A Dead Man in Deptford (38 page)

- Tell us, the Earl said somewhat mildly, of this rivalry
and hate.

You will know more of it than I, my lord. Of Sir Walter I
will say this, that I admire and honour him. He more than any
has consulted the safety of this realm, and not that only but also
its wealth and the expansion of its territories.

- First to his own profit, the Earl said. Only traitors are
sent to the Tower.

- So treachery is to be sought out in the making of a
fair marriage with a most fair and estimable lady?

- You tread on very perilous ground, Sir Robert Cecil
said. This is unseemly.

- This word doubt, the Archbishop said.

- You require a definition, your grace? Kit said, again
unwisely.

-I must ask you, Mr Marlin, Sir Robert Cecil said, to
consult your own situation as regards this present enquiry.
You are being questioned on grave matters and you respond
with reprehensible pertness and flippancy.

- I again beg pardon. I am not well schooled in the manner
of comportment before Her Majesty’s Privy Council.

- Doubt, you say, the Archbishop continued. The company you spoke of was concerned with the free resolution of doubt in
matters of faith?

- I think this may be said.

- So doubt about the teachings of our divines was voiced
so that it might be resolved through rational enquiry?

- I would not go so far.

- Very well, the Archbishop said. You admire Sir Walter
Raleigh. In consequence you may not be relied upon to render
a frank and candid disclosure as is required.

- I have told lies, your grace, to the Queen’s enemies, but
that was a matter of policy imposed by circumstance. You have
no need to put me to any torture to impel true speaking.

- You are not as yet under arrest, the Earl said.

- But I will be, and then I will be tortured? What will
the charge be, my lord?

- No talk of that, the Archbishop said. I think we may for
the moment end. What must he now do, Sir Robert? You have
the formula.

- Yes. Give daily attendance to their lordships until he
shall be licensed to the contrary, thus remaining within close
distance of this Palace of Westminster until the case under
review is decided. So you may leave.

Kit bowed to all in the manner of a single wave of obeisance
and left the chamber in some anger and disquiet. Outside the
door he saw Baines waiting for entrance. Kit spat and said: No
buboes yet? The devils of the plague know their own. Baines
said:

- That is not friendly.

We may not yet accompany back to Scadbury fuming Kit,
orphaned, with one friend in the world but of him he was unsure.
We must, behind his bowed back, return to the chamber where
the Privy Council deliberated on this Mr Marley or Merlin. The
Earl of Essex said:

- This is my Mr Baines. Baines, read out your note.

- Baines read: A note containing the opinion of one Christopher Marley concerning his damnable judgment of religion
and scorn of God’s world. He affirmeth that Moses was but a juggler and that one Heriots being Sir Walter Raleigh’s man
can do more than he. That Christ was a bastard and his mother
dishonest. That he was the son of a carpenter and that if the
Jews among whom he was born did crucify him they best knew
him and whence he came. That Christ deserved better to die
than Barabbas and that the Jews made a good choice, though
Barabbas were both a thief and a murderer. That all protestants
are hypocritical asses. That if he were put to write a new religion,
he would undertake both a more excellent and admirable method
and that all the New Testament is filthily written. That the Angel
Gabriel was bawd to the Holy Ghost, because he brought the
salutation to Mary.

- Is there much more? the Archbishop asked, his mouth
tasting a kind of spiritual vinegar.

- Yes, your grace. Much more. But I would ask you to
note that Mr Richard Chomley or Chumley or Cholmondeley,
that is also in his lordship’s service, has confessed that he was
persuaded by Marlowe’s reasons to become an atheist but only
in pretence that he might be the more persuaded, and he is now
ready to testify to this and much in my note and other things
besides.

- Fair copies of your notes are required, the Earl said.
We will have a deeper perusal.

- Apart from the heresies, your grace, my lord, sirs, Baines
said, there is other treasonable matter. I read from here. That
he had as good right to coin as the Queen, and that he was
acquainted with one Poole, a prisoner in Newgate who hath great
skill in mixture of metals, and having learned some things of him
he meant through help of a cunning stampmaker to coin French
crowns and English shillings. And he said that all that love not
tobacco and boys are fools. And that the holy communion would
be best administered in a tobacco pipe. And much more.

