Seven Will Out: A Renaissance Revel (10 page)

“I don’t know if that makes you a cheap date, a poor judge of poetry, or both,” opined Bess. “It doesn’t matter much either way though, as
The Passionate Shepherd
is
not
the poem in question.”

“Well, Marlowe’s translations from the Greek can’t have been offensive to you, Bess. That just leaves his single, unfinished, epic—
Hero and Leander
.”

Bess looked at me pointedly and said nothing. The unaccustomed silence gave me a moment to recollect my thoughts and what I could of the content of the lengthy and lusty little ditty in question. As the words and phrases came back to me, the information I had so recently received from Arabella took on a whole new significance.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Mythology’s Follies

The outside of her garments were of lawn,

The lining purple silk, with gilt stars drawn;

Her wide sleeves green, and bordered with a grove,

Where Venus in her naked glory strove

To please the careless and disdainful eyes

Of proud Adonis, that before her lies.

Her kirtle blue…

The outfit that Arabella remembered so fondly—the one that her Morley first saw her in—corresponded very closely, I realized, with the garments worn by Hero, the heroine of Christopher Marlowe’s epic
Hero and Leander
.

“‘Fair was Hero, Venus’s nun,’” I recited aloud as I further recollected snippets of the poem. “Hadn’t Arabella said something about Morley likening her to one of Venus’s acolytes when first they met?”

“She said something about it to you, perhaps, Dolly,” Bess said. “She’d have known better than to share such drivel with me.”

I was not at all surprised to hear that the vinegary Bess was not one for honeyed words. The word “honey,” however, brought back another bit of
Hero and Leander
.

Her veil was artificial flowers and leaves

Whose workmanship both man and beast deceives.

Many would praise the sweet smell as she passed,

When ’twas the odour which her breath forth cast;

And there for honey bees have sought in vain,

And, beat from thence, have lighted there again.

Here were Arabella’s bee-pleasing compote of flowers—and apparently the girl herself—immortalized in enduringly epic and erotic love poetry, unless I was very much mistaken; an apian paean, one might say.

The story of Hero and Leander dates back to Greek mythology and a telling by no less than Ovid himself. Christopher Marlowe’s variation on the theme is what is known as an
epyllion
because, in the 1590s, 818 lines of iambic pentameter qualified as a little epic. Marlowe was said to have put the finishing touches on it while at a loose end sitting out the plague in London.

The story involves two lovers: our leading man, the über-sexy Leander, and a gal named Hero, a priestess of Venus. They lived on opposite sides of the Hellespont; a Renaissance Running Bear and Little White Dove who came to the same kind of sad end in the drink. Hero and Leander, however, had the advantage of having consummated their relationship prior to death, thanks to Leander’s swimming skills and Hero’s handy way with a lantern in a tower window.

Marlowe’s version of
Hero and Leander
took the lovers to consummation only. A contemporary of Marlowe’s, George Chapman, took the story home to its sad ending when he published it, after Marlowe had died, in 1598.

I needed to explore this newfound theory about
Hero and Leander
being about the relationship between Arabella and Christopher Marlowe—my historian’s curiosity would settle for nothing less. Bess would have to be carefully sounded though;
my usual insouciance and forthrightness would not do for this undertaking. An attempt at subtlety would be necessary, and Lord knew that would not be easy for me. I started out by focusing on Marlowe’s part in the poem rather than on Arabella’s.

“Marlowe spends a good few lines going on about how good-looking his young hero, Leander, is,” I mentioned. “Apparently he was pretty full of himself when it came to looks and personal charms.”

I felt this to be beautifully understated, considering the description of Leander in the poem. “Leander, thou art made for amorous play.” “Dangling tresses” on par with the golden fleece. “Smooth breast.” “White belly.” A “heavenly path” running down his back. And of course the rather disconcerting neck, like “delicious meat.” Apparently, vampire erotica goes back much further than most people realize.

“If one likes men who look like girls, I suppose Morley would have been just one’s cup of tea, Dolly. Clearly, that is why a girl as young and virginal as my Jewel was so taken with the man. He certainly didn’t strike me as someone a
grown
woman would have any interest in.”

