Daphne Boy

Marlowe

The Fourteenth Tale of the Daphne Boy

by George Gauthier

Author's Note: This is a tale of an eternally youthful boy and those he encounters in England during the late XVIth century AD.

This is the fourteenth in a series of tales about an undying youth named Alexander or Alex in this story. The other stories in this series so far are 'Antebellum', set in the American South just before the Civil War, 'Daphne Boy', set in Roman Syria, 'El Dorado', about the conquistadors, 'The Erythraean Sea', set in Arabia just before the rise of Islam, 'Stupor Mundi', about the Sixth Crusade, 'Ferghana', a tale of the Silk Road in Central Asia, 'Zulu' set mostly in Southern Africa during the Anglo-Zulu War, 'Sol Invictus' set in the Roman Empire during the reign of the dissolute androgynous and sexually insatiable gay emperor Elagabalus 'Reniassance' set in Italy around 1500, 'Gupta' set during the Golden Age in India in the century AD, 'Palmyra' set during the crisis of the IIIrd century that nearly destroyed the Roman Empire, 'Tobago', set in the Caribbean and South America during the middle of the XVIIth century, and 'The Apostate' set during the age of the Roman Emperor Julian the Apostate in the mid IVth century.

It contains graphic descriptions of the male human body, of consensual and non-consenual sexual activity between adult males, and considerable non-sexual violence including combat. If any of this would offend a reader, read no further. This is not intended for persons younger than an age where they may freely and legally select their reading matter in whatever jurisdiction applies. It is offered for entertainment. If it manages to both intrigue and to provoke prurient interest, it will have succeeded in its aim.

It is as historically accurate in its setting as I could make it, with only minor poetic license for the sake of the story. This tale, after all, is fiction. It is not a historical monograph. Only the the playwrights Marlowe and Shakespeare are actual historical persons. The rest of the characters are not intended to resemble any actual person living or dead.

Readers who like these stories might want to try my 'Jungle Boy' series of tales in a modern setting, posted in the Gay/Authoritarian section of the archive. See also my series 'Naked Prey' in the historical section, my 'Mer Boy' series in Gay/Beginnings, and the 'Track and Field' series in Gay/College. For links to my stories, look on the list of Prolific Authors on the Archive.

Comments and feedback welcome at georgegauthierdc@gmail.com.

Chapter 1. The English Midlands, 1589

"Your turn, young Alex. Let the lads and the serving ladies see what exotic dances you have brought from the Continent. Folks, put your hands together to welcome Alex the Gypsy boy."

One patron guffawed and shouted genially: "A blond Gypsy! Now I have seen everything."

"Not yet you haven't--not yet, anyway." I retorted but with a smile. "Not till you have seen this genuine dance of the Danube Gypsies."

I then bowed to the audience gathered in the tavern, mostly locals including the tavern girls plus my fellow players and other stage folks, as I stepped over to the cleared area near the bar. As I went, I stripped off my doublet and blouse and tossed them away rather like in a strip tease. This was a dance you did in your hose alone (or preferably less, thought that would be a little too much -- or rather much too little -- for a tavern in Elizabethan England.) As it was I would be dancing bared to the hips in skin tight hose that molded themselves to my rump and legs like some kind of pre-modern spandex. Extravagant padded codpieces were already out of fashion, so I went with simplicity. Mine was a simple silk pouch attached by ties to the front of the hose.

I picked up a tambourine and coached the musicians in the simple tune that I wanted them to play. They caught on quickly. Then I launched into a suggestive Gypsy dance that I knew all would like. It had a catch tune they would likely remember too. The audience could not understand the sentimental lyrics in the Romany language, but love is a universal language, easy to translate into tone and movement, especially the way I gyrated my hips and swayed my slim svelte body. Soon they were tapping their feet to the rhythm and even humming along with the chorus. That tells you that you have won over your audience, something every entertainer hopes for with each performance.

I sang of a handsome young lover, a simple horse trader and tinker, despairing of succeeding in his suit with his lady love, the object of his affections being far above him on the social scale. In a sense the song and story were timeless and I like to think I did the young lovers justice. The evening was a warm one that spring day of 1589, and sweat glistened on my torso from the energetic dancing. I like to think that my movements and sweaty body suggested sexual congress. After all, as a wise man once said, the dance is a vertical expression of a horizontal intention.

One of those most entranced with my dance was one Will Reardon, the most recent addition to our company. Only seventeen the pretty Shropshire lad was graced with fine light brown hair and blue eyes. Will and I were much the youngest and shortest in stature of that company sharing almost the same height and build. We had been hired as boy players for our slight physiques, light tenor voices, and youthful looks. Adolescent males called boy players worked for the theater companies performing all the female roles, since women were socially barred from the English stage.

My performance was so well received that I did another dance to a livelier tune, this time without singing. I whirled and leapt and even added some acrobatic flourishes that had everyone smiling and clapping. Afterwards I sat at the table of the guest who had scoffed about the blond Gypsy. He was in good humor and bought me a mug of ale.

"Now I really have seen a blond Gypsy for I have watched Gypsies do just those sorts of dances. Well done young man."

I sat there in my tight hose chatting, basking in the approbation of the audience, especially the other players. All in all, it was a pleasant hour of so. Later, I went out to bathe before going to bed. My attention to hygiene was regarded as quite eccentric in those days, for I bathed at least daily. There I stood near the well, in the gloom of late evening, moonlight painting chiaroscuro effects on the corrugations of my nude body, as I sponged myself clean of sweat and dirt, never minding the harsh soap of the day. Will bathed with me but contented himself with a more modest ablution of his face and upper torso. He kept his hose on as he washed.

From the close attention young Will paid to me, I knew he felt some attraction to me, but was he consciously aware of his own inclinations? Even though I am shorter than most men and slight of build, I do present a pleasing appearance, though admittedly I am pretty rather than handsome. I had stopped growing at seventeen so had never attained my adult musculature. An inch short of five and one half feet (165 cm), my frame carried only eight stone seven (119 pounds or 54 kg), though I had a fairly strong upper storey for a runner and a wiry musculature generally. Still I was quite slender and boyish -- almost skinny, with narrow shoulders and a flat but corrugated chest and belly sporting well-defined abdominals. Regular exercise kept me at an competitive athlete or dancer's level of fitness. It was why I had the tight buns that I knew Will was ogling.

What Will could see close up was comely youth (a "cute twink" in modern parlance), apparently of no more than seventeen or eighteen summers and prettier than any boy rightly ought to be. I was quite slender and boyish -- almost skinny, with narrow shoulders and a flat but corrugated chest and stomach sporting well-defined abdominals, prominent ribs and sharp hip bones, with a firm round rump. The tracery of veins on my forearms, calves, and belly showed how very little body fat I carried. I like to think my manhood is more than adequate but I wouldn't be scaring the horses. It takes both my small hands to cover an erection, but only one when it was soft.

My features were delicate with an almost elfin quality: a flawless bronzed complexion, a straight nose, finely arched brows, a chiseled jaw line, high cheekbones, and large green eyes with eyelashes so long they could never have been meant for a boy, topped by a blond thatch. My naturally pale skin wore the tawny gold that results from long exposure to the Mediterranean sun.

