Cry Murder! in a Small Voice Read online

  “No master-mistress, then?” Damn Will. “No cosset?”

  “What, should he make sonnets to his pisspot? ’Tis philosophy with him: what is, is for his use.”

  “And yet no Epicure to live in poise of pleasure. What he occupies he scorns.”

  “Set it down, Ben. Thou want’st copy of words.”

  “Sneck up.” A bearish cuff, which Armin—seemingly unmoving—ducked.

  “Yet there was one, a mistress mastered him. And then an ingle that—I will tell it as I heard at bellows. Then was the round world in her swaddling. It had not rained twice since Adam made him galligaskins of a hedge. Armada was an acorn. Thou, great Ben, wast in thine absey-book, and hadst no more Latin than a bishop—”

  “Thy tale, boy.”

  “Vere took to him a whore in Venice—”

  Down stamped the can. “Dearer than Thaïs (for so I heard) and spent in her a thousand plough of land—horse, company, and all his towers—which she swallowed up like earthquake in her crack.” Aye, set it down.

  “Hide and hair. And cried, More meat! More meat!”

  “A very termagant—” A good theme, and Ben roused to it. “—and taller in her chopines than a Whitsun giant. Aye, a Moll, a cutpurse of your codpiece knave. She brags beneath her smock his breeches, such as Venice punks do flaunt.” His lumbering Pegasus aloft, he spurred.

  Where now is Kit to volley forth her dread?

  Each epithet a blaze and thunderstone?

  Or glozing Will, to rhyme this tyranny

  In cloth-of-gold, this cloven Tamburlaine,

  This Tartar farthingaled, bestriding—O!

  His little empery.

  A silence, and the fall and fade of squibs.

  “Have we a boy could play her?” said Armin.

  “Boy? Ranting Alleyn could not carry her. Yoke oxen to her pageant-car, they could not draw her. She out-queans the world.” Ben doused his eloquence in ale, as would a smith a sword. “Her vengeance? Tell.”

  “She gave him that he cannot spend: a pox.”

  A stamp. “O rare Tisiphone!” And a frighted potboy hastening up with ale, Ben flicked a drop of it to slake her lust. Then sank his fury, hissing, in the draught. He settled to expound.

  “With my lord ’tis alchemy inverse: his gold transmuted into mercury. (The fume of which hath mounted to his brain: naught else explains his verse.) From gold to mercury, and thence to tin: was he not ever at the old Queen’s doorstep, like a surly beggar, whining for monopoly?”

  “Nuncle, so he was.”

  “’Twas in him Jovial, high god of catamites and tin. And thence—” A darkness fell and fleeted. Nothing: but a shadow on the wall, hawk nose and urchin back: the hirpling boy who made the fire swept the ash. A bugbear. Yet he shuddered. Even in that tavern frowst and roar, a black frost in his bones. And thence to lead. Old Saturn who devours his children. In that eye of winter, in the fume of mercury—a lickerous, flickering blacksilver—sat Lord Oxford, cold and saturnine, a shadow of the king of shadows. Damned fantasy: but still Ben saw it, clear as on a stage. All but extinct: his fire ash, he fed it with a hekatomb of boys, a bonefire of their flesh.

  “Nuncle?”

  His hand, palm outward: hold.

  Time’s vengeance: death-in-life. Is’t not enough? said Reason.

  So: to die at last, as all men die in time? Not all. Not as Ben his son had died, untimely. Not as Peter Whitgift died. Those innocents were laid in earth; the sacred monster lived to feed his dying lust on boys. Cut branches still in flower. Let hell rekindle him, and endlessly consume.

  Bah. Air and sophistry. He had no proof. Would not trust visions.

  And how many would be killed while conscience wrangled with itself? There was not time.

  He set the tankard down. “But the boy? The Ganymede?”

  “That tale was old when Solomon was yet a breeching boy, and Arthur whipped his top. Come back from his Italian travels, Vere brought with him a singing-boy for use, a rarity of Venice glass to spend in. They say ’a chained him like a pouching monkey in his chamber. Shook the chain to make him scold. They say the old Queen bid him sing, and praised his voice, and gave him silver: which Vere took. A queer name—now what was it? Orry Cockcrow.”

  “And?”

  “He ran away.”

  “Is’t all?”

