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Scene 13




Kit Marlowe’s room, where he shaves at a basin set in an ornate iron stand, in front of a polished metal round, nailed to the wall. Imp, squeezed between the wall and the stand, beneath the improvised mirror, holds an empty ceramic jar of water, and stares at the movements of the blade with utter fascination.


Kit shaved.

His troubles whirled around in his mind, while his hand, unfailingly, scraped the blade against his cheek.

He must get to The Rose and intercept Will. He must get to know Will better and introduce the man to high personages.

Kit rinsed the hair from his dagger in the basin of water in front of him.

A twelve-penny dagger and it wouldn’t last him long, at this rate.

He remembered, when he’d been at Cambridge, where a barber attended to the students’ shaving needs daily, the barber complained that Kit’s red-tipped beard, light and downy-looking, did more damage to his blade than the hirsute cheek of the most black-haired of villains.

“Will my beard come in soon?” Imp asked. His large, almond-shaped grey eyes watched the dagger, fascinated.

“Aye,” Kit said, and dipped the dagger in the water of the basin, to rid it of the tips of hairs and of soap. “Aye, soon enough.”

Imp ran a long, thin finger along his smooth, pale cheek. “And will I have to do that every day, then?”

Kit paused in his shaving because his face insisted on flourishing a smile, and how could he shave himself while grinning like a lunatic?

“Ah, no. You need not shave, Milord Laziness. You may go about unshaven and hirsute like a savage.”

He dipped the tips of his fingers in the cold water of the basin and flicked the droplets at Imp. “I tell you what, Milord Adventurer, I shall speak to Lord Raleigh for you and he can take you to his lands in Virginia, where you may join with the savage tribes of men there, and not only need not shave, but run about naked and barefoot, if you well please.”

Imp giggled as the droplets of water hit him and he squeezed away from his perch, but only to return again, to watch Kit.

He ran his hand, wishfully, down both his cheeks. “My mother says that my father had a big black beard.” He sighed and squirmed and stared at Kit, as though expecting from Kit a confirmation of his paternity.

Or else, perhaps the child suspected . . . . He looked at Imp’s features, a mirror of his own, and wondered how Imp could not suspect. But the human eye was thus, in thrall to the heart and ever ready to see only what it wished to see.

Besides, Imp had never known his mother’s husband. For all the child knew, Master Richard Courcy had looked exactly like Kit, but with a black beard.

Kit made a sound in his throat, neither assent nor denial, more of an invitation to proceed.

“My mother says he was a man like no man,” Imp continued in a needling voice, prodding like a butcher that searches the tenderest part from which to cut the steak.

He blinked at Kit and almost smiled. “And that she could never find his like.” He paused, and shifted his feet, rustling the rushes on the floor. “Kit, why don’t you marry Mother?”

The words so surprised Kit that he cut himself and, feeling the bite of the dagger upon his cheek, cursed, and reached for his handkerchief from within his sleeve.

Kit hated pain, even so small a pain as this.

He remembered his sisters mocking him when he was a child and cried at having skinned his knee. They said he made as much fuss over that small injury as soldiers wouldn’t make over battlefield wounds.

He thought of the threat of torture that hung over his head and shuddered. How could he take torture when he couldn’t even take this?

Staring at the small flower of blood on his handkerchief, Kit gave Imp a wary eye. Had Madeleine put her son up to this?

No. Kit shook his head to his own question. No. From the anxiety in Imp’s look, the mock-relaxed posture of his body, the idea was Imp’s entire.

“If you married her, she wouldn’t turn you out,” Imp said. “And then you’d be my father.”

Kit swallowed. Oh, to be extended such a bait on such an enticing hook and by such an unwary fisherman.

A day ago, two, Kit might well have been fool enough to take it.

Marrying the dour Madeleine would be worth it, so long as he could stand up and announce to the world, full voice, “I am responsible for this Imp. I am his father.”

Yes, twenty-four hours ago, had Imp said these very words, Kit might well have sent him to his mother, as a pleasing Cupid, to press Kit’s suit.

But in twenty-four hours, all had changed.

Kit’s admission of fatherhood would do no more for Imp than bring the knife nearer him, tighten the noose of conspiracy closer round Imp’s unsuspecting neck.

