The waterfall, p.1
The Waterfall, page 1
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To Penelope and Aldrich, for your years of friendship.
Matthew Wetherby, 10 December 1925
The First Part
It is now the spring of the year of our Lord one thousand five hundred and ninety-three. I scratch these letters onto whatever scraps of paper remain to me. I dare not stop writing lest another hand stops mine before I am done.
* * *
I must begin with a thread of recollection.
It was Ascension-eve, the nineteenth day of May under the new calendar, and a Saturday, too, so a merry day. The proud sun was warming us like a blanket while Alicette and I rode from Canterbury to London on the great Watling Street that the Romans had laid.
I was on an especially lazy white cob, with Alicette on a dun pony at my side. Along the way, we had eaten well of the bounty of Kent – England’s Garden, as the portly King Henry named it. Apples, plums, a little mutton. Oh yes, our bellies were straining at the girdles.
I had been to Kent with Lord Strange’s Men to play my Shrew at a few inns and churchyards, the London stages being all closed. Canterbury has been spared the horror of our age, and I fancy it is the spirit of the great martyr St Thomas that keeps the Pestilence at bay.
The tomb of that holy man is a fine sight to behold. And no less is the patient, wending line of gentlemen, paupers, women and servants to kneel before it. The cathedral, a seat that points to the Heavens, is built of yellow stones and joyful pilgrim tears, such that I felt affected by their quiet piety. Even the stalls within the great church selling beer and capons and the ‘doctors’ selling their patent cures for corns of the toes showed a modicum of respect, so that they held their tongues while the archdeacon made the Eucharist.
Alicette and I – oh, writing the letters of her name affects me in a way that writing Anne’s never did, for which I feel at once joyful and ashamed – took a turn in the cathedral precincts aftertime. There I set eyes on the Lord of Canterbury, the Archbishop himself, John Whitgift – a walnut-skinned fellow a little shorter than myself and of a strongly built stature, with small dark eyes that flicked about. He was deep in conversation with one of his minions, a beautiful-faced young man, perhaps five-and-twenty, with hair like white silk. They were walking and chuckling at some jest, I fancied. Whitgift is not a gentleman known as a great rollicker – indeed, better known for his jealousy of ecclesiastical riches and having his enemies within the Church broken to pieces – so the jest must have been an excellent one.
We passed them as we went out to enjoy the city. Canterbury would do well to have a playhouse as grand as our Rose. The burghers seem less dim-witted than most, and I did wish that we could play again in a true theatre. My feet have had enough of stomping on cobblestones in inn yards. (I am not the hardiest creature, I confess – I am of a middling height, with genial features and thinning ginger hair. And my delicate fingers would have suited a girl, I was told at school in Warwickshire.)
But on that Saturday, we were gone, and it was as we reached the Thames-side village of Greenwich, some three miles from London, that we passed the Palace of Placentia, where our gracious Queen had been brought into this world. It is a fine red-brick dwelling, built long on the riverbank to watch the boats pass by. Made for pleasure, and pleasure only, it pleases the eye as well as the heart of any Englishman who takes pride in the repute that his country has for merriment.
We trotted happily another hour through the fields and lanes that took us to the city where we had made our home; but by and by, the day began to darken a little. The sun still shone, the birds still tweeted, but the mood around us had changed.
‘Do you feel that, Will?’ Alicette asked me.
‘I do.’ It was a cold wind. Its fingers were creeping inside my doublet and wringing at my heart. Sometimes nature herself will send us missives in disguise.
Forsooth, the spirit of London had come upon us. Suspicion in every casement, every doorway, watchful for what foulness we might bring with us. More eyes than the cornfields followed us as we rode through the streets. My fingers went to the poniard in my boot, to tell myself that it was there still. Oh, the idol of our age is a barred door; and all the angels are turned to guardsmen.
