As soon as it was in his possession, Shakespeare recognized the distinctive penmanship. The hair on the back of his neck prickled. It was a message from a dead man.
“When did Marlowe give this to you?” Shakespeare’s voice was sharp.
“He didn’t, Master Shakespeare.” As ever, Annie couldn’t bring herself to lie. She had few other witchy traits, but Annie possessed honesty in abundance. “It was hidden. Father Hubbard found it and gave it to me. For a remembrance, he said.”
“Did you find this after Marlowe died?” The prickling sensation at the back of Shakespeare’s neck was quieted by the rush of interest.
“Yes,” Annie whispered.
“I will hold on to it for you then. For safekeeping.”
“Of course.” Annie’s eyes flickered with concern as she watched the last words of Christopher Marlowe disappear into her new master’s closed fist.
“Be about your business, Annie.” Shakespeare waited until his maid had gone to fetch more rags and water. Then he scanned the lines.
Black is the badge of true love lost.
The hue of daemons,
And the Shadow of Night.
Shakespeare sighed. Kit’s choice of meter never made any sense to him. And his melancholy humor and morbid fascinations were too dark for these sad times. They made audiences uncomfortable, and there was sufficient death in London. He twirled the quill.
True love lost. Indeed. Shakespeare snorted. He’d had quite enough of true love, though the paying customers never seemed to tire of it. He struck out the words and replaced them with a single syllable, one that more accurately captured what he felt.
Daemons. The success of Kit’s Faustus still rankled him. Shakespeare had no talent for writing about creatures beyond the limits of nature. He was far better with ordinary, flawed mortals caught in the snares of fate. Sometimes he thought he might have a good ghost story in him. Perhaps a wronged father who haunted his son. Shakespeare shuddered. His own father would make a terrifying specter, should the Lord tire of his company after John Shakespeare’s final accounts were settled. He struck out that offending word and chose a different one.
Shadow of Night. It was a limp, predictable ending to the verses—the kind that George Chapman would fall upon for lack of something more original. But what would better serve the purpose? He obliterated another word and wrote “scowl” above it. Scowl of Night. That wasn’t quite right either. He crossed it out and wrote “sleeve.” That was just as bad.
Shakespeare wondered idly about the fate of Marlowe and his friends, all of them as insubstantial as shadows now. Henry Percy was enjoying a rare period of royal benevolence and was forever at court. Raleigh had married in secret and fallen from the queen’s favor. He was now rusticated to Dorset, where the queen hoped he would be forgotten. Harriot was in seclusion somewhere, no doubt bent over a mathematical puzzle or staring at the heavens like a moonstruck Robin Goodfellow. Rumor had it that Chapman was on some mission for Cecil in the Low Countries and penning long poems about witches. And Marlowe was recently murdered in Deptford, though there was talk that it had been an assassination. Perhaps that strange Welshman would know more about it, for he’d been at the tavern with Marlowe. Roydon—who was the only truly powerful man Shakespeare had ever met—and his mysterious wife had both utterly vanished in the summer of 1591 and had not been seen since.
The only one of Marlowe’s circle that Shakespeare still heard from regularly was the big Scot named Gallowglass, who was more princely than a servant ought to be and told such wonderful tales of fairies and sprites. It was thanks to Gallowglass’s steady employment that Shakespeare had a roof over his head. Gallowglass always seemed to have a job that required Shakespeare’s talents as a forger. He paid well, too—especially when he wanted Shakespeare to imitate Roydon’s hand in the margins of some book or pen a letter with his signature.
What a crew, Shakespeare thought. Traitors, atheists, and criminals, the lot of them. His pen hesitated over the page. After writing another word, this one decisively thick and black, Shakespeare sat back and studied his new verses.
Black is the badge of hell,
The hue of dungeons
and the school of night.
It was no longer recognizable as Marlowe’s work. Through the alchemy of his talent, Shakespeare had transformed a dead man’s ideas into something suitable for ordinary Londoners rather than dangerous men like Roydon. And it had taken him only a few moments.
Shakespeare felt not a single pang of regret as he altered the past, thereby changing the future. Marlowe’s turn on the world’s stage had ended, but Shakespeare’s was just beginning. Memories were short and history unkind. It was the way of the world.
Pleased, Shakespeare put the bit of paper into a stack of similar scraps weighted down with a dog’s skull on the corner of his desk. He’d find a use for the snippet of verse one day. Then he had second thoughts.
Perhaps he’d been too hasty to dismiss “true love lost.” There was potential there—unrealized, waiting for someone to unlock it. Shakespeare reached for a scrap he’d cut off a partially filled sheet of paper in a halfhearted attempt at economy after Annie had shown him the last butcher’s bill.
“Love’s Labour’s Lost,” he wrote in large letters.
Yes, Shakespeare mused, he’d definitely use that one day.