Perhaps my young friend noticed the unusual lack of hair on my fore arms and in my pits or how the bronze tint of my skin continued unbroken by pasty white below the low waistband of my hose, as indeed it did. I had only recently given up my latest identity as a sea captain so I still retained the all over tan from those days. Aboard my own ship at sea in the tropics I habitually went naked.

Yes, I saw him gulp as he noticed. He was one of us then. Good.

It's not just that I was horny. True, my inclinations were quite as strong as in my true youth, but time and experience bring perspective and calculation and restraint. I had no need to rush things. Even if we never fully consummated our relationship, I wanted this young man's friendship. If that was all he was prepared to offer, a chaste friendship, I would accept it. I would not seduce him through trickery against his own true nature. That would be selfish and uncaring and ultimately unsatisfactory for the both of us.

As to why my age was only apparently seventeen, that goes back to my birth in the second century BC in southern Germany. For reasons I have never understood, I had stopped growing and aging before reaching my eighteenth birthday. By the late fifteen hundreds, I had seventeen centuries behind me, not seventeen years, but I still looked like a youth in his late teens. No, there had been no encounter with a sorcerer nor a pact signed in blood with eldritch powers. I cannot explain my eternal youthfulness, why I looked (and still look) like a boy in his late teens. It just happened that way. Something genetic at work, a benign mutation, I suppose.

Once I finished washing, I sat on a low brick wall and chatted a bit with Will while I air dried. He could hardly keep his eyes off me. I pretended not to notice, speaking of everyday things. When I was ready I walked up the outdoor stairs still bare assed. As I reached the top of the stairs and turned down the corridor to the room and the bed that we boys shared, I glanced back to catch the boy ogling my ass. He started guiltily. Again I pretended not to notice. This sort of seduction is such fun. Adding to the delight, I was fairly sure by now that the boy was yet a virgin.

Will and I then pulled back the covers of the bed we shared. It was by no means unusual in those days for travelers or even members of a household to share a bed. Furniture was expensive. Will and I had a tiny room to ourselves, little more than a closet really but it was luxury compared to camping out and sleeping on the ground under a wagon. Will stripped his hose off for bed. I was already naked. Like everyone back then, we slept in the nude, without a nightshirt much less pyjamas, a later import from India in the 18th and 19th centuries.

I almost laughed as I saw his eyes grow wide at my unself-conscious nudity. I blew out the candle and went to open the shutter. I knew the moonlight would cast interesting highlights on my slender form. Let him carry that sight into his dreams this night. I lay next to him, a hand's breadth apart with only a light sheet covering me from the waist down. The sheet could not conceal my hard nipples or the mound at the fork of his legs, but I was far too polite to stare. We talked briefly a bit more. I did want him to relax. I certainly was not going to force myself on him or to force the situation. He was too nice a kid for that. We drifted off into slumber.

The next morning I woke up from the dawn's light streaming through the open shutter. Will's face was on the pillow next to mine with a slender leg thrown over my own. His knee was actually touching my manhood. At this time of the morning, we were both hard and his erection had poked against my hip. I ran my finger along his shaft. The head had emerged from its foreskin and a clear drop of fluid glistened on the tip. I took a taste then breathed in deep to absorb the smell of this lovely boy lying next to me. I realized he must have ejaculated during the night during a wet dream. Was it about me? I wondered. I hoped so. Suddenly his eyes flew open, and he looked about wildly. Evidently still lost in the memory of his latest erotic dream, he wasn't sure what was fantasy and what was reality, but there he was: nude, erect, lying next to the naked young man of his dreams. Suddenly he look frightened.

"We didn't... I mean you and I, uh ... We're both..."

"Hard? Yes, That happen most mornings with boys our age, doesn't it?"

I let him off easy, not having to fully articulate his real question. Had we had sex last night, two males together? No we had not, but I was sure now that he wanted it, and at some point, he would get his wish, ours really. Let him come around to it in time, as he got to know me better. I was in no hurry. A languid seduction is just what both of us needed. A quick consummation would spoil my plans for this delightfully innocent young man. Also, I needed it to be his idea too. I never forced things on my partners. Having been enslaved as a youth myself, and on several occasions since, I valued personal autonomy. He hurriedly changed the subject.

"Er, how do you know those gypsy dances, Alex?"

I gave him an abridged version of my past encounters with gypsies. I had travelled with the gypsies many times over the centuries and learned their language, stories, and dances. In times of prosperity I had welcomed their caravans onto my property. Aside from their welcome company, I found it advantageous to cultivate ties with the nomads. They were conscientious about never stealing from friends and allies, whatever might happen to the possessions of my neighbors. I never took a cut, but I sometimes told them which noble had more wealth than was good for his soul, if you take my meaning. If I had to disappear suddenly, I could always hide among them, invoking sacred guest rights conferred on me and 'my kin' in perpetuity.

From that night on, Will and I grew physically closer. He did not object if I reached over and pushed a lock of his hair back from his pretty face, looking into his eyes with my smoldering gaze. The next night I grew bolder, softly caressing his shoulder and his pectorals and tweaking his nipples. I turned on my side so I could run my hand down his side to rest on his hip bone.

Within a week, he would not demur when I lay beside him and spooned myself to his back and backside, our naked bodies in total contact. He could feel my erection pressing against his cleavage but said nothing, just gulping and squeezing his eyes shut as I circled his aureoles with my thumbs. It was all I could do to keep from laughing, but that would have devastated the lad, and really hurt his feelings, not to mention damaged my chances with him. After a week he let me reach around in front to hold his ballsac in my hand and to stroke his erection languidly, not trying to bring on an orgasm but to get his pre-ejaculate flowing. Soon he was allowing me to swirl the fluid around the head of his glans, or to present a finger to him to lick off.

"Don't be shy. Take a taste of yourself Will. Here smell it first. Good. Now reach out with your tongue and lick it up. There. What do you think, now Will?"

"Actually it tastes kind of sweet, but not bad at all. Can I taste yours?"

I gave him a taste but even then did not push him too far too fast. I bided my time. He was fighting a losing battle against his own inhibitions. His body told me that he was clearly hoping for, but did not dare to ask me to bring him to an orgasm. I wondered if he had ever tasted own cum.

Then one morning I woke him with a kiss on his lips. His eyes opened wide with delight. I kept kissing him: his face, his chin, his nipples and down his chest. I swirled my tongue in his navel and tugged the sheet off his hips and down to his ankles. He sighed in acceptance. Now he was stripped, defenseless, and ready. He could deny me nothing. He reached up and grabbed the headboard and spread his legs wide, as if stretched in bondage on the rack. He was excited by what he hoped would happen but admitted that, though he had heard about it, no one had ever taken his manhood into his mouth. I licked his glans, tugging on the flange and poking my tongue at his piss slit, making him shudder as he closed his eyes and he gasped a plea. "Oh yes, please."

"Pay attention," I admonished. "You will be tested on this later." Surprise and delight danced in his beautiful blue eyes.

"Promise?"

"Definitely, but for now lie back and learn from your master."

