The Muses' Darling
"Everyone," Kit Marlowe proclaimed loudly, standing on the threshold of his open door, "who doesn't like boys and tobacco is a fool."
A few steps away, halfway across the sparsely furnished room, Will woke up and raised his head from the small oak table on which it had rested. Will had fallen asleep in Marlowe's room, waiting for Marlowe to return and read Will's first attempt at writing a play.
The candle Will had lit on entering the room was almost burned out. It would be near midnight.
Marlowe looked drunk. He grinned and said, "There is nothing to religion, you know. Just tricks and--"
Will rushed forward, toppling the stool on which he'd sat. He pulled his friend into the room and shut the door, before someone outside overheard words that could have them both jailed by tomorrow and executed the day after. In the England of Queen Elizabeth, protestant religion was mandatory, church services compulsory and blasphemy or vocal dissent a capital matter.
"Ah, friend Will," Kit Marlowe said and turned a dazzling smile in Will's direction, at the same time drowning Will in the vapors of expensive Spanish wine from his breath.
He reeled, and Will caught him and supported him.
"You came," Marlowe said, and hiccupped and giggled. "As you said you would, that I might look at your excellent... your excellent ... what's name? Play? Titus whatsis? Andronic... nic... nic."
Will flinched. He'd come, indeed, as Kit Marlowe had bid him, searching for instruction from Kit, the great playwright, the muses' darling, the toast of the London stage. Kit's landlady had let Will in. Will was a constant presence, an habitual petitioner of Marlowe's.
But Kit obviously had forgotten his promise to look at Titus Andronicus, the fifty mangled pages that lay where Will's head had rested.
Will supported Marlowe all the way to the inner door of the room. He put his hand on the knob, but it would not turn.
"Have you a key to this door?" he asked Marlowe.
Marlowe giggled and said, confidentially, "Know you that I studied theology, Will? At--" Hiccup. "Bloody Cambridge. And now I write plays. Bloody plays. Great work for a scholar, is it not? Doubtless my masters are astonished."
Will cursed under his breath. It was obvious he would get no answer about the key. He felt Kit's sleeves for the key the playwright must have secreted somewhere around himself.
He knew well enough that Marlowe had attended Cambridge. It was one of the many things he envied his friend and mentor.
Though they were both the sons of respectable craftsmen, Kit had attended university on a scholarship, a luxury Will could not afford.
And though they were both of an age, Kit Marlowe's plays -- Tamburlaine and Faustus and Dido -- were the talk of London, the delight of all. Meanwhile, Will, despite his earnest attempts to write for the theater, had got no nearer it than guarding the horses of theater-goers.
Even their appearances were unequal. Kit, slim and good-looking, with his russet hair caught back in a pony tail, his sculpted beard, his thin moustache, wore pearly-grey velvet doublet and pants, the sleeves slashed through to show golden silk beneath. At collar and cuffs, lace peeked.
Will, ruddy and strong, with black hair already receding at the temples, had nothing to wear but the same old, much-mended wool suit he'd brought with him from Stratford-upon-Avon, three years ago.
Yet, truly, Will didn't resent Marlowe. He was grateful that Kit was willing to help him, that Kit was willing to teach him.
Finding the key to the locked door dangling from a chain at Marlowe's neck, Will pulled the chain over Marlowe's head.
"St. Paul," Kit whispered confidentially," was a juggler, a fraud, the only educated man among the apostles, who were all rude fellows of the lowest class. He blinkered them with tricks. He--"
Will shivered at Kit's dangerous talk. Kit was mad. The small, golden key he'd got from around Kit's neck fit the keyhole on the door. Whether Kit knew it or not, he courted death. Aye, and he would win her, if he persisted.
Will turned the key in the lock and opened the door. In the dark space beyond, Will could distinguish nothing, save some shining dust twirling midair -- magical fireflies in the gloom.
What was this? What enchantment was here?
