Part 24

Raleigh had his body wrapped in canvas and tossed overboard. No ceremony. Giant, wind-wracked combers.

“Do you know his name? Is there any record?” I asked.

“Timothy Parkes.”

“Where was he from?”

“Dover. He was wanted there for murdering two women.”

“Was he a good seaman?”

“No. And he was eaten up with scurvy.”

And Raleigh’s face said: “What kind of ship can an officer command sailored by rogues?” But he was all man: I saw him, in his canvas sack, as all men, fal- ling...falling.

There was never another voyage for me after Raleigh’s...nor was there ever another Sir Walter. I should have been his champion. He needed me to fight for him. I have often shut my eyes and seen his books and sensed the cradling lull of his ship and felt the grace and power of him standing beside me: books, beams, a pointed beard, a swinging lamp, smell of oakum and ocean.

To think that I witnessed his trial and made no attempt to defend him...to think that I saw him in prison...to think...cold venison! Cry your mercy!

Henley Street

July 28, 1615

At the Mermaid Tavern, Raleigh laughed over his ale, his lanky body screwed on a rickety chair, the wind and rain howling, people coming and going, their clothes soggy, the wind gusting inside with each arrival. Most newcomers made for the fireplace, stamping and shaking out their coats; boots and leggings steamed.

Grinning, Raleigh lit his pipe, a dozen men around our table, elbowing Ben Jonson and me.

“Come on, Ben, smoke another, and you, too, Will.”

Raleigh’s coat was ripped, where a sword or cutlass had slashed; he pushed a tobacco pouch and pipe toward me.

“I’ll drink with you—but not smoke,” I said.

“Try again. You’ll learn to like it.”

“You experiment,” I said. “Once was enough.”

“But I’m not experimenting. I’ve smoked on the long watches. It settles the blood and calms the mind. The Indians...”

“We know about the Indians,” Jonson said. “Just remember, we’re not Indians!”

“You might better be! Here, lad, bring us more ale! Let’s drink!”

“Here’s to your return! London’s London with you around.”

“Have you seen my new play?”

“What play is it?”

“The Winter’s Tale,” I said.

“What—a chilly play on top of this miserable weather! Why a month ago I was basking in the sun...you and your plays! Is this Denmark and another Hamlet? Tell me, Will, was Hamlet named for your son—are those lines in his honor?”

Jonson interrupted and answered for me:

“When my boy died I wrote something for him. I was in prison then and the jailer grabbed my manuscript and spat on it. Bah, that’s the kind of crassness that shakes you. I’ve forfeited goods in payment of my stupidities but I haven’t forfeited my hatred of injustice! It’s another kind of injustice when a boy, a stripling, dies. Will made Hamnet into Hamlet, an outcry against this world.”

He drank his ale and I saw him examine his thumb, where they had branded it when he was in prison; he nodded to himself; I suppose his thoughts were of his boy, a victim of the plague...

Jonson eats poorly. Prison treatment has hurt him. His hair is greying, particularly on one side, sweeping down, showing when he talks with gusto. Teeth are missing. Today he wears a suit of black wool, his cuffs clean, his collar clean. He hardly seems one of us.

Raleigh’s sword scrapes against the table as he leans forward, talking of his voyages. His is a perpetual struggle with storms and mutinies and his flashing eyes convey a courage one has to take into account. He has sent the idlers packing and smokes with his pipe in the bowl of his palm, its brown the color of his hands, the five or six rings on his fingers blazing: opals and rubies, I am told.

I am also told that if he sold the jewels he wears he could pay for the construction of a ship-of-the-line.

Henley Street

July 30, 1615

I came across several old letters this morning. Raleigh’s is hard to decipher:

Portsmouth

March 9, 1608

Will Shakespear—

We have taken an old carrack, the Madre de Dios, and spoils clutter her deck as we lie at anchor in Portsmouth Bay, spoils, things the Queen would grow sullen over, wanting them. Some of them bloody and soaked with spray, they have a cheapness about them, a liar’s eye. You and Ben would know how to laugh and knock them about. Here’s a green gem in a brooch a negro queen must have worn, its horse’s eye staring through a slash of sail canvas. Here’s a rope of skulls carved in brownish ivory; here’s a tiara ornamented with pale yellow gems I can’t identify...a pile of brass bracelets alongside a smashed cutlass. As for me, I’ll take the wind in the rigging and a clear landfall.

