Cry Murder! in a Small Voice Read online

  Ben had thought to be the thunder-bearing shadow; he had planned to say, Sono della vostra Fede. I am of your faith. Stood mute. Then spoke in words of conjuration:

  “dic” inquit Thessala “magna,

  quod iubeo, mercede mihi; nam uera locutum

  inmunem toto mundi praestabimus aeuo

  artibus Haemoniis . . .”[1]

  “Signor? Do you bless me? Are you priest?”

  “Poet. Acolyte of poets.”

  “Sèr?”

  “Your pardon. I am stranger here; I know not your Venetian manners.” Nor his tongue: la lingua thoscana he had learned of Florio would have to do, eked out with Latin. He raised his light. “Orazio Coquo?”

  “Sciao.” A leg, most graceful. And he lifted up the mask.

  Not the ruined angel Ben imagined, or the rogue, defiant in his filthy gauds and tatters; not the boy at all—for he was older than Will was, than Kit would be: no, a neat small fellow, like a parish clerk. But when he doffed his ghost, beneath it was a vixen. Sleeked and fatted on good market geese, to be sure: but there was the three-cornered face, insouciant, the sharp white teeth. The face was lined now, lively with time’s annotations; but the fox-red hair scarce dimmed, still curling to his shoulders. He’d a darker beard, the red of earth. Burnt amber. Though his belly paunched a little, he was slight and limber still. And now that he’d slung back the mask, in which he’d buzzed and boomed like a fly in a kettledrum, his voice was unmistakable: a child of the chapel. Tumbled out of heaven into baritone: but still exquisite.

  It spoke a buridda of Italian, the Venetian tongue, and English. “Come, sèr, it is being whoreson cold. The air is bad by night here. Tale aria cattiva! It is ill to venture in sta moràda buràna—Beg you. In toscana, nebbia. Inglese—?

  Ah, nebula. “Fog.”

  “So. Fog. Evil at the throat.”

  A crookback bridge, a maze of alleys, fog and stench. A city built of stone on slough, yet seemingly afloat, a bauble of its own glass. Gilded. Foundering. Syrenical. (A school of Nereids cried out to him, bare even to the tuft.) And to the far north, legendary here, swam London, great Leviathan: a monster all of daub and wattle. Older still than Venice, if the Troyan Brute were proved. Of Neptune’s brood. Yet seemed a hobnoll to this painted courtesan.

  Time’s paradox a glove, he thought. Young old turned inward out. Here I am, that was raw and passionate in Marlowe’s age: grown tetchy. There’s Kit, his Lucan still unfinished, plays unthought of. Overtaken: and would never now be thirty. Zeno’s poet. An I were that witch of Thessaly, I’d conjure Kit and say: translate me.

  Mazed, he saw only they were in the porch of some great building. They entered by a wicket; and still musing on the lost Pharsalia, he dipped and sained himself. A church. A great church, by the chill and echo. He looked up—

  Sweet Christ.

  —at the empyrean, the sphere of fire. Shadowed not as with the night but in his understanding, darkly through his glass. βλέπομεν γὰρ ἄρτι δι᾽ ἐσόπτρου ἐν αἰνίγματι.[2] Far below, he walked amid a wood of candles, honey-breathed: a starry heavens, poor and sparse beneath the glory of the roof.

  And at that moment came a little thunder of rising, and the rustle of pages: and the heavens sang. It was piercing with a knife of diamond. Matins.

  Ah, Ben knew this work of theirs. God’s company and His great theatre of one play: Christ actor in His passion, audience of praise. It drew forth his soul in awe, it ravished him; and he recoiled. All this beauty, power, meaning, art? Was masquing. Trumpery. And he thought of your bare-boards English theatre, of the ink in Paul’s churchyard, argument and counterblast: words, all words to conjure with. Fretted with golden fire. O brave Will. He weighed them, scale and scale: the empyrean; the Globe. An apple in each hand. The one of gold; the other, green and russeted: a windfall of the little gods.

  I am of your faith—but was he?

  “Here?” he whispered. (And when did Ben whisper?)

  Orazio nodded, quirked his chin at an image in a simpering ecstasy: “She knows.” His knee to her. (Ben’s knee to no one. He was stiffnecked; he was slow of rising. And his faith was argument.) “But in my room, where we are intimo.” And turning in the aisle, he clicked his tongue. “That Jijo, he is flat.”

