Perfect Shadows

chapter 5

Blackavar was old, very old, but recently rebuilt to more modern standards, with many glazed windows newly set into the ancient masonry. The house drowsed and glittered in the sultry late afternoon sun like a stout matron draped in diamonds. I swung myself out of the saddle, tossed the reins at the waiting groom and turned to the house. As at Crosby Place, the servants showed me into a study well supplied with books, food and drink and left me with word that the Master and Mistress would be returning soon.

I read for a time, then decided to walk in the gardens and there Rózsa found me, leaning on a wall, watching the brilliant sunset. The clouds were piled into impossible mountains and gorges, violently colored. She leaned against me, taking my hand. “It reminds me of the Carpathians, the Transylvanian Alps,” she said, her voice loud in the oppressive, still air.

“Tell me,” I said, curious about the places she had seen. “I have always wanted to travel, farther than just the Low Countries. Back to France, perhaps, but for my own pleasure, rather than dangerous business for the Queen.

No, for Walsingham, rather,” I corrected myself bitterly.

“Wherein you met your Tom?” she asked softly.

“Yes, and would I had not, for I fear he will be my ruin.” Lightning cracked the sky and her reply was drowned in the roll of thunder that followed. We ran for the house and I found my mood not much improved when we got there.

Nicolas awaited us in the study. “Am I the only guest?” I asked, relieved to find that, at least for the time being, I was. Rózsa questioned me about my time with Walsingham’s circle of spies and how I had come to work for them. I snorted and told them the sordid story.

“I am well out of it,” I concluded.

“But how is it that you were able to leave Walsingham’s Service so freely?” Nicolas asked, thoughtfully. “Given all you know, I should not have thought that you would be so easily let go.”

“The death of Sir Francis was a blessing for me. Cecil tries to ensnare me, but he is no Walsingham.”

“He may be worse,” Rózsa retorted. “He may embrace your Machiavel as Sir Francis did not.”

“If they wish me to spy for them they cannot kill me,” I reasoned.

“How if they only wish your silence? How better to stop your mouth than with six feet of clay?”

“Mayhap, but I do not fancy I should be quite so easy to kill, and I never supposed I’d make old bones in any case. The fiercer the flame the sooner it burns out,” I said with a shrug and a grim smile at their exchanged glances. I paced restlessly about the room and stopped short before a portrait half hidden in the shadows. It showed an androgynous dark-haired young man, dressed in a finely embroidered doublet muted by cobweb-lawn, and holding a feather fan in one languorous hand. With a start, I realized that it was Rózsa and turned a questioning look on her. She laughed, happy, it seemed, to change the subject, and told me that it had been a present for Nicolas.

“It was painted to celebrate my presentation at court. The painter claimed to have been employed by the Queen of Scots, to design her embroideries, but had fallen to traveling the country and painting portraits. Indeed, the embroidery is rather better rendered than my features!”

“You were presented as a boy?” I was fascinated.

“And danced with the queen, who told me that I was a likely lad,” Rózsa laughed, “and presented again the next night as a girl and she quite enjoyed the prank, though she claimed to have known the truth all along!” I took a candle to examine the painting more closely.

“The face is not very like,” I agreed. “Except for the eyes.” I stared at them and they stared back, ancient, knowing eyes in an adolescent face. I turned to find the originals fixed upon me, their expression no more readable than the painted ones. She smiled and changed the subject again, asking me about my plays, especially Faustus.

This naturally turned the conversation to the arcane, to Doctor Dee, and to Ralegh’s so-called School of Night, to the references I had used for the play and thence onward to superstition, the Fairy faith and other heathen religions.

“Did you know that it is the dark of the moon and that this is Walpurgis Nacht?” Rózsa said abruptly. “The people of the Empire believe that all the devils walk this night and the witches have free rein. It’s one of the great Sabbats, you know, called Beltane here in England.”

“How do you know so much about witches,” I asked idly. She turned her dark, enigmatic eyes on me.

“That is what my parents were burned for, in Spain.”

