Chapter 8 No.8

Months after Marlowe's murder, I learned that the Queen had had hirelings kill him. I confided in Raleigh as we stood on a pier, near one of his frigates...the Thames wind whipping our clothes.

How well I recall his expression when I told him. Mouth tense, eyes afire, he grabbed at the hilt of his sword and exclaimed:

"I command nine ships. How many cutthroats do you think I have at my beck and call? In a fortnight, Marlowe's murderers will be dead. Our Queen will know that she has been out-maneuvered, that there are plotters keener than she. She killed Marlowe because he was too rabid an atheist..."

Those were vain words on Raleigh's part: he did nothing: I did nothing. How gutter-cheap we are in times of stress, how obliterative, given to expediency, wedded to her and safety!

Next Day

Come live with me and be my love,

And we will all the pleasures prove

That hills and valleys, dales and fields

Woods or steepy mountain yields...

And I will make thee a bed of roses

And a thousand fragrant posies...

Chris never knew what it was to have a bed of roses, not even for a fortnight.

He might have gone on to splendid heights. His verses mean much to me. I liked him for his clowning, his patience, his kind words, his persuasive pen. Glover's son and shoemaker's boy-we had many a boisterous time. Of his plays I think best of Tambourlaine and Faustus.

From jigging veins of riming mother wits

And such conceits as clownage keeps in pay

We'll lead you to the stately tent of war...

As we collaborated on our plays, he was constantly fighting debts, his mis-tress riding him hard. Our tankards full we worked in my place or his. I shied away from his association with the School of Atheists, leaving that to him and Raleigh.

No writer could have had a better guide for Titus, Henry and Richard. M__ had learned to smoke and like R__ had to putter with tobacco, pipe and flint.

One afternoon he used a scrap of poetry to light his pipe. Letting the paper burn and then char on the floor, he said:

"That was a poem well used."

Was it another "Shepherd's Song"?

I should have collected his works and seen them published. Now I could not track down his pieces. Ah, the shoulds of life...

This is the anniversary of his death, another churlish scruff of day with wretched rain...the rain it raineth every day...true, boy, come bring us to this hovel...the tyranny of the world is too rough at times...give me your hand.

Jonson received a letter from Ellen, Ellen in Edinburgh, writing at home, ex-pressing her friendly concern for me:

"Will has written me but I am worried. Can you look after him?" She was afraid after Marlowe's death. "Will you write and reassure me?" she asked. "Ed-inburgh is far... I'm sick with a cold...so much rain."

And it was raining as Jonson read me her letter, in his apartment. I opened a book of his and leafed through it, standing by his window, the rain leaded on the pages, long, grey, thin lines, tracing problems that threatened us, a bond tying in with her concern, lessening that distance between us.

The wall felt damp to my shoulder and I smelled stale bread and stale cheese on Jonson's desk.

"What came between us?" I asked.

"Are you talking to me...or to her?"

"To you."

"Bad luck...the thing that comes between most lovers."

"And what do I do to change it?"

"You know London's soothsayers...they're ready to help you. Pay them."

"How much?"

"Pay...oh, with your life, your work. Pay and she's yours."

"It's stupid to talk like that."

"It's stupid to fall in love. Just fuck and go."

Stratford

September 9, 1615

When Raleigh was brought to trial by the Crown and condemned to life im-prisonment, I began a play, thinking to defend him, troubled by the royal hatred leveled at him, for his loyalty to England was unquestionable.

His trial was pure sham.

SHEPHERD OF THE OCEAN

Scene I: Courtroom, in winter

Raleigh: You claim me guilty, but I am innocent. In no way, at no time, have I conspired against the throne. At sea, I defended our country against all enemies. I supplied ships for the Queen. In Virginia, my colony is dedicated to all that England stands for. Sirs, I protest!

Judge: Damned you are, damning our people with your stinking guilt. You have conspired! We have every proof...there's not the slightest doubt of your perfidy! You defended Queen Elizabeth against the Earl of Essex but he was the King's friend, never his adversary. You have every guilt upon you. You are grossly guilty of plotting against our nation and our King. King James sees fit to sentence you...

Maybe the King had secret reasons for Raleigh's banishment but I doubt it. Some call Sir Walter the "King of Liars." His letters from prison no longer come and Tower over me, filling me with guilt.

Should I burn his letters: could there be family in-volvement at some unfore-seen time? I should burn many things-many memories!

Ocean Skimmer, you pilloried yourself. We were friends: those were good days but not good enough to last. What lasts?

The oriel outlasts us! Its quarrels outlast ours!

September 11, 1615

In my mind's eye we meet at the taproom of the Mermaid's Tavern...

Raleigh: ...At sea, weeks away from port, alone on the deck, rigging and sails creaking, I've felt it... I've felt it in the smash of waves and moan of beams...felt it in the expanse of sky...that there must be a god.

Marlowe: Should be a god! Put it that way.

Raleigh: No...let it go as I've said it. As you ride at the bow, as spray hurls on board, there are certain certainties, rebuffs of personal fancy, declarations of a godhead.

Jonson: The Greek helmsman felt those same declarations, and his god was Zeus.

Marlowe: I don't go for such thinking on my part, Sir Walter. It shuts me in-side a cage and the cage has a door with four heavy bars: f-e-a-r.

Raleigh: You know that each country has had a godhead.

Marlowe: Each country has its diseases, debts...despots.

Shakespeare: Are you denying your "School of Night"?

