Authors: Siobhan Burke
“Then so many years later I saw him again, swaggering through
the London streets, a poet and a playwright. You, Kit, were so like him as to
make one think of miracles, if one did not remember that the Boleyns, like the
Marlowes, were a Kentish family. George had at least one bastard, and I know
that he provided for the child, arranging for either apprenticeship or dowry,
depending upon the child’s sex, which I never knew.”
“I had wondered why you so favored me. My—tastes? habits? — were
no secret, and of a nature to repel most women, I would have thought. You were
not the kind of woman to try to cure me of my ‘affliction’ at least. I do have
one rather uncomfortable memory of having to leave off frequenting the Anchor,
because one of the wenches was sure that the right woman could make me change
my ways, and she, of course, was that woman.” I stifled a laugh. “On the other
hand, depending upon how one looks at it, one might say that the right woman
did indeed make me change my ways.” Rózsa looked at me quizzically for a
moment, then joined in my laughter. It did not occur to me until later that her
laughter seemed somewhat forced.
The following evening I woke before dark. I dressed and made my
way downstairs alone, and followed the sounds of soft voices to the little
parlor where I was wont to meet Geoffrey and Nicolas. The door was ajar, and
the note of anguish in Rózsa’s voice stopped me even as I lifted my hand to
push it open.
“But he’s a stranger! A ghost! I think after all, Geoffrey, that
I did much harm in making the exchange with him. Better he should have truly
died than to live on a cripple, with only half his wits!” I could hear her
pacing, and drew back a little into the shadows of the hall.” He is almost like
a child, but a child in a man’s body. It is not just the reading—he is
diffident where once he was decisive, hesitant where he was hasty. You did not
really know him before, the reckless brilliance, the edge of his humor. To see
that razor wit become a sickle of leather! And his present state is souring
even his few memories of what he was. He cannot think now what he might have
thought then, or how.” There was a muffled thump as she threw herself down on a
chair.
“Give him time, sweetheart. I took eleven years to regain my
full sensibilities—Marlowe has not had even eleven months,” Geoffrey said, his
voice kind, as it never was when he spoke to me. She stood and commenced to
pace again.
“Perhaps you are right. I shall return to Paris, to give him
more time to heal. I cannot bear to be with him now; I lose my George all over
again with every glance at him—I had not remembered that there were worse
things than dying!” She was so distraught that she passed me in my dark corner
without noticing me. When she had gone I started to slip back to my room, only
to find Geoffrey watching me from the doorway. He motioned me in, and I took my
accustomed chair. I sat staring at my hands, too stunned to speak. After a
moment Geoffrey shifted in his chair.
“I am sorry, Christopher, that you heard that. Rózsa is very
upset—”
“Yes. It must be a truly horrifying thing, to throw a lifeline
to a drowning poet, and drag a disfigured half-wit back in his place,” I said
bitterly, and he raised his hand.
“That is not fair, Christopher, either to you or to Rózsa. I
tried to warn her, though she did not want to believe me. But neither has she
seen the progress you have already made. You will heal, that I do promise,
though it may take a very long time, a very long time indeed. During that time,
however, we will—you will be—”
“Put under charge? Given a keeper? Who shall be burdened with
that honor? You?” He nodded, and I was angry, suddenly and furiously. We stood
at the same moment, and Geoffrey caught my arm, holding me almost effortlessly.
I struggled but it was useless. He savagely pushed me back into the chair, no
less angry than I.
“Do not spurn us, Christopher,” he hissed. “You have this
choice, and this choice only, to live upon my terms, or to die, here and now.”
He meant it. I could see it in his eyes. If I so chose, he would kill me before
I could change my mind. I looked down, trying to think. “Well?”
“I want to live,” I whispered. “Whatever the terms.” I raised my
eyes to his, and he nodded coolly and started to walk away. “But,” I added, and
he wheeled to face me. “But, if it is possible, I’d rather not see Rózsa for a
time. I’d fain not put her to the strain of another such performance as last
night’s; she hid her feelings most adroitly.” He relaxed slightly, and nodded
again. He left, and I sat staring at the fire for a long time, still trying to
think.
