The Marlowe Conspiracy (29 page)

Banquet Hall.

W
ill couldn't help but grin. Far from lulling, the hilarity of the banquet only seemed to climb to an ever higher pitch. The entire hall rang with howls and shrieks of laughter. The noise rendered the music from the minstrel gallery barely audible but no one had told the minstrels to stop. Lutes kept thrumming their husky notes, lyres twittered softly, flutes burbled, and deep drumbeats pealed out from the gallery – all lost immediately in the cacophony of laughs.

Nothing could stop the merriment. Meats were left half-eaten on plates. Goblets tipped over and stained the tablecloth. Frank revelations and miserable utterances mixed everywhere with bellies shaking, tears of mirth, palms slapping on backs, fists rattling the tabletops, chairs tilting back on their legs, and hands waving in the air.

Upon the dais, a deathly quiet smothered the royal table. Elizabeth sat on her throne-like chair and surveyed the scene with annoyance. Slowly, she chopped a strip of venison with her knife, paused, and let the knife hover over the plate. She clenched her teeth and straightened her posture and held the breath in her lungs.

To Will's horror, she suddenly twisted in her chair toward him. She looked him straight in the eye. He felt as if he could crumple in half. She raised her hand and beckoned him to approach. He prayed that she was pointing at a serving man behind him. She wasn’t. When he glanced over his shoulder he found there was no one near.

On quick heels, he marched down the hall and came to stand by the most eminent monarch in the entire world. At her side, he squinted at the light issued from the candelabra’s surrounding her, and bent his head close to hear her through the noise.

“What is the source of their amusement?” she said bluntly.

He hesitated and scratched the back of his neck.

“Forgive me, your highness,” he replied with a wavering voice. “I really can’t say.”

“Is it that you can’t say, or that you won’t say?”

“Um...”

She rolled her eyes at him.

“Enough with you!”

To his relief, she soon sent him away and he scuttled back to stand by the wall. Afterwards, he felt both silly and strangely proud of himself – as if he’d survived an encounter with some terrific and deadly force of nature.

Elizabeth leant forward to the very edge of her chair. With pursed lips, she addressed the table to her right where the military man sat laughing.

“Is it me?” she said loudly. “You laugh at me, do you not?”

The military man shook his head vigorously but continued chuckling. Elizabeth's eyes sparked with anger. She directed her gaze to the man's shrewish wife.

“Then who?” said Elizabeth.

The shrew quelled her laughter slightly and made numerous attempts to answer, yet every time she opened her mouth and tried to reply, she collapsed into uncontrollable giggles.

Elizabeth put her knife down on the plate. Despite the thick layer of white upon her cheeks, somehow she looked red and flustered. In a combative manner, she tipped her head down a little, and the light exaggerated her wide, domed forehead. The lines under her eyes and around the sides of her mouth grew deeper. She raised her voice to address the entire hall.

“Cease laughing,” she said forcibly. “I command it.”

Nothing happened.

She simmered with anger and rapped her fingers on the table. Her nails made a ticking noise.

“I command that you stop laughing this moment.”

Still nothing happened. As far as the ladies and noblemen were concerned, the Queen had ceased to exist.

Elizabeth pushed her plate away. Shot to her feet. Slammed her fists on the table. She bellowed at the top of her voice.

“Stop laughing or I'll make you stop!”

This time, everyone stopped. Even the minstrels. All smiles vanished. All voices ceased. A dry, withering silence fell upon the room. Elizabeth narrowed her eyes and glowered, studying the faces of her guests for signs of defiance.

Along the length of the tables, sweat now beaded upon brows, suppressed laughter trembled in chests, twitched on cheeks, and wrinkled on lips. With eyes charged and glinting with mirth, the ladies and noblemen stole flashing glances at one another or desperately fixed their gaze onto the tabletop. For a moment, there was complete and utter silence.

Then someone at the back sniggered.

Someone else sniggered, too.

Suddenly, in one great, unstoppable wave, the laughter returned and rolled down the tables twice as strong as before. Ha! Ha! Ha! It surged up into the rafters. Men and women laughed so hard they almost fell out of their chairs.

Confused and threatened, Elizabeth gave a mighty huff. She tossed her napkin at her plate, spun away from the table, and raged toward a small door at the side of the room. The candelabras on the dais flickered with the sudden movement and some blew out. With surprising force for such delicate arms, Elizabeth flung the door back on its hinges and burst out into the corridor. Her ears still ringing, she stormed away as fast as her legs could carry her. Laughter seemed to chase her down the corridor.

SCENE ELEVEN

Queen’s Bedchamber.

H
alf-clothed, Audrey and Kit sat on the Queen's bed and languorously began to dress themselves. Their shadows overlapped on the rug below. Kit closed his shirt around his chest, buttoned it, and tucked a lock of damp hair behind his ear. A warm contentment lulled within his limbs. For the first time without a quill in his hand, he felt within reach of something truly powerful and profound. With her love, there seemed nothing he couldn’t accomplish. Anything was possible.

Next to him, Audrey reached down over her skirt, pinched a silk stocking between her thumb and forefinger and inched it up her leg. Hats, pins, shoes, a bodice, and a doublet lay scattered over the rug around the bed. Kit tipped his head back and watched tiers of flames dance among the clouded glass of the chandelier above. Occasionally, Audrey's gown ruffled or one of her buttons snapped into place. He stopped dressing and remained still and a strange phrase entered his mind. He remembered it from his visit to the Earl of Derby.