  Here the jangle of keys at a little door. A haven from transcendence. A tiring-house: an overspill of robes, crowns, candles, music. Everything but swords. A workroom. Ben felt much at home.

  Orazio gestured at the muffled ecstasy without. “San Marco. I am not (of course) il maestro di cappella but I practice the boys. Malvasia?” From a cupboard, he took wine and glasses, and a box of sandy little cakes. “You are liking our Venexia?”

  “I have not seen her. I have been seeking you.”

  First of all in the marketplace, for news: all rumor and distraction. Gulls jeering, as ’twere Marston and Dekker. Shitting satire on the throng. The slab of inchling demons in a fishmonger’s stall: Beelzebub’s get, toads’ scaffolding, hobgoblins by the pound. A turbaned Moor who picked among the lemons, breathing them; held silver for his choice: moon for sun. Jews discoursing in a row of bookstalls—O ye Sirens!—in a sort of Ebreu Spanish. One, a lovelocked boy of theirs, stood reading what? Enraptured with it, by his glowing cheek. Here, courtesans bare-breasted cried their bodies, mocking at him from an upper window. Liofànte! Sér Naxón! Ti xe drio levàrse? One fed a monkey on a golden cord, with lumps of marchpane from her lips. Her sister, bending to caress her, pinched her pap. (His will rose, knocking. Would enter: but his purse denied.) Here, a beaked and prancing mountebank. A stalk of Jesuits; a leash of gaunt and eager friars on the hunt. A juggler swaying on a slack of rope: he danced, up-raining fire. His attendant thieves. Urchins. Harlequins.

  “Mi piace molto.”

  He’d lingered half an hour to watch a man blow glass. A fiery metaphysic, that: enspiriting dead salt, as if a second Adam were an Oberon, of air and fire; as the first is clay. Donne. Overdone. The exhalations of this place had turned his wits. And yet—he laughed for wonder—how it trembled on the rod, now ardent as a Seraphim, now pale.

  “My Julietta, she is dead five years.” A grief resigned, renewed and fading at a breath. “Three daughters living. Two are sisters, one wife. And by Micola, our Paolo, my good pupil. Thirteen.” A sip. “When I return—a great way, by Fiandra, Anversa, Savoia, Cremona—when I return I am, meno male, too old to be made castrato, thank the Virgin. But I may not have my old place at Santa Maria Formosa. I bring scandal.” A sip. “But my voice, my musicale: they are sopraffino. Should not be lost. So I busy myself, I get favors. The Patriarch—”

  Ben stared.

  “I flee this bad man’s servitude, you say. Another? And why? He does not cheat me. He is dangerous, but he is kind. He pleasures me.” He shrugged. “And only—you understand—the grazing. La passa pecora. That is not sodomy.”

  “You are—open.”

  “I am na mołéca.”

  “And that is?”

  “Un granchio? Cancer?”

  “Crab.”

  “So, crab. I cast my shell. I change: soft then; hard now. I go a sghimbescio—” With his hand, a sideling scurry. “Quick. I have my little claws. I pinch.”

  Ben eyed the malmsey. No. He had work. “So you fled—?”

  “Millort d’Voxfor.” The horns. “He is now Il Pantalone?”

  “No: rich no longer.”

  “Bene.” He spat. Rising, he listened at the door. “Halfway,” he said. Did not sit down again, but fidged with his beads, not telling them but twisting. “It is Giovedì Grosso. I am after coming from the church; he is before me in the way. He speaks me fair at first: I should be his page and sing to him, not God. So I ask mio pare, mia mare, who say, ‘This milord will make thy fortune.’ Five sequins, he gives them. But they have no joy of it: they die nella gran peste. I learn when I come back.”

  A turn. He paced.

  “And then he shows his hoof. There is a great storm
on the sea; I think the ship will split, as he split me.”

  Another turn.

  “Your England is cold. Your food is barbarous, always the flesh.”

  Ben thought of his supper. Sepe al nero, said the boy who slapped it down. Mermaid’s abortions a-swim in ink. They stank of canal.

  “I like not your cortigiani. I tell these men, He locks me. And they laugh. I am his monkey. I amuse.” A turn. “And yet—there is much good music in your court, Italian. We hear mass. I learn fagotto. And your great Queen, Elisabetta—ah, fulgida! Her rings are worthy of il Doge. I sing to her: of Sèr Cupido, how he his arrows break. And of his bow, la casta Diana bents her moon. La regina speaks with me most excellent Italian, like Petrarca. She strokes my fox’s head. Like hers, she says, and calls me Voxfor’s—cup?”

