License to Quill (17 page)

Marlowe sat with his hands in his lap and both eyes agape. “Then it is settled. Give me enough
kahfey
, and I will kill this woman for you.”

The dragoman's face twisted. “No. We do not know who this woman is or who supplied her information. Besides, murdering her would be difficult considering where she wants to meet you.”

Marlowe raised his eyebrows. “Where will it be?”

The dragoman stiffened. “At la Piazza this Tuesday, the first night of Carnevale.”

The poet gasped.
“What?
We'll be in the middle of the festival! There will be people everywhere!”

“I know.”

“And guards!” Marlowe added. “The doge's palace is
right there
!”

“I know,”
the dragoman stressed.

Shocked, Marlowe turned away and ran a shaking hand through his hair. “Drago,” he began, clinging to his guardian in fear, “I haven't killed anyone since I got here! Also, I really,
really
need more
kahfey
!”

The unsmiling shade shot his friend a dark look. “No. You've had enough for the evening. Carnevale begins in two days.… No.” The dragoman checked a timepiece attached to his belt. “Tomorrow. That leaves us with less than twenty-four hours for you to reclaim your former fitness. You
need
to exercise, Cristo. Your life could depend on it!”

“
Oh
…” Marlowe sighed with relief. “We still have time then. Sure! I can do that.” The poet stretched out his arms and fell backward into the repellant embrace of his bed. “Good night, my tall friend! I will see you in the morrow.”

“Get out from there,” the figure thundered.

The cheery poet looked up at his serious-looking friend. “Why so serious?”

The dragoman drew a Damascus sword from his robes and took a mighty swing at Marlowe's bed. Horrified, the poet leaped out of the path of the blade, which sliced his malodorous mattress in a diagonal deathblow. Marlowe fell to the floor and rolled back onto his feet in time to see a family of rats come pouring out of his mattress. The dragoman looked down his nose at the screaming vermin, dried their blood from his shining blade, and then turned to his friend staring speechlessly at the rodents. “From now on, you will stay with me at the Fontego dei Turchi. And you will bathe. And with every hour we have left in this city, you will exercise.”

Wide-eyed and in the nude, a reawakened Christopher Marlowe turned to his savior. “Will you make me some more
kahfey
?”

The dragoman nodded, and Marlowe followed him from the embrace of the defeated bedroom.

 

Chapter XVIII

The Scream

Shakespeare flipped through Holinshed's
Chronicles
with increased aggravation. Although Duffe's encounter with the dark arts piqued his interest, the bard knew that he could not use it. The tale of King Duffe was a triumph, not a tragedy, and the playwright imagined that his strange patrons would not take kindly to a drama about a Scottish king's victory against black magic. The bard needed his drama to injure England's King James; not celebrate his legacy as a witch-hunter. Especially since Robert Catesby and Guy Fawkes had an alliance to preserve with their Warwickshire cohorts, the cunning folk: midwives, folk healers, and fortune-tellers.

White witches
, the playwright reminded himself.

Shakespeare needed something different from Scotland's turbulent history to deliver the political messages his patrons requested. He needed a dark main character; someone who could captivate audiences like the bard's greatest villains. He needed a Scotsman who could share the same stage as Richard III and Marcus Brutus. He needed a tragedy so treacherous that it would terrify London.

And in the middle of this maelstrom, the bard also needed witches. Three witches.

Fading quickly, the tired playwright closed his eyes and wandered inward. Within his mind, he could already picture his players walking onstage in kilts. He could hear the laughs their Scottish accents would draw. He could already see Richard Burbage mesmerizing the crowd as the play's title character. Shakespeare knew what he wanted; all he needed now was a name. Unfortunately, it had been six months and England's greatest playwright had not even accomplished that much.

Wracked with frustration, the bard opened his eyes and returned to the
Chronicles
.

