The Marlowe Conspiracy (45 page)

SCENE FIVE

Deptford. St Nicholas’ Churchyard.

C
ycles of thin mist rolled through the still morning streets. Awake and shivering, Kit had spent most of the night curled up by the churchyard wall.

At the entrance to the graveyard stood two posts with a stone carving of a skull at the top. Behind the posts, enveloping the church on all sides, the graveyard was full of tablets and headstones – some stubby, some tall, some carved with angels, and some blank and nameless. The eastern sky strengthened with ever-growing intensities of color and sunlight flooded around the yard, washing gold against the bases of the stones. By contrast, the western moon still hovered above the horizon, its shape large and hazy and old.

Kit raised his head from the ground and sat up with a groan. He rubbed his eyes. They felt dry and ached when he shifted them from side to side. Hunger scraped in his stomach and thirst constricted his throat. Hands wavering in the cold, he felt down at the pouch on his belt and pulled out the pipe he had bought and the tobacco. After regarding them closely he put them away again. From his pouch he then withdrew a pencil and a thick wad of parchment: his poem
‘Hero and Leander’
. Some of the pages were bent, but he straightened them and set them on his lap. He turned to the back page and found it was still blank – the only one he hadn't used at Marshalsea Prison.

For some time, he sat there reading the poem from the very start, but his mind wandered and he had to reread the words. He turned to the blank page and prepared to write. The pencil-tip trembled as he lowered it nearer the surface. He shook his head, his lips twisted into a bitter smile, and he looked away. Hunger, thirst, coldness, anxiety, and frustration sunk their hooks into him and tore away at his energy, his sanity.

His face hardened with resolution. He lowered his eyes, fixed his mind on the poem, and started writing.

As if there had been no break between the poem’s last sentence and the words he now scribbled onto the parchment, Kit continued his verse urgently, finally completing Leander's quest to spend a second night with Hero. Thus far, Leander had swam the Hellespont, risked the waves, survived the amorous clutches of the sea god Neptune, and eventually reached the sands below Hero's tower. Naked and dripping wet, Leander now entered Hero’s bedchamber and strived to embrace her.

For the morning after their night of passion, Kit wrote the following words:

‘
And them, like Mars and Erycine, display

Both in each other's arms chained as they lay.

Again, she knew not how to frame her look,

Or speak to him, who in a moment took

That which so long so charily she kept,

And fain by stealth away she would have crept,

And to some corner secretly have gone,

Leaving Leander in the bed alone.

But as her naked feet were whipping out,

He on the sudden clinged her so about,

That, mermaid-like, unto the floor she slid.

One half appeared, the other half was hid.

Thus near the bed she blushing stood upright,

And from her countenance behold ye might

A kind of twilight break, which through the hair,

As from an orient cloud, glimpsed here and there,

And round about the chamber this false morn

Brought forth the day before the day was born.

So Hero's ruddy cheek Hero betrayed,

And her all naked to his sight displayed...’

Kit's pencil slowed. He glanced up at the graveyard. The headstones now stood in greater sunlight. With a look of utter calm and peacefulness he wrote the words: ‘The End’ abruptly under the lines of the poem. For a moment, he studied those last words then crossed them out and closed his eyes.

When he raised his eyelids again he had to squint in order to see around him. Sunlight. Full, ripening sunlight. Though the mist was still dense, the sun had risen and breached the horizon and the churchyard. He sat still and stared upwards. Something strange happened. The sun and moon resided in different quarters of the sky, yet to his eyes they seemed equally splendid orbs. They were indistinguishable. The light and the mask of light were not divided or opposed at all: they were the same ultimate existence. For the briefest of moments he felt oddly satisfied, joyful, even ecstatic. He saw the world and he loved it.

Something glimmered on his chest. He looked down and his ouroboros brooch caught his eye. He sat up straighter with excitement as if enamored with an idea.

“What nourishes me...” he said slowly to himself. “What nourishes me... destroys me...”

