Kit: Heart of darknesse by davistrell@aol.com
Buggery was a death sentence for John Atherton, bishop of the parish, caught in flagrante delicto, with his proctor, John Childe. Hung, stretched by the neck till dead, on a Tyburn Gallows, with a humongously huge crowd, who watched. Eating rat-pies and jellied eels.Children laughing, eyes popping, tongues poking out, as with hands around their throats, they mimicked the sad pale deaths of the two, up on the scaffold.
Marlowe was in the crowd. He listened as a teenaged youth asked his father why the two up there, were being swung.
"That one, him up on t' left, him was Gannymede to the old perfumed she-goat, him what's dancing now, and soon won't dance nay moore."
Kit smiled as the boy obviously had no idea what his father was telling him. Maybe Kit should go over, explain, demonstrate. Then maybe not, after all, there was the object lesson, of what might happen, if libido pointed in that direction. And being a spy for the crown, one of the agents of the Star-chamber, was not going to be protection, not even for one such as Marlowe.
"But, faither, I disney understant..."
"Betterbe, you bain't, me boy, betterbe that ways..."
Kit could see the troubled look on the boy's face. And while the crowd crushed together, as the disembowelling proceeded, Kit took the time to lay his hands on the boy's shoulders, and without moving his lips, gave the quick lecture on the gentle arts of sodomy and fellatio to the bemused youth, and disappeared into the crowd, leaving a puzzled boy behind.
"Thart cain't be, cain't be....man being wumman to t'nother man?"
Maybe young Wart, might take up Kit's offered invitation to go to, the public alehouse on Ferry Street, 'The Duck's Breakfast'.
Kit Marlowe took his accustomed seat, in the 'snug' of the alehouse, and Mistress Underdone, served a walloping slab of greasy pork, with cloves and garlic, and a lamprey on the side, to wash away the taste, a flagon of mead, boiled-honey colored.
"Thau's urly, Master Christopher, you be meeting with that Felippe, the one's who cummat of Spain, again?"
"None of your bidness, Mistress. But my room, unrented, I hope."
"You and yer, well ...dint thau see whart happen up Tyburn, s'mornin'..."
Kit smiled at her, looked over the blue-veined cleavage, the fat behind, noticed how the buttons of her bodice were yearning to be free.
"Well, Mistress Underdone, thou wanst me and thee to mount, and of course for me, t'would be free?"
"For thau Master Marlowe, I'd beed doin' give t' payment. Thau's a good lucking man, why's you want to conjoin only with tha's ownlee kind, be a bemusement for me...Thart be best bunk up, I'd have me in many a long dee..."
Just then, and the Mistress, noted that the Spaniard, with the long black hair, the glinting ear-ring, the cruel eyebrows, the savoir-faire cut of his cloth, entered the hostelry, saw Kit, and came over and sat.
"Felippe, art hungry? Sample this, the pork, and if it suits, the lamprey is fresh killed...."
"Taken from the sewer-ridden Thames. I think not," said Felippe, his accent dripping with Spanish fly, amontillado, sherry-like. His voice dark like his eyes, fair smouldering, and the slight wetness on his lips, not for nothing had Kit nicknamed him, Diablo.
Young Arthur, called Wart, had found the place, down by dockside, the smell of last night's fog still clinging to the cobblestone street, and through the bottle glass windows, peered in.
He saw the man from this morning, the emerald green cape, the yellow pantaloons, the golden curled hair, the small rapier, at his waist. He appeared to be talking to a foreign-looking, handsome dark aristocrat, then saw the hand reach, to the head, saw the faces, come so close, and saw the kiss.
"Baint be possible. Man, doin a that to t'nother man. Bain't credible be. Wonder what they be doin, upstair..." he thought, as he watched Kit and Felippe, go up.
"I have coin missus, for one cider..." said Wart, having entered, and Mistress Underdone, one arm akimbo, stood at the base of the stairwell, where the other two had climbed up only minutes before.
"Childe, thou'rt luck hungry, hear, take rest off of, plate hear, Master Kit, has no need, and afore the lamprey get cold..."
