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“A matter of death?” Will says instead of a greeting.
The dawn had barely managed to penetrate the fog when he arrived at the lodging.
The letter had evidently been penned in some haste, judging from the splotchy ink, and probably meant to say “a matter of life and death,” which would be on par for the outrageous proclamations of its author.
The alternative is simply beyond consideration. One does not arrive to attend a matter of death by way of having to stop and clean one’s shoe after stepping into a pile of horseshit.
“Yes, precisely,” Kit Marlowe sounds even more irritated than usual.
He is wearing his best doublet, and his hair is in disarray that Will knows to be artfully arranged, but the shadows under his eyes are making him look a decade older.
“Of whose death, then?”
“Mine.” Kit sits down, motioning at a chair next to him, placed in the middle of the room, as if they were expecting an audience leaning against the walls. The rickety table has been pushed to the side and is haphazardly covered in papers, books, what looks like an ancient scroll sticking out of the bottom of the pile.
Witty repartees march through Will’s mind. He clenches his teeth to prevent them from escaping. Kit isn’t going get out of this easily, so he’d better be able to give a proper explanation.
Slowly it dawns on Will that Kit – Christopher bloody Marlowe, who has ink running in his veins – is at a loss for words.
When the waiting becomes unbearable, Will drawls out, deliberately stretching the words.
“I am neither a doctor nor a notary. And you appear to be remarkably full of life.”
“For now.” Kit’s lips curve into a smile, light and sharp and evenly proportioned, like the rest of his body.
His eyes remain hard; blink and they will shatter.
“As full of life as ever, until Kyd is done testifying, and maybe for a few more days. I’ve been told he’s already enumerated my blasphemies. I suspect he’ll soon run out of the treasonous proclamations too. After that, it’s my turn on the rack.”
The thick glass in the window turns the sun into a smudge. A pile of straw instead of gold, the remnants of a spectacle after the audience has left and the stage needs to be swept clean before the evening entertainment.
And the actors have missed the exit cue.
This is another stage direction, nothing more, Will thinks, and bites down the bitter laughter that is threatening to escape him.
Act III, culmination: the characters find out that their friend has been brought in to interrogation. Act III, epilogue: the characters leave, and die offstage.
Will isn’t doing too bad in this new role. He’s got the cold sweat, the shaking hands. The heaviness in his chest is making it hard to breathe.
He knew this could happen. Of course he did. They all run the same risk, and Kit more than most. Only it is so easy to blaspheme through the lips of a villain, or a foreign prince, that the possibility of a punishment doesn’t feel wholly real outside of the stage either.
“Kyd’s probably saying whatever he can think of to stop the torture,” Will says, uncertain. Not because it isn’t true, but because it might not be enough to save Kit. Who should be knocking on Walsingham’s door instead of bandying words with a fellow playwright!
“Oh, but Kyd is only telling the truth,” Kit croons, and Will can only listen.
“It would be rather fitting for me to follow him, wouldn’t it? Torture and punishment and perhaps a recanting, followed by death, a proper finale for a morality play. Only, I’ve never written those, and I have no wish to act them either. I wouldn’t do well on a rack.”
Kit shudders, stares at the floor, doesn’t lift his eyes.
“I’d probably implicate half of London before the first day was over.”
“Including Thomas,” Will says softly.
Kit has fallen silent, but there are always rumors flying around about his conquests, and Will has, perhaps, been more attentive to them than one might expect. Admittedly, conquest doesn’t quite fit the young, rich and carefree Thomas Walsingham, who could hire both Will and Kit for the rest of their lives on less than he probably spends on clothes per year.
Kit has the indecency to look a little surprised before he nods.
“Including you,” he adds, moving a little closer. “I refuse to give them the pleasure.”
“Why not?” Will asks.
They need to continue the banter, feeble as it may be. Will isn’t sure if he could manage the alternative; but Kit has always dragged him well past what he was sure he couldn’t manage any more.
“Do I have to bore you by repeating praise to your poetry?”
“As we speak, a carriage is waiting to take me to Deptford,” Kit continues after barely a pause.
“I have arranged a meeting. I do not expect to survive it. And please do not mention mortal sins. I have no interest in taking my own life. Only, I am even less inclined to let anyone else take it.”
If they were in a play, Will would bow in respect and speak of courage using the best Classical allusions.
He would fall on his knees, begging Kit to stay alive in metaphors of flowers and birds.
He would wait for another two beats, staring blankly ahead, for Kit to give him the orders to be carried after his death.
There would be an ominous sound of thunder, cleverly made by shaking a thin sheet of iron, instead of a mournful whinny of a horse in the street outside Kit’s house.
“I only wish I got my twenty four years as my part of the bargain,” Kit finally adds.
Suddenly, fury slams through Will like a gulp of piping hot ale.
“You’ll get two hundred and forty,” he growls.
“And then some. Your plays will make sure of that. And you hardly even had to sell your soul.”
The angles of Kit’s face blur a little at the proclamation.
“It’s – it’s not supposed to hurt,” he says quietly. “The last service from the great master of her Majesty's spies and traitors, in exchange for, yes, that long-forgotten bargain for my soul. I have the concoction in my traveling valise; I’ll drink it before I get there. It’s supposed to make me fall asleep, at first. There should be a bed, in the room.”
Will can almost see it. Kit’s mouth, silent, frowning even in sleep, his breathing slowing down.
“What if you wake up?” Will asks.
“One of my companions will make sure I won’t. Also, it wouldn’t do to have an inquest, would it? A dagger is so much more straightforward after all, and nobody asks any questions, or checks exactly when it was applied.”
“Do you have…” what is the appropriate question, on such occasions? Does Kit have any last wishes, a testament, a will, the last draft of a genius performance?
Will has his doubts. Kit wouldn’t have been able to die without watching his genius performance set on stage, and as for the rest, his meagre possessions will be appropriated by the state as part of the examination.
“Why did you want me here?” he asks instead.
“Because I want someone to know the truth.”
“It’s dangerous,” Will says calmly. Which is true, but somehow he is finding it impossible to care.
“I don’t need you to tell anyone. I only need you to understand. As for the rest of my last wishes, as they may be, Thomas has my Hero and Leander. It ends happily, for a change. I thought it might give him some comfort.”
“What about my comfort?”
The words escape Will before he can clamp down on them, and Kit freezes halfway through lacing his travel boots.
“Yours?” he says. “You do not trade in comfort. I should know it; I never did.”
“What do you leave me, then?”
Slowly, Kit ties the knot on his left boot and turns to Will.
“What would you claim from me?”
His voice is low, and the seduction in his gaze is only a flimsy cover for the familiar desperation.
Will notices it and his feelings too, catalogues them for later, for a play, for a poem, even as he hates himself for doing so.
This is where we exit the stage, Will thinks.
This is it; a grand farewell in a rented room as a carriage waits outside.
“I will write you,” he says, and means it.
Not to him. Not about him. Him. In a turn of a phrase, or in a gesture of impatience. In ambition; in defiance; in tragedy.
Perhaps, it will inspire Will enough that his own name will have a chance at surviving.
Kit turns around at the door, and the sparks in his eyes could burn London to the ground.
---
"When a man's verses cannot be understood,
Nor a man’s good wit seconded with the forward child,
Understanding, it strikes a man more dead
Than a great reckoning in a little room."
(William Shakespeare, As You Like It).