As our hooves entered the great city and fell as fours on the great bridge arching over the Thames, I heard a tell-tale sound: the ringing of a bell. With more hope than belief, I looked to the chapel of St Thomas in the centre of the bridge, asking that the noise be coming from the bell-loft there. But those rings have been gone for fifty years, since the old king crushed the Catholic religion.
No, this sound was a handbell, and it walked palm-in-palm with the terrible words: bring out your dead. We halted in front of the chapel. One of those dread doctors, encased in a wool cloak sealed with wax, his bird-beak leather mask over his face to ward off the sick-making miasma with a mush of peppermint and cloves, stood before me. His arms were up to the Heavens as he recited those words over and over. Behind him was his handcart loaded with the dead. I know not how he came to be but five yards from me, for I swear by Christ’s wounds that he had not been a moment before. My cob whinnied and bucked. Animals have senses men cannot conceive, and he could tell that this creature was not of the sanctified earth. Time and again, these bird-men enter a putrid house and push away the clawed hands imploring them for cure, for medicine. But they cure nothing. They only remove and record. The body goes on the bier, the score goes on the slate.
He stood still, with his arms and face raised up as if welcoming me to Hell.
‘What do you want?’ I demanded, angered by his presence thrust into my life.
He said nothing, but I saw his eyes moving behind the dusty glass lenses in his mask. They roved over me and Alicette. Then, without a word, he turned, pushed his handcart to the edge of the bridge and lifted the handles. At first, the three naked corpses upon it did not move. Then they shook. They began to roll and tumble, and over the stone edge they fell. A great ring of water rose up as they dropped through the chill surface, down to the reeds that would entangle them and never let go.
‘Are there no pits?’ Alicette asked me, shocked.
‘There are. But it takes him time to get to them,’ I told her. She shivered, and I did the same. Death is nothing but the currency of the age. The theatres are shut, the apprentices make no mayday riots, all is sad. But to see what had once been bonny young lives disposed of as trash left me heart-sick as we walked to the house that I rent close by the Aldersgate. I should have felt cheerier, for it is a fine new place, built well, cool in the summer and warm in the winter. And it has little problem with rats.
I was upon the threshold and about to call up to my servant, Marcel, who is cheap, when Alicette pointed to a big heap of old clothes that someone had cast down at the corner of the building.
‘Be wary, Will,’ she said.
I did not need her to recall to me what danger lurked in old clothes. The Pestilence is always on our shoulders in London. With a great care, I drew the poniard from my boot and made to shog the heap away from my home.
‘Hold your hand!’ the pile growled. And I suddenly beheld within it two eyes, livid as brimstone, staring at me. I knew them even before their owner had dragged himself to his feet and pulled the hood from his scalp.
‘For the love of Heaven, Kit!’ I said. ‘You smell like a goat.’
He opened his doublet and sniffed. ‘I cannot forswear you, Will. I do. I have been living like one for the past three days. It was without chance that I would not smell like a farmyard.’
‘Oh, come in.’ I sighed wearily. ‘I will have Marcel pour some rose water over you. It might disguise the reek for a short while.’
‘Thank you kindly.’
‘Who is he?’ Alicette whispered as Marcel opened the house and stood back to let my friend and collaborator enter.
‘Kit Marlowe. Sometime playmaker, sometime gentleman, sometime pigsty.’
‘Yet always a gentleman,’ he insisted, having earwigged. He bowed low. And there was a slight malevolence in his eye-cast. To describe him, Kit was a tall and broad-built man and Roister Doister pugnacious. His features were boyishly pointed, which made him look untrustworthy, when most of the time he was simply bored. His staccato vowels denoted Kent as his origin, and he rarely wore ruffs, preferring collars because he said ruffs itched at his neck. He never mentioned the truth that he attended the university at Cambridge, allowing him the title of ‘gentleman’, while I did not; but he many times very noisily did not mention it. It so happens that our beginnings were remarkably similar: both born in the year 1564 in the provinces. His father made shoes, while mine made gloves, and we were both schooled in the grammars. Had fate and fatherhood not decreed that I should be forced to marry Anne at the age of eighteen years, we might even have met and begun composing works together then. Perhaps I could have diverted him from the path of self-destruction.
