Perfect Shadows (2 page)

“Cony-catching! Ingram has found a pretty poult, just begging
for the p-p-plucking!” The last word seemed to amuse him, and he repeated it
several times, giggling. Another deep breath ended in a hiccup, but he went on
regardless. “A young country squire, come to town for the first time. Pretty
and innocent, just the sort you like,” he continued, leering at me. “You’ve the
easy part, just seduce him, and let Ingram here walk in and catch you—we’ll
handle the rest!”  I glanced at Frizer, tittering behind his hand in the
window seat.

“Find somebody else,” I said curtly, and turned to go. I wanted
nothing to do with extortion; I had been the past recipient of just such
attention too often to desire to practice it upon others.

“No, it must be you! He’s stage struck, cannot wait to meet the
mighty Marlowe!” I returned to the table and he giggled again, pouring another
cup of wine. “You’ll like him, big blue eyes and long blonde hair,” he paused
to stroke his own locks, still as thick and golden as the day we’d met. “A
perfect Ganymede, more money than Croesus, and he’ll pay, aye, he’ll pay!”
Anger welled in me, hotter with every word he spoke.

“No!” I shouted, pounding my fist on the table, knocking over
the inkwell and the wine cup. Frizer growled and lunged to snatch up the
papers, shaking the inky wine off of them and glowering at me. I ignored him,
leaning over the table to catch Tommy by the shoulders. I had meant to shake
him, but found myself drawing him closer, and saying softly, “Send Frizer away,
Tommy! You don’t need him—things were so much better, when it was just we two.”
I tilted my head to kiss him, but recoiled from his breath, sour with wine. He
knocked my hands from his shoulders, just as other hands fell heavily upon
mine. Frizer jerked me back, and my knee caught the edge of the table, knocking
it over, dumping its contents all over Tom. He screamed, brushing at the wine
and ink soaking his velvets, spreading the stain, making it worse. I started to
apologize, but he interrupted.

“Look what you’ve done! Look what you’ve done! Send Ingram away?
Send him away? I need him. I need him far more than I need you!” Frizer’s grip
tightened and he dragged me towards the door. I shoved an elbow hard into his
belly, and twisted out of his grip. He was a few inches taller than I, and far
heavier in build, but I was the veteran of innumerable tavern tourneys. A hard
jab to the stomach, and an elbow to the back of his neck when he doubled
overtook the starch right out of him.

“You cannot mean that, Tommy,” I said. He was staring in horror
at Frizer measuring his length on the floor. When I started towards him, he
backed away, calling loudly for his serving men. “I won’t hurt you, Tommy, you
know that,” I began soothingly, when the door burst open to admit several large
footmen. One helped Frizer to his feet, while two more flanked me, each taking
an arm.

“You call yourself a gentleman, a scholar! You’re nothing
without patronage, nothing without me! I’ve done everything for you, and you
refuse me even one small favor in return! Jumped up little cobbler’s son!” Tom
screamed, his face purpling with rage. I jerked free of the serving men, turned
on my heel, and headed for the door.

“I did not give you leave to go!” Tom bellowed. I ignored him.

“Let him go,” Frizer growled. “He’s naught but a poet and a
filthy playwright. Let him go!”

“Marlowe! Oy, Tamburlaine, over here!” It was Nashe’s voice.
Peering into the tavern’s smoky gloom, I spotted his manic, gap-toothed grin
behind a wildly waving tankard, and crossed the crowded room to join him. “I
thought you were at Scadbury for the week.”

“I decided not to stay,” I said briefly, shedding my threadbare
cloak and shaking the sleet from it. Patrons at the surrounding tables cursed
or laughed as the icy spray caught or missed them, but none seemed inclined to
fight, alas.

“Frizer, eh?” returned the quick-witted Nashe. “I tell you what,
Kit, lets us catch him out some night, strip him mother-naked, then bind him
fast to Paul’s Cross for the watch to find!” His insolence restored my humor,
and I grinned, agreeing that the knave, with his pious parson’s face and pimp’s
soul, deserved nothing less. “Well, never mind,” he said consolingly. “I got
paid today—help me celebrate!”

