License to Quill (19 page)

Exercise

“Oh no…”

Just when things were looking up for the doubled-over Marlowe, the poet vomited all over the toes he was desperately trying to touch. Fortunately, the dragoman was familiar with such afflictions due to a past that he kept hidden, which was why he insisted there would be no coffee until the dramatist finished his stretching. It was Marlowe's first attempt at exercising in more than a decade, and although the experience was unbearable, the dragoman's residence was the perfect place for exorcising the poet's demons.

The hotel colloquially known as the Fontego dei Turchi, “The Turkish Inn,” was a tall, stately building that served as headquarters to Ottoman merchants in Venice. Although not as large as its future site at the Palmieri Palace, the Fontego at San Polo's all'Angelo was a welcome haven to Turkish travelers when the dragoman first came to the city. The complex tripled as a residence, storehouse, and marketplace that opened into the Rialto's international epicenter at Campo San Giacomo. The hotel was a Turkish microstate within the Venetian Republic, keeping the city supplied with exotic goods while providing its occupants with every possible comfort from home. This latter detail was why the dragoman insisted on having his inebriated companion with him that morning, for unlike any of the casinos or brothels Marlowe frequented, the Fontego dei Turchi had a
hamam
: a Turkish bath.

After Marlowe's capsized stomach was righted thanks to a remarkable substance called “
yoɣurt
,” he and his friend sat for a
kahvaltı
: a “before coffee,” the dragoman translated. The intricate breakfast consisted of white bread and a wide selection of stuffed
börek
, some cheeses—
beyaz peynir
, as well as both
eski kaşar
and
taze kaşar
—fresh butter, imported honey,
sucuklu yumurta
—a baked egg served with large slices of spicy beef sausage—black and green olives, jams, fresh vegetables, and several cups of a bright red liquid called
tavşan kanı çay
—rabbit's blood tea. Once the two finished their eating, the dragoman permitted the imploring poet one cup of coffee, but only if he drank it in small sips while they walked. The poet complied and was finally reunited with his precious elixir in the Fontego courtyard.

After sharing a pleasant conversation about hospitality and reciprocity, the dragoman learned forward with his
kufi
cap and whispered that he and Marlowe must part. When the wide-eyed poet asked why, the dragoman explained that he had business at the Jewish ghetto that was relevant to their appointment at Piazza San Marco. The dragoman made it clear that he would return, but until then Marlowe would have to remain with the Fontego staff. The poet smiled and inquired what sort of pleasantries such preferential treatment entailed. The two set down their cups, the dragoman nodded, and a pair of enormous hotel guards seized Marlowe by his shoulders. The terrified poet resisted, crying “Drago!” as he was dragged into a darkened room. His tall friend checked his pocket watch as he left the hotel.

Marlowe kicked and screamed his way across a beautifully tiled floor until he was shoved into a regal rotunda decoratively adorned with bright quartz. The room was low, wide, and hot, and had a large, octagonal marble platform at its center. The air was unimaginably humid, causing the sunlight piercing through the ceiling's innumerable starburst windows to waft in the air like misty ribbons. Marlowe had never been subject to such exotic surroundings, which surprised him since he thought he had already sampled every pleasure that the afterlife had to offer. But then again, within the cozy womb of the Fontego dei Turchi
hamam
, the late Christopher Marlowe was not exactly in Venice anymore.

“Remove your clothes,” one of the hotel staff requested.

Amused, the poet pivoted on his sticky toes and invited the burly men to disrobe him themselves. The guards exchanged a glance and then moved on Marlowe with their
yatağan
knives drawn. Before the poet could explain that he was jesting, their shining blades flashed like mirrors all over his body. The shredded remains of Marlowe's undergarments fell to the floor, except for several stinking clumps stuck to his filthier parts. In the nude and abashed, the poet covered himself. The guards threw Marlowe onto the marble slab and held him down so that the hotel staff could get on with their assignment.

