Cry Murder! in a Small Voice Read online

  Mad?

  But turning back, the boy said, “So. We know what bait our great fish rises to. I will lie and tickle for him: hook him by the gills.”

  “Is it not vice versa?”

  “It hath been; but here the grayling fishes for the cat.”

  “So I put the cat’s foot in the fire to draw my chestnuts out? I am no craven.” Here was the ulcer: what gnawed at him. “By Christ, I would unman him, make him eat himself, eyes, cock, and cullions, in Venetian sauce; but in the marketplace. As man to man. But to send a boy—”

  “A whore. An epicœne. Puellus. The greater his dishonor to be slain by dross.” Salt words; his eyes Atlantic, January. “I loved Peter, and I failed him. By the gods, I will avenge.”

  Ben threw up his hands. “I yield; but on persuasion. I abhor all practice; I abominate device.” A sigh. “At least, I prithee, carry a stiletto, as do Venetian whores. Thou knowest its use.”

  “I will be naked: not the knife but scabbard. If our plan miscarry—if it comes to sheathing—”

  “God forbid.”

  “—I will have means to end myself. So: the plot is laid.” Calder knelt to his chest, unlidded it; he lifted up a panel, and took out a quire of papers. “I told you that I made a pyre of fantasy; but these I kept.” The Minotaur and Ariadne. “This I got: from that same Nightborn.” And he handed both to Ben.

  A play. Or by its brevity, an interlude. Unsigned. And in the same fair hand. The same play that Whitgift acted, but unmutilated—and the worse for that. A poison apricock unpared. Ben read it, kindling. An atrocity: not only for the verse.

  “This wants revising.” He took the phial from his breast: a thumb’s end of crystal, stopped with wax. He’d bought it of a witch in Venice, Coquo’s aunt. “Here’s ink.”

  “I will inscribe with it his epitaph.” Rafe set it on the shelf with Whitgift’s colours. All at once, a mischief glittered in his face, though he spoke solemnly. “As you have prophesied”:

  An emperor, only in his lusts. Retired,

  From all regard of his own fame, or Rome’s,

  Into an obscure island; where he lived

  Acting his tragedies with a comic face . . .

  Sejanus. His own words: no idle flattery nor mock in Calder, but a pact. His hand. “He is our monster.”

  “Forfeited to vice.” His hand to it.

  “Is there a tryst?”

  “In a month’s time.”

  “So late?”

  “He did consult the stars, and found the day auspicious.”

  “At his house in Hackney?”

  “Aye.”

  “Reckless. I would guess his need past secrecy. But then, my lord hath ever had his will. Cannot conceive of his undoing.” Ben turned the paper. “Wast thou told to come alone? No servant?”

  “To let no man follow.”

  “Thou wilt need a sword at thy retreat. If he cry out, his servants will take thee.”

  “You do love a quarrel.”

  “As a cur does. Thou art greedy to let fall no scrap of hazard.”

  “God’s tree! An armed ruffian, bristling like a wounded boar, and snorting blood-frothed vengeance? You would not get in his door.” A pace. And then a dancer’s cadence and a clap. “So you must be my bawd. Mother Silence.”

  Astonishment. Mouth open: but the roar is laughter. “Hast thou seen a rhinoceros in petticoats?” But he remembered now a print he saw in Flanders, when he trailed a pike: Dull Gret goes forth to harrow hell. A great virago striding with her sword, a cullender upturned for morion, her apron full of spoil. He’d bought a copy for his mother; lost it in retreat.

  They spoke.

  And after, Ben went cityward. To Bread Street: he’d a mind to disputation and a dish of capons; then a city-wife he knew. A Whitsun holiday. He breathed the honest stench of London, strode her filth. And as he stood on the Southwark jetty, he found himself singing in his bombard bass, a snatch of nonsense:

  But those that cross Tom Rhinoceros

  Do what the panther dare not

  The boatman Charon, ambitinerant, hove to.

  “Eastward ho!”

