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The death didn’t seem like the beginning of the end. Kit chirped about the upstart crow comment for weeks, Johannes fac totum he parroted, and William Shakespeare, not a Jack at all, laughed each time, a slight strain but nothing unusual for the ribbing world of playwrights and actors and wits. Robert, a big presence no longer, handing out insults from beyond the grave. They were all so loud, loud in word or deed, a cacophony of character. Publishing references to each other and making print their playground, though Will wasn’t such a fan of that. Kit cared little for it as well, seeing no need to write about those he knew when he could write about those he didn’t, bring his own people to life or back from the grave. He knew the right people. Or, arguably, the wrong ones.
After Greene, tavern nights seemed less possible to go on forever. An illusion, both that they ever could and that now they could not, but illusions hold power. Brash, shameless Kit Marlowe would jump at shadows. ‘Not like your Faustus, are you?’ Will teased, and Kit laughed loud. He and Tom Watson would mutter in Latin, too fast for Will to catch, turning away from the candlelight. People said the plague was coming again, but they said that every year. Will was trapped in Holinshed, devouring the pages of the chronicles, ignoring Kit’s constant ‘you won’t find life in those’, though King Ned and his fall was life enough for him. Despite the clues, Will never thought that Christopher Marlowe wouldn’t last until eternity, arguing with the devil over the finer points of divinity or ways to swear in Latin.
There was no one quarrel. A long series of jibes, a playfulness of words that knew a little too well how to hurt, or strike a nerve. An insular world, disease hitting the city, both turning to poetry a little too similarly: stalking like tigers round a cage, eyeing one another up. Though he hadn’t been able to with the groatsworth of wit, Will could hit back at Kit, get under the skin he knew so well. Thomas Kyd groaned good-naturedly whenever Will entered his and Kit’s shared rooms. Poetic challenge. Personal challenge. Kit, ink-splattered, flashing glint in the eyes, head barely raised from the paper, would be how Will would remember him best. He would look up, ‘Master Shakes-scene’ he would drawl, ‘have you come to see me?’ And Will would smile, ‘yes Merlin, I’m here for your magic’. Kit would raise one eyebrow. You’ll be sorely disappointed then, it said. The comments would get more heated and Kyd would clatter around, leaving once it got too much.
‘You’ll be the death of me,’ he complained once.
‘I only kill in self-defence,’ Kit retorted, and Will looked disbelieving.
There may have been no big argument, but there was one that Will remembered more clearly than others, afterwards. Showing their nasty sides in front of crowd, friends and acquaintances, poets and actors and hangers on, one night, one badly timed night. Kit had started by making a few comments on Will being an actor as well as trying his hand at writing the plays, the line he knew everyone wanted him to take. Amongst all the actors, he would play the scholar, mysterious, dangerous, for too much knowledge can be a bad thing. The city was restless, with people dying and leaving for the country and no plays on at all, and Will was no exception. He responded by imitating Kit, for the actor in him couldn’t help it. Drink deep and exclaim, quill in hand.
‘All who love not tobacco and boys are fools.’
Others laughed, but Will was looking straight at Kit. A challenge. Marlowe’s face remained blank. You’ll have to do better than that. Will strutted around, imitating Alleyn as Tamburlaine then back into Kit, confidence bursting from the smaller frame, as if he’d managed to shrink himself for the role. People bayed for more. Tom Nashe nudged Kit, but still he said nothing.
Will acted writing. ‘The tragical tale of...yet another thing about Ganymede, cup bearer to Jove, almighty in legend and beautiful from head down to the-’
Kit coughed. His eyes were focused, smaller than usual. Not at the words, but at the bravado of mocking what he loved. What trapped his mind.
‘We get the gist, Shakey spear.’
‘More drinks,’ suggested Nashe, not usually one for tact. Will turned away, thinking to go outside, but found Kit suddenly beside him, quick as a cat.
‘Don’t be Greene, it doesn’t suit you.’
Will blinked, playing innocent.
‘What?’
‘Being nasty for popularity. It doesn’t suit you. It worked for him. You’re too country boy trying his luck in the big city.’
They were hissing, close enough for the words not to escape.
‘I’ve been here long enough.’
‘Long enough to see the stinking disease stealing life from the people. Rob us of our audiences. See the ebb and flow of this pit.’
‘You’re ill-humoured.’
‘And you think you’re funny.’
‘Don’t do this.’
‘Do what?’ Kit paused, reading Will. ‘I don’t care what they all think, don’t think it’s that, but you’re better than this.’
‘And you’re the victim? You leave destruction in your wake.’
‘Only in my writing.’
‘So you say.’
Will didn’t mean it. They’re too good with words; they can make them mean what they like. Kit looked around and screwed his face up.
‘I’m off to Scadbury.’
‘Fine. You go off and see your fancy Tom. Safe away from the rest of us, playing at being like him.’
‘He’s not mine.’
‘Neither am I.’
‘I don’t want anyone or anything. I’ll burn my books.’
Kit waited for the reaction. Will, ever one to complain about the self-referencing, turned his head. Across the tavern, people were enjoying themselves and the drink was flowing. Nobody had seem anything go wrong. Things go wrong everyday, anyway. When he turned back, Kit was gone.
Dead. Shrouded in mystery. Will didn’t know what to do, so he did little of note. Kept writing. Nobody with a sparring imagination to distract him. On stage, expected to see a flash of Kit’s face in the crowd, though he rarely spent time in the playhouse crowd. ‘Deal with the devil,’ laughed Tom Nashe, but Will could see how strained the joke was. After Greene and Kyd and Marlowe, mortality was starting to seem like something that wittiness couldn’t help you escape. No grace for the poets, especially not Kit, laughing with Lucifer as he did. Will wondered if he had bled ink as well as blood when Frizer got him, black surging out with the red. It was too fanciful. Will jumped around the genres, looking for stability, and realised he didn’t want to find any. He was no Marlowe, deeply interested in a certain way of looking at man. Will wanted to look at them all. They had always had their differences. Now that difference was who could keep writing.
Years later, Will writes his own Ganymede. A quick-witted one, with a sharp tongue and an ambition to get what they want. Ganymede, or Rosalind, is not Kit, but he can hear their voices together, hear Kit offering the consolation that men have died from time to time but not for love, you can’t die from love, don’t be stupid Will. Explaining Troilus and Leander to anyone who will listen; he could always draw the best parallels, even if they did all come back to his obsessions in the end. A man plagued by obsessions. Will knows he would have never appreciated being called ‘dead shepherd’. There’s something pleasing in that. One of them needs the last jibe.