  “Is’t nothing to have scaped the minotaur? Brave Thessyus himself had failed, were it not for Arianty’s garter.”

  “He alone?”

  “Am I the moon, to see all mischief? Here’s Dame Durden’s Bet took half a pair of stockings and a silver thimble, for that her mistress boxed her ears. Did I see her snick the door behind?” Snuff sang, “Up the ladder and down the wall . . . An if I were the old moon, hath he spoken yet of what he sees?”

  “But lives he yet, thinkst thou? This boy of Vere’s?”

  A shrug. “And if? As good sieve th’Ocean for an elver.” He leaned a little in and plucked from Ben’s left ear the angel. Showed it: obverse; face. Not lancing Michael now, but Dionysus; nor the Ship, but Arion.

  Maze-drunk, thought Ben. He shook his head to clear it. “Nothing missed?”

  The gold was now a heap of silver, dwindling in Armin’s hand to two small coins. Cracked testers: which on tossing in the air, were vanished. “Nothing worth. But one or two light trinkets of his lordship’s . . . privy purse.”

  Ben crowed and stamped, called out for ale; and for a time drank silent. Brow on fist. “Did not his lordship keep a company of boys?”

  “To act for him? Aye, pretty marmosets, and Vere himself wrote musty interludes for them to play.”

  “Did he so?” A spark on tinder.

  “My nuncle Tarleton—he was not yet in the Fool’s Cap then, the stars were not yet seven—Dick he kept to wake ’em after with a jig.” The young fool touched his eyes—what, rain? He smiled. “Ah, long ago, sweet fool. The moon’s his tabor now, the stars his Bergamask; the very sun now rises to his pipe.”

  Long ago, aye. Ben remembered. He, the bricklayer’s prentice—great lubberly fellow, tall amid the groundlings, with his patched coat and ragged Aeschylus, too greasy for the baker’s ovens—stood and roared. Unwillingly: ’twas Doric stuff, this clowning, all unworthy of the Theatre in her great descent. Yet irresistible. The dwarfish antick with his dub and whittle held them all, the very eye and O of admiration: he the earth round which the sun, moon, stars revolved. A very Ptolemaic fool.

  “But Oxford?”

  “He loved above all thing—beyond all venery, drink, quarrelling, conspiracy, or grudge—to make them act his comedies. In eight and six. As stale as Bartholomew gingerbread, Dick said, but brave in gilding. Kept his servants but to mouth his. . . .” A tilt of face. “. . .poetry. ’Twas played in camera.”

  “And?”

  “Thou know’st fools, our part: see all, say nothing but by elsewards. But this much ’a riddled me.”

  “And these mouthing boys, none lost?”

  “Peace, brock. Not every hole hath weasels in’t.” He beckoned for a cup of wine; was served. He drank. “My nuncle Dick, thou know’st, was a Master of Fence. He did challenge Oxford once—”

  “Why?”

  “For his gingerbread.” Snuff drank. “In play. As if in play. Vere said he parried not with apes. And had him beat.” A flicker on Snuff’s face: the fire, as someone stood. “And so the company dissolved.”

  “I see.”

  Now Robin’s voice changed instrument. “Here I lay aside all fool. As Burbage hath his crown: an hundred times. ’Tis artifice in me, and studied: not anointed.” Still that face at odds with itself, ill-matched—man? woman? spirit? That he could not doff.

  “This tale is new. ’Twas in that winter that the Globe itself was new; they played at Richmond to the Queen. I, Curtained yet, did wait upon my lord of Oxford with a Christmas play—”

  “I hear.”

  “At Hackney. ’Twas his own device, unsullied by the common breath. As well: that comm
ons would have mocked it halfway to the moon. It would have rained old herrings, rotten oranges; hailed nuts and eggs. The company was boys.”

  Ben’s fist thumped, softly, on the board.

  “Unworthy of his table, I did lurk in his buttery—”

  “Ubique nullibique.”

  “—like a dish for the banket, to be served up capering. And there did feast myself on quiddany and tattle.”

  “Thou art my Truepenny. O excellent old mole.”

  “His servants do fear him. Do avoid his eye, lest he make choice of them: for he hath delicates. ’Tis bending; or the whip and road.”

  “Yet more?”

  “His other weapon’s steel. At seventeen, he broached an undercook.”

