Ruled Britannia (39 page)

“Always,” Shakespeare said. Burbage pursued wealth and fame with a singlemindedness that left the poet half jealous, half appalled.

Laughing, Burbage said, “It is one of Kit's plays, mind. A relentless man of his is twice as relentless as any other poet's, as an angry man of his hath twice the choler and a frightened man twice the fear. With his mighty line, he is never one to leave the auditors wondering what sort of folk his phantoms be.”

Shakespeare nodded. “Beyond doubt, you speak sooth. But come you down.” He gestured. “I'd have a word with you.”

“What's toward?” Burbage sat at the edge of the stage, then slid down into the groundlings' pit.

In a low voice, Shakespeare said, “Marlowe is fled. I pray he be fled. Anthony Bacon, belike, was but the first boy-lover the dons and the inquisitors sought. An Kit remain in England, I'd give not a groat for his life.”

“A pox!” Burbage exclaimed, as loud as ever—loud enough to make half a dozen players and stagehands look toward him to see what had happened. He muttered to himself, then went on more quietly: “How know you this?”

“From Kit's own lips,” Shakespeare answered. “He found me yesternight. I bade him get hence, quick as ever he could—else he'd not stay quick for long. God grant he hearkened to me.”

“Ay, may it be so.” Burbage made a horrible face. “May it be so indeed. But e'en Marlowe fled's a heavy blow strook against the theatre. For all his cravings sodomitical—and for all his fustian bombast, too—he's the one man I ken fit to measure himself alongside you.”

“I thank you for your kindness, the which he would not do.” Shakespeare sighed. “We are of an age, you know. But he came first to London, first to the theatre. I daresay he reckoned me but an upstart crow. And when my name came to signify more than his, it gnawed at him as the vulture at Prometheus his liver.” He remembered how very full of spleen Marlowe had been when Thomas Phelippes passed over him for this plot.

“Never could he dissemble,” Burbage said, “not for any cause.” In an occupied kingdom, he might have been reading Marlowe's epitaph.

“I know.” Shakespeare sighed again. “I sent him down to the Thames. I hope he found a ship there, one bound for foreign parts. If not a ship, a boatman who'd bear him out of London to some part whence he might get himself gone.”

“Boatmen there aplenty, regardless of the hour.” Richard Burbage seemed to be trying to convince himself as much as Shakespeare. After a moment, he added, “What knows Kit of . . . your enterprise now in train?”

“That such an enterprise
is
in train, the which is more than likes me,” Shakespeare answered. It was also less than the truth, he realized, remembering the copy of the
Annals
Marlowe had given him. But he said no more to Burbage. What point to worrying the player? If the Spaniards or the English Inquisition caught Marlowe, he knew enough
to put paid to everyone and everything. And what he knew he would tell; he had not the stuff of martyrs in him.

“They seek him but for sodomy.” Yes, Burbage
was
trying to reassure himself. Sodomy by itself was a fearsome crime, a capital crime. Next to treason, though, it was the moon next to the sun.

“The enterprise”—Shakespeare liked that bloodless word—“goes on apace. Last night, or ever I saw Marlowe, I wrote
finis
to
Boudicca
.”

“Good. That's good, Will.” Burbage set a hand on his shoulder. “Now God keep
Boudicca
from writing
finis
to us all.”

 

A
SQUAD OF
Spanish soldiers at his back, Lope de Vega strode along the northern bank of the Thames, not far from London Bridge. Not so long ago, he'd taken a boat across the river with Nell Lumley to see the bear-baiting in Southwark. He kicked a pebble into the river. He'd crossed the Thames with his mistress—with one of his mistresses—but he'd come back alone.

He straightened, fighting against remembered humiliation. Hadn't he been getting tired of Nell anyway? Now that he was in love with Lucy Watkins, what did the other Englishwoman matter?

One of the troopers with him pointed. “There's another boatman,
señor
.”

“
Gracias
, Miguel. I see him, too,” Lope answered. He shifted to English to call out to the fellow: “God give you good day.”

