A room above an inn. The foreign words
on floors beneath me, drifting up like smoke
from kitchen servants, say I’m the stranger here.
The fields are almost marsh. Two days of rain
and still the skies are pouring. Clothing, soaked,
sweating before the open fire. My skin
is wrinkled as the elderly, my feet
as white and sodden as the Dover cliffs
stood out in water. All my papers soaked,
the ink cried out of them: a blot, a streak,
then blank again. Last night, I dreamt of rape.
From the space under my cot, from all the quiet
beneath my sleeping body, came the shift
of someone who had waited for my breath
to slow and mark that I was vulnerable.
A shadow consolidated into flesh,
some man who needed, more than meat or drink,
my soul’s destruction. Not a face, no voice,
but the cold desire for what he couldn’t have
I recognised. Intrusion was his name.
And the cry of fear he stuffed back in my throat
with fists of bedclothes echoed in the room:
a room with no one in it. Yet, afraid,
I kept my eyes on the door until the first
dull light began to detail me, alone.
I drifted back to sleep just after dawn,
exhausted by my vigilance and fear,
and found myself at the nightmare’s end, distressed
and running room to room in some great palace,
with no one recognising me as friend,
and, bursting finally into a hall,
my nightshirt torn, my privacy exposed,
I found myself half dressed before a court
of witnesses. The room was thick with them,
the walled-up souls who manage history.
‘Hold her down fast,’ they said. ‘Cut out her tongue.’
The rain falls still. It’s two hours after noon.
The silent shame that followed from my dream
is reeking from the dampness of the clothes
I took a walk in, trying to be clean,
though all the dirt is on the inside now.
And bursting to be told, to be let out,
but, with the stain of it, who can I tell
who wouldn’t blame me for inflaming it?
I take my driest paper, mix the ink,
and open where the daughter stumbles in
with bleeding stumps for hands, a bloody chin,
and blood ballooning as she tries to speak;
each word a victim of her absent tongue
translated to an empty sphere of air;
anguished to tell some caring heart who wreaked
this violent silence over their guilty deed.
But 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.
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, though.’
‘I must have the horse.
Tom, without the horse, I’m five foot five
and half the world looks down on me.’
‘I know.
Create the show and men believe it’s true.
Dress rich, ride rich,
be
rich. When will it work
do you think?’
‘Don’t doubt me, Tom. I’m come this far
with nothing but belief. A cobbler’s son
who now is qualified a gentleman.’
The corners of his mouth twitched like a fly
in a spider’s web that movement fast reveals.
‘Don’t toy with me, Tom.’
‘Oh, we are serious.
I’m glad you have the horse, still. As for money,
the horse might get you more of it.’
‘How’s that?’
He leant in closer, made our wall-less room.
‘A Spanish invasion fleet is being prepared.’
My pulse leapt like a stag. ‘Twelve dozen ships
bearing three thousand guns. There will be peace
negotiations. But. We believe they’ll fail.’
‘The execution of the Queen of Scots –’
‘– has angered the Catholics greatly, yes, my friend.’
He dropped his voice two registers, as Kate
yawed to the side to fill our cups with ale.
‘A horse eats up the distances,’ he smiled
until she passed, ‘between the enemy
and us. We need a network on the ground.’
Watson took two short sips beneath the froth
and smacked his lips.
‘Pack and be ready to go.
You’ll not be called until the chain’s in place
through which to pass your information. But
be ready to serve your country.’
‘Tamburlaine!’
The room filled with his roar as Edward Alleyn
created a stage around him. ‘Is it done?
I thought I’d find you here. Where is my play?
Have you got time for drinking?’
‘It’s my first!’
‘He’s lying, this is number three,’ Tom said,
and shook his hand.
‘You poets. Always thirsty.
Can a humble actor join you?’
‘Certainly!
Where is this man, sir? Let us be introduced.’
Ned bellowed with laughter. ‘You are very rude!’
‘In the meanwhile,’ Watson said, ‘please be our guest.
Though our purse is empty, if you might chip in.’
Tom had been writing plays for Ned for months,
though secretly, without his name to them.
‘If it’s not Latin, it’s not scholarly;
I cannot own the thing,’ he told me once.
Ned’s quick riposte, ‘Both spent my money, then?’
was subtle as a knife in an oyster shell.
‘I may have information,’ Watson said.
‘Some advance notice. What will be on the minds
of summer’s audience. You could plan ahead.’
Alleyn was interested. ‘Go on, then, speak.’
‘Better not speak,’ said Tom. ‘I’ll write it down.
Read it and cast it on the fire. And should
anyone ask how you’re so prescient,
say you consulted an astrologer.’
Ned tapped his nose. ‘Come on, then.’ Watson tore
the corner off a playbill on the wall,
borrowed the quill the tapster kept for sums
and scratched some words for Ned.
His brows rose up
like a crowd for an ovation.
‘This is news.’
‘Valuable news?’
‘I’ll double the summer gates
with the right plays in place.’ Handing a purse
over to Tom unconsciously, his eyes
still taking the words in.
‘On the fire,’ Tom said,
and Ned obeyed. It curled up, black as nightmares.
‘We will defeat them,’ Watson said, quite firm.
‘We will defeat them, Ned. You mark my word.’
At Middelburg, the printer’s twitchy eye,
its odd, incessant winking, puts me off.
My accent deteriorates. ‘Monsieur Le Doux.
You have a trunk for me?’
The facial tic
suggests he has it hidden. ‘Not at all.’
‘It didn’t come?’ His wink says nothing more.
‘If I give you this angel?’ ‘There you are.’
He snaps the money up. ‘It’s stored out back.’
I follow him through. An apprentice at the press
brings down black letter on to pristine sheet.
I check the contents. ‘Everything is there,’
he says politely. ‘Books are valuable
but far too heavy to stand in for gold.
I have some English titles you might like.
Things you can’t get a licence for. You know?’
The one time winking might have seemed to fit,
his face is motionless as masonry.
‘Religious tracts of various persuasions.
Wider debate than the English Queen allows.’
‘You publish poetry?’
‘If it will sell.
None at the moment. You have written verse.’
He knows. It’s not a question. ‘I have seen
your manuscripts.’ He shrugs apology.
‘When I was checking things against your list.
There might be a market for the saucy ones.’
‘We may do business later,’ I reply,
tucking a ream of paper beneath my arm.
‘For now, I’m at these lodgings. Send the trunk
as soon as you can manage.’ He folds the slip
into his pocket, winks me to the street.
I write all night. The lady of the house,
who provided extra candles for a mark,
is snoring on her purse. The moon is low;
a cat is prowling shadows on the stairs
and when I stop, my losses crowding in,
I think of your lips, one kiss. As though I live.
But I am the ruined queen of ancient Rome
who killed herself, and left her words to sing.
At noon, the trunk arrives between two boys
who frown at my shilling. The tall one kicks the short
to dig out a piece of parchment, firmly sealed:
‘Arrived this morning, sir.’ Another coin
and both skulk off. It is addressed ‘Le Doux’;
the seal’s unknown to me; the hand inside
is unfamiliar. But beside the words
is sketched the outline of a marigold.
‘Meet me at one. The Flanders Mare. T.T.’