The Marlowe Papers Read Online Free Page A

speechlessness has rendered her a worm:
no hands to write, no tongue to speak until
she spies the book that spells another’s tale –
the silenced woman turned to nightingale
who sings, and in her singing, is avenged.

ARMADA YEAR
    London. How fondly, thinking of her now,
I conjure up her smells: her market stalls,
the horse manure, the river’s fishy taint.
Can hear her in my ears like old advice:
the racket of the carts, the coster-wife
who’d shout out, ‘Flowers are lovely,’ to the rich
as I wandered back from breakfast to my desk.
I’d make the world in words, I’d show it things
you’d only see in mirrored glass, and then
scratch off the silver, let the truth go through.
The loveliness of youth. The innocence.
     
    Government duty helped me pay the rent.
From time to time, called up as messenger:
the small thrill when my strict instructions were
to give the message personally to men
as close to princes as pond lilies are
to the water’s edge. Each courtier, each swain,
was study for my second Tamburlaine.
     
    Watson was newly married: he and Ann
took up a lease above a draper’s shop
in Norton Folgate. I lodged in the roof.
     
    ‘So, Kit, how goes it?’ Watson, entering
the room I wrote in through those early months;
the smell of starch and boiled onions.
                                                                           ‘Tom,
    can I greet you first?’
                                             I feel that warm embrace
    as if his arms are round me now, and not
this blanket. Missing him wells up, like blood
from a fresh wound, as I let my memory bathe
in that early evening as we pulled apart.
     
    ‘How’s the writing going?’
                                                   ‘How was France?’
                                                                                     He laughed,
    ‘You first! You know I’m paid for my discretion.
No gossip for you before the third beer. So.
The shepherd king, sir? How’s your second part?’
     
    ‘Obscene. I had to pump the horror up;
dear Ned insisted.’
                                     ‘Have you eaten yet?
    Can I tempt you to the tavern? All the light’s
gone out of the day. What say you? Save your wax
and dine with me. The Queen is paying for it.’
     
    ‘I’m halfway through a scene.’
                                                           ‘And stuck?’
                                                                                   He read
    my mind most clearly when he was relaxed.
‘Come back to it tomorrow when you’re fresh.
Your brain can solve it overnight, if greased
and given sustenance. Come on.’
     
                                                             He was
    persuasive, warm. The most insistent arm
ever to link with mine and march me down
three flights of stairs and out into the night
to marvel at mud and stars. He was the shape
I moulded myself to, because he made
such wondrous things as him seem possible.
     
    We strode into the tavern, earned a wink
from Kate the barmaid as she wiggled by,
two trays of food well-balanced. ‘Christopher,
you may slip in there; I’m a married man.’
To neighbours, ‘Well met, Harry! How’s the boil?
My wife can brew an unction. Hunt her down!’
We took the private corner he preferred.
     
    ‘How do you fare for money?’
                                                       ‘Not so well.’
    ‘Still hiring the horse,