He had a long ivory member, smooth not gnarly with veins, very like my own and truthfully a little longer. It took both my small hands to cover him and even then not all of him. No one had ever played with him as I did that morning. No one gives better head than another male and I had nearly two millennia of practice. As I licked him, his smooth cock started to plump up, losing its curvature, straightening and lengthening as the head, the only part of him hidden from view, emerged from the foreskin, to point toward the belly button. Then the cock lifted completely off the boy's belly, cantilevered out from the root, rigid but dipping rhythmically with the throb and beat of his heart, all the time leaking a clear fluid which spread in a limpid pool on his belly.

My hands and lips now caressed this exquisite boy, stroking the length of his legs, sliding along his flanks, delving between his thighs into his crack making love with my hands but touching the boy's proud cock only with my lips and tongue. I swallowed him to the root, snuffling in his wiry bush, sucking, bobbing my head up and down its length then pulled off just in time. The ball sac pulled tight against the fork of the boy's legs, its globularity in contrast to the cylindrical column of the engorged member. The head purpled, its tiny lips spreading open. Abruptly, with only a quick intake of breath and a tightening around the boy's half-closed eyes, his proud cock engorged beyond its previous impressive girth and began spurting and spitting his white seed onto his chest. Even after six strong spurts, the gism continued to drain from the still tumescent shaft but now in a slow flow, like a lazy river, emptying into and collecting as a pool in the hollow of the belly.

I used the tip of my finger to gather some of his chrism and brought it to my lips and then to his. I lapped some of it up and took him back into my mouth, sucking and tugging on a cock that the moment before has spit his essence onto his belly. He whimpered begging me to stop. It felt so good, it hurt. He shuddered as I teased his softening member, belly twitching as he practically sobbed with pleasure. I was happy too. I had so wanted his first experience to be memorable.

Later I did indeed test him on his lesson for the day. He proved to be an apt pupil, enthusiasm making up for lack of technique. That would come soon enough. All in good time. As indeed it did. Within two weeks we had explored each other's bodies thoroughly, inside as well as out, experiencing male love in all the ways that we are capable of it.

Chapter 2. London

Our changed relationship did not go unnoticed by our company. For one thing, we now rode our tumbrel or walked beside it bared to the waist, letting the sun kiss our hides. As the days went by I rolled his waistband lower and lower on his hips. He found he too liked showing off his slim but wiry physique. Soon the top of his hose was closer to his groin than his waist. Among ourselves the company now referred to the pair of us as the "lovebirds". Poor Will was so embarrassed at first though later he grew proud of the sobriquet. Whatever the strictures of the larger society, stage people are much more tolerant of same gender attachments.

The English Midlands corresponded to the early medieval kingdom of Mercia which I had visited a generation before the Danes put an end to that kingdom and seized its eastern lands as the Danelaw in the late ninth century AD. The countryside was much more thickly settled by the later sixteenth century, though forests and wastes still separated the country villages. I encouraged Will to join me in running the rough roads of the day ahead of our train for exercise.

I always try to keep up my speed and stamina. There is survival value in being fleet of foot -- more than once I had simply outrun my foes or gained a big enough lead to shake pursuit entirely or to hide or even to double back to spring an ambush. Mostly though I ran for its own sake. The steady rhythm of the long distance runner is hypnotic: the legs scissor like a metronome, the rib cage expands and contracts to take in great lungfuls of air, the arms pump to maintain balance, the feet slap the earth, all of which induces a state of day dreaming and euphoria. Moderns call it a runners' high.

Will and I had little to fear from robbers, two young lads naked to the waist, wearing just hose and soft shoes. Anyone could tell at a glance that we had nothing worth stealing. So we ran unmolested. Running ahead also gave us time alone away from our company, time to talk, time to share hopes and dreams. We could also stop off at a pond or a river for a swim, although twice mischievous village lad ran off with our clothes. Poor Will wrapped his arms around himself. With an anxious look on his face he asked me:

"What do we do now, Alex?"

"We wait, Will -- wait for our caravan to catch and provide us a change in clothes. Or we could maybe fool around..."

"What if they are watching ... those kids that ran off with our clothes?"

"Should we invite them to join in the fun?" but I was kidding. I knew Will was too new to male love to be so brazen. So I suggested we practice our acrobatics. This was, all at one time, useful, fun, and sexy. I rather like acrobatics in the nude. In ancient times all acrobats performed naked. The whole idea is to display the power and beauty of the human body. Dubious at first but enthusiastic once we got going, Will found himself smiling then giggling as he challenged me to match his feat. The practice helped him to be less self-conscious of public nudity. Good. His trim body was a delight to watch and he really needed some color on him. There were few enough chances in Tudor England for a boy to run around in the buff and to show off his body. I see that as the birthright of young males but too many societies have frowned on such brazen display of the human form.

Still Will turned body shy and embarrassed when our caravan arrived. He clutched himself as we walked up our wagon stark naked to rummage for a change of clothing. Since we were much the same size we could share my clothes. We did recover our hose and shoes that second time when the tavern owner dragged his mischievous son over by his ear to present the travelers with their filched garments.

We eventually reached London, our tour of the Midlands completed. Here we would winter over. Some of us would work as individuals for the theater companies permanently domiciled in London, others in other pursuits. The struggling young actor was a cliche even then. In truth I was a very rich man, really slumming with this acting gig, but it was a lot of fun to get away from the usual thrust and parry of the business world and go around strutting the stage.

Of course in a sense I have been an actor all my life, forced to change identities and tell tall tales as I moved from land to land or even to different continents. I can seldom stay for even twenty years with one identity or in one place since I do not age as others do. Through theatrical tricks I can give the impression of getting older over the years, even without makeup. I change my style of clothing, from the casual dress of of a youth to the flashy dress of a young man and later the more sober raiment of a mature man. I speak differently, first with the shaky unsure voice of a youth, then the confident voice of a young man full of himself, later in the more cautious and thoughtful speech of a man in his thirties. I changed my hair styles, from that of a tousled twink to the carefully groomed locks of a vain young man, to the shorter and more sober cut of a maturing man no longer in his twenties.

Such subterfuges can be effective for only so long. I do not like to rely on makeup except for very short term disguise. I spend far too much time in the nude exercising, sweating and swimming, cleaning my body in shower or bath to rely on such trickery as false crows' feet put on with ink or powders to make the hair at the temples gray. In my sleep my relaxed body looks especially youthful, as my lovers could plainly see.

After a while, even the people well disposed towards me, begin to wonder. The danger was not from them but that men of power would suspect me and torture me for the secret of immortality. I have no such secret to reveal. Hence, prolonged torture was always my greatest fear -- torture by those who would not accept the truth until my body was wrecked. True, I have considerable recuperative powers thanks to my remarkable vitality. Scars always disappear with time, but I could hardly expect to recover from all out torture.

Indeed I am not truly immortal; I simply do not age and I seldom get sick. My remarkable vitality includes an immune system that protects me from most diseases and mitigates the ravages of the worst. I even survived the Black Death, recovering completely. Still I am not invulnerable. Someday I will die from foul play or misadventure: a gun, a knife, an accident, a war, and earthquake, or shipwreck. Something or someone will kill me. Indeed my life has been one of continual ups and downs. I had experienced a complete reversal of fortune time after time.