Kit shook himself, as though wakening. He stood on his own two feet, not leaning on Will, and put an arm in front of Will to prevent his entering the room. "Thank you, friend Will. Thank you, but I'll go into my room by myself.” Thus speaking, still unsteady on his feet, he skipped into his room, retrieving the golden key from the lock in passing. In a swift movement, he slammed the thick oak door in Will's face.
Will jumped back, startled. The devil take the man. The devil take Kit Marlowe, great poet or not.
In his three years in London, Will had made but two friends who could be called such. One was a former Franciscan friar who dabbled in herbs and philosophy and whom people called mad. The other was Kit Marlowe, apparently the madder of the two.
Will had waited for Kit, for a moment of attention, for his cursory reading of Will's lines and perhaps his giving Will a word of encouragement or two. Instead, he got this -- the risk of being taken in for listening to blasphemous words and a door shut in his face. Even if Kit were too drunk to read, he could have behaved more courteously.
Will picked up his manuscript.
From Marlowe's room, all the while, came a low, steady muttering, the continuous, senseless monologue of a drunk man.
Will tightened his hand around the pages of Titus Andronicus, the play he hoped would rival Marlowe's Tamburlaine. He'd talk to Marlowe tomorrow when he hoped Marlowe would have come to his senses.
A sound like that of new, strong cloth ripping under great force came from the bedroom. Its intensity was such that the only cloth that could make that sound would be the size of the world -- a winding sheet for the universe.
Will stopped, hesitated, turned to look at the locked door. Did Kit need help?
"At Sestos, Hero dwelt; Hero the fair, whom young Apollo courted for her hair," a woman's voice said. "And offered as a dower his burning throne, Where she should sit for men to gaze upon."
No. Not a woman's voice. The creature uttering those words sounded like liquid fire and fluid ice. A female it must be, yes, but a female angel, the queen of fairies, a creature of primeval force, of undying passion.
It went on speaking, while Will listened.
In such a voice had Eve, sweetly, convinced Adam to taste the fatal apple. In such a voice had the sirens called to Ulysses whilst, tied to the mast, he steered his ship past their temptations.
"Some say for her the fairest Cupid pined and looking in her face was stricken blind."
The words, beautiful enough in themselves, said in that voice, became pure ambrosia that flowed through Will's ears to his mind, and gave him a taste of heaven and immortality.
Tears of joy and confusion flowed down Will's face.
When the voice stopped talking, when the room was silent, he woke as a man who opens his eyes from a beautiful dream and knows not where he is.
Had he been awake or sleeping?
"I have had," he whispered to himself. "A most rare vision. I have had a dream -- beyond the wit of man to say what dream it was. Man's hand is not able to taste, his tongue to conceive, nor his heart to report what my dream was."
Yet, how could Will have slept? He'd never before slept standing up and he still stood in front of Marlowe's door.
What man sleeps standing? And what man, further, holds a manuscript in his hand while he sleeps?
Still, Will must have been sleeping. For how else could these wonders be? Oh, surely he'd been asleep and that dreamed voice must be an echo of paradise lost, remaining in the heart of fallen man.
The room was quiet. Marlowe must be asleep. Will rushed out of the room, closing the door behind himself. He hurried out of the house, past the door of Marlowe's landlady, firmly closed at this late an hour.
Outside the front door lay a narrow lane, paved in beaten dirt mixed in with refuse thrown down over generations to form a dark, foul-smelling mud.
Night was advanced, but here in Shoreditch, it might have been full day. No, better than day, for in the day the inhabitants of this newest and shoddiest of London suburbs slept. At night they crept out of their dens and plied their trades.
Through the open doors of the taverns that dotted the area, the light of many candles and the smell of roasted mutton spilled.
Apprentices in large, noisy groups walked by. Whores, in bright clothing, laughed and sang.
The smell of ale cloaked the area like a fog.
Outside a tavern a man shouted loudly for one and all to come and watch the whipping of the blind bear -- till the blood runs down his hoary sides, a most entertaining and amusing spectacle.