We had spent an hour or so indulging in scathing observations
upon our mutual acquaintances and squandering his shillings, when I spotted a
new face just entering. Two new faces, a beautiful young man, and a somewhat
stout, but still vigorous, older man. They exchanged a few quiet words, and the
younger man’s eyes swept the common-room and stopped at me. I straightened
incredulously and returned the gaze, resisting the urge to look behind me.

My preference in lovers was well enough known, but few had ever
sought me out and never before a jewel such as this. The young man was gentry,
from the look of the rich crimson velvet that clothed him. Wildly, I wondered
if this was Tom’s cony, but no, he’d said that lad was fair and this youth was
olive-skinned, with smoky, restive eyes and inky hair. He and his companion
nodded to each other and he headed straight towards me. My satisfaction was a
little soured by suspicion as he slid into a seat next tome, so close that our
thighs pressed together. It was getting damnably hot in the room, for all it
was January, and the sudden pressure in my groin was promising to become
painful. I gulped at my wine and edged away from the lad, who let me go and
then laughed, a throaty chuckle that set my head spinning.

“Is it fear, or desire, that so disturbs you?” he whispered,
sliding a narrow hand onto my knee. His voice, husky and low, seemed almost to
purr, and was graced with a faint foreign accent. I glanced around but his
companion had vanished. Nashe gave me a wry and only slightly disapproving
grimace and took himself off to a dice game in the far corner.

“Have I reason to fear you?” I asked, as
sweat tickled my body.

He brushed my question aside with a laugh and leaned closer.
“Desire, then. ‘He is a fool who loves not tobacco and boys.’, so you’ve said
oft enough, or so it is told me. Do you desire me?” I nodded, unable to speak
past the sudden lump in my throat. “Then meet me tomorrow evening for the Lord
Mayor’s Twelfth Night masque at Crosby Place. You know where that is?” His
careful manner of speech, and the odd lilt of his accent had beguiled me, but
that drew me up short.

“I cannot go there!” I knew full well the
sort of reception I, or any of my ilk would receive at the hands of the Lord
Mayor’s grooms, but my companion brushed my objections aside.

“Then I do dare you come; have I not said it is a masque?
Disguise yourself! If you have the valor there to meet me, then you have won
me, but if you are a craven, then I would as lief you stay away.” He considered
for a moment and then gave me a wicked, fetching smile.” Fail me not, my
Leander, and look not to drown your fires in some unforeseen Hellespont of
orthodoxy and security.” And I found myself alone with nothing to prove that
the whole encounter had not been imagined, save for the warm place where his
hand had rested on my thigh, and the hoots of my companions upon my apparent
failure to gain the youth’s company for the evening. Shortly thereafter I
returned to my lodgings to work out a guise for the following night, and to
wonder if it were by chance or intent that the boy had referred so exactly to
the mythic theme of my current work.

The following night, soberly arrayed as Machiavel, I wandered
through the hall, looking for the lad. There were rivers of strong wine and
wassail bowls liberally laced with brandywine readily available. I drank
deeply, and as my stomach had been all but empty, I was soon far from sober.

I almost failed to recognize my quarry when I found him—or
rather, when he found me. He was dressed as Hero, and not just any Hero, but my
very creation, from my unfinished poem Hero and Leander. I was stunned by the
advent of my imagined heroine in the all-too-physical flesh. The lad had copied
the description of the robe exactly, the impertinent whelp, right down to the
Venus with Adonis at her feet embroidered on the sleeves—only the veil was
missing. His long dark hair, worn loose over his shoulders in glittering auric
waves and I was fascinated to see that it had been pomaded and liberally
powdered with gold-dust.

Hero made a deep curtsy. “Will you dance with me, my lord?” The
neck of the robe gaped for a moment and I had a clear view of the small breasts
it concealed. With a shocking shift of reality, I realized that my beautiful
boy of the night before was indeed a woman. I was repelled, yet also
unaccountably attracted. Yes, very attracted.

“Lady, I cannot,” I answered in a shaken voice. No woman had
ever had such an effect on me before and damned few men.