After Malcolme succéeded his nephue Duncane the sonnne of his daughter Beatrice: for Malcolme had two daughters, the one which was this Beatrice, being giuen in marriage vnto one Abbanath Crinen, a man of great nobilitie, and thane of the Iles and west parts of Scotland, bare of that mariage the foresaid Duncane; the other called Doada, was maried vnto Sincell the thane of Glammis, by whom she had issue one Makbeth a valiant gentleman, and one that if he had not béen somewhat cruel of nature, might haue been thought most worthie the gouernment of the realme.
*

Shakespeare paused at the end of this passage.

Makbeth

a valiant gentleman … cruel of nature …

The playwright continued.

Banquho the thane of Lochquhaber, of whom the house of the Stewards is descended, the which by order of linage hath now for a long time inioied the crowne of Scotland …
*

The corner of Shakespeare's mouth curled upward. King James hailed from the House of Stuart, formerly Stewart, making him a direct descendant of the Scottish thane Banquo.

After reading of the rebellion Macbeth and Banquo subdued for King Duncan …

Makbeth and Banquho iournied towards Fores, where the king then laie, they went sporting by the waie togither without other companie, saue onelie themselues, passing thorough the woods and fields, when suddenlie in the middest of a laund, there met them thrée women in strange and wild apparell, resembling creatures of elder world …
†

Shakespeare's eyes widened.

Three
women?

the first of them spake and said—

“TOO əv yə?”

The playwright spun in his chair. “The devil!” he cried. Behind him was the same raven from earlier rapping on his window with its beak. Bewildered, Shakespeare rushed over and let the bird inside. The room was suddenly filled with a cold gust of snowflakes and feathers. Candles were blown out and pages flew into the air as the raven darted in and perched atop the bard's writing desk. Before the stunned playwright could speak, the bird opened its beak and emitted a low, sustained scream. It was a disgusting, unnerving sound that chilled the bard even more than the cold, and it was not long before the siren woke up everyone in the building.

“What the hell is that!” a voice hollered from the halls.

“It is nothing!” Shakespeare shouted to his landlord as the bard tried to silence the animal. He made a reach for the raven, but the bird flew away from his fingers and swooped straight out the window. The playwright rushed to the windowsill only to notice similar cries emanating throughout London. In a matter of seconds, a swirling fury of ravens descended over Silver Street and Muggle.

Almost instantly, the bard then heard a different scream—a woman's scream.

Shakespeare leaned forward and stuck his head out the window to spy a small figure running away from his intersection. The figure was surrounded by a black cloud of shrieking ravens. The birds assaulted their target with their claws and beaks, filling the neighborhood with cries that echoed noisily against London Wall. Dogs began barking. Startled neighbors rushed to their windows with candles. And then, out of the corner of his eye, Shakespeare saw something glowing across the street from him.

The bard turned his head to see a dark, haunting figure looming over the rooftops. The figure stood tall with a flowing black cape and hood, and was holding a lantern that glowed brightly amidst the snowfall. The playwright's jaw dropped. The figure was staring straight at him and disappeared just as soon as Shakespeare noticed.

“The Gods!” the playwright gasped as he ducked from the window. With his mind alert and pulse jumping, the bard lunged across the floor for his belt and weapons. After drawing his sword and securing his gear, Shakespeare surveyed the situation from the ground. It was too dark and cold for him to meet his observer outside, he had no footprints to follow, and Sir Francis Bacon's ravens were clearly busy elsewhere. The bard was alone and exposed in his apartment, but he had no safer place to retreat. Resigning himself to his situation, Shakespeare turned around and peeked out from his window. There was nothing but darkness and snow to behold. Even the woman's screaming had stopped.

Relieved, Shakespeare shut his window and sank back to the floor. But then, just as his pounding heart quieted, his thoughts turned to the men he met at the Duck and Drake. “Oh fig,” the bard realized. If a spy had been sent to follow him home, he would have seen Shakespeare ride Aston through the Ludgate. The conspirators would know the bard had lied about having lodgings on the Strand. They would know he had government access during lockdown. Shakespeare's entire mission could be compromised, and, with one whisper, so would his life.

