One Dagger For Two Read online

  “Some day,” she laughed, “I’ll tell you all the little there is. I like to forget. I am a great dreamer. I like to dream that I begin my life just here, a new woman.”

  *

  She met his friends — Nashe, Peele, Kyd and Chomley. She bought them meals, took them out to taverns and ordinaries and spent freely. They called her their Cynthia, their moon-goddess who had come to earth to gladden them for a while. They wrote poems to her, and vied with each other as to who had written the best. Merry afternoons they had, reading their works aloud to their moon-goddess. Nashe was working on a play and on his magnificent Rabelaisian tale, Jack Wilton; Peele was translating for his West Countryman but found time to praise Alice in a eulogy of Chastity. They laughed as that young villain in his reedy voice piped out the charms of the Moon’s strict maidenhood:

  “And who hath seen a fair alluring face,

  A lusty girly-clad in quaint array,

  Whose dainty hand makes music with her lace

  And tempts thy thoughts and steals thy sense away,

  Whose ’ticing hair, like nets of golden wire,

  Enchains thy heart, whose gait and voice divine

  Inflame thy blood and kindle thy desire,

  Whose features rape and dazzle human eyne,

  Who hath beheld fair Venus in her pride

  Of nakedness, all alabaster white,

  In ivory bed, straight laid by

  Mars his side, hath not been enchanted with the sight,

  To wish to dally, and to offer game,

  To coy, to court, etcetera, to do,

  (Forgive me, Chasteness, if in terms of shame

  To thy renown I paint what longs thereto)…”

  Kyd was struggling on the bloody battlements of his Cornelia; Shakespeare had just finished Venus and Adonis: he called one day and read it to the group, and Marlowe answered by reading what he had written of Hero and Leander; the laurels were judged to be Marlowe’s, and Shakespeare left in rather a huff, though pretending not to care.

  They were all very happy, but when Alice taxed them with it, they stoutly denied that they were happier working than when boozing and gambling and wasting time.

  Merry days, with a moon-goddess in the chair and with poets reading their poems to her and drinking the wine she bought them. Marlowe, despite the open sore of his love for Awdrey, was really very happy, and it was the first true happiness that Alice had known. This was the next best thing to creating, to be the help and inspiration of the greatest poets of the time.

  Sitting in a tavern, arguing on aesthetics, telling old stories and laughing uproariously, these poets with their goddess lived their lives in a plague-frightened city, in the darkness of narrow lanes with thieves creeping from their burrows, with poverty and stink and wretchedness on all sides, with the beggar outside the window dolefully playing his clapper and wailing for alms; with men dying rottenly in prisons for petty thefts, for debts and for daring to speak above a whisper; with ploughmen starving in the countryside, bullied by justices as sturdy beggars, and cursing the sheep that baa-ed at them from the downs where the good plough and harrow had once upturned the sweet, rich-smelling earth: one man sitting with his crook and moaning into his pipes, where but a few years since twenty strong men had toiled and earned their bread; villages were being pulled down, farmers ejected penniless to make way for the accursed mutton with its vile fleece. Poverty and the plague; men were grumbling behind their hands; the butchers were grinding their knives and muttering sullenly at the enforced Lents — two days each week, Saturdays and Wednesdays, as well as in Lent itself and on Ember days, Vigils and Fridays: if anyone bought meat these days, man or woman, they were padlocked in the stocks all night and the butcher who sold it stood in the more uncomfortable pillory; and this not for religious reasons, forsooth, but because the Queen’s navy must make money for her by catching fish.

  And the poets sat in a tavern around their kind smiling moon-goddess and spun beauty out of words, and were paid fully with a smile. They were happy too, although moneyless and without hopes of ever attaining anything but praise from friends and small sums usually given grudgingly by patrons who spent a fortune on clothes alone.

  Peele disappeared from the group and they rowed over to the Bankside one afternoon to see what had happened to him, and they found him, like a lunatic in Bedlam, without his fine beard and with but a few weeks’ growth on his merry face. He had been gulled by his West Countryman who, growing tired of giving George more money and more money and getting less translation with every crown he gave, had forcibly shaved the poor wretch, knowing he would then be forced to stay at home and work.