What if Will hadn't dreamed the voice? What if what he'd heard was true? What if Marlowe had someone in there? A woman?
It was fantastical. It was impossible.
Yet, now calmer, he knew that the poetry he'd heard had the ring and sound of Marlowe's own creation.
While he walked the narrow streets of Shoreditch, five-story buildings on either side of him blocking all sight of the sky and penning smells of sweat and rancid food and old ale all around him, Will couldn't help forming a very strange idea in his mind.
What if Marlowe weren't the one who wrote Marlowe's plays? What if they were the work of some noblewoman, some female scholar that Marlowe kept in his room, writing plays for Marlowe's credit and profit?
Part of Will protested that Marlowe would never do that. Madcap and sometimes dangerous Marlowe might be, but his sins were those of the hothead, of the intemperate man. He pulled knives on men in the heat of argument, or he made devastatingly cutting statements about this one's mother and that one's wife. Or boys and tobacco.
But he'd been kind to Will and, more than anyone else in the theater, had treated Will as an equal, offered him help with his poetry and aid in storming the stage where Marlowe's words ruled supreme.
Surely he couldn't be an evil man.
And yet, wasn't it strange how Marlowe never worked at his writing? He never seemed to make an effort at anything.
His life, such as Will saw it, was one long feast. Kit caroused with artists and got drunk with nobleman.
Where did he find time for the prodigious reading, the careful editing required by his monumental historical plays that beggared the Earth and stormed the skies?
While Will read and studied and applied his every waking moment to his work and yet had trouble giving wings to his leaden prose.
Will shook his head. Baseless envy. Let it be his own baseless envy engendering these wretched thoughts.
Yet the worm of suspicion gnawed at his heart.
When he gained his lodging and in his single, small room, lay down upon his pallet and covered himself with his worn blanket, he found that sleep eluded his belabored mind.
Tossing and turning, between exhaustion and dream, well past one and shy of the other he knew that he must find what Marlowe kept in that locked room.
He must know.
In the morning, Kit Marlowe would go out, to break his fast at the Mermaid, the tavern where actors and theater people gathered.
Then, Will could look inside and bid to satisfy his curiosity.
The lock was a problem, but Will would try to conquer it with the tip of his old dagger. If he failed, then curiosity would have to rest unsatisfied. But if he managed to spring the lock and open the door, then he would for sure know whether his mentor was a monster or whether Will, himself, had become as mad as those around him.
On that thought, he fell asleep and dreamt of the liquid fire voice reciting divine poetry.
***
Morning found Will standing across from Marlowe's lodging, in the narrow space between two buildings, his dark hat pulled down over his face -- trying to meld with the surroundings and vanish.
After a short wait, he saw Marlowe come out of his lodgings, resplendent in violet velvet and brand-new lace. Marlowe turned left to the Mermaid, and Will hurried across the street.
Convincing Marlowe's landlady, who, from her open room, watched, that he had been told to wait here for the great playwright was the work of a moment.
Will stole up the stairs on winged feet, his heart beating within his chest like a hammer upon a great anvil.
In Marlowe's antechamber, the outer door closed, Will drew his dagger and knelt in front of the inner door.
He had an hour, maybe. No more.
Will should be there when Marlowe came back, since the landlady might talk. But he should be but sitting at the table, ready to drink the muses' wisdom from his teacher's lips. He should not be caught attempting to violate Marlowe's privacy.
Will inserted the dagger in the keyhole and moved it around, trying to loosen the lock. At first, it seemed his efforts were vain. Just when he was about to give up -- sweat flowing down his fast-balding head to sting his eyes -- the lock sprang and the room opened.
Will's first thought was disappointment. He could not account for the golden firefly lights he'd thought he'd seen the night before.
This room -- what he could see of it through the half-open door -- looked all too normal. A narrow bed lay beneath the lead-paned window, and dust motes danced in the shaft of morning light that revealed disarrayed blankets on the bed and dusty rushes upon the floor.