  Hackney, Midsummer Eve 1604

  Door beyond locked door, the servant Nightborn led the player’s boy still inward. In a closet, now unlocked, a coffer; in the coffer, next undone, a thing of folded linen, stained: Venetia’s smock. He shook it out. And Calder closed his eyes and breathed it, dizzying. O it smelled of Peter, Peter: of his bed. And of his fear. And fainter, mingled with his scent, were waifs of other bodies, ghosts unlaid. How many boys had worn this to their sacrifice? But overlaid on all, the monster’s civet: he had marked it for his own. “This,” said Nightborn. “He would have you in this.” And Calder turned from him to strip himself, put on his lover’s death.

  Shaken, he turned back to re-assume his petticoats; but the pander’s foot was on them. “These stay.” He stirred them with his sword. “Nothing brought within.” He turned the player’s hands for rings, took even his silk earring. Naked thou came into this world, and naked shalt depart. The servant opened a great chest. “These.” And he tired Calder as a child in mourning, deftly. Oh, he knew this work. “Thou know’st thy part, girl? Speak as written. Silence else.”

  In lawn, in lace, in cypress, in a dying house, through room on empty room, the silent Nightborn for a guide, the boy walked to a certain death. His enemy’s, his own: but one of them at least would be in Hell that night. Stripped rooms, unarrased; eyeless walls from which the paintings had been wrenched. Dark rooms that spiralled ever inward to the Minotaur: his thread of blood.

  So Peter must have walked, his dark-drowned eyes aglance, from mirror to half-shrouded mirror, fearful of his own pale shadow. Calder looked for him in each, the rushlight of his hair. He’d dreamed of pulling him through shattered glass, of being pulled, at once the midwife and the birth: he knew not if he rose or drowned. They swam, ingeminate, in blood. But in each glass, he saw himself alone. And not himself: a child bride, widowed ere she bled.

  Nightborn halted, putting back a heavy curtain; he unlocked a door, as if the lord were prisoner here: kept in, or Theseus kept out.

  A chamber cold, high, splendid, with a great bed hung in scarlet. There in white and gold, his monstrous adversary waited: great-boned, saturnine, centaurian. Even in midsummer’s kindly night, he wore a heavy bedgown of branched velvet, deeply furred. A firestorm was in his chimney. Yet he shivered. Older than his fifty; painted as a lovely youth. And chancred.

  Calder sank: a deep, deep courtesy, most perfect in submissiveness.

  “In black?” A weak voice, petulant, short-breathing.

  “For my brother’s death, my lord.”

  Nightborn pinched. “Hold thy tongue.”

  The hand with its weight of rings beckoned. They flared in the firelight. The eyes, despairing in their mask of lead, looked up at Nightborn, as a dying man to his physician: not for poppy but a drachm of life.

  His master-servant bowed. “The Queen, my lord, hath praised your interlude.”

  “Hath she?” An ember yet amid the ashes. “Gloriana?”

  “Even she.”

  The old Queen? Doth he game?

  In the sooted eyes a flicker and a fading: which a breath would fan. “For conceit and brevity, my lord; for quaint array; and passing all, for your galliard. Your leap an admiration. She would have it played before th’Italian embassage.”

  “I must have gloves.” A quickening: he’d caught. “Go, wake my broiderers. The perfuming”—a turn of hand—“shall be of ambergris and orris.”

  Mad.

  “The boy—the Venice boy—”

  “Orazio, my lord? Hath arrows. Will be Love.”

  “Must sing my Echo.”

  Stark mad. He lives among his ghosts.

  “It will be done. But now—” A glance at Calder, and her cue: another reverence. “Your cordial. To raise your spirit for so great a work. A maid of Thessaly, my lord, her mother lately dead.” A stirring. N
ow the dark eyes turned to Calder, to the child in black. “Her father sold her.”

  His adversary gazed at him like something on a butcher’s stall; then chose. “Show me.”

  “Come, madam.” Nightborn disrobed the boy: turned him this way, that. Now priest. As acolyte, as offering, the boy played his part: the shamefast maiden, trembling at each disclosure. But as Calder endured, he studied. So: the chimneypiece upheld by satyrs. The arras of Lucrece. An Aretino open at the bedside. A table, with a golden casket. And in that?

  He was trembling like a hare: no act. It is a play. I can rework it as I will. A play.

