A Dead Man in Deptford (39 page)

- Sour wine. Have you money?

Kit counted what was in his purse. £1 lls 5d. It would not
take him far. He asked: May I stay here the night? I must be
at Deptford tomorrow.

- You are welcome to the floor and a blanket. And a
bundle of books for a pillow. You travel?

- That is to be seen. We can afford a bottle of something.
But I must be sober in the morning.

Cheese and bread and some shallots in aliger. And some
Rhenish.

- I taste Robin Greene’s death when I drink Rhenish, Tom
Nashe said. Is he too embracing Jesus Christ? The stink of his
breath must be a handicap. But of course he is now purified.

- And so the less Robin Greene. Is there truly anything after?

- You are the divinity scholar.

- To be dissolved in elements. To lose all that is or was
Christopher Marlowe. I have a great name, though not many call
me by it. I bear Christ on my back. And who or what is Christ?

- A fine poem, though burdened with too much meaning.
The only true meaning is syntax.

- There is a fine heresy.

- Heresy pushes us forward. Church and State drag us
back. Now you may report me to the Privy Council.

- So we hang together.

- Brightness falls from the air. That could be Lucifer or
Icarus. Or both in one. But it is also greying tresses.

Grey hair is a privilege. The badge of him who survives.

- Pretty countryfolk survive. And grave senators with influence. I know of no greyheaded poets.

- The dissolution will be a relief.

- You are gloomy, Kit. Drink, Christopher.

MORNING Deptford and the shipbuilders early awork. The
chandlers’ shops busy. Hounds from the Queen’s kennels howled
bitterly. A faint stink from the Queen’s slaughterhouse. But
was not the whole land her slaughterhouse? A firmer stink
from the tanneries. Inland gulls wove over the waters and
crarked. Sails, sails, a wilderness of them. Ships - the Peppercorn, the Great Venture, the Majesty, the God Shield Us, the
Neptune (a safer god) - would leave with the morning river
tide. And there the Golden Hind lay, to be chipped of its
timber by the new pilgrims. Kit walked in the clean air to
the house of Mrs, Widow rather, Eleanor Bull. She greeted
him at the door in her plain black. Doubtless, unmolested,
she visited the Brownist houses to worship a plain God. She
said:

- They are already come. They wait on you.

- They?

- You have this chamber and the garden for your meeting.
They have ordered dinner at noon. Fish in a pastry coffin. I
have wine.

They? Kit went where told, bearing his leathern bag. It
was the room he knew, he had dined there with Tom before
they embarked for Scotland. Frizer and Skeres sat together at the table, counting money. Skeres had endued his dirty self.
Frizer whined at once:

- Nothing. I bear no grudge. Your anger was in order. My
shin hurts but it is a reminder that I was wrong. It is enough
that a man die without our sneering.

- You did not sneer. You exclaimed on the hangman’s bad
art. Well, so I am forgiven. I am to meet Mr Poley here. I was
not told of my meeting you too.

- Friends, friends, again and again friends, Skeres said.
May we thou and thee? May you be called Kit?

- Christopher.

- Formal, aye, but a holy name. Shall I explain? Ingram
and I are in Deptford to collect a debt. We have collected it
and now count.

- A hundred per centum?

- A hundred and twenty. A difficult young man, dead of
the plague, alas, but his father very hearty. He too was difficult
but we prevailed.

Kit sat. Frizer and Skeres were already on wine. There
were four cups. Without invitation Kit poured for himself.
Money was neither clean nor filthy, it was merely needful. He
said:

- Are you in the lending spirit now?

Both looked up from their coins in some surprise. Frizer said:

- What in the way of pledge?

- I understood you loaned without security.

- Never, Skeres said. There is always something - a messuage, a fine wardrobe, a stable of horses. You need money?

- Somewhat desperately. Else I would not ask.

