Strange Devices of the Sun and Moon (25 page)

The door slammed behind him and he looked around. Christopher stood there, back after an absence of several months. “Care to take a walk with me?” he asked.

That was another problem with sharing a room with Kit: sometimes, on the days he didn't feel like working, his friend would try to talk him into going out into London. “Nay,” Tom said, turning back to his work. “Where have you been?”

“Canterbury,” Christopher said, and Thomas nearly jumped from his seat. He would have sworn that the other man had been behind him, but somehow he had gone over to his desk by the window. He seemed to move at a different pace than other people, though Tom noticed that when they walked together he went slowly, almost languidly.

“Escaping the plague?”

“Visiting my family. Fighting a duel.”

Like Thomas Nashe, Kyd sometimes wondered what his friend did in the time he wasn't working. But unlike Nashe, Kyd thought that he probably didn't want to know. Back in January Christopher had told him a story about being arrested for counterfeiting in the Netherlands, and while Tom hadn't disbelieved him exactly he had thought that for his own peace of mind he had better change the subject. Now he did the same. “The plague's nearly over, they say.”

“Aye. Let's go.”

“I'm busy here.”

“Come, we'll be back in an hour. I promise.”

“Nay. I know your hours.”

“Two hours, then. You're hungry, aren't you?”

He was. He had known from the first that he wouldn't be able to resist his friend. Sighing, he stood and carefully put away the pages he had written that day. He didn't think that Kit would want to read them, but then Kit probably thought the same of him.

They went out into the street. A cool breeze blew and he walked into it gratefully. His friend had been right: he had needed to get outside for a few hours.

On Cheapside a vagabond in torn and dirty clothing came toward them, a begging bowl held out in his hands. “Masters, please,” he said. “A penny, a groat, anything you can spare. I've been turned off my lands, my wife and children are dead of the plague …”

Kit moved past him, but Tom fumbled in his purse and dropped a coin in the bowl. “Thank you, master, thank you, kind sir,” the vagabond said, and moved on.

Kit turned to Tom in astonishment. “You don't believe that he was truly turned off his lands, do you? Or any of those other lies he told you?”

Tom shrugged. “What if he was?”

“What if he wasn't?”

“He was suffering—”

“Oh, aye. You write plays and you know nothing of disguises.”

“—and so at least I've done some good,” Tom said, ignoring the other man.

“That's right, I forgot. You believe that goodness is rewarded.”

Tom said nothing. He had learned over the years not to argue with his friend. Suddenly he noticed that they had gone past all the stalls and cookshops on Cheapside. “I thought we were going to eat,” he said.

“Later.”

“Where are you going?”

“Paul's.”

“Paul's?” Tom said, hurrying after him. “Why?”

“I heard that Robin's book has come out. The last one. His deathbed confession.”

Tom had heard of Robert's book too. Folks whispered that it was filled with scandal, with revelations about poor Robin's life and his last hours. If the book had truly appeared it would be worth postponing his meal for a few hours. He should have known that Kit had had something planned, that he would not be getting back to his work that day. It seemed that something extraordinary and exciting always happened whenever he went out with his friend; he wondered how the man could stand an entire diet of it.

They went inside the churchyard. Tom had never seen so few people there, had never heard it so quiet; the plague still kept most folks indoors. Kit nodded to some of the stationers as they passed but did not talk to any of them; it seemed he would not be moved from his original purpose.

Suddenly, though, he stopped and pointed across the yard. “Is that—Aye, there he is. Look, quickly, it's Gabriel Harvey!”

Tom followed his gaze. A middle-aged man with large quantities of lace at his neck and wrists was making his way slowly through the courtyard. As they watched he adjusted his clothing, patted down his jerkin, smoothed his mustache and then walked off with a satisfied air.

“Doctor Harvey!” Kit said, shouting across the yard.

“What are you doing?” Tom asked, whispering.

“I want to wish him good day. Don't you want to talk to him?”

“Of course not. Why should I involve myself in Tom Nashe's silly feud? I don't even know the man.”