The sun rose higher above the horizon. A smile bloomed upon his face: the answer to his problem was clear and inviting and had been within his reach all along. It should have been obvious for a playwright, but he didn’t see it until now. He continued to gaze at the brooch and run his finger around its circular form. Almost chanting to himself he repeated the words again and again:

“What nourishes me destroys me...”

SCENE SIX

Deptford.

K
it waited nervously for the evening. With no money, and no where else to go, he could do nothing else but wait.

To help pass the time, he meandered over to the riverbanks near the wherries of watermen and sat down to rest his legs. Seagulls above scored the air with sharp, laughing cries. He removed the pipe and the little bag of tobacco from his pouch and studied them both. The pipe was made of clay and had a long shank carved with a lion near the bowl. He filled it with tobacco, then left the banks and found a wall brazier along a side street. He tore a poster in half, rolled it, and lighted it on the hot coals of the brazier. Afterwards, he held the flame just above the pipe bowl and made the surface gently smolder. With hesitation, he took a drag of tobacco, let the smoke circle around his mouth, brush against his palette, and fizzle on his tongue. He took another drag and watched the tobacco glow brighter.

While still hidden in the side street, he knelt and flattened the other half of the poster on knee, pulled out a pencil and wrote the following note:

‘
Dear Will,

I have a tragedy for you: if you are reading this note then you already know I am dead.

I have been murdered.

The meeting house was known to Thomas, and thus also to Archbishop Whitgift. Undoubtedly, they will have prepared a story to mask their crime but do not believe it: I was not killed in an accident, or in a brawl, or by someone acting in self-defense. I was murdered with premeditation by Thomas Walsingham, Archbishop John Whitgift, and any number of their associates (probably including Richard Baines).

Give this note to Lord Burghley without delay and there may yet be a chance for justice.

Take care, my friend. I would have cherished seeing your comedy on the stage, but that is not to be anymore…

Yours truly,

Christopher Marlowe

May 30th, 1593, Deptford.’

Once he was finished, he flitted through the alleyways and ventured back to the graveyard. Ten paces from the north tower, he discovered the crevice of a crumbling gravestone, folded the note, and wedged it inside the stone. He hoped Will would never have to find it.

Seven o'clock in the evening. With a solemn face, his shoulders low, Kit finally strolled back through town to the meeting house and stopped at the garden gate.

He paused. From a house across the street, two children ran out of the door and skipped away over the cobblestones, squealing with laughter as they chased each other. Kit watched them go. He took a drag on his pipe and smoke drifted out between his lips. He turned and his eyes scoured the front of the meeting house for any sign of change. It looked the same as the night before – only the garden now had touches of color. In the dim light, the laburnum hung with boughs of pendulous and poisonous golden chains of flowers.

Kit walked through the garden with a stiff gait, clenching his fists all the way. At the door, he let his hand hover above the handle. He puffed on the pipe and the smoke lingered in his mouth and he smiled, trying to relax himself. He lowered his hand and cranked the door handle around and entered the house...

SCENE SEVEN

Meeting House.

A
s soon as he stepped into the hallway, he flinched, caught a glimpse – a blur – of blonde hair out of the corner of his eye.

From the shadows, Poley leapt at him from the side. Swung a club at his head.

“Now!” cried Poley.

Kit ducked. The club whirred overhead. Cracked into the door frame. Splinters ripped away from the edge.

The next second, he whirled around in panic. Heavy footsteps rushed up behind him. Baines charged him into hard and rammed him over.

As he fell, Kit snatched onto Baines’s cassock and dragged him down too. Their bodies pounded onto the floorboards.

Baines squirmed on top of Kit, ran a knee into his chest, and pressed down with all his bulk and muscle. Kit struggled, but Baines pinned his arms on the lower step of the staircase.

“Hurry!” Baines yelled. “Search him!”

Poley fumbled on the floor for his glasses, then shuffled across to Kit and patted his stumpy fingers up and down Kit's legs, waist, and chest.

Finally, Poley stood up straight.