  “And roasted?”

  “In a sort. ’Twas judged self-slaughter—”

  “Oh—”

  “Aye: ran himself upon the sword. As little pigs do in Cockaigny. His widow, great with child, turned beggarstaff upon the road.” Robin drank. “They do say Tom Brincknell walks, will not be laid. And others, glancing o’er their shoulders, sign themselves and mock their master: as children do who dread a bugbear. They do call his lordship sorcerer—”

  “What? How?”

  “Speaks with air. They say, to rouse his—spirits.” Armin drank. “But no more: for here the play begins.”

  “A comedy?”

  “Tragical mirth.” His outward hand to Ben. “All eyes.”

  He brooded wearily: a man of lead. “Here sits my great Lord Oxford in his chair, and gazes on his squeaking puppets. Yet as they speak, he rouses.” Now a lifted face, a lightening. “Mouths his own words, as they were ambrosia. O ’twas monstrous stuff! Cambyses is not mustier.”

  Ben cast his eyes to heaven. “No. Fourteeners?”

  “In part. Methinks ’twas a gallimaufry of all his youthful verses, gobbets ladled up o’erspiced, like thrice-cooked mutton. Or a suit of old snippets: here a sleeve he thought became him once; there buttons. ’Tis his only thrift.”

  Here the fool’s voice changed to piping: “‘My life, through ling’ring long, is lodg’d in lair of loathsome ways . . .’”

  Ben stopped his ears.

  “What, sirens?”

  “Umbrae. The unquiet ghosts of poetry that sinned against the Muse and fell.”

  But pitiless, the fool spoke on:

  Help man, help beasts, help birds and worms

  that on the earth doth toil!

  Help fish, help fowl that flocks and feeds

  upon the salt sea soil!

  Ben could not pipe, but like a bombard overblown, he squawked:

  Help plague, help pest, help pox of might

  that in my bones doth lodge—

  The one I caught in Southwark stews from

  Tom, Dick, Joan, and Hodge!

  “Who caught the trick of an Athenian—” The pipe now a rackett.

  Help ye that are to wail ay wont, ye howling hounds of hell!

  O Fates, come, come,

  Cut thread and thrum;

  Quail, crush, conclude, and quell!

  Ben snorted. “‘This passion, and the death of a dear friend, would go near to make a man look sad.’” Bless Will, pox rot him, for his all-serving lines.

  The fool looked soberly. “‘Beshrew my heart, but I pity the man.’” Swirling his cup, Armin said, “And mistrust him. Foppish verses, yet—” He downed it. “The story of it liked me not. Of himself, I doubt, though in a crooked glass. A youth of great nobility, despised and outcast—Oxford wept for him, I saw his tears—the scorn of lesser mortals. His triumph. His revenge. A disdainful lover—”

  “Who repents, disguises as a page to follow him—”

  “And is repudiated. Our fishwives scold more wittily.”

  “Most tragical mirth,” said Ben. “And she dies? Remorseful?”

  “By her own hand.” A silence. “The boy was beautiful. And played—O ’twas a stump, this play, too rotten for the burning, and its fruit a midden-heap of withered crabs; yet when he sang, you thought it blossomed.” He turned down his empty cup.

  “At Childermas, they found him hanging. In a garland and a smock. There was a letter in’s breast—”

  “What hand?” said Ben.

  The fool shrugged. “I saw it not. The crowner cared not. Two or three of his fellows, the boy’s master swore a melancholy in him, rising to an ecstasy. ’Twas ruled self-slaughter. The rope worth twopence.”

  “Hang him.”

  “Oxford? For a preening ass?”

  “A Paphlagonian. A Moloch of minions.”

  “Didst thou cast his water, like an empirick? Wouldst thou anatomize?”

  “Hang first.”

  “On what evidence? Bad poetry? Wind winds no rope.”

  “I will make one.”

  “Of his face? His manners?”

  Enter the Fool. Snuff, gazing at a glass of air, admired: simpering; then scowling. “‘Vanitie above all—’” So. “‘Villanie next her.’” So. “And in comes Retribution, like an old morality?” Nothing in the face, so poised between two faces: empty as a glass. He held his nothingness to Ben. The fool looked quizzical. “No? Yes?”

  “’Twill not play. The horse is dead.”

