One Dagger For Two Page 12

  “That’s the world’s fault, not the poet’s,” said Peele.

  “It’s not! The poet’s a fool and deserves all he gets. I’m not proud of being a poet!”

  “Nor I,” said Marlowe. “I want to be a king.”

  “To stir the hearts of the people,” said Kyd, “that’s all I want.”

  “So you throw them a bucket of blood!” jeered Nashe. “How clever of you, Tom!”

  Kyd flushed. “Tragedy is at the heart of all mankind,” he said. “I wish to show the horrors of Machiavellianism, of this lust for power. People are crushed by it, their children are murdered, all to get some horrid earthly crown of prickles.”

  “It’s worth dying for,” said Marlowe with a sigh.

  “None of us can get a crown,” laughed Peele shrilly, “so what’s it matter? All I want’s a gutful of Rhenish and some pickled herrings.”

  “That’s all Robin Greene wanted, and it killed him. I was at the dinner when he ate the things.” Nashe frowned, tapped his half-empty tankard on the table and watched the white wine froth within. “He’d starved for weeks and when he got the chance stuffed himself like a capon for baking. He was screaming with pain next day, and nobody went to see him, except me. I went once, and then I fled. He wailed the whole time about the wife he’d deserted and his multitudinous debts. There’s the end to your ambition, Georgie.”

  “Better than Kit’s; he’ll have his head lopped like dead fruit.”

  “As for me,” said Nashe, “I’m the only sane one. I have no ambitions. I live for life. It’s the only thing worth living for.”

  “I live for the people,” said Kyd, “I love them all.” He sighed, and glanced out of the window. The crowd was thinning now, and the dust dying down, settling on cobbles and the window-sill. “We’d best be off,” he said, “or the trumpet’ll be blown.”

  *

  Marlowe and his friends, being privileged, entered at the rear, into the actors’ rooms. Philip Henslowe, owner and manager, a mean, leathery man, with a perpetual dog-like grin, was fussing about, helping the actors to dress, fitting a wig on to a boy’s head who was to be Catherine, then darting off to see that Henry’s crown still held its paste-jewels and that the kingly robes were not too moth-eaten.

  Feeling terribly bored, Marlowe went to the curtains that hid the rear-stage from the audience, and peered through. There were not so many people present as he expected. Probably the plague (that was rapidly increasing) kept them away, or the possibility of rain, for the sky was heavy with clouds. The galleries that boxed in the three sides were but half-full, in the yard there could not have been more than a hundred people, and on the stage itself not half a dozen played dice amongst the rushes. The attendance did not really bother Marlowe — except as a sign of his popularity — for he had already had his ten pounds for the play, and had spent it months ago.

  “How many?” asked Peele, coming up with the others.

  They were in the corridor behind the stage. This corridor curved, leading from the tiring-rooms, and had at each end, in the curves, squarish wooden doors, divided by the curtain through which they now gazed. Above them, hanging from a hook, was the plot for the prompter to watch and for the actors to refresh their memories with. One of the actors was now walking petulantly up and down past them, mumbling his part; he had glued the sheets together, rolled them into a scroll which he put under his chin, unwinding it as he read. Every time he passed the group of poets, he sneered and rolled his eyes at being interrupted.

  “Let’s go,” said Kyd. “There won’t be many on the stage, so we might as well sit there.”

  They took down four stools from the pile against the wall, and stepped through the curtains on to the stage. Although only the heavy curtain had before divided them from the audience, the noise now almost deafened them: chatter, chatter, chatter, shouting of friends over groups, men quarrelling at dice and cards, the cracking of nuts, chewing of apples and sucking of oranges, the hissing pops of opening beer-bottles, cries of the salesmen: “What d’ye lack? Water, sweet water! Lavender for the stinks! Rosemary for the red murrain! Hot pies! Hot fine oatcakes! Primrose pies! Suckets! Come buy, come buy! Buy oranges, sweet oranges and apples! Buy a new book! Tobacco for your pipe! Who’s thirsty, here’s cool beer!” The vendors in the yard stepped through the groundlings — as they were called — clambered on to the stage amongst the gallants, and even wandered into the galleries.

