he'd wanted to. Shaking his head didn't make the memories go away. 'What then?'
'Why, then, sir, I bethought myself, should I hie me home, for that it was a foggy night and for that curfew would come anon, or should I stay yet a while to see what chance might give? Fortune brings in some boats that are not steered, they say. And my boat-the wight whereof I speak, you understand-'
'Yes, yes.' Lope fought to hide his impatience. Did this ignorant wherryman think him unable to grasp a metaphor? 'Say on, sirrah. Say on.'
'I'll do't,' George said. 'This wight came along the river seeking a boat. a€?Whither would you?' I asked him. I mind me the very words he said. He said, You could row me to hell, and to-night I'd thank you for't.' Then he made as if to shake his head, and laughed a laugh that left me sore afeard, for meseemed
'twas a madman's laugh, and could be none other. And he said, a€?Why this is hell, nor am I out of it.' I thought him daft, but-I see you stir, your honor. Know you these words?'
'I do. I know them well. They are from a play, a play writ by the man I seek. That your man spake them proves him that very man. Were he mad or not, you took his penny?'
The boatman nodded. 'I did, for a madman's penny spends as well as any other. He bade me take him to Deptford, to the Private Dock there, and so I did. A longer pull than some I make, for which reason I told him I'd have tuppence, in fact, not just the single penny, and he gave it me.'
'To Deptford, say you?' That was a shrewd choice. It was close to London, but beyond the city's jurisdiction, lying in the county of Kent. Till the Armada came, it had been a leading English naval yard; even now, many merchant ships tied up at the Private Dock. Lope knew he would have to go through the motions of pursuit, but any chance of catching Marlowe was probably long gone.
'Ay, sir. Deptford. He was quiet as you please in the boat-even dozed somewhat. I thought I'd judged too quick. But he was ta'en strange again leaving the boat. He looked about him, and he said, a€?Hell hath no limits, nor is circumscribed in one self place; for where we are is hell, and where hell is there must we ever be.' I had a priest bless the boat, sir, the very next day, to be safe.' He crossed himself.
Had he been a Catholic while Elizabeth ruled England? Maybe, but Lope wouldn't have bet a ha'penny on it. He also made the sign of the cross. 'I think you need not fear,' he told the wherryman. 'Once more, Marlowe but recited words he had earlier writ.' He wasn't surprised Marlowe had quoted his own work. He would have been surprised-he would have been thunderstruck-had Marlowe quoted, say, Shakespeare. The man was too full of himself for that.
'Are you done with me, sir?' George asked.
'Nearly.' Lope took out a sheet of paper and pen and ink. He wrote, in Spanish, a summary of what the boatman had said. 'Have you your letters?' he asked. As he'd expected, George shook his head. Lope thrust paper and pen at him. 'Make your mark below my writing, then.'
'What say the words?' The boatman couldn't even tell English from Spanish. De Vega translated. George took the pen and made a sprawling X. De Vega and one of his soldiers who was literate witnessed the mark. George asked, 'Why seek you this fellow?' Maybe, despite the sixpence, he regretted talking to a Spaniard.
Too late for your second thoughts now, Lope thought as he answered, 'Because he is a sodomite.'
'Oh.' Whatever regrets the Englishman might have had disappeared. 'God grant you catch him, then. A filthy business, buggery.'
'Yes.' De Vega nodded. He meant it, too. And yet, all the same, no small part of him did mourn the pursuit of Marlowe. True, the man violated not only the law of England and Spain but also that of God.
But God had also granted him a truly splendid gift of words. Lope wondered why the Lord had chosen to give the same man the great urge to sin and the great gift. That, though, was God's business, not his.
While he spoke in English with the wherryman, the soldier who'd witnessed the man's statement told the other troopers what was going on. One of them asked, 'Sir, do we go down the river to this Deptford place?'
'I think we do,' Lope answered, not quite happily. 'I hope the Englishmen there don't obstruct us.'
'If they do, we give 'em a good kick in the
George's boat wouldn't hold Lope and all his men. They had to walk along the riverside till they found a wherryman who could take the lot of them to Deptford. De Vega paid him, and off they went. 'Eastward ho!' the boatman cried at the top of his lungs.
Though Deptford lay just down the Thames from London, Lope was conscious of being in a different world when he got out of the boat. London brawled. Deptford ambled. And he and his troopers drew more surprised looks and more hard looks in five minutes in Deptford than they would have in a day in London. London was England's beating heart, and the Spaniards had to hold it to help Isabella and Albert hold the kingdom. That meant they were an everyday presence there. Not in Deptford; once they'd closed the naval shipyard there, they'd left the place to its own devices.
Lope hadn't been asking questions along the wharfs for very long before a sheriff came up to question
After Lope explained whom he sought, and why, Norris shrugged and said, 'I fear me you'll not lay hands on him, sir: he's surely fled. These past two days, we've had a carrack put to sea bound for Copenhagen, a galleon bound for Hamburg, and some smaller ship-I misremember of what sort-bound for Calais. An he had the silver for to buy his passage, he'd be aboard one or another of 'em.'
'I fear me you have reason, Sheriff,' Lope said. No, he wasn't altogether sorry, however much he tried to keep that to himself.
'It sorrows me he hath escaped you. A bugger's naught but gallows-fruit,' Norris said. 'And you have come from London on a bootless errand, which sorrows me as well.'
He sounded as if he meant it. Lope wondered if he would have seemed so friendly had the chase been for a traitor rather than a sodomite. The Spaniard had his doubts, but didn't have to test them. this time. He said, 'For your kindness, sir, may I stand you to a stoup of wine?'
Norris touched the brim of his hat. 'Gramercy, Don Lope. Eleanor Bull's ordinary, close by in Deptford Strand, hath a fine Candia malmsey.'
The ordinary proved a pleasant place in other ways as well. It had a garden behind it that would prove more enjoyable when the plants came into full leaf. The proprietress showed Sheriff Norris, Lope, and his soldiers into a room with a bed, a long table, and a bench next to the table. De Vega and the Englishmen sat side by side. The Spanish soldiers sprawled here, there, and everywhere.
As Norris had said, Eleanor Bull's malmsey was excellent. Sipping the sweet, strong wine, Lope asked,
'Can you find for me the names of the ships wherein Marlowe might have fled?'
'Certes. I'll send 'em in a letter,' Peter Norris said. Lope nodded. Maybe the sheriff would, maybe he wouldn't. Either way, de Vega had enough for a report that would satisfy his own superiors. Norris hesitated, then asked, 'This Marlowe. Seek you the poet of that name?'
' 'Tis the very man, I fear me,' Lope replied.
'Pity,' Norris said. 'By my halidom, sir, his art surpasseth even Will Shakespeare's.'
'Think you so?' Lope said. 'I believe you are mistook, and right gladly will I tell you why.' He and Sheriff Norris spent the next couple of hours arguing about the theatre. He hadn't expected to be able to mix business and pleasure so, and was sorry when at last he did have to go back to London.
Shakespeare had never imagined that one day he might actually want to find Nicholas Skeres, but he did. Skeres had a way of appearing out of thin air, most often when he was least welcome, and throwing Shakespeare's days, if not his life, into confusion. Now Shakespeare found himself looking for the smooth-talking go-between whenever he went outside, looking for him and not seeing him.
Skeres found him one day when spring at last began to look as if it were more than a date in the almanac, a day when the sun shone warm and the air began to smell green, a day when redbreasts and linnets and chaffinches sang. He fell into stride beside Shakespeare as the poet made his way up towards Bishopsgate. 'Give you good morrow, Master Will,' he said.
