The Sonnets. Warwick Collins

I am used to contingency, to turn and pivot. So I responded, hearing myself say, ‘What I most admire, I fear. And what I most fear, I admire.’

      As if by instinct – though not greater skill – I had cause to believe his sword was turned; or that, passing through me, his blade found no flesh, no bone to hasp. From the long table I heard again that limpid, expectant silence, and then a rising ripple of applause.

      My lord seemed pleased at this exchange. He had played on our rivalry, enjoyed his sport. His restless mind moved to other subjects. And so, to my own relief, he began to discourse with others, while the applause died down and the table settled again to its eating and interrupted conversations.

      A little later, my lord touched me on the shoulder in support, signalling that constant affection for which he was both praised and slandered, whispering in my ear, ‘Well spoken, sir,’ while from the other side of that long table Master Marlowe looked on, saturnine and amused, keeping his thoughts to himself.

      The dinner reached its end, the candles flickered. Some of the guests lay forward on the table, drunk. My lord surveyed the scene with approval, saying, ‘It seems that we are surfeited.’

      I, by nature more cautious and abstemious than the others, nodded to where Marlowe also lay forward, asleep on his arms. Of the visiting poet my lord said softly, ‘Let us not wake him. He rode from London, where it is said he conspires constantly with the younger Walsingham. Let him sleep.’

      He turned towards me. ‘Come, now, let us play a game of throw-apple, and while we may, wake certain of these diners.’

      He plucked an apple from a dish of fruit in front of him, and rose from his seat. Gathering my wits, I followed him as he walked alongside the great table, shaking awake various of his guests. A number rose and stumbled after him, mumbling to themselves as though in a dream. I took hold of one of the torches that lay against the wall, lit it from the last of the burning logs, and followed the young earl out into the cold air of the courtyard.

      The drunken company followed behind. A rough circle was formed, with my lord in the middle, around whom other torches burned, as further guests and servants arrived. So he waited, at the centre of the circle, weighing the apple in his hand, throwing it in the cold air, catching it, calling out his open challenge, saying, ‘Who can keep this from me?’

      He peered around him at the faces of his companions, lit by the light of the encircling flames. The guests and servants stared back at him, hoping for entertainment. Choosing his time, my lord threw the apple towards me.

      In that moment, it seemed to me, time slowed. The cold air brought sobriety, lifting the fumes of the wine. Above me, the apple seemed no more than a star-gleam; then, falling towards me, it expressed its unexpected mass. I caught it as deftly as I could, surprised by the sudden weight of it, in my spare left hand – the one not holding a torch. Around me other hands applauded the speed of my catch.

      My lord wiped his lips with the back of his wrist, flexed his shoulders, began his charge like a boar towards me. His speed and determination seemed almost devilish. I waited until he was almost upon me, then flicked the apple over his charging head, watching it sail through the air, upwards, glinting like a planet, until one of the sturdier servants caught it.

      There was another burst of applause. With fearsome dexterity my lord turned and pursued the apple to its catcher. The same servant, holding the apple, appeared intimidated by his ferocious charge. Even so, he managed to throw it over his lordship’s head in time. Another guest caught it. (And so it seemed to me that, as I watched the game, I observed the circle from above, the apple sailing through air, the scion of the house chasing with absorption and ferocity, almost under its shadow, panther-like, moving so fast from thrower to catcher that beneath each glimmering flight he seemed to be gaining ground on the flying prey.)

      It happened that one of the greater guests, a powerful Seneschal, a renowned warrior, caught the apple a moment before the charging youth – closing on him at speed and calculating its upward trajectory – snatched it in the very act of rising again from his hand.

      ‘Huzzah!’ our host called out in triumph. Holding his prize aloft, he backed into the middle of the circle, to rising roars. There he took a wolf bite of the apple, to further approbation, while among the gathered others, I watched in smiling approval.

       Chapter 4

      MY LORD BURNED WITH A CONTINUOUS, dense energy. He was one of those who needed little sleep. When he rested, he slept instinctively and deeply, like an animal. After we had thrown the apple, he approached me and said, ‘Master Shakespeare, I wish to speak with you about certain matters.’

      It was already past midnight. In his chambers during the early hours, he paced up and down. I stood still and silent, leaning against the wall, not daring to interrupt his fervent movement. Eventually he turned towards me. ‘Is Master Marlowe older than you?’

      ‘Hardly,’ I answered, surprised by this odd question. ‘By only a few months, I believe.’

      ‘Yet you openly acknowledge him your superior?’

      ‘My superior in art,’ I said. ‘The worthier pen.’

      ‘You say so freely.’

      To which I answered, ‘Every scribbler in our land is in debt to his great peroration, his mighty line. Where he leads, we others follow.’

      ‘You truly admire Faustus?’ he asked.

      ‘Marlowe is Faustus,’ I replied. ‘They say he necromances spirits, that he is on speaking terms with Mephistopheles.’

      He smiled at that, saying, ‘This … other work that you mentioned at our table –’

      ‘Hero and Leander,’ I said.

      ‘Hero and Leander. What is it, precisely?’

      ‘A poem about love, dwelling much on masculine beauty. It is said that he intends to dedicate it to you.’

      His face lit up. He was addicted to praise.

      ‘To me?’

      ‘So it is said.’

      ‘Yet it is unfinished.’

      I smiled. ‘So it is said.’

      He looked at me searchingly. ‘And you do not mind … a rival for your praise?’

      ‘He has a worthy subject.’

      He paused and considered me. ‘You are honest. You see coldly and clearly, and yet I believe you burn hot inside.’

      I would not deny it. So before him I said, as though in affirmation of a fact, ‘I see clearly and burn hot.’

      That night, after I left my lord’s rooms, I attempted to give some further shape to the thoughts I had earlier that day – that his youth and beauty incited dreams in the observer. Earlier that morning, when he emerged from the lake, there was one more witness than those I had already described. In the dawn mists, a figure was collecting brushwood in some dense, nearby scrub. At first I thought it might have been a boar, rooting in the undergrowth. Despite the low-lying vapour, I could begin to make out an elderly crone, bent-backed, in a grey hood. She had been dragging a sack of brushwood backwards from a thick covert where she had been collecting sticks for firewood.

      The foliage was so dense there that it would have been difficult to lift the sack under the immediate oppression of the overhanging boughs. Once she was out of its entanglements, she intended to lift her load onto her shoulders. So she emerged from the thicket backwards, like some strange animal, hauling her load, wheezing and gasping, at precisely that place on the shore where my lord, unconscious of any other human witness, was approaching after his swim in the lake. I supposed that, suspecting a meeting, I could have warned her of his emergence from the water, but the comical nature of our situation touched