A Dead Man in Deptford (40 page)

- I cannot bend my mind to it. Later. When Robin Poley
has come and we have talked.

- You seem much agitated. You have brought your bag.
You need money. Are you to be sent on a voyage?

- Why do you so swing between filth and cleanliness?

- Is that meant unkindly? I think not. It depends on the
part I must play. This morning it was a foul part, a villainous
part. You are a man of the playhouse, you know of playing
parts. Great God in heaven, he is here.

And indeed Poley was there, in travelling gear of leather,
great cloak eased off his left shoulder, surprised at the sight
of Frizer, who stood in deference, not so surprised at Skeres’s
presence, smiling with a certain weariness at Kit. He said:

- Gusts when we did not expect them. A calm sea churned
without warning. A little sickness. Take that wreck of a dish
away. I munched bread, my stomach is a basket of it. I will,
by your leave, taste wine. And so he did, sitting. He sniffed and
rotated upper lip and nose. Fie, what a stink. There is a Raleigh
smell about. Ah, yes, Kit. Out into the garden with us. I fancy
landward air.

In the garden, among the pinks and primroses and violets,
under a beech and the mild sun, they took seats on a gnarled
bench. Poley said he must take breath after the voyage. He
was becoming weary of it all. To live in retired ease, plant the bergamot, watch walnuts fatten. Had Kit heard ever of one
Jane Dormer? No, she had been near friend to Queen Mary
that we now term bloody, had wed the Count of Feria that had
been near friend to King Philip. And now as a duchess she is
appointed governess of Flanders. This strengthens the Catholic
cause. The danger hath a stronger smell than it had hitherto.

- So now Lord Strange must have a watch set on him?

- His cousin is coming. He is no fool, very wary. We
must arrange a Catholic welcome, have intimate meetings, gain
evidence in good black ink, strike. It will be Babington over
again. I rely on your play-acting. Practise the signum crucis.

- I have my own troubles.

- I know of your troubles. I know of your one trouble.
Your trouble is not with the Privv Council but with one sole
member thereof.

- Absent in Flushing as you were you know of these things?

- It has been in preparation, the destruction of Raleigh.
The outer works are first attacked. You should never have let
yourself be befriended by him.

- He is one of the men in England who look forward.
Must I fawn on the spoilt brat Essex?

- Cut out Raleigh’s heart and present it to Essex on a gold
plate and you will be raised, knighted, ennobled. I see what is
turning in your brain. You think I have influence.

- You have. With Heneage, Cecil.

- They are my masters. The question is whether they have
influence over his lordship. Only her majesty has influence, but
he is still, as you say, a spoilt brat. He will do for himself yet,
you will see. Or perhaps you will not see. What I can do is to
cry out the weightiness of your part in what must be done.

- Is it so weighty?

- It could be done by any man of wit and skill loyal to the
Service. But there is the matter of experience. You helped send
the Babington plotters to the gallows.

- I saw them go to the gallows. I think you did not.

- It is best not to see these things, as I have said before.

- I saw Penry hanged and drawn.

Aye, the other face of the seditious coin. Atheism is in
comparison a friend to the established Church. The Raleigh
atheism, which even the exiled Catholics now scream at, harms
none. But by definition it is foul subversion. Essex plays on that.
It is madness that a private though most virulent quarrel should
film and obscure the true struggle. As a servant of the Service
you must play your part and hope that you be not too strongly
drawn into the other contention.

- The poet was in ancient times considered a vates or prophet.
It is in some measure true. I cannot prophesy of the future of this
realm but I see in terrible clarity a future for myself. The arrest,
the charge, the dungeon, the rack.

- You will never go to the gallows, Kit. As for arrest and the
rack, it is the common expectation of us all. You think myself
to be unaffected? I feigned papistry so well that the mask was
taken for the true visage. Even Walsingham had his doubts of
me. I spent, to my thinking, too long in the Tower. These are
gloomy thoughts for a May day. See the bees and butterflies,
blessed creatures. Hear that blackbird, or perhaps it is a thrush.
We take what life we can.

- I think I must be done with the Service. It was unseemly
to think on a bargain.