Raleigh: I'm not on trial here. I was speaking con-fidentially, no, inti-mately...that's a better word. I was trying to share an emotion and I ask you to respect it as an emotion.

Jonson: You ask for respect. God be at your table. Everyone's highly re-spected here-even the waiters. (Laughter)

Marlowe: Ah, shut up!

Shakespeare: We didn't come here to quarrel.

Raleigh: Maybe we can do better with politics...or is it too hydra-headed to-night? Let's talk about Essex. Cautiously.

Marlowe: But why cautiously?

Shakespeare: We'll do better trying something else, not so risky. Supper's ready. Here it comes.

Jonson: Pour the ale, boy.

Marlowe: Hugger-mugger, my cage lost its bars. The bird of fear has flown ...hunger picked the lock.

That's how I remember an evening at the Tavern, Raleigh in his finest, wear-ing green velvet cloak, red trousers, black boots, black hat, sword; Jonson, Mar-lowe and me in our snuffbox suits, wearing our swords because of recent street fracases.

The Tower of London...

A cracked stone stairway leads to an open door:

Inside, windowless, Raleigh sits at his prison desk,

with maps, letters, books around him.

He is writing; he coughs:

Frail, he seems to be listening:

An armed guard trudges by and looks in.

Stratford

September 15, 1615

I

n '10, sometime during the autumn I think it was, I stopped out-side Raleigh's prison, thinking to visit him: there he was, at his deal table, books, globe, maps and papers piled about him. His door was flung wide: his pen moved: perhaps he was writing his History. Sun lay on the floor of his room. A wren sang. His hand stopped. I stepped for-ward, then faltered. His hands moved over the table: he leaned on his elbows now, coughing. He had on a grubby red woolen cape, sleeves smudged with wax. He coughed again-his shoulders shaking.

He was the one who had dared the wild and secret lands, who had sweated men and ships to reach a goal. Winds luned, storms crashed; yet he had kept on. He had wanted to explore the world for himself, for mankind! Books on board his ships, books in his brain: wind stirred parchment on his table as I stood there and he read. What if he should turn and see me? What if he should get up? Would he recognize me?

I thought: who are his friends? The thought cut me: the Great Lucifer is forgotten. Look around you. The liar is captive, will die behind these walls. They say he concocts an elixir, and gives it to his friends. No, I was not included. He needed his elixir more than I.

His white head was dirty...where was his youth? No, he had concocted hope. People said his rooms would be un-guarded...so they were. But I made no sound. The ugly Tower was still. What has happened to his Elizabeth: is she memory?

I wanted to talk to him about Spenser's Faerie Queen, and say...Spenser...you know...no, Raleigh sailed to the Canaries, to Florida, Manoa...Hispaniola...cloak-thrower...knight...names...and his map, a large parchment, came out of the wall and stared at me, rebuking me: cloak-thrower...patron...names...John White said that he admired him...John White said...where was White now, now that he's back from Roanoke?

Pushes hand through hair, coughs... I back away, wanting to put the wall be-tween us. I shuffled down a few steps, disgraced, down to the street, cock-roaches and rats scuttling, ivy blowing in the wind.

Let him finish his History of the World.

I had no right to disturb.

The blue cloak slips from Ellen's shoulders and through the stabbed hole I see moon, stars, and fog, each flecked with red. Fog soaks the hole and then, then, there's the face of an attacker, scarred, piratical. Something behind him fades into her face, so white. I see her smile her dazzling lover's smile and I hear her laughter and the sound of her bracelets.

In the funeral procession

a small black casket is accompanied by Ann, Shakespeare,

his daughter in black, and others.

A flower falls from the casket and Shakespeare

picks it up and puts it in his pocket:

A church bell tolls:

Blue cloak over a tombstone.

I

buried Hamnet, buried father, buried myself... What is this death that eats our lives as if we were pieces of bread on a dirt plate, sacrificed to whim and time? Our crosses top a hill, row on row, a row for each generation, across fog hills, across sunny hills, Ital-ian, French, English, Scot.

Escape with me:

Now at the prow, now in the waist,

the deck, in every cabin, I flamed amazement:

sometimes I'd divide and burn in many places,

on the topmast, the yards, the bowsprit...

Henley Street

September 23, 1615

Now, now thought is closer to death than love: I live in it, longing for her, for intercourse, the ice of this winter-house aging me and the wind, poor wind, scuttling nowhere, nowhere to go.

Go to the oriel, then.

Henley Street

September 24

God, the rain, the rain at its cobble-sop, common rain on cobbles, rising out of them, climbing the ivy, moulding thatch, hurting places of the mind, shivering our secrets, insinuating with lashes, coming again and again, thieving.

The dropping of one drop can absorb a soul: its alchemy traps a man: so, we, reduced, debased, encompassed, are carried to sea, to finality, ourselves made useless, noiseless, like a million others.

I heard rain throughout the night, from lying down to getting up, no sleep, only this endrenchment, intent on obliteration, transforming life into a comedy of errors.

I was twenty-eight or so!

All morning I sawed wood for props; all afternoon I practiced lines; all eve-ning I rehearsed. My costume didn't fit: the crown was badly torn. At four in the morning, there was no food for us. That was life at the Globe, when I first tried London.

I estimate that I have earned less than a hundred pounds from my thirty-seven plays. When I divide that by thirty years of work, I see what it represents. At least I see that much.

Henley Street