The Marlowe Papers: A Novel Read online

  THE MARLOWE PAPERS

  Ros Barber

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  When a man’s verses cannot be understood, nor a man’s good wit seconded

  with the forward child understanding, it strikes a man more dead

  than a great reckoning in a little room.

  Truly, I would the gods had made thee poetical.

  As You Like It, III, iii

  The way to really develop as a writer is to make yourself a political

  outcast, so that you have to live in secret. This is how Marlowe

  developed into Shakespeare.

  Ted Hughes, Letters

  Poetry is nearer to vital truth than history.

  Plato

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  TO THE WISE OR UNWISE READER

  DRAMATIS PERSONAE

  THE MARLOWE PAPERS

  DEATH’S A GREAT DISGUISER

  DECIPHERERS

  CAPTAIN SILENCE

  NON-CORRESPONDENT

  THE SHAPE OF SILENCE

  THE TRUNK

  FORGE

  CONJURORS

  TOM WATSON

  TAMBURLAINE THE GREAT

  THE LOW COUNTRIES

  ARMADA YEAR

  MIDDELBURG

  TAMBURLAINE THE SECOND

  HOTSPUR’S DESCENDANT

  NORTHUMBERLAND’S SUBJECT

  FIRST RENDEZVOUS

  THE FIRST HEIR OF MY INVENTION

  THE JEW OF MALTA

  LURCH

  THAT MEN SHOULD PUT AN ENEMY IN THEIR MOUTHS

  THE UNIVERSITY MEN

  THE PACT OF FAUSTUS

  THE TUTOR

  SMALL BEER

  SOLILOQUY

  THE HOG LANE AFFRAY

  ENVOI

  LIMBO

  POOLE THE PRISONER

  A TWIN

  NECESSITY

  THE SCHOOL OF NIGHT

  THE BANISHMENT OF KENT

  TOBACCO AND BOOZE

  COPY OF MY LETTER TO POLEY

  HOW DO I START THIS? LET ME TRY AGAIN

  BURYING THE MOOR

  SOUTHAMPTON

  ARBELLA

  ALPINE LETTER

  WATSON’S VERSE-COMMENT ON MY FLUSHING ASSIGNMENT

  POISONING THE WELL

  DANGER IS IN WORDS

  FLUSHING

  FISHERS

  A RESURRECTION

  A COUNTERFEIT PROFESSION

  THE FATAL LABYRINTH OF MISBELIEF

  BETRAYED

  RETURNED TO THE LORD TREASURER

  COLLABORATION

  THE SCHOOL OF ATHEISM

  HOLYWELL STREET

  A GROATSWORTH OF WIT

  DISMISSED

  THE COBBLERS SON

  RE:SPITE

  A FELLOW OF INFINITE JEST

  SCADBURY

  A SLAVE WHOSE GALL COINS SLANDERS LIKE A MINT

  THE PLOT

  WHITGIFT

  FLY, FLYE, AND NEVER RETURNE

  KYD’S TRAGEDY

  SMOKE AND FIRE

  BY ANY OTHER NAME

  DRAKES

  MY BEING

  MY AFTERLIVES

  A PASSPORT TO RETURN

  DEPTFORD STRAND

  I FORGET THE NAME OF THE VILLAGE

  THE GOBLET

  IN A MINUTE THERE ARE MANY DAYS

  THE HOPE

  SICKENING

  STRAITS

  MONTANUS

  BISHOPSGATE STREET

  MADAME LE DOUX

  THE THEATRE

  INTERVAL

  A CHANGE OF ADDRESS

  HOW RICHARD II FOLLOWED RICHARD III

  BURLEY ON THE HILL

  CORRESPONDENT

  NOTHING LIKE THE SUN

  THE GAME

  PETIT

  WILL HALL

  MY TRUE LOVE SENT TO ME

  STOPPED

  DOGS

  FRIEND

  HAL

  YOUR FOOL

  THE AUTHORS OF SHAKESPEARE

  MR DISORDER

  REVENGE TRAGEDY

  SO

  IN DISGRACE WITH FORTUNE AND MEN’S EYES

  ESSEX HOUSE

  THE EARL OF ESSEX

  SMALL GODS

  MERRY WIVES

  IN THE THEATRE OF GOD’S JUDGMENTS

  WHO STEALS MY PURSE STEALS TRASH

  SLANDER

  A KIT MAY LOOK AT A KING

  A ROSE

  CHAPMAN’S CURSE

  BARE RUINED CHOIRS

  KNIVES

  CONCERNING THE ENGLISH

  ORSINO’S CASTLE, BRACCIANO

  GHOST

  THE AUTHOR OF HAMLET

  IN PRAISE OF THE RED HERRING

  SOJOURN

  T.T. & W.H.

  TWELFTH NIGHT

  AN EXECUTION

  WILLIAM PETER

  ELSINORE

  I LIE WITH HIM

  DELIVERANCE

  MORE SINNED AGAINST THAN SINNING

  LIZ

  IAGO

  A NEVER WRITER TO AN EVER READER. NEWS.

