OOC: canon, crypt scene

[no_sin_but]

pp.180-188

 

Skeres was sitting on a stone coffin and looking down at Master Shakespeare, whose coffin lay on the floor, the lid removed. Skeres was dressed in black, his face was as grey as the stone walls around him and only the lantern’s yellow glow gave any colour to the scene in front of us. He looked up without surprise and said, “Good evening…or should I say, good morning?”

“What are you doing here, sir?” Hugh asked in his powerful “Titus” voice. “Have you no respect for the dead?”

Skeres gave a twisted smile. “Oh, yes!” he said, glancing into the playwright’s coffin. “And for the living.”

“Master Shakespeare is sleeping with his dead ancestors,” Hugh said sternly.

Skeres threw back his head and laughed suddenly. “Hah! The difference is the dead ancestors will not wake up.”

“Nor will Master Shakespeare,” Hugh said.

Skeres rose slowly, like a black cat stretching. “Really? Why is that?”

“Because he is dead,” I said. My throat was tight.

“Then you won’t mind if I push this dagger into his heart,” Skeres said. A dagger glinted in his hand and his movement had been so quick I hadn’t even seen him draw it.

“That’s murder!” Meg cried.

Skeres opened his one good eye in wonder. “I don’t think so. This man is here because a doctor has said that he is dead. How can I murder a dead man?”

None of us had an answer. Skeres went on. “I did think it was strange that he is wearing making-up!” he said, wiping a finger over the purple colouring on the playwright’s neck. “You know, of course, that a corpse doesn’t bleed if it’s cut after death? Shall we see what happens if we make a little cut on your friend’s thumb?”

He lifted Master Shakespeare’s hand and pushed the point of his dagger into the thumb. Blood streamed from the cut. Skeres rubbed the sticky liquid between his own thumb and finger. “Now, why do you think that would happen? Shall I tell? It happened because Master Shakespeare is in a drugged sleep. He is not dead – and I am not so easily fooled. It’s an old trick that our friend the corpse used in his Romeo and Juliet play.”

“You’ve seen the play?” I asked. Somehow I couldn’t believe that a spy would know the plays of Shakespeare.

Skeres gave a thin smile. “I’ve seen the play. And it ends in tragedy – just as this one will end in tragedy.”

“If you kill Master Shakespeare, we will kill you in revenge – just like in Master Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus,” Hugh threatened.

Skeres snorted. “And my friend Ingram Frizer will kill you in revenge for my death, and so it will go on till there is no one left alive!”

“No,” Meg said. “We have already dealt with your friend Frizer.”

The spy’s hand tightened on his dagger. “No. He wouldn’t be beaten by a boy, a girl and a bag-of-wind actor!”

“You kidnapped Judith Shakespeare and bullied Anne Shakespeare into telling you where we were going. While you guarded Judith, Frizer went north to deal with us. But we’ve back here now, aren’t we? Frizer must have failed.”

“You killed Frizer?” he asked.

“No, we just sent him abroad for a while,” Meg told him.

“But I still have Judith!” said Skeres.

She shook her head slowly.

“Frizer would never betray our secrets. There is no torture that would make him tell you that.”

“Perhaps we found one,” Meg said.

“Liar!”

Meg spoke to him like a reasonable mother talking to a wilful child. “She was in the loft above the stable at the Hanged Man. You chained her to the wall. I set her free about an hour ago. She will be well protected in future. You have no more power over us, Skeres. Give yourself up.”

The knife moved as fast as a rat in his hand. I thought he was going to stab Meg and jumped forward, but he held the dagger over the sleeping playwright’s heart. “I have all the power I want. Judith Shakespeare never mattered. Nor do you three. All I wanted was this villain Shakespeare in my power. I have that now. If you blink an eye, this knife goes through his heart.”

“Why?” Meg asked.

“Because Master Shakespeare has to die. He is spreading Robert Cecil’s message through his plays. It is not Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth’s wish, so Master Shakespeare is a traitor. Traitors should be executed.”

“But he is a great man!” Hugh cried. “Who knows what future works of genius you are destroying?”

“There had been greater playwrights,” Skeres said. His calm mask was starting to crack.

“Like Marlowe?” Meg said suddenly.

He looked up at her with an expression of pain. “Like Marlowe,” he agreed.

“The man your friend Frizer killed?” she asked. Meg moved forward and sat on the stone coffin lid beside him.

“That’s right,” he agreed.

“You want Shakespeare dead because he is becoming even greater than Marlowe. You can’t bear the thought of Shakespeare writing those marvellous plays while Marlowe is forgotten.”

“Perhaps,” he admitted.

“Because Marlowe was a genius, and Marlowe was your friend,” she said quietly.

“Yes,” he said.

“Meg looked at him until he lowered his glance to the figure in the shroud. “Liar,” she whispered.

“What?”

“I said you are a liar. Marlowe was not your friend and you are not trying to protect his memory.”

The knife trembled in Skeres’s hand and I thought he was close to using it. “What do you mean?”

“I mean Master Shakespeare told us the story of the death in Mrs Bull’s tavern ten years ago.”

“Nine years,” the man said bitterly. “Nine long years.”