Overwrought with stress and wary of being seen through the windows, the hapless playwright remained confined to the wooden floor. He looked at the lone candle on his desk, but he decided against snuffing it. If he was still being watched, Shakespeare wanted his enemies to think that he was still awake. It was his only safeguard against someone trying to murder him in his bed—that is, aside from his weapons and his current view of his door. Realizing he was in for a long night, the bard scooted over to his desk and pulled his copy of Holinshed's
Chronicles
into his lap. The book closed as it fell, but a stray raven feather shut inside it conveniently marked the bard's place.

Using the modest light he had, Shakespeare opened the book to the feather and revisited Macbeth and Banquo's encounter with the strange women.

the first of them spake and said; “All haile Makbeth, thane of Glammis” (for he had latelie entered into that dignitie and office by the death of his father Sinell.) The second of them said; “Haile Makbeth thane of Cawder.” But the third said; “All haile Makbeth that héerafter shalt be king of Scotland.”

No cruelty. Not black magic. Neither good nor evil. These were not the same witches who cursed Duffe. These women were mystics: diviners no different than the cunning folk his employers planned on meeting.

The bard kept reading to keep himself awake as his candle burned down. By the time it was spent, so was Shakespeare. The exhausted playwright was slouched forward. He had fallen asleep with his sword in his hand and his book in his lap, but he had finished his reading. Within his sleeping mind's eye, the bard shared the same sorry fate of Macbeth.

He now knew of Macbeth's scheming and manipulative wife, of King Duncan's murder, and of Macbeth's deadly ascent to the throne.
*

He saw the treachery of Banquo's murder and the escape of his son.
†

He shared in the prophecy that Macbeth would never be slain by any man “borne of anie woman, nor vanquished till the wood of Bernane came to the castell of Dunsinane.”
‡

He witnessed Macbeth's descent into madness, the massacre of Macduff's family, and the spectacle of Malcolm's men wearing Birnam wood as they assaulted Dunsinane hill.
§

And lastly, the bard went to sleep with his mind afire over the tragic fall of Macbeth. How the prophecies that led to his rise also led to his death. How Macduff was “neuer borne of my mother, but ripped out of her wombe.”
¶
How Macbeth met his death due to hubris, the machinations of his vain and ambitious queen—Elizabeth, perhaps?—and the words of three witches.

Words
, he dreamed.
Words!

The playwright jerked from his slumber and made a blind grab for his desk. Unfortunately, he missed both his quill and paper, managing only to spill his inkwell all over himself the floor. Irritated, Shakespeare groped through the darkness until he found the raven's feather sticking out of his book. After dabbing the floor for ink, the bard wrote:

THE TRAGEDIE OF MACBETH.

Actus Primus. Scœna Prima.

Thunder and Lightning. Enter three Witches.

Despite being written on floorboards with an unsharpened quill in the dark, Shakespeare attempted his best handwriting. Even with his secret license, the bard had no intention of sharing this project with a scribe.

He then went back to sleep on the floor using page 277 of Holinshed's
Chronicles
as his pillow:

This was the end of Makbeth, after he had reigned 17 yeeres ouer the Scotishmen. In the beginning of his reigne he accomplished manie woorthie acts, verie profitable to the common-wealth (as ye haue heard) but afterward by illusion of the diuell, he defamed the same with most terrible crueltie. He was slaine in the yéere of the incarnation, 1057, and in the 16 yeere of king Edwards reigne ouer the Englishmen.

The ink-covered playwright woke that morning to the cawing of crows. Once he realized he survived the evening, Shakespeare pushed himself up off the floor and groggily looked out of his window. Aside from some ravens, no one was watching him from the rooftops. Relieved, the playwright staggered to his bed only to slip on the cold floor's frozen ink.

Had Shakespeare looked to where he had heard screaming the prior night, he might have noticed black feathers sticking out of the snow.

Although invisible from the distance, the white snow was also speckled red with blood.

 

Chapter XIX

The Complaints Office