Outside the Theatre Marlowe had to fight his way, unrecognized, through an unruly smelly crush of patrons, prostitutes, procurers and pickpockets. He arrived at the turnstile whisking at his doublet with the back of his hand in case something nasty had stuck to it.
‘Kit! Over here!’ Thomas Kyd was waving at him from the other side.
‘Tom!’
The gatekeepers let him pass and Tom closed the distance with a few loping steps. He was much taller, as fair as Marlowe was dark. ‘I thought you’d be late for your own opening.’
Marlowe beamed. ‘They hardly need me any longer. The words, after all, have long been writ.’
Kyd clapped him on the shoulders. ‘Such is our lot in life, my friend. But without our small contribution, the actors would have naught to do but fart and stammer.’
Marlowe had met Kyd shortly after leaving Cambridge. Kyd was a fixture of the Mermaid, one of the young lions of the theatre. His
Finally, after one particularly ale-filled night, they found themselves in the same bed. Marlowe pulled away from Kyd’s ardent kisses and said hoarsely, ‘I have a certain feature.’
‘Really? How intriguing. Is it very large, very small or very crooked?’ Kyd asked, propping himself on one elbow.
‘Do you swear never to tell anyone?’
‘I do so swear,’ Kyd replied melodramatically.
Marlowe got off the bed, stood, turned his back and lowered his breeches.
Kyd screamed in delight. ‘I always knew you were a devil! How marvelous! May I touch it?’
‘You may,’ Marlowe said. ‘It can take rough treatment.’
Kyd stroked the tail in fascination. ‘Does this peculiarity run within the bloodlines of your family?’
‘No,’ Marlowe lied. ‘I am the only one. Perhaps the only one in the world.’
‘This will be our special secret, then,’ Kyd said. ‘Come back into my bed as quick as you can.’
The two men pushed their way through the crush to the stage. In the wings Edward Alleyn, England’s leading actor, in the full academic robes and hat of Doctor Faustus, was warming up his vocal chords with a harmonic exercise.
‘Kit!’ he exclaimed. ‘And Tom! How’s the house looking?’
‘Oversold, judging by the crowds,’ Kyd said. ‘You’re looking the part.’
‘I look it well enough but will I remember it? I’ve done three new plays in the past week.’
‘Do not, good sir, forget my lines,’ Marlowe scolded. ‘Remember, the other plays were mere meat pies. This one is a top cut of beefsteak.’
‘I shall do my very best, of that you may be assured.’
James Burbage sidled over and escorted Marlowe and Kyd up a narrow staircase to one of the Lord’s Rooms where they surveyed the crowd.
‘Look at them all!’ Burbage exclaimed. ‘I hear there’s a mob at the gates, all clamoring for tickets. I’ll have to dispatch armed horsemen to keep order! Word of mouth is a powerful ally, is it not?’
‘Well, the play has it all!’ Kyd said. ‘Kit’s notions – summoning Mephistophilis with magic, selling one’s soul to the Devil in exchange for the secrets of the universe – these are heady themes.’
There was a flask of wine on the table. Burbage poured out three glasses. ‘Here’s to heady themes and frothy success, gentlemen.’
The stage manager called for quiet and announced the players to the audience. At the mention of Edward Alleyn there were rousing cheers. The Chorus marched onto the stage and the play began.
When the Chorus set the scene and exited, Alleyn, as Doctor Faustus, entered and at the mere sight of the great man the house erupted in cheers. He managed to stay in character as the robed Faustus while pausing smugly to let the audience exercise their lungs. Soon he was standing in an elaborately drawn magic circle of astrological signs, done precisely to Marlowe’s specifications. His voice boomed:
The audience gasped collectively as Mephistophilis appeared in a flash of phosphorus, green-suited, complete with horns and wings.
Kyd whispered into Marlowe’s ear. ‘Marvelous!’
And Marlowe smiled back at him, well satisfied.
The stagecraft intensified as Faustus, having made a pact with Lucifer to trade his soul for twenty-four years on Earth with Mephistophilis as his personal messenger, embarked on his journey of worldly exploration.
Alleyn’s soaring elocution, combined with fireworks and flames, enthralled the audience. When it was time for Lucifer to claim his bounty a terrible dragon of a creature rose out of the smoke, breathing fire. Overhead, shaggy- haired devils swung across the stage on wires with sparklers in their mouths. Drummers made thunder and stagehands made lightning.
And near the end, before being carried off to Hell, Faustus was granted his final wish – to see with his own eyes the fair Helen of Troy. Alleyn, his voice soaring, moved the house to tears.
By the time the applause had faded and the audience had largely dispersed, evening had come and with it a cooling mist. In an alleyway behind the Theatre, Kyd and Marlowe shared a moment.
‘Why must you go?’ Kyd pouted. ‘Come with me to the Mermaid. You’re triumphant, Kit. Celebrate among friends.’
‘I’ve men I must see,’ Marlowe said. ‘I’ll be there later. Wait for me, will you?’
‘I will, if you’ll come closer.’ Kyd kissed him, slid a hand down the back of his breeches and sensually stroked his tail.
In the shadows a lone man watched them for a while, then crept off silently into the haze.
*
At the Palace of Whitehall, within his privy chamber, Francis Walsingham poured Marlowe and Robert Cecil glasses of good French brandy. Robert Poley was there too, sitting by the fire, nursing a tankard, gloomy and taciturn.
There was a knock on the door and Walsingham’s private secretary announced, ‘He is here.’
Marlowe wasn’t expecting another party. With curiosity he watched as a small man, no taller than an adolescent boy, entered. He wore an academician’s black robe that scraped the floor. His face was wizened with age and he possessed the most remarkable beard that Marlowe had ever seen, white as a snow goose, bushy enough to hide a bird’s nest and as long as his head. The man was clutching a polished, inlaid box the size of a Bible.