  It was an oceanic noise, somehow curiously inhuman, a loud buzzing of voices woven together into one yammering swell, above which the pedlars shouted their wares hoarsely. Marlowe and his friends took their stools to the very front of the stage that jutted far out into the yard amongst the groundlings — the twopenny noisy crew of journeymen, apprentices, workmen, cheap-jacks and whores that sat in the dust or stood around in groups. Behind the groundlings, enclosing them, rose the galleries in three tiers around the stage, at front and on both sides; here the wealthier class sat for ten-pence: for twopence at the door to enter the yard, and another eightpence to ascend into the galleries, or rooms, as they were called. The stage cost a shilling a stool.

  The musicians were packed into a lower gallery to the right of the stage. The stage itself was long and wide, rising about four feet above the yard, and had at the back, above the doors and the curtain, an upper-stage, a kind of gallery; above that, a tower surmounted with Henslowe’s rose-embroidered flag to show that a play was about to be performed. Under this flag, in a narrow balcony, strutted a trumpeter, trumpet at his hip.

  It was almost time to begin. Opposite Marlowe, a gallant ostentatiously pulled a large watch from his belt, gazed at it, shook it, showed it to his friends, held it up so that everybody could see that he possessed a watch, then stamped on the rushes, shouting: “Time, time, past three, boys!”

  The yard took up the cry, “Past three! past three!” they chanted, and clapped their hands; they whistled and stamped their feet until the very walls seemed to quiver and the ground to rock.

  Hurriedly, the trumpeter on the tower rubbed his hand over the trumpet-mouth, licked his lips, and raised the instrument against the sky. There was immediate silence, everybody craning their necks to watch him as he swelled out his red cheeks and blew three sharp blasts, a slight pause between each blast.

  The play had begun.

  It was a rotten play. Marlowe said so himself. It was a rough sketch, unfinished, crudely constructed, a chronicle-tale done with his tongue very much in his cheek for popularity’s sake and a few shillings, for it was grandiloquently Protestant. Henslowe had given him the outline, roughed out by some ambitious youth, Nashe had enlarged it, and himself had merely coated the skeleton with a thin Marlovian flesh.

  But it caught the audience: no doubt of that. It was so obviously bloody from the very moment that Guise crept through one doorway as the others exeunted through the opposite door. There was to be a whole massacre, and the popularity of Kyd’s Spanish Tragedy, that wail of frenzied killing after killing, showed how the people loved a stage well-cluttered with corpses.

  The yard was actually quiet, caught by the thrill; even the galleries did not gossip above a whisper; and — marvel of marvels! — the supercilious gallants on the stage tilted forward their stools, stopped playing with dice and rushes, and listened without jeering to the actors, without trying to shout above the speeches.

  Marlowe shut his eyes and tried to listen without seeing the painted men mimic the creatures of his fancy. He longed for a better stage, where the illusion might be stronger, for a stage of beauty — an impossible dream.

  When he opened his eyes, he saw the actors strutting, making sweeping gestures, showing off their legs, rolling their eyes and bellowing out the words. Guise would hunch his shoulders, cross his legs, twirl his moustaches and gloat up at the women in the galleries, one eye shut as he thought his villainies aloud or sent the apothecary off with poisoned gloves, or hounded murderers into the upper-stage to shoot the
admiral. The massacre itself had been the only part that had amused Marlowe to write. He had been interested to see how he could use the clumsy technique of the stage to reveal as many murders as possible.

  The admiral’s bed he placed behind the curtains, and had him dragged out from there on to the stage. At first, he had wanted to put him on the upper-stage but the actor objected to being flung down so far; instead, he hanged him from there. Seroune he brought out of the left-hand door to be stabbed, and had used the curtains to reveal Ramus in his study; Navarre had then come through the right-hand door, and Anjou had come from the left-hand one. It had been rather tricky, but it seemed to work quite well. The audience gaped open-mouthed, like dogs watching flies on their noses; there were so many corpses thudding amongst the rushes, so many shrieks for mercy, so much flashing of swords and banging of guns, that it was like paradise to them.

  After the massacre, Marlowe grew bored again, and gazed idly at the intent faces around him: the dirty mob in the yard, leaning forward, resting on their hams; the conceited gallants on the stage squeezing the sap from rushes, caught despite themselves; and in the galleries, the merchants and their wives, the artizans, the tradesmen and the wealthier harlots, were very still: three tiers of watching faces.

