THOMAS WALSINGHAM HAS NOT seen Kit in the flesh since well before Tom died last September, though Walsingham’s informants in London have kept him apprised of Kit’s condition. ’Tis still shocking to witness first-hand: so weak that the servants must help him upstairs, so bowse-sick that his hands tremble like an old man’s. Years now, Walsingham has watched Kit move towards a precipice, sometimes at a stumble, sometimes at a sprint. Since Tom’s death, Kit has been in freefall.
Upstairs, in a room Walsingham thinks of lately as ‘the lady’s chamber’ (although he has no lady, as yet, to occupy it), a pair of maids come to help bathe and dress Kit’s wounds, change him out of his clothes and put him to bed. When the servants have finally gone, Walsingham climbs into bed beside Kit and listens patiently while he rants and raves about his unfortunate friend Thomas Kyd, and about Richard Baines – that old bugbear! – whom Kit is convinced he saw among the men who had dragged his friend off in chains, plain as day. It would not be the first time that drink has fooled Kit’s eyes. Need he be reminded, the breadth of the Narrow Sea now lies between himself and Richard Baines, as it has done, almost uninterrupted, for five years. And whom does he have to thank for that?
‘I have not forgotten,’ Kit says, lying back, rubbing one eye with the backs of his fingers, like a worn-out child. ‘I have not forgotten what you’ve done for me…’
‘Ay, but you would rather bend reality than blame yourself for your own misfortunes,’ Walsingham says, propped on an elbow beside him. ‘Do not feign surprise, Kit. I know what you’ve done. I’ve heard everything.’
Still, Kit has the audacity to frown. ‘What have I done?’
‘You showed a man kiss another man,’ Walsingham whispers, mindful of any ears at the door. ‘You showed a king of England slaughter half the peerage and drag the kingdom into civil war, all to avenge the murder of his masculine strumpet! You showed a king of England fucked to death with a red-hot spit!’
Eyes closed, Kit bites his lip. As if he enjoys this!
‘It would have been quicker to hang yourself. More dignified too.’
‘Thomas, it does not matter about the play—’
Walsingham says, ‘Of course it matters about the play! They could have you for sedition, if not worse. Sedition leads so easily to treason, these days… And one man, for that matter – one name – leads to another, and another. The Council burns through names like tinder; they are always hungry for more…’ He cannot bear to go on, shaking his head. ‘Marry, I know not why the guards took your friend Kyd, but any fool can guess why they came to your house. I only pray you do not bring ruin down upon mine as well!’
‘Thomas—’
‘Why, Kit? Why have you done this to yourself?’
‘Because I cannot bear it any more.’ At last, Kit opens his wet eyes. ‘You may not believe me, you may not see it, but I have tried, I have. I am fed up.’
Walsingham looks away, lest he should start to feel guilty. Of course, this is all about Tom. Kit had not been at St Bartholomew’s Hospital to watch Tom die, and for that he surely resents Walsingham, who will carry the memory of that place to his grave. The crowded plague-ward. The moans of the dying. The putrefying stench. Kit will never appreciate Walsingham’s kindness in sparing him the details. For he need know nothing of Tom’s delirium and suffering, his racking cough, his incurable thirst. He need not know of the last words Tom spoke, before the blood had filled his lungs: God forgive me, coward that I am!
Anyway, even if Tom had wanted him there, Kit could not have come. He had been in Canterbury, in jail.
Quietly, Kit says, ‘I wanted them to feel it, the vicious curs.’
Walsingham is startled. ‘You wanted who to feel what?’
‘The audience. I wanted them to feel what Edward feels, when the spit goes in. I wanted every one of them to feel their arse exposed, the man on their backs… I wanted the veins to burst in their eyes. I wanted them to taste their insides cooking on the back of the tongue.’
‘What for, in God’s name?’
‘Vengeance,’ Kit says. He then shrugs, diminishing the word. Still it lingers, a fly at Walsingham’s ear. Sometimes Kit frightens him.
Walsingham shakes himself. ‘That’s enough now. You should sleep. I should sleep.’
Kit sighs at length, making room for Walsingham to lay his head upon his shoulder, his hand upon his chest. Gently, Kit fiddles with a large ring upon Walsingham’s finger: a gold band set with amber, the stone inscribed with a hare in flight. A gift from Tom, given long ago.
Walsingham shuts his eyes, focusing on the thump of Kit’s heart against his cheek, the rocking of his breaths, the scent of skin through his shirt. On the verge of sleep, he feels Kit’s hand slide up the length of his arm, stopping upon his shoulder for the space of one breath. Two. The hand then moves down his flank, finding the curve of his hip, the outer part of his thigh, before at last the long fingers push their way into the opening of his dressing-gown, reaching deep.
Walsingham snatches hold of Kit’s wrist. ‘Stop that,’ he hisses, as if to shove the words directly into Kit’s wounded eyes. ‘We do not do that any more.’
Two years ago, in March of 1591, Kit had turned up at Scadbury unannounced, in one of his rare spates of sobriety. Things had already gone wrong between Tom and Kit by then, though at the time Walsingham knew not how exactly. He only knew that Tom had spent much of the previous year in prison, for so had Walsingham himself, along with dozens of the late Spymaster’s former men.
The mass arrests had come in the wake of Uncle Francis’s death: in Walsingham’s case, surprised by some of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s mercenaries on his way home from the funeral, hauled off to the Marshalsea Prison with a bag over his head. Some of those who went in with him never came out again, though a handful were soon back at work at a reorganized Privy Court. Still others had, like Walsingham, only narrowly escaped the noose. His charge of treason could not be definitively proved, but as for the others – heresy and sodomy – the latter, being certain, was taken as proof of the former. For what is sodomy, if not a heresy of the flesh?