  They bellowed their laughter at the melancholy tale. “But,” said George, “I got my money’s worth, for this sweet child” — curling his daughter’s flaxen hair, while she smiled impishly — “ran to the rascal early the other morning, hair unbound, snivelling and grinding her teeth and rubbing her hands, and smacking her little bosom, wailing, ‘ Oh, my father, oh, my father, my good father, my dear father! ‘ and when she saw the villain she shouted at him, ‘Out upon you, you’ve made my father, my good father, drown himself!’ He got a bad sweat, bought the child new clothes from crown to big toe, promised to be dad to her, gave her five pounds and food, and sent her home. So who’s the better of the bargain?”

  *

  After that, they met at Peele’s rooms often of an evening, until his beard grew strong again; and Alice loved his daughter, a perky wench of ten; she would take her out with her and Marlowe on their trips upriver and would buy her gewgaws and sweets.

  Chomley often dropped in to argue with the poets. Being no poet himself, but a man of action, he scoffed at their talk, and he had the power always of working Marlowe up into great rages against the Queen and her social system.

  “Not for long,” Chomley would say, grinning, his giant bulk quivering with secret fun; “things are going to change, lads. I’ll make you poets our Lords Chamberlain, and Kit here’ll be king, eh, Kit! you and Machiavelli’ll reign over England.”

  “And drench us all with blood,” sneered Nashe. “Talk of Machiavelli! By God, Kit, you should love the Queen, she’s the perfect Machiavellian.”

  “Nay; Machiavelli insists that above all else, a prince must have the love of the people.”

  “She has that. Because you mix with malcontents you think everybody’s the same. Ask the wealthy class, they’d lick her boots.”

  “That’s true,” said Alice, fondling the little girl’s long curls.

  “We’ve got desperate men,” laughed Chomley, “and the army’s ours, both army and navy!”

  “I’d like to see it happen.”

  “You’ll see it quick enough, Tom Nashe. Won’t he, Kit?”

  “I hope so,” said Marlowe sadly.

  But did he really hope so? When alone, he doubted it. Bad as this system was, Marlowe could really see little he could do to alter it, if he had power. And if he had had power, if he had been born an earl or with wealth, he would have been content enough with things as they were.

  Chapter XII

  COME LIVE WITH ME —

  April coming; March blown out and collapsed to water, to April rain that drizzled eternally, morning, day and night. No pause in the overflowing skyey-cistern. To bed with the tinkle of rain on the window-pane, and up in the dawn to hear the rain still tinkling like an ill-tuned cittern. And daffodils, bright yellow stars, in the gardens, burgeoning in the fields; the trees breaking out into a rash of yellowish-green; the grass, softening, thickening; and little flowers lurking under hedges; swallows in the sky, chattering on roof-tops, and wheeling through the narrow lanes; April, the first flush of spring, that newly wakened girl; and with this awakening, came the unfolding of little buds, the fall of wistful rain, and to Marlowe, the memory of Awdrey.

  Like a coloured rag tied to a revolving wheel, she had dazzled him, then slowly faded as the wheel spun round; but now the rag
was climbing up again into his memory, disturbing him, worrying him like an old wound bursting out afresh. Perhaps it was Alice’s coming so often to see him, the feel of a woman near by, the sound of her gentle voice, the essence of a woman’s body felt to be moving close by even when not seen, perhaps it was Alice who awoke the wraith of Awdrey; perhaps it was spring warming his blood to uneasy dreams.

  She came agonizingly. He longed for her with physical pain. He lay awake at nights, biting his pillow, dreaming of her. She was more real now than she had been in actuality. Like poison at his heart, she eat into all his thoughts, tortured him. Her imagined loveliness was hell. And he must forget her. He must. She had sworn to send for him, and he had heard nothing from her for months; not even Frizer had come to see him. Why didn’t she call? Had she any intention of calling?

  Alice, watching him, saw the marks of suffering on his brow, around his eyes and tightening his mouth. She longed to ask the cause, but dared not, lest her fears be realized and he tell her that he loved some woman. She knew he loved some woman, although he never spoke of her; he never spoke of love; and being so near him constantly, helping him, seeing him write and reading his great verse, she had grown to think very tenderly of him, had grown to love him.