  THE MERMAID CLUB

  EXIT STAGE LEFT

  Also by Ros Barber

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  NOTES

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  ROS BARBER

  Copyright Page

  TO THE WISE OR UNWISE READER

  What can a dead man say that you will hear?

  Suppose you swear him underneath the earth,

  stabbed to the brain with some almighty curse,

  would you recognise his voice if it appeared?

  The tapping on the coffin lid is heard

  as death watch beetle. He becomes a name;

  a cipher whose identity is plain

  to anyone who understands a word.

  So what divine device should he employ

  to settle with the world beyond his grave,

  unmask the life that learnt its human folly

  from death’s warm distance; how else can he save

  himself from oblivion, but with poetry?

  Stop. Pay attention. Hear a dead man speak.

  DRAMATIS PERSONAE

  Writers and Actors

  Christopher Marlowe poet, playwright, intelligencer

  Tom Watson poet, playwright, intelligencer

  Thomas Walsingham gentleman, literary patron

  Robert Greene writer of prose romances, playwright

  Edward (Ned) Alleyn lead actor, acting company manager/sharer

  Thomas Nashe prose satirist

  Thomas Kyd playwright

  Government

  Sir Francis Walsingham Secretary of State, head of intelligence

  Lord Burghley William Cecil, Lord Treasurer

  Sir Robert Sidney Governor of Flushing in the Low Countries

  Nobility

  Northumberland Henry Percy, 9th Earl of Northumberland

  Southampton Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southampton

  Essex Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, soldier

  Sir John Harington 1st Baron Harington, first cousin to the Sidneys

  Lucy, Countess of Bedford his married teenage daughter

  Arbella Stuart first cousin to James VI of Scotland

  Bess of Hardwick Countess of Shrewsbury, Arbella’s grandmother

  Intelligence

  Robin Poley intelligencer

  Thomas Thorpe publisher, intelligen
cer

  Richard Baines intelligencer

  Gilbert Gifford intelligencer

  Anthony Bacon head of the Earl of Essex’s intelligence network

  Sundry

  John Allen Ned Alleyn’s brother, innkeeper

  William Bradley publican’s son

  Hugh Swift lawyer, Watson’s brother-in-law

  John Poole Catholic counterfeiter

  Sir Walter Raleigh courtier, adventurer

  Eleanor Bull Deptford gentlewoman with Court connections

  Venetia a maiden of Venice

  Jaques Petit Anthony Bacon’s servant

  William Peter gentleman

  THE MARLOWE PAPERS

  DEATH’S A GREAT DISGUISER

  Church-dead. And not a headstone in my name.

  No brassy plaque, no monument, no tomb,

  no whittled initials on a makeshift cross,

  no pile of stones upon a mountain top.

  The plague is the excuse; the age’s curse

  that swells to life as spring gives way to summer,

  to sun, unconscious kisser of a warmth

  that wakens canker as it wakens bloom.

  Now fear infects the wind, and every breath

  that neighbour breathes on neighbour in the street

  brings death so close you smell it on the stairs.

  Rats multiply, as God would have them do.

  And fear infects like mould; like fungus, spreads –

  folk catch it from the chopped-off ears and thumbs,

  the burning heretics and eyeless heads

  that slow-revolve the poles on London Bridge.

  The child of casual violence grows inured,

  an audience too used to real blood;

  they’ve watched a preacher butchered, still awake,

  and handed his beating heart like it was love.

  And now the sanctioned butchery of State

  breeds sadists who delight to man the rack,

  reduce men from divine belief and brain

  to begging, and the rubble of their spines.

  From all this, I am dead. Reduced to ink

  that magicks up my spirit from the page:

  a voice who knows what mortals cannot think of;

  a ghost, whose words ring deeper from the grave.

  Corpse-dead. A gory stab-hole for an eye;

  and that’s what they must think. No, must believe,

  those thug-head pursers bent on gagging speech,

  if I’m to slip their noose and stay alive.

  Now I’m as dead as any to the world,

  the foulest rain of blackened corpses on

  the body that is entered in my name:

  the plague pit where Kit Marlowe now belongs.

  For who could afford for that infected earth

  to be dug up to check identities?

  And so, I leave my former name behind.

  Gone on the Deptford tide, the whole world blind.

  Friend, I’m no one. If I write to you,

  in fading light that distances the threat,

  it’s as a breeze that strokes the Channel’s waves,

  the spray that blesses some small vessel’s deck.

  DECIPHERERS

  I’ll write in code. Though my name melts away,

  I’ll write in urine, onion juice and milk,

  in words that can be summoned by a flame,

  in ink as light and tough as spider silk.

  I’ll send a ream of tamed rebellious thought

  to seed a revolution in its sleep;

  each letter glass-invisible to light,

  each sheet as blank as signposts are to sheep.

