Perfect Shadows

Perfect Shadows - By Siobhan Burke

PART ONE:

SHADOWS IN THE SUN

OR AN UNDEAD MAN IN DEPTFORD

Chapter 1

“Kit! You, Kit! Come here, I want you!” Tommy, Sir Thomas Walsingham, called as I crossed the great hall in search of coals for my brazier; my ink had frozen again. He motioned me to follow him, and I trailed him to his office. To my dismay Ingram Frizer stood leaning over his shoulder, pointing out something on the papers spread on the table before them. Tommy looked up as I entered, and motioned me to join them.

“I have work for you!” Tom exclaimed, waving a handful of paper at me.

“A commission?” I asked eagerly. “I am well begun on Hero and Leander. In fact I was working on it just now, remembering how we swam in the moat last summer....” I faltered, stopped more by the smirk on Frizer’s face than by the annoyance on Tom’s. Tom was more than half drunk, I observed, though it lacked an hour to noon. Frizer drifted over to settle upon the chest under the casement window as Tommy started to gabble at me.

“No, no, nothing so slow or uncertain as that. What we thought was this.” His voice dropped to just above a whisper as the words tumbled out faster and faster.

“Slowly, Tommy,” I said gently. “I cannot make out more than a word in three. You’ve found another way to reline our purses, I take it?” He took a deep breath, and began again.

“Cony-catching! Ingram has found a pretty poult, just begging for the p-p-plucking!” The last word seemed to amuse him, and he repeated it several times, giggling. Another deep breath ended in a hiccup, but he went on regardless. “A young country squire, come to town for the first time. Pretty and innocent, just the sort you like,” he continued, leering at me. “You’ve the easy part, just seduce him, and let Ingram here walk in and catch you—we’ll handle the rest!” I glanced at Frizer, tittering behind his hand in the window seat.

“Find somebody else,” I said curtly, and turned to go. I wanted nothing to do with extortion; I had been the past recipient of just such attention too often to desire to practice it upon others.

“No, it must be you! He’s stage struck, cannot wait to meet the mighty Marlowe!” I returned to the table and he giggled again, pouring another cup of wine. “You’ll like him, big blue eyes and long blonde hair,” he paused to stroke his own locks, still as thick and golden as the day we’d met. “A perfect Ganymede, more money than Croesus, and he’ll pay, aye, he’ll pay!” Anger welled in me, hotter with every word he spoke.

“No!” I shouted, pounding my fist on the table, knocking over the inkwell and the wine cup. Frizer growled and lunged to snatch up the papers, shaking the inky wine off of them and glowering at me. I ignored him, leaning over the table to catch Tommy by the shoulders. I had meant to shake him, but found myself drawing him closer, and saying softly, “Send Frizer away, Tommy! You don’t need him—things were so much better, when it was just we two.” I tilted my head to kiss him, but recoiled from his breath, sour with wine. He knocked my hands from his shoulders, just as other hands fell heavily upon mine. Frizer jerked me back, and my knee caught the edge of the table, knocking it over, dumping its contents all over Tom. He screamed, brushing at the wine and ink soaking his velvets, spreading the stain, making it worse. I started to apologize, but he interrupted.

“Look what you’ve done! Look what you’ve done! Send Ingram away? Send him away? I need him. I need him far more than I need you!” Frizer’s grip tightened and he dragged me towards the door. I shoved an elbow hard into his belly, and twisted out of his grip. He was a few inches taller than I, and far heavier in build, but I was the veteran of innumerable tavern tourneys. A hard jab to the stomach, and an elbow to the back of his neck when he doubled overtook the starch right out of him.

“You cannot mean that, Tommy,” I said. He was staring in horror at Frizer measuring his length on the floor. When I started towards him, he backed away, calling loudly for his serving men. “I won’t hurt you, Tommy, you know that,” I began soothingly, when the door burst open to admit several large footmen. One helped Frizer to his feet, while two more flanked me, each taking an arm.