There was something of a pattern in my centuries of living, where periods of wealth and freedom came interspersed with periods of captivity and slavery, even sexual slavery. The truth is that all my long life I have been both blessed and cursed by a lovely form and face that inspire admiration and lust in the heart of any male who appreciates a beautiful boy. I am small and pretty and uniformly bronzed from habitual nudity. So I looked entirely too much like I belonged to someone as his catamite or pleasure boy.

And if not already such, then I was fair game for capture and taming. With my androgynous if wiry physique and fine-boned features I fell far short of normal male standards in height, muscular development, and secondary sexual characteristics like beard and body hair. I was smooth even at the fork of my legs. Since I had stopped aging before my beard grew in I have never had to shave. The upshot of it all was I often wasn't taken seriously as a male.

I have had much experience of rape and sexual servitude over the centuries. Enslaved at fourteen by a Roman tribune as a spoil of war, I became my captor's catamite and body slave until sold on to a merchant in Massalia, modern Marseille. My new master also kept me nude and used me as a messenger and pleasure boy but later put me to work as a scribe as well. Set free by his will when he died suddenly of a fall from a horse, I traveled to the East and made my first fortune in Alexandria, working in a boy brothel while investing in mercantile ventures on the side. That is where I took up the Roman habit of having all my body hair, little as it was, plucked with tweezers. After several decades of plucking it stopped sprouting. Now I was completely hairless and would stay that way forever.

In the early first century AD I spent a few years in ancient Antioch as a Daphne Boy, enslaved for an unjust debt as a temple prostitute. The cult of the nymph Daphne is allied to that of Aphrodite, the goddess of love. Male acolytes, for that is what they called us, offered themselves to boy lovers. We were very popular because we were scrupulous about personal hygiene, trim and fit, and hand picked for our beauty of face and form. Although we could not chose our clients, the life was pleasant enough, with bright airy accommodations, good food, and decent treatment. The priests let us keep tips from our clients so we had a bit of coin to spend on our two days off per month.

Other periods of slavery before and since were not so pleasant. I had spent a year in the Colosseum as a gladiator, forced to fight for my life before the crowd. I became quite the favorite, fighting naked and armed with two knives. They called me the Killer Catamite because I was regularly given to my fellow gladiators as well as to rich spectators who paid gold for the chance to fuck me fresh from my latest combat, chained for their safety, still covered with my sweat, the dust of the arena, and the blood of my foe. Another time, centuries later, I was enslaved as a pearl diver in the Persian Gulf, forced to pleasure both the guards and my fellow divers.

Yet Fortune has smiled on me often as well. Longevity and centuries of life experience made it possible to accumulate several separate fortunes and to hide emergency caches of gold and jewels all over Europe, the Mediterranean world and beyond, though very few east of Persia. Some were unearthed by others. Their good luck and my bad, but I always paired me caches in each region for just such an eventuality. Of course, at this time I had no need to dig up buried treasure. I had financial and business investments all over Western Europe which I managed through correspondences with Dutch and Italian and Spanish bankers plus several trusted stewards. That was what financed my indulgence in a career in the Elizabethan theater.

The Elizabethan Era was one of those golden ages that mark the advance of human civilization, like Periclean Athens or the Rome of the Caesars. It marked the height of the English Renaissance and saw the flowering of English poetry, music, literature. and the theatre. It was not only a cultural flowering but an age of nautical exploration and expanding trade. Who has not read of the exploits of sea dogs like Raleigh and Hawkins, Frobisher and Drake. These men were navigators, explorers, privateers, and patriots. Only the prior year, the sea dogs had led England to victory over Spain's Invincible Armada.

It had hardly seemed possible. England was an underpopulated island kingdom while Philip of Spain could draw on the resources of not one but two vast empires with territories on every known continent. As King of Spain he ruled the lands of the Spanish Habsburgs in Europe: Spain itself, all of southern Italy and the islands of the Western Mediterranean that lay between, plus the Spanish Netherlands. Abroad, he controlled the riches of Mexico and Central America and the West Indies plus half of South America as well as the distant Philippines. As King of Portugal he commanded the resources of that world girdling sea-borne empire as well. Portuguese possessions included Brazil in South America plus a string of islands, archipelagos and coastal trading stations from the Azores, Canary Islands, Cape Verde Islands, all around the rim of Africa to Muscat in Arabia, India, and the East Indies.

By the dynastic politics of that era, Philip had claimed the Portuguese throne after the loss of the last Portuguese king Sebastian I. The man had died without an heir during a reckless crusade in Morocco in 1578. Philip had asserted his own distant claim to the Portuguese throne and made it good by force of arms. It is not well known in modern times but the Philip of Spain who sent the Armada h as once been King of England and Ireland as husband and co-ruler with Queen Mary I, elder daughter of Henry VIII. He was also allied by blood, religion and politics to the Austrian Habsburgs. With such odds, the victory of the English had seemed virtually miraculous.

Elizabethan London was a rapidly rising commercial center. Its many small industries were booming, especially weaving. Trade routes reached beyond nearby Western Europe all the way to Russia via the White Sea, to the Levant, and the Americas despite Spain's claimed monopoly on trade with her colonies there. London's rise as a port was aided immensely by the destruction of the great commercial city of Antwerp by the Spanish in 1572, letting London take first place among the ports on the North Sea. Immigrants flocked to London not just from the British Isles but from abroad. Among these were the Huguenots, French Protestants, the heart of their commercial class. Only the toleration extended to them in 1598 by the Edict of Nantes slowed the flow of this energetic populace for century till Louis XIV foolishly revoked it in 1685, returning France to official intolerance of Protestantism.

London's population rose to some 225,000 in 1605, up from a mere 50,000 as late as 1530 during the reign of Elizabeth's father, Henry VIII. In the center of the City, the houses of the middle classes retained their medieval style half-timbered construction, with dormers and gables and upper storeys that projected over the streets. Population density was very high, much like that in the crowded cities of backward countries today.

For fear of pestilence, theaters had to be built outside the City of London proper. The first theatrical district was located north of the City wall, in Shoreditch. Later the south side of the river became the main centre with theatres like The Globe, The Rose, The Swan, and The Hope.

I tapped some of my secret resources to enable us to live in more comfort than our earnings as boy players would allow. Will and I took up lodgings in one of the better inns in London, one I had purchased in secret. I insisted on fresh foods, clean water, frequent laundering of linens, and prompt service for which I paid better wages than others did. As always I try to be a fair employer, not taking advantage of the help, but I do demand and get what I want.

The staff at the inn were surprised at my insistence on having hot water for daily bathing for the both of us. They were flabbergasted when I imposed weekly bathing on the staff. Despite the higher pay, some workeers refused to bathe so frequently, so I let them go. I also had drinking water brought in by cask from a clean spring in Sussex though we mostly drank small beer against thirst. Drinking small beer instead of water was one way to escape infection. Due to poor public sanitation, local water supplies could be infected with cholera and other diseases. Now the process of brewing beer from malt involves boiling the water, which kills germs, and the resulting alcohol is also toxic to most water-borne pathogens.