- Else you would not lower yourself, Frizer said. Well,
your good life at Scadbury was assured by lending on what
you would call usury. But you praised usury in your play of
the rich Jew.

- Hardly praised. He died in a hot cauldron.

- And dies again soon with the opening of the playhouses,
Skeres said. Dies and is reborn. Plays preach of the resurrection.

- Profound, Kit said. Most deep.

- You repeat yourself. The words mean the same. How
much do you require?

- Five pound only.

- At one hundred and fifty per centum, Skeres said. Do
you agree?

- I must.

As a pledge we will have your sword and belt, Frizer
said. A mere token. A manner of a receipt or quittance.

- So, Kit said, unfastening, I am disarmed.

- You are with friends, Mr Christopher, Skeres said. And
you shall be with another friend at noon. Ingram’s master will
be along to eat with us.

- He was most distraught at your manner of parting, Frizer
said. What he called his triumph was, he saw, very hollow and
unworthy. He will not have it that dead Penry was arrested in
England. Young men will have their dreams and boasts.

- And the money?

- Fear not, Skeres said. It will be placed down for you
when we play at the tables.

- I am not here to play backgammon.

- You are here to eat and drink and make merry, and
what better merriment than a clinking of dice over the tables?

- Much depends on the dice.

Skeres laughed, showing teeth that appeared paint-blackened.
Have no fear of the dice. I am no man of the barred catertreys.
Nor is our Ingram, no cleaner or fairer man ever walked. You
are among friends.

- As you are warm to remind me.

- Good, good and again good. Skeres stood, stretched, and
walked to the wall where a lute hung. An instrument of music
among people who detest pagan twanging, he said. Ah well, they
are in barber-shops too. This is damnably mistuned, dirty thumb
on the strings.

- There is a softness in you then, Kit said.

- You know how soft and sugared and dulcet. I am most
pliable. I will do anything for peace. And gain, of course, I must
live. What shall I sing? Ah, I know. Listen. It appeared that he knew but one triad of the mode major. He sang, and the voice
was high and sweet, nay over-sweet:

I forget the words. Their author must remind me.

-No matter, Kit said. I have forgot them myself. The
writing down of verses is a means of cleansing the mind of
them.

- Cleanse? Frizer said. You say cleanse as if the verses were
filth. They are surely not so. A shepherd sings to his love, what
could be prettier or more wholesome? But writing them did you
have a shepherdess in your mind? Did you see some young and
pretty lass ready to be wooed to lift her kirtle and say now Roger?

- A boy rather in a shepherdess guise, Frizer said, twanging.
There is a sour note, let me screw. It is the way of the stage,
is it not? Now thrust in to the sticking place. There, better. I
have wondered oft what a man and a boy will do together. It is
against nature.

- It is called the sin of Sodom, Kit said. The God of the
Hebrews warned his people of the need to fill the land with
little Hebrews. Those who took their love otherwise must be
punished with fire and brimstone. We inherit the law of the
Hebrews.

- But even in Aristotle, Frizer said, it is laid down that
love is for engendering.

- You have read Aristotle?

- I have little Greek, alas. But it is logic, is it not, that
entwining is for engendering?

- Do you entwine and engender, Mr Frizer?

- Oh, I have had moments in hayfields but not in indentured
beds. Nick Skeres here too. Couple but not beget, not knowingly.
We are like you, not men for marriage. But why should a boy’s
body excite lust?

- Because of smoothness and pliability, much like a woman
you will say. But love is raised above the animal, for animals are driven only to beget. So was it prized by the Greeks. Including
Aristotle.

- But it is against nature, Frizer said again.

- Many things are. This for an example. And Kit took out
his pipe and tobacco. Skeres was eager, over-eager, to look for
a flint and kindling on the window ledge. On the mantelpiece
a candle waited in its sconce. Skeres inflamed. Kit lighted from
the candle and drew in, drew out. Frizer feigned suffocation,
saying:

- Well, that is a stink that Scadbury will no longer know.
Though it seems to me embedded in the walls and hangings.