When I was well enough, we traveled to Italy, and there I felt
for a time that I had come home. Geoffrey had me drilled in equitation, in
swordsmanship and any other discipline he thought necessary to maintain my
current social position; I was gratified to find that I mastered my lessons in
nobility as easily as I had once mastered grammar and rhetoric. Before long I
was able to ignore, if not forget, the pain and sense of failure Rózsa’s words
had given me. The injury that had taken so much had at least left my arrogance
relatively intact.
When the first year had passed, Rózsa joined us there, and she
and I struck an uneasy peace, as of siblings raised apart and meeting for the
first time as adults. The plots of plays lay thick as autumn leaves upon the
ground there, and I had fretted over my inability to write them until Rózsa had
proposed a simple solution: I would dictate, and she would write them down. We
had made more than one attempt at this compromise, but I found that whatever
spark had fired my talents had burned out of me, and the words I produced were
stilted and awkward, worse than any of the “jigging rhymes” I had so despised
in my lifetime. I gave the endeavor over to Rózsa, who found that she had a
taste for it, and contented myself with collaborating on plots and staging,
while she wrote the plays. I wondered at the time if she truly appreciated my
help, or if she merely humored the half-wit. I still do not know.
Nicholas Skeres was pimping for several doxies, the eldest a
raddled forty, the youngest no more than fourteen. He approached me as I
lounged against the wall of the shabby dockside tavern, and began trying to
induce me to make use of them. The passing years had not been kind to him, I
noted. His muscle had run to fat, his matted hair was thinner, greyer, and
alive with vermin, as was the ratty beard that failed to cover his sagging
jowls. I merely shrugged and turned away to continue my conversation with one
of the lads frequenting the place, but that was enough to let an astute pander
guess where my interests lay. He wandered off, but watched me speculatively as
I later left the crowded room.
More than three years had passed since we left England. I had
had a surfeit of traveling, longing to return to my native land and to embark
upon my overdue revenge, so we had returned to Blackavar, leased to us for an
indeterminate length of time. I had been well coached in the royal role of
Geoffrey’s younger brother, our presentation at court being imminent, but
vengeance drove me to my old haunts, some of the more disreputable taverns and
inns of London. At Geoffrey’s request I prowled incognito, for, he said, while
such disreputable occupations were not uncommon in royal younger brothers, as
he had reason to know, they were still an embarrassment. Within three months I
had succeeded in tracing the first of my murderers.
It was several nights later that I returned to Skeres’ den. I
caught him eyeing me, and gave the lout a good look at the heavy purse I
carried. The ugly man drew a thin, pretty youth into a dark corner, speaking to
him earnestly, gesturing towards me, the mysterious man with the heavy purse.
The boy looked defiant, then scared, finally nodding in apparent resignation
before making his way through the smoky room. His invitation to entertain me
was given sulkily and obviously under duress, but I feigned not to notice and
followed the young man from the inn. Lige, Elijah Lyly, as he had introduced
himself, explained that the dark and twisting alley was a short cut to his
lodgings and drew me after him into the darkness.
“This is not the way to your lodgings, is it, Elijah?” I said
softly, turning the starveling boy to face me. I had not fed in almost a week
and the awareness of his pulsing blood was all but overpowering. “I will not
hurt you,” I breathed, and drew the young man into a kiss. Lyly resisted, but
only for a moment, then the fascination overtook him and he relaxed—I had
learned my lessons well. My teeth found the vein and his sweet blood filled my
mouth. I forced myself to take but a little, then withdrew, speaking to the
dazed youth in a low and lulling murmur.
The sounds of pursuit echoed in the alley’s mouth, and I turned
to face the hounds, placing young Lyly safely behind me. Skeres and two
companions spread out to flank me in the small yard at the alley’s end. One
man, a ruffian called Thomas Cully, laughed and showed a rusty blade, while the
other, a stranger to me, hefted a short but weighty club. Skeres stood back and
set the lantern he carried carefully on the ground then motioned the other two
forward. He leant against the wall to watch the fun.
I lazily drew the Italian snaphaunce pistol from beneath my
cloak and leveled it at Cully’s head. The two stopped and glanced uncertainly
at Skeres, who cursed softly at the sudden appearance of the pistol. Too
swiftly for mortal eyes to follow, I smashed the gun’s long barrel against
Cully’s skull, dropping him, and caught the second knave with the rebound
before aiming the pistol at Skeres. His face pale under the dirt, he tried to
plead with me, but fell silent at an abrupt movement of the pistol.
