An Eye of Death (ebook)

Argumento de An Eye of Death (ebook)

I first met the famous – or infamous – Christopher Marlowe while looking after his horse outside the Curtain Playhouse in Shoreditch. A job better playmakers than I have done. I was feeling downcast. The actors were proving reluctant to buy my plays. I’d sold a few ballads to street singers. Failures according to them: ‘Didn’t hold them enough, Master Dekker,’ they’d said as they negotiated a lower price for my next one. What that meant was the ballad had failed to lull the audience sufficiently for their mates to relieve the listeners of their purses. And when the poor devils were caught and hanged at Tyburn the ballad singer would be there hawking their last dying speech of repentance while a new mate worked the crowd. I know, having written a number of speeches for them. Still in my twenties, I’ve repented of being a murderer, cutpurse, housebreaker, coiner, highway robber – oh, and a Catholic priest. Bit awkward that last since he made his own speech which differed somewhat from mine. I’m a whole den of iniquity rolled into one.

But it is the theatre I long to write for. And not just because the rate is six pound a play. Although given my debts that is a powerful inducement. Even collaboration, the usual way to start, would be something. But getting actors to take my plays was like getting Puritans to take mass.

So I was feeling down. My girl, Elizabeth, was late with my bread and cheese and pot of ale. And when she did turn up I was going to have to ask her to pay for them. Again. The heat was heavy, oppressive. Trying to cheer myself up with thoughts of my coming meal I heard a plop. Marlowe’s horse had deposited his breakfast in a steaming heap on my shoes. Feeling down? I was lower than the Earl of Oxford’s knees just after he’d farted in the Queen’s presence.

A southerly breeze sprang up. That’s a plus, you’d think. Especially as doctors say the south wind is healthy and dispels melancholy. Healthy? Not when it wafted the putrid mud of Moorditch up my nostrils. And into my eyes the smoke of London. Smoke from forges, foundries, smeltries – and bakeries. But no bread for me. My ears were assailed by the iron-wheeled carts rumbling along Bishopsgate Street carrying chickens, turkeys, geese, cheese, vegetables, past me and into the city.

London is my city. I grew up there and most of the time I love the bustling vulgar life of the place. Crowds of men and women jostling through the narrow streets; the babbling tongues of many nations; sailors, soldiers, merchants, chapmen, whores; apprentices in leather aprons, ladies in silk gowns, colliers heaving sacks of coal and gentlemen strolling in satin doublets. Yes, I love the city. Usually. But just now I could have preached a sermon on the place to a congregation of Puritans that would have got me elected as one of their elders. London is a suppurating sore on the body of England, brethren, I would say. Lance the luxury and drain off the pus of pride through the purity of the pious. My stomach growled. Where was my bread and cheese?

Just as I thought things could not get any worse I saw old man Cruickshank hobbling towards me. When he caught my glance he put his hand to his back and on his face his look of, ‘I’m in pain but bearing it heroically’. With old Cruickshank there are two subjects you never raise. Illness and murder. Ask him how he is and he’ll complain of more ailments than a true doctor’s seen or a quack doctor could invent. The public executioner, fresh from disembowelling a batch of traitors, only brings his dinner back up when Cruickshank describes his haemorrhoids. Mention murder and for the thousandth time he’ll tell you about the murder next door when he lived in Milk Street. Thence the palpitations he suffered – and we’re back on his ailments.0