After being forced to sweat out an entire lifetime of alcohol, the poet was scrubbed vigorously until stripped of enough dead skin to fill a small sock. Marlowe was then lathered from head to toe, doused with warm water, and thrown back onto the slab so that the hotel's even larger masseurs could go to work on his fossilized muscles. Every naked inch of the poet was pulled, pounded, and twisted, resetting his skeleton and yanking out every tangled knot in his body. Outside the
hamam
, the Fontego echoed with the violent screams of a man being reborn. At the nearby San Giacomo di Rialto, a flock of pigeons took to the sky as a new hour tolled. And then another. And then another until, finally, after being submersed in pools of steaming hot and freezing water, Marlowe was bombarded with cloths, handed a cup of tea, and told by the hotel staff to take a walk.

With every joint in his cadaver loosened and every muscle in his body throbbing, Marlowe staggered out of the Fontego in such a daze that he did not even notice that the hotel staff had dressed him. All his old clothes had been discarded and replaced with only the finest: splendid white linens, an expensive doublet of red silk and shining silver, a pair of freshly stitched brown leather boots—doeskin for extra comfort—a white cape clad with crimson, a shining sword and parrying dagger, a new belt with a silver buckle, and a large, floppy red hat the bewildered poet unconsciously discarded as he scratched his head.

Marlowe's back had been bent, but now it was straightened. His eyes had been vacant, but now they reawakened. A bright, blinding light beckoned Marlowe forward, back into the world of the living. The poet squinted and shielded his eyes until the shining setting faded back into clarity. Marlowe lowered his hand and looked around: he was standing in the swirling center of the Campo San Giacomo. The loud bazaar was alive and moving, yet all its people seemed distant. The Venetian cacophony sounded dimmed and muted, as if the poet were somehow listening from underwater. The entire world around him looked and sounded indistinct, save for one timbre that made him pause: the plucking of a mandolin. The poet stopped walking and listened blissfully to the strumming strings until the angelic notes of a singing woman made him turn his head. Wide eyed, Marlowe looked straight ahead so that he could listen to both sounds with sharpened senses. The woman's vocals started swelling, and the mandolin strings jumped with electricity.

The reborn poet's heart was pounding.

A forgotten vigor from Marlowe's youth started surging through his body. Reunited with his former self, young Kit took a step forward, then another, and another, once more, then again, and again … With increasing speed and energy, the poet sprinted straight out of the Campo faster than the Fontego guardsmen watching him could follow. Marlowe ducked and dodged his way through the
mercato
, never losing momentum. When a merchant's table blocked his path, the nimble poet bounded over it. When a heavy wagon rolled in front of him, he dove under it. Marlowe maneuvered the congested center of one of the busiest cities in history as effortlessly as the sounds around him or the wind and the birds above him. Revived and revitalized, the reborn poet felt like he had wings for feet.

Once he reached the Grand Canal, Marlowe decided he wanted a challenge. The Rialto was too packed with people for him to lope through; many of them were already wearing their evening masks. Rather than get in line to cross the water, the poet raced up the Rialto Bridge's balustrade and leaped off its edge as stunned Venetians looked on and gasped. Marlowe jumped into the first archway he saw and climbed up using its unshuttered window's wrought-iron bars. As his awestruck audience both laughed and cursed, Marlowe pulled himself atop the marble structure no differently than the Roman walls he scaled in Canterbury. After taking in a breath of triumph, Marlowe sprinted eastward across the bridge, slid up and over its central arch, and leaped off its sloping roof towards a window at eye level. Although he was hanging on by just one hand, Marlowe had crossed the Canałasso in a manner higher than any Venetian in history.

After pulling himself over the window's balustrade, Marlowe dusted his hands while looking upward, curious if he could repeat this modest feat on the window above him. The poet stood on the balustrade, jumped, and succeeded, so he tried this again until he was standing victoriously atop Riva Ferro. Marlowe was more than sixty feet in the air now, offering him a spectacular view of the Grand Canal. The famous Fondaco dei Tedeschi was to his right: the first of nearly a hundred palaces stretching westward for a mile along the Canałasso. Directly across from Marlowe, the peach facade of the Palazzo dei Dieci Savi was facing him. The poet had to smile at the realization that he was now standing taller than the bronze of Saint James atop the San Giacomo di Rialto. To the poet's left, the Canałasso stretched more than two thousand feet west-southwest in a nearly perfect line of gondolas, merchant vessels, and cerulean water before bending southeast into the teeming Bacino di San Marco. Beneath his dusty boots, many of Marlowe's onlookers from Riva Ferro to the boats bobbing in the water were losing interest in the crazy poet who had just vaulted from the Rialto Bridge. Losing interest in them as well, Marlowe turned his back on San Polo as he took in his view of San Marco from its northernmost point.

