One Dagger For Two Page 10

  “These red velvet breeches, sir, would look sweet, and this red satin doublet with the Lady’s-blush stockings, and these dead Spaniard garters…”

  “Have they really those queer names?” laughed Marlowe. “I call them plain red or whatsoever they be, and know no fancy names.”

  “We women like those names, sir; they make the clothes seem lovelier than they are. Your towel!”

  Marlowe took the damask towel, wiped the water from his face and, sitting on the stool, began pulling on his stockings while Mary aired his clothes before the fire.

  “Sweet child,” he said, slipping on his garters, “you’d make a splendid wife. I envy the man that gets you.”

  “That’s all past, sir,” she whispered. “Some day I might tell you about it. I hate to think of it.”

  “Not over for always, surely, Mary? He was a wicked lad, was he?”

  “Nay, sir, he was the finest in the world, but a little too trusting.”

  “Another woman, child?”

  “Another man, sir!” He saw her hands twist on the doublet she aired before the fire, and a red glow burn on the nape of her neck, racing up into her dark hair. “A beast!” she said. “If I was a man I’d do something. But what can a woman do?”

  “Why, what happened, Mary? Do tell me. Did he snare you with lies under the apple tree, like in the old song?”

  “Oh, lud, no, sir!” she tittered. “Not me, sir. I’m no simpleton. Some day I might tell you. Now, you must hurry to breakfast. Here are your things.”

  Marlowe caught her arms and swung her round to face him. “Child,” he said sadly, “you’ve been crying.” With a gentle forefinger he wiped the tears from under her eyes. “I hate to see a woman cry,” he murmured. “Is there anything I can do for you?”

  “Nay, nay, sir, truly, sir, nothing. Please let me go.”

  He kissed her, softly patted her shoulder, and let her go. He heard her sobbing as she brushed through the curtains at the door.

  That stole a little of this morning’s happiness. Marlowe sat on his stool, took up the waxen ball of perfume from the table and smelled it, moving it under his nostrils.

  Everywhere was trouble and pain, everywhere humanity suffered. Wherever you turned, you were faced with suffering. In town and in country.

  Poor wench! He had been happy last night, but that was only a pinch in the world’s immeasurable woe; Awdrey did not love him. Face the truth, coward! Why gull yourself with silly dreams? She took you out of hate for Tom, not love for you. Be proud and leave her. There were other women, lovelier perhaps than she…but none could stir his blood as she did, none dizzy him with joy merely at standing beside her. He was a poet, penniless, without future, the son of a Canterbury shoemaker — what could he expect this world to give him? He must be pleased to take whatever crumbs fall from ladies’ laps, and thank them for it, while he dreamed of Helen and, in words, flung his proud soul to the devil for the glory of an earthly crown; in life, no devil came. He had to take what cruel gods gave him: a touch of love, a kiss slipped from another man’s mouth…and all the women he dreamed of… How could he marry? How could he keep a wife? He couldn’t keep himself…

  *

  Down to breakfast went Marlowe, strangely glum. Walsingham was already there, looking as neat as if he had been home all night, when actually he had only slipped back an hour ago; Awdrey sat opposite; she was not dressed for riding, Marlowe noticed, but was garbed like a Court lady in voluminous farthingale and with steel-lined doublet pinching her waist into hour-glass shape, a great ruff about her neck, a wicked little round plumed hat rakishly forward over one eye. And her eyes were smiling. Perhaps, wondered Marlowe, she might love him; she looked very merry, very, very happy… She must love him, after all!

  He grew merrier; all three grew merry, jesting in the sunlit Winter Parlour, eating heavy breakfasts, drinking pints of beer.

  “I’ve got work,” said Walsingham at last, rising as he washed his hands in the silver basin. “Please excuse me.”

  Awdrey bowed, Marlowe stood up, and Walsingham hurried off to his laboratory to snatch a brief sleep on the day-bed.

  After washing the grease from hands and mouth, Marlowe went to Awdrey, put his hands on her naked shoulders under the ruff, and leaned forward, smiling.

  “Happy, love?” he whispered.

  She sprang to her feet. “Far from happy!” she cried, but her eyes gave the lie to the words. “I’m frightened, Kit! Come to the gallery. I must talk to you.”