The thunder was still exploding in cannonade overhead when I went to my chamber an hour or so later. It was only a matter of minutes before Rózsa joined me. I lay on the bed, stripped to shirt and hose and watched her undress in the flickering light of the candles. In her shirt she went to a cupboard and returned to the bed with a small, carved stone pipe and a cake of a greenish-brown substance. I admired the pipe, carved in the shape of a dragon, the bowl formed of its open jaws and its tail for the stem. She filled the pipe from the block and lit it with a taper. I sniffed. “What is it? It’s not tobacco,” I said, and watched as she held the smoke she had inhaled and then let it out slowly.

“It’s hashish, from Turkey. It’s better than tobacco,” she answered, handing the pipe to me. I had eagerly embraced and ardently loved Ralegh’s “nymph”, tobacco, but after a time I had to agree: this was better. I felt as if I were floating a few inches above the bed, as if her hands left trails of sensation across my skin, like shooting stars against the void, as she stripped away my hose and shirt. I watched dreamily as she kissed my fingers and wrist. Our eyes met and locked as she bit into the vein there. The anticipated bliss began to well in me, and my stomach knotted as I realized that it was the bite that gave the pleasure, and that she was sucking on the wound that she had made. She was drinking my blood.

She left my wrist then and kissed my lips. I could taste my blood in her mouth and it excited something within me, something twisted, corrupt, that had lurked in my soul, only hinting at its presence before, but now forever exposed—flinging away salvation, embracing damnation, I reveled in it and rolled over, pinning her beneath me, thrusting myself into her with a violence that was only rivaled by her own. She scored my back with her nails, then buried her hands in my hair, relentlessly pulling me down, pulling my head back to expose my throat.

I could feel her sharp teeth entering the vein. The depravity of it forced my climax and I nearly blacked out. Only dimly conscious, I felt her slip from me and return a minute later with a goblet of ruby-red Venetian glass, a dragon entwined about its stem. It was filled to brimming with a dark liquid. “I would not have thee die. I could not endure to lose thee a second time,” she said, inexplicably, and handed me the glass. As I raised it to my lips I saw the rapidly closing cut she had made on her wrist and knew that the glass held blood, her blood. I drained it, savoring the odd, bittersweet taste, then cast it aside and our eyes locked again as I took her hand, placed the cut to my lips, and drew the living blood from her as she shivered against me. I took no more than a few swallows before a lethargy overcame me and I slept.

It was late afternoon when I woke, alone, and drew the curtains against the painfully bright sunlight pouring into the room. My wrist bore only a faint bruising where she had bitten me, as did my throat when I had checked the mirror, but my back looked and felt as if I had been flogged. Hissing with the pain, I eased a shirt over the bloody welts, pulled on my hose and slops, and went downstairs. The servants once more brought me meat and drink and told me that my hosts would return at sunset.

I sat in the study and thought about the preceding night. The hashish had released my inhibitions, revealing the darkest side of my nature, a side that I had always suppressed, but that was now rampantly free. When I thought of last night I felt no disgust or revulsion, only a tainted fascination and it was the taint itself, I realized, that was so seductive. I passed the rest of the time until sunset reading and laughing over Rózsa’s brazen and pithy translations of that ribald Roman poet Catullus.

I spent a few days there, and the nights together with Rózsa were a pleasure so intense I thought I’d die of it. Twice more we engaged in our sanguinary rite, leaving me feeling a little weak, but also possessed of vastly heightened senses and an almost hectic excitement. Though I could never tire of the company, I soon wearied of the country life and felt the pull of the city, of London. I left early on the morning of the eighth, but the playhouses had been ordered closed due to plague and I found I had rather too much time on my hands.

One night at the Anchor, Thomas Kyd approached me, his inky fingers working nervously, twisting a pewter mourning ring around and around. We had worked in a shared chamber some time before, but found that our natures were not suited to such close quarters. Thomas was sober and earnest, taking in work as a copyist or scrivener to keep himself fed. Sarcasm and irony were largely lost on him and he read no Latin or Greek, but depended on the translations of others, all of which served to make him the butt of many jokes among the University wits.