  Cup-bearer. “Cub.”

  “She wishes me to take her faith, the English heresy, and gives me silver for my nameday: which milord is taking. He is debt.”

  “And otherwise—forgive me—he abused you?”

  “Il cazzo di Voxfor?” A storm of Venetian, a blaze and sputter, like those goblin fish dropped living into boiling oil. “L’inquisizione, they ask me of milord. I am careful, lest I damn myself. I do not say, he kept me prisoner. They ask of much else. So: on fast days, did he give you flesh? No, sirs. Not: did he put his flesh in you? and did you eat? did he make you woman? They know; it does not concern them.”

  Ben looked the manuscript half-written on the desk, a Miserere—paper gave him strength—and said, “He is killing boys. Like you. Like Paolo.”

  “I believe.”

  “And I cannot prove it.” Fist on palm. “He is too great to hang, but for treason. The gallows tree bears no such fruit.” He turned about, penned elephant. “And having killed, he will go on. He has no measure in his wants.”

  “I know.” The blaze had settled; would not quench. “He thinks I am his shoe: he puts his foot in me, he kicks me off. Il suo cinedo. But I see him. I hear. He is naked with me. He cries out.” And lower voiced. “I know his secrets.”

  “You will tell me what you know?”

  No word of assent. But Coquo, recollected, spoke. “Il Voxfor con il Voxfor?” He stroked his cheek. “He loves. Innamorato. All else—tutto il mondo—is a table set for him: un banchetto di delizie. Maids. Paggi. He will say”—in Oxford’s prinking voice—“When women were unsweete, fine (yonge) boyes were in season.”

  Cherry-ripe, ripe, ripe, I cry, thought Ben. An Epicurean. Now Kit was used to say: All they that love not Tobacco and Boys are fools, and it set not his teeth on edge (though angels wept). Kit’s little bacca-pipes came willingly to mouth. He had not plucked.

  “He makes for me the plays—” Coquo took the glass Ben poured for him. “Often I will be a virgin, I must weep and plead him. He will say—” A draught, a silence. “He will say, Thy father sold thee—” For a space he cannot speak. “He makes thee whore.”

  “He will command me to his table in La Paduana’s gown, in sight of all the company, great lords. They stare at me: all white, the face, the neck”—he touched his breast—“all bare. The paps—rossetti?”

  “Painted.”

  “He would kiss them, he would taste my shame.”

  A growl from Ben.

  “And—” He spoke very low. “L’inquisizione must not know this, or I burn. You will tell no one?”

  Ben held his knife, hilt forward. “I swear by Christ’s wounds.”

  Orazio spoke softly in Ben’s ear. “By his sword he made me do this: I was Maddalena bending, I must wipe his feet with my long hair.”

  A year of this? thought Ben. And not madded?

  But lightened of confession, Orazio sat back. A little knife-flick of a smile. “He likes plays? Ha! I play Arlecchino to him.”

  He poured Ben a glass, and took himself a cake. Held out the box.

  “So: he would be a stregone. Inglese, vizard? Il Maledetto Milord. He brags—O to all his compari—of his negromanzia. Sbruffone! He can call forth spirits—”

  From the vasty deep, thought Ben, and groaned.

  “But he lies. It is magia to raise his own poor spirit.”

  “Stand up, Dick,” said Ben in English.

  “Sèr?”

  “Go on. I am bewitched.”

  “He will lie with la pagana dea—Elena?”

  “Helen. It’s been tried. Her lips suck forth my soul; see where it flies!”

  “Your incanto is better than his. More musical.” Another little cake. “There is much stregoneria: candles and chalkings. He is naked in his robe. Veni! he cries. Soft music, out of nowhere (that is Matteo occulto). What trembling! What orgoglio! Again, he cries, Veni! And a wind blows all his candles out—Hooh, hooh—but one (that is Marco with—un soffietto?).” He mimed a bellows. “And a third time, Veni! I approach, Sant’Elena. I am in milady Voxfor’s gown: he would not know it. O madòna! He is awe at me, this vixión. He kneels to me, he worships. Incantata. And his baccalà—his stockfish—stands. Adorat, surgit. I must bite my lip. But am I real? Fantasma? So at last he lifts my petticoats (in riverenza, sèr, believe me: as a holy relic) so to lick my mona”—the fig with his left hand—“and he knows that I am—” The fist with his right.