  Yet neither spoke of love, and it was because they did not speak of it, that a shyness grew between them. They had met without embarrassment, frankly; but unlike most friendships, comradeship brought with it a peculiar shyness later on, an awkwardness. They were no longer at ease together, and nowadays whenever she called, Marlowe would be unnaturally gay, would fling down his pen, seize his hat and take her out for a walk in the fields to search for spring flowers, or for a trip up the river.

  He did little work, but laboriously continued his play. It was almost finished now, and out of his own torture, he conceived the most terrific drama the stage had ever known — the murder of Edward. It made Alice shudder when she read it. This was real suffering, and she wept, it was so horribly lifelike; she felt all the poor King’s pathetic agonies, she felt them as if they were her own.

  And were they not her own? Was she not lonely, also, for her Gaveston?

  She loved the old times when they had sat together quietly in his room while he worked; and she remembered them sadly. She had no heart for these trips abroad, for these callings on Peele, Nashe, Kyd, Shakespeare and Chapman, for these walks over fields in the rain, for sitting in a boat under the canvas awning and seeing the misted river-bank slide past.

  “No, no,” she said one day when he would have taken her out immediately she came; “let’s stay at home. You must finish your play.”

  “The devil, yes!” He flung down his hat and shuffled the papers on his table. “What’s the good of work?” he cried. “What am I writing this stuff for? For a rabble that’ll be touched for the moment but would see me flung into a pauper’s grave without a tear. What’s the damn use of poetry?”

  She went to him, put her hands on his shoulders, and gazed sadly into his troubled eyes.

  “Kit,” she said softly, “please tell me — what is wrong? Don’t you trust me?”

  “Trust you, my dear! But I have nothing to tell, nothing.”

  “Don’t lie, Kit. Isn’t it queer how we met, how we’ve known each other over a month now and yet neither of us knows the other’s secrets? We’re still strangers.”

  “Ay!” he said. “So we are! Who are you? What is your other name? Who is your lucky husband? Where were you born? What age are you? I know nothing of you except that you’ve been kind to a lonely poet.”

  “My story is nothing wonderful.” She sighed, turned from him and went to the window. “Yet why should I hide it? A bargain, Kit! I’ll tell you all my life, if you’ll tell yours. Then we can both cry together like a pair of babies.”

  “It’s a day for weeping.” He went beside her and gazed out at the wet roofs twinkling like glass, at the rain wafted on the wind like a gigantic silver cobweb. “Yes, in the gloom, let’s sit beside the fire, and put our heads together, mingling my beard in your long hair, my tears with your tears, and weep. What else is there in life but to weep?”

  “And it could be so happy! Life should be happy, there should be happiness in being strong, in being alive.”

  “I’ve never known it.”

  Both sick with self-pity, sick with longing — she for him and he for Awdrey — they gazed out of the window, heads together, eyes dull with pain.

  “To the bargain!” he cried suddenly. He took her hand and led her to the stool before the fire. She sat down heavily, limply, and he squatted on the torn mat at her feet. “Tell your life,” he cried. “I want to know it all, from the first moment your eyes saw the sky to this moment when they see the firelight through their tears. Bare your whole soul to me.”

  “And you will bare yours?”

  “I have promised.”

  *

  Like a child at his mother’s feet, Marlowe sat on the floor beside her. He rested his head in her lap, against the whalebone of her farthingale, and gazed into the fire. She played with his hair while she spoke, twisted it in her fingers, curled and uncurled it, rolled it between finger and thumb, patted it, straightened it…

  Her voice was very gentle, soothing.

  “It’s the story of a thousand girls,” she said, “but I was lucky in finding a decent man, otherwise perhaps I would not be alive now. My father was not wealthy, a schoolmaster at Lavenham, in Suffolk, but he taught me Greek and Latin and he bred me honestly. He was a good man, very kind, yet harsh when things crossed him in his religion. I was the only child, all the others died. I’ve nothing to tell of my childhood, nothing you couldn’t know already. It was the girlhood of any well-brought-up maid. Then comes the man into my story.”

