A Dead Man in Deptford (2 page)

I see, reading the above above the rim of my raised alemug,
that I am in danger of falling into the dangerous orbit of the
playman Jack Marston and being betrayed into use of the most
reprehensible inkhornisms. It may well be that plain English
cannot encompass a life so various, tortured and contradictory.
And yet it was Marston who in his innocence called him Kind
Kit. He did not know him. Words were moreover to him more
than human reality. It was surely wrong of him to emend the
verse about shallow rivers to whose falls melodious birds sing
madrigals to his gallimaufry of Cantant avians do vie with mellous fluminosity. And not in jest neither. There is a limit to all things.

Cat or Kit I said, and indeed about Kit there was something of
the cat. He blinked his green eyes much and evaded, as cats will,
the straight gaze either from fear of fearful aggression or of some
shame of one order or another. Even in the carnal act the eyes
were not engaged, at least not often, and it may well be that the
sodomitical seek to avoid ocular discourse as speaking too much
of the (albeit temporary) union of hearts. Of Kit’s heart I must
be unsure and can but suppose, or so I suppose. Of his feline
face I may add that the nose was wide of nostril and chill and
moist. The underlip however was burning and thrustful. On
the overlip, which was long and Kentish, it was a matter more
of whiskers than of true mustachio, the beard scant also, and it
may be said that he never grew to hirsute manhood. The hair of
his head was an abundant harvest, though not of corn. Let me
speak rather of hayricks burning. In dry weather that augured
thunder it would grow horrent. Of his bared body I observed
but little hair, the mane thin above the fairsized thursday. The
flesh was smooth, the shape fair, the belly flat. It is, as I can
personally avouch, untrue that he bore a supernumerary nipple.

He ate little but drank much and vomited proportionally.
He was given, when Sir Walter Stink, the Lord of Uppawaoc,
brought the herb into fashion, to the rank tobacco of Barbados
and filthy pipes that whistled and bubbled with brown juice.
Sometimes, when he was pipeless, he smoked the cured leaves
wrapped in a great outer leaf, but this opened and flowered and
flared and he would cast it floorwards cursing. At first as at last
he was a fair curser and ingenious in his blasphemies, as for
example (God and the reader forgive me and the licensers of
print, if this should attain print, avert their eyes in Kit’s own
manner; after all I do but report as to posterity’s own Privy
Council, this is not my mouth but his) by the stinking urine
of John the Baptist, by the sour scant milk of God’s putative
mother the Jewish whore, by St Joseph’s absent left ballock, by
the sore buggered arses of the twelve apostles, by the abundant
spending of the stiff prick of Christ crucified, and the like.
I omit to mention his height, which was no more than five foot five inches. This is not to be considered pertinent to the
cursing.

Well then, let us have him at Cambridge, an undergraduate
of the college of Corpus Christi, in his drab trunks, patched
doublet, hose blobbed with darning, humilous scholar’s gown,
committed, by the nature of his Parker scholarship, to the tedious study of theology and the eventual taking of orders. His
companions in the room for study he shares are all parsons’
sons and so mindlessly devout that they invite such blasphemy
as I above instance. So that Mr Theo Fawkes of the wry neck
says: I cannot. I know I will fail. But how will you have your
dialogues, reader? I will follow the foreign fashion and indent
and lineate. So Mr Theo Fawkes of the wry neck and for good
measure pustular says:

- I cannot. I know I will fail. So Kit replies:

- That is the sin of despair, one of the two against the
Holy Ghost, hence unforgivable. And young Mr Fawkes:

- Well, perhaps God will grant one so ready for his holy
work the benison of a pass, however meagre. And Kit:

- That is the sin of presumption, the other against his
or her or its ghostliness and equally unforgivable. Mr Jno
Battersby looks on Kit with wide eyes, though the left one
does not keep exact direction with its fellow, saying:

- I protest at your invoking pure papist sins since we have
done with them. And Kit:

- Yes, we found our faith upon protest. We protest against,
not in holy fervour cry out for. Against the Pope in Rome and
auricular confession and the sacred cannibalism of the mass. I
protest against protest.