It took him a while before I could persuade Will to part with his body hair especially under his arms and at the fork of his legs. Though all he had were mere wisps, he regarded those as tokens of his burgeoning manhood.

"You sure it isn't that so you won't get any hairs in your teeth when you go down on me?"

"It's about much more than that, Will, or even about shaving your pubes for the sake of hygiene, so you won't collect any critters down there or in your pits. It's also about making you smooth and touchable everywhere. It's about making your cock look larger and more prominent, sprouting right out from your belly wall. The root won't be hidden anymore in a messy tangle. As to tokens of manhood, your cock and balls are the true tokens of manhood, since your balls dropped. Hair just hides them."

"You really think so?"

"Look at it this way, Will. You like being naked. You like letting others see you naked such when we go skinny dipping in a creek or pond. You sleep naked under the blankets and never bother with a wrap when you go to the jakes in the night no matter who or how many might be watching. Lose the hair, and it would make you even more naked than you are now. Body hair is the very last covering, the last thing you can take off. Wouldn't you like that Will, getting as naked as you possibly could?"

He agreed though he was pretty nervous as I soaped him up then took a straight razor to the wisps at his groin and his armpits and denuded him, though the boy was visibly trembled as the sharp edge of the razor glided along the bottom half of his shaft and all around the root. Not that it really needed it, but I stretched out the boy's scrotum and drew the razor over that too, turning the blade so it glinted wickedly and threateningly in the candlelight as it ran over the ridges and curves of the boy's vulnerable scrotum.

For good measure, and because it was sexy and provocative, I shaved the boy's anal region too, though Will had virtually nothing back there. I just wanted Will to pose there, trembling on all fours, as I scraped a straight razor along his cleavage and then down the back of his dangling ballsac. The boy was so complaisant, naked and on hands and knees, legs wide apart, offering the most intimate parts of his body for inspection, for exploring fingers, and so trustingly, for the edge of a blade that could emasculate him in an instant.

Will stood up afterwards and ran his fingers over his groin and ass crack, relieved that everything was still there, though it now felt so strange and smooth. And yes, his cock did look bigger, more blatantly on display than before.

Will's hormones did the rest. The boy felt a wave of heat wash over him as his ball sac pulled tight to the fork of his legs. He erected almost immediately, his manhood tumescent, the engorged cock jutting straight out with its fleshy glans shaped like an arrowhead at the end. A string of precum hung from the head of his cock, all purple and swollen. I thought Will looked so very sexy strutting his stuff, hands on hips. It was a composition bursting with youthful male assertiveness.

"Gosh it does feel smooth and sexy. I think I am going to like it like this, Alex."

Living with Will was a delight. It was not just the great sex. He had a sunny personality and a fine character too: smart though not overtly intellectual, guileless, cheerful, level headed, and industrious. He was a lively conversationalist, talking fluidly and excitedly with everyone about everything. In short the boy was an incessant chatterbox with an insatiable curiosity.

Though assertive he was never rude or crude. He liked puns too, the worse the better, and would as soon elicit groans as chuckles. An accomplished mimic, he did hilarious imitations of our mutual friends and of some of the good and great we came across during our theater career. That said, he also was a dreadful gossip, though never a malicious one. That is how I remember him best, not in bed but talking and smiling, which he did a lot. His company was good for me as I like to think mine was for him.

Much as we enjoyed London, Will and I liked to get out to the country in warm weather a few days at a time, maybe a month, though we no longer traveled with theatrical companies. A little peace and quiet were welcome after the hustle and bustle of London. The greenery and the fresh country air was a welcome change to the stench of a crowded city of the early Modern period. I had never resided in England for any extended period though I passed through on business, mostly in the Southeast. This time we traveled everywhere in southern England and even beyond. We followed the Ridgeway Trail, ancient even when I was born, to the circle of monoliths at Avebury and the Uffington White Horse then south to Salisbury for Stonehenge and Maiden Castle (the one in Dorset).

Whether along the seashore or riverbank, Will and I could frolic nude swimming and splashing. I liked to carry him on my shoulders then dump him unceremoniously into the water, head first. He would come up spouting like a whale, then scull hard with his hands to splash water in my face. Or he would swim underwater, grab me around the waist and upend me. Turnabout was fair play, after all. I like grappling with him best of all, dunking each other or tripping and going under, our slick wet bodies in ever changing contact, touching, grabbing, holding. Sexual love is physical and I loved physical contact with Will's sexy body. And vice versa.

Once we clambered out of the water, we dried our nude bodies in the sun, often playing catch with a tin dinner plate which we used like a Frisbee. I loved watching Will running after the flying disk, snatching it out of the air. His coltish athletic form darted here and there, bending and twisting, jumping and lunging, occasionally tumbling to the ground, then bouncing back up, a kinetic and sensual display of clean smooth limbs, tight torso, and taut buns, all to accompaniment of laughter and jokes and excuses, like blaming a missed catch on a sudden change in the wind or a clumsy throw on my part.

Maybe it was the company or the sunny setting or the sheer joy of physical exercise, but the game always left our spirits exuberant with the love of life. When we finally stopped we came together and hugged. What a great way to have fun. It was a form of play that was noncompetitive, good exercise, and a wonderful way for two young males to bond.

Then we would settle on the sand or the grass for a picnic lunch including a nice white wine we had left cooling in the water. It was a welcome change of pace to be outdoors in the nude, the warmth of the sun kissing our limbs, the smell of the sea or woods in our nostrils, sometimes with spring wildflowers turning the surrounding field into a magic carpet of color. Will and I liked to go around just before we were ready to leave and pick a few flowers to grace our rooms back at the inn. There we were were two nude boys, bending over to pluck flowers, shamelessly displaying our bare bums. Sometimes we placed a particularly fine blossom behind our ears and kissed. It was wonderful smelling the perfume of the blossom and the scent of good clean boy together.

On visits to the south coast, we sometimes climbed to the ruins of an old abbey in Sussex, closed and looted by Henry VIII, perched on the bluffs above the shore. There we frolicked in a naughty way that would have shocked its former inhabitants. Or maybe not. There are all those stories of licentious monks though much of that has to be Tudor propaganda to justify the throne's theft of their wealth.

We also visited the Lake District, which offered beautiful panoramas of lakes and mountains, called "fells" even though they rise up. (I have the same problem with the English calling a range of chalk hills "downs".) The reason there are so many lakes there is because of the low mountains which induce heavy rainfall. The Lake District is the rainiest region in England with rainfall averaging 80 inches (2,000 mm) per year. The area is cool and rainy and often foggy, with air and water temperatures too low for swimming (or prancing around nude) but it is great for hiking, walking and climbing.

Leave it to the English to call it the Lake District then bestow the title of lake on only one of its many large bodies of water, Bassenthwaite Lake. Except for the occasional tarn, all the rest are meres and waters such as Derwent Water and Windermere.

Chapter 3. Marlowe

One day I met up with Will at the tavern where we had taken lodgings, coming upon him chatting with a voluble and strikingly handsome young man in his mid twenties. Will introduced him as Christopher or Kit Marlowe. I knew the name. Marlowe was already famous as a poet and playwright. He had written the sensational Tamburlaine, one of the first English plays in blank verse and its sequel, Tamburlaine, Part II, both of which I had seen performed. I mentioned that to him, telling him how much I had enjoyed both parts. That brought a smile and a nod in appreciation.