Torture and prison rode at Kit’s back, and death not far behind.

And Kit had seen someone uncommonly like his Lady Silver. Silver, that dream that Kit had given up but not forgotten, that dream that made the reality of any human love pale and shrink in Kit’s mind.

Kit had seen someone like Lady Silver with Will Shakespeare.

Kit closed his eyes, and behind his eyelids as on a stage, he saw the Lady Silver—graceful beauty, ethereal grace—and he could almost smell her lilac perfume making him dizzy and drunk.

He opened his eyes and saw, beyond the opened door of the room, beyond Imp’s anxious glance, a fine gentleman in green velvet pants and doublet.

A gentleman with blondish hair and a fine, open face, which added bonhomie to his sparkling blue eyes and seemed to announce to the world that here stood a man who liked all men, a man who’d never betray any, a man full of the milk of human kindness.

With a chill down his spine and a burning acid at the back of his throat, Kit recognized Robert Poley—Sweet Robin Poley—master spy, the uncoverer—many said the engineer—of the Babington conspiracy, which had sent fifteen hapless men to the gallows.

It was said that these men had tried to kill the Queen, that they planned to install Mary, Queen of Scots, in Elizabeth’s place, but Kit, who’d been close enough to the apprehension to hear the behind-the-scenes stage setting—even if he’d taken no real part—had long suspected the plot had been no plot.

Kit thought that Cecil and this, his minion, Robin Poley, had hatched the whole thing entire from their heads, Zeus giving birth to Athena. Without them there would have been no plot, only the stray words of foolish young men. Without them, Mary Stuart would still be alive in her captivity. Without them, the Crown would be no shakier than it was and Queen Elizabeth no more threatened.

Babington himself had been in Robin Poley’s room, supping, when he’d been arrested and so deceived that he’d sent Poley a letter from jail, begging for help from Poley’s true affection.

Since then, Kit had never been able to face Poley without feeling a sick pang to his stomach and a strange, shrinking fear, like that of a rabbit scenting fox.

Now he felt all that, added to the heart-tightening sense that he was no better than Poley. He was, after all, planning to involve Will Shakespeare in a plot like the Babington plot, wasn’t he?

Kit’s knife clattered into the wash basin.

He reached blindly for the much-worn towel that hung beside the wash stand, and wiped his hands and the remaining soap from his face.

Kit dared not tell Imp to go away.

He didn’t want to call attention to the child, but he frowned ponderously at Imp who, not seeing Poley, stared back with wide open, uncomprehending eyes.

“Well met, Kit,” Poley said from the hallway. “You do not seem happy to see me.”

“Surprised,” Kit said, and forced a smile. “Surprised.” Robin Poley was not someone he would want to show a sour face to. Not a courtier or a fine gentleman, yet Poley’s displeasure would have more material consequences than a royal frown or a lost benefit. The first consequence would be a whisper in the night, the second a misstep in the dark, and the third a dagger in your bosom.

“Glad that you were only surprised, Kit.” Poley walked into the room with a stealthy, feline confidence which suggested that he had spent too much time in dark alleys, too much time following traitors, real or counterfeit, with his cat step, the claws and fangs of his cruel intent. “Glad that you were only surprised.” Poley smiled, in good nature. “I wouldn’t want our friendship marred.”

Kit retrieved his dagger from the water and dried it carefully, glad of its weight in his hand.

He wouldn’t use it, nor would it be of much effect against Poley’s kind of stealthy menace, and yet Kit felt better for having a weapon in his hand, and an excuse to hold it so.

Poley’s gaze flickered to the dagger. He smiled. “Wouldn’t play with that too much, Kit. Lest someone use it on yourself. The strangest accidents happen . . . .” Poley turned, his gaze fell on Imp, and he smiled, putting his small hand, covered in pearly suede gloves, on the boy’s bright hair. “Such a beautiful child, is he not? Harry Mauder told me of him and how much he looks like his father.”

“You knew my father?” Imp asked.

“Exceedingly well, child. Exceedingly well,” Poley said and smiled, a smile full of paternal encouragement, avuncular tenderness.

“And had he a great big black beard?” Imp asked.