“Marlowe would be the grown
man
’
s
cup of tea though, if the orientation were right. I am thinking of your son-in-law, Gilbert, Bess.” Bess had made mention of it herself not so long ago, so I felt on safe ground bringing it up.

As it turned out, I was correct, and then some. A little Gilbert-bashing was just what the doctor ordered, as far as Bess was concerned.

“Gilbert! He and my daughter, Mary, managed to make a going concern of their marriage, but only because my girl, Mary, at least, was able to wear the doublet and hose in that family.”

I thought it best not to comment too much about which garments Gilbert or Mary Talbot assumed for marital purposes. I was comfortable, though, in making an assumption about Gilbert’s part in
Hero and Leander
.

“Marlowe immortalized Gilbert in
Hero and Leander
too, didn’t he, Bess? Surely the Gilbert who tried to tumble Marlowe in the hallway in the wee hours was the prototype for Neptune, who did the same with Leander when he was crossing the Hellespont to get to Hero.” I quoted:

And, looking back, saw Neptune follow him…

He clapped his plump cheeks, with his tresses played

And, smiling wantonly, his love betrayed.

He watched his arms and, as they opened wide

At every stroke, betwixt them would he slide

And steal a kiss, and then run out and dance,

And, as he turned, cast many a lustful glance,

And threw him gaudy toys to please his eye,

And dive into the water, and there pry

Upon his breast, his thighs, and every limb,

And up again, and close beside him swim,

And talk of love.

“It was the closest Gilbert ever got to being considered godlike, that much is for certain,” Bess replied. “What with his being so cantankerous, I’d think Mars or Ares would have been more appropriate choices for comparison than Neptune—although of course, not in keeping with the mythology.”

I knew that staying in Bess’s good graces would mean forgoing any discussion with her of the parts of the poem that
involved Arabella and Marlowe’s more intimate moments. That was a shame; Marlowe’s description of their youthful cowboys-and-Indians game sounded much more sophisticated and erotic than Arabella’s ingenuous description.

And, as her silver body downward went,

With both her hands she made the bed a tent,

And in her own mind thought herself secure,

O’ercast with dim and darksome coverture.

And now she lets him whisper in her ear,

Flatter, entreat, promise, protest and swear;

Yet ever, as he greedily assayed

To touch those dainties, she the harpy played,

And every limb did, as a soldier stout,

Defend the fort, and keep the foeman out…

At least, “Till gentle parley did the truce obtain,” anyway, and love, or lust, conquered all.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

The Breakdown of a Shakedown

It occurred to me that an ego as healthy as Bess’s might want the attention focused on
it
every once in a while, so I directed my mind away from the golden lines of Marlowe’s epic and toward Bess.

“So, Bess, when Marlowe contacted Arabella, seeking to extort funds, what exactly transpired afterward?”

“I arranged for him to come and see
me
personally, after I’d refused Arabella’s request for the pension money he was seeking. He arrived with a draft of
Hero and Leander
already in hand. You are familiar with the content of it, Dolly. If he published it and surreptitiously set rumor loose in London about what the poem was
really
about—”

“Zowie! Talk about a ‘subtle, perjur’d, false, disloyal man; a man willing to set word of mouth out to do its worst.’ Morley was downright Machiavellian, wasn’t he?”

“Yes, indeed!” Bess confirmed. “He could handily use the publication of
Hero and Leander
, and the rumor mill, to circuitously embarrass Arabella, to embarrass Gilbert, and, by extension, to embarrass
me
. At the same time, with the poem clearly based on a well-known myth, he could claim all innocence if burdened with the charge that he had written it about his own experiences with our family.”

“And once he’d secretly started that rumor train in motion, it would be the carriers of the scuttlebutt, if anyone, who would be liable for libel. Marlowe himself, with such a well-established and
familiar mythological story as the basis of his poem, had a solid alibi if brought up on any kind of charges.”

“He had me and my family over a barrel. Should he have published it and gotten some of his unsavory associates to put the word out on the street that the poem was about Arabella, what could we have done?
Fighting
the rumor would be
acknowledging
it! Keeping silent on it would be the lesser of two evils, but there we’d be, humiliated whether it was true or not.”