“And to you, sir.” The boatman swept off his ragged hat (which, in an earlier, a much earlier, life had probably belonged to a gentleman) and gave de Vega an awkward bow. “Can't carry you and all your friends, sir, I fear me.” His gap-toothed smile showed that was meant for a jest.

Lope smiled back. Some wherrymen took their boats out into the Thames empty to keep from talking to him. He'd do what he could to keep this one happy. With a bow of his own—a bow he was careful not to make too smooth, lest it be seen as mockery—he said, “Might I ask you somewhat?”

“Say on, Master Don. I'll answer.”

Better and better
, de Vega thought. “Were you here on the river night before last?”

“That I was, your honor,” the boatman replied. “Meseems I'm ever here. Times is hard. Needs must get what coin I can, eh?”

“Certes,” Lope said. “Now, then—saw you a gentleman, an English gentleman, that evening? A man of my years, he would be, more or less, handsome, round-faced, with dark hair longer than mine own and a thin fringe of beard. He styles himself Christopher Marlowe, or sometimes Kit.”

He looked for another pebble to kick, but didn't find one. He did not want to hunt Marlowe, not after spending so much time with him in tiring rooms and taverns. But if what he wanted and what his kingdom wanted came into conflict, how could he do anything but his duty?

The wherryman screwed up his face in badly acted thought. “I cannot rightly recollect, sir,” he said at last.

“That surprises me not,” Lope said sourly, and gave him a silver sixpence. He'd already spent several shillings, and got very little back for his money.

Nor did he this time. The boatman pocketed the coin and took off his hat again. “Gramercy, your honor. God bless you for showing a poor man kindness. I needs must say, though, I saw me no such man.” He spread his oar-callused hand in apology.

A couple of Lope's troopers knew some English. One of them said, “We ought to give that bastard a set of lumps for playing games with us.”

Maybe the boatman understood some Spanish. He pointed to the next fellow with a rowboat, saying, “Haply George there knows somewhat of him you seek.”

“We shall see,” Lope said in English. In Spanish, he added, “I wouldn't waste my time punishing this motherless lump of dung.” If the boatman could follow that, too bad.

The trooper who'd suggested beating the fellow said, “This river smells like a motherless lump of dung.” He wrinkled his nose.

Since he was right, Lope couldn't very well disagree with him. All he said was, “Come on. Let's see what George there has to say.”
Let's see if I can waste another sixpence
.

Gulls soared above the Thames in shrieking swarms. One swooped down and came up with a length of gut as long as Lope's arm in its beak. Half a dozen others chased it, eager to steal the prize. De Vega's stomach did a slow lurch. A pursuing gull grabbed the gut and made away with it. The bird that had scooped it from the water screeched in anger and frustration.

Boats of all sizes went up and down the river. “Westward ho!”
shouted the wherrymen bound for Westminster or towns farther up the Thames. “Eastward ho!” shouted the men heading towards the North Sea. Westbound and eastbound boats had to dodge those going back and forth between London and Southwark. Sometimes they couldn't dodge, and fended one another off with oars and poles and impassioned curses.

“Consumption catch thee, thou gorbellied knave!” a boatman yelled.

“Jolt-head! Botchy core! Moon-calf! Louse of a lazar!” returned the fellow who'd fallen foul of him. Instead of trying to hold their boats apart, they started jabbing at each other with their poles. One of them went into the river with a splash.

“Not the worst sport to watch,” a Spanish soldier said.

“
Sí
,” Lope said, and then went back to English, calling, “You there, sirrah! Be you George?”

“Ay, 'tis the name my mother gave me,” the wherryman answered. “What would you,
señor
?” He pronounced it more like the English word
senior
.

De Vega asked him about Marlowe. He waited for the vacant stare he'd seen so many times before. To his surprise, he didn't get it. Instead, George nodded. “I carried such a man, yes,” he said. “What's he done? Some cozening law, an I mistake me not. A barrator, peradventure, or a figure caster. Summat shrewd.”