“You call yourself a gentleman, a scholar! You’re nothing without patronage, nothing without me! I’ve done everything for you, and you refuse me even one small favor in return! Jumped up little cobbler’s son!” Tom screamed, his face purpling with rage. I jerked free of the serving men, turned on my heel, and headed for the door.

“I did not give you leave to go!” Tom bellowed. I ignored him.

“Let him go,” Frizer growled. “He’s naught but a poet and a filthy playwright. Let him go!”



“Marlowe! Oy, Tamburlaine, over here!” It was Nashe’s voice. Peering into the tavern’s smoky gloom, I spotted his manic, gap-toothed grin behind a wildly waving tankard, and crossed the crowded room to join him. “I thought you were at Scadbury for the week.”

“I decided not to stay,” I said briefly, shedding my threadbare cloak and shaking the sleet from it. Patrons at the surrounding tables cursed or laughed as the icy spray caught or missed them, but none seemed inclined to fight, alas.

“Frizer, eh?” returned the quick-witted Nashe. “I tell you what, Kit, lets us catch him out some night, strip him mother-naked, then bind him fast to Paul’s Cross for the watch to find!” His insolence restored my humor, and I grinned, agreeing that the knave, with his pious parson’s face and pimp’s soul, deserved nothing less. “Well, never mind,” he said consolingly. “I got paid today—help me celebrate!”

We had spent an hour or so indulging in scathing observations upon our mutual acquaintances and squandering his shillings, when I spotted a new face just entering. Two new faces, a beautiful young man, and a somewhat stout, but still vigorous, older man. They exchanged a few quiet words, and the younger man’s eyes swept the common-room and stopped at me. I straightened incredulously and returned the gaze, resisting the urge to look behind me.

My preference in lovers was well enough known, but few had ever sought me out and never before a jewel such as this. The young man was gentry, from the look of the rich crimson velvet that clothed him. Wildly, I wondered if this was Tom’s cony, but no, he’d said that lad was fair and this youth was olive-skinned, with smoky, restive eyes and inky hair. He and his companion nodded to each other and he headed straight towards me. My satisfaction was a little soured by suspicion as he slid into a seat next tome, so close that our thighs pressed together. It was getting damnably hot in the room, for all it was January, and the sudden pressure in my groin was promising to become painful. I gulped at my wine and edged away from the lad, who let me go and then laughed, a throaty chuckle that set my head spinning.

“Is it fear, or desire, that so disturbs you?” he whispered, sliding a narrow hand onto my knee. His voice, husky and low, seemed almost to purr, and was graced with a faint foreign accent. I glanced around but his companion had vanished. Nashe gave me a wry and only slightly disapproving grimace and took himself off to a dice game in the far corner.

“Have I reason to fear you?” I asked, as sweat tickled my body.

He brushed my question aside with a laugh and leaned closer. “Desire, then. ‘He is a fool who loves not tobacco and boys.’, so you’ve said oft enough, or so it is told me. Do you desire me?” I nodded, unable to speak past the sudden lump in my throat. “Then meet me tomorrow evening for the Lord Mayor’s Twelfth Night masque at Crosby Place. You know where that is?” His careful manner of speech, and the odd lilt of his accent had beguiled me, but that drew me up short.

“I cannot go there!” I knew full well the sort of reception I, or any of my ilk would receive at the hands of the Lord Mayor’s grooms, but my companion brushed my objections aside.

“Then I do dare you come; have I not said it is a masque? Disguise yourself! If you have the valor there to meet me, then you have won me, but if you are a craven, then I would as lief you stay away.” He considered for a moment and then gave me a wicked, fetching smile.” Fail me not, my Leander, and look not to drown your fires in some unforeseen Hellespont of orthodoxy and security.” And I found myself alone with nothing to prove that the whole encounter had not been imagined, save for the warm place where his hand had rested on my thigh, and the hoots of my companions upon my apparent failure to gain the youth’s company for the evening. Shortly thereafter I returned to my lodgings to work out a guise for the following night, and to wonder if it were by chance or intent that the boy had referred so exactly to the mythic theme of my current work.