“Time you got acquainted, then.”

Gabriel Harvey saw them at that moment. “Doctor Harvey!” Kit said again, but the other man seemed as reluctant to meet as Tom was. He turned and almost ran out of the yard.

Kit laughed for a long time. “The terrible Doctor Harvey,” he said finally. “I wonder why it is he angers Tom so. Why does he waste his time with that man?”

“One of those trifling feuds that neither one can finish, I suppose. Let's get what we came for and go.”

But Kit had one more stop to make, at Edward Blount's stall. There he talked to the publisher about the poem he was writing, assuring the other man that with the playhouses closed due to the plague he would have more time to work on it. Tom listened a little enviously. No one had ever been that interested in his poems. His hunger returned, and while the two men talked he browsed through the books on the neighboring stall.

“Look, Kit,” he said. “Nashe's book.
Pierce Penniless.”

“Aye, and we'll take that one too,” Kit said, breaking away from his conversation. He took sixpence out of his purse and gave it to a pleasant-looking woman at the stall. Where does he get his money? Tom thought. He had heard rumors of a wealthy patron.

They went by William Wright's stall and picked up
Greene's Groatsworth of Wit,
heard talk of another book called
The Repentance,
bought that one too, and then made their way out of the churchyard. Just as they were leaving Tom Nashe came in through the entrance.

“We just saw your friend Harvey,” Kit said. “If you hurry you can catch him.”

“Nay,” Nashe said, and to Tom Kyd's surprise he looked a little uneasy. “I don't—I've said everything I had to say to him and his brother Richard in my book. That book,” he said, pointing to
Pierce Penniless
in Kit's hand. “I hear he came to London just to write his reply to me. Came in the middle of the plague, while thousands died all around him.” He laughed.

“Are you thirsty? Come, let's go to a tavern and look at the books we bought.”

“Groatsworth of Wit,”
Nashe said, noticing it for the first time. “I doubt you'll like that one, Kit.”

“Why not?”

“Ah. You'll see for yourself.”

They made for a tavern close by that Nashe knew. Tom Kyd thought that this was the first time they had all been together in months, perhaps in years, and that it had taken Robert Greene's death to accomplish it. They had been busy with their work and their patrons, and over the years they had drifted apart. And Kit and Tom Nashe had had some sort of falling out, though he didn't know the details: Kit had told him only that he thought Nashe had lost his wits. Maybe poor Robin would work some good, then, especially if his book made Kit think over his life.
The Repentance
: it seemed a promising title.

They were the only ones in the tavern. Most folk avoided crowded places during the plague and the host approached them a little cautiously, as if afraid they might be infected. Tom Kyd was finally able to order his meal. Nashe leafed through the books they had brought.

“‘First in all your actions set God before your eyes,'” he read in a solemn voice.

“A Puritan!” Kit said. He reached for the book but Tom Nashe moved it away and continued reading.

“‘… for the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom …'”

This time Kit managed to take the book from him. He turned a page and read a little to himself, and Tom Kyd saw his face change. “What is it?” he asked.

“‘Wonder not,'” Kit read, “‘that Greene, who hath said with thee (like the fool in his heart), There is no God, should now give glory unto His greatness—'”

“Is he writing about you?” Tom Kyd asked.

“Aye.” His face had grown intent, almost hard. There was no other sound in the room. “Listen. ‘Why should thy excellent wit, His gift, be so blinded, that thou shouldst give no glory to the giver?'” He looked down the page. “‘Defer not (with me) till this last point of extremity; for little knowst thou how in the end thou shalt be visited.' Oh, the hypocrite! Oh, the damned wretched hypocrite!”

“He deals as badly with me,” Tom Nashe said.

“Did you know about this?” Kit asked.

Nashe nodded. Tom Kyd thought that just once in his life he would like to have heard some piece of news before the other man. “The printer told me a few days ago. Robin was not like this when I dined with him, I assure you.”

Kit began to read again. “‘Sweet boy, might I advise thee, be advised, and get not many enemies by bitter words …' You are the sweet boy, I take it. Had he lost his wits when he wrote this?”

