Fetid grey hung over the city on the June morning of our departure. Our farewells to Pope and the household fit the haste and pain of the times: quick embraces and prayers for safe return. Satchels on our shoulders and Jack’s precious lute in hand, we hurried to meet Christopher Marlowe at the Devil Tavern past Bishopsgate and Bedlam to the north.
What a journey through hell we undertook from Southwark to Shoreditch. We couldn’t possibly cross London Bridge going against the crowd fleeing the city. At the wherry landing next to St. Saviour’s, we saw John Taylor unloading passengers and their packs. We waved and shouted, and he held his boat for us. The plague brought Taylor as close to riches as ever he came, a penny or two from each lost soul that he ferried towards fresh hope in the countryside south of tainted London.
Our escape would send us first through those very city streets. John Taylor refused our pennies, laughing that only Charon took coins from those he ferried into hell. He seemed in fine spirits, no sad songs today. Or perhaps he was in no spirits at all save labor. Sweat stained his blue shirt and sheened his face. Jack and I held our noses against the stench of the river as Taylor fought the tide. Above us, split planks hammered every which way shuttered the shops of London Bridge. Refugee throngs weighed its crossbeams until they groaned and creaked.
Taylor’s rhythmic movements dispelled gloom. Jack strummed to the old Dragon song:
I shall swallow you human, regardless, the lot—
Yet some I might spare; others, not.
What’s death to a lad? A gruesome joke. “Keep your skull fleshed,” Jack called to Taylor as we scrambled ashore, lute held safe above his head.
Laughter granted us no protection from the horrors of Gracechurch Street, no more than drink did the dull-eyed men who filled the innyard at the Boar’s Head. In the alleyways, doorway after doorway bore a crude red cross. From upper windows of some of these marked houses we caught glimpses of quarantined survivors, eyes vacant or fierce with hatred of those below who roamed free. We all breathed the same dank steam, a poisonous cloud.
Jack and I found ourselves running, looking to neither left nor right, no thought but to escape. My country-cobbled boots felt heavy on my feet and my breeches and shirt were as wet as John Taylor’s by the time we stopped for breath at Bishopsgate. The Dolphin was a madhouse, My friend Wat likely somewhere in the midst of those clamoring for a horse. No smoke came from the smithy. Dick Frith had no doubt gone off to the clean air of Stevenage with Sarah and Henry in tow, unless they had returned to Sarah’s village. Moll Frith, I imagined would stay in London, and Dr. Garnet. I wished them safety.
The air blew no fresher outside the city wall, the sweltering tenements of Shoreditch seeming worse hit by plague than those within the city. We gave wide berth to the burying fields and Bedlam until we arrived at last at the Devil Tavern, a coaching inn too distant to collect such demanding throngs as the Dolphin or Four Swans.
Kit Marlowe, sitting before the inn’s window facing the patchy garden, looked untouched by plague or heat. His face was fresh above his doublet of the same dark coppery color as his hair, his shirt clean, his brown hose matching his boots.
“Come over here Sander, Jack. Meet Tom: Doubting Thomas Nashe.” Only then did I notice the small man beside him, whose smile showed teeth gaggled unevenly under a lip brushed with the merest wisps of pale mustache. He wore no beard, and his thin blonde hair fell to his shoulders. All this would have given Nashe a singular appearance even if he weren’t shorter than Jack and me. He was a bony, angular man of an age with Kit, his piercing flint-blue eyes too large for his face.
Jack and I sat on a bench against the tavern wall waiting for the others as Marlowe held forth. “You ask, my dear Tom, how, if I do not believe in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, should I believe in the devil? Indeed I do believe in Lucifer the fallen angel. Is he any less a force than God or Jove, or Eros as he drives to fulfill himself through us?” The golden flecks in Kit’s brown eyes glimmered with pagan light as he rushed on.
“Christians must worship God, the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, or be damned. I say, dare not deny the devil. He is a master at deception, out-tricking fleet Mercury, showing himself seductively in the form one most trusts or relishes, be that royal counselor or beautiful youth.”
“You sound like a Catholic, Kit: ‘Beware the seductions of the devil.’ You are no atheist, whate’er you pose. Your play shows Doctor Faustus torn to bits by those devils, same as in the mouldy old German tale mouthed by superstitious grandmothers to keep children in line.”
“That’s the story, Tom. Faustus sold his soul to the devil. You’ve written your own story of soul-bargaining. Pierce Penniless, right?”
“You must admit, Pierce is more amusing than a musty-gowned dabbler in forbidden arts.”
“I wager you’d sell your soul for best success at the booksellers.” Kit laughed.
Nashe pointed out the window. “There’s Will Shakespeare. And our coach.”
We climbed aboard as Kemp ran up, tears rolling down his red cheeks. “Crab is nowhere! Dear friends, I fear he is gone to the burying fields, the sick dog fleeing his loved master in the face of death. Never would he choose to leave me otherwise, friends. Never.”
Kit and Shakespeare reached out to pull him into the coach, nearly landing him on Jack’s lute. To the sound of Kemp’s sobs and nose-blowings we were carried out of plaguey London toward the familiar air of Essex—and the sweet air of home.
From The Secret Player, ©️ Jinny Webber