I was playing cards with four or five others and waited for Thomas to come to his point, but in vain. He just sat with his calflike eyes fixed on me and sipped the small beer that I paid for, watching the card-play without comment. I was drinking wine liberally laced with aquavitae and was already more than a little drunk. I soon grew bored and impatient—I found his sedate temperance irritating at the best of times, and now every twist of that cheap ring seemed to wind me tighter and tighter.

“Christ’s Cock, Thomas, will you come to the point?” I snarled, my impatience somewhat mitigated by the evident horror my impiety induced in Kyd. “Surely you remember Christ’s cock, Thomas—it could crow three times in a single night!” Drunken laughter rocked the room and almost drowned out Kyd’s reply.

“You’d best take care, Marlowe. What if someone—important— should hear you?” Kyd murmured, with a furtive glance around.

“What do you want, Thomas?” Patiently exasperated.

“I need some money, not much, just a small sum until Friday. I’ll begetting paid then and—what?”

“I said, I’ll buy your hat. A new one, is it not? You have execrable taste in clothing, Tom, and you always had,” I was laughing, almost overcome by my own drunken humor. My companions exchanged glances and several bystanders moved closer, closing in to watch the kill.

“Why would you want it,” Kyd asked sullenly, “if it’s so execrable?”

“Why, it looks just like a piss-pot, Thomas, and I’ll use it so. I need to piss and I’d as lief not leave the table just now,” I said blandly, indicating the cards before me. The room exploded into coarse laughter and his face flamed. “Come now, what d’you say? I’ll give you a shilling for it. That’s a handsome price for a piss-pot, you can’t say fairer than that!” I drawled.

Kyd shoved himself away, stumbling to the door, half-blind with tears of humiliation. I felt suddenly tired and heartily ashamed of myself for wasting my wit in such a coarse and puerile way. Pushing myself away from the table, I called out after him, but he only stiffened and kept going. I caught him just inside the door. “Come, Horatio,” I said, nicknaming him for one of his characters as Nashe had often named me “Tamburlaine”. “Come now, and forgive me. You know ’twas only the drink.” He cursed softly, but took the half crown I pressed into his hand, the last gold coin I had in my purse. He left without a word, but with a backward glance that spoke volumes. He hated me, that glance said, hated having to ask me for money, hated being made the butt of my vicious humor, and if ever he could do me an ill turn, he’d not hesitate. Ignoring the gibes of my companions, I returned to the table. Both the game and the company had lost their savor.

Bored with inaction, I spent my days amusing myself by living up to Marston’s sarcastic sobriquet ”Kind Kit”, writing poisonous satires on the works of rival poets and playwrights, and circulating them where they would fall under the eyes of their targets.

I made the rounds of the taverns by night, drank too much, argued my unorthodox opinions a bit too glibly, and certainly, by hindsight, far too recklessly. Blasphemies designed merely to shock and disgust my listeners spilled from my lips, I picked fights and started brawls, and through all I thought of Rózsa. Several times I almost returned to Blackavar, but I held back, keeping that as a last resort. I heard that Thomas Kyd had been arrested, and shrugged. It was most likely for debt, I thought and if the fool had been too fastidious to use the money I had given him, then to hell with him.



About mid-month a letter arrived from Tom, asking me to visit him at my earliest convenience. Let him dangle for once, I thought and purposely waited several days before riding to Scadbury, to arrive on the afternoon of the seventeenth. The house was filled with people and though Tom must have seen me in the throng, he never acknowledged my presence. By the morning of the nineteenth I was furious. I had started drinking as soon as I woke, but I was not yet drunk when I accosted Tom in the gallery that morning, catching his arm and swinging him about. “I would speak with thee,” I hissed, my anger barely controlled, my fingers digging into his flesh through the heavy velvet of his doublet.

“Not now, Marlowe, and not here,” Tom answered petulantly, ignoring my familiarity. “Anon.” He tried to pull away but I tightened my grip.

“Yes now,” I insisted. “Find us someplace private or I shall have my say here and now. You won’t like it.” I had retained my rank as dominant partner in our personal relationship, more by my own nature than Tom’s intent, and his resistance crumbled. He motioned to a nearby room used for the estate’s accounting and I bolted the door behind us. Tom seated himself behind the table, caught up a large book of accounts and began studying it assiduously. After a moment I strolled over and took the ledger from him, handing it back right-way up; he had the grace to blush and lay it down.