“Does he mention me?” Tom Kyd asked.

Kit laughed suddenly. “You? Nay, it seems he overlooked you. The only playwright in London, I fear.” He looked down the page. “Who is this here? ‘An upstart Crow, beautified with our feathers … the only Shake-scene in a country.'”

“I think I met him once,” Tom Nashe said. “An actor who wanted to write plays. Shake—Shakes something. I can't remember now.”

Kit pushed back his thick hair and paged through the book. Tom Nashe picked up
The Repentance.
“‘It is better to die repentant than to live dishonest,'” he read in his Puritan's voice, seeming anxious to fill up the silence.

“Aye, and best of all to do both, it seems,” Kit said, looking up from his book.

“How can you mock the dead?” Tom Kyd said.

“Mock him? He mocks me, and from the grave, too, where he's safe from my answer. What did he think I would do when I read this, change my ways? Nay, I'm certain that he didn't think of me at all.”

“What will you do?” Tom Nashe said.

“Do? Nothing. What should I do?”

“Harry Chettle saw this through the press after Robin died. I know the man—we can go to him and demand an apology, demand he publish something, I don't know …”

Kit looked at him levelly and he stopped. “Why?”

“So that—What he says here is dangerous, Kit. If everyone in London knows your views you could be arrested, or—”

“Nay, nothing will happen to me.”

“You don't know that. Come, we'll go to him together—”

“Nay. Let it stand.”

“But people will think—”

“Let them. I don't care.”

Tom Kyd saw with surprise that Kit meant it, that if he had been angry a moment ago it had passed. He thought that he would never understand the man, not if he knew him for a hundred years.

The talk changed; now Kit and Tom Nashe were going over all that had happened since they had seen each other last. It seemed that Kyd would have to hear the story about counterfeiting in the Netherlands after all.

“But why were you in the Netherlands to begin with?” Tom Nashe asked.

“Someone there wanted to publish some translations I did, a book of Ovid's poetry. I met up with a goldsmith, a man who said he could show me how to make coins. I was curious to see it, and I went with him. And the authorities caught up with us, and I was sent back to England.” He laughed.

“But why should you want to make coins?” Tom Kyd asked.

“Why? Think of it, man! If I could make my own money I would never have to bow to a patron again. Or change a scene for an actor who didn't understand what I'd written, or write a pretty dedication that came to nothing …”

Was he serious? Tom Kyd knew that his friend often said things only for the effect they had. He tried to keep his face impassive, tried not to let Kit see that his talk had shocked him. But he must have given something away, because Kit turned to him and said, “Well, why shouldn't I? I have as good a right to coin as the queen of England.”

A few days later Tom Kyd sat at his desk and tried to concentrate on the work before him. Christopher was out somewhere—God knew where—and Tom had given in to temptation once more and read what he had added to his poem. But when he'd turned back to his own play it had seemed awkwardly written, each word leaden and colorless.

He sighed and looked around. Kit had left the books he'd bought, balanced precariously on top of a stack of other books and manuscripts, and Tom stood and went over to look at them. He picked up Nashe's
Pierce Penniless
and began to page through it.

Almost at once he came to what Tom had written about Gabriel Harvey's brother Richard. “Thou great baboon, thou pygmy braggart, thou pamphleteer of nothing … Off with thy gown and untruss, for I mean to thrash thee mightily.”

Were these insults a fit subject for a writer? Apparently so, apparently, as Greene had shown, one could write a book about anything. Kyd read on in amazement, coming to Nashe's words on Richard Harvey's book
The Lamb of God:
“I could not refrain but bequeath it to the privy, leaf by leaf as I read it, it was so ugly, dorbellical and lumpish. Monstrous, monstrous … not to be spoken of in a Christian congregation …”

Robert Greene had been right: Nashe could only make enemies with these words. Robert had been right about a great many things, Tom Kyd thought; both the men he had mentioned could profit from his words, if only they would listen. But nay, they were too fond of their follies, each of them.