‘Do you? Why?’
‘Because Marco was perfect for you. There wasn’t ever going to be anyone who was as good.’
She gestured at the sky, ‘And because of that I married Christ instead? Is that what you’re going to say? Don’t you think that’s awfully simplistic?’
‘I’m not a complicated guy,’ he said.
‘You’re my brother, Zazo, but you’re also an idiot.’
They were at the Piazza S. Maria in Trastevere. He shrugged and pointed toward the church. ‘I’ll wait for you in the café.’
‘You don’t have to.’
‘If I can’t protect the new Pope I’ll protect you instead.’
A Mercedes Vito panel van slowly poked its nose into the Piazza from the street they’d been walking along. It was a pedestrian zone. Before Zazo could motion to the driver that he’d made a mistake the van went into reverse and disappeared. In a short while a man with a reddish beard emerged from the van in a side street, walked back, and sat on the edge of the Piazza’s fountain to smoke a cigarette. He was halfway between the church and the café and seemed to be taking pains to keep both Elisabetta and Zazo in sight.
‘What are you doing here?’ Zazo’s father asked as he dropped his briefcase in the sitting room.
‘Runs in the family,’ Zazo mumbled. He repeated the entire story while Carlo poured himself one aperitif – and then another.
‘First Elisabetta gets in trouble, now you. What’s next? Something with Micaela? Bad news always happens in threes.’
‘Is that superstition or numerology, Papa?’ Elisabetta asked.
‘Neither: it’s a fact. What are we doing for dinner?’
‘I’m going to make something.’
‘Make it simple,’ Carlo said. ‘I’ve got to go out tonight.’
‘A date?’ Zazo asked.
‘Funny. Ha, ha. A retirement party for Bernadini. He’s younger than me. The writing’s on the wall.’ Carlo opened his briefcase and swore.
‘What’s wrong?’ Elisabetta asked.
‘I was going to spend an hour working on your puzzle but I left the goddamned book in my office. Let me have the old one.’
‘No!’ she protested. ‘You heard that it’s valuable. You’ll spill your drink on it. I’ve got a paperback in my room. You can even write in that copy if you like.’
Elisabetta cooked a bowl of pasta with pecorino and chopped a garden salad while Zazo drank a couple of his father’s beers.
‘Micaela’s coming over after supper,’ she told him.
‘I’ll take off when she gets here.’
‘You don’t have to wait if there’s someplace you’d rather be,’ she said.
‘It’s okay, I’m hungry.’
‘Well, get Papa then. Tell him it’s ready.’
Zazo rapped on his father’s bedroom door. When there was no reply he knocked louder and called out.
There was a testy, ‘What?’
‘Supper’s ready.’
Through the door came, ‘Wait a minute. I’m busy.’
Zazo returned to the kitchen, put a fork into the pasta and twirled a taste. ‘He said to wait a minute. He’s busy.’
They waited ten minutes and Elisabetta tried again. Carlo sent her away, promising he’d be ready in another minute.
Ten minutes later they heard his door swing open. He stepped slowly into the kitchen, scowling, with the Faustus paperback and a notebook in one hand.
‘Are you okay, Papa?’ Elisabetta asked.
Suddenly Carlo’s scowl turned into a giant smile, like that of a kid playing a trick. ‘I’ve cracked it! I’ve solved your puzzle!’
TWENTY-THREE
London, 1589
MARLOWE PRACTICALLY SUCKED in the rough and tumble of London as he strolled through the crowded, jostling streets of Shoreditch. He smiled at every blackguard, whore, blackamoor, cheating monger and filthy urchin he brushed past. I was born to live in such a place, he thought.
Today was a day of high expectation and even the stench of the open drains couldn’t diminish his pleasure: in a short while he would see the first performance of his new play, The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus.
Marlowe had donned his best suit of clothes, the same that he had worn four years earlier when, pockets laden with Walsingham’s payments, he had posed for a commissioned portrait. In an unheard-of act of hubris, which had thoroughly seized the imagination of his fellows, he had presented the portrait to the Master of Benet on the occasion of his leaving the college in 1587. Somewhat flummoxed by the gift, Master Norgate had had no choice but to hang it in his wood-paneled gallery next to a bevy of vastly more notable academics and alumni.
In the painting, he had assumed a cocky pose with his arms folded, his lips pouty and rebellious, his hair flowing and his moustache wispy. His doublet was close-fitting, black with a red velvet lining, trimmed with gold buttons down the front and up the sleeves. His linen shirt was open-necked with a floppy cobwebbed collar, far more rakish than the usual starched and ruffled collars that graced the worthies on Norgate’s wall. The garments, which had seen their share of use in England and the Continent, were a bit worn now, but they still looked splendid and fit perfectly. Still, if the play were a success he’d already laid a plan to visit Walsingham’s tailor for a new ensemble.
London, this dense metropolis of 100,000 souls, was now Marlowe’s oyster. In a short time he’d repeatedly pried open its unyielding shell, plucking out one treasure after another; he had little doubt that Faustus would give him his most lustrous pearl yet.
Marlowe had taken to London like a witch to a cauldron. By night he frequented the riotous Nag’s Head in Cheapside, the dark brothels of Norton Folgate where he could try to hide the truth of his anatomy under his drawn-up breeches, and the feverish salons of Whitehall where – among Cecil, Walsingham and his kind – he had no need to hide. And by day, when his head had cleared from the previous night’s excesses, he sat in his rooms and put quill to parchment until his hand ached.
He found his theatrical home among the Admiral’s Men, a troupe of players under the patronage of Charles Howard, Elizabeth’s Lord Admiral. The Admiral had lured the leading actor in England, Edward Alleyn, to his company and when Alleyn, an imposing man with a baritone voice like a fine brass horn, first read Tamburlaine the Great it was the beginning of an intense artistic partnership. Alleyn could scarcely believe that a masterpiece like Tamburlaine was penned by a 22-year-old. Nor could the audiences, and the play about a simple shepherd who rose to be the murderously blaspheming ruler of Persia became the talk of London and a commercial sensation.
The Theatre was London’s first purpose-built playhouse and Marlowe still felt a shiver of excitement every time he entered. It was a great timbered polygon, built partly by Burbage’s own hand, he a master carpenter by trade. There were three galleries surrounding a cobblestoned yard fronting a raised stage. For a penny a few hundred could stand on the stones pressed hard against one another. For another penny, a few hundred more could ascend the galleries and for yet another penny they could rent a stool. A half a dozen Lord’s Rooms were fashioned into the galleries, private cozies for the wealthy.
Outside the Theatre Marlowe had to fight his way, unrecognized, through an unruly smelly crush of patrons, prostitutes, procurers and pickpockets. He arrived at the turnstile whisking at his doublet with the back of his hand in case something nasty had stuck to it.