“Why did you call me here if you only meant to abuse and ignore me?” I asked softly, seating myself on the corner of the table. “Do you mean to punish me? For what? For refusing to be the debauched pawn you and Frizer would make of me?” My voice was hoarse with emotion. Tom’s eyes flashed.

“No! Do not dredge that up again—it’s past and done. No,” he said, his lips curling with disgust, “I want to know about that foreign drab you’ve been swiving! I’ve heard she’s a bawd and that the von Popple knave is her pimp. What do you pay her, Kit? Less, I warrant, than I paid you! Or does she pay you? It must be a pretty price indeed to keep you between a woman’s legs—” his tirade cut off as I slapped him smartly across the cheek. I raised my hand for a second blow, but Tom leapt to his feet, knocking over his heavy chair and setting his back to the wall, his hand dropping to the dagger on his belt. I stayed seated on the table, hands carefully kept away from my own weapons. I had loved Tom, offered my heart, and to be so spurned, to be compared to a prostitute offering my body in exchange for patronage—but Tom was still a boy, for all he was a year older than I. I started to speak, to apologize, but Tom interrupted me.

“I wouldn’t expect you to understand it, but I have responsibilities to my family. I must marry now, I must beget an heir and I must not be involved in scandal. But then how could you understand? When have you ever been responsible? When have you ever been anything but malicious? Malicious, lascivious, and base! Base-born and base in nature!” His voice had been rising steadily in volume and he screamed the final words.

“You’ve played that card too often, Tommy,” I said coldly. “It doesn’t hurt anymore.” I lied; it still hurt, but I would be racked before admitting it.

He leant towards me, resting his delicate hands on the table. The harebell-blue of his eyes paled to treacherous ice and his voice dropped into a menacing whisper. “You talk too freely and far too much, Kit. I will not have you prating about us, do you understand? Court your own destruction if you must, but do not think to drag me down with you. It never happened, never! I was your patron, nothing more.”

Red mist swirled in my sight and I heard my words as if spoken by another. “You! When were you ever anything but a boy? A petty, pretty, spiteful, irresponsible boy! You, responsible to your family? Hah! That would make a cat laugh! You could not wait to corrupt me, to add me to your collection, but took me straight from your uncle’s office! Now, now, you come to me, boy! My boy!” I beckoned and Tom shook his head, but he came to me, step by unwilling step. I grasped his expensive bone-lace ruff in both hands and twisted it, drawing him into a kiss while I choked him. I could taste his tears; felt him fighting for breath, his feeble tugs at my relentless hands. Still I held him, until he gave a little whimper deep in his throat, no longer fighting the kiss, no longer fighting me, and then I released him, shoving him away from me. He stumbled back against the wall, pawing at his throat. I became aware of a pounding on the door and voices. Numbly I went to open it, turning back at the threshold to look at Tom.

“I came here to try to mend our differences—what a hope! It is you that never cared, always relying on someone else to do your dirty work for you. You could not so much as tell me honestly that it was over, you must needs force a new quarrel, goad me into a fury, to make the fault mine,” I said with dull disgust and unbolted the door. It flew violently open and barely missed striking me. I staggered back as Frizer thundered into the room and grabbed me by the arm.

“The villain has hurt you, Master,” he bellowed. I drew my dagger and he unhanded me with a speed that was almost comical. Though the mark of the slap was clearly visible on his fair skin and his ruff a ruin at his bruised throat, Tom shook his head. “No, no. He was just leaving. Let him go,” he said hoarsely.

“Well, no, I think not,” Frizer gloated. “Someone has come for him.”

A nondescript and soberly dressed stranger entered as I leant close to Frizer. “I was dissuaded from cutting your throat not so long ago, Ingram,” I hissed, my words low-pitched but perfectly audible. “Be sure that I will not be so cheated again.” Frizer glared at me with mixed hatred and exultation as the stranger stood forward.

“Christopher Marlowe?” I stepped forward. “I arrest you in the Queen’s name,” he said.