The only thing that made it Marlowe's room and not an anonymous lodging was an array of suits hanging from the far wall -- velvet and satin and silk, each in a more vivid color than the other.
Will smiled at his friend's vanity and pushed the door wholly open, to satisfy himself.
On opening the door fully, he saw to his left a bookstand. Not a desk, but a bookstand, tall and narrow and golden, with a single, thick and ancient-looking book open atop it.
Will crept into the room and read the words written in faded ink on the open page: "Spell to summon the muses."
What was this? What sorcery?
His heart pounding, his vision blurring, Will read on, a string of senseless words, whispering them to himself as he read.
At the senseless but well-sounding words, the air in front of Will shimmered as it had the night before.
Had he heard the voice of a muse, then? The voice of one of those goddesses of antiquity who could bring life and glory to any poet's words, any musician's music, any sculptor's chisel?
As he dreamed and spoke half enthralled, the air in front of him shimmered and roiled until from the maelstrom three women formed, dressed in Ancient Greek fashion.
"Hail, stranger," one of them said -- a creature with the face of an angel and golden hair flowing on either side of her smiling face. "Hail stranger, well met."
"Hail our deliverer," a dark-haired woman who stood shoulder to shoulder with the blonde said. Her tresses were braided, framing a face steady and grave.
"Hail the man who's freed us from ignoble slavery. Hail," a third Muse said. Her chestnut hair lent a soft appearance to her sad features.
"Slavery?" Will asked.
"For ten years, that man Marlowe has kept us in his thrall. He knows magic enough that he only calls us when he is protected by powerful spells inherited from his forefathers. Thus we must work for him, but we get not the payment prescribed in the ancient laws. Like slaves we toil, with no reward," the third woman said.
Will trembled. These women were so fair, their voices so harmonious. Artistically draped tunics hid bodies such as men dreamt of but seldom saw. Their high breasts, their soft curves made Will weak with desire. They sounded like angels. How could Kit have borne to keep them thus enslaved? For his base gain.
Oh, miserable wretch, who kept angels in chains.
"But you, by summoning us without baseless tricks or evil protection spells, have opened the shackles of our magical servitude," the blonde said.
"We are grateful to you, Master Will," the grave woman said.
"And for your help we'll give you reward," the brown haired one said.
The blonde advanced, flowing clothes and graceful steps, and handed Will something -- a small square of paper.
A glance at it and Will could see, written upon the paper cabalistic incantations and strange symbols.
"If you call on us with those words," the brunette said. "We'll come. Call us if you need help writing plays that inflame man's minds."
"But I thought," Will said, "that you despised helping write--"
The blonde smiled. "You're not like him, who has so long avoided paying the price of what we generously provided.” Her voice, still liquid fire, acquired a cutting edge, like a blade drawn and glinting in the sun.
Will took a step back, surprised at the change.
And saw the brunette smile and say. "Now, he will pay, sisters. Kit will pay."
And on that word, they all smiled and Will noticed for the first time that all three classical beauties had teeth as sharp and pointed as a wild animal's, ready to bite and gnaw and tear.
***
Will didn't remember returning to the antechamber, but he was there, sitting at the table, when Marlowe came in.
Were those the Muses? Had Marlowe summoned them? What was the price they spoke of?
"Will, you do not look well," Kit said, coming in the door. "You're pale as milk curd and twice as wan."
Kit closed the door behind himself, self-assured and looking, for all the world, like a new man in this light of day.
His narrow, long hand, clad in a white suede glove that Will knew cost a small fortune, came to rest on Will's shoulder. "You must take care. I hear the plague is abroad and people dying of it. Would you like something? Some wine? I have some cherry sac arrived only yesterday in a ship from Spain."
Will nodded, not knowing what he did. Should he tell Marlowe? Should he tell him what he'd done and thus prevent whatever horrible consequences would come from Will's transgression?