  “Why, what’s wrong?” He tried to detain her, but she pushed past him, and he was forced to follow her through the screens into the hall, along the passage to the wide carved staircase. He caught up to her on the stairs, but she did not turn towards him. Gazing steadily at the painting of Queen Elizabeth on the wall before her, Awdrey walked with her head high above the ruff as if it were a flower amidst delicate petals; her mouth was set tightly, and both her hands upheld her gown from trailing on the floor, showing a flicker of her pink velvet shoes at every step.

  Very troubled, Marlowe watched her, walking slowly up the stairs at her side, hearing her gentle breathing, the rustling of her clothes, the tap-tap of her cork heels on the wood.

  Swiftly, she turned the crook of the stairs, and on the landing, continued straight along to the gallery.

  There, Awdrey faced him, between them, a small walnut table inlaid with tortoiseshell at the corners and covered with a Turkey carpet; she put both hands upon the warmly coloured carpet, leaned forward with a sad smile, and said:

  “It breaks my heart to say it, Kit: but you must go.”

  “Must go!” His face paled, and the corners of his eyes wrinkled up with pain. “This is what I feared; you never loved me.”

  “How can you say that after last night? Dearest, I love you more than I can ever say!”

  She gazed wistfully at him, but remembering her as she had smiled on Rose, he did not trust the look in her eyes nor the curl of her mouth; he looked for other signs — for shaking of the hands, movement of the breasts or for the unheard sob in her throat — he looked for signs of love or of distress, and could not find them.

  Sadly, he shook his head. “Be truthful, Awdrey,” he said, “please. You never cared for me. It was your jealousy that made you take me.”

  “Do you doubt me? I tell you I am afraid of my own love. Tom was there when I got back last night.”

  What could he believe? Ah, if only he could trust her eyes, if only he could believe her words! He looked into her eyes, and she gazed steadily back, sorrowfully.

  “I had trouble to explain,” she whispered. “I told him I had sneaked out. You can guess the excuse. He said nothing, but he’s a man that hides things so well that one never knows what he is thinking of. Please go, Kit; I’ll send for you when he’s lulled.”

  Marlowe sighed, went to her, put both his hands on the table so that his knuckles touched hers, and looked long into her pale face as if he drank its beauty through his eyes.

  “Awdrey,” he said suddenly, “will you give me one last kiss?”

  “What a question, Kit! My kisses are all yours.”

  “I ask only for one,” he said. “I want you to come to me, of your own free will, to put your hands on my shoulders and kiss me, all of yourself.”

  She laughed, embarrassed. “Of course, Kit; why?”

  Of her own free will, she went to him, she put her hands on his shoulders, raised her mouth and with a dreamy, sorrowful look in her large, open eyes, kissed him long and gently.

  What can one believe of these creatures who can lie with a kiss? Deliberately, he fooled himself, he swore she loved him: he was exalted for the moment, but all the while, another Marlowe, a cool, Nashe-like Marlowe, stood off and jeered at his fantastic brother who played so gallantly the part of lover. Played it — ay, played it! Awdrey played it! Actors, both of them, in the great lie that both knew was a lie, yet acted and, momentarily, were taken in
by their own acting. Lovers in a play, showing off their own gestures, listening to their own voices, struck amazed at their own subtleties; and all the time, contemptuous of themselves and of each other.

  Love, have you nothing better to offer a poet than this? This counterfeit, this dross coin, gilt to look real? So this was love, to play the lover to oneself, to jeer behind the loving mask, to kiss and to know the falseness of the kiss?

  But if she had loved him, if this had been but real! My God, what joy would then have beaten inside his skull, what happiness burned flambeaux behind his eyes, what ecstasy shaken his hand! And it was real, agonizingly real — in part; real in the fact that he loved her beyond all else on earth, real in the fact that the touch of her skin vibrated into the very marrow of his bones, real in the fact that her kisses were to him headier than wine. All this was real, and only one thing was lacking — the knowledge that she loved him.

  A paltry, shameful beast he was to steal love where it was not given freely! In honesty, he should have fled this house, and from this woman in his arms. She did not love him. He was a cheat, a vile thing. But he loved her.