- That means you must veer back to what is proscribed,
says Mr Robert Whewell, son of a rural dean, scratching an
armpit. Have a care. Kit says:

- I am what Harry Eight, may devils ceaselessly prod his
gross belly, I am what he and his mumbling ministers, may their
fiery farts be bottled and uncorked on Unholy Shatterday, I am
what we have been made. And all for a black-haired whore he
had put in pod.

- It is not of great pertinence, says Whewell. What is of
import is that we have the Holy Word restored to us direct,
not to be filtered through the addled brains of the foul tribe of
priests.

- And what is this Holy Word? sneers Kit. Addled prophecies
and a God that loves the smell of roast meat and even, in its lack,
of the raw blood of massacres. He makes light first and then the
sun after. This sun is made to stand still by Joshua when, as all
know, it was standing still already. And young Fawkes says:

- For all I care you may blaspheme against the Old that the
New supersedeth. Blaspheme against the New and we will have
you.

- Oh, the New is good in that it has wiped out the vindictive
God of the Jews, though he is vindictive enough on Good Friday.
But there are things that be unholy enough if we douse our protestant hypocrisy. Thus, the Archangel Gabriel is no more than
a bawd for the lustful Holy Ghost. And Christ used his beloved
disciple John in the manner of Sodom and Gomorrah. Will you
now have me burned? It will relieve the tedium of your studies.

- Mr Kett shall be told.

- Mr Kett is not here to be told. Mr Kett was gently
delivered into the arms of his parents, who came up from
Exeter for the purpose. This was yesterday.

- No.

- Ah yes.

Ah yes in truth. Francis Kett, Kit’s tutor in theology, had
been sequestered for some weeks and his cats had been let loose
on the streets. Of these he had had many, but twelve in particular
that he called his Apostles and named for them. Kit had now the
stink of those cats in his nostrils still. He had sat often enough in
Mr Kett’s study, the cats playing ambushes with musty folios all
over the filthy floor. And Kett, the last time, smiling in a manner
of manic eagerness, had said:

- All that is written may be subjected to the anatomising
knife of the sincere enquirer. Holy Writ included. We need
no book to tell us of God’s existence nor convince us of the
necessity of his taking on mortal flesh for our sins.

A cat on Kett’s knee had purred at him as in approbation.
Kett had said:

-Not that Christ is God as yet. No, not God but God
in potentia, a mere good man that must suffer not once but
many times for the world’s iniquities. He will have his ultimate
resurrection and then he will be God.

- Have you delivered this heresy at high table?

- Ah no. We must observe discretion. Machiavelli says
that we must conform and show the world what we are not.

- That is for men of power only.

- What is great men’s power to God’s power? And Kett
had inclined closer, the frowstiness of cat on his clothing
bidding Kit close his nose holes. God has placed Jesus Christ
in Judaea, together with his disciples, it is the gathering of his
Church. We must all go in good time to Jerusalem to be fed on
angel’s food.

He frowned at a black cat that boldly relieved itself on a
Jerome Bible on the floor in a corner. He pointed a shaking
finger at it and said:

- That one, see, is Judas. Yes yes, we must go. Costly
but needful. How much money do you have?

- None. A poor scholar and a cobbler’s son.

- Well, I will go help prepare the way. I will walk thither
and I will beg. Kneel with me now among these creatures made
by God on the tenth day of Creation and let us pray for the realm’s
purgation, lustration, salvation. Kneel.

- I am not here to kneel.

- You are not? Kett spoke mildly with mild interest, his
face thrusting into Kit’s. You are not here to kneel?

- There is a time and place for kneeling.
Kett of a sudden boiled and cried aloud:

- Kneel kneel kneel damn you kneel. You are to be blasted,
sir. I know of your sins. And he trembled, a struggling cat in
his arms.