“The man had ‘no more mercy in him than there is milk in a male tiger’—but you’ve got to hand it to him for pure one hundred percent slickness,” I said.

“Yes,” Bess agreed. “But fortunately, the ally I chose to assist me with the Morley problem was even slicker than that.”

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Bess Is Tightest with the Best and Brightest

Bess of Hardwick associated with many of England’s political powerhouses over the course of her career. My professorial mouth watered as I considered the brains she’d have had available to pick for her endeavor.

“Well,” Bess began, “Marlowe thought he had triumphed over our family, having had his way with Arabella and then weaseling money out of us to boot. I refused to give him the forty pounds in cash. I gave him a ring instead, a ruby ring worth forty pounds and then some, and was handed the manuscript of
Hero and Leander
. In Marlowe’s presence, I read it carefully once and then consigned it to the fire that was burning in the chamber at the time.”

I winced as I thought about what Marlowe the writer must have gone through, seeing his manuscript go up in flames. The professor in me winced even more at the thought of such wanton destruction of primary source documents.

“Of course, I knew that while Marlowe was silenced for the time being, our transaction was not a final solution,” Bess said.

“Well, of course, you were pretty strong on slick yourself, Bess. You must have suspected that other copies of the manuscript existed. And obviously, you were correct about that.”

“No,” Bess corrected me. “I was
certain
that other copies of the manuscript existed. Even if they did not, the man himself, with his gift for words and what he knew, could create yet another work to accomplish his purpose.”

I supposed this was so.

“I needed final resolution to the Morley problem, and I needed it fast. Arabella’s reputation and future as an heiress to the throne hung in the balance. I did not hesitate to call in the big guns, but I had to be careful regarding which of them I would entrust my tale to. Discretion was imperative; it was crucial; it was—”

“‘The better part of valor!’” I interjected.

“That as well,” Bess acknowledged dryly. “At first I considered getting Dudley into the picture. He was an old friend and had proposed his own little boy for Arabella before the lad unfortunately died. I eventually decided against Dudley, though.”

“Why, Bess?” I asked. Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, was the favorite—if not the true love—of Queen Elizabeth I and was well placed, surely, to help out an old friend like Bess.

“Dudley may have had friendliness and resources aplenty to offer, but he was sadly wanting in the discretion department,” Bess said. “I mean, look at how badly the whole Amy Robsart affair went—and of course, Douglass Sheffield to follow.”

One woman vulnerable and eventually dead under mysterious circumstances, and one pregnant and desperate and pointing the finger when he wormed out of the relationship. One could hardly give him full marks for discretion or valor, at least based on the relationship history.

“I did briefly consider calling Dudley’s stepson, Lord Essex, to my aid. Newly appointed privy counselor, young, full of ideas, and with a soft spot for Arabella to boot.”

Arabella had been aware of that soft spot, if the Essex mentions in the rambling letters she wrote later in life—probably in the manic phase of some sort of bipolar crisis—were any
indication. Those letters are the basis of the modern-day theories regarding Arabella’s troubled mental health.

“In the end, though, I decided against Essex too,” Bess continued. “For much the same reason I decided against his stepfather.”

“Marital indiscretions?” I inquired. “He certainly cheesed Elizabeth I off when he married Frances Walsingham, the daughter of her spymaster.”

“Indiscretion in general,” Bess said, encapsulating into three words the life and career of Robert Devereux, Lord Essex. Maniac episodes may have featured in his ultimately unhappy trajectory as well; perhaps his fondness for Arabella had something to do with like calling to like. In any event, as he wound up on a gibbet of his own devising at the end, Bess’s call there was probably a good one.

“Sir Walter Raleigh might have done,” Bess added.

“Since he ‘might have done,’ I’m guessing he didn’t make it off the short list, Bess. Why not? The man must have been sympathetic to Arabella; he was executed for his treasonous efforts to place Arabella on the throne of England, with Spanish backing, in the Stuart era.” Thus died the original Renaissance man and my favorite among them: explorer, romantic, scholar, scientist, poet, warrior, and politico.