  Then one face amongst the many caught Marlowe’s eyes: a girl’s masked face. She was dressed in black velvet with a snowy ruff and white gloves, a wide-brimmed black straw hat perched on her brown curls. It was his Helen of yesterday!

  She did not see him for quite a while, so enraptured was she by the drama, then suddenly she noticed him and smiled gingerly with a sideways curl of her lips, as if she were afraid of being seen smiling openly at him.

  All through the remainder of the play, Marlowe gazed at her, and during the pauses between acts when his friends pulled the play to shreds, he scarcely bothered to answer them. Sometimes he saw her mouth moving as if she repeated words to herself, especially during the scene between Guise and his wife. It seemed to Marlowe, gazing at her, not at the actors, that she spoke the words the actor spoke, so perfectly formed were they by the movement of her mouth; almost, he could hear her cry:

  “So, set it down, and leave me to myself.

  O, would to God, this quill that here doth write

  Had late been plucked from out fair Cupid’s wing

  That it might print these lines within his heart…”

  while next to him, a painted boy in woman’s kirtle squeaked the lines and minced on the stool, rolling his shoulders and his eyes.

  A boy to play the part when she up there could act so marvellously! It was not right! She should be on the stage with her sweet, husky voice and subtle posturing, her voice so exquisitely tuned, its timbre lovelier than any lad’s could be, and her body so delicately graceful…

  *

  By extraordinary bad luck — or was it intention on her part? — when he glanced aside at the finale to see Henry’s body carried out, followed by four soldiers trailing their pikes, steel-heads dragging the rushes after them, to the wail of the Dead March, she must that minute have stood to her feet and darted off. He scarcely looked away a scrap of time, yet when he turned again, she was not there.

  He sprang up, searching the gathering with his eyes, then at last, just as the musicians burst into the jig and the clown in his motley peeped through the curtains amidst the shrieks and laughter of the mob, Marlowe saw her.

  The music welled up joyously, in a sprightly paean to the god of mirth; it laughed around Marlowe; he heard the clown liltingly cry his rhymed verse, heard his toes clatter on the boards, and amidst the music and the laughter, Marlowe fought his way with fists and elbows through the groundlings to reach the gate and catch her.

  He was too late. Far away, down the street, he saw her enter her caroche, saw the coachman clamber on to the box. A rattle of harness, jarring crunch of heavy wheels on the cobbles, catching in the gutter in the middle of the road; then she was off.

  If he had run he could have caught her, but he gave up the chase. She had wanted to elude him, let her go. Perhaps she feared her servants; obviously she was married, although that liar Frizer had said she was in keeping to some lord; no, she was married, a merchant’s wife; and he dared not interfere lest he destroy her comfort.

  He stood in the roadway watching the caroche until it had disappeared around the corner, then he strode over to the Rose Tavern; his friends caught up to him just as he entered the door, all eager to understand his sudden running away.

  “I know,” said Naslic, “a woman! Didn’t you see him gazing at her all afternoon like a dog after marchpane?”

  “Yes,” said Marlowe, “a woman: but she’s gone now.”

  “Well, that’s a blessing,” said Peele. “I wish mine’d go. I’ve got two of ’em stuck at home, not only a wife, but a daughter.”

  “Don’t be horrid,” said Kyd; “your daughter’s a witty little creature, and so sweet. Shame on you, George! Take no notice of their nasty manners, Kit: I understand how you feel.”

  “I wonder,” said Marlowe, smiling, “if you really do understand! It wasn’t love.”

  “Glad to hear you honest for once,” said Nashe. “Love’s only a pretty name to fool wenches with. Amongst men, we call it something else.”

  “No, no,” said Marlowe, “I didn’t mean that. I like her as a sister, purely.”

  And he was angry when all three, even Kyd, roared with laughter.

  Chapter X

  THE QUEEN RIDES BY

  There was no escaping Nashe and Peele.