“No. More a small, reddish, well-trimmed one,” Poley said, and stared at Kit.

Though the laugh wrinkles remained, cozy and comforting like a nest around Poley’s bright blue, innocent-looking eyes, the glint in those eyes, the intenseness in that gaze, shone like a naked blade, like a drawn dagger.

Kit grasped his own dagger harder, and took a deep breath. “Go, Imp. Go to your mother, child.”

Imp blinked. “But he says—”

“Go, child. God’s death. Your mother will be wondering where you are. I don’t want her plaguing me. Go, child.”

Imp started and jumped. Never before had Kit raised his voice thus to him. Never before had Kit cursed at him.

“But—” he said.

“Go, damn it,” Kit yelled, fierce and dark and full of thunder. “Go. Plaguing me day and night. Impossible brat. What time have I for you? Do I look like the sort that consoles the orphan and talks to the widow? God’s death, if that were my vocation, I’d have taken orders. Go, curse you, and do not come back.”

Something like pain showed in the squint of the little boy’s almond-shaped eyes—a shine of tears, a startle at finding disapproval where he’d met only caresses and praise before.

He opened his mouth. He swallowed.

And Kit, longing to apologize, longing to take the small child in his arms and console him for that wounding so necessarily inflicted, maintained his face in a thunderous disapproval, as strong as Jove’s own before flinging the bolt.

Oh, only let Poley believe in this display. Oh, only let him believe in this and not in the fleeting resemblance, the tenderness of Kit’s gaze when it rested on Imp.

Imp stared and, finding no comfort, grabbed the empty water jar from beside the washstand and ran down the hallway, and down the stairs, the too-large empty jar of water clattering.

“He is his father’s glass, is he not?” Poley asked, turning to Kit with a smile of friendship, a seeming open smile of cajoling.

“I don’t know,” Kit said and felt dark red blood flower beneath his cheeks. “I didn’t know his father.”

“Ah.” Poley’s eyebrows rose. “I daresay you still don’t. And yet, what was that proverb that the Greeks had . . . . Know thyself?”

“Poley, be done with it,” Kit said sharply, his irritation having the best of his determination to remain impassive and civil. “You did not come to me to discuss the child, did you?”

Poley smiled. “I came to ask what story you spun to that fool, Henry Mauder, that he let you go so quietly yesterday.”

He opened his eyes, palm outward, spread wide.

“No story,” Kit said. “No story.” His heart had started, fast, fast, like a trapped bird flinging itself on the bars of a cage. “No story but the truth. I know of a conspiracy. I know, and I thought you’d like to know.”

Poley laughed, his big, hearty laugh. “A conspiracy. No. True? Kit, you amaze me. You—Kit Marlowe. A conspiracy. How would you come by it?”

“I heard it in my circles,” Kit said.

“In your circles?” Poley laughed. “The circles of penniless poets? Or the circle of foolish actors? Maybe perhaps the circle of those who seek illicit love in bawdy taverns?” He made a moue. “Oh, how the council should fear those . . .”

“You forget, milord,” Kit said, drawing himself up to his full height, re-gretting for the first time in his life that his gracile, agile body owed more to his mother’s side of the family than to his father’s thundering, majestic brutishness. “You forget that I live in other circles. I have a patron—Milord Thomas Walsingham. And before him I courted the favor of Milord Southampton.”

Poley chuckled. “Courted Southampton, more like. Not that, from what I heard, he’d have made himself a hard catch. And what manner of conspiracy do your circles cross that you could use it to gain your freedom and that child’s safety?”

Now the heart that had beaten madly in Kit’s chest felt as though it had won passage to his throat and beat there, suffocating him, making him dizzy. Through his heart he spoke, hearing nothing but the rush of blood in his own ears. “A plot against the Queen’s very life. A plot to put another upon her throne.”

“Another?” Poley’s eyebrows climbed up his forehead, in disbelief. “Who?”

Kit shook his head. “I don’t know that much yet. I’ve heard whispers, nothing clear yet. But I know there’s something there and I mean to find it.”

Poley narrowed his eyes at Kit. “If you’re lying, God’s death, Kit . . . .”

“Would I lie?” Kit asked.