  And she, what did she think of this man at her feet? Pride, perhaps, that was all. He gave her strength, gave her the knowledge that she had power over man. Little else. But she was barely conscious of his presence; her mind roved hungrily into the future, ransacking the sweetness of a coming hour when Tom would beg for favours; this was not the base-born poet, Marlowe, in her arms, this was not Marlowe’s voice saying “I love you,” this not Marlowe’s mouth tingling against her ear… It was Tom! Tom was in her arms, abased before her, the gipsy-stale forgotten!

  He knew this, yet he did not go, he did not fling her from him; he stayed tamely in her arms, lying to himself, swearing that it was truth that she loved him.

  A shameful pair, this pair of Venus’s dupes; surely a drab and her gull were nobler than they, were at least honest to themselves and to each other? Lies on their mouths, eyes lying, limbs and hands lying; this dreamer of Hero who would swim the Hellespont to reach her, this man who wrote with honeyed pen of girls waiting in rose-walled rooms to offer their young bodies to their lovers, this man who talked of a “naked lady in a net of gold,” and in his agony of loneliness had written:

  “Sweet are the kisses, the embracements sweet,

  When like desires and like affections meet;

  For from the earth to heaven is Cupid raised

  Where fancy is in equal balance praised.”

  this poet, proud in his words, was pleased now to take the image of another man’s love; and not only to take it, but to swear it was his own.

  Proud poet, what a fall from the Olympus of words into the mud of the street; and from such things as this your immortal dreams were born; was Tamburlaine, that shouting iron-thewed conqueror, the emanation of a memory of when you were a lad at Corpus Christi with little money and a proud stomach, watching the wealthy lordlings boast and strut about the quadrangle? And Barabas, that subtle enemy of religion, was he born of the days of your childhood, in the shadow of Canterbury’s great cathedral when you were whipped to prayers? Was this the stuff of poets’ dreams? — a petty Faustus giving his soul for another man’s embracements?

  Shame on you, Kit Marlowe, you proud versifier and weak man… And Hero, that trembling, beautiful girl webbed in your magic lines, so shy, so trusting and so lovable, was she this disdainful-eyed woman, this Awdrey Etheldred Walsingham, who kissed her husband by proxy, gave his kisses to you, Kit Marlowe, a dummy figure for another man?

  Sadly, Marlowe packed his little store of clothes and papers. He had more clothes now than when he came, for Walsingham always supplied him with last year’s suits; he had more money too, for Awdrey had given him twenty guineas, and when at dinner he told Walsingham that he must go, like a true patron, he took Marlowe upstairs into his study — the walls no walls at all, but rows and rows of books that turned Marlowe’s heart to envy — and pressed into the poet’s hand a purse of fifty crowns, gave him caution to hold his tongue in future, clapped him merrily on the back and sent him off with God speed.

  He did not seem surprised at Marlowe’s going, but Walsingham never showed surprise at anything. He had one of those long, rather mournful faces, with eyes drooping at the corners, a longish nose, and a careless manner, a loose way of waving his hands in unfinished gestures — just as Awdrey did.

  “What poems I could write if only this room was mine!” cried Marlowe, standing on the rushes in that study.

  “Books stultify you,” said Walsingham wearily. “I have read so much that I can only think other men’s thoughts. You’d do nothing but read if you had this room.”

  “I’d write such poems,” said Marlowe, “that they’d set the Thames ablaze!”

  “You’ll write those anyhow,” smiled Walsingham. “When do we get another Faustus?”

  “Soon. I’ve wellnigh finished Edward II. It’s easily the best thing I’ve written so far.”

  He gazed longingly at the leather and the vellum bindings, and remembered his own half-dozen tawdry volumes on the shelf in his garret in Pudding Lane. He sighed; these things were not for poets.

  *

  Both Awdrey and Walsingham walked down the steps to see him off. The sun still shone, clouds overhead were tumbling like great puff-balls, speeding over a deep blue sky; and the sun was a gentle blur, a crushed gold wafer.

  Marlowe looked his last on Scadbury; heaven alone knew when he would return, if ever Awdrey would really send for him as she had promised.