How are your plays going this season? Sometimes, when a sea rages, Macbeth howls in my ear, Othello lifts his hand as stars dive below the washed horizon.

Shun the Queen’s condemnations. It is usually her freedom—seldom ours. Stay clean!

But if I could write like you I would try to destroy political chicanery, though meddling with the Crown may spell my doom.

Well, I will make London late next month, and see you at the Tavern.

Raleigh’s pen dug into the paper, and the signature has almost disappeared for lack of ink.

The Tower

Will Shakespear—

When I scribbled verses on a window, our Queen was pleased. I did not know—my crystal would not divulge that I would become a chemist in the Tower, alchemist of solitude. I thought the compass mine, shrewdly boxed...

London

April 9, 1593

Will—

For years I have been planning an expedition up the Orinoco, to locate a gold mine. The fabled mine is near Spanish settlements and these may present hazards to any English force. A Spaniard, a Captain Berrio, is entrenched there, along the River. The expedition will tax my resources but I am determined for the sake of the Crown: to carry out my plans I will require several shallow draft frigates and several small boats; there are no accurate maps and the mine is in fever jungle. Certes a month or two will go into exploration, hacking this way and that. The roguish crew of prison perverts will contribute their share of com- plications, no doubt of that, my friend. Con- sole yourself that you will never know such an experience as dealing with deckloads of cutthroats. To be a voyageur you must condone scapegoats, assassins, rapists, thieves...but you know our maritime history. I have been accused of bad voyages...who has not made bad voyages who dared voyages? If this expedition can be materialed the victualing will be a matter of months. Wish me well...wish me God’s speed.

I am contributing £3,000, and it seemeth to me this Empire is reserved for Her Majesty and the Nation. I can find the gold King of Cundinamarca: el hombre dorado. Who knows, as in Sergas de Esplandián, we may reach the Island of California, inhabited by Amazon women with passionate hearts and great strength, where there is abundant gold.

There were other letters in this vein, about his future. As explorer he was to the manner born. Thou canst not be false to any man—his letters seemed to say.

The Tower

Like our ship Revenge I am surrounded by an armada of enemies, all my pikes splintered. In the beginning of the fight I had a hundred for me; volleys, boardings, and enterings have done their damage...this composition and exile are the dullest and longest in the history of our Tower; the book I am writing is for Prince Frederick, a slow, slow tacking about; yet you, who respect writing, realize the salvation. Tell me, friend, that I will fare well with my History of the World...

It is still my error that I never assisted him: it was my error to have shut my mind: there are many I could have helped as I went along. But to pass by someone great—that is great misfortune.

I hear him telling about how he burned the town of San José; I hear him telling about the treachery of the Tarawa Indians; his terrible thirst when his ship ran out of water at sea; he is boarding a Spanish frigate, raiding for guns...

’Sblood, the Spanish are a cruel lot, chaining the caciques, scorching their naked bodies with hot bacon, beating them, starving them, decapitating them...

The Tower

Write to me, lad, before thought’s relicts utterly obsess me and the ghouls remove me in their stinking chains. I have seen and heard them, ghouls and ghosts of this town and tower, seen and heard them cringe and bully, nightlong. Stones multiply their menace. There’s an old seadog from Dublin crumpled in a cell here, a grumbling bag: he claims he used to sail with me; by his own confession he is the murderer of his crippled father. He is to be freed in the Spring. Freed? Free—are we ever free, my lad? When I sniff the brined air I am hard put not to cast myself off the Tower—I still hope to see the sails double- reefed and porpoises rising off the bow...

Later he wrote bread—bread—bread. “Time drives the flocks,” he said: “I am reading the Amoretti... have you read Spenser recently?

“None can call again the passed time,” he wrote. I repeated those seven words. I repeat his bread...bread...bread...it is not bread we want. I did not care. Who cares now?

Henley Street

August 1, ’15

What times we had, Raleigh, Marlowe, Jonson, and I, Marlowe and his wit, Raleigh and his tales of the sea, Jonson and his satirical pomposities in Latin or Greek. Then, then...Marlowe’s murder crept through our veins and left us dumb or feverish, our very gatherings viewed with disapproval.

Hail drubbed our windows, the chill of complicity and duplicity spread over cobbles, the clatter of horses’ hooves meant torture on the spit of tomorrow: these were hitched to our beads of sweat.