  Having skinned his hare, the servant held it for display: a shivering virgin, naked in the smock. Avidity, a cold appraisal in those heavy-lidded eyes. “She will do.” He undid his cock. “Go.”

  And Calder heard a key turn in the lock. O gods. That other door would be a closet. Windows shuttered fast. His blood was snow.

  His captor led him to a mirror, stood behind.

  “What see’st thou, girl?”

  “My brother’s face. His death.”

  “That is not in thy part.” And Vere slapped him, so his ears rang. “So?”

  “As you will, my lord.”

  He slapped again. “My words. What see’st thou, girl?”

  “A whore.” The great eyes filled with tears. A trick he had of Timmins.

  O pity me who pipes and pleads

  for mercy at your mouth

  My maidenhead mine honor is—

  O reverence! O ruth!

  His lordship walked about and fiddled with himself.

  Calder wept and thought. Now he should begin to speak his own lines, Ben’s. And yet was thwarted. Yet the play must go otherwise: or he was dead.

  Shrinking from the tyrant’s gaze, head bowed, his captive crossed her arms across her childish breasts. “O fulgent foe . . .”

  “What’s here?”

  She cowered like a hare. No refuge but her smock.

  He caught her wrist, bent back her arm until she whimpered. “No. . . .”

  “I told thee silence. Thou shalt pay for that.” And he bared her breasts. Rouged paps.

  A gasp. His resurrection.

  Glee. Vere had broken his own spell; she could change the measure. Call the tune.

  “My lord, I am new-budded. Touch me not.”

  “Thou whore.”

  And yet unstained. No man hath breathed

  Corruption on my stainless glass.

  “She-fox.”

  He had pinned her fast. So close: she saw the runnels in the white lead of his face. The pox beneath. His stench of civet and decay near choked her. He pressed his revenant against her thigh. Full-glutted. Rubbed it up and down. She must not think of that in Peter, bound and splitting; she must yield to win. He pinched her buds. No acting: she cried out. Shuddering with thirst, he kissed them. Hard, to bruise.

  Let him not bite. Dear gods.

  But he shook free at last. His mouth, her breast incarnadined as if with blood; and slobbered. With the venom? Had he tasted? “Witch.” His breath raled and shuddered. “Lupa.” He unlocked his casket, and put back the lid. A bunch of scarlet cords—I saw the marks—a knife.

  Not acting. Why is it not acting? He is dead, yet walks.

  My lord took up the knife, a loop of cord about his arm; leaned in. Calder flinched but stood. A play. The cold knife at her throat would sever voice and breath and all. A play. “Off with that.” And steel cut string. Her Venetian smock slipped from Calder’s shoulders, falling down about his feet.

  Full nakedness.

  The knife hand slipped a silken cord about his throat; the other groped for his privities—

  And stopped. Astonishment, the hand still curved where nothing was. Or anything. At last, the sweat. The cord slipped loose, the fumbling dagger slithered in his hand. A whisper. “What are you?”

  A voice, neither man’s nor woman’s, spoke from anywhere.

  I and my fellows

  Are ministers of Fate: the elements,

  Of whom your swords are temper’d, may as well

  Wound the loud winds, or with bemock’d-at stabs

  Kill the still-closing waters, as diminish

  One dowle that’s in my plume

  And Calder laughed. A spirit played about their body, light as on a ship in tempest: here now, anywhere and nowhere, unconsuming. Helen’s fire. They saw it dazzle in the monster’s eyes—in each a midnight, and the steeps of air—as if a tree burned, roots to crown a lightning; yet was green.

  “I have acted in that play, a world away from here, and half a thousand years from now; I will have seen it at the stars’ beginning. It played to Lucifer before his fall.”

  Knees, ground. Hoarse breath and clouding eyes. The tetter had begun to spread. But, “I—I will be—”

  “Forgotten. Thou born of carrion, thou momentary gilded fly: proud only in thy generation. Buzz.”

  A frothing when he spoke. “Write this—in stone—he—”

  But now the agony. He toppled, writhing like a kid glove on a fire. “Hel—Hel—”

  The spirit looked in horror. Even he.

