The Secret Life of William Shakespeare (27 page)

When he does see Marlowe next it is in an unexpected place: in the theatre, watching him.
The Battle of Alcazar,
a new piece. Will has been up all night learning his parts, steps on stage half faint and dizzy and overheated, a full crowd at the Theatre under a muggy sky, and his costume is the heavy jewelled cloak that marks him as a Moor, though Abdelmelec is, thank heaven, meant to be light-skinned: blacking-up always gives him a rash. He’ll get through it, always does, and once the momentum begins, and each of them stops acting alone and begins to trade off each other – catch a good glare, tread on the heels of a fierce speech with another – then the dull headache will lift. Always does. Always he finds himself, knows he is in the right place, that this is the summation of his wants. And the day it doesn’t – well, that will be another day. But for now there’s a trailing part of him still in the tiring-house where the boy-actor is trying to cover his spots with white-lead and young Richard Burbage, amazing Burbage, is actually snoozing on the sultan’s prop cushion until his hero’s entrance. (His father is the theatre proprietor, yes, but the coolness still amazes.) And part of Will sniffs out to the audience, gauging numbers and size of the box, looking out for the troublesome, the big, chomping lubbers betting each other they can hit you with their cracked nutshells, the simple sort at the front who are liable to reach up and touch you to see if you’re real. He hates being incidentally touched.

And there is Marlowe. In one of the balcony seats, where the gentry loll. Someone is with him: Will glimpses silky beard, laced ruff, though typically whoever it is seems half crowded out by Marlowe. One of his high connections, perhaps – even Walsingham? Though they say he cares nothing for the arts: if he had to see a play, he would surely attend a Court performance and have done with it. Unless here to assess this play, these players, for dangers to the state. The only danger he can see is that Marlowe will notice the hero seems to have stepped from
Tamburlaine.

By the end of the play, Will has forgotten about Marlowe. Some good poetry in it, and he feels it still on his tongue, a stimulating aftertaste like ginger or mustard. The piece pleased: Richard Burbage, toppling back on to the cushion and biting cheerfully into an apple, says his father is pleased too. So the part-scrolls, the plot-sheets and the playbook will be put carefully away in the property-master’s strongbox, and the piece will play again.

Will can’t be like Burbage. After a performance he is high-strung, hoarse and irritable with reality. This is how Marlowe finds him, just as he is taking off his Moorish cap and shaking out his hair.

‘Will, you played prettily. Burbage, mind, was the triumph. He has such a natural way. Wish I could write for him. Your hair thinning at front? I fancy mine’s going that way. Goose-fat and sulphur helps, they say. But, then, it’s the heat of the active brain that causes it, and I’d rather have that.’

‘What do you want?’

Marlowe’s lower lip comes out like a reproved little boy’s: like Hamnet’s, exactly. ‘Your company, heart. You did well to leave Master Henslowe’s affair t’other week. Some fellows, the ones who fear he’ll put ’em in debtors’ prison, started making toasts and speeches. Oh, great protector of Melpomene and Thalia and so on, and the old brute looks blankly, so they say, “The muses of tragedy and comedy,” and that’s no better. He probably thought they meant some of his whores.’ His breath is furred with liquor. ‘Look, I want to escape yonder grand dullwit, and he won’t lower himself by coming back here. Lord, one obligation leads on to another.’

They eat a meal together, at a rather grubby ordinary close to the Theatre. Will can afford better than this nowadays; some perverse spirit makes him want to inflict it on world-conquering Kit Marlowe. But the perversity is turned back on him. Marlowe loves it, from the greasy trenchers to the scrofulous barmaid. He has a refined taste for the seedy, is soon swapping watermen’s obscenities with a wall-eyed mumbler who eats his cheese with a notched dagger. ‘Don’t provoke him,’ whispers Will, realising too late that this is the worst thing to say: devilment enters Marlowe’s eyes at once.

‘We could manage him between us. A little bloodletting gives you an appetite, you know. Oh, forget I said that. What’s in this pie, think you? Cat or dog?’

‘Rat. The meat’s more grainy, look.’ But he can’t quite catch Marlowe’s tone. The trouble, perhaps.

‘Look, Will, what I want to know is this. What did you mean when you said we’re not going to be friends?’

Startled, Will says: ‘I don’t know. Does it matter?’

‘That’s what I’m asking.’ Schoolmaster-sharp; but there is sweat in his hairline. He draws something with his finger in a pool of spilled drink on the table-top, something like a gallows-tree. ‘I need to know you didn’t take me wrong. And with you it’s hard to tell. Never know where to have you. I suspicion that you are, after all, a better actor than Alleyn or Burbage or any of ’em. But not on the stage.’