Wart wolfed the blue-gray eel-fish, and took a draught of the untouched mead.
"So watts a boy like thau doin', dahn here, doxie side...?"
"Met a man, this verry 'morn, at the hanging. Told een, to come on over, as I hadd questions, to which een wurt promissed andswers..."
Mistress giggled. "That Kit, I faith, heet more, picking up tha pretty ones, then enny, Ight ever knewed...Thau boy't, knows tha' what tha's gettin theesen inta...?"
"Learnin' Mistress. I'm be much obligen to be taughted."
"Thau knows that he, Master Kit, is play writer..."
"Nah, get thee away..."
"Dit truth, god's forgivedness that I lie..."
"What beem eek had ywrote?"
"Thoau hurt of 'Tamburlaine'...."
"Noaht, tha's Master Marlowe's? Spooch me for a monkish fryer.."
For a room over-looking the wharves of docklands, it would do.
There was a bed, a chair, and not much of a view. If you looked really long and hard, you might glimpse London's Tower. The Prison, where the royal enemies were stowed, stewed, before decapitation.
Felippe lay on the coarse blanket, naked as the day he was born. A masculine beauty, hard and chiselled, like those favored by that italian, who in engravings, popularised by Ghisi, and Raimondi, currently being circulated amongst a brave minority.
"For this, they would sever your head..?" said Felippe, as Kit took the Spaniard's rich phallus into the English mouth. One hand brushing against the olive skin, felt the melons, that Felippe displayed so dramatically.
"No, for that, they hang you. This is what produces the severed head..."
Felippe gripped the grimy pillow, and if Kit had noticed, would still have ignored, the viscous tear, that rolled down the Spaniard's cheek.
"The Armada, tell of the Armada, Felippe..."
"I can't tell, I know nothing..."
With that, Kit took away the penis.
"You think I know all of Philip's secrets. He would marry Elizabetta, Gloriana, but she flirts with Essex, Richfield, Raleigh even. My King is devout. It will be God's will. Dudley failed with the German mercenaries...Somerset is mourned..."
Kit relented, and continued his interrogation. Felippe became more voluble. Pliant, like the Spanish whore he truly was....
Wart downstairs, his belly full, looked above. Mistress Underdone, looked up too.
"Man laike that, have een wrapt wit' legs around. Sookin' hard, all of een...." She licked her lips at the boy's words. Then she saw Wart, and saw him watching the ceiling, hoping maybe it would open up, and somehow he would be lifted up. Like a seraphim.
"Thau woant him, doan't thau...I noah that luck.."
Admirable woman that she was, she saw in the boy's eyes, a maidenish look. Something that had to do with deflowering. Flowers, so pretty, but most of us have the one, and there comes that time when you give it up. And if he wanted Kit, she would help.
As sticks and stones are bone breakers, words that never hurt, will aid me.
Marlowe was not getting the information, he truly needed. Burghley, was adamant. The need to know was paramount. All else was foolishness, serf only to fable.
Kit though, had a storyteller's intuitiveness, a need to know, a mind that would delve, into, the morass, of another and pluck a jewell of eminent reason.
So the bed boiled. The chamber burning, none crying fire. Though flame did indeed make us all choake, and in the fire the stinking mire, of foul lust, as love is done to ashe, the abhorred bed is burnte, coupled as we are in plague of synne, to leap in a lake of bloode, quenching flayme...enough to peturb the ayre...
Mistress Underdone, highte Molly, looked at the boy, the Wart, two year maybe from the big twenty, looked in his eyne.
"Thau trewelly wants this? To be of a society, whereit, man sit in the lap, of t'nother man, kissing in lewd fashion, using hands indecently....gitten up, dancthing, mimic voyces of womain...? Tha' wants?"
Young Arthur, well, he knew that Molly, was putting her peculiar way of looking at things, and knew that was not how trew it necessarily was.
Felippe, lay as if one dead, as Kit, touched the flesh with persuasive strokes. He lay close, almost atop, beside, as Felippe, wrested, wanting to be held, like a child, who thinks the universe is all part of him, and this Kit, too is him, they are enjoined, as they were one flesh. Once, and again. Palpable hits all.