Marlowe or Kit as he insisted we call him was graced with an intelligent and animated face neatly framed between fine arching eyebrows and a pointed chin. He was a good conversationalist and soon we were talking like old friends. I found the man to be utterly charming though quite guarded about some topics, like his foreign travels. It was only months later, after we grew intimate, that he admitted that while traveling abroad he worked for Queen Elizabeth's spy master, the formidable Sir Francis Walsingham.

Later I learned that Kit had been suspected of Catholic leanings, always a matter of suspicion for the authorities in a Protestant kingdom threatened by the Iberian powers. The talk was that Kit had traveled to the Continent to be ordained a Roman priest. The lead the authorities at Cambridge University to deny his diploma, but a letter from the Privy Council straightened that out. It helps to have friends in high places. At the moment the young writer was working on a play that eventually was staged under the title of The Jew of Malta.

"You two boys look scrumptious. I am also impressed by the variety of roles you have played with that traveling company. Maybe I can find work for you with some of the people I know in the theater. I am good friends with the actor Edward Alleyn who is head of his own company, the Admiral's Men. Their sponsor is no less than Charles Howard, First Earl of Nottingham and Lord High Admiral of England. He it was who singlehandedly scotched the closing of London's theaters in 1584."

"Good for him!" I intoned sincerely.

I was impressed. Kit really did have friends in high places. I knew that Alleyn was the leading actor of the day and that Marlowe had written the lead role in Tamburlaine specifically for him.

"So how do you think we should celebrate our new found friendship, Will and Alex?"

Our celebration began with a hearty meal and good drink and ended with a three way love-in in Marlowe's comfortable rooms. Marlowe had a nice lean physique though his skin was rather pasty from living in cool and rainy England. His bed was big enough for three large men, plenty of room for one man and two slender youths. He put me or Will on our knees, head down, rump up as he thrust away. If I were getting fucked, then Will would put his back to the headboard and present his cock to me for service. Or vice versa. We were bottom boys and loved having both our holes filled at the same time. That was our pattern most of the time. Kit seldom let us fuck him though he would reciprocate our oral service. He certainly knew what he was doing in that department.

Outside of the bedroom, we three became fast friends, attending performances at all the playhouses, strolling the street fairs, taking part in holiday celebrations, dining together frequently, and playing cards at the taverns, though only for low stakes. I could have made my living as a card sharp, but I had mastered that trade only so I myself would never get cheated. I passed some of the tricks and tell-tales along to Marlowe who had suspected that some of his regulars cheated. They did. Kit did not confront them, which would have provoked duels. He simply stopped playing with them. If they sat down at the table, he threw in his cards and withdrew. Others picked up on this. In time, the cheats found it hard to get their former marks to play with them. Serves them right.

Christopher Marlowe's reputation and connections gave us entree to Alleyn and his Admiral's Players. Our first parts were minor ones, just filling in when too many regulars were indisposed from illness or for crowd scenes. In short order our good looks and competent readings landed us regular jobs with the company. Besides the usual assortment of background roles as males: messengers, soldiers, or pages we undertook female leads or secondary leads. Our youth, svelte figures, and pretty boy good looks made us naturals at it. We soon edged out competitors and became, for a while, the most preferred boy players on the Elizabethan stage.

In time we caught the fancy of numerous stage door johnnies would offered comforts and coin for us to spend the night with them or even to live with them as their kept boys. For the most part our suitors were rich merchants, nobles, or men placed high in the church. It was quite common for low-paid boy-players to supplement their incomes that way. Even the straight lads worked as part time rent boys, what we call gay-for-pay these days. We turned all offers down cold. That angered some of our suitors. One of them spoke to me saying.

"Who do you think you are to turn me down, you little blond tramp? I know you run around in those skin tight hose of yours to troll for custom. I ought to tear them right off your skinny ass and fuck you right here in your changing room. Why be so exclusive? I know you bend over for Kit Marlowe, so why not for someone like myself, a nobleman and not a commoner, so much better favored and far richer."

"Sir, you misunderstand. Yes, I can run around and I can fuck, but I don't do either for money. As for Will, he is not for rent either."

I punctuated my remarks by producing a hidden dirk and pointing it at the man's groin. He left hurriedly. Will and I did accept straight forward invitations as guests at parties and gatherings. Our role there was to be decorative with the understanding that our company and our bodies were not for rent. Will and I broke many hearts in those years, to hear the dandies tell it.

Eventually my exquisite androgynous features and long blond locks made me the obvious choice to originate the role of Helen of Troy in Marlowe's 'Tragical History of Doctor Faustus'. My costume was padded in all the right places to provide a pert bosom over my own flat chest and to round out my narrow hips. Costume and makeup are not enough. To complete the illusion of femininity, a boy-player has to master the way women walk, quite different from a man's walk, as well as a repertoire of gestures and facial expressions. Mind you, I never cross-dress for fun, though I have found it useful in the short term as a disguise to help me escape and evade.

In all modesty, I dare say mine was a reasonable facsimile of the face that "launched a thousand ships and burnt the topless towers of Illium". Marlowe wrote that line for his Doctor Faustus with me in mind for the role of Helen.

One featured role that I played as a youth was Edward II's second male favorite Steven. I caused something of a scandal too for my stagecraft. I had persuaded Alleyn to let me add silent bits in scenes where I had no lines. In one, as a grand lord ushered a messenger into the king's chamber, I slipped out from under the covers stark naked and pulled on a tight pair of hose, though careful to keep my bum to the audience, then exiting unconcernedly. In another, I passed through the garden shirtless, sweaty, and out of breath supposedly from off-stage sword practice. I wore only tight nearly sheer hose rolled way down on my hips, kissed the king on the cheek, nodded to his disapproving interlocutors, then left. These were ways to make explicit what was only implicit in the script, that the king's male favorites were indeed his homosexual lovers and that he flaunted them before the court.

In truth I flaunted my body on the stage whenever I could, performing acrobatic stunts to warm up the audience before the play. It was not just juggling and tumbling, and handstands, but also really hard stunts hanging from a pole, holding my body out horizontally like a flag, or twisting my hips up overhead and doing splits -- feats that look impossible for a youth as slightly built as I am, but I did them. In truth, I am far stronger than you would think just to look at me. I maintain myself at a level of fitness that very few ever attain except guys like the ubertwink Eike von Stuckenbrok, the stunning German acrobat and modern dancer. (Check out some of the videos on YouTube or MySpace of this extraordinary and beautiful "equilibrist", as he calls himself. I don't mind admitting that I fell in lust with him at first sight.)

I also coached my fellow actors in their staged sword fights, showing them how to choreograph the action so it looked dramatic but was safe to execute. Even a blunted sword can inflict serious injury. You can easily blind a man with a careless move. Years later I choreographed the duel between Hamlet and Laertes with special attention to the bit where they switch the poisoned sword. For battle scenes, my main contribution was to drill the soldiers so they kept themselves and their weaponry out of the way of the principal actors. An errant pike could reach halfway across the stage.