‘Why do you need to know?’ It dawns on Will, then. Marlowe’s rumoured tastes: he even hints at them himself, after all. ‘Oh.’ Nearly says flatly: Oh, just that. ‘By friends I meant friends. Plain friends, Canterbury or Stratford friends, if you like. Meaning you and I will always tend to disagree. Beyond that I – I hold no opinion.’

‘You understand, then.’ Flushed, Marlowe rubs out the gallows with his sleeve. ‘Not that I care a damn, Master William, what you think of these matters. But, naturally, the laws being as they are, you could make things difficult for me, if you took me up wrong.’

‘Do you truly think I would do that?’ Will says, in mild disgust.

‘No. But who knows what men will do, if they’re caught between danger and conscience? Or between conscience and advantage. I know whereof I speak. We burn men for addressing God in the wrong way. And we burn them – or assure them they’ll burn hereafter – for desiring the flesh in the wrong way.’ Bravado, but no fool: he keeps his voice lowered now. ‘It would be curious if they should both turn out to be equally unimportant. Oh, I say nothing against the love of women. I did women for a whole year.’ He makes it sound like a soldier’s campaign or an apprenticeship. ‘It was very well in its way. But something, I don’t know, bread-and-sops about it. It’s the only carnality the Church allows us, after all, and the Church always restricts us to the tamest of pleasures.’ Abruptly he laughs and signals for more drink. ‘Noose-talk again. I’ll stop. Let’s talk of poetry.’

‘Gladly,’ Will says, though the gladness is a sick, blue-lipped thing, scarcely able to breathe for envy. ‘Are you writing a new piece?’

‘Toying. A Machiavel piece in mind. Magnificent and devilish scheming. Fascinates. Yet part of me doesn’t believe it any more. Your Machiavel shapes his ends so precisely, and which of us can plan what becomes of us beyond the next morning?’ He scowls at the wall-eyed man. ‘You want a drinking-race? Why, then I’ll fit you.’

Will gets him out of there, eventually. The wall-eyed man is retching in the back alley. ‘Weakling,’ Marlowe calls. He staggers and laughs as Will holds him up. ‘I must have thy neck, Will. Pardon, pardon. We’ll set a great talk going. Don’t fear, I’ll write thee a testament: Will Shakespeare did not accede to my nameless vice.’

‘Tell me if you’re going to be sick,’ Will says grimly. ‘And tell me this – you can’t truly be in danger, surely? I mean because of your irregular life—’

‘Oh, it’s regular, trust me, every fucking night, and you can alter the order of that phrase with no harm to the meaning. Like Kyd’s verse, in fact. I know what you mean, Will, I have friends among the great, isn’t that it? Perhaps I do. But who says that puts you
out
of danger, hm?’

‘Well. You like danger anyhow, don’t you? That business at the alehouse.’

‘I’ll tell you what it is. I court danger because I’m afraid. All the damned time. If I didn’t put myself to the test I’d simply hide in a hole.’

‘Why?’

Marlowe stops and, still leaning heavily on Will’s arm, makes an expansive looping gesture. ‘Because of all this.’ Will comprehends in it the town around them, the unrolling, unending land beyond, the sky of nothing. Marlowe urges him on. ‘I’ve got to sleep. Can you get me home?’

Home, to Will’s surprise, is in Norton Folgate, an enclave of rackety Shoreditch. He supposed Marlowe living somewhere more fashionable: another adjustment. At the foot of the wormy stairs Marlowe pauses, finger to lips.

‘Kyd,’ he whispers, or tries to: drink undoes stealth. ‘We’re sharing a lodging. No, no. Good God, no. The man’s a dried mummy. Only I want to sleep before he begins plaguing me—’

‘Marlowe, is that you? Who’s with you?’ Kyd’s colourless face floats above the banister. His glance falls on Will without interest. ‘Oh. You said you would see my lord’s secretary today, you absolutely engaged for it. What happened?’

‘I did, I did, for God’s sake. And I undertook for you, and plied him thoroughly, and I was your entire advocate, and so you may be assured of your interest with my lord. Now I want sleep.’ Marlowe lurches up; Will keeps a hand at his back.

‘You’re sure? This isn’t the liquor talking?’

‘You needn’t be so profuse with your thanks.’

‘No – I am, I’m grateful, but when am I to wait on my lord?’