The following night, soberly arrayed as Machiavel, I wandered through the hall, looking for the lad. There were rivers of strong wine and wassail bowls liberally laced with brandywine readily available. I drank deeply, and as my stomach had been all but empty, I was soon far from sober.

I almost failed to recognize my quarry when I found him—or rather, when he found me. He was dressed as Hero, and not just any Hero, but my very creation, from my unfinished poem Hero and Leander. I was stunned by the advent of my imagined heroine in the all-too-physical flesh. The lad had copied the description of the robe exactly, the impertinent whelp, right down to the Venus with Adonis at her feet embroidered on the sleeves—only the veil was missing. His long dark hair, worn loose over his shoulders in glittering auric waves and I was fascinated to see that it had been pomaded and liberally powdered with gold-dust.

Hero made a deep curtsy. “Will you dance with me, my lord?” The neck of the robe gaped for a moment and I had a clear view of the small breasts it concealed. With a shocking shift of reality, I realized that my beautiful boy of the night before was indeed a woman. I was repelled, yet also unaccountably attracted. Yes, very attracted.

“Lady, I cannot,” I answered in a shaken voice. No woman had ever had such an effect on me before and damned few men.

“Then we shall speak together,” she said, tucking her arm through mine. My head was whirling. I thought of Tom, whom I had loved, and of the bitter quarrel that had parted us. He was making a great show of indifference, which hurt me as badly as any of the cutting things he’d said, worse even than his throwing my humble birth up in my face. We crossed through a room of tables setup for the gamblers, many of whom I knew, from their patronage of the playhouses. One of them started to stand as we entered. Ingram Frizer. Good, I thought, then Tommy was bound to hear of this and be sorry, or better still, as hurt and angry as I. My companion gave me no time to stop, however, but drew me into a private parlor beyond, and Frizer dropped back into his seat, muttering to his tablemates. There was an outbreak of bawdy laughter as the door was pulled shut and bolted behind us.

There were many pillows spread before the fire and a tray with drink and sweetmeats. She pulled me down beside her and poured wine red as blood into fragile cups of Venetian glass. My hands were shaking as I took the cup she handed me and garnet drops stained the ragged white frill at my wrist.

“Speak to me,” she said, “about yourself. Oh, not those things that anyone might know,” she added, with a low laugh. “Tell me what lies hidden here,” and she laid a cool hand upon my heart. I was repulsed by her forwardness but, even against my will, still more attracted and we conversed for a time. Her soft questions drew the answers from me as if my mouth had become a wound she had opened, bleeding my memories away, and no way to stanch the flow.

I described to her my childhood years, spent in the shadow of Canterbury’s great cathedral, of the games the churchmen, both religious and secular, played with the choirboys, but held back my own time spent as an alderman’s catamite. I told her of attending the King’s school, that had led to Cambridge, Cambridge led to London, and London had given me success, and Tom. I trailed off, thinking of him, of the wounding words he had flung at me like so many darts, of the void in my life where I had grown used to seeing him. My companion seemed to sense my distress, and asked me about him.

“We quarreled,” I said, shortly, but she pressed me for the details, and I surprised myself by telling her all.

“I even gave up my family for him,” I continued. “Last fall in Canterbury, a disagreement with a local tailor had come to blows, and he’d screamed out his accusation on the public street: Sodomite! My father was constable, and put an end to the quarrel, but that evening he taxed me with the accusation. ‘Is what Corking said the truth?’ I wanted to deny it, at least to him, but denying that meant denying Tom, and that I could not do.” I ran my thumb over the T-shaped scar on my right hand. “So I confessed. I hope never to pass another such night as that! My mother crying, my father pacing, striking me blows now and again, which I made no effort to block. Was it something that they did? No, it was the way that I was. Who had made me so? Manwood, who had gotten me my scholarship? No! Who then? God, or no one! That earned mea blow that sent me sprawling off my stool to strike my head against one of my father’s iron lasts. They made no effort to help me, left me there bleeding from a cut above my right eye—see the scar? I knew then that they were lost to me. When I found the strength I made my way to the door, ‘I think it best that you not come again,’ my father said, thrusting my cloak and my small bundle of belongings into my hands. I’ve not been back to Canterbury, nor will I ever return to that house. I am as the dead to them, and they to me.”