  Eyes open on an empty house. “Help, worms.”

  Down in Oxford’s buttery, fat Mother Silence held court. A watchful idleness: she drank less than she feigned, spoke more than she heard. A pity: for the devil kept good cellarage and knavish servants. How they gaped, how they tittered, as she railed upon her custom: gulls, knaves, conies all. ’Twas good as a play.

  Then to a catch, and clash pans. “Hey! we to the other world, boys . . .”

  Enter Nightborn in a black-ice fury. “Are you mad? or what are you?”

  The cook: “Why, master, we do wake the sun.”

  “Drink down the moon,” the pantler said.

  “All one. Methought his cheek was pale.”

  “Aye, sickly. He will die o’ love.”

  “Illicit, o’ the pox. All one.”

  Nemesis in falling bands advanced on Ben. “Thou. Chancre. Out.”

  “And why? There’s fire here below, to ease my poor old woman’s bones. And eight nine”—a counting finger—“ten black devils to wait upon me with eel pie.”

  He could palter as Will did, and to purpose: keep Nightborn, while my lord was metamorphosed into nothing and my lady changed. Enter: Boy.

  “Come, wouldst thou learn a new catch? Or wouldst hear an old ballad? There’s one in dispraise of Pluto’s kitchen—Saturn’s rather, ’tis a fault in grammar.” And she sang—sweet Jesus, what a voice! as if a crow had swallowed frogs alive:

  There I took up a cauldron,

  Where boiled ten thousand harlots,

  Though full of flame I drank the same,

  To the health of all such varlets.

  My staff has murdered giants,

  My bag a long knife carries,

  For to cut mince pies from children’s thighs . . .

  From above, a great shriek. “Plague! O masters, he is dying!”

  Snap! went the mousetrap.

  Ben grinned like a fox. Not his bulk but his spirit rose dancing, like a vixen on clicket: fire in greenwood. He poured himself a cup.

  “O pity on us! Come and help him!” Not they. Each for himself, they ran, shrieked, prayed, and gibbered, snatching up what they could lay their hands to: napkins, brandwine, silver, sausages. They ran like curs.

  Such charity would make Christ puke.

  And still the nighthag sat at ease. “Where kept my lord his tobacco? For my pipe is out.”

  “Go. There is death in this house.”

  “I trade in it. My profession and thine. Pander.”

  “Insolence. Go.” His sword.

  Her sword. “Anon. There’s a reckoning to settle.” And rising exultantly, Ben laid about him. An unequal brawl: Ben was hampered by his petticoats, so merely outreached the man. Brief and furious: he backed the villain to the pantry wall.

  The pander drew his knife. Dagger and sword now, cross
-parrying attack. Ben’s sword was flung upward.

  Breaking free, the other lunged.

  A parry. Ben feinted and fell back. And fell. A midden underfoot.

  The other man bestrode him, dropping his poignard: sword in both hands for a downward-driving stroke. Formality betrayed him.

  Ben kicked.

  A yowl, a slither, and a compensating hop. That stroke went far awry.

  And ponderous Ben rolled upward like a harlequin. With his sword he swept the shelf above him, and a hail of pewter fell on Nightborn, setting him aback. He staggered, shook his head: amazed. Ben seized a frying pan—O noble Gret!—and with a great clang, downed his mark.

  Kneeling on the pander’s chest, he said, “Now, thou fallst on thy dagger.” And he reached for it, half-buried in the rushes. “I will say thy speech for thee: O untimely! And so forth.”

  The servingman spat. “Player.”

  Ben drove it in between the ribs.

  Blood welled from the mouth. The eyes still recognized. And hated.

  “Thy master waits for thee in hell; go, wait on him.”

  Extinct.

  Ben took his keys; he closed the dead man’s hand upon his hilt.

  “God ha’ mercy.”

  Then he went to find Calder. A bawd and her punk had entered. Exeunt: Posthumus and Boy. As they left, he chalked the door.

  Southwark, All Hallows Eve 1604

  Two boys were talking in a great room, bare as any garret. Timmins, in his nightgown, said: “Wouldst thou do such a deed for all the world?”