He’d seen too many friends hang.
“Nothing,” he said, but he wasn’t sure the word took breath before the darkness folded him deep.
Act IV, scene vii
Thou hast years upon thee; and thou art too full
Of the wars’ surfeits to go rove with one
That’s yet unbruised: bring me but out at gate.
–William Shakespeare, Coriolanus,Act IV, scene i
Will crouched in the chair by Tom Walsingham’s fire, his damp boots draining onto a rush mat, turning Kit’s glorious old Greek Bible in his hands. Will’s Greek had never been good, worse even than his grammar‑school Latin, but he could tell from the handscript, the margins, and the way the sections abutted in the glove‑soft, gold‑embossed red leather of the binding that he held three or four books stitched together. Their pages had been carefully trimmed to match in size; now scallop‑shell flakes roughened the fragile gold edge. He held the book close to his face, open, cupped in the palm of his hands, inhaling the oak‑leaf scent of the pages. “George, have you ever seenanything like this?”
Chapman set his wineglass on the mantel before he came closer, crouching before Will to get a better look at the text. “Seen? Aye. Never with such a freedom to read as I pleased, however …” Chapman reached forward, hands like wings on either side of Will’s, but didn’t touch.
Teasing, Will pulled the book closer to his chest and hunched over it like a mantling hawk. “Ah – ”
“Can you read it, Will?” Ben, who leaned against the window frame, his dark eyes hooded as if with weariness.
“A word here and there, ” Will said. He looked up as Tom returned to the study, two bottles of wine in his hands. “It’s missing some rather large bits, Kit says. We’ll have to resort to Tom’s Erasmus, too. Tom – ”
The bottles clattered on the sideboard as Tom dug in his purse for a penknife to draw the corks. Ben cleared his throat and tossed one, pearl‑handled, which glittered in the afternoon sunlight as it tumbled across the room. Tom’s hand came up; he plucked it from flight. “Thank thee, Ben – ”
“Not at all, Sir Thomas.”
“Will? Thou wert about to speak?”
Will looked from Tom to Chapman, to the book in his own hands, and shrugged. Ben concealed a smirk behind his sleeve, his regard steady on Will. Chapman stood, puzzled, looking from one man to the other, until Tom smiled. “Why not?”
“Gentlemen?”
“We’ve a plan to translate the Bible into English,” Will said. Wouldst care to engage in it?”
Chapman looked down at the book open on Will’s palms again. “From the Greek, Will? May I‑“
“Aye.” Will held the book up.
Chapman lifted it reverently, in broad fingers knobbed from hours of holding the pen. “There are translations – ”
“None like ours shall be,” Ben put in from his place by the window. He set his cup down and went to relieve Tom of the wine bottles. Ben poured first for their host, who watched, amused, and then filled a cup for Will now that the precious book was out of his hands.
“Will.” Chapman’s voice was barely a breath. He looked up, across the pages, awe on his broad‑cheeked, broken‑nosed face. “Wheredidst come by this book?”
“Kit gave it me – ” Will said distractedly. He covered his slip with a coughing fit and rinsing his mouth with wine, but Chapman paused, bald forehead wrinkling over bushy brows.
Tom stepped in. “It was Marlowe’s. It went to Will after his death.”
“He thought highly of thee.” Chapman touched the book the way a man might stroke flower petals. “How he ever afforded such a thing – ”
“It must have been a gift,” Will said.
Chapman shook his head sadly. “Rare skill, had he. And a foolish manner of spending them–you’ve heard his Ovid’sto be burned?”
“Burned?” Tom,unbuttoning the neck of his doublet, looked up.
“Aye.” Chapman shrugged sadly and set the precious Bible down on a high table, away from the fire, the wine, and the window. “The Archbishop of Canterbury’s men seized copies from St. Paul’s on Monday. Along with everything of Nashe’s, and Gabriel Harvey’s. If you’ve your own copies, you’ll want to keep them quiet. Perhaps even out of the city–
“Burned?” Will heard his own voice as the echo of Tom’s, and thought a chorus. Yes.“Well, Harvey’s no loss to posterity. But Nashe?”
“It’s the Isle of Dogsback to haunt him,” Ben said. “That and his wrangling with Harvey: the Puritans are growing stronger, Will, and it’s foolish to deny it. There’s something to be said for masques.”
“Aye, nobody ever finds a bit of meaning in one, to want to burn it. Gods, poor Tom. I suppose that means they’ll be burning Dido,too, with Kit’s and with Tom’s hand all over it. How can there be any sedition in a translation of Ovid,of all things, to draw Archbishop Whitgift’s ire? It’s Love poems–”
“It’s the Puritans,” Ben said, pouring himself another cup of wine. The big man moved like a cat, for all his weight bent the floorboards under their rush mats. “It’s the Puritans, as I said. They think the translation lewd, and Whitgift bends his neck to the bastards. An Archbishop.” Ben looked as if he wished to spit.
Baines,Will thought. And Essex behind him. Another attack on the poets–
“The Queen’s ministers grant them more power, aye. I suppose they think, better Puritans than Catholics.” Chapman leaned against the mantel, but he didn’t lift his cup again. Instead, he edged closer to the popping grate, as if the fire could warm him. “I wonder who would give Kit a book like that,” he mused.
Will saw Tom’s glance, and didn’t need it. “I’m sure I don’t know. So what think you, George, of our Bible in poetry? ”
Chapman shrugged. “It could never be published. And a man must eat– ”
“Drudge,” Ben said. “Toiling only for coin – ”
Tom laughed with him, and Chapman dismissed both with an airy wave of his hand. Will might have joined them, but the cough that followed bent him over with his hands on his knees, and only Ben thumping his shoulders gently with those massive bricklayer’s hands put an end to it before he choked.
Only two days later, Will scratched another line out and crumpled the scribbled palimpsest that had been meant to become act II, scene I of a tragedy into a fist‑sized ball, which he pitched into the grate. He glanced up again at the steel mirror over the mantel and the single candle burning before it–despite the daylight through the open shutters–‑with a sealed letter propped against it, and swore under his breath. “Dammit, Kit. A week is too long to make a man wait for news.” He could have returned to Faerie, and an hour or less gone by in his world. Thou wouldst have heard something if aught had gone wrong.
And if thou hadst not, Tom Walsingham would have.That Tom also said that Richard Baines was, to all reports, alive and well and fulfilling his obligations told Will only that Kit might be biding his time. Kit was certainly crafty enough – crafty as Tom himself, or Sir Robert.
I am not like these men,Will thought, not for the first time. I cannot see as they see, in shades of advantage and degrees of subtlety.He sighed, and glanced at the light on the walclass="underline" the noon bell would toll any moment. He couldn’t leave the candle burning in an empty room, and he couldn’t put off meeting the rest of the Globe’s shareholders for another instant. He pushed his stool back from the table and stood, scuffing the rushes aside as he limped to the hearth. Dick’s had me playing old men for ten years now. A shuffle and a quaver in my voice won’t limit my roles.