I got up very early and used the stable yard of the tavern to practice with sword, dagger, throwing knife, and sling. Pistols were so primitive and inaccurate in those days, that it was hardly worth my time to perfect my aim. My skills with weapons are as much the result of constant training and practice as of my natural gifts of speed and agility. I had to keep them up. My hand to hand combat skills are also better than excellent though I had no worthy sparring partner to help me stay in practice. I did what I could. I taught Will some unarmed fighting techniques to well, mostly ways to disengage and disarm to allow escape from assailants. Will did not have the killer instinct in his heart. It was one of his most endearing characteristics.

Will got bigger roles too, sometimes as a male sidekick, more often as lady in waiting, good friend of the leading lady, tavern mistress, that sort of thing. He acquitted himself well and was in demand because he was a quick study and could memorize his multiple roles faster than anyone else. He had a good sense of timing on stage. Many of our contemporaries were far too anxious to begin declaiming their speeches, stepping all over each other's lines and their own. With the acoustics of the open roofed theaters and the sometimes restless crowds, an actor has to slow down, pause, and project, delivering his lines a little slower than with natural speech.

Though not well schooled Will was literate. He could read well enough to learn his parts, I introduced him to some of the more popular poetical works in circulation including those of Shakespeare. He also liked reading the cheap block-books, short and heavily illustrated, the best sellers of the day, their pages printed from whole carved blocks of wood rather than metal movable type. I loved to watch him reading, seated in a comfortable chair, sunlight streaming through the window and making his hair look almost blond. Then he would realize I was staring and flash me one of his open and honest smiles. He truly was a sweet lad, utterly without guile and happy with the life we shared.

Kit Marlowe was a frequent and welcome guest at the inn and in our bedchamber. His tall body was well knit, and he was nearly as fastidious about hygiene as we were. As a master wordsmith, he was an engaging conversationalist and had a fine sense of humor, funny without being cruel. He drank probably more than he should though he had a good head for alcohol. It did not make him truculent or boorish. I liked they way he would drop by and pick up a conversation right where we had left off when we last parted. He was fascinating company.

As my frequent guest he could not help but notice the modest but very real comforts I surrounded myself and Will with. We lived in a suite of rooms, really two airy rooms with a doorway cut between them, a bedroom and a study, both facing south for the sun. We had clean linen on our bed, wholesome well-cooked food, stylish and well-made clothing, Nor did I skimp on beeswax candles for illumination after dark. He was shrewd enough to realize I must have other resources to afford this level of comfort and hospitality. He actually interrogated me about my means.

"Alex, much as I find your company delightful and the table you set satisfying, in behalf of my sometime patron Walshingham I have to wonder if you are a spy in the pay of a foreign power. This comfort, though moderate, is far beyond the means of a boy player. I know for a fact that neither of you is a kept boy, not even mine, as much as I enjoy sex with you both. Please understand that if the answer if yes, then I will give you time to get clean away. I could not bear to see you put to the question in the Tower. And I know there is no guile in Will. I will protect him no matter what, for I am very fond of him myself. My word on it. Tell me. Where does your money come from? "

"All right, Kit. I give you my word that I am not an agent for a foreign power. It is true enough that I am a man of means, quite substantial means actually, far greater than these surroundings would suggest. Indeed I own this tavern. The fact is that I am heir to a large mercantile fortune in the Low Countries, all earned honestly. Before settling down to a hum drum life in the counting house I prevailed on the trustees of my fortune to give me several years in London, specifically in the theater to sow my wild oats. I am bound to take up the business when I reach twenty-four. Please don't spoil things for me. You are young only once."

Though Kit raised a skeptical eyebrow, he accepted my word and my story as good enough to assuage his conscience. He did not feel duty bound to report me to the authorities. I was gratified that he had been willing to give me a head start for friendship's sake and to take Will under his wing. He was a true friend. Actually the kernel of my story was true enough, as far as it goes. I was on a sabbatical from the world of business, like the spiritual retreat I once took in Gupta India as a saddhu or monk.

Then Will and I got caught up in the scandals swirling around our playwright friend. These centered on his alleged atheism, sorcery, and his sexuality.

As to charges of heresy and sorcery. It was nonsense. I was there. I edited his drafts of Doctor Faustus. Some hysterics seemed to think that the playwright was as guilty of sorcery as his protagonist, not being able to distinguish make-believe from reality. Of course the author had studied sorcerous incantations, to add verisimilitude to his text. He certainly did not subscribe to any of that magical nonsense himself. Anyway, all Kit's plays were passed by the censors, so they could not have been really unacceptable to the authorities.

Nevertheless, the word went around that Kit was a member of a shady group, men who studied science, philosophy, and religion, the so-called "School of Night", said to be satanists and pagans who worshipped the pagan gods at night. The group allegedly included politicians, poets and scientists like Sir Walter Raleigh, Christopher Marlowe, George Chapman and Thomas Harriot. Richard Chomley, an anti-Catholic spy for the Privy Council, charged in an affidavit that Marlowe had read an atheist lecture aloud to its members.

Now atheism at that time was a charge equivalent to treason, since the monarch was the head of the church. To be against the church was to be against the monarch, its head. However, atheism was also a name for anarchy, an easy charge to bring against the politically troublesome who wanted change.

Was Kit an atheist as his enemies charged? In those days, good Protestants would use that as a pejorative term for Catholics, a rather quaint usage I thought even at the time. A good Catholic after all had to believe in the five main deities of the Trinity: Father, Son, Holy Spirit, plus the Virgin Mary and Satan. That was two or three deities more than Protestants professed faith in. Was the man a disbeliever? In the end, yes. Like many skeptics and cynics down the ages he considered that the faiths of mankind were generally held to be true by the common people, to be false by philosophers, and to be useful by the state. I could hardly disagree with that assessment, cynical though it might be.

In early of May 1593 several bills were posted about London threatening Protestant refugees from France and the Netherlands who had settled there. One of these, called the "Dutch church libel", was written in blank verse and contained allusions to several of Marlowe's plays. It was signed, "Tamburlaine". Marlowe's colleague Thomas Kyd was arrested and indeed when Kyd's lodgings were searched, a fragment of a heretical tract was found. Kyd blamed Marlowe suggesting that when they had shared rooms, two years earlier, the document had found its way among his papers quite by accident.

Marlowe's arrest was ordered 18 May. Marlowe was not in London at the time but was staying with Thomas Walsingham, cousin of the late Sir Francis Walsingham, Elizabeth's principal secretary in the 1580s and then her spy master. His friends' influence got him released on his own recognizance, with the understanding that he should await their lordships' pleasure.

Twelve days later, on 30 May, Marlowe was murdered. And therein hangs the tale. What really happened? I was not there myself, but I am sure it was not merely a drunken brawl, as the authorities would have it, nor do I believe Kit would draw a blade on an unarmed man, one he knew well. Kit had spent the entire day with three men, all of whom had worked for the Walsinghams and the underworld. One of them was carrying dispatches for the Queen. The man who actually killed Kit, Ingram Frizer went to prison only briefly. Within a month he was awarded the to the Queen's pardon and went back to work for the younger Walshingham. The fix was in.