‘Do gentlemen often dress like dung-heaps?’ Alicette replied.
‘Take care,’ I told her. ‘He bites.’
‘Bite, kick…’
‘… steal?’ I proposed.
‘On occasion.’ And he broke into a wide smil
My parlour was comfortably appointed, with rush matting that covered the beaten-earth floor and two good-quality benches that I had bought from the Earl of Leicester’s man when the old gentleman decided he wished to reside in Wales with his mistress. I am all for residing with one’s mistress, but not if it means Wales. Alicette arranged herself most comely on one bench as I held my arms open for Kit.
‘Come, then,’ I said. He embraced me and did a little sailor’s jig as he did so. ‘Sit and tell me why you have not bathed for a month.’
He sat and peeped around at my home. The man who built my house had begun to deck the walls with oak panelling, but seems to have run out of gold, for the panelling also runs out, about halfway across the room, leaving only the whitewashed plaster. He had also been unable to afford glass for the windows, so they are constructed of oiled cloth instead and let little light in. Marcel therefore lit a half-dozen tallow candles, filling the room with the smell of burning pig fat. To oppose this stink, he subsequently went around wafting dried lavender.
‘What the devil is he doing?’ Kit asked.
‘Wasting his legs. Marcel, leave be and fetch us some wine.’
‘Aye, master,’ he said, ambling back to the kitchen.
I took note of Kit staring at a tapestry I had hung. It was a rough depiction of sinners standing before St Peter to be judged. Some were being lifted by angels to the clouds overhead, while others were being dragged down by horned devils to the underworld.
‘What do you think of it?’ I asked.
‘I think it scares me right to Hell.’
‘Then it has achieved the weaver’s intent.’
‘I hope he gets gut-ache!’ He shivered. ‘I am in danger, Will.’
‘Your everlasting soul?’
‘My more fragile body.’
Marcel brought us three pewter cups of Rhenish wine. It was stale and tasted so. Alicette grimaced and I nearly spat mine on the floor, but Kit threw his back and asked for more.
‘You are not jesting,’ I said.
‘I am not.’
In the few years I had known Kit, he had rarely been out of danger. He had a nose for it.
‘What is it this time? Have you been selling saints’ bones? Is it a jealous husband? A jealous wife? Murder?’
‘Murder is closest,’ he said grimly.
I caught Alicette’s glance. She had known him for three minutes and already she could tell that anything sinful was within Kit Marlowe’s scope.
‘Will you tell me?’
He licked his lips. It was his habit when he was uncertain whether to reveal himself or not. ‘You are not my confessor.’
‘I hope, Kit, that you do not have a confessor. If you have, they will hang you.’
He jumped up and began pacing. ‘Ach!’ he cried. ‘You think that is the danger? You think I have gone back to the old religion? Oh, Will, if only you—’ He caught his tongue and stared at Alicette.
‘She is my companion, Kit, and I trust her to play mum far more than I trust you for it.’
He grumbled under his breath.
‘I shall leave if you wish it,’ she said, rising.
I held up my hand. This was my house, and I would choose who could or could not haunt it. I was irritated by Kit’s unfriendly actions. ‘No,’ I said. ‘Kit can go or stay, but I have invited you and not him. Few people ever invite Kit, he just appears.’
‘This is no game, Will,’ he said.
Alicette could see the determination on his countenance. ‘I shall leave,’ she said firmly. I accepted, though I had been relishing our evening together. I kissed her hand, she curtsied and left.
‘What is the affair?’ I asked sharply as her gown rustled up the staircase.
‘Your man?’
I sighed.