“Elijah,” I said softly, “go to sleep until I bid you wake,” and
Skeres’ eyes widened to see the youth close his eyes obediently, although he
remained standing against the alley wall.
“And now, Nick, it is time for the reckoning,” I murmured. I
pulled off the eye-patch I wore and turned so the lantern light fell on the
puckered, purple scar. “Do you not know me, Nick? No? Marlowe, who paid so many
reckonings for you, whom you repaid with treachery and murder?” I ignored the
strangled sound Skeres made. “Yes, I died, but I yet live, or at least after a
fashion. How?” Keeping the pistol level, I pulled the boy to me, sinking my
pointed canine teeth into his throat again, my gaze never straying from Skeres,
as he watched in horror. I raised my head and licked the blood from my lips
just as Skeres, with a cry, hurled himself at the alley mouth. I dropped the
pistol and was on him before he had gone two steps, catching him by the thin,
greasy hair. I had scooped Cully’s knife from the ground in passing, and I
slashed it against the terrified man’s throat, tearing through vein and artery,
windpipe and gullet, with one brutal motion. I coolly stepped out of the way of
the fountaining blood, retrieved my pistol, and stood watching in grim
satisfaction as Skeres pawed at his throat in a futile attempt to staunch the
flow.
“Be thankful, Nick,” I hissed. “Yours is a quick death. The
others will not be so fortunate.” There was a protesting gurgle from Skeres,
and he died. I turned to Lyly. “Elijah,” I said,” come with me.” At the mouth
of the alley I woke the young man, after admonishing him to remember nothing of
the night’s encounters.
A few nights later I struck up a fresh acquaintance with the
lad, and eventually found him a place with the Lord Chamberlain’s players.
There was no inquiry into the death of Nicholas Skeres, so I assumed that his
two fellows, upon awaking to find the corpse and the bloody blade, had been at
some pains to conceal the deed.
Not long after Skeres’ demise a letter came for me. I took it to
Geoffrey to have it read. It proved to be a cunningly written invitation from
Robert Cecil, to meet with him in order to discuss matters of “mutual interest
and benefit”. Since it was well known that Cecil had a desire to spread his,
and England’s, influence onto the continent, it did not take much thought to
see what he was carefully not saying—he wanted to recruit an agent to act in
his interest in the east. Geoffrey accompanied me to the meeting, much to
Cecil’s dismay, though he tried manfully to cover it.
“Prince Geofri, Prince Kryštof, please, be seated. Will you take
wine?” He signaled the servant who stood nearby and soon we were comfortably
sitting near the fire. Cecil’s glance strayed to my face, trying to read me
whenever he thought that neither of us were looking. He was a small, scholarly
man, as brilliant in intellect as he was twisted in body, and he must have
realized from my lack of expression and the satisfied look on Geoffrey’s face
that things had somehow gone awry. That realization was confirmed when Geoffrey
pulled the letter from his doublet. “That letter was meant for your brother,
your grace,” he said stiffly, and Geoffrey nodded.
“Yes. However my brother Kryštof can neither read nor write, not
his own language, nor any other,” Geoffrey answered the implied accusation
bluntly, ignoring, as did I, Cecil’s shocked look, and offering no explanation.
“He brought this to me that I might read it to him, but, had he been able to
read it himself, be assured that he would still have brought it to me. My
brother will not be suborned, Lord Robert. If you have matters of ‘interest and
benefit’ to him, they are so to me also.”
“Your grace, I meant no offense, and I implore you to take none.
I had not wished to trouble your grace with what might after all be but a
trifling matter, and I had no idea of your brother’s . . .inability,” Cecil
said smoothly, trying to cover his confusion. He was plainly appalled; it had
obviously never occurred to him that so elegant a prince as I might be unable
to read. It was also obvious that that incapacity, moreover, rendered me useless
for any purpose Cecil might have had in mind. He seemed to realize that his
thoughts were abroad upon his face, and sighed, schooling his features to
impassivity before continuing his business.