  The spy’s conventions, slipping edge to edge

  among the shadows, under dirty night,

  mislead the search. To fool intelligence,

  we hide our greatest treasures in plain sight.

  This poetry you have before your eyes:

  the greatest code that man has yet devised.

  CAPTAIN SILENCE

  We dock in darkness. The skipper’s boy dispatched

  to find our lodgings. Not a town for ghosts,

  and with no wish to be remembered here

  I’m wrapped in scholar’s garb, the bright man’s drab.

  A quarter-moon is rationing its light

  to smuggle us ashore without a fuss;

  the fishermen are far away from port,

  their wives inside and unaware of us.

  You know I’ve come this way before; not here,

  but in this manner, come as contraband

  under the loose concealing cloak of night,

  disguised as something of no interest,

  as simple traveller. A man of books:

  which words will make him interesting as dust

  to folk who cannot read and do not care

  they sign their papers only with a cross.

  My name means more, and yet I shrug it off

  like reptile skin, adopt some alias

  that huffs forgettable, to snuff the flame

  that now would be the death of me. Anon,

  now Christopher is too much cross to bear.

  The skipper calls me only with a cough.

  Lugs, with his lanky son, my trunk of books.

  No prop. For books will be my nourishment

  in the sightless days without you. And if I

  feel strange, or wordless, they will anchor thought,

  ensure my brain is drowned in histories

  that help me to remember who I am.

  The skipper leads as shadows bolt from us

  and streets fall back. And in his torch’s flame

  a flicker of the tongue that can’t be bought,

  which pirates sliced to secrecy. The rest,

  that part he’d curl to make his consonants,

  is long since fish-food on the Spanish main.

  The boy speaks for him when we reach the door.

  We’re hurried in, ‘Entrez,’ as though a storm

  is savaging the calm still tail of May

  and has the oak trees shaken by their roots.

  The woman might be forty-five, or twelve.

  A calculated innocence, a face

  so open blank, it seems revealing as

  it hides itself. This woman’s learnt to blanch

  as bones will bleach when left to drink the sun,

  as death will creep a pallor into skin

  at just its mention. Clothed in widow’s weeds,

  soft fingers straighten for gold. ‘Un angelot.’

  Two months of food for sticking out her neck

  for an Englishman. The payment’s hidden where

  she’s still half warm. ‘So you will sleep above,’

  she states as if she questions us, ‘the room

  that slopes for Captain Silence and his boy.’

  They heft my trunk upstairs between them, just.

  ‘The less we say, the better,’ she begins.

  ‘You want some ale? You’re thirsty? Or there’s sack

  if you need something stronger.’ Then she pales,

  as if she is reflecting me. Some look

  betrays my loss to her, and in a blink

  her loneliness has fastened on to mine.

  ‘You learnt the tongue from Huguenots?’ She nods

  and answers her own question. ‘That is right.

  And you. You are a religious man? But, no,

  forget I ask you anything.’ In truth,

  I am a scholar of divinity

  and study the divine with open eyes.

  Beyond all question, I would give her truth;

  and yet, I cannot save her if I speak.

  ‘My husband was an Englishman, like you.

  Or not like you. He had no love of books.

  Ballads he liked. He used to sing this one—’

  Her brain defends itself by giving way.

  ‘I don’t remember it.’ But here, her eyes
<
br />   brim with the silence, break their trembling banks

  as though she heard his funeral song. Then he,

  her husband, a growl, is whispering in her ear

  the rudest ballad he knows, clutching her waist

  to spin her for a kiss. And then he’s gone,

  and we are momentarily with ghosts.

  ‘Forgive me,’ she says. ‘The silence is poisonous.’

  Upstairs, I’m with her still. She’s through the wall,

  the spectre of a woman I might touch

  on any other night but this. I don’t

  undress so much as loosen up a notch,

  for comfort now would later be exposed,

  a gift to spot and clear as light to slay;

  and bad enough, I’m running for my life

  without my skin a beacon for the moon,

  a human sheath that swallows blades. I sit

  laced in my boots, my stomach tight, my ears

  so strongly tuned they model sight from sound.

  Next door, the widow braves into her gown

  and lies awake. She listens to the house

  and reads the whispers that pronounce her safe

  though I would have her sacrificed for love.

  I know her stares are pulling at the wall

  I’m on the other side of, and her bed

  feels colder for the want of me. And yet,

  as time goes on, she’s bidding me adieu.

  A woman’s skin might send a man to sleep,

  but I must twitch and listen to the night

  say Nothing’s here. The moon is out of sight

  and something gnaws now, in the walls. I write,

  the extra tallow that I paid her for

  illuminating every sorry word.

  How we are trapped in silence; how this night

  has brought a silent shipwreck to her shore,

  how silence unites us as it chokes us off,

  how thick the silence hangs around the door

  that dogs might almost sniff it, and the causes:

  cutlass, lies or longing. Gathered here,

  awake, or sleeping aware, are three full-grown