  He gazed at the stone walls, at the pointed gables, at the windows glistening in the sunlight, at the leafless creeper twining up to the slated roof.

  “Good-bye!” he cried.

  “Farewell,” said Walsingham, and behind his back, Awdrey blew him a sly kiss, the merest flick of her fingers it was.

  She has brushed me from her mouth, thought Marlowe.

  He waved his hat and swung his horse down the avenue towards the drawbridge.

  Under the arched gateway he stopped to wave a last good-bye. Scadbury seemed very far away. The front of the house did not face the gate, for it stood almost at right-angles to the avenue, and the part that Marlowe now gazed at was towards the west — the side where he had met Awdrey on top of the stairs when first he arrived —; he saw also a corner of the Great Chamber and of the windowed gallery; he wished he could have seen the bedrooms, but they were at the opposite end, towards the east.

  Beneath the four-centred arched gate he stood — thick with ivy, it was, the tendrils dripping down into his face — the drawbridge behind him, and under it, the narrow moat, now heavy with rain, chuckled and lisped like children’s voices. Behind the black trees, Scadbury stood very solidly, it made him ill with longing to gaze on it; to his right, the orchard sloped up with trees bound tenderly in straw against the frost; and before him, the manor, with smoke shaking above the chimney-stacks. Awdrey was in there now, playing perhaps upon the virginal or the cittern, lounging on the day-bed, gnawing a sucket, the candy melting on her tongue and crystallizing at the corners of her heavy mouth.

  My God! what wouldn’t he do to own that house and that dear woman!

  *

  Sentimentally, Marlowe followed the track they had ridden that first day together; over the drawbridge, that rocked under the horse’s hoofs, and into the thick wood with trees twisted together like fighting giants pausing suspiciously in their battle to watch the stranger pass; dead leaves like a rustling carpet, golden and brown, skeletons of leaves floating in the wind; and in the branches, the keening of the wind as in the rigging of a ship at sea.

  Through the woods, Marlowe ambled on his horse until he reached the great chalk-pit and gazed down its wet glittering slope; then down the hill until he neared the loop of Hollybush Lane.

  There was Rose’s cottage, and in the garden he saw the brilliant red of a girl’s stammel kirtle the other side of the fence, half-hi
dden by the bushes. It was Rose, and she watched him coming, then darted suddenly inside.

  Sighing, he dug his spurs into the horse and galloped by, galloped not only from Scadbury, but from memories, from memories of a woman’s large blue eyes, her heavy mass of straw-coloured hair, silk-textured hair, living and moving in his hands; her mouth so dark against white skin, curling upwards almost into a perpetual snarl, cat-like, with lower-lip narrow at the corners and drooping suddenly in the centre; the splash of wet teeth when she smiled; the slightly upturned nose; the curved, thin eyebrows and long dark lashes; the miracle that was her throat, that miracle of gently curving line, so white, so graceful; and her sharpish chin; the chubby sloping shoulders…the creature that was Awdrey caged in his brain, caged there for ever as a taunt, as a goddess against whose beauty all other women of clay must look tawdry, slipshod jobs.

  Gallop as he might, dig spurs brutally into his horse’s flanks, throw up his head and gulp the country wind — her, Marlowe could not escape. Run, poet, run! She ran with you, faster than you, for she was in your mind. No matter how fast you fled, you could not shake her out; always she would be there, smiling disdainfully in your mind, with hooded pale-blue eyes, the woman whose soul you could not understand; eternally, she would be smiling in your mind, taunting you.

  Chapter IX

  LADY OF THE MASK

  The thought of reaching London at night, of entering that plague-frightened warren in the dark, revolted Marlowe, and he slept in a pretty little inn off the main road near Black Heath. It was his last night in the country, and he awoke in the morning to the gay tune of Hunt’s Up under his window. He flung the musicians a shilling, ate a hearty breakfast and set out upon the road along which there was no returning, the road from Chislehurst to London. Through Deptford beside the Thames, into the suburbs where the city rabble starved and lived their wretched lives amongst poverty and dirt and all the sins that soul and flesh are heir to. At last, London Bridge, under the bleached skulls of traitors on the gate, along between the merchant-houses, then into London’s hurly-burly.