- There is no bargaining, there never is. We do our duty,
and there are no reservations, also few rewards. You must not
say you are done with the Service. Ponder the consequences of
that. You know too much.

- Meaning enough to wreck a plot through treasonous exposure? I may be many things, but I am a loyal subject.

- Aye, like the stout patriots who sought England’s redemption through a Spanish invasion. Loyalty is a wide word.

- Now I am made to see Lord Strange hanged and hacked,
screaming to heaven of a long occluded faith.

- His lordship would have a cleaner death, the privilege of
his rank. A clean lopping on Tower Hill. His supporters would,
true, not fare so well. But it is the price they know must be paid.
Do not talk of leaving the Service. Think on what you said. I
must take now what the Spanish call the siesta. That means the sixth hour, noon. The sun is past its zenith. The rolling and
tossing have made me sleepy as well as queasy. Do not add to
my queasiness. Think. We will meet at supper. I must ask the
Widow Bull for a bed.

And he rose, nodding also yawning. Kit sat on among the nodding flowers, the green bushes that gleamed as with a varnishing,
under the great tree that breathed through the multiple mouths
of its leaves. Butterflies, yes, bees. He had lost family, country
must be next. He did not propose pain or death for himself;
though lined and losing hair he was still young. The power of
the poet pulsed blood through his body. The truth of life lay in
the vatic messages words sent, meanings beyond what the world
called meaning. The old gods lived; Apollo blazed in the sun. He
must serve what must be served. He pondered, and the answers
to questions of immediate import made little sense. Kill that you
be not killed. Bring to birth rather, one whose forfeiture of the
right of fatherhood granted an unfleshly manner of begetting. He
stood, somewhat sick with too much wine, the wine over-heavy,
a slight crown of pain about his temples, then he walked to a
patch of grass, somewhat over a grave’s length, with daisies on
it, under the arching branches of an elm that was rooted not in
this garden but in the neighbour garden. There he laid out his
length. He would think no more, he would sleep.

He dreamed in fragments, sudden flashes of light (could
light inhere then in the brain?), scenes with a mild sun, with a
burning sun that seared the eyeballs of the figure in the dream
that was the dreamer, with a moon gibbous or dying. He was
in a Hellas he did not know except from books, a warm Hellas
conjured by a northern scholar. All was absurd - fauns, centaurs, the fruits of an imagined lawful coupling. There was the
Minotaur too, bred out of the cursed Pasiphae lying waiting for
the bull’s impossible pounce on the wooden cow, made on orders
by Daedalus in distraction, obsessed as he was by the mastery of
the mystery of flight. These, like the words of a poem, were all
signs of a deep reality not with ease to be fathomed. Then Helen
approached him from the Trojan battlements. She should not do
this, she should know his nature, she should not be naked, bore his eyes with her breasts, oppose to his flaccid rod the mouth
of the cave whose interior was the labyrinth where the rending
Minotaur bellowed. No, no, he would not. And then blissful
darkness, real daylight not intruding, resting on his eyelids.

He woke stiff, yawning and unrefreshed. The sun had sloped
down the sky. He must deliver his message of one word, cheat the
lenders, put money in his purse and take the river that would take
him to the sea. Through the window he saw Skeres and Frizer
playing at tables. He went round to the side of the house and
entered that room. Skeres said:

- Take Ingram’s place. He is on a losing streak, though
it is but for a penny, discountable enough.

- I will lie down, Frizer said. It is the pain in my leg. I
bear no ill feeling, but there is the pain. And wincing he lay
on the daybed.

- The loan, Kit said.

- Shall I put it as your stakes by the board? You may
be in luck. Shall we play high?

- Low, very low.

- As you will. Sit. Take the dice. Start.

Kit tossed the pair. He moved his discs but his finger-ends
were clumsy. Skeres had a monkey quickness with his dirty
paws. He was easily first to move his store to the inner table.
Frizer on the bed groaned. Kit dropped three of his coloured
pieces. Enough, in no mood for play. You fear the catertreys?
Fear not. Again? Kit rose, saying he must go. The loan. You
already have your pledge. I do not see it.

- Stored for safety, along with your baggage. Urchins in
and out, quick of the finger. Come, you mar the merriment of
the day. It will be suppertime soon. What is it to be, Ingram?