"The Armada, Felippe..." Kit said insistently, this time, with a hiss.
"I can tell you of Tyrone, the Irishman..."
"Fuck you ..." said Kit, disgusted with himself, his job, the lies, the deceits, he was perforce, to abjure.
Felippe left, but with his smile, a cat full of spilt cream, looked like a one of the characters in the upstart crow's men-maiden's dramaturgy.
Kit watched the Spaniard leave, him with the knowledge of the Escorial, had even seen King Phillip in prayer there.
Burghley would not listen to his excuses this time.
Then came the rap on the door. A shy meek, Wart entered.
Christopher, a bed, looked at the boy, lit contre-jour, his face a maze of shadows, his body a mass of indetermination.
"What, what ye want..."
"You askt me to comye, and so indeed I didde as ye commamandet.."
It was the boy from this morning's hanging. And well hung...
end part two/5 Kit: Heart of darknesse 3/5 by davistrell@aol.com
"Aha, the 'prentice. Thou cam'st after all...," said Kit, finishing the last flourishing scrawled sentences of the letter to go to Walsingham, and then to Henry Cecil, now Lord Burleigh, guardian of England, guardian to the Queen, seeker out of Popish plots. Marlowe, the most flamboyant but easiest the best agent of them all. Because of his special talent, to get answers to pricking questions. And he would use any tool, pawn in his game, where the block and severed head were prizes, and if you were lucky you died on the rack.
Wart had possibilities. His youth, stood in his favor, and his naivete, refreshing.
"C'mon, hi ye here boy, sit astride this bed...and all will be revealed, the Faustian mysterys, how peasant can also be prince for a day or more..."
Mistress Underdone, downstairs listened, the honeyed words, that had turned many a wasp-waist boy, even the spanish ambassador's boy that had left only minutes before, and in his blazing-eyed glare, the Mistress, could tell he'd told all he had to tell, and more besides.
But after the asinine Ridolfi plot had come to incompetent grief, hoisted on its own extravagant petard, the Queen of Scots must be destroyed and her wasp-like hive of heretical abomination stamped out. The Queen must die. But knowing Marlowe, Mistress Underdone could not be sure, which Queene, whether that would mean Elizabeth or cousin, the papal choice, Mary, she of Scots.
"I hart dunne this afore, wit Potter Taylor's lad, Willum, but only sookin, not like this. Abed, to roal in, a room full of lite..."
"More muscatel?" offered Kit, and dribbled a stream from the clay bottle, let the stream dribble, splashing on Wart's lips, then spill down the youth's front, twixt nipples, down torso, over bellie, and swim at crotch. And lick it off, while the boy discovered the new pleasure as one taken in by the aristocracy.
"Oot, mastair Christopher, thau's a tickler, and a spoochin fancy fine lookin thing, a man of noblest intent, nai doobt...oohhh,," And he talked on and on, describing all new experience and how exactly it affected him. And what he wanted repeated and which to be improved upon, and doest hat really go there, and how will it fitte, and then he shut up, the bed creaking viciously, then an exertion, and then. Mistress underdone waited too, heard the moaning sighs increase in volume, growing faster and louder, then soften, and quieten again. She would have time, to wash dishes, get back under the stair and listen for a fresh peroration from Kit Marlowe, revived. Thrice in a morn, for Kit, that was more than average, and glad he enjoyed his job.
"Wart, I need service, no not that," as he pushed the boy's hand away, "Thou'art to do thy queen, and country, and me graet service. But you must wear this...."
A dress, with lowcut busum? And gantry at back, long slieves, and hold thains hands thus? Well if Mairster Marlowe insist, but Wart felt awkward, much preferring to spend the summer naked, in Kit's arms.
They took the small coach, with a surly surely brigand as driver, down to Thameside, as Kit explained what to do, later. What Wart had to do now had need of no explanation, but passerby, might be surprised at the rocking coach passing over un-cobblestoned street.
They stopped down aways from Durham House, the Spanish Embassy. Occasionally Elizabeth would have the place searched for evidence of Mass held, or finding obdurate priests, that referred to Elizabeth as a schismatist. Hanging, drawing and quartering, the obligatory punishment, if said, the heresy, were said out loud.