“Nine years, then,” Meg said with a shrug. “The story that everyone believes is that Marlowe was dozing on a bed, when he jumped up and attacked Frizer. Frizer defended himself and stabbed Marlowe in the eye. That’s the story.”

“And it’s true,” the man said.

“Here’s another story,” Meg said. “Marlowe was in deep trouble with the government. He was going on trial over some papers that were supposed to be belong to him. Papers that showed he was a secret Catholic.”

“Everyone knows that.”

“Marlowe knew he faced trial and torture and a long spell in prison. His friend Thomas Kyd only lasted a year after he was released from that sort of treatment. Marlowe was desperate for a way out. That’s when he met Skeres and Frizer in Mrs Bull’s tavern. All day they tried to think of a way to help Marlowe. Maybe Skeres and Frizer weren’t trying too hard. Maybe that’s why Marlowe lost his temper and attacked Frizer.”

“Maybe,” the man agreed.

“And in the fight Marlowe was stabbed in the eye.”

“He was.”

“But, in my story, Marlowe didn’t die. He lost his eye and he was unconscious. A doctor examined him and said he was dead, but the doctor made a mistake. In my story Skeres and Frizer saw Marlowe stir. They revived him. And they saw a way in which Marlowe could live on safely. Marlowe would be declared dead and the body of some plague victim could take his place in the coffin – it would be easy enough to arrange.”

Skeres bowed his head slightly to one side. “And where is this Marlowe now?”

“It’s just a story,” Meg said.

“Then…where is Marlowe in your story?”

“He changed his name, gave up the theatre where he would be recognized, and lived his life in the underworld of spies. It could have been done – a lot of the theatre people who knew him died in the plague. He was safe enough as long as he kept out of the Globe. But then he always knew that another actor had joined the spy trade. If Shakespeare ever met Marlowe through their new spy-lord Cecil, then he would recognize him. Marlowe’s nine years of freedom would be over. Marlowe had to have Shakespeare killed.”

The man half closed his eye. “So, this Kit Marlowe gave Frizer and me our orders.”

“Not in my story,” Meg said.

“So where is Marlowe now – in your story?”

Meg turned and looked at Hugh and at me. “Have you seen any one-eyed men around, Will? Hugh?” she asked.

“I only know one,” I said quietly.

The man on the coffin looked up. “So, you think I am Kit Marlowe?”

“It makes sense. You know a lot about the theatre – Romeo and Juliet must have been performed at around the time of your tavern fight. You have only one eye because you were stabbed in the fight, but didn’t die. You are keen to see Shakespeare dead – because you are jealous of his success and because he could recognize you. You took the name of Skeres when Skeres died shortly after your fight. Perhaps the real Skeres died of plague. A lot of people in London did.”

The man kept the knife in his right hand, but used his left to clap it softly. “A wonderful tale. You should be a playwright. If it is true – and, of course, it is a fantasy – if it is true then how will it end?”

“You must let Master Shakespeare live and then you will be able to leave England,” Meg said. “We’ll even help you.”

“And, if I don’t?”

“Queen Elizabeth will die soon, and then you ‘Skeres’ name will be no protection. But, if you go now, you can join your friend Frizer in France. Maybe you’ll get a pardon one day and be able to return to England.”

“I could still kill Master Shakespeare first?”

“There would be no need. He doesn’t know your secret – he never will, unless you are still around when wakes up and sees you.”

“You know my secret.”

“You don’t need to kill us either. We’re harmless… a boy, a girl and a bag-of-wind actor. Go now, Kit. Go now while you can. Ingram Frizer will have landed at Caen by now. You can join him.” Meg pulled her purse out from inside her doublet. “Mistress Shakespeare is offering you ten pounds to help you start again in France.”

His eye glowed in the amber light of the lantern. Out in the graveyard the autumn wind stirred and rattled the yew trees. Inside the crypt it was silent. Silent as the grave, in fact.

Slowly the man who called himself Skeres raised the dagger and placed it carefully in his belt. “If Kit Marlowe had lived, then he would have been a greater writer than William Shakespeare, you know,” he said.
”That’s what everyone in the theatre says,” Hugh Richmond agreed.

The spy looked up with an expression of pain mixed with pride. “They do?”

“I’ve played Kit Marlowe’s Doctor Fasutus myself,” the actor said. “Wonderful poetry – magnificent theatre. What a loss poor Marlowe’s disappearance was.”

“Ah, Fasutus.” The man reached out and took the purse of gold that Meg held, then rose to his feet. He walked to the entrance of the crypt and looked into the night sky. “Faustus was the story of a man who sold his soul to the devil and tried too late to claim it back.”

Meg rose and stood behind him. “It’s never too late. We can all change the way we live…if we really want to.”

“Can we?”

“You could have killed Master Shakespeare before we arrived and escaped easily. But you didn’t. Maybe that’s because you’ve already started to change, “ I said.

The light of the lantern barely lit his face as he turned to look at us one last time, yet I’ll swear I saw a tear in that diamond-hard, glittering eye. He pulled his dark cloak around him and stepped out into the blackness of the churchyard. He vanished as suddenly as a snuffed out candleflame.

“Was that the great Kit Marlowe?” Hugh asked.

“There are some mysteries that were never meant to be told,” Meg told him.