonight. The Ardens and whatever connection they might have had to the Babington plot would suffice. Suffice to put a veneer of truth on Kit’s contriving of Will’s guilt.

He looked at Will, sidelong, “And here in London, where the theater is, friend, Will. Who have you met who might help you?” He grinned and again plied his elbow conspiratorially against Will’s ribs. “A man like you and alone. Any great dame taken you in for her leeman?”

Will’s eyes opened in surprise. “Oh, no,” he said in shock. “Oh, no.” A dark red tide flowed up his neck to his ruddy cheeks, making them ruddier. “Oh, no. I am a married man, you see, and I do love my wife, my Nan in Stratford. We have two daughters and a son.” Suddenly, Will’s golden eyes lit up as though a sun shone inside his very soul. “My son is seven. He’s the smartest, most devilish little scamp you ever wish to see.”

In Kit’s mind, Imp’s image formed. Imp, whom he’d scared away with harsh words, Imp, the most devilish little scamp who’d ever lived.

Tears filled Kit’s eyes, distorting his view of the tavern, his view of the assembled men eating and drinking.

Will was like him. Just like him. The son of an artisan who craved fame and fortune such as fate didn’t hand to those lowly born.

Turning Will Shakespeare in would be too much like turning himself in.

Kit grasped his tankard with eager hands, drank down its contents with an unquenchable thirst that ale itself would not cure. He longed for friendship such as even his father had enjoyed. He longed for love such as natural humans couldn’t give. He longed for a life as Imp’s father, a life he would never have.

He drank and he drank till his head swam. He ordered more mutton and more ale. For a few hours, he’d pretend he was a common man, sitting beside his friend in a common tavern.

A few hours later, maudlin and lost, Kit heard Will singing softly. “When that I was and a little tiny boy, with hey, ho, the wind and the rain,” he sang, his voice picking up strength. “A foolish thing was but a toy, for the rain, it raineth every day.”

The tavern was almost empty by then, save for a snoring drunk and a man who tapped his mug to the tune.

Will lifted his eyebrows and his mug, daring Kit to pick up his challenge and improvise the next verse.

The wenches grinned at them.

Kit smiled, bemused.

As a little boy, he’d watched his father and his father’s friends play this game. But he’d been a quiet child, apart from the euphoria, the socializing of such convivial evenings. And later, later he’d been a learned child, who intimidated his father and his father’s friends.

Now, at long last, in the maturity of his years, he was being included in a game men played with their tavern friends. He grinned broadly. Only Will Shakespeare would dare do this with someone of Kit Marlowe’s jaded reputation.

Grinning, Kit picked up the tune in the voice that had made him the star of Canterbury choir—a clear, resounding voice, if made lower by age and manhood—“But when I came to man’s estate, with hey, ho, the wind and the rain, ’gainst knaves and thieves men shut their gate, for the rain, it raineth every day.”

Will raised an eyebrow and smiled, as though asking if that was the best Kit could do. Kit chuckled.

“But when I came, alas! to wive, with hey, ho, the wind and the rain, by swaggering could I never thrive, for the rain, it raineth every day,” Will sang.

Kit picked it up before the last line had died in the still air that smelled of ale and smoke. “But when I came unto my beds, with hey, ho, the wind and the rain.” He grinned at Will, and lifted his ale mug in silent salutation. “With toss-pots still had drunken heads, for the rain, it raineth every day.”

Will laughed at that, and Kit laughed in return.

For a moment, in the glow of the ale, Kit relaxed and thought this was what having friends felt like and how he would like to be friends with Will.

Kit could picture many meetings like this. They’d dine and drink, walk together, and talk. Kit could improve Will’s mind and Will’s writing. They could discuss poetry, and Kit could learn the easy joys of undemanding friendship that required neither secret nor betrayal.

It was only a moment.

At the tavern’s door, they clasped hands and clapped each other on the shoulders.

But when they left the ale house, the cold wind sobered Kit, and watching Will retreat down the street in unsteady steps, Kit asked himself whether Will would be going home, home to his great lady.

Would Will not already be involved in intrigues of his own? Was Will not playing a game of his own?

Perhaps Will worked for Poley. Perhaps . . . .

In the dreary world Kit inhabited, too much warmth was as threatening as too much aloofness. Will was too open, too warm, too easygoing. Too good to be true.

“Kit?”

Kit looked down. Imp stood beside him, looking up, his eyes fearful as they’d never before been, his pale skin marked by the trail of tears. Had the child cried, then, at Kit’s rebuke?

Kit wished to undo each of those marks, take back the words that had hurt Imp.

He looked down. He smiled.

“Well met, Imp. Well met.” He grinned. “Is Lord Morality come to chide me for my shortcomings?”

As he spoke, he looked to the west, where the sun set in a glory as red as spilled blood behind the tall, dark wood buildings of London.

Kit must go to Southampton House and finish laying the trap for Will, before Will came with his note, to Lord Southampton this evening.

Kit must make sure that one or more of Southampton’s servants praised Will’s poetry before then, so that the gullible lord would fall for it, would give Will his patronage without even having heard Will’s poetry.

And yet, Kit wished he could know if Will was meeting with his high-born woman . . . . Or with Poley.

The wind clearing the fog from his mind, Kit took Imp’s hand in his own and walked down the street, measuring his steps with the child’s. “Listen, I need your help, Imp. I’m sorry I spoke to you so fiercely this morning, but that man who visited me wasn’t a good man. He was a wolf man, gross and evil, and I didn’t want him to think I loved you, for then he would . . . . He would hurt you to hurt me.”

Imp looked up and blinked, his grey eyes looking again older and more understanding than they should—as old and understanding as Kit’s mother’s eyes. And as weary. “You’re doing something dangerous, aren’t you? Mother says—”

Oh, no more of Madeleine’s maxims. Kit squeezed Imp’s hand hard and looked away from Imp’s searching eyes. “Look, it is dangerous but I must do it, and once I’m done, then we will be safe, we will all be safe, and mayhap I’ll even marry your mother and be your father.”

“You mean it?” Imp asked, his voice full of a strange joy.

“Aye, if she’d have me.”

“Oh, she’d have you well enough. She sometimes looks at you that way.”

“That way?” Kit asked. He picked the child up and held him, and looked into the veiled gray eyes which were so intent and yet revealed nothing of the emotions behind that little, peaked oval face.

Were Kit’s own eyes that unreflective? No wonder men didn’t often offer him friendship.