We had seen our share of slings and arrows. Was it important who killed Marlowe? We weren’t sure. All threads of evidence were thin threads! We praised Marlowe, shuffled through our worn pockets to bury him— Raleigh at sea now. We excused, blamed, made our exodus.

Ann said, with scorn:

“It’s the company you keep! London! Always London!”

As if our plays could be produced in Stratford!

“It’s men who blaspheme God who find the gutter! Listen to what people say about Raleigh! He’ll have a bad end!” So they prophesied over sour beer.

Chris Marlowe was squat, dark, tousle-headed, many- freckled, with wretched teeth and poor eyes. He weighed far too much for a small man—his clothes were sacks at times—his body lost inside for all its bulk. He had character and a voice that conveyed character—his speech superior to many actors. He could memorize lines quickly, and speak them sincerely, interpreting with sound thinking behind them. When nervous he picked his teeth and jogged his foot, when writing or talking, not on the stage. He slumped in his chair habitually, as if he had been on his feet for days. When he spoke, there was Marlowe, bringing you to attention, his eyes serious, the warmth of him coming to you, a piece of currency.

Stratford

Marlowe and I worked throughout the night, troubled by reeky candles, rain and chill. He kept us grinding by saying we’d soon see the sun cross the roof tops.

The sun...where was it?

Our playwriting went badly as we worked at rephrasing, changing, cutting, adding. I would write a scene and he would recompose it, or he would start out and then I would revise. We had to have our three acts finished by noon, for our players.

Red-eyed, Marlowe sipped ale, his quill chronicling, squeaking, or head on his arms, he snatched a fragment of sleep.

Rain over the house, over the mansard, clicking against the glass, sounding colder and colder, dampening our spirits and our paper, making my knees and ankles ache...rain.

I wanted to toss myself on the cot and smother myself with blankets and call it a day. Marlowe said we’d soon see the dawn. God’s bodkins!

In that four-square room, cluttered with Greek and Roman masks, posters, books, and dirt, we wrote Titus over and over. When the manuscripts were ready for the theatre even the rain sounded tired.

In those days, for economy’s sake, we often cut each other’s hair, sitting in the doorway or on the steps, when the weather was good. Draped in sheet or towel, I sat on a chair while Marlowe snipped. Scissors and comb usually put him in a whistling mood. Gently puffing a tune, he scissored away—the slowest barber in London. He liked to complain about the color of my hair, saying he wished it was as black as Othello’s so he could see it easily.

“I’ve cut so many bad lines from your plays this job should be easy.”

Chris was better at barbering than I. He said I didn’t keep my mind on my work.

“If I had the money, I’d certainly excuse you. Come on, no more time out for jotting down lines. Let’s get through this mess. Presently, it will be dark. I never trust you by candlelight.”

In separate crimson frames:

Sir Francis Drake, Sir Walter Raleigh, Ben Jonson, Shakespeare:

A mirage of Armada, sails rattling, guns roaring...

At sea, Sir Francis tells yarn of brave seamanship:

a man stabs another in the eye with a dagger.

Silence.

Stratford

August 5, 1615

S

pelling God backward gets dull after a while: at the clandestine meetings where Raleigh, Greene, Marlowe, Drake, Jonson and others crucified everyone’s beliefs, they gradually dulled their arrows, for me: I thought: Lucifer can smell too strongly of sulfur too often. “Am I not a mighty man who bears a hundred souls on his back!”— talk like this was to little purpose, to my way of thinking. How much saner to keep convictions to one’s self: Yet some, surly as a butcher’s dog, paraded their beliefs. Gulled, I never went too often: the suite, in the Duke’s Thames house, had about it an air of trouble brewing, trickery, and the abrupt appearance of men-at- arms. The talkers walked or sat about, under brilliant chandeliers, shadowing their shadows on the polished floors, starched cuffs thrown back over satin sofas. Whiffs of cologne and perfume over-topped the whiff of garret. Rapiers shimmered. The Queen, if she chose, could do away with each of us: a nod of her wig. I seriously suspected all their pattery, branding it half-hearted conspiracy, mistrust and defamation. The passage of time has confirmed, not denied my feelings: perspective has brought out the folly of guffawings at creeds.

St. Grouse’s Day

1615

For weeks, after Marlowe’s murder, I avoided the Mermaid Tavern. When a courtier from the Queen’s court came to me at my apartment and suggested, with coughs behind his perfumed handkerchief, that I leave London for a while, I agreed... I was rather unaccustomed to such visits!