  “Pricked out for women’s pleasure.”

  “Sèr?”

  “A boy.”

  “And he beats me. But the trick is good.” Another cake. “And after, here in Venice, I ask mé nona, and she asks her sister, and they know a grima. And I buy a magic, but a little one: Xe mejo che non copa. It is better I not kill.” He crossed himself. “You tell me if the spell is good: there will be rumor?”

  He pushed the box of cakes toward Ben. “The last? No? Then I will.” He ate it in three bites, and licked the sugar from his fingertips.

  “His spirit will not come.”

  At the Sign of the Goat and Pipes

  This would be the shop, this cave of shadows. On the shelves rose sphere on sphere of crystal, Bruno’s worlds. Ben muttered his Venetian, waiting; watched a new world pale and glow. At the hellmouth crouched the boy at bellows, naked in a smutched red cap and clout. A sootblack, salamandry imp. He beckoned, fleering, and unclosed his eft’s hand on a—what? a sparrow’s heart? O hangman! He tossed it and Ben caught: a clot of glass, hot ice, a gout of witch’s blood. A charge.

  London, Whitsun 1604

  Light now, in the long May evenings: after a new tragedy, the loitering couples strayed into the grass, the green ways braided even in the city deeps. The hawthorn shook its linen out along the Moorfields. Smocks fell. The morris jangled. Arrows quivered and struck true. Great London played.

  Ben, returning from his voyage, skulked and loured in the alleys. A diet of revenge and cuttlefish had left him gaunt-eyed, great-boned as a cart-horse, with his upstart mane. Ere he could speak, he’d fallen on a tun and fleshmeat, Whitsun ox, outfaring Falstaff in his trencherwork, Homeric in his feast—Achilles’ self could not have wielded so victorious a knife; then called for puddings. With his first new breath, he spoke an execration upon Neptune, cursing all his finny tribe, save Mermaids. Yet his spirits drooped. His London seemed a thing of paper, like the rustling company in Calder’s roof.

  He’d a message to the boy. He went, as if the wherryman were Charon.

  At the door, Rafe’s mistress was effusive. A tincture of Ruddock will suffice: Boy? Harry—our new prentice, and a likely boy, a sweet Nerissa—had leave to play. A part for Calder? Moping in his garret.

  Up went Ben.

  The rafters now were stripped. Bare ruin’d choirs.

  “Praise be to Neptune for your swift returning.” Calder, leaping up at once, spoke low. “I have been watching at his rat hole. He is ill.”

  “Then he will die?” A choke of frustration; a blaze of hope.

  “No: he must kill, and presently; must drink to revive himself.”

  “Their blood?”

  His cheek carnation. But no nicety of speech: “I think their seed.”
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  “That he may procure in Moorfields; or might take at home, if he hath spitboys still.”

  “In ordinary. For a great dish, he is dainty.”

  “Thou knowest this?

  “He hath a pander: one Nightborn, fond of plays. A politic creature. No face of his own—or any man’s—but wears a guiling mask.”

  “Aye,” said Ben. “I know his back to me.” A fury swelled. “’Fore God, he sat upon the crowner’s jury.”

  “Then he serves the devil well.” A turn and pace. “He spoke with Hugh Timmins.”

  “When?”

  “After Easter, when the plays began. He took a week or so to mark his leveret. Late in April.” Calder’s voice was honey. “Ah, a witty boy. Would he sing for my master? A great lordship (though I may not speak his name), a high prince, but hath fallen into melancholy. Could not sleep but he could hear sweet music at his bedside.” Now gall. “And the pretty fool would have trysted with him, but that he blabbed to me.”

  An eyebrow.

  “No, I told him nothing of his peril, but distracted him with play.”

  “How, a cogging game at dice? A brace of whores? Brave roguery.”

  “A play at marbles. I was Troy: he sought to win of me great Helen, and bring down my walls.”

  A child. “So green a boy? Small harvest in the threshing out.” Ben thought. “Or does his lordship glut on seed in posse?”

  “On innocence. On fear. He kills us on the threshold, and we keep his door. Our dying his rebirth.” The boy spoke softly in Welsh, which Ben knew not. I have been a grain of corn. Turning, he looked out beyond the smoke of London to the unseen hills. “Peter was afraid of dark. You saw I left an orange for him on his grave. For his journeying. Lucerna in Averno. And afterward, made sacrifice.” Ben looked up at the rafters. “Their ashes for his company.”