- Very well, Baines, enough. Do as I say, we will peruse.
You have done good work and may go.

- And so, the Archbishop said when Baines had left.

- And so, the Earl of Essex agreed.

KIT, much troubled, rode back to Scadbury. He had heard
from Tom Nashe that the knives were being sharpened for the
puritanical or Brownist persuasion. There was to be a trial before
the King’s Bench the next day, Nashe was unsure of whom,
something to do with a book printed in Amsterdam or some such
outlandish place entitled Reformation No Enemy. The author? He
knew not. It was full of the scourging of the bishops and even
of the Queen as one that had turned against Jesus Christ. The
London air had seemed thick to Kit’s lungs; he smelt burning
entrails and tasted the blood of a wrenched-out liver. He rode
back to the sweet country, greeted by thrushes and larks and the
bellowing of rams. The shepherd swains shall dance and sing for
thy delight each May morning. A smeared May, a May defiled.
The maypole gone for that it did resemble a man’s prick, and
Jack in the green a foul idol, and the hobbyhorse forgot.

Sitting with Tom Walsingham after supper, he spoke his
troubles.

- I fear that next time it will be an arrest.

- The charge?

- They are digging out heresy and treason. I am no true
target. I am the salty herring before the great roast of Raleigh.
I saw this Baines go in with a paper. There is talk of the arraignment of Tom Harlot.

- So, Tom Walsingham said, chewing a piece of marchpane
and showing a tooth in decay, they will be coming here to drag
you off. And then to the torture chamber and your screaming
that it was all the fault of Sir Walt the tobacco man. Well, we
have tortured each other over the years, though to the end of
pleasure. And you torture my nose and gullet with your damnable
pipes.

- You have not said this before.

- You have not listened or, listening, taken notice. Much
may be pardoned in a poet. I shall not be stifled with the reek
of it again. At least not here.

- You smile, smirk or leer at the prospect. So I am to leave?

- I did not think this would be the manner of your going.
I shall marry soon, I think you have guessed that, I need the
dowry. You would have to go, but I did not think your departure
would be enforced by the Privy Council. Nor did I think your
new and final home would be a tree. No, no, I but jest. Poley
is your best protection.

- Poley takes orders from Heneage and Cecil, both of the
Privy Council.

- He can plead with them, though not, I think, with the
Earl of Essex. Poley can defend your great shouts of atheism
and disaffection as the mere cloak of a deeply loyal purpose.
You were provoking the true dissidents. And if Poley fails you,
well, there is always a ship to board. He fails you at Deptford,
you sail from Deptford.

- Sail whither?

- You are expert in theology. You can lecture on divinity
abroad. Catholic divinity at Rheims or Douai. Calvinist divinity
in Scotland. Or perhaps both there. And you can write your plays
and send them on hot horseback to Alleyn or Henslowe.

- I am done with plays.

- You are done with a lot of things. You knew this would
happen. There has been a deal of jealousy around.

- So. We are to part. One should always pay attention to
the future. My sole future so far has been the writing of Finis
to a play or poem. When do you think they will come for me?

- Dirty men rattling their manacles here in the unpolluted
manor house of Scadbury. It brings me low. I know not. I think
not before you meet Poley. Poley will have discussed a possible
mission for you with his masters. Fear not yet. All will be well.
We shall eat together in Southwark the day before. There is
something to show you.

- What?

- A small secret. You would not begrudge your dear friend
a small triumph? Ask no more for the present.

And so on May 29 they rode into London, with, to Kit’s
dislike, Ingram Frizer on his nag at the rear. They ate their noon dinner at the New Tabard - soup of boned beef, roasted
veal, and a medlar tansy. Frizer was served apart in the kitchen.
Tom, made merry by red wine from Bordeaux, said:

- It may then be Scotland for you. You recall our visit
together? I had to see his dribbling majesty with a small request
from the Queen and the Archbishop. He was much taken by
me. He toyed and pawed and mauled, it was not pleasant. He
moaned in his pleasure and then leered in the little death, his
silken breeches were soaked. Ave, laddie, ye see that a king is
mickle like movie anither mon. Well, the request was fulfilled,
though very late.