I am no detective, so I never managed to untangle the various threads, the most promising of which lead to the government. I judged then and still think now that Kit was likely was caught up in political struggle against his friends, the politicians identified with the School of Night. The charges of heresy must have been a smokescreen. Certainly the Church did not object to his burial in St. Nicholas churchyard, which is in Deptford, very close to where he was slain. Without a clear target other than Frizer, obviously merely a tool, I had no one to visit vengeance on. I was not about to take on the Queen's spy chief with so little to go on. Even had I been sure, I have to be careful. Taking on a government is really out of my league, immortal or not.

At the time rumor had it that the fight in the tavern was not merely over the reckoning, but over a rivalry for a "lewd love", i.e. a male lover. Kit's death was deemed punishment for his "epicurism and atheism." I was implicated in both. Many thought I or Will was the object of that lewd love.

It was certainly no secret that Will and I were a couple or that we sometimes took male lovers on the side. We had slept with Marlowe many times. This charge of "lewd love" was opportunistic. It can hardly have been news to anyone at that late date. If that were really Kit's offense they could have convicted him of it many years earlier.

Scholars still argue over Marlowe's personal history and character. Was he gay or not? Of course he was not gay in the modern sense of exclusive preference for the male gender. In Elizabethan times sexual congress with a lovely boy was often indulged in as a change of pace or to take advantage of a target of opportunity. I think it fairly obvious from his poetry that Marlowe appreciated a pretty lad at least as well as the next man and likely more than most.

Just read his enthusiastic depiction of the beauty of tragic youth Leander in his poem 'Hero and Leander', how all men loved him, even the fierce Thracians, how Marlowe compared him to the cupbearer of the gods, pretty blond Ganymede, Zeus' live in boyfriend, how much Poseidon lusted after the boy in exactly the same way Zeus did. Alas the youth met a tragic end, dying while swimming the Hellespont for his nightly assignation with his lover Hero, sadly, despite the name, a girl, a simple regrettable fact that the poet could not get around.

Anyway I can testify from personal experience that he certainly liked to sport with me and Will in bed. He was an experienced, thoughtful, and enthusiastic lover, going so far as to compose naughty couplets on our joinings as we cavorted in bed. I knew him for only fours years yet the impression he made on me is unforgettable. His was one of the five or six most engrossing personalities I ever encountered, my true loves aside. Another was Leonardo da Vinci, of whom I have already written in these narratives.

I think what I hated most about the whole sorry business is that it put Will into jeopardy temporarily. Sweet, innocent Will. At least I managed to extract us from the scandal well enough that we could stay on in London and continue our theatrical careers.

Epilogue

Taking a sabbatical from business and stepping before the footlights of the Elizabethan stage was a decision that I have never regretted. Okay, maybe it was my version of running away to the circus, but I not only had a great time, I met some of the most fascinating people in history. I had been not only been on hand to see the premieres of the works of Ben Jonson and William Shakespeare and Kit Marlowe, but I had known those men personally. After Kit's death, I worked for the King's Players in some of Shakespeares' productions. I like to think that it was boy players like me and Will who were the inspiration for all that cross dressing stuff in plays like 'As You Like It'.

Bliss it was in that dawn to be alive!

Will Reardon was one of my true loves. We were lovers, best friends, and fellow workers in a career that both of us relished. Acting was good for both of us. It got us out of a rut: me from the world of business, him from a lifetime of rural drudgery. He died of dysentery one year before the Virgin Queen herself, in 1602, at age thirty. I had him buried only paces away from Marlowe's grave. I think of him often, whenever I watch one of Shakespeare's plays especially the outdoor theater in Central Park or hear some phrase of his quoted so often since as to become a cliche. Bless you Will Reardon of fond memory.

Did Marlowe write the plays of William Shakespeare? No. Emphatically not true. I was there. Kit really did die at that tavern in 1593, twenty years before the death of the Bard of Avon. I saw the body. He did not go into hiding and ghost write Shakespeare's plays for him. The notion is silly. I myself have seen the Bard of Avon scratching away or pacing impatiently when inspiration faltered and a speech would not work. Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare, though sometimes in collaborations, and he had his bad days too. And bad plays as well (e.g. Coriolanus). At his best though, he surpassed Marlowe. That I must give him.

One last minute correction, made when this was just going to press: that tin plate Will and I tossed like a Frisbee must have been made of pewter. In my defense, may I point out that pewter is an alloy which is at least 85 percent tin and sometimes as much as 99 percent. So I was not far wrong.

Oops! My calico cat Winifred has just jumped into my lap to remind me that it is her supper time. Right now she is playing nice, purring, looking up at me appealingly, her body language indicating impatience but nothing more. Not yet. If I don't take the hint she will get more confrontational, putting her paws up on my chest to stare me in the face. If she has to, she escalates to kneading my flesh with her paws, the way she did as a kitten to signal her mother to let her nurse. Unfortunately for me, her mother had thick fur on her belly and I am sitting here in just bikini briefs. As a kitten, her claws were tiny little things. Now they are rather formidable when fully extended from the sheaths. Not that she wants to hurt me, not intentionally. Kneading is a signal, not aggression.

Nor does she try to hurt me if I am asleep though her method of getting my attention is rather assertive. If I am taking a nap she resorts to nipping my nose. I wake up staring into her green eyes almost literally nose to nose. Not that she is angry. She just blinks and waits for me to bestir myself. Then she steps off my chest so I can breathe more easily.

This evening, supper is canned tuna fish, packed in water. It is her favorite. Indeed "tuna" is one of the few words Winifred really understands, as far as I can tell. I just have to say it out loud and she gets all aquiver with her fur fluffed out and runs into the kitchen, circling below the counter, meowing till I set the bowl in front of her. Then she purrs loudly and glances up at me occasionally for reassurance before turning her attention back to the food. All the while I have to stroke her and talk to her encouragingly. If I leave, she will chase me down, meowing and carrying on, maybe stropping my legs, till I rejoin her in the kitchen.

Like most cats Winifred doesn't want her food just dumped in front of her like for some barnyard animal. She wants due attention paid to her at this, the most important part of her day, her dinnertime. Thus I must kneel beside her and stroke her all the while as she crouches at her bowl and gobbles her meal. I suppose the steady stroking reminds her of how her mother would lick her as she nursed. Not that I really mind. Feeding Winifred appeals to the nurturing and indulgent side of my personality.

She sometimes makes me think that I am her kept human. What is wrong with this picture?

That's why I won't be getting back to my writing, not with my lover Jeffrey due here any minute. I cannot let him see this narrative. He does not know my secret so I will send this off for publication and log off my computer. You can probably guess that I do not have a Windows setup. I gave up on Microsoft entirely with Windows 98. As I have said before, I am not a masochist. (Don't get me started on Vista which friends have complained about for years.) I now use an iMac. Count me a fan of Justin Long in those amusing PC versus Mac commercials.

Only recently could I write of these things, choosing, from caution, to cast them as fiction, a series of fanciful tales of an immortal youth written under a pseudonym. My secret is safe for no one in these days of modern science will believe it. In this tale, all of the names are real. The events described really did happen just as I have written.