He wrinkled his nose.
Since he was right, Lope couldn't very well disagree with him. All he said was, "Come on. Let's see what George there has to say." Let's see if I can waste another sixpence.
Gulls soared above the Thames in shrieking swarms. One swooped down and came up with a length of gut as long as Lope's arm in its beak. Half a dozen others chased it, eager to steal the prize. De Vega's stomach did a slow lurch. A pursuing gull grabbed the gut and made away with it. The bird that had scooped it from the water screeched in anger and frustration.
Boats of all sizes went up and down the river. "Westward ho!" shouted the wherrymen bound for Westminster or towns farther up the Thames. "Eastward ho!" shouted the men heading towards the North Sea. Westbound and eastbound boats had to dodge those going back and forth between London and Southwark. Sometimes they couldn't dodge, and fended one another off with oars and poles and impassioned curses.
"Consumption catch thee, thou gorbellied knave!" a boatman yelled.
"Jolt-head! Botchy core! Moon-calf! Louse of a lazar!" returned the fellow who'd fallen foul of him.
Instead of trying to hold their boats apart, they started jabbing at each other with their poles. One of them went into the river with a splash.
"Not the worst sport to watch," a Spanish soldier said.
" Si," Lope said, and then went back to English, calling, "You there, sirrah! Be you George?"
"Ay, 'tis the name my mother gave me," the wherryman answered. "What would you, seA±or?" He pronounced it more like the English word senior.
De Vega asked him about Marlowe. He waited for the vacant stare he'd seen so many times before. To his surprise, he didn't get it. Instead, George nodded. "I carried such a man, yes," he said. "What's he done? Some cozening law, an I mistake me not. A barrator, peradventure, or a figure caster. Summat shrewd."
"Whither took you him?" Lope asked, excitement rising in him. Marlowe wasn't (so far as Lope knew) an agent provocateur or an astrologer, but he was a clever man-though he might have been more clever not to let his cleverness show. "Tell me!"
Now George looked blank. De Vega paid him without hesitation. The boatman eyed the little silver coin, murmured, "God bless the Queen and the King," and made it disappear. He nodded to Lope. "As you say, sir, not yesternight, but that afore't. Ten of the clock, methinks, or a bit later. I'd fetched back a gentleman and his lady from the bear-baiting at Southwark. " He pointed across the Thames, as if towards a foreign country.
"I know of the bear-baiting, and of crossing the river," Lope said tightly. He knew more of such things than he'd wanted to. Shaking his head didn't make the memories go away. "What then?"
"Why, then, sir, I bethought myself, should I hie me home, for that it was a foggy night and for that curfew would come anon, or should I stay yet a while to see what chance might give? Fortune brings in some boats that are not steered, they say. And my boat-the wight whereof I speak, you understand-"
"Yes, yes." Lope fought to hide his impatience. Did this ignorant wherryman think him unable to grasp a metaphor? "Say on, sirrah. Say on."
"I'll do't," George said. "This wight came along the river seeking a boat. a€?Whither would you?' I asked him. I mind me the very words he said. He said, You could row me to hell, and to-night I'd thank you for't.' Then he made as if to shake his head, and laughed a laugh that left me sore afeard, for meseemed
'twas a madman's laugh, and could be none other. And he said, a€?Why this is hell, nor am I out of it.' I thought him daft, but-I see you stir, your honor. Know you these words?"
"I do. I know them well. They are from a play, a play writ by the man I seek. That your man spake them proves him that very man. Were he mad or not, you took his penny?"
The boatman nodded. "I did, for a madman's penny spends as well as any other. He bade me take him to Deptford, to the Private Dock there, and so I did. A longer pull than some I make, for which reason I told him I'd have tuppence, in fact, not just the single penny, and he gave it me."
"To Deptford, say you?" That was a shrewd choice. It was close to London, but beyond the city's jurisdiction, lying in the county of Kent. Till the Armada came, it had been a leading English naval yard; even now, many merchant ships tied up at the Private Dock. Lope knew he would have to go through the motions of pursuit, but any chance of catching Marlowe was probably long gone.
"Ay, sir. Deptford. He was quiet as you please in the boat-even dozed somewhat. I thought I'd judged too quick. But he was ta'en strange again leaving the boat. He looked about him, and he said, a€?Hell hath no limits, nor is circumscribed in one self place; for where we are is hell, and where hell is there must we ever be.' I had a priest bless the boat, sir, the very next day, to be safe." He crossed himself.
Had he been a Catholic while Elizabeth ruled England? Maybe, but Lope wouldn't have bet a ha'penny on it. He also made the sign of the cross. "I think you need not fear," he told the wherryman. "Once more, Marlowe but recited words he had earlier writ." He wasn't surprised Marlowe had quoted his own work. He would have been surprised-he would have been thunderstruck-had Marlowe quoted, say, Shakespeare. The man was too full of himself for that.
"Are you done with me, sir?" George asked.
"Nearly." Lope took out a sheet of paper and pen and ink. He wrote, in Spanish, a summary of what the boatman had said. "Have you your letters?" he asked. As he'd expected, George shook his head. Lope thrust paper and pen at him. "Make your mark below my writing, then."
"What say the words?" The boatman couldn't even tell English from Spanish. De Vega translated. George took the pen and made a sprawling X. De Vega and one of his soldiers who was literate witnessed the mark. George asked, "Why seek you this fellow?" Maybe, despite the sixpence, he regretted talking to a Spaniard.
Too late for your second thoughts now, Lope thought as he answered, "Because he is a sodomite."
"Oh." Whatever regrets the Englishman might have had disappeared. "God grant you catch him, then. A filthy business, buggery."
"Yes." De Vega nodded. He meant it, too. And yet, all the same, no small part of him did mourn the pursuit of Marlowe. True, the man violated not only the law of England and Spain but also that of God.
But God had also granted him a truly splendid gift of words. Lope wondered why the Lord had chosen to give the same man the great urge to sin and the great gift. That, though, was God's business, not his.
While he spoke in English with the wherryman, the soldier who'd witnessed the man's statement told the other troopers what was going on. One of them asked, "Sir, do we go down the river to this Deptford place?"
"I think we do," Lope answered, not quite happily. "I hope the Englishmen there don't obstruct us."
"If they do, we give 'em a good kick in the cojones, and after that they won't any more," another soldier said. The rest laughed the wolfish laughs of men who looked forward to giving the English another good kick.
George's boat wouldn't hold Lope and all his men. They had to walk along the riverside till they found a wherryman who could take the lot of them to Deptford. De Vega paid him, and off they went. "Eastward ho!" the boatman cried at the top of his lungs.
Though Deptford lay just down the Thames from London, Lope was conscious of being in a different world when he got out of the boat. London brawled. Deptford ambled. And he and his troopers drew more surprised looks and more hard looks in five minutes in Deptford than they would have in a day in London. London was England's beating heart, and the Spaniards had to hold it to help Isabella and Albert hold the kingdom. That meant they were an everyday presence there. Not in Deptford; once they'd closed the naval shipyard there, they'd left the place to its own devices.