But if he told, what would Kit do? At best, Kit would grow violent. Will eyed, wearily, the bright handle of the expensive dagger whose sheath hung from Marlowe's belt. At worst... at worst Kit would stop all the help he'd given Will.
No more listening to and correcting Will's poetry, no more talks about the theater and its ways, no more introductions to theater owners and actors. And then there was the paper from the muses. Would it not be worth it to use magic, to have words such as Marlowe's credited to one's fame and glory?
The price might be nothing at all, compared to such poetry. But if Will spoke, he'd lose the paper.
Will couldn't bear the thought. He remained quiet.
"Ah, wait till you taste this. It could revive the dead.” On that, Kit opened the small trunk by the window, and brought out a bottle and two cups, poured bright red wine into each cup, and set one in front of Will.
"Partake of my wine," he said. "I'll be gone out of the town for a while, for a holiday. But I'll return in time, and we'll look at your play together, your magnificent Titus Andronicus.” He smiled, a kindly smile that made his small, impish face look innocent and too young. "I'll tell you, it will well outshine my Tamburlaine."
Will wanted to believe Marlowe. But what did Marlowe know of human effort and human art, if the Muses wrote for him?
The wine seemed to warm Will's frozen body, but his heart remained encased in cold and distance.
If he'd brought real danger on Marlowe, Will should warn him. Yet how could he warn him when he didn't know what the women meant by payment?
Nothing in the old writings spoke of vengeful nymphs or hungry Muses, did it? Here Will's small learning failed him, and he wished he knew.
Friar Laurence would know, he thought. The Friar knew more mythology and legends than anyone living. And he lived a few streets away, here in Shoreditch, where he used his herbal remedies to help the poor. So, Will would go to him and ask what such creatures were and what they might want for payment.
If they meant ill to Marlowe, Will would spend all his money -- all of it, that he had saved to send home to Anne and his three children -- and rent a horse to follow Marlowe and warn him of the danger.
"Where are you going today?" he asked Kit. He must know, in case he had to catch up with Kit.
Marlowe, ready to leave, cleared away the wine and cups and half pushed Will out the door ahead of him.
"Oh, to Deptford.” Kit smiled. "Just games of tables with some friends, in a boarding house -- Mistress Bull's.”
Outside, in the busy, bustling street, Kit offered Will his hand. "I'm tired. Run down from all the work and bustle of the city. A day of gaming and drinking and friendly conversation will replenish my heart and soul. You take the like remedy, friend Will, and I'll talk to you of Titus as soon as I return."Marlowe smiled and waved and thus they parted.
***
Friar Laurence's den was a long, dark room that smelled green and spicy. When Will came in, he heard scraping sounds from the back room, and the friar's voice called out, "Hello?"
"It's Will, Father."
"Ah, Will." The friar came to the middle of the room to welcome him. He was a small, smiling man so thin that his cheekbones seemed to peek -- a skeletal forewarning of death -- through his parchment-thin skin. "Come in, come in.” He wore his old habit still, now grey and sooty with ash and dirt. That he dared wear it in these times was a mark of the man he was and the respect the locals held him.
In the inner sanctum, to which Will had often been admitted, retorts bubbled and spirit lamps glowed and all the equipment of alchemical work lay on a long bench. Friar Laurence picked up some herbs and commenced chopping them.
Will sat upon a stool.
"Morrow, Will," the friar said. "The grey-eyed morn smiles on the frowning night. Now, ‘ere the sun advance his burning eye, the day to cheer and night's dank dew to dry, I must fill this osier cage of ours with baleful weeds and precious-juiced flowers. Oh, mickle is the precious grace that lies in plants, herbs and stones, their true qualities, for nothing so vile on the earth doth live but to the earth some special good give.” The friar picked up a bulb and showed it to Will. "Nor aught so good but strayed from that fair use, revolts from true birth, stumbling on abuse; virtue itself turns vice being misapplied. And vice sometime by action is dignified. Within the infant rind of this weak flower poison hath residence and medicine power."
