“Kit, that’s heresy.”
A smile bent around his scars. “I died for it.”
Will opened his mouth. Embers in the banked hearth popped. Kit rested his hands on Will’s shoulders, leaned his forehead against the bridge of Will’s nose. “These are very bad people, Will. Get out. Go to the Continent. Join a nunnery. Save yourself.”
Will set him back at arm’s length and studied his face. Flushed, maybe, but his gaze was sharp and he stood steady on his feet.
“You haven’t run.”
“I’m Kit Marley.”
“And I’m Will Shakespeare. Dammit, Marley, an you’d ward me, tell me truth!”
“The truth?”
Will took a breath. “Aye.”
Kit gestured to the chair and hooked a peeling stool over with the toe of his boot. “If you can’t be dissuaded, he said, then by what’s holy, Will, sit down.”
You must be proud, bold, pleasant, resolute. And now and then stab, as occasion serves.
CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE, Edward II
The fire burned low. Kit found a black iron poker beside the hearth, a long bit of rod stock with a looped handle, the tip spiraling to a point like some black unicorn’s horn and poked the coals idly, knocking sparks and cinders up the chimney. An orange flame licked in the crevices, and Kit wedged the poker there, resting the loop on his knee. Will coughed once against the back of his wrist. Kit at last folded his arms one over the other and smiled. “You re tangled over Titus.”
“I’m horrified,” Will answered with a shrug. “I’ve got to lavinia mutilated, ravished and next I must have the Moor’s treachery to Titus, and I find myself as tongueless as lavinia, and as bottled full of tales. Hands cut off, tongue torn out. How does a man make that real?”
“You haven’t her rage to put in it.”
Will nodded. “Her rage and her hurt. Tis not something that can be set right in an act.”
“Tis not something that can be set right. That’s what makes it a tragedy.”
The coals had gone dark near the poker’s tip. Kit leaned forward and puffed air until they flared blue and orange, casting disconcerting heat across his face.
“The plays, your plays have the power to make people believe. Some of it—this craft lies in what I did to Titus. Some of it is in your own vision and tongue. Oxford writes some scenes and words, but he only knows what I taught him. It’s Plato’s magic; you make an ideal thing, and if the people believe that thing, the world itself must be beaten to the form.”
“Plato. Like love, then.”
“Aye,” Kit said dryly. “If you believe in love. And then the performance. Alleyn was good enough to carry the spell. Burbage and Kemp are strong as well.” He twisted the poker in the fire, one boot propped on the hearthstone. “There’s an art to that too: to giving the audience belief in a dream as real as the touch of hand. The Senecan structure won’t work for it, and blank verse is too static. Fourteeners are a loss, too formal. A Platonic ideal. And people will live for it. It seems too simple, doesn’t it?”
Kit looked away from the embers. The loop of the poker grew warm against his knee. He shifted its resting place from his stocking to his breeches. “But give them men who could grasp heaven, and who turn away through willfulness and greed. Give them strong kings, or give them the truth of what happens when kings are not strong. Make them grieve for men they would hate, but it must be fresh, not stylized: words spoken trippingly on the tongue. Reality is drama.” He paused, and watched Will chew his mustache. “Like that lemon tree of Sir Francis . If you can convince enough eyes they’ve seen a thing, if you can convince a man or a beast he is a thing better than he is, more loyal, more true—that thing holds.”
“I have often thought,” Will said carefully, for this was a heresy too, “—that a man given half a chance might act morally. Because he knows what morality is.”
“Not Robert Poley.”
“No. But another man.”
“What man?”
“Myself. You. Her Majesty. You don’t believe in God. And yet you were never but kind to me.”
“Oh,” Kit said. “I believe in God well enough. It’s the Church I take issue with. But who would believe Kit Marley, monarchist?”
“A King we must have.”
“A man might prefer a strong woman who temporizes to a weak man who beheads.” Kit looked at his nails.
Will cleared his throat after a time. “And … you say Titus is formal.”
“And finish it formal. You’ve an ear for a scansion and a fair eye for an image, and there’s this in you: thou fearest not to own the myth. But now you must put the fire in it, and not shy away, and bring them under the spell of your words. You’ve played my Jew.”
“I have.” Will smiled. “Tis strong. But the third act I know.” It wasn’t all the play he would have had it be.
“Write thy plays about people. You’ve a way of spinning height and depth I envy. All I’m fit for is making light in darkness, and spreading blood and bitter farce acros sthe planks.”
“Foolishness, Kit. I’ve read your leander.”
“Pretty, isn’t it? I’m partial to Tamburlaine myself: still my best work, I think.”
Will choked, and laughed, and turned back on himself nimble as a ferret. “Where’s this danger?”
“ The danger’s in the men who don’t want the plays written. Men like Baines, and Sir Walter’s rival, the Earl of Essex.”
“Raleigh is an ally?”
“Raleigh is someone I cultivated a bit, but he is not one of ours. Robert Devereaux, though Essex is one of theirs. Though both sides still use the same name, and trade alliances like chessmen.”
“What do they want?”
Kit marshaled half-drunken thoughts. “As I think it? Elizabeth off the throne, for one thing. A ruler in her place without such personality. Gloriana is the Faerie Queene. The other Prometheans, their goal is the elevation of man. Admirable. They want safety and an end to poetry, Will. An end to greatness of spirit, and all men made equal. They want to own God, and use him to make all men subject. I should liefer lose my life than my liberty of thought.”
“And our half? Our half, is it still?”
“Elizabeth and England, we stand for. Tis rough work. Even for a rogue like myself, whose works drip with gore, unacquainted with gentle thoughts.”
“Can the man who wrote Hero and leander claim to be unacquainted with gentle thoughts?
“Acquainted and yet unacquainted.” Kit shifted before the iron could scorch his leg. The tip was not yet glowing. “Tis a quaint small thing, a poem about passion Kit, it’s a poem about leander’s arse.” The iron slipped: Kit caught it right-handed and hissed, juggling a twist of sleeve around the metal to shield his hand.
How smooth his breast was, and how white his belly,
And whose immortal fingers did imprint,
That heavenly path, with many a curious dint,
That runs along his back, but my rude pen
Can hardly blazon forth the loves of men.
Will’s long nose dented sideways with the twisting mouth. “I faith, I think betimes you purpose to shock. You underestimate the wit in your pen, rude as it may be, or so I’ve heard tell. From those with more interest in the loves of men than I.”
“Rude enough for most purposes.” It was his last chance to impress upon the man the severity of his choices. Is this pen enough to write with? He lifted the poker until the smoking end hovered a finger’s width from Shakespeare’s eye. “Will. Move not.”
“Kit, what are you about?”