It was a lovely sight as well, but … not high enough. Marlowe's view of the
sestiere
was obstructed by the nearby spire of San Bartolomeo. Since the spire was at the opposite end of his rooftop, the poet wandered over to examine it. After teasing its surface with his fingers, Marlowe drew his newly acquired parrying dagger and stabbed the structure. The dagger held, giving him enough leverage to climb even higher until he was able to shinny up the remaining distance. Now at the church's highest point, the poet was more than seventy feet in the air. An easy victory. Marlowe held on to the spire's point and looked for further conquests. From the nearby
chiesa
of San Paterniano to the distant tower of Sant'Elena, there did not appear to be any higher structure standing between the triumphant climber and his view of the floating city. Except for …

Marlowe set his sights on the Campanile di San Marco: the great bell tower rising 323 feet just next to St. Mark's Basilica. The lofty structure was a mighty column of red bricks crowned with a commanding belfry, alternating icons of the Lion of St. Mark and la Giustizia, and a pyramidal spire of emerald green framed in marble white. The massive structure was topped by a golden weather vane fashioned into a statue of the archangel Gabriel—or at least it should have been. The statue was the highest point in all of Venice, making it a frequent victim to lighting strikes. This meant that Marlowe would have some scaffolding to work with if he wished to temporarily take Gabriel's place. Especially since the guardian angel had recently been taken down for repairs.

After examining the sea of shingles between himself and the Campanile, Marlowe slid down his shorter spire, sheathed his dagger, and took a running leap from the rooftop.

*   *   *

That night …

After spending an entire afternoon scaling Venetian churches and palaces; after enjoying a meal along with some lovemaking from a coquettish soprano singing from her window; after sitting atop the four bronze horses Venice sacked from Constantinople in 1204; and after sharing a few choice words with Mark the Evangelist atop his cathedral; Christopher Marlowe, the man who had spent his youth scaling battlements erected by Roman generals, the fallen priest who admired Rome from atop the Castel Sant'Angelo and the Colosseum, the murdered poet who spent his afterlife wallowing in Venice as if the city were still a swamp, had finally conquered his demons. He had finally ascended to something higher.

With the sun asleep and the stars ablaze, with the evening alive with music and laughter, with Piazza San Marco overflowing with partygoers dressed in their finest costumes and masks, with every voice in the city cheering, with every church bell in Venice tolling, and with a barrage of fireworks filling the night sky around him with explosive colors, Marlowe lowered his head from atop the highest point in the floating city, outstretched his arms, and offered a benediction in Latin so that even God could hear it:
“Deus mea est fortitudo, atque quod me nutrit me destruit.”

“God is my strength,” he whispered, a literal translation of the Hebrew ‘Gabriel.' “And what nourishes me destroys me.”

The late Christopher Marlowe was back from the dead, and just in time.

The Carnevale of 1605 had begun.

 

Chapter XXI

Shakespeare & Aston

Robert Catesby, Guy Fawkes, and their fellow conspirators departed the Duck and Drake during the early hours of February the twenty-second, 1604—more on this last detail later. It was not yet daylight, but the bard had little trouble spotting their lamps as their carriage crawled north-northwest from Westminster into the snow-swept landscape. It would be a long journey across one hundred miles of frozen, unpaved roads to Warwickshire, but Shakespeare took the same route every summer to be with his family in Stratford. Even though it was winter, the bard was confident that he could complete this ride, and for good reason. For the first time, he would be taking a vastly superior vehicle into the English countryside.

Once the conspirators reached the distant windmills of Hampstead, the playwright sheathed his brass spyglass and slid down from his rooftop. Within a familiar Strand stable, Shakespeare found a saddled Aston rested and ready for him. Clad in fur and cloaked in white, the two embarked on their journey while a familiar raven took flight as well.