Will endured like chatter but his mind dwelt on Kit. Had Will, like the innocent flower, harbored poison to kill his friend?
No, it could not be. There must be another, simpler explanation. Could Will have dreamed it all?
He felt the square of paper within his sleeve. No. He hadn't dreamed it.
Perhaps he was going mad.
Upon the friar's drawing breath, Will said, "Father, I must ask you what you think. Did the gods of old ever exist? We have such detailed records of their existence... their help to both sides in the war at Troy, for instance. All written down by reputable historians, men of much learning."
The friar turned baleful green eyes on Will and for a moment seemed to stare through the young man. "The church," he said, as though speaking out of a dream. "Would say that they existed, but they were all demons, tempting men to perdition. Why ask you?"
"Oh," Will said, forcing his voice to lightness. "Everyone calls Kit Marlowe the Muses' darling, and I wondered if it might be true, if there were indeed such creatures and what kind of sprites they might be."
This time the friar's gaze dwelt intently indeed on Will. "Aye, and Marlowe would be fool enough to trifle with the Muses, too. I've heard of him. He is said to be a madman. Besides, it is said he is descended from Merlin himself, the heir, no doubt, of foul books. While at Cambridge, he ever signed himself Merlin, of which Marlowe is but the corruption. And there's no worse thing than dabbling in magic without sufficient knowledge and with no protection.” His gaze became softer. "But I see you're troubled. What brings this question on, Will? What makes you think on muses and on gods, aspire to supernatural not of religion?"
Will sighed.
Friar Laurence had such eyes -- green as leeks and shining, like the eyes of a cat that peeks out of the dark and spies a mouse. The friar threw some seeds down into a glass tube wherein the transparent liquid bubbled bright green. "Out with it, Will. Though you're not of the old religion and wouldn't trust me with your confession, I warrant you can trust in me."
Will sighed again and out it came -- the glimmer in the air, and the muses with their sharp, odd teeth.
When he talked of the muses saying that Marlowe would pay, Friar Laurence drew a sharp breath, like a man suddenly stricken. "There's no time to lose," he said. "You've freed the evil creatures into the ether, Will. They will find him and collect their fee, and the fee of old pagan gods is always life. They take your life to feed their strength and with that strength they grant you boons.” Thus speaking, he extinguished all flames from beneath the various tubes, sealed a few containers. "Aye, there's no time to lose. The thing to remember with them, Will, is that they ever require payment for their boons. And that payment is always life. Think you on all the sacrifices of old. They were payment for the favors of the gods."
Now Will's throat constricted. He saw in his mind the nymphs saying now they'd get their payment from Marlowe. "Thank you, Father," he said.
"Give me the paper, Will," the friar said, softly. "Give me the paper they gave you."
Will reached into his sleeve, but on touching the paper, again felt the odd reluctance he'd felt about telling Marlowe what he'd done.
He had worked at his craft so many years, and yet his words remained slow and lifeless upon the paper on which he wrote them. With this paper, he could be the best playwright of London, and his plays could make money to send home, to buy a better house for his family and honor and power for himself.
He felt the paper, but he let it go. What did the friar know? Perhaps he was wrong about the price.
"I see," the friar said. "I see.” He looked sad, like a child betrayed.
Will thought of Marlowe. He must go and save Marlowe, if Marlowe needed saving. And if not, Will must go and ascertain for himself what the price of the Muses' words was and if he wished to pay it.
Pursued by Friar Laurence's, "Wait, Will, I must...," Will ran out the door to hire a horse.
But when, having hired his horse -- a mere bag of bones, the best he could afford -- Will took the road to Deptford, he found Friar Laurence waiting at the city gates.
Riding an old, broken-down donkey and still clad in his banned habit, the friar looked like something out of the Middle Ages, a creature who went through centuries undisturbed and brought a touch of the past to the present enlightened age.
"I'll go with you," he said. "As you might need my help."