“If you’re lying,” Poley repeated, ignoring him. “Remember that last year we plucked you entire from that counterfeiting charge, but you’ll wish we’d let them disembowel you then.

“If you’re lying, you’ll beg to die in that manner. You’ll beg to see your entrails burned before your eyes. But first you’ll see that child of yours maimed and his dam dead. Do you hear me?”

Kit, hands trembling, forced himself to sheathe his dagger, forced his voice through his constricting throat with what he hoped was a semblance of strength, a timbre of certainty. “I am not lying.”

Sweat dripped from his forehead. Fool that he was, fool. In this foolish life he led, always in danger of being arrested, always at risk from the secret service work that had fed him for so many years, always nourishing upon that which destroyed him, Kit had no business living near Imp, no cause to bring their relationship to the attention of these vultures that, in the dark, moved behind the Queen’s court, using the Queen’s age, the growing mistrust of an older woman.

Save he’d no more been able to stay away from Imp’s joyous innocence than a bee could stay away from nectar.

“If you’re not lying then, surely you can name us someone—someone whom we can question, who will reveal this grand conspiracy?”

Kit looked up, startled. “I don’t know the all of it yet,” he said. “I don’t know the all of it, and what I know is unprovable.”

Poley stepped closer. He was not much taller than Kit, just enough that he could look down upon the poet, sneer down his menace upon Kit’s upturned gaze. “Some of it has to be provable, Kit Marlowe. And someone there should be whom we can take and make sing. You’d be amazed how men sing on the rack.” He looked down at Kit as he walked round the poet.

Kit turned round and round, keeping his eye on Poley. Robin Poley was not one on whom you’d turn your back. Round and round they went, in a lethal dance. Poley circled and Kit turned, like inimical planets locked in opposing aspects.

“Give us a name, Kit Marlowe, so we know you truly do have something. Just one name. An earnest of your faith.”

Round and round, and the sick, despairing feeling gnawed at Kit’s belly.

He had to turn someone in? He had to stain his hands yet again? An earnest of good faith for his bad faith?

Will Shakespeare? But no, unprepared and unconnected, Will would never pass for a conspirator, nor could they, no matter how they tortured him, exact anything incriminating from that man.

Either that or they’d extract too much.

No.

Will Shakespeare was the main actor in this tragedy that Kit was creating. He could not be sacrificed so early in the game and for so small profit.

Who then?

His mind ran over the ranks of his college friends, searching the vulnerable—just connected enough to be a credible conspirator, just unconnected enough to be harmless; just eccentric enough to have something incriminating to say; just normal enough to pass.

The mind alighted on John Penry—two classes above Kit and known for creating enemies with his fervent Puritanism, his inflexible certainty. Penry was well born enough to know the high-born and stubborn enough to stick out wheresoever he went.

“John Penry,” he pronounced, saying the name before he repented his treason. He pushed John Penry’s serious countenance out of his mind’s eye. “John Penry, I heard, was involved in this conspiracy. He is a Puritan and would rather have another such on the throne.”

Poley smiled. “Ah. John Penry, now that’s a name. And where does he reside?”

“Bishop’s Gate,” Kit said. “I heard he came recently from seeing the King of Scots.”

“Ah,” Poley said. “The King of Scots, now that’s interesting.” And with a smile that showed teeth but no warmth, he bowed and he said, “We’ll talk to Master Penry, then.”

He walked out, feline and soundless.

What had Kit done? What had he done?

He remembered Penry’s austere, faith-burned countenance.

Not a pleasant man, Master Penry, and often had he upbraided Kit for Kit’s late hours, his drunken bouts.

But how earnestly he’d discussed gospel and philosophy. And how quietly he had argued against Kit’s arguments, never once denouncing Kit for atheism, though he’d heard more than enough for that.

Kit closed his eyes.

His empty room seemed cold and stark.

It was the room of a plotter, one who would turn on anyone, and whom everyone should fear.

A wolf at bay, his fangs at every throat.

Kit’s bile rose at his throat, burning.

Yet he thought of Imp, and what could he do but save all the hope Kit had for the future, and what goodness Kit still believed in?

To save Imp, let all of Kit’s goodness burn away. But how many others must be killed in those flames?

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Framed