VI
Smoke from the fireplace, smoke from the flames under a roasting capon, and smoke from half a dozen pipes of tobacco filled the Boar's Head in East Cheap. Shakespeare's eyes stung and watered.
'What's the utility of tobacco?' he asked the player beside him, who'd been drinking sack with singleminded dedication for some little while now. 'What pleasure takes one from the smoking of it, besides the pleasure of setting fire to one's purse?' The stuff was, among other things, devilishly expensive.
The player blinked at him in owlish solemnity. 'Why, to pass current, of course,' he answered. After a soft belch, he buried his nose in the mug of sack once more.
'It suffices not,' Shakespeare murmured.
'Pay him no heed,' Christopher Marlowe said from across the table. Marlowe had a pipe. He paused to draw in smoke, then blew a perfect smoke ring. Shakespeare goggled. He'd never seen that before. It almost answered his question by itself. Laughing at his flabbergasted expression, Marlowe went on, 'He is sensible in nothing but blows, and so is an ass.'
'Is that so?' the player said. 'Well, sirrah, you can kiss mine arse.'
Marlowe rose from his stool in one smooth motion. 'Right gladly will I.' He came around the table, kissed the fellow on the mouth, and returned to his place. The drunken player gaped and then, too late, cursed and wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his doublet. Loud, raucous laughter filled the Boar's Head.
Under it, Marlowe nodded to Shakespeare. 'You were saying, Will?'
'What good's tobacco?' Shakespeare asked.
'What good is't?' Now Marlowe was the one who stared. 'Why, let Aristotle and all your philosophers say what they will, there is nothing to be compared with tobacco. Have you tried it, at the least?'
'I have, four or five years gone by. I paid my shilling for the damned little clay pipe, and two shillings more for the noxious weed to charge it with, and I smoked and I smoked till I might have been a chimneytop. And. '
'And?' Marlowe echoed.
'And I cast up the good threepenny supper I'd had not long before-as featly as you please, mind, missing my shoes altogether-and sithence have had naught to do with tobacco, nor wanted to.'
'Liked you the leek when first you ate of it? Or the bitter taste of beer?'
'Better than that horrid plant from unknown clime.' Shakespeare shuddered at the memory of how his guts had knotted.
'By my troth, I was seeking for a fool when I found you,' Marlowe said. 'You have not so much brain as ear-wax; in sooth, there will be little learning die then that day you are hanged.' He leered at Shakespeare. 'And who knows which day that will be, eh, my chuck?'
'Go to,' Shakespeare snarled. Marlowe
'Well shot, Will,' Thomas Dekker called. The young poet whooped and clapped his hands. Lord Westmorland's Men had put on his first play only a few weeks before. He lifted up his mug of wine in salute. 'Reload and give him another barrel!' He drained the mug and slammed it down.
Shakespeare caught a barmaid's eye and pointed to Dekker. When she filled the youngster's mug again, Shakespeare paid her. Dekker was chronically short of funds; till Shakespeare's company bought his comedy, he'd been one step from debtor's prison-and now, rumor had it, was again.
Marlowe clucked reproachfully. 'Buying a claque? I reckoned it beneath you. The Devil will not have you damned, lest the oil that's in you should set hell on fire.' He emptied his mug, and gave the barmaid a halfpenny to refresh it. 'I pay mine own way,' he declared, drinking again.
'I am sure, Kit, though you know what temperance should be, you know not what it is,' Shakespeare answered sweetly.
'Me? Me?' Marlowe's indignation was convincing. Whether it was also genuine, Shakespeare had no idea. 'What of you, eh? I am too well acquainted with your manner of wrenching the true cause the false way.'
As Shakespeare had with Dekker, so Marlowe also had a partisan: a boy actor of about fourteen, as pretty as one of the girls he played. He laughed and banged his fist down on the tabletop. Marlowe bought him more of whatever he was drinking-beer, Shakespeare saw when the serving woman poured his mug full again. He'd already had quite a lot; hectic color glowed on his cheeks, as if he were coming down with a fever.
Marlowe blew another smoke ring, then passed the pipe to the boy, who managed a couple of unskillful puffs before coughing piteously and turning even redder than he was. Marlowe took back the pipe. He kissed the stem where the boy's lips had touched it, then put it in his own mouth again.
Watching intently was a tall, thin, pale man who wore wore a rich doublet of slashed silk. His tongue played over his red lips as he watched Marlowe and the boy. 'Who's that?' Shakespeare asked Dekker.
He pointed. 'I have seen him aforetimes, but recall not his name.'
'Why, 'tis Anthony Bacon,' the other poet replied. 'He hath a. liking for beardless boys.' He laughed and drank again. Shakespeare nodded. Not only had he seen Bacon, he'd visited the house Anthony shared with his younger brother, Francis, to see Sir William Cecil. He suddenly wondered what Anthony knew of the plot. Wonder or not, he had no intention of trying to find out.
Marlowe and Shakespeare weren't the only poets and players and other theatre folk dueling with words in the Boar's Head. Will Kemp had got George Rowley, an actor notorious for his slow thinking, splutteringly furious at him. As Rowley cast about for some devastating comeback-and looked more and more unhappy as none occurred to him-Kemp gave him a mocking bow and sang out, 'Look, he's winding up the watch of his wit; by and by it will strike.'
'I'll strike you, you-you-you.
'Is his head worth a hat? Or his chin worth a beard?' Kemp demanded of the crowd, and got back shouts of, 'No!' that pierced the smoke and came echoing back from the stout oak beams of the roof.
George Rowley surged up from his bench and did try to strike him then, but other actors held them apart.
Marlowe smiled across the table at Shakespeare. 'Ah, the Boar's Head,' he said fondly. 'What things we have seen, done at the Boar's Head! Heard words that have been so nimble, so full of subtle flame-'
Shakespeare broke in, 'As if that everyone from whence they came. ' He paused in thought, then carried on: 'Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest, and had resolved to live a fool the rest of his dull life.'
'Not bad, Will,' Marlowe said. 'No, not bad, and all the better for the internal rhyme. Purposed you that from when you began to speak?'
'An I say yes, you'll call me liar; an I say no, you'll call me lucky clot-poll,' Shakespeare answered. The other poet grinned back at him, altogether unabashed. Shakespeare turned thoughtful. 'Think you the like hath value in shaping dialogue?'
Marlowe leaned forward. 'A thought of merit! It might lead mere leaden prose towards the suppleness of blank verse.'
They batted the idea back and forth, nearly oblivious to the racket around them, till the pretty boy beside Marlowe, indignant at being ignored, got up to go. Shakespeare wondered if Marlowe would notice even that. Anthony Bacon did, he saw. Despite the lure of versification, the lure of the boy proved stronger for Marlowe. He spoke soothingly. When that failed to have the desired effect, he charged his pipe with tobacco, lit it with a splinter kindled from a nearby candle, and offered it to the boy. The youngster took another puff, made a horrible face, and coughed as if in the final stages of some dreadful tisick.
Shakespeare's sympathies were with him.
Regardless of Shakespeare's sympathies, the boy and Marlowe left the Boar's Head together. Marlowe's arm was around the boy's waist; the youngster's head nestled against his shoulder. Bacon watched them hungrily. Anyone looking at them would have guessed they were sweethearts. And so, Shakespeare supposed, they were. But Marlowe could not hide-indeed, took pride in not hiding-his appetites. The English Inquisition might burn him for sodomy. Secular authorities, if they caught him, would merely hang him.