Will could not imagine why a man such as him should need the help of this decrepit friar. He also could not remember having told the friar where Marlowe had gone. But perhaps Friar Laurence had heard of it elsewhere.
***
The best horse Will's money could buy was slow. Night had fallen when Will tied his horse in front of Mistress Bull's house, a broad and sprawling habitation facing the river in Deptford.
Friar Laurence remained on his donkey, beside the horse, and made no move to dismount. His brow knit in a frown. "We came too late," he said.
Will shivered at those words, so sepulchrally pronounced, but shook his head. The friar was mad. What could he know?
Will turned his back on his travel companion and knocked at the door.
A woman, still buxom but doubtless past forty, answered.
"I must see Master Marlowe," Will said, his tiredness letting no more than those words forth.
At this, the woman gave a little cry. "Aye, Master Marlowe, poor Master Marlowe, the grave diggers have taken him already."
The world seemed to circle round Will, like the stars around the fixed Earth, as his head went faint. "Grave diggers?"
The woman produced a handkerchief from her sleeve and touched her dry eyes with it. "Aye, the poor man. So quiet, he was, and his friends, Master Frizer, and Master Skeres and Master Poley, drinking and playing tables all day. And then, over the reckoning, Master Marlowe grew enraged and pulled his dagger, and Master Frizer, defending himself, stabbed Master Marlowe through the eye and thus he died, the great playwright, the Muses' darling.” She looked worried. "And his friends all say they don't know what came over any of them to end the day thus, in fighting and sudden death."
She twisted her handkerchief in her hands still, as Will turned away.
The muses' darling.
In his mind, Will saw the muses, freed and wild, unseen, provoking the tempers of Marlowe's gaming companions and Marlowe's quick-fire rage. He could see them, with their sharp teeth and lapping tongues savoring the blood that spilled like red wine from Marlowe's pierced eye to tinge with red his violet velvet suit.
He turned his back on the woman, discourteously, and returned to the Friar. "He's paid," he said, in a voice that didn't sound like his own. "He's already paid."
"Yes," Friar Laurence said.
He didn't sound surprised. He wasn't surprised. Will's mind put together facts, sluggishly. Friar Laurence had known Marlowe was dead when they got to the house. He'd known where Marlowe had gone without asking. He'd known.
This revelation was like the sudden, sharp-toothed smile of the muses. Will felt sick. "Who are you?"
The friar opened his hands, displaying his palms in the old gesture of non-aggression. "I am who I am," he said. "I am Friar Laurence."
Will's throat felt dry. He swallowed, but could get no moisture. "But you knew all about this grief in advance. How did you know?"
Friar Laurence smiled. "There are certain studies that go with my avocation of alchemy, Will. There are more things in heaven and earth, Will, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
Will felt the square of paper in his sleeve. The muses' paper.
"Aye, your gift," Friar Laurence said. "If you want to use it, Will, there are things you can do to avoid payment.” Friar Laurence's eyes looked more like a cat's eyes, spying, spying, hoping to catch something. "I could teach you those things, if you wish to know."
But Will thought of Marlowe's curses, his heretical talk, his restless search for untimely death.
Had the Muses' price been more terrible than their gift? Or had their gift, itself, made Marlowe long to die?
How would it feel to be acclaimed for words you knew were not truly yours? How would it feel to see your fame grow, lie on lie, and to know yourself small and empty beside the works the world accounted your own?
"No," Will said. "No. Of certain things, I can't know too little."
The Friar smiled, as if, somehow, Will's decision pleased him.
Will didn't care. He knew his decision was right. His guilt for Marlowe's death, Will would never forget. But he could avoid a like fate. There were prices not worth paying, not even for words like Marlowe's.
As soon as he got back to London, Will would burn the paper.
Will had rather spend his life holding horses outside the theater, than bargain with his life for words with which to conquer the stage.
William Shakespeare would become a great playwright on the strength of his own talent and work or not at all.