Did he know of his sins? Was that a sin that the Greeks
approved, that was practised by holy Socrates? Kit said now
to his fellow students:

- Clearly out of his wits. No longer as he had been, intermittently in his senses. Religion can do this to a man, nay to a
whole nation can it. See, look, there is sport outside.

And indeed through their bottle-glass window they could see
a sort of riot beginning to proceed outside the tavern opposite,
the Eagle. Undergraduates, their gowns aswing, were kicking a
man into the mud. There was much mud after long summer rain.
Wonder of wonders, the Vice-Chancellor of the University stood
afar looking, ordering no quelling of the riot.

- We’ll Join, Kit said. It has happened at last.

- What has?

- You’re deaf to all except God’s doubtful Word. This has
been coming. Walter Raleigh got the farm of wines. That means
the right to license whatever vintners he chooses and collect one
pound a year from each one in the country. The Queen gave him
this right, but the Queen’s writ does not run here. That is why
there is no interference. The fists of the students are doing the
Vice-Chancellor’s work.

- It is not godly to stick a man’s face in the mud.

- Ah come.

Down there in the street the man enmudded was permitted
to rise from his cursing misery only to be thudded down again.
His wife at the tavern door howled. A man called from an upper
window of the tavern:

- Sir Walter shall know of this. I am Sir Walter’s agent.
You hear? There shall be writs. This is rampant breaking of
the law.

Kit saw flushed glee on raw student faces. They had done
with the tavern-keeper, they would now have at his wife. But she
slammed the door, giving her dripping dirty husband no chance
to enter. He ran dripping down the street. He would turn at its
end and make his way in by a rear door. It was all over, save for
the crying of the man at the window. An official call of Arrest
him from afar was translated into student stone-throwing. The
man withdrew and fastened the casement. A gentleman by Kit,
finely dressed and in a red cloak, whined:

- See, there is mud over me. This is filth.

- You take your chance, sir, Kit said. But the mud will
scrape off. Though it must dry first.

- I cannot ride on to Newmarket like this.

- You had done better not to dismount, sir.

- It is on my face too. I must wash. Where can I wash?
As for my horse, it is at the farrier’s, a matter of a loose
shoe.

- If you would deign to honour the humble lodging of a
student, I can bring water in a bowl and find a tough brush
for the brushing.

- I must be in Newmarket by nightfall.

- Night falls late this season. This way.

The bedchamber Kit shared with young Ridley, at that time
lovesick and gathering flowers by the Cam, was very bare. His
visitor, cloakless now and displaying a slit doublet, black velvet
over, gold silk under, also a collar of cobweb lawn, nodded at
what he saw, saving:

- Very bare. It was the same at Bologna. I took my degree
there. I.V.

- Ivy?

- I.V. Iuris Vtriumque. Proficient in either law, civil, canon.
Thomas Watsonus I.V. studiosus. And you?

- Christopher. The other name is unsure. Marlin, Merlin,
Marley, Morley. Marlowe will do. Wait. Thomas Watson. They
were showing around Sophocles done into Latin. The Antigone.
Are you the same Thomas Watson?

- My Antigone was a mere boast. I prefer to be known
for my Passionate Century of Love.

- An honour, Kit said, though he did not know the work.
I would send out for wine if I had money. A poor student of
divinity, no more.

Watson dug a shilling from his purse. Kit yelled for Tom.
Watson started. But Tom was no uncommon name. The Tom
that entered was a boy, tousled and with an incisor missing, bare
feet filthy, in cast-off trunks and jerkin too large. Kit told him
to bring sherris and be quick. Watson took from Kit’s table a
scrawled sheet. I-Ie read aloud:

Ovid, he said. Fifth Elegy of Book One.

- Correct. And not fitting for a divinity student.

- I like the breasts prest. A rhyme confirming that there
are two of them. You are a lover of breasts?