Anthony Burgess - Enderby's Dark Lady

Enderby turned up at the theater next morning but one in the tout's cap and an overcoat of faded plum. He removed the overcoat to reveal blue linen trousers, an open yellow shirt with crimson foulard and a seagreen cardigan. He wore no spectacles. He could see enough, and some things he did not wish to see – the face of Toplady in full definition, for instance. He had to read a new scene to Toplady. There was no music in it really, so Silversmith did not have to be there. Before Will's sexual triumph following Richard III it had been decided to bring in brief homosexuality, espionage, violence and frightful death, in other words Christopher Marlowe. This was to scare Will and make him pack his and Hamnet's traps and ride back to Stratford, but then the Earl of Southampton was to appear and tell him not to. That would lead to Dark Lady and Southampton taking her from Will and her getting mixed up with the revolutionary party led by Essex. Toplady sat behind his desk apparently wondering at Enderby's new appearance while Enderby read aloud. First, though, Enderby sort of sang.

"There will we sit upon the rocks

And see the shepherds feed their flocks

By shallow rivers, to whose falls

Melodious birds sing madrigals."

"Oh, good that, you must admit," says Marlowe. "Will Shakespeare here could not do as well."

"Give me time."

"Give us all time," says Frizer.

"Amen," says Skeres. "But for some the time is ordained to be short."

"Ah," says Marlowe, "very mystical and occult."

"All may be clarified in time," says Poley. "Though not, of course, to everyone. You have worn a good cloak, Kit."

"From the best tailor," says Marlowe.

"I mean," says Poley, "the figurative cloak of your pretty songs about shepherds, and your loud brawling stageplays and your even louder atheism that the Privy Council chooses to ignore."

"Ignore?" says Marlowe. "I have been up before the Privy Council but recently. A matter of some blasphemous papers found in Tom Kyd's rooms. You know Tom Kyd, Will?"

"He wrote one good play," says Will. "The Spanish Tragedy."

The three men titter, and Will wonders why. Skeres says:

"That is not too apt. Much depends on what happens in the last scene. It is too soon to talk of the Spanish tragedy."

"Come, come," says Frizer, "this is intended to be a merry meeting. Give me the lute and I will sing you a song, though not about passionate shepherds." He takes the lute that Marlowe has been absently plucking and sings:

"As you came from the holy land of Walsingham,

Met you not my true love by the way as you came?"

"Ah," says Poley, "he knows the name Walsingham. It was, after all, his master's. His ears pricked like a dog's."

"Sir Francis Walsingham," says Skeres. "Dead these two years, but once head of Her Majesty's Secret Service. He recruited you, Kit."

"Sing him more," says Poley, so Frizer sings:

"I sing of a spy, of a spy sing I,

That under the cloak of tobacco smoke

And drink and boys and blasphemous noise

Had sharp enough eyes for other spies.

"Meaning that he was, or is, a counter-spy, matching the Counter-Reformation."

"Will," says Marlowe, frightened, "go and call in those men. The Privy Council men we told to wait in the garden." Will tries to get up, quick enough on the uptake, but finds Skere's drawn sword at his chest. Skeres says:

"Nay, stay, we beg you, Mr Shakejelly. Play stuff, Kit," he says to Marlowe, "apt for the stage but not for real life."

"I admit," says Marlowe, "real life has more surprises. I had no idea my three friends were creatures of King Philip of Spain."

"You still have no idea, Kit," says Frizer. "You have no idea who we are working for, or, if thou wishest, para quien nosotros estamos trabajando. Why, we may also be working for Her Majesty's Secret Service, and that organization may deem it desirable to be rid of unreliability."

"Look," says Poley, his eyes stern on Will, "this one here. Must he not too -?"

"He is not quite a gentleman," says Skeres. "He carries no sword. He may freely report what he is about to see. The judgement of God on an atheistical roarer." They all have their swords drawn. Will remains rigid in his seat. Frizer says:

"Draw your dagger, Kit. Let us have some little argument about the honour of a wench or who shall pay the reckoning." He lunges at Marlowe. Marlowe draws his dagger. Frizer laughs, keeping at a sword's length's distance. He says:

"Ah, Mr Shakeshoes, are you not now in the great world? Did you not dream of all the glory of this London life when you wiped your snotty country nose on your sleeve?"

"Tell them, Will," says Marlowe. "Tell them what you have seen."

"He may tell them," says Poley. "He shall corroborate all." So all three now have their swords out, but they clatter them to the floor. "Strike, Kit," says Poley, "strike, you passionate shepherd." Marlowe holds his dagger indecisively. "Now," says Poley. All three seize Marlowe's dagger hand and drive the dagger into his frontal lobes. Marlowe screams. Will is petrified.

"I still think," says Skeres, "we should dispatch this one too. A quarrel of drunken poets."

"No, no," says Frizer. "It is a little man. Leave him." And Will runs away.

Enderby looked up at the blur of Toplady, pleased. He could not tell from his look whether Toplady was pleased or not, but he took it that he was not, since he never was.

"Well," Toplady began, and got no further. For his door flew open and in swam or sailed or flew April Elgar, saying:

"Hi."

"Sweetie, marshmallow pie, angelcake" and so on went Toplady, half-rising and making a cold sketch of embracing her in hungry arms. Enderby not merely got up to give her his chair but retreated to the wall. "This," Toplady said with dramatic lack of enthusiasm, "is er," meaning Enderby.

"Hi."

Enderby stood openmouthed underneath a poster for Mother Courage. He had never seen anything or body like this woman before. In Tangiers, true, he had presided, as owner of a perch of sunning ground windtrapped, over comely enough bodies and acceptable enough, if usually chronically dissatisfied, faces above them or, if they were lying down, at one end or other of them. These had been all white, meaning unwholesomely rich in greens and blues and carmines, and very pallid to begin with, earning slow increments of honey and ultimate toffee as the sun slowly chewed them. The women of darker hue he had been unable to judge of, since they showed only ankles under robes and kohled eyes over yashmaks. He had never really had standards for the assessing of black American beauty. This April Elgar was a revelation to his awed eyes, and would be even more so when he got his glasses on. She glowed in deep content with her Blue Mountain glow and exact sculpted line of feature. Quadroon? Octoroon? Blasphemous terms, obsolete musical instruments squeaking in accompaniment to a celestial choir. Denoting coldblooded blood apportionments apt only for damnable race laws. Doubloon was more like it: hot gold, also cool. The divine sinuous body was skirted in cinnamon, ensilked shins and ankles and feet shod frivolously on frail plinths that were really artful engineering made Enderby groan with their frightful perfection. She had had pasted upon her a matching jumper of fairy chain metal. Her delicate breasts appeared unsupported. The hair, obligatorily raven, flowed a satin river, to whose blackness all blacks were chalk, scrawling their own reproach. She sat, well pleased with herself, by God, and no wonder, by Christ. She said, in a voice of cassia honey or an Elgarian string section:

"Has that fucking fag schlepped his ass here yet?"

"Don't be like that, Ape," whined Toplady. "You like Pete, you know you'll be great together."

"What did you call her then?" cried Enderby in outrage. "Did you call her what I think you called her?" She turned and looked Enderby up and down, as to appraise his fag properties, if any, and said: