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OUR FRONT DOOR HAD never looked more forbidding. I stopped before it, scrubbed my hands down my trouser legs, and tried to pretend my heart was thudding in my chest from the brisk walk, not from fear. ‘Twas a feeble pretense, and I did not fool myself.
But I could not deny the truth of the Archbishop’s words, nor other truths: Tom was going back to Oxford, and I could not go with him. It would be months before the scholarship was set, and I was Christopher Marlowe, son of the drunkard cobbler and already thrown out of one apprenticeship. Who would hire me, and for what? And I missed my mother, and my sisters. I did not miss my father, but I did not want to be at war with him, either.
I took a deep breath and opened the door.
Despite the fact that it was mid-morning, Father was not in his shop. A relief, in a way, but also a puzzle. “Mother?” I called, starting up the stairs. “Mog?”
“Kit!” But it was Joan who appeared at the head of the stairs, Tabbey in her arms and Annie peering around her skirts. “Oh, thank God thou hast come home.”
“What is’t?” I covered the rest of the steps in two bounds. “What’s amiss?”
“Nothing,” Joan began, but then I heard my mother scream, and I knew.
“Where’s Father?”
“Has gone for the midwife. It came on her sudden, Kit. Mog and Mistress Browning are in there with her, helping her as best they can.” She paused, lower lip caught between her teeth, and then said, “I think ‘twould be a comfort to her to know thou’rt home.”
“I’ll take Tabbey, then. Do thou go tell her.”
Tabbey clung round my neck like a limpet; Joan had no sooner shooed Annie away from her skirts than Annie had her arms wrapped round my legs so that I could not move. Joan grinned. “They will keep thee from straying,” she said and slipped out of the kitchen.
“Aye,” I said. “Annie, what is’t? Why must thou wrap thyself round me like ivy?”
“Thou wert gone,” she said solemnly.
“Gone,” Tabbey echoed.
“And now Mama’s gone,” Annie said.
“Mother’s not gone, Annie-love. She’s just in the next room, waiting for the baby.”
“Joan says we mayn’t see her.” Annie’s big blue eyes were bright with tears, and her lower lip was trembling. In a moment, she would be crying; the moment after that, Tabbey would join her.
“Hush, love,” I said, detaching her with some difficulty from my legs so that I could kneel down beside her. “‘Tis a thing for grown women, is all, not for little girls—or for men. I may not go in, either.”
Give Annie a puzzle, and she will forget any woe. “Thou mayn’t?”
“No, ‘tis very sad,” I said, and made an exaggeratedly sad face. She and Tabbey giggled, and Tabbey pulled my hair. “We shall wait here together, shall we? And when the baby has come, we may see it.” If it be alive, I added, but only to myself.
I coaxed my sisters over to the bench, where Tabbey sat on my lap and Annie scrambled up beside me. “Kit,” said Annie, “where wert thou, when thou wast gone? Father said thou hadst gone to Hell.”
“Did he?”
“He said thou couldst, and he would not care. Kit, I don’t want thee to go to Hell!”
“It’s all right, Annie. I didn’t.” I may yet, but that need not trouble thee, sweeting. “I was just staying with a friend. A very grand friend.” I lowered my voice. “He has an earring.”
Tabbey smacked her plump hands together with glee. Annie’s eyes were wide with wonder. “Wilt thou get an earring, Kit?”
“Not yet,” I said, although the idea had already crossed my mind. “Maybe someday.”
“Kit?”
“Yes, Annie-love?”
“Art back? To stay?”
“Yes,” I said and put my free arm around her shoulders to pull her closer. “This is my home, as it is thine.”
“Good,” said Annie. “Then wilt tell us a story?”
“Story!” Tabbey cried, and I could not help laughing.
“Yes, yes, greedy ones! I’ll tell you a story.”
“Make it exciting,” Annie directed. “With giants.”
“Yes, my queen,” I said, making her giggle again, and began to spin another in the endless series of stories I had been telling my sisters since I was old enough to talk and Mog was old enough to listen.
Father returned before the story was half done, with Jane Gibbons the midwife in tow. His eyebrows went up when he saw me, but he was far more concerned with getting Mistress Gibbons to Mother, and mindful of the Archbishop, I thought that I could truly honor him for that. I concentrated on the story, for Annie and Tabbey were a critical audience; they would not care that my throat had gone dry or that my palms were sweating again.
Father came out into the kitchen very shortly thereafter; Joan trailed him, very white-faced and silent. Father said, “Mistress Gibbons says it may not be long, but ‘twill not be soon, neither. Kit, thou and Joan see that the little ones get somewhat to eat, and then I would speak with thee in my shop.”
“Yes, Father,” Joan and I said in dutiful chorus. He had done it on purpose, to make me wait, and I helped Joan in the kitchen with both hands but only half my brain—the rest of it turning round and round like a squirrel in a cage, trying to guess what he would say, trying to frame answers that would leave me my dignity and some semblance of freedom, while yet giving him the respect that was, the Archbishop told me, due this man as my father.
I had not been able to say to the gentle old Archbishop that I hated my father; it was too easy to imagine his look of disappointment, his deep, beautiful voice saying, Then thou canst be no priest, Christopher. For how canst thou preach love and forgiveness an thou dost not practice it?
Joan said, “Kit?”
“Turtle?”
“Don’t call me that.” But her scowl was for form’s sake only. “I can manage. Do thou go down.” She paused, her hands twisting in her apron. “Get it over with.”
“Thou’rt right.” I sighed and stood up, still aching from the events of the week.
“Kit?”
“Still here, Turtle.”
“Dost think he will beat thee?” Her anxiety made her look as young as Annie. “For I would not have Mother... I mean, Kit, I do not want thee hurt, but Mother...”
“I understand, Joanie. Thou dost me no harm.” I smiled at her. “It’ll be all right.”
Her trust in me hurt, for in truth I had no idea what Father intended, nor whether I could look to come out of this meeting with a whole skin.
I can leave again, I thought. But I knew I couldn’t. I could not leave my sisters, neither the elder pair nor the younger. I could not break Mother’s heart.
I am fifteen, I thought, going down the stairs. The Archbishop of Canterbury says I have the heart of a scholar, and Tom Watson is my friend. But none of that would matter to Father.
For a long time, he did not look up, leaving me to stand awkwardly in front of his bench, watching his heavy hands, which were so strangely nimble at their work. But finally, he set shoe and tools aside and leaned back. “So, Christopher, thou hast returned.”
“Yes, Father.”
“Hast been busy these past days, or so I hear.”
“Yes, Father.”
“What dost think to do now, boy, that thou art familiar of archbishops and grand people?”
“Father, I did tell thee. I want to study, to be a priest.”
He gave me an unpleasant look from beneath his eyebrows. “Dost know what the Bible says of pride, Christopher?”
“That it goes before a fall. But, Father, ‘tis not pride.”
“No? Then what is’t? Tell me, Christopher, I beseech thee.”
My face flooded red, but I kept my chin up and did not mumble, though I wished to. “It is what I must do, Father. I am sorry if it displeases thee.”
“Displeases me? Let us not talk of pleasure in this household, Christopher. Thou hast four sisters, yes?”
“Yes, Father.”
“And a fifth—”
“It could be a boy.”
“Aye,” he said, as if humoring me, “could be. Be that as it may, thou hast four sisters who will need dowering. Dost think thy father, with only his one pair of hands, can provide for all four? And what of thy mother, Christopher? What will she do whilst thou art preaching to the shepherds and laborers? Or wilt thou go to London, with thy fancy friends?”
“Father, I cannot be a cobbler—”
“Yes, thou canst.” He stood up, and I could not help going back a pace. “I know thee, Christopher. Thou carest not for hard work or for anything which does not win thee praise the moment thou setst thy hand to it. In a word, thou art lazy. Lazy and arrogant and disobedient. Thou hast seen that priests need not work with their hands, and thou hast said, I must be a priest.”
“No!”
My father blinked, and we both turned, almost gratefully, to glance up the stairs as my mother gave another hoarse cry. I was myself a little taken aback at how loudly I had spoken, but I hastened to press my advantage: “It is not laziness to admit that one is better suited to one task than another. I can be a scholar, Father, a priest. A priest can hope for advancement. Can care for his family better than an apprentice cobbler ever could.”
His face was dark as thunderclouds. “And you expect me to house and clothe and feed you whilst you chase your rainbows? Is that why thou hast returned?”
“I can win the scholarship, Father. Please. Try to believe me.”
“Thou’lt keep a civil tongue in thy head, boy.” He stepped around the bench, and I backed up another step. “And as I am thy father, and as thou hast returned to my house, thou wilt obey me. Dost thou hear?”
“Yes, Father. But—”
“No. Thou wilt obey me, or thou wilt not live beneath my roof.”
“Wouldst thou break Mother’s heart so?”
“An thy mother’s heart be broken, Christopher, it will not be my doing. It is thy choice.”
“Then command me something I can do. Do not set tasks for me which thou knowst I will fail in, and then blame me for failing.”
“Say what thou meanst, boy. Thou thinkst thyself too good for cobblery.”
And stung by the cruel contempt in his voice, I blurted out, at long last, the truth: “Yes!”
In a moment, he would hit me. In a moment, he would recover from the shock, and he would knock me to the ground with one blow of his fist. He knew it; I knew it. But in that silent moment, when he could not quite believe his ears, a voice said, “I do beg your pardon. But I did knock.”
Tom. Who shouldn’t be out of bed unless it was to sit in a chair in the sun. I closed my eyes and swallowed as my father looked up, over my head, and towards the doorway. I turned as well, though it put my back to him, and felt my own face go blank with shock. Because there, in the doorway of my father’s humble shop, stood not only Tom Watson, but the Archbishop of Canterbury, leaning hard on the arm of a servant I had not previously met.
My father stepped away from me, his hands falling open to his sides as he studied the three figures in the doorway. Tom’s face in particular gleamed an utterly violent shade of purple, although both eyes were working again. Upstairs, Mother cried out once more, and both Tom and Archbishop Grindal turned to glance up the stairs. “Oh, dear,” the old man said. “I see thou cam’st home in the very teeth of time, Christopher. I am glad I did not insist thou stay another day.”
“Stay—” Father looked from his Grace to me, and I nodded.
“That is where I have been.” I caught myself twisting my hands in my shirtfront and forced myself to stop.
“Your boy has a gift for languages, Master Marlowe.” As if my father’s silence were an invitation, the Archbishop moved forward into the shop. “I don’t suppose you have such a thing as a stool for an old man’s bones—”
There was the tall one before the hearth. I dashed to fetch it while Father was still wrestling with the reality of the head of the Church of England in his undusted little shop. Tom and the servant made the Archbishop as comfortable as possible, and then he looked up at my father again.
My father, who was as utterly at a loss as I have ever seen a grown man be.
“So,” the Archbishop continued, as Tom put a subtle hand on my shoulder and edged me out of their line of conversation, “have you given much thought to the lad’s schooling, Master Marlowe?”
“Begging your pardon, your Grace,” my father said, jolted out of his paralysis by the directness of the question, “but I have four daughters and a fifth on the way, as you can hear. I need the lad here—”
“It’s irregular,” the Archbishop continued serenely, “but—assuming he can pass the examination for the scholarship, a matter in which I have good faith—a way might be seen for your son to live at home while he attends King’s School.”
I flinched. I wanted to shout No! again, in that wonderful freeing tone that had made Father shut his mouth and stare at me as if I had grown a second head. More than anything, I wanted out of his house. I wanted to share a room with Ginger, and stay up late nights talking, and—
More than thou dost wish schooling, Kittycat?
Upstairs, again, and this time every head turned. I winced, and winced again because the intervals had shortened. I heard hasty footsteps on the stairs, and swallowed hard. ‘Tis just Joan running up with water or rags. They’ve done this many a time.
It never seemed entirely fair to me that both Adam and Eve got the knowledge, and only Eve received the pain.
The Archbishop gathered himself visibly, and Tom’s hand tightened on my shoulder. “—In which case, there would be money left over, intended to pay for the student’s room and board.”
I could almost see the greed—Be fair, Kit. It’s not greed: it’s honest need, with another mouth on the way—warring with my father’s passion for control of his family. As God has dominion over the King, and the King over the man, so the man over his family. Watching his mouth work, I understood something else as well: that to him, my hatred of his chosen trade wasn’t just rebellion. It was—I did not think that it would be too harsh to say that to him it was a dismissal of all his sweat and toil.
Tom Watson cleared his throat. “If I may speak, your grace? Master Marlowe?”
The Archbishop nodded permission before my father had done more than glance over. I wondered if he and Tom had rehearsed it. The sounds from upstairs were worse, and I tried to remember what Tabbey’s birth had been like. Please, Mother. Be strong.
“I’m after wondering what young Christopher here has to say on the matter,” Tom said, and looked directly at me.
Please, God. It wasn’t much of a prayer, but it was the best I could manage on short notice, for there was nothing I could say here except the truth. “F-father said—” I coughed, and started over. “Father said that if Mother bears a boy, I could hope for schooling,” I managed, my voice as thin as it has ever been. Only Tom’s hand on my shoulder let me get as much as that out. “But that is all.”
The Archbishop nodded. “Is that so, Master Marlowe?”
My father’s face was white as suet under the dark thatch of his hair, but he nodded. “‘Tis so. But my wife does run to girls, your Grace.”
“I see.” The Archbishop glanced over at Tom, who gave me one last pat, the sort of pat you’d give a whining dog that belonged to another man, and left my side. “That’s settled, then. Christopher, I expect Tom will come ‘round on the morrow to discover if thou wilt sit for the scholarship or not, come summer.”
“Aye, your Grace,” Tom said, just as I reached out and also began, “Your Grace—” in a totally different tone.
My father shot me the blackest look I have ever seen, and I heeded him not. But the Archbishop looked at me and raised an eyebrow, and smiled. “In addition to obedience, Christopher, a priest must have faith. The Lord will provide. I will leave you goodmen to your vigil, then, and God’s grace upon your good wife, Master Marlowe, that she be safely delivered.”
He turned and left, leaning on the arm of the man who had spoken not a word. I think I would have died and melted into the very floor if Tom had not turned over his shoulder and winked at me, just once.
All that afternoon, Father and I worked side by side, unspeaking, and when the light failed we went upstairs to the cold supper Joan had laid. Mother’s screams had faded to a sort of weary panting that echoed through the house, and neither of us could eat. I’m not sure Joan managed more than a mouthful either before she put Tabbey and Anne to bed on a pallet by the kitchen hearth and charged me watch them while she went upstairs.
Father and I sat in silence, the helpless waiting of men since the world began, and waited for someone’s step on the stair. Once or twice, he looked over at me as if he would speak, but each time he thought better of it. I knew he wanted to ask what I had done to win the Archbishop’s favor, and I was praying that he would not ask, because the only answer I could give him—the truth—was an answer he would never believe. It was not within the scope of his understanding, that a child of his could be a priest. I could be lazy and thriftless and too clever for my own good, too quick with a smart answer—aye, he would allow me the faults. But not the merits. He could not allow that I could be truly capable of something which he was not.
Let go, Father, I pleaded, though I would never dare to say it out loud. I do not have to be what you are to be thy son.
Mother shrieked again, a long sobbing howl. Tabbey and Anne came bolt upright, clinging together, but before either of them could overcome their fright enough to make a sound, we heard a new voice, the newest voice in all Christendom, as a baby began to wail. Anne and Tabbey’s eyes went wide, and I saw my father bow his head over his clasped hands, giving thanks with—for once—neither self-consciousness nor irony.
Feet through the upstairs rooms, feet pounding down the stairs. Joan, swinging round the doorpost into the kitchen, her face still pale, but bright with joyousness. “Father! Kit!” She paused, savoring the drama and her own importance.
“Well, lass?” Father growled.
“Mother’s well, and Mistress Gibbons says ‘tis a strong child. And... ‘tis a boy!”
And I thought in the silence before Father gave a whoop and lifted Annie up to dance her round the kitchen while Tabbey clapped her hands and Joan hung on the doorpost, laughing and crying at the same time, Perhaps a Marlowe shall sit that examination after all.
The Archbishop of Canterbury said I had the heart of a scholar, and I aimed to prove him right.