There was a gasp from Tom and the room seemed to fade before my eyes. My thoughts filled with images of my stay in Newgate Prison a few years before; the stinking rooms, the galling weight of the manacles on my wrists, the unnatural, halting steps produced by the leg-irons. I stalked up to Tom who quailed back against the wall. “I’ll not go back to prison, Tom. See to it,” I told him, and turned my back on his mumbled retort. “And you are?” I asked the man who had arrested me.

“Henry Maunder,” was the terse reply.

“The charge?” Tom asked, his voice shrill with alarm.

“Blasphemy, sir,” Maunder responded tonelessly. I nodded—I had guessed.” I am ready,” I said.

“Master Maunder?” Frizer’s tone was one of command. “If you would be so kind as to delay your departure a short while, I have a letter to deliver for my master.” He ignored the man’s protests, turning to Tom. “Yes, yes, please wait,” Tom agreed, weakly. As I left the chamber Frizer was speaking quietly to Tom, and eyeing the ruin of his linen.

By virtue of my university degrees I was a gentleman, even if a somewhat disreputable one. Master Maunder requested my sword, but left me my poniard. Nor was I yet in irons, being taken as I was from the house of a powerful protector who might take exception to the practice. Irons, irony—I grinned humorlessly. Tom was my protector no longer, and might indeed have relished the sight of me dragged off in chains if Maunder had but known it.

It was a full hour later before Frizer joined us, and we were able to start for the City. The day was overcast and threatening rain, for which I was grateful, as sunlight had recently been causing me savage headaches. We had not been riding long when Frizer pulled his horse up beside mine and began to chatter.

“They arrested poor Kyd, you know. Found heretical papers in his chamber. Good friend he was to you though: they had to rack him before he told them the papers were yours. Have you ever seen anybody racked? Sometimes the arms dislocate first and sometimes the stomach muscles tear loose. The gaolers bet on which it’ll be. And sometimes, when you’re stretched that tight, they’ll bounce coins on your belly. Just the weight of one coin can do it, sometimes, rip you near in two.” I had a sudden, sickening vision of myself broken and crippled, begging for my bread, my numbed and nerveless hands unable to hold a pen. Poor Kyd! I felt the color drain from my face as he continued; triumph and venom spurting from him like arterial blood. “Of course, it’ll not stop there; if they can prove you an atheist or heretic, it’s the stake for you! They tie you up and roast you alive for all to see and I’d make sure it’s a slow fire and no mercy shown, when it’s your turn. Strangling would be too quick for the likes of you.” I suppressed a shudder as the relentless voice went on.

“Now if you’re found a traitor, that’s another thing altogether. You being a commoner, there’ll be no gentle axe for you, lad. No, you they’ll take to Tyburn and hang. You know the rest well enough, I warrant! Before you’re dead, you’re cut down, your cock and ballocks gets sliced off, and I’ll be bribing the hangman for yours, as a keepsake for Master Thomas! Then they gut you, but you’re not dead yet—you get to watch them burn your living guts before your face. Oh, it can go on for hours with a man as knows his work, and say what they will about yon Master Topcliffe, there’s none assays he slacks his work! Then they cut you into quarters and take your head for a pole on London—”

“Enough!” Maunder must have observed the greensick expression on my face, and moving in to investigate, heard the last of Frizer’s harangue. “Now either hold your spiteful tongue or be off with you!” To my immense relief Frizer glared for a moment then galloped off, his malevolent laugh floating back to us.

“And you, Master Marlowe, you can put that blade away, or I’ll be obliged to ask you for it.” I glanced in wonder at the dagger in my hand, which I did not recall drawing, and then to my jailer.

“I do thank you,” I said, in a voice as shaky as my smile. Maunder shook his head.

“Do not think on it, man. Belike it’s nothing at all.” If only I could believe that, I thought, but much to my surprise, Maunder had the right of it. The next morning I presented myself before the Council, answered a few questions about the papers, a part of a treatise on Arianism I’d been using for research, and they let me go, extracting my compliance to appear before them early each morning. I readily agreed, although it meant lingering in a city that daily grew more plague-ridden.