  “Ah, the man!” said Marlowe, not looking up. “So it is a love story?”

  “Of course, child. Isn’t every woman’s life a love story — this one a happy love, this one a sad one? But love was forced on me. Even now I don’t know whether it was love or not. I had other dreams. Have you been to Suffolk, Kit? It’s a rugged country, it holds every form of land, from downs to woods. I love it. I would wander over the fields, picking flowers for my own hair and not knowing how fully beautiful I was, for I had no lads to listen to, my dad being so strict. I was a dreamy brach, always building a great future for myself. My dreams were great because everybody said how learned I was, being able to read my horn-book at three. I wanted to become a scholar, to go to Oxford or Cambridge. But what could a girl do? A woman-undergraduate! It’d be a monster. I had only love to rely on to reach anywhere, only my own young body. That’s all we women have in this world; but I wanted something more.”

  “But the man?” said Marlowe. “The man who entered your story?”

  “Ay, the man!” She twisted Marlowe’s hair and gazed into the fire, remembering those days of ambitious girlhood. “I won’t say his name,” she murmured at last, “for fear you know him; at least, you’ve heard of him, for he’s a lord. Well, Kit, he plucked me.”

  “Lucky man!”

  “My mother had served his lady, and I in my turn was sent to serve her, but it was him I served.”

  “Tell me how it happened, tell me everything.”

  “An old story, Kit, repeated by a thousand maids. A hundred ballads sing it. It was the inevitable song of spring and the end of dreams. It isn’t fair that women should have longings and no power of satisfying them save by infamy or marriage. I can’t help how I was made. I am your sister, Kit, for I was proud, like you. I wanted something more than men of my own station could give me, I wanted to hold up a queen’s train, to be, to do something in this man’s world. He was a lord, three times my age, for I was only fifteen. He was a lord, and that’s how he took me, glamoured me.”

  “But how?” insisted Marlowe. “Tell me everything.”

  “Child!” she laughed. “It was springtime, and my lady was away. He told me he loved me. I think he d
id.”

  “Of course he did!”

  “And he was so kind. He has been kind always, although he doesn’t love me now, for he’s quite old. He got old suddenly. That was ten years ago, and he’s on the road to sixty now. He took me from the country, bought me a fine house in London, set me up with all the money I needed and the richest of clothes; and when he grew old and tired, he still gave me money. I’d like you to know him, Kit, he’s been so good to me. I scarcely ever see him now. He promised me that if ever I met a man I loved he’d marry me to him, give me a fine dowry, the house I live in and rents from the country. We’re still good friends. There’s my story, Christopher lad. It’s not sad really, it’s merely futile. But don’t blame me, please! For God’s sake, don’t blame me. Before you condemn, think of what a woman is these days, think of her life, frustrated from birth, unless she be a Grand Lady. I couldn’t do anything with my learning and had to rely only on my body. I was just lucky that my body did not lead me to disease and death like so many of my wretched sex.”

  “Blame you!” cried Marlowe. “My God, what right have I to judge? If I’d my way, I’d let every woman be as free as they are in Venice, where they can dress as bravely as they like, go where they will, and where a man can be jailed for cozening poor wenches at a trade that society has forced upon them. I’d have no laws on bastardy and not make marriage a brutal chain, a necessity, without which women are doomed after death to lead apes in hell in penance for not having babies here. The laws are vile, not the women, the poor dears!”

  “And now,” she said, “your tale, Kit!”

  “No, you haven’t finished yours. You told me you were married, you cheat! The way you begged for your pendant lest your husband fling you into the streets made my heart bleed.”

  She laughed softly. “Yet it was not all a cheat,” she told him, “that was my lord’s first gift, and even though I don’t love him any longer, women are strangely sentimental over things like that. It’s sweet to take old toys from boxes and let them bring to you the colours and perfumes of a dead hour. I was foolish to gamble. It was a friend who took me there, a lass I’d known at home who married into the Goldsmiths’ Guild in London and spends her whole time losing her husband’s money. That was my second day there — when I met you. I never went again. Fate sent me there to meet you. I cursed my friend at the time, but now I bless her… Kit, Kit, stop me! Here I run on all about myself, and I do so want to hear your story.”