- A beef pie in a deep dish. With onions and pounded
peppercorns.

- You hear? The Peppercorn sails tomorrow at dawn. Some
that come from afar for it sleep on board. It saves the cost of
an inn.

- And so?

- To exhibit my knowledge of the traffic of the river I grant such breadcrumbs of information. And so nothing. Ah,
the awakened Robin.

Robin Poley was down, washed, combed, neat, a marvellous
proper man, yawning and smiling.

- Sleep is like hard labour. It promotes powerful appetite.
I smell good news from the kitchen.

- Sleep is strange, Skeres said. Some die in it. Dreams are
strange. A man can wake sweating in terror. What is that dark
country of the mind through which we wander in sleep?

- A forest, Poley said, in whose depths the soul lieth hidden
like a golden egg.

- Pretty, Skeres said. You are something of a poet. Is he
not so, Mr Christopher, oh I will say Kit, we are all friends.

- As you please.

- May I too say Kit? Frizer asked from the daybed.

- As you please. I have small dignity to maintain.

- I will ask you three riddles, Poley said to Kit, comfortably sitting at the table now cleared of its backgammon board
and counters. Your answer must be in one word only. You are
ready? Good.

Ready, yes. The riddles and their solutions were to no
purpose at ail. The answer was to something else and must
be in the manner of a triple amen.

- Is the Queen a virgin?

- No.

- Is God in his heaven?

- No.

- Have you ever bedded a woman?

- No.

All except Kit sighed out as it were with a kind of reverence.
Poley said:

- War, you will remember, depended that time on a straight
yes or no in a message from Flushing. Well, we know by that
no. The stout smell of beef and onions marches towards us. The
wine danceth.

And so it did. The Widow Bull herself brought in the crusted
mound, her girl the trenchers and horn spoons not knives. It was, said the widow, stewed very soft for them without teeth.
But all had teeth and strong ones. They ate smokily, Frizer left
his daybed limping but limped not in his steady devouring. Good,
he said, excellent good. Thou eatest but little, he said daringly to
Kit. Thou drinkest overmuch of the wine. Eating and drinking
should be nicely in equipoise.

- Supper, Poley said, is a word of strange finality. Perhaps
that derives from the scriptures. Revenge is a good supper but
a bad breakfast, they say. Do I have that right?

It was indeed a deep dish, they could not eat all. There was
a sighing and a loosening of belts after. The scullions would be
glad of the leavings, the fragments, the orts. Kit had not loosened
his belt. Skeres called somewhat roughly that the table be cleared,
though let the wine and the cups stay. And he called too for the
reckoning. He said to Kit, while the others faintly smiled:

- We thank thee for the kindness of the bestowal of this
merry day. Good wine, food, company. That one who should
have come did not come we must account a small disappointment. Ah, here is the reckoning.

He took it from the hands of the Widow Bull (Pasiphae,
Kit thought for a moment madly) and said:

- It amounts near enough to the amount you asked to
borrow. Dear, true, but she keeps a dear house. Thus - item,
one fish in a coffin I is 5d; item, two quarts of Bordeaux wine
15s Od; item -

- You Jest, Kit said, and it is sour. I was invited. The
reckoning is not mine.

- Not altogether jest, Skeres said. There is a reckoning to
be made. Let me play a manner of president of a council. I
sit here, and you two gentlemen sit either side of the carrier of
Christ.

Kit started at hearing his name’s true meaning in that mouth.
There was no pretence of merriment now. Robin Poley, smiling,
moved his chair to Kit’s right. The limping and wincing Frizer
skirred his chair along the floor to the left. So now all three faced
Skeres for what Kit did not know. But these others seemed to
know.

- What doss thou do, Skeres asked, with a quill pen that
is past sharpening?

- Do you really require an answer?

- Good, thou knowest.

- I am not thou.

- Very well, you. You are not anything. You need not
sword, money nor goods. Not even nutriment, though you
have eaten little enough. The wine will assist your passage.

- I understand nothing. I will be off. And he rose, but
Frizer’s arm, surprisingly strong, pulled him down. I will not
be pawed, I will not be hindered, let me pass.