In separate crimson frames:

Sir Francis Drake, Sir Walter Raleigh, Ben Jonson, Shakespeare:

A mirage of Armada, sails rattling, guns roaring...

At sea, Sir Francis tells yarn of brave seamanship:

a man stabs another in the eye with a dagger.

Silence.

Stratford

August 5, 1615

S

pelling G.o.d backward gets dull after a while: at the clandestine meetings where Raleigh, Greene, Marlowe, Drake, Jonson and others crucified everyone's beliefs, they gradually dulled their arrows, for me: I thought: Lucifer can smell too strongly of sulfur too often. "Am I not a mighty man who bears a hundred souls on his back!"- talk like this was to little purpose, to my way of thinking. How much saner to keep convictions to one's self: Yet some, surly as a butcher's dog, paraded their beliefs. Gulled, I never went too often: the suite, in the Duke's Thames house, had about it an air of trouble brewing, trickery, and the abrupt appearance of men-at- arms. The talkers walked or sat about, under brilliant chandeliers, shadowing their shadows on the polished floors, starched cuffs thrown back over satin sofas.

Whiffs of cologne and perfume over-topped the whiff of garret. Rapiers shimmered. The Queen, if she chose, could do away with each of us: a nod of her wig. I seriously suspected all their pattery, branding it half-hearted conspiracy, mistrust and defamation. The pa.s.sage of time has confirmed, not denied my feelings: perspective has brought out the folly of guffawings at creeds.

St. Grouse's Day

1615

For weeks, after Marlowe's murder, I avoided the Mermaid Tavern. When a courtier from the Queen's court came to me at my apartment and suggested, with coughs behind his perfumed handkerchief, that I leave London for a while, I agreed... I was rather unaccustomed to such visits!

Meeting Jonson, as I left the city, sensing evasion on his part, I felt ill at ease, suspicion stepping in.

Later, he visited me at Stratford, brief visits, but he was aware of my doubts; my reserve must have told him.

Jonson said:

"The Queen has been spying...last week your London apartment was searched...if you're smart, stay away...she's making up her mind..."

I turned that over.

What could I pin on the Queen? What could she pin on me? Which play? A broadside? A pamphlet? With Jonson back in London I sent out feelers. When I was convinced that he was loyal I would remember that he had killed two men.

Queen? p.a.w.n? Right? Wrong?

September first

1615

Months after Marlowe's murder, I learned that the Queen had had hirelings kill him. I confided in Raleigh as we stood on a pier, near one of his frigates...the Thames wind whipping our clothes.

How well I recall his expression when I told him. Mouth tense, eyes afire, he grabbed at the hilt of his sword and exclaimed:

"I command nine ships. How many cutthroats do you think I have at my beck and call? In a fortnight, Marlowe's murderers will be dead. Our Queen will know that she has been out-maneuvered, that there are plotters keener than she. She killed Marlowe because he was too rabid an atheist..."

Those were vain words on Raleigh's part: he did nothing: I did nothing. How gutter-cheap we are in times of stress, how obliterative, given to expediency, wedded to her and safety!

Next Day

Come live with me and be my love,

And we will all the pleasures prove

That hills and valleys, dales and fields

Woods or steepy mountain yields...

And I will make thee a bed of roses

And a thousand fragrant posies...