‘Marcel!’ He came. ‘Bring the rest of the bottle, then you may retire for the night.’ He nodded happily, fetched the rest of the Rhenish and betook himself to the loft at the rear of the house, where he had a comfortable cot lined with fresh straw.
‘Marcel,’ Kit muttered to himself.
‘Aye.’
‘French, is he?’
‘Piedmontese. Why?’
‘Can’t trust the French right now.’
‘Piedmontese. And a Huguenot.’
‘Pah! So he says.’
‘Do you think he has been sent by the French king to spy on my kitchen? Mayhap he is sending back intelligence on how I like my hens cooked.’
‘Mayhap he is!’ He jumped up as if bitten by ants and strode around the room. ‘There are stranger things in this life, Will. Five miles stranger.’
‘What has gotten into you? And what do you mean “murder is closest” to what makes you so nervy?’ He stopped by the window, tried to penetrate the oily cover with his sight, gave up and opened the door to peep out. ‘Calm yourself. No spies.’
‘So you think.’
‘Aye, so I think.’ His histrionics were beginning to itch upon me. He was a master playmaker but a grating player.
‘Elizabeth has signed a warrant for my arrest.’
That jolted me. He had been taken by the constables for brawling many a time, but that his riots had reached the ears of the Queen was a surprise. ‘Upon what grounds?’
He turned and showed me his teeth again. ‘Atheism.’
‘Oh, Kit, for the love of… How?’
‘They took Kyd on the same charge last week. The little adder gave me to them in return. He handed them some of my writing that I had left in our rooms.’
‘What did it say?’
He leant his back to the wall and gave way to a crooked smile, as if it were a summer’s morn in Kew. ‘I believe it was my claim that Christ used John the Evangelist as a boy of Sodom.’
I shook my head. Kit was a preening child at times. ‘How clever of you. So clever that they may tie a noose around your neck and snap it. You may die laughing. It is no wonder you are frightened.’
‘Frightened? Of that? Pish.’ He fluttered his hands. ‘Whitgift will stay that order.’
‘Whitgift?’
‘My Lord of Canterbury, aye.’
My first thought was that he was boasting. My second, which carried more danger, was that he was not. If the prelate of all England was like to prevent Kit’s persecution for such a calumny on Christ, the reason was a dark one. I was uncertain that I wanted an answer to my following question.
‘Why should he do that?’
‘Why should he do anything?’ He chuckled to himself and none other. ‘Because he wants something.’ I knew he was expecting me to guess a black deed. ‘He wants knowledge that I possess.’
‘Will you give it to him?’
He drummed his palms on the wall. It quivered a little. ‘I have not yet determined that. There are reasons to do so, reasons not to do so.’
‘If the reason to give it is that he stays the Queen’s hand and keeps you from dancing the Tyburn jig at the end of a rope, I should say that would out-strong any argument to the contrary.’
‘Yes, you would think so, would you not? And yet…’ He stopped his tongue and peered hard through the oil cloth. ‘The church clock strikes.’
‘It is St Botolph’s.’
‘St Botolph’s,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘Was that eight chimes?’
‘It was.’
‘Then I must go. I am late already.’
I was tiring of his mood and did not want to enquire where he was expected. ‘Go, then.’
‘May I return tomorrow?’
‘Tomorrow eve. Sup with us.’
‘I shall.’
Without another word, he threw his black cloak over himself, studied the street, up and down, and hurried in the direction of the river. I watched him leave, startling a constable of the watch, who shone his lamp in Kit’s face and shrank into a crevice, his lavender nosegay pressed to his face to keep the Pestilence at bay.
I betook myself to our sleeping chamber. Alicette was warm and soft after a hard journey.
* * *
The morning arrived, and I made my way to the Rose. That fine playhouse is most certainly the best of our theatres. Oh, it may not have the luxury of those on the north side of the Thames, but Southwark does well for it, and there are both a bear pit and a bordello within twenty paces, so all a man’s entertainment is on hand with great convenience.
