THE PRISON
The river was there. Unseen, but there. How far beyond the walls? What does it bring? What carry? Ancient waters of the deluge, where flowest thou in they stately progress? Flowing since the beginning. Darkness covered the face of the deep. A wind from God swept across the face of the waters. Then there was light. Then the land, the seeded things, the beasts and the fishes and the animals of the air. Those in his image were created last. Blinking, shivering, huddling they came forth to behold creation. Out of Eden, into the wilderness, onto the road and further still they rambled. Still, they gather around the rivers; buzzing and bustling to make cities out of settlements, realms out of regions. The waters are the lifes blood of all of them of Babylon. Tigris and Euphrates. Tiber. Seine. Danube. Elbe. Volga. Rhine. Take life from the waters, they do. Move across, down, up, over them. Find things. Fish things. Sometimes frozen and sometimes overflowing. Also the river takes. Drownings, dark below sometimes. It takes what is lost. It receives what is falling, thrown. Buckets of slime and offal and blood and bones and excretia and dead flesh. Bags of rind and shell and husk and casing and splinters and rag and wattle and even dogs and cats and sometimes woman and man.
Thamesis. Our river. Dark waters.
Londinium. This city. The wild.
Sputtering flame. Heavy air. Ground felt unsure beneath boots. Sludge of a hundred thousand days, months, years? God created all of this, too. Man assembles, but the prison is still made of that which God made: stones, earth, timbers, iron and death. Life came unto this place, but only death goes hence. Womb of corpses, birth mother of despair. The afterlife, the afterbirth, the after ever after of all things world without end. Yet the river is beyond. Down here beneath the surface it is as if walking in graves. The nostrils alert to the unknown and the familiar. Rot, bone, excrema, oozes, blood and pain. The scent of the tomb. Last plague, the death odora sat hunched in doorways and hovels, feral and lurking for months until merciful rains came and then only the stink of the town remained, merciful rains dropping from the heavens blessing the takers and the givers and the living and the dead. Deus irae.
Can it be heard? In the silence there is something under, something behind. Hiding? Ashamed? Two men breathing. Candle flame insisting. All heaving in and out, bellows of life, ebb and flow of existence. Cadence of aspiration and counterpoint of beating heart. Once saw a pig’s heart still beating in the butcher’s hand as a boy. Blood jetting to the ground, burp, burp, burp and then nothing. Only offal, but of recent was there a soul released from hence? Childish question. Butcher swats away and the boy wanders off, still metaphysical.
No, cannot hear the river from here. A gaoler pulls a grate aside somewhere near. Resisting rust and shunt of key, then little cry as hinges let go. Some voices. Then, the grate claps again and the rest is silence. Just the two men, breathing. Something still lurking. The river?
- Will, was anything done? -
His voice is whispering, secret, dying. His body is wasted, leatherish, dried neat’s tongue. Eyes yet have light in them, though. Clawed hands still searching for something. Final days, final hours. The feet long ago mangled by the torturer’s boot, just lumps of broken bone and blackened skin now. Lying there on the litter, filthy overshirt and stinking breeches. Bowels leaking, piss soaked straw under.
- Was anything done? -
First there was the word, then the light to separate the day from the night, then the waters gave way to the land. Everything then followed. Much done. Six days. On the seventh, rest. Behold, your creation. You created us. In your image. Then you drove us out of the garden, into the wilderness. Now we are abandoned. Lost. What was done? To whom? And for what? Drama. The old Greek. Do. Do something. Why don’t you do something? What’s done cannot be undone. Enough of that, say something. Say words now. Let there be words.
- You made them listen… -
The withered man sighs out a bitter breathe and his eyes roll up.
- Your words, Will. Your words. Good ones. -
Recall when this frail ghost man was astride the narrow world. Voice ringing around the Globe. Ears rapt. Brought to life a few of them: Lear, Hamlet, Caesar, Richard Gloucester, Falstaff. yes, Falstaff. My, my, my his Falstaff! Good words. Will’s words. Will’s words went withering without warrant while worlds went wanting. Words. More light!