"There lives one, Felippe, Diablo, Marquez inside. He's about five years older than you, dark with devilish fine skin, and, ah me, I forget, you saw him this very morn...."
"Ah hee, the dusky mountiebank, that thou did frupp with aforn, yours , current, came, to errm...wxisit and...I doan't like im."
"Foolish Wart to think I could feel aught for another..." said Christopher, hardly paying attention to what he was saying because indeed most his mind was plotting and counterplotting. Like a chess game on a checkerboard played behind closed eyes.
"This Felippe is essential to the plan. You will meet with him, and listen if he mentions Campion, the Jesuit, who is determined to assail the Queen..."
Which Queen, Marlowe himself unsure sometimes. As loyalty hard to maintain in this land of law, where a natural man might have his life betook, for mere success in duel, or if later after participants, moved from the killing floor to the nailing bed.
"Boot why't I have must needs of this wummunish cloathe?"
"Wart, if an attractive man, and you Arthur, are indeed a fine young man, called to see, nay, met with Diablo, what would be thought? Suspicion aroused instantly, but a callow maid, with flattened bosom, and gangly awkward gait, and ribbons on her hair, who would think that on this one brave boy stood the whole Enterprise."
"Well whaat do I doot, when I gain 'mittance. What to say to frog-eater..."
"Wart, the frog-eaters are the French; Spaniards are onions, octopuss and garlic....."
"Oot give chuck? Whart I t'say to Fillippippi bloak anyroad? 'Cumst with ithen has us'ns to 'ave pretty black curled head lopped off, as favor foor me, young Wart, spinster of this Parish...?'"
"No, silly Wart, nothing so simple... I want you to creep into his bed and besport you there, and tell him of our doin's this afternoon, the laying on of cock, and the genuflection, you made, d'ye not remember.....?"
After knocking on the door of Durham House, rapping the lionheaded door-knocker three times, the oaken door to the Spanish Embassy was opened, by a dwarfish footman. Who looked up at Arthur, dressed in tight fitting bodice, with padded front, and carpet like dress that hid everything.
Wart cleared his throat and coughed, and raised his voice to parlay the learnt piece given him by Christopher Marlowe.
"My dear huzza," the voice girlishly high, maybe too high, "Deliverst to thy esteemed honorable grandee, Felippe Organza Gardoro Marquez, tell him mistress Marie Orlikely, would have word, a closeted word, perchance..."
"He knows you...."
"Taught me my catholic responsibility..."
"Wait..." said the dwarvish doorkeeper, and went inside.
"Well done," said Marlowe.
"Dust haveto mounch on uns testis whilet you hide, under there, tis ard enuff those dam foreen words you teeched me for to remember...dont...stoppit..oohh...stoppit.."
The dwarf returned with another dwarf and made Wart repeat his speech, and was ushered in, and down the deep staircase, over the marbelled floor, where reflection of under women's skirt could be detected, if any one bothered to inspect, but the dwarves, Gog and Magog, as Wart was informed by the whispering Christopher, took no interest, as they led up the visitor the high stone flight upward, past the portraits of all the weak-chinned Phillips, and their mustachioed wives.
As the staircase grew higher, eventually the summit reached, but dark up here. Kit hiding reassured young Wart, whose courage was as strong as his erection. Wart had heard the stories of the Spanish King's minions, all warlocks, all werewolves and all sodomites. So after this afternoon's lesson was a third less scared.
"Be careful, now Arthur, we are close to Diablo, I can sense his presence.."
"Eet seemed raight nice kind of chappe, afore, whyst you breathe hot about him naow...."
"A wolf in wolf's clothing is still a wolf...and will bite.."
The dwarves stopped, and opened an oak-pannelled door, and ushered in Wart, though they themselves remained behind. The door finally stopped its ominous creaking and ambled in to the darkness, glad that Kit was there, hidden under the dress, crouching, holding onto Warts legs and buttocks. But he felt the hands slip from his flesh, and the draught, and realised that he was truly alone....