Meeting Jonson, as I left the city, sensing evasion on his part, I felt ill at ease, suspicion stepping in. Later, he visited me at Stratford, brief visits, but he was aware of my doubts; my reserve must have told him.

Jonson said:

“The Queen has been spying...last week your London apartment was searched...if you’re smart, stay away...she’s making up her mind...”

I turned that over.

What could I pin on the Queen? What could she pin on me? Which play? A broadside? A pamphlet? With Jonson back in London I sent out feelers. When I was convinced that he was loyal I would remember that he had killed two men. Queen? Pawn? Right? Wrong?

September first

1615

Months after Marlowe’s murder, I learned that the Queen had had hirelings kill him. I confided in Raleigh as we stood on a pier, near one of his frigates...the Thames wind whipping our clothes.

How well I recall his expression when I told him. Mouth tense, eyes afire, he grabbed at the hilt of his sword and exclaimed:

“I command nine ships. How many cutthroats do you think I have at my beck and call? In a fortnight, Marlowe’s murderers will be dead. Our Queen will know that she has been out-maneuvered, that there are plotters keener than she. She killed Marlowe because he was too rabid an atheist...”

Those were vain words on Raleigh’s part: he did nothing: I did nothing. How gutter-cheap we are in times of stress, how obliterative, given to expediency, wedded to her and safety!

Next Day

Come live with me and be my love,

And we will all the pleasures prove

That hills and valleys, dales and fields

Woods or steepy mountain yields...

And I will make thee a bed of roses

And a thousand fragrant posies...

Chris never knew what it was to have a bed of roses, not even for a fortnight.

He might have gone on to splendid heights. His verses mean much to me. I liked him for his clowning, his patience, his kind words, his persuasive pen. Glover’s son and shoemaker’s boy—we had many a boisterous time. Of his plays I think best of Tambourlaine and Faustus.

From jigging veins of riming mother wits

And such conceits as clownage keeps in pay

We’ll lead you to the stately tent of war...

As we collaborated on our plays, he was constantly fighting debts, his mistress riding him hard. Our tankards full we worked in my place or his. I shied away from his association with the School of Atheists, leaving that to him and Raleigh.

No writer could have had a better guide for Titus, Henry and Richard. M__ had learned to smoke and like R__ had to putter with tobacco, pipe and flint.

One afternoon he used a scrap of poetry to light his pipe. Letting the paper burn and then char on the floor, he said:

“That was a poem well used.”

Was it another “Shepherd’s Song”?

I should have collected his works and seen them published. Now I could not track down his pieces. Ah, the shoulds of life...

This is the anniversary of his death, another churlish scruff of day with wretched rain...the rain it raineth every day...true, boy, come bring us to this hovel...the tyranny of the world is too rough at times...give me your hand.

Jonson received a letter from Ellen, Ellen in Edinburgh, writing at home, expressing her friendly concern for me:

“Will has written me but I am worried. Can you look after him?” She was afraid after Marlowe’s death. “Will you write and reassure me?” she asked. “Edinburgh is far... I’m sick with a cold...so much rain.”

And it was raining as Jonson read me her letter, in his apartment. I opened a book of his and leafed through it, standing by his window, the rain leaded on the pages, long, grey, thin lines, tracing problems that threatened us, a bond tying in with her concern, lessening that distance between us.

The wall felt damp to my shoulder and I smelled stale bread and stale cheese on Jonson’s desk.

“What came between us?” I asked.

“Are you talking to me...or to her?”

“To you.”

“Bad luck...the thing that comes between most lovers.”

“And what do I do to change it?”

“You know London’s soothsayers...they’re ready to help you. Pay them.”

“How much?”

“Pay...oh, with your life, your work. Pay and she’s yours.”

“It’s stupid to talk like that.”

“It’s stupid to fall in love. Just fuck and go.”

Stratford

September 9, 1615

When Raleigh was brought to trial by the Crown and condemned to life imprisonment, I began a play, thinking to defend him, troubled by the royal hatred leveled at him, for his loyalty to England was unquestionable.

His trial was pure sham.

SHEPHERD OF THE OCEAN

Scene I: Courtroom, in winter

Raleigh: You claim me guilty, but I am innocent. In no way, at no time, have I conspired against the throne. At sea, I defended our country against all enemies. I supplied ships for the Queen. In Virginia, my colony is dedicated to all that England stands for. Sirs, I protest!