  Clack! went Snuff’s clapper. “Stand up, Dick!” A nod and shudder, and a four-legged bow—how did he that on two? And then a fearful fleshless girn. Death’s nag.

  Ben—even he, old warlike badger in his bloody coat—flinched back. No word.

  “The skull hath teeth.” The mad horse dwindled to a fellow in gray. The fellows who had turned and stared sunk back to drinking. Robin and his pranks. “What wouldst thou, Ben?”

  “Justice.”

  “That is heaven’s. Law?”

  “Cannot touch him: he skulks in his rank, as ’twere his labyrinth.” Ben’s tankard stood near full: no stomach for it now. Drunk anyway. “So thou wouldst temporize? As I do? Even as boys die?”

  “I drive not the action; the fool is commentary.”

  “Oracle sometime; or sibyl.” She misleads: he knew that. He defied her. Lion-drunk. “If heaven will not strike, then I call upon the player’s god—”

  “Dionysus? O be wary!”

  “Then his English fellow. I conjure Oberon: avenge thy children.”

  His challenge echoed from the walls. Talking, they’d drunk down the moon: the Mermaid empty now but for the boy who swept.

  Snuff plucked his angel from the air, and scattered it: it fell as leaves. “I’ll see thee to bed, Ben.”

  Ben stood asway. But dead sober. As if his oath had been a great wind and a frost, his mind was clear. Below, the smithy of his rage began its hammerwork upon his sword. “I’ve a mind to a pilgrimage,” he said. “Venice in Lent.”

  The Moorfields, Midwinter 1603

  On a hill beyond London wall there is a labyrinth, a foxway trodden deep in mud. In summer, maids do walk it as a charm, thrice three to lock a love; or backward, to undo a bloodknot in the womb. It coils upon itself, earth’s nave. But now at winter dusk, the ground is rimy, crisping with December. There the player’s boy casts Merlin to the wind, afire and flying. Go, he whispers. Tell him that I love.

  A glory, withering to ash. A dragon follows, and a bear, a company of nymphs. The air is full of momentary comets. Brightness falls.

  I serve.

  Great Oberon; poor Tom, his Maudlin after; Polyphemus, many-eyed with sparks; black Hecate; Dian of the bow, its silver swallowed up in flame. The last is Mab. Her chariot sails on, leaf-light. It dwindles to a spark. He watches, willing it to loft the hedge. Unseen at last.

  I come.

  A whorl of smoke arises from the furrow. Troy is burning. Calder does not weep, but stands, choked, whited with the ash of romance. All around, the flinders of his army fade.

  He does not see the countryman in green—a hedger? but he bears no hook—who glances, smiling, and walks on.

  Venice, Ash Wednesday, 1604

  In the shadows of a courtyar
d brimmed with wavering light, is hid a fragment of a boy in bronze. In ecstasy: his limbs outflung in tatters from his trunk. His clustering hair leaf-curled about his will-gill face. His bondage flight. His dance is scattered now. The old ones, hornéd, pricked, and fluted, wait: at thresholds, in the shoals of fountains, set on bridge-ends and in niches, drowned in silt: the keepers of the isles. Immortal, they decay: are smutted, streaked with mutings of millennia of birds; cracked; maimed. The patient gods.

  They wait the ass, god-bringing; for the green to whelm the stone.

  Toward light, a rumor in the stones, a rustling in the trash of carnival. A crying out amid the bells. And high to the eastward, in a wind above the mist, a wheel and flash and falling, like the sparks whirled from a brand. They crown a viewless ship with fire.

  And looking up, the sootblack boy who sweeps the courtyard, the glassmaker’s servant—he is ash entirely, eats coal; his font, they say, a furnace—Settiano crows; and hirpling, he unlocks the gate.

  By the White Lion, Venice, Lent 1604

  “Maestro Giansono?”

  Ben swung round.

  A pale-faced shadow out of shadow: eyeless, grim as justice. Even as he gripped his sword, he knew that steel was powerless: cum mortuis non nisi larvas luctari. None but hobgoblins use to fight with the dead. Yet would he face the thing.

  “Stay.”

  His lantern flared. A cloaked man stood within its wavering circle, hands upward turned. “See. I go alla bauta: I may bear no weapon.” The dreadful larva a mask.