“Whither took you him?” Lope asked, excitement rising in him. Marlowe wasn't (so far as Lope knew) an agent provocateur or an astrologer, but he was a clever man—though he might have been more clever not to let his cleverness show. “Tell me!”

Now George looked blank. De Vega paid him without hesitation. The boatman eyed the little silver coin, murmured, “God bless the Queen and the King,” and made it disappear. He nodded to Lope. “As you say, sir, not yesternight, but that afore't. Ten of the clock, methinks, or a bit later. I'd fetched back a gentleman and his lady from the bear-baiting at Southwark. . . .” He pointed across the Thames, as if towards a foreign country.

“I know of the bear-baiting, and of crossing the river,” Lope said tightly. He knew more of such things than he'd wanted to. Shaking his head didn't make the memories go away. “What then?”

“Why, then, sir, I bethought myself, should I hie me home, for that it was a foggy night and for that curfew would come anon, or should I
stay yet a while to see what chance might give? Fortune brings in some boats that are not steered, they say. And my boat—the wight whereof I speak, you understand—”

“Yes, yes.” Lope fought to hide his impatience. Did this ignorant wherryman think him unable to grasp a metaphor? “Say on, sirrah. Say on.”

“I'll do't,” George said. “This wight came along the river seeking a boat. ‘Whither would you?' I asked him. I mind me the very words he said. He said, ‘You could row me to hell, and to-night I'd thank you for't.' Then he made as if to shake his head, and laughed a laugh that left me sore afeard, for meseemed 'twas a madman's laugh, and could be none other. And he said, ‘Why this is hell, nor am I out of it.' I thought him daft, but—I see you stir, your honor. Know you these words?”

“I do. I know them well. They are from a play, a play writ by the man I seek. That your man spake them proves him that very man. Were he mad or not, you took his penny?”

The boatman nodded. “I did, for a madman's penny spends as well as any other. He bade me take him to Deptford, to the Private Dock there, and so I did. A longer pull than some I make, for which reason I told him I'd have tuppence, in fact, not just the single penny, and he gave it me.”

“To Deptford, say you?” That was a shrewd choice. It was close to London, but beyond the city's jurisdiction, lying in the county of Kent. Till the Armada came, it had been a leading English naval yard; even now, many merchant ships tied up at the Private Dock. Lope knew he would have to go through the motions of pursuit, but any chance of catching Marlowe was probably long gone.

“Ay, sir. Deptford. He was quiet as you please in the boat—even dozed somewhat. I thought I'd judged too quick. But he was ta'en strange again leaving the boat. He looked about him, and he said, ‘Hell hath no limits, nor is circumscribed in one self place; for where we are is hell, and where hell is there must we ever be.' I had a priest bless the boat, sir, the very next day, to be safe.” He crossed himself.

Had he been a Catholic while Elizabeth ruled England? Maybe, but Lope wouldn't have bet a ha'penny on it. He also made the sign of the cross. “I think you need not fear,” he told the wherryman. “Once more, Marlowe but recited words he had earlier writ.” He wasn't surprised Marlowe had quoted his own work. He would have been surprised—he
would have been thunderstruck—had Marlowe quoted, say, Shakespeare. The man was too full of himself for that.

“Are you done with me, sir?” George asked.

“Nearly.” Lope took out a sheet of paper and pen and ink. He wrote, in Spanish, a summary of what the boatman had said. “Have you your letters?” he asked. As he'd expected, George shook his head. Lope thrust paper and pen at him. “Make your mark below my writing, then.”

“What say the words?” The boatman couldn't even tell English from Spanish. De Vega translated. George took the pen and made a sprawling X. De Vega and one of his soldiers who was literate witnessed the mark. George asked, “Why seek you this fellow?” Maybe, despite the sixpence, he regretted talking to a Spaniard.

Too late for your second thoughts now
, Lope thought as he answered, “Because he is a sodomite.”

“Oh.” Whatever regrets the Englishman might have had disappeared. “God grant you catch him, then. A filthy business, buggery.”