“Hero” seemed to feel the depth of my pain and humiliation. She took my hand for a moment, then reached up to run her long fingers through my hair. I trembled as she drew my face close to hers, kissed my eyes, then my mouth, licking my lips with her soft tongue. I was amazed to feel arousal, not the disgust occasioned by my few perfunctory performances with the tavern trulls I’d drunkenly attempted upon dares from my friends. I moaned and thrust my tongue deep into her mouth, my hand falling to her hip. Her hands were busy loosening my doublet, unlacing my points, slipping in beneath my shirt to caress me, then trailing down to the fastenings of my trunk-hose. I gasped as she slid her hand between my thighs, then up to my groin. “Stop!” I groaned and she chuckled.

“Is your fire all for poetry now and none left for the flesh? Do you really desire that I stop?”

“Yes. No! But I do not even know your name,” I said lamely and cursed my faltering speech: the great poet at a drunken loss for words. She chuckled again, pulled her hands from my clothing, and poured more wine.

“I am Rózsa Treska Guadalupe de Salinas y Miklos, but I am called Rózsa la Loba,” she said softly, handing me the glass. I drained it and she filled it again

“Spanish?” I was both surprised and interested.

“Spanish and Hungarian,” she replied. “My godfather and guardian, Nicolas von Poppelau, is Bohemian, a friend of my mother’s family. My parents were killed and I have lived with him ever since.” She smiled and anticipated my next question. “They were murdered by the Inquisition. Nicolas spirited me out of Spain, back to my mother’s family in Hungary. They did not want me either: ‘la Loba’ is another name for ‘half-breed’, you know.”

“I thought it meant ‘she-wolf ’,” I said feeling dizzy from more than just the wine—how was she doing this to me?

“That as well,” she smiled and kissed me deeply before helping me out of my clothing. She stood for a second, slipped off her gown and let it pool around her ankles. I watched the firelight play over her body. She was slender, almost, as the boy I had thought her, with small underdeveloped breasts, slim hips, and flat stomach. She knelt beside me, pushing me back on the pillows, her hair caressing my chest as she kissed my nipples. “You smell of lavender and roses,” she murmured. The effort involved in actually forcing my landlady to provide the weekly bath we’d agreed upon was prodigious, but I was happy that at least this time I had persevered. I hated bedding an unwashed lover myself—Rózsa realized that my thoughts were wandering and nipped me sharply, then trailed her tongue lightly down my body. She took my manhood into her mouth for a moment, then continued stroking me with her hand as she slowly moved her lips to my inner thigh. I shuddered, gasped at a sudden sharp pain as she bit me, then surrendered to the most intense carnal ecstasy I had ever felt. It was pure pleasure; all that I thought of as myself, all thought itself, vanished in wave after wave of bliss.

As the feeling receded I felt thoroughly enervated, almost drained, unable to tell how much time had passed. She rose from me then, licked her lips and smiled as she fetched a basin and ewer that sat nearby. “I wonder that it’s not dripping from the ceiling,” I mumbled as she washed my spilled seed off me. Try as I would, I could not stay awake. I mumbled an apology, which was genially accepted, then gave myself over to sleep.

Before dawn she woke me with a kiss. I reached for her, but she laughed and eluded me, thrusting my clothing into my seeking hands. I sat up and began to dress, feeling oddly giddy and light headed, as if I had been bled. Rózsa, having already donned her gown, awaited me by the door.

Only a few gamblers were still at the tables, their sodden heads upon their arms Frizer among them. Seething with sudden uncontrolled rage and humiliation at the memory of his words to Tom upon our parting, I drew my dagger and stepped towards the drunken man. I did not truly know if I intended to follow my impulse and cut the villain’s throat or to settle for merely frightening him into soiling himself. A light touch on my arm swung me face to face with Rózsa and all thought of vengeance fled. “Do not spill blood in this house,” she said quietly and drew me out the door.