‘We offer mercy – this time,’ the archbishop had squawked, as Walsingham stood dazed and ragged in the Star Chamber before the full assembled Council. ‘Next time, you’ll receive none.’
When Kit had arrived at Scadbury, Walsingham had been a free man for a total of two weeks, and in that time had done little but lie in bed and pray for death. He’d thought of Kit then only as his former lover’s much younger lover, and he’d hated that he was seeing him like so, a frail, rabbit-eyed starveling, who had to be carried up and down stairs in a chair and could barely hold a spoon for the weakness in his hands. Out of politeness, Walsingham had invited Kit to dine, and sat with him in tense silence for an hour or so, thinking only of his cell at the Marshalsea Prison, and of the voice of Dick Topcliffe, her Majesty’s Master of Tortures, purring in his ear:
What was the name Tom Watson gave you, in the poem he wrote for you in Paris? ‘Tityrus?’ And you called him ‘Virgil’, did you? Did you call him that when he tied your hands to the bedposts and stuck his cock up your arse? Did your uncle know about that – about how Tom Watson made you his whore?
Of course not. Only Tom had known of those things. Only Tom could have spoken of them. But Tom had already been in prison, on a separate charge, when the mass arrests occurred. His release had, in fact, coincided remarkably with Walsingham’s arrest, not to mention the arrests of all Uncle Francis’s former men.
Over dinner, Walsingham wondered: did Kit know, or had he somehow guessed, as Walsingham had, that it was Tom who had first uttered Walsingham’s name in the torture room? Was that why Kit had come – out of guilt? Or was it, perhaps, to see whether Walsingham would now hold his tongue?
Walsingham’s suspicions made him the poorest sort of company, yet Kit was undaunted. He stayed the night, and the next, and the next. By then, Kit had become Walsingham’s constant, thankless nurse, carrying him about in his arms, helping him wash and dress, urging him to eat and drink – soothing his nightmares, drying his tears, enduring his rages, mothering and making love to him with almost unbearable tenderness. As the weeks passed, Walsingham began to take it for granted that Kit would be by his side always, ready with whatever he required, smiling at him with a quiet ache in his eyes, the ache of distance. It maddened and unmanned Walsingham, this ache, it made him want to throw himself at Kit Marlowe’s feet and wail like a girl.
For it was not Walsingham whom Kit loved, though he treated him with love: it was Tom Watson of course, who had also been imprisoned and tortured but would have nothing to do with Kit any more. Walsingham was only a surrogate. A ghost.
Once Walsingham’s strength had returned, he’d begged Kit to leave.
Eventually, Kit’s breaths lengthen with sleep. Walsingham slips free of him, lights a taper from the fire and quietly lets himself out. In the corridor, he finds the night-runner who had helped bring Kit inside lurking in the dark, the lad’s startled blue eyes shrinking as the light hits them. ‘You should not be here,’ Walsingham says, and the runner sucks in a breath as if about to let out a stream of excuses, ultimately deflating in silence.
No matter. Walsingham has present use for him. He leads the little fellow down to his study, where he sets him by the door, too far away to see over his shoulder. Walsingham uncorks a bottle on his desk, pours himself a drink. ‘What is your name?’ he asks.
‘Frizer, master.’
Walsingham empties the cup in one jerk of his head. ‘You know my man Nick Skeres, do you?’
‘Ay – yes, master. He recommended me to you.’
‘I remember.’ With his littlest finger, Walsingham flips open the amber jewel on Tom’s ring and removes a key no longer than a tooth, with which he unlocks a drawer. Inside are dozens of letters: letters that speak of the riot at Edward II, of Kit’s comings and goings from the taverns in Bishopsgate, of yesterday morning’s raid and Kit’s escape. All are written in a distinctive hand, needle-thin and arabesque. You must understand, the most recent letter says:
…the Devil never comes for just one man’s soule. ’Tis not worth the trouble to him. No, he comes for that man, and all his friends to boot. Well, of course you understand this, perhaps better than anyone. So I sholde not neede to tell you that when the Devil comes for your friend – and God knowes he is coming right soon – you needes must looke first of all to your owne soule.
I can helpe you to that ende.
‘Do you need me, master?’ Frizer squeaks.
Walsingham shakes the inkwell, selects a sharp quill and blank paper from the box. With one half of his mind, he writes; with the other half, he speaks. ‘I am writing two letters. One, you shall deliver to the Star Chamber at Westminster. The other is a message for Nick Skeres. Tell him to deliver it to his friend in St Helen’s.’
Estimable Lords, with humilitie and reveraunce I bring you this news, that K Marloe may be found here at Scadbury should you seeke him, & so beg if I may such counsel as your Lo:ships see fitt regarding the question of his keeping. In any exigency I remain,
Your faithful servaunt, Tho: Wals:
He crosses out with humilitie and reveraunce, writes in perfect obedience instead.
The second letter, bound for St Helen’s, Walsingham scratches down more hastily than the first. He slits the Star Chamber letter in several places and weaves a paper-bolt through the slits, as Uncle Francis had taught him. When all is done, he pours another cup of whisky and holds it below his nose without drinking, feeling anger where he ought to feel something else; thinking of Tom on his deathbed, a brittle, gasping husk: God forgive me, coward that I am!
When Frizer comes forward to collect the letters, Walsingham moves them out of his reach. ‘How much do I pay you, Frizer?’
Silence. ‘Tuppence a week, master.’
‘And how much does a bottle of ten-year Scotch whisky cost?’
An even longer silence, a softer reply: ‘I know not, master.’
‘Perhaps you should consult with the steward on that matter, ere ye go raiding my stores again.’ Walsingham lets him stew, and then, lesson imparted, offers the letters at last. ‘God grant ye foresight hereafter.’