  Like a pair of swift dogs they yapped around Marlowe, they kept always beside him, as if guarding him; they herded him into taverns, barked furiously when he attempted to escape, and ran round corners and up and down lanes and streets until they caught him if he tried to run away. At first, he grumbled and strove to avoid them, but at last his good humour defeated his good intentions; he tamely submitted to his friends, and drank and ate as they insisted he should, visiting theatres and bear gardens until they were shut by the plague.

  The plague, after a brief lull, was growing worse. Every day the whisper went around taverns that another human body had been carried out feet first from its home and had been flung under earth. The Queen was furious with London’s Lord Mayor and aldermen for not taking proper care of infected places, and now great locks were on the doors of plague-houses and men with pikes stood on guard, snifling camphor and rosemary to drive infection away.

  It was an exciting time. London was full of angry seamen, and Marlowe and Nashe and Chomley, whom they often met, filled up the sailors with beer and treasonable suggestions, while Peele protested in his woman’s voice that they were fools and villains. They took no notice of Peele, except to give him drink, but found great joy in arguing with the sailors. The trouble was old now, but every day it grew fierier.

  On the third of January last, the Earl of Cumberland claimed a great carrack taken at sea. A Queen’s ship under Sir John Burgh had been fighting the carrack when Cumberland hove up over the skyline and joined in. Sir John had been getting much the worse of the battle, being crippled, masts snapped and yards fallen like a gigantic net over the decks, and was almost on the point of hauling down his colours, when help came. The Queen denied this, when Cumberland towed the enemy into port; she insisted that Cumberland had interfered and refused to give him a farthing of the booty. His men were in a volcanic condition, threatening one moment to start a rebellion, the next talking of fighting against Gloriana on the side of Spain. Unfortunately — from Marlowe’s and Chomley’s point of view — the Queen grew afraid, caved in, and agreed to sell £10,000 worth of the captured goods to pay the seamen: herself grabbing £80,000 out of the affair, besides a giant cargo of pepper.

  There was other fun, however. One of the usual sweats about invasion started the Court gibbering and raising levies that immediately deserted — or at least, tried to desert. There was talk of Catholics coming down through Scotl
and, and the Earl of Derby was sent to defend the Isle of Man for fear the Spanish fleet might take it. Spanish gold was pouring into London, it was said. The doctors at law and a great many others refused to contribute to the Safety Fund and there was talk of imprisoning them; then the men impressed to fight in Brittany were reviewed and discovered to be so useless that even the Queen began to despair of her loving subjects ever being made to fight for her. The trouble was simple enough and easily remedied — she could never bring herself to pay out money. The result was that the army consisted of jail-birds with marks of the gyves still raw on their limbs, or of men clubbed by the press-gangs into a state almost of idiocy. Officers lived decently enough, for they pocketed whatever gold could be got from Her Majesty, paying off a great many men who had been killed years and years ago but whose names still flourished on the rolls.

  Determined to extract money from somebody, the Queen decided to call one of those nasty arrogant things, a Parliament.

  Treason was whispered in the streets; it grew with the plague. Soldiers passed glumly along, trailing their pikes, faces glowering darkly up under old morions, searching for deserters. Captains, lieutenants, sergeants and other officers bragged of past deeds and quarrelled in taverns, trying to pass the Queen’s shillings into the hands of simpletons with talks of glory in the mud of Brittany. “I’d rather hang than go,” was the common phrase snarled out in reply to all enticements.

  Marlowe, half-drunk all the time, was enjoying every moment of it. Forgetting his oaths, his promises to Walsingham, he flung himself frenziedly into efforts to arouse ill-feeling against the Court, in an effort, perhaps, to forget a pair of beautiful plumply curving white arms, to forget lips painted red as blood, and pale blue eyes hooded under blackened lids, to forget the lovely Awdrey Etheldred Walsingham. But he could not forget. Mornings inevitably followed drunkenness; mornings in which brain and stomach turned against their master; when sick, mentally and bodily, he rolled out of bed, swearing not to drink again until he heard Nashe and Peele hammering on the door with more bottles and more bottles. Awdrey, Awdrey, you were a wasp in his brain, you were poison in his blood, he could not drown that poison, he soaked it in Rhenish and sack, tried to burn it out in rancour against the Throne — rancour of jealousy, Nashe told him it was, and he did not deny it.