Dusk that evening found me, for once, sitting at home. I had slept heavily until late afternoon, then dressed to go out, but had turned instead to moping about my chamber thinking of Rózsa. I had never before been attracted to any woman, never so much as found even one of them in the least interesting. Why had she such an unaccountable effect upon me?

My friend and fellow playwright, Watson, had once taxed me with being a sodomite for spite, saying that if it were made the common practice and marriage forbidden, then Marlowe would surely wed a woman within a fortnight. Had he after all been correct? Was it more a matter of perversity than perversion? I did not like to think so, but then, Rózsa. Oh, Rózsa.

The winter daylight, limp and dingy as old linen, brightened neither my chamber nor my mood. Twice I sat down to work, but found myself merely thumbing through my pages with growing dissatisfaction. I was thinking I’d not go out at all, but send out for a meal, when there was a light tap on the door. I answered it and saw my pretty boy of two nights before, in doublet and trunkhose of crimson velvet, shirt and hose of white silk, and a falling band of fine Italian lace. He wore riding boots and had his heavy cloak thrown over his arm, his hair braided into the elaborate lovelocks some of the more fashionable courtiers were beginning to wear.

“Come in! What are you doing here and why do you dress so?” I questioned Rózsa, laughing as I pulled her into a room made suddenly bright.

“I came to invite you to dine with us tonight and I dress so because it is both safer and more desirable in this world to be a man, or even a boy, than a woman,” she grinned at me and I felt a tingle in the pit of my stomach. I held her against the door, crushing my body’s length against hers, turning her face up to kiss. She held back for a second, then her body flowed against me, one hand tangling in my hair, the other dropping to stroke my rising desire. I broke off with a gasp and she pushed me firmly away. “Anon, anon! We must go now. Do you put on your boots and bring your cloak. I have brought a horse for you; no, ’tis no great distance,” she forestalled my protest,” but the streets are mired knee-deep from today’s thaw.” Numbly I followed her. What was this woman, that she had such an effect on me, could order me about, and have me obey like the veriest slave? As we passed a common-room downstairs voices floated out.

“Oh, tell me another! What use would that stinkin’ sodomite Marlowe behavin’ for a wench?” I felt my blood turn to ice then rush burning hot to my face as I recognized the voice—Nicholas Skeres, a crony of my great enemy, Frizer. He was lurking here for no other reason than to taunt and torment me, I was certain. A red haze clouded my sight as I shook off Rózsa’s restraining hand and slipped into the room. “He’s far more interested in a boy’s backside,” the coarse voice continued over a chorus of guffaws.

“Or either side of pretty Thomas Walsingham, eh Skeres?” another voice gibed.

“Oh, aye, I’d bet he bends over right enough for our Tommy!” I was standing behind the drunken Skeres; close enough to watch the progress of a louse through his thinning, filthy hair. As he reached his right hand up to scratch, I grasped it, twisting it up behind his back as I tugged his dagger from its sheath. The big man started to push himself up off his stool, his left hand flat upon the table. I promptly leaned over and plunged the knife through his hand and a good inch into the oak beneath. I then stood racked with vicious laughter at his frantic efforts to free himself.

“I cry you mercy, Nick, but I mistook it for a rat,” I cried, almost choking between rage and glee. Only one of his companions was sober enough to stumble from his seat and charge me—he ran into the heel of my hand and crumpled to the floor, spattering the rushes with blood from his broken nose. I landed two solid kicks to the fallen man’s ribs before Rózsa stopped me. She paused to glance scornfully at the bedlam and toss a couple of gold coins into the blood pooling on the table top, then pulled me from the smoky room. The roars of outrage and pain followed us into the yard where two horses stood, one innocent white, and the other black as sin, held by a starveling street boy. I found myself still shaking with rage and unable to look at Rózsa. I had never learned to curb my violent impulses, rather the opposite, brawling for sport. Though I had been warned often enough my temper would bring me disgrace, this was the first time that I felt ashamed. She waited until I heaved myself onto the white horse’s back then swung lightly onto the black. “You are impetuous, Kit,” was all she said.