- My words. -
In the small courtyard where the gravegoing wagon waits, a bleary boy with a limp asks about the corpse.
- E wert o da company o actors? -
Wide faced, gaping stare, turned in foot.
- He was an actor. -
Actor. King. Rogue. Villain. Beggar. Thief. These are things that a man might play. The actor hath within that which passeth show.
- You? You wert an actor, sir? -
Hand the boy a coin. Ha’ penny. He shows his teeth.
- Ay, danks you, sir. We trundle on to Geddins’ field wid da poor man’s body, sir, bury ‘im proper like an. -
The body in the winding sheet on the wagon. Cold out here. Still, the scent of the river. Dog barking somewhere. Must be near midday. No one to follow the body to the fields. No one dares. Might one dare? They would be watching. Noting. Spying. Scribbling names, notes, notions in notebooks. The wagon jumps forward as the drover heys the nag. The body rocks side side, then the wagon is gone, coppy coppy cop of hooves and leathers and wooden creakings out the gate then only the terrible understanding, the grotesque reckoning, the sinister suspicion - Now get you to my lady’s chamber and tell her, let her paint and inch thick - to this favour she must come. Make her laugh at that. -
When at the last, think of the first. Young men, all. Thick with blood and bluster. A company of players. Pages and pages passing hands, all ink and purpose. Words everywhere like puddling rain. So much has gone before. Was anything done? He used to grin so easily when the phrasing was true. A wink, a nod, a quick dart of the eye and then such a voice, such a man, such a player as he poured forth the sounds that made all dumb with listening. Yes, he was an actor, boy. One of the Lord Chamberlain’s Men. Favored of ol’ Queen Bess. Built a house just past Denby with four gables. Wife, three sons. A shareholder. A partner. A brother. A friend. Knew where to be on stage when, didn’t need to be shown. The younger actors perched along the rail in the mornings, watching him churn the lines through. Taught them all by doing it all; the drumming monosyllables, the tripping iambic, the one word here and the other word there and the third somewhere else all linked by the mind and then arriving at some great destination.
Remember when in the snow we tore down the timbers of The Curtain, carted them off to Bankside? You were laughing as the last of the boards were stacked all hey-willy on the borrowed lumber carts and we formed the procession. Shoreditch, where we trundled as an army in retreat. Bishopsgate where we waved like ambassadors to the shopkeepers and the bemused. Grace Church Street where we became Caesar’s legions about to enter Rome under arms. The bridge, where we saluted the pikemen and offered them tobacco. Then along the river to Clink and and Southwarke until we set our burden to ground and repaired to The Tabbard where we encamped for two hours among the tankards and plates, smoke and steam of sweaty men who had returned from the north with treasure and triumph. That was when we knew the theatre was ours. Now he goes on another cart. Goeth from whence he will ne’er return. Churchyard of Botolph, if there was room enough. Four shillings plus one for the coffin and a few pence for the diggers to be sure they laid him in their ground and did not shovel him into the charnel house at once. Earth is to earth. Food for worms. To this favour we all must come.
Remember when they broke him on the rack. Wanted the names of all concerned to add to the list. Spymaster men, all sallow faced and dark of soul. Took him from the theatre with a warrant investigation. Enemies of the crown. Believed the theatres were infested with them.
- You knew Marlowe. You knew who he was with that day. Polley, Turnbull. Who was the stranger who arrived for dinner and departed before supper. -
They laid into his legs with the blunted ends of wooden cudgels. Left the bones and blood to fester. Then they crushed each finger with a steel mallet. Then his hands, his wrists, his forearms.
- Give us the name of the stranger. We’ll let you die in peace. -
Remember his agony, carried by his cries as if night bats in frightful flight.
Waiting outside Newgate. The barrister on his way, but his body already broken. Later, during a visit, the barrister recounts the charges, the barber lays the plaster on the crushed bones, the actor breathing shallow and fast, the gaoler watching silent and gaping from beyond the grate. Was anything done?
Remember…