“What nourishes me destroys me,” he mumbled slowly to himself.

“I’m sorry?” Audrey answered.

“Oh… nothing… I was just thinking of something that I heard once.”

“How mysterious. You are mysterious, aren’t you?”

He smiled and leant over the bed to watch her retie her dress. She bent her head down to fiddle with the strings and her eyelashes made shadows on the tops of her cheeks. Her strong, elegant neck rose from the depth of her circular ruff. She sat with a straight back and crossed legs. Below, a tiny foot covered by a white stocking stuck out from the hem of her dress. The silk gave a glossy sheen as she wiggled her toes. His eyes wandered up to observe her hands – her slender fingers and fine white nails. She noticed his gaze and smiled. He reached over, took her palm inside his own and lifted the back of her hand to his lips. He recited a line of poetry:

“...hands so pure, so innocent, nay such,

As might have made heaven stoop to have a touch.”

She looked at him lovingly.

“Is it from you new play?”

He nodded. Across the room, his pouch lay near the fireplace. He got up, fetched the pouch, and from it drew a wad of parchment. After straightening the pages, he sat back down on the bed and gave them to her. He’d rewritten all the ones lost in Portsmouth. She received them with a look of reverence, as if they were a sacred text.

“Hero and Leander,” she read aloud, leafing slowly through the pages.

“Yes,” said Kit. “But it's a poem now, not a play.”

“Oh, I see, yes, it’s a poem.”

“You don’t mind?”

“Well, yes I do, in fact. I’m afraid you’ll have to change it all.”

“What?”

She giggled.

“Of course I don’t mind. How could I? Your writing is wonderful in each and every form.”

“But is every form wonderful?”

“I... I don’t know... I suppose life has too much form, too much ceremony, about it sometimes. Yet surely everyone feels like that?”

“I wish life had no form at all. No surface. Just the depth beneath.”

She extended her little finger and tapped the play with the very tip.

“May I ask, Christopher, why did you change it into a poem?”

“I was tired of the stage.” He rose to his feet and paced around the room while fastening his doublet. “I didn’t think it had relevance anymore.”

“Do you still think so now?”

He didn’t answer. She halted on one of the pages and studied it closely.

“I remember this, I think – it’s a myth.” She looked at him for confirmation. “Its origin is from Greek mythology, is it not?”

“That’s correct.”

“Two lovers divided by the Hellespont – the sea of Hell.”

“Leander promises to swim it for Hero.”

“Yes, yes, I remember now. He promises to swim it every evening to be with his love. Yet it's a tragedy, no? Doesn't he drown at the end?”

“Maybe I'll change that.”

“Oh...”

“I haven't got there yet.” He paused by one of the windows and glanced out into the night. “It's only a quarter done.”

Above, a mass of cloud wrapped around the sky and only the faintest dusting of moonlight illuminated the windowsill. Kit gazed out and a blur of motion came from the palace below and caught his eye. He peered across a darkened courtyard and looked through a line of windows and into another wing of the palace: a figure in a large dress strode past the windows and a small group of ladies followed at a distance behind her. As the figure moved closer, Kit identified the face. He frowned and turned quickly to Audrey.

“The Queen's left the hall already!” he said with rising panic. “God's blood! She's coming this way!”

Audrey jerked her head and looked at him doubtfully.

“Not this early,” she replied.

“Look for yourself.”

“It’s never this early – the banquet will go on for hours yet. They always do, believe me.”

Urgently, Kit beckoned her to the window. She hesitated a moment, as if thinking, then jumped to her feet and rushed over to stand beside him. When she peeped out and looked through the windows of the next wing, her face grew mortally serious. She turned back to him and rapidly started threading the strings of her bodice.

“Quick! Help tie me!”

Away from the bedchamber, across the dark courtyard, through the windows of the next wing, Elizabeth surged down the corridor trailing a wake of handmaids. Her dress billowed out behind her. Her sharp heels clicked on the marble floor. Heat started to rise under her dense sleeves and tight bodice, fanning the flames of her anger. She marched onwards. A double necklace of pearls bounced against her chest, her earrings jogged and swung like pendulums from her earlobes, and a jeweled chain slipped from side to side around her waist.

She sped around a corner and headed for a wide staircase that led to the royal bedchambers. Her gloves squeezed into her wrists like manacles and she tore them off, threw them to the floor, and left them behind. The handmaids exchanged a dark look between themselves and one stooped to collect the gloves. They hustled after the Queen as she mounted the stairs, muttering under her breath with every stride...

Meanwhile, inside the Queen's bedchamber Kit stood with Audrey and tried to lace the strings through the narrow loops of her bodice. Even before he'd finished, she had already fixed her hair, checked her makeup, and slipped her feet into shoes. His fingers trembled as he clutched the strings and struggled to find the right holes. Eventually, as best he could, he managed to tie the strings into a tight web.

They tidied the room and prepared to leave. Kit straightened a chair. Audrey smoothed the quilt covers on the bed. Just before they left, Kit flinched and reminded Audrey about the pillow. She grabbed one from a stool and then led him out through the oak doors.