‘Tomorrow. There, Will – just there…’ Marlowe sways and slumps so that Will has to half carry him past Kyd to his chamber. Professionally expert in such things, Will knows he is feigning. Once inside and the door closed, Marlowe straightens, yawns, picks his way through incredible mess – clothes, bottles, fruit-peelings, books – to an unmade bed. ‘Tom Kyd looks to be a noble’s secretary. He wants to be known as a gentleman, not a mere rascally play-maker.’ He drags off his shoes, boylike, by digging his heels along the floor. ‘I suspicion you are going to say, “Why can’t a man be both?”’

Will is drawn to the table by the window, where there is an astrolabe, writing materials, papers. The light is fading: it crawls across the page like disturbed spiders as he cranes, quickly reads. His mind runs hands of apprehension round the blocks of sound and sense, picks out phrases to find them stuck in him like sharp jewels. Not sure how long he loiters there. Marlowe is in shirt when he glances up, and approaching the table. His throat looks like a hollow in tawny sand.

‘What dost want, Will?’ There’s a jug of water on the table: careless, Marlowe swigs, though there’s likely a flux in it.

Will blinks, shudders, trying to splice himself back into reality, the heartless now. ‘I want to be thee, Kit,’ he says quietly, pointing at the papers; and it seems the crudest, strongest thing he has ever said, like blaspheming in passion.

Marlowe chuckles softly, breathes deep. ‘Be me then.’ It is as if they have emerged at the exit of a maze: here, sudden clarity. ‘Incorporate me. There’s ample room in there, no?’ He places his hand on Will’s breast, tapping. ‘I’m sure I wouldn’t be lonely. But thou must decide first, Will. Must choose, heart.’ Yawning, with ribbed catlike mouth, he turns back to the bed. ‘Thou art here, but not here. That new barn still calls, hey? You must burn the barn.’ Marlowe stretches himself out to sleep. He gives the curious impression that he can still see you through his smoky closed eyelids. ‘Burn the barn, Will.’

*   *   *

It was better, this summer visit. Longer, for one. He wasn’t touring. And for long moments Anne could even convince herself that it wasn’t a visit at all.

Seated opposite him at dinner, with the children standing at their plates either side of him – and how patient he was with their splashes and messes and dainty refusals – she could think this presence of his was not an exception but ordinary: a page like a hundred others in the book. But, then, she didn’t understand books: she set herself a nightly task alongside Edmund, but he still outpaced her. And she didn’t understand her own conclusion, from Will’s tender, loving way throughout that summer – her conclusion that he was changing. That she was losing him.

Losing him, or losing a fight for him? Fighting who, or what? Still she felt no alien kisses on his lips, saw no absent shape in his fire-dreaming. A morbid sensation, Bartholomew would have said. She said it herself when she started awake in the morning and looked on her husband’s face beside her – convinced, utterly convinced, that his face would be different: fine, comely, lovable, perhaps, but not the one she knew. But no. Where, then?

In the space between words, between the lines he wrote in their bedchamber after supper, crouching curled, the trunk as his desk. In the distance that opened up once when they spent the evening with the Sadlers, and Will – replying to Hamnet Sadler’s genial question about tobacco-smoking in London – answered and then went beyond answering.

‘And your tobacco-shop is not merely a place to buy, you can take instruction in the art there also. The juniper-fire always burns, so you may take the tongs and light your pipe and stretch your legs and there cogitate, day-long perhaps. I have seen men come out in the evening quite dried and kippered.’

‘Curious, for so many say it’s foul,’ Hamnet Sadler said, with his beaming curiosity. ‘And does it make a man drunk like liquor?’

‘I can’t say myself, for the taste of the smoke doesn’t like me, and my tongue turns to a cinder. But from what I hear and observe it has a moiety of all sorts of drunkenness in it, without ever attaining to any singleness or height: so, a man may be fumy and busy-brained as if he has drunk arrack. Then there is a little Malmsey-wine in it that makes a man deep and politic and lay his finger to his nose with twittle-twattle, I know what I know; then a little of the mellowness of sack that makes a man ruddy as a Michaelmas pippin and all inclined to love thee, thou noble heart, have I told thee how excellent a friend thou art, none better, I will run this sword, look you, through the guts of the first man who says thou art not the world’s sweetest fellow. Aye, that’s your cider-drunk, with a hot-spurred temper that leaps ahead to your next offence before the first is committed; and then a tincture of your metheglin that sews up your eyes singing and makes an oaken table-top as soft as the poppied couch of Morpheus…’