- Novelty, Kit said, puffing, oft entails suffering.

- Like the sodomitical act, Skeres said, sitting. It must be
most painful to have a hard rod thrust into the nether orifice.
That was a most painful punishment you had for the King in
your play. Painful but fitting.

- There are emollients, Kit said, oil, butter and the like.
The pleasure is considerable.

- For the giver or the taker?

- For both.

- Ah, both Skeres and Frizer went. For the serving girl the
Widow Bull employed had entered with knives, trenchers, and
a fine salt cellar. Kit said:

- The Lord of the Manor is to come when?

- Oh, Frizer said, we may eat without him. This is a feast
for us three. As for the reckoning, there is time enough. You are
a good girl, my dear? he said to the wench who placed knives and
trenchers. He stroked her arm. You go not with naughty men?
Which of us three would you say was the naughtiest?

- I know not, sir. And she left to collect the fish baked
in its coffin.

- He may come early or late, Frizer said. He rides about
London on marriage business, lawyers and the like. And there
is Mr Poley to come. Well, we shall sup together. What shall
we sup on?

- Flesh, Skeres said. The Widow Bull oft visits the royal
slaughterhouse. “There is good flesh there. Flesh, he said again. In his mouth it seemed not savoury. Then the steaming coffin
was brought in. Frizer served, cracking the brown crust, letting
odours arise. Dates, mace, nutmeg, cloves, rosemary, thyme,
dace, trout, pike.

- You recall Dover, Mr Christopher? Skeres asked. There
is nothing like a sole of Dover, but this is good. And he piled
spiced fish on pastry and hungrily and smokily ate. He said,
through smoke: We eat the fishes of the seas and the rivers.
We do not speak of hunting or killing but of catching. They are
caught and napped on the head. Or, with crabs and lobsters, they
are not napped but boiled alive. Do we feel pity or compassion?
No, they belong to a world not ours. Now, to slaughter a calf or
a bullock or a lamb is to feel a certain remorse, for they seem
close to us. Is that not so? A man is a kind of brute but he is
not a kind of fish. But to kill a calf is to wish to eat it, to kill
a man is what? Whatever it is, it is, like your manner of love,
against nature. But if your manner of love is good, why is not
the killing of a man?

- There is little connection, Kit said, eating with small
appetite. Except that the loving and the killing are acts gratuitous
that proclaim the nature of humanity. But to kill a man or indeed
woman or child is to offend against a principle of cognition. For
we know the world to exist only by our seeing it. You shut eyes
in a man’s death and in a sense you kill the universe.

- At Cambridge you learned this? Frizer asked, the palm
of his hand a mess of broken crust and fish.

- At Cambridge I thought on these things.

- He is a man of thought, Skeres said to Frizer, not like
us, who are more lowly. But thought will have a man killed
sooner than following his round of work and rest and devotion
and begetting. Thought is a dagger, he said, and looked for
applause. Frizer nodded many times and, feigning a greater
pain than he could properly have felt in his kicked shin, picked
up the emptied wine jug and went with it to the kitchen to be
filled. Skeres in small irritation spat into his hand a multitude
of pike bones, saving: Why have they so many? A man’s bones
are few and sturdy. I know them all.

- You have broken them all?

- Mr Christopher, I break no bones. You mind the time
you puked at the Babington executions? I puked too, inwardly.
The tearing and cracking. An end should be quick and sharp
without malice.

- For whom do you work now?

- For myself. For one and another. Not much now for
Robin Poley. Sometimes for him. But not now much. The
ship from Flushing is in late today. It is the Good Hope.

- I sailed thither on the Peppercorn.

- Aye, the Peppercorn now doth the coastal waters. It leaks
and needs caulking. Ah, here is Ingram with a brimming crock.
We are having a good day together. Shall we play the tables now?