It is not. ’Tis a man, and he and Sir Edward are at it with each other, which is a hanging offence here. Morag is not even present. She was but a cover for them to be together. The two men freeze and stare up at the three of us crowded at the doorway so, and quickly part.
Les Holgate looks very surprised, but I ken he doesn’t understand how dreadful this situation is. Tristan told me that in their age, it’s only the most religious of zealots (belonging largely to sects of churches that do not even exist in our day) who are much bothered about buggery. In his day, ’tis lawful and unremarkable—even in London! So I’m thinking Les Holgate does not understand that he is looking at two dead men. Unless we can bribe the Constable with a lot of money straightaway.
But I’ll be honest, that’s not the only thing that shocks me. It is the fellow Sir Edward’s buggering that shocks me more. For a famous bloke it is. A very famous bloke.
There is a commotion back down the corridor, of somebody climbing up the stairs in a hurry, clear enough to hear due to our amazed silence. The Constable is goggle-eyed, and finally he says, “I cannot believe what I am seeing. The heralds and the chronicles will never let us hear the end of this. Never.” Myself, I can’t stop staring at the two men. At the one man in particular. For that man—the famous man—is my lover. Who I believed until that moment hadn’t a secret from me in all the world.
The scuffling on the stairs has turned into footsteps beating their way down the short corridor, and suddenly there’s a heaving Tristan Lyons, who grabs Les Holgate and shoves him back down the corridor toward the steps. “You fucking moron,” he says, but then immediately turns his attention back into the room. Pushes the Constable out of the way, he does, and sees the two on the ratty mattress. He points to my darling, sitting there staring at me wide-eyed and naked beside Sir Edward, and asks, “Who is that?”
I could barely make myself speak the words. “That,” I said, “is Christopher Marlowe.”
Tristan frowned in confusion. “Christopher Marlowe is dead. He died in 1593 in a pub brawl. It’s almost the only thing I know about him.”
Kit and I are staring at each other with a shared look of stupidity I did not think either one of us capable of. “A counterfeit death, it was,” I say, my chest tight. “Staged, for convenience sake. He was a spy, so he was—”
“Gracie,” says Kit in a quiet, warning voice.
“Sure it came out after, everyone knows you’re a spy by now anyhow,” I said. And explaining to Tristan: “I had just been Sent from Ireland, and so in love with him I fell, and him with me, we would do whatever we asked of each other.” Those huge, beautiful brown eyes of his bored deep into mine as I spoke, as I gave away the secret I had kept for years, kept even (I pray you forgive me) from you, Your Majesty: “’Twas the greatest bit of magic I have ever done. He told me they needed to counterfeit a wound that would give him the freedom of seeming to have died, but it must be so thoroughly accomplished that even a physician examining his body would reckon him dead. So they claimed there was a pub brawl, and a spell of protection didn’t I put on him, that when he was stabbed, he seemed dead but wasn’t, although he was close to the shadows for awhile. Then I spirited him away and nursed him back to health in secret.” And still those eyes how they looked at me, and how I looked at them. “And for these eight years gone,” I went on, “in secret I have loved him and he’s loved me. I knew he had other dalliances and I was not jealous of him. But the secreting of it—oh, Kit—the concealment, in my own home—”
Before Kit could respond, or I could say anything else, Tristan pushed me aside into the room and grabbed the Constable by the back of his collar. The Constable had been staring at the two men all this time, and while I hadn’t been listening to him on account of my own confessions, I realized now he was muttering over and over again how all of it—their impending deaths as well as this revelation—would shake the city, would shake the nation, to its very roots.
Tristan lightly slapped the Constable’s cheek to get his attention. “The two sodomites must be released unconditionally at once,” he said. To Sir Edward he said firmly, “Get your clothes on. While you’re at it, open your purse. You will reward the Constable handsomely for this act of mercy on his part, and in exchange, the Constable”—and here he released the Constable’s collar but only to grab his shoulder and turn him squarely to face him—“the Constable will never speak a word of anything that has happened today.”
“But that is Kit Marlowe,” repeated the Constable in awe, gaping still. Then turning to Tristan, does he offer up this: “He was arrested for heresy just before his death. Did you know that?”
“Atheism,” clarified Kit promptly, for sure he hates it when people think heresy suggests he was a believer in some sect.
“They meant to put him on trial,” said the Constable. I realized from his obsequious tone that he was collecting his wits now, and expecting Tristan to reward him for this information. “All of England was waiting to hear what he said at the trial. There was no pub brawl. He was assassinated to keep from spilling state secrets, secrets all of London was waiting breathlessly to hear. He can finally spill them, now he is alive!”
“No he cannot,” said Tristan very firmly, as my da used to speak to me when I was a wee lass throwing a tantrum and he needed me to shut it. “You are about to be given a lot of money to agree, for the rest of your life, that Marlowe died in 1593.”
The Constable had recovered from his amazement, and was ready to see reason. “I’ve certainly heard that rumour,” says he. “If you’ll show me where it’s written in gold, I’ll happily swear to it.”
“I have no gold with me,” fretted Sir Edward. “But I do have plate enough back at my lodgings. If I am allowed to dress, and somebody shows me the back-exit, the Constable may follow me—”
Listening to him, I felt something beginning to move in my chest. Nothing good, nothing pleasant. Jealousy was a foreign thing to me, I’d no experience of it ever in my life, not that I could recall, and so a moment it took me, to realize the name of this horrible feeling. Sir Edward must have sensed my gaze on him. He glanced in my direction, and then casually away again, as if I counted for nothing. Jealousy at once bred with rage inside of me, and made such an inward clamour that I heard the next bit of the conversation as through a hailstorm.