Judge: Damned you are, damning our people with your stinking guilt. You have conspired! We have every proof...there’s not the slightest doubt of your perfidy! You defended Queen Elizabeth against the Earl of Essex but he was the King’s friend, never his adversary. You have every guilt upon you. You are grossly guilty of plotting against our nation and our King. King James sees fit to sentence you...

Maybe the King had secret reasons for Raleigh’s banishment but I doubt it. Some call Sir Walter the “King of Liars.” His letters from prison no longer come and Tower over me, filling me with guilt.

Should I burn his letters: could there be family in- volvement at some unforeseen time? I should burn many things—many memories!

Ocean Skimmer, you pilloried yourself. We were friends: those were good days but not good enough to last. What lasts?

The oriel outlasts us! Its quarrels outlast ours!

September 11, 1615

In my mind’s eye we meet at the taproom of the Mermaid’s Tavern...

Raleigh: ...At sea, weeks away from port, alone on the deck, rigging and sails creaking, I’ve felt it... I’ve felt it in the smash of waves and moan of beams...felt it in the expanse of sky...that there must be a god.

Marlowe: Should be a god! Put it that way.

Raleigh: No...let it go as I’ve said it. As you ride at the bow, as spray hurls on board, there are certain certainties, rebuffs of personal fancy, declarations of a godhead.

Jonson: The Greek helmsman felt those same declarations, and his god was Zeus.

Marlowe: I don’t go for such thinking on my part, Sir Walter. It shuts me inside a cage and the cage has a door with four heavy bars: f-e-a-r.

Raleigh: You know that each country has had a godhead.

Marlowe: Each country has its diseases, debts...despots.

Shakespeare: Are you denying your “School of Night”?

Raleigh: I’m not on trial here. I was speaking con- fidentially, no, intimately...that’s a better word. I was trying to share an emotion and I ask you to respect it as an emotion.

Jonson: You ask for respect. God be at your table. Everyone’s highly respected here—even the waiters. (Laughter)

Marlowe: Ah, shut up!

Shakespeare: We didn’t come here to quarrel.

Raleigh: Maybe we can do better with politics...or is it too hydra-headed tonight? Let’s talk about Essex. Cautiously.

Marlowe: But why cautiously?

Shakespeare: We’ll do better trying something else, not so risky. Supper’s ready. Here it comes.

Jonson: Pour the ale, boy.

Marlowe: Hugger-mugger, my cage lost its bars. The bird of fear has flown ...hunger picked the lock.

That’s how I remember an evening at the Tavern, Raleigh in his finest, wearing green velvet cloak, red trousers, black boots, black hat, sword; Jonson, Marlowe and me in our snuffbox suits, wearing our swords because of recent street fracases.

The Tower of London...

A cracked stone stairway leads to an open door:

Inside, windowless, Raleigh sits at his prison desk,

with maps, letters, books around him.

He is writing; he coughs:

Frail, he seems to be listening:

An armed guard trudges by and looks in.

Stratford

September 15, 1615

I

n ’10, sometime during the autumn I think it was, I stopped outside Raleigh’s prison, thinking to visit him: there he was, at his deal table, books, globe, maps and papers piled about him. His door was flung wide: his pen moved: perhaps he was writing his History. Sun lay on the floor of his room. A wren sang. His hand stopped. I stepped forward, then faltered. His hands moved over the table: he leaned on his elbows now, coughing. He had on a grubby red woolen cape, sleeves smudged with wax. He coughed again—his shoulders shaking.

He was the one who had dared the wild and secret lands, who had sweated men and ships to reach a goal. Winds luned, storms crashed; yet he had kept on. He had wanted to explore the world for himself, for mankind! Books on board his ships, books in his brain: wind stirred parchment on his table as I stood there and he read. What if he should turn and see me? What if he should get up? Would he recognize me?

I thought: who are his friends? The thought cut me: the Great Lucifer is forgotten. Look around you. The liar is captive, will die behind these walls. They say he concocts an elixir, and gives it to his friends. No, I was not included. He needed his elixir more than I.

His white head was dirty...where was his youth? No, he had concocted hope. People said his rooms would be un- guarded...so they were. But I made no sound. The ugly Tower was still. What has happened to his Elizabeth: is she memory?