“Then we shall speak together,” she said, tucking her arm
through mine. My head was whirling. I thought of Tom, whom I had loved, and of
the bitter quarrel that had parted us. He was making a great show of
indifference, which hurt me as badly as any of the cutting things he’d said,
worse even than his throwing my humble birth up in my face. We crossed through
a room of tables setup for the gamblers, many of whom I knew, from their
patronage of the playhouses. One of them started to stand as we entered. Ingram
Frizer. Good, I thought, then Tommy was bound to hear of this and be sorry, or
better still, as hurt and angry as I. My companion gave me no time to stop,
however, but drew me into a private parlor beyond, and Frizer dropped back into
his seat, muttering to his tablemates. There was an outbreak of bawdy laughter
as the door was pulled shut and bolted behind us.

There were many pillows spread before the fire and a tray with
drink and sweetmeats. She pulled me down beside her and poured wine red as
blood into fragile cups of Venetian glass. My hands were shaking as I took the
cup she handed me and garnet drops stained the ragged white frill at my wrist.

“Speak to me,” she said, “about yourself. Oh, not those things
that anyone might know,” she added, with a low laugh. “Tell me what lies hidden
here,” and she laid a cool hand upon my heart. I was repulsed by her
forwardness but, even against my will, still more attracted and we conversed
for a time. Her soft questions drew the answers from me as if my mouth had
become a wound she had opened, bleeding my memories away, and no way to stanch
the flow.

I described to her my childhood years, spent in the shadow of
Canterbury’s great cathedral, of the games the churchmen, both religious and
secular, played with the choirboys, but held back my own time spent as an
alderman’s catamite. I told her of attending the King’s school, that had led to
Cambridge, Cambridge led to London, and London had given me success, and Tom. I
trailed off, thinking of him, of the wounding words he had flung at me like so
many darts, of the void in my life where I had grown used to seeing him. My
companion seemed to sense my distress, and asked me about him.

“We quarreled,” I said, shortly, but she pressed me for the
details, and I surprised myself by telling her all.

“I even gave up my family for him,” I continued. “Last fall in
Canterbury, a disagreement with a local tailor had come to blows, and he’d
screamed out his accusation on the public street: Sodomite! My father was
constable, and put an end to the quarrel, but that evening he taxed me with the
accusation. ‘Is what Corking said the truth?’ I wanted to deny it, at least to
him, but denying that meant denying Tom, and that I could not do.” I ran my
thumb over the T-shaped scar on my right hand. “So I confessed. I hope never to
pass another such night as that! My mother crying, my father pacing, striking
me blows now and again, which I made no effort to block. Was it something that
they did? No, it was the way that I was. Who had made me so? Manwood, who had
gotten me my scholarship? No! Who then? God, or no one! That earned mea blow
that sent me sprawling off my stool to strike my head against one of my
father’s iron lasts. They made no effort to help me, left me there bleeding
from a cut above my right eye—see the scar? I knew then that they were lost to
me. When I found the strength I made my way to the door, ‘I think it best that
you not come again,’ my father said, thrusting my cloak and my small bundle of
belongings into my hands. I’ve not been back to Canterbury, nor will I ever
return to that house. I am as the dead to them, and they to me.”

“Hero” seemed to feel the depth of my pain and humiliation. She
took my hand for a moment, then reached up to run her long fingers through my
hair. I trembled as she drew my face close to hers, kissed my eyes, then my
mouth, licking my lips with her soft tongue. I was amazed to feel arousal, not
the disgust occasioned by my few perfunctory performances with the tavern
trulls I’d drunkenly attempted upon dares from my friends. I moaned and thrust
my tongue deep into her mouth, my hand falling to her hip. Her hands were busy
loosening my doublet, unlacing my points, slipping in beneath my shirt to
caress me, then trailing down to the fastenings of my trunk-hose. I gasped as
she slid her hand between my thighs, then up to my groin. “Stop!” I groaned and
she chuckled.

“Is your fire all for poetry now and none left for the flesh? Do
you really desire that I stop?”

“Yes. No! But I do not even know your name,” I said lamely and
cursed my faltering speech: the great poet at a drunken loss for words. She
chuckled again, pulled her hands from my clothing, and poured more wine.