- What request?

- You hear the bell of St George’s? That is not for a
plague burial. It is for the passage of a prisoner of the Bench
prison to his condign end on the gallows. You know St Thomas
a Watering?

- A place to drench horses for the Canterbury pilgrims.
Who are, of course, no more. What happens there?

- You will see all. Come. Frizer shall come too.

- I may speak boldly about Frizer now. If there is any
pleasure in leaving Scadbury it is that I shall see Frizer no
more.

- A wonderfully necessary man. So devoted. He has been
my perambulating moneybag. Of course, he ever disapproved
of what you and I did together. You, he always said, seduced
me into evil ways. But then he came to believe that it was in
the nature of a poet to court perversion. Poesy, he argued, is a
perverting of words, and one thing must come after the other.
Come.

The gallows at St Thomas a Watering was new erected, and
two boys apprenticed to Harley the hangman were completing
the hammering, nails in their mouths. “There were but a few
onlookers, idle artisans, a legless soldier, some small urchins.
Why here? It has not been well announced, here is not usual,
he has a gift of words and might inflame a Tyburn assembly.
Who? Then Kit saw. Penry, that had eaten herring with him at
Edinburgh, that had begged him to look to his soul, that desired a lover’s embrace from his blessed Lord, was dragged to the ladder
on a hurdle of wattles. He did not look at the lookers; his eyes
were on an inward vision. Tom said smiling:

— Penry has evaded capture for long. Over the border and
back. The Scotch slobberer has been true to his word. He has
caught him and faithfully delivered. A proof of amity.

- You call this a triumph?

- I gave my body that it might be done. Or so I wish to
believe. Here is evidence that Scotland’s king is no menace.
Look, Kit, you see here what will not happen to you, whatever
you may fear. The poet of Tamburlaine will not have his guts
wrenched out. Such things do not happen to poets.

Penry on the ladder spoke:

- I address your Queen, may my words carry. You are turned
rather against Jesus Christ and his gospel than to the maintenance
of the same. Your bishops are no more than a troop of bloody
murderers of souls and sacrilegious robbers of churches. And I
would - But here he was swung from the ladder. The hangman
Harley was not skilful with his cutting off of privities and the
tearing out of heart, for Penry saw nothing, dead swiftly with
the cracking of his neckbone. The small crowd had been foolish
enough to expect a Tyburn performance, and it turned away
soon enough from the mesh of bloody entrails exhibited. Tom
grinned, though little, but Frizer cried displeasure at the lack of
art. He saw nothing, it was ill done. Kit thought he would deliver a
damned clout but contented himself with a damned kick with his
heavy riding boot on Frizer’s shin. Things may be better done,
he almost said, when they deal with me at Tyburn, you may be
pleased then. He turned his back on Tom while Frizer whined.
He did not want the horse that was not his. He took from the
saddle the leathern bag in which his few possessions lay. He
walked away, very sick: have us all up there on the scaffold, all
except Archbishop Whitgift and perhaps the Queen, we are all
schismatics and heretics whose inner light contradicts the outer.
They would certainly have Jesus Christ up there, had they not
done so already?

The lodging of Tom Nashe was in Southwark. Kit found him there, dashed down his leathern bag, sat heavily on the
tousled bed. He said:

- Brightness falls from the air. Does that have a meaning?

- It was meant to be hair, not air. To most there is no
difference. The less a meaning can be ascribed the better the
poetry.

-Yes, yes. Shadowing more beauty in their airy brows
Than have the white breasts of the queen of love. Meaning
above meaning. So meaning means little.

- Where do you come from?

- A hanging and drawing. I did not stay for the quartering.

- Martin Marprelate, yes, I heard it was to be today. Well, I
did no more than vilify him in those plays already forgotten. Do
we all bear blame for the poor wretches that are given a lesson
in anatomy before dying?

- Penry missed his lesson. He is now embracing the Lord
Jesus in a kind of spiritual physicality. What have you to drink?