"Precious maiden, hie ye here, over here, where the light, the ray from the attic would catch thee..." came a voice, like molasses, strong, with the accent of brimstone. In the dark, two red flares, his eyes, showed where he was, as Wart moved over to show himself in the splash of daylight.
"Remove thy bodkin, boy, if we are to be true friends..friends of Spain..but of course there will have to be the preliminary inquisition, of which I promise in which you will truly delight..always supposing you tell me lies....or truth... after all in a Christian world...is there truly a difference..."
"Me loard, thau art Monsignjor Fillippippi, him whats mairster Marlowe has callt 'Diablo'.?"
"Naked boy...off, all the vestements, yes, a pretty picture indeed.. the stiletto well-formed and to the point...Over here, come ye, come ye..one and all.."
As Wart walked over, the attic-window closed, but candles, a thousand maybe, spontaneously ignited, surrounding the room, and all, a dancing red, orange, yellow luminescence, and under a large applique-quilted bed-spread, the torso, head, goatee, dark eyebrows, long black hair, and the burning eyes, and the white flashing teeth,and obligatory ear-ring, threw back the cover and the man within, long, 'twixt legs, olive golden skin, and the boy Wart, fell in.
Marlowe crept down the passageway, through the vestibule, clinging to the walls, clinging to the shadows, clinging to the murk.
The daemon in the bed, proved enough for Wart to handle. As Wart held the Spanish scepter, and showed a genuine interest in the gleaming orbs, with the bristly texture. The grandee, held a flat hand on Wart's warm buttocks, and flicked in a tangy tongue.
Kit opened the lock, with the silver-pick, given to him by Walsingham. The lock opened, and the door inched open, so slowly to stave off any squeak. Christopher entered, stealthily.
Felippe, he called Diablo, enjoyed the youth. His flesh penetrated the flesh of the pleasant peasant-voiced guttersnipe. At least he'd bathed, thought Diablo, as he pushed his sword with a returning thrust, forcing into Wart's scabbard. The little stiletto, with it's early spillage, a glistening puddle, on Wart's belly, undulating, at every parrying thrust, as Diablo, smote the boy more and more again. Wart's legs wrapped around Spanish backbone, urging on the foreign invasion.
In the ambassador's office, in the spanish-wood roll-top desk, Kit found what he was looking for. The list of names. And the Queen's signature. And the date of the Armarda's departure. And the number of ships, and the names of the admirals, and the tonnage, and the gunnery, and the cannonball count, and the barrellage of gunpowder. "If the six were turned into nine, I don't think they'd mind..."
"What, boy? Lost thy taste for sport...?"
"Oo noah, sur. Me forgotst, 'a tell yees, what maister Marlowe afords me to tell 'ee."
"Spit it out, lout. What did Marlowe affords you you must me appry?"
"Well ee said to tell ee what we jourst did, me an een did onlie thees ver' same arternoon..."
Kit made the changes, with the quill, prepared by Walsingham, the very ink, prepared crushed from a cuttlefish between Walsingham's thighs. The Queen would be in for it. Which Queen? Marlowe's chessgame of the mind, only had white squares, and only black pieces.
Arthur had never seen a grown man cry so much in so much agony before. He was even beginning to enjoy, reporting what Marlowe had done. Watched the Spaniard squirm. Then the door opened.
"Wart, get out of here! Come. come quick."
He tried to scoop up the bodiced dress, but Marlowe knowing an emergency, grabbed the naked Wart under one arm, his rapier in the other, and duelled both dwarves into submission, down the staircase.
By some fortutious miracle they got down to the door at back that led directly to the River. And a launch, that Kit rowed for all he was worth, as the enemy regrouped and he saw Diablo wave his fist and smite himself on the head as Wart and Kit made their escape.
"Eet funny sort of chappe...," said Wart, enjoying the trip under Blackfriars bridge past the IPC tower, on the way to Wapping. "Eet liked me, butt, as a porker rather than manne, think thau't why we'll winne in t' end?"
Kit said. "I love you, man, Warts n'all."
The September sky turned into October in a single night, and those of astriolighiolical background might take note. And think it cast import on my tale.