A Dead Man in Deptford by Anthony Burgess Read Free Book Online Page A

is Lord of the Manor. But he is so little at the manor
house that he grants me the run of it. Sir Thomas our father left
him all and me little. So Edmund takes pity on me and says
Behold this is yours. In a manner, the manor in a manner. He
knows what he is. He knows he is a whoremaster and thinks it
no shame. He has become here in London the thing of Lady -
I will not speak her name. Enough for Mr Edmund. Well, Cat,
Kit I would say, you are no dog -
    - You rhymed. Shame name.
    - If you are a poet you may put together rhymes for me
properly considered, not dealt by chance like two aces. What
have you now in stock?
    - This.

    And then some more I have on paper but not in mind. And then:

    I am too bashful to give you the matching line, but you
may guess it. It ends with at first sight.
    - Hm, hm, hm. Well, we shall meet at some other place. I
must go see if my cousin has yet called for me. We shall meet,
though, make no mistake of that.
    It was this first encounter, I believe, that put Kit in a fever
that had to be allayed. We were not playing at the Theatre that
afternoon, and he sought me out at Ned Alleyn’s lodging. Alleyn
was with Henslowe and Peter Street the master builder, sniffing
roses and stringing measuring lines on earth cruelly stripped of its
bushes. And so he found me alone, conning the part of the Queen
in Hamlet Revenge, a half-finished play of Tom Kyd’s (all these
Toms, a world of toms like a night roof top). His eyes closed, muttering strange words and also groaning, he had me stripped
and himself stripped and was soon at work that seemed strangely
loveless. Then his cat’s eyes blinked in shame as he wiped the
sweat from us both. It could not be animality, for animals are
directed by the gods of increase, and animals have no shame.
He kept crying God God God as in some form of repentance
but there was nothing to repent except the spending of seed in
barren places, the fault, if it be fault, of fortuity, as in Christ’s
parable of the sower that went forth to sow.

    So let us have him riding to Canterbury. The horse was his
own, his father’s gift when, but recently, he had been monied
enough to stand as a marriage bondsman. This was Brown Peter,
fat and a little slow, well tended in the Cambridge stables, a
sort of yeaing and paying friend to whom Kit sang or tried out
verses as he clopped through Dartford, Gravesend, Chatham,
Sittingbourne in the fine summer weather. And there he was
- Pound Lane, his own old school by the City Wall, Burgate,
the great cathedral. A single solemn bell mourned a death.
Here the faith had been brought from Rome so that a king
of many wives might reject it, here a witness to the Church of
Rome against the power of another king had been slaughtered,
his holy shrine made most rich and then despoiled. There was
perhaps a curse on the realm. Certainly there was a curse on
his father, whose new house in St Marv’s parish he had to seek
by asking. John Marley or Morley the shoemaker? By there, or
near. He had moved from St Andrew’s for non-payment of rent
and was installed now in premises, Kit knew, not commodious.
Down in the world, the fault of the Strangers.
    - Let us look at you, his father said, intermitting his
hammering, spitting nails from his mouth. The two apprentices
too ceased their hammering to gaze. Velvet blue and gold, a
cobweb collar. I like the cloak, his father said, his arms about
him, and you smell sweet and Londonish. God knows why you seem up in the world. Let me see those shoes, they could be
better. I will give them new soles before you go back.

    - I go on. To Dover and then take ship for France.
    - God help us, you are indeed up. That sounds like state
business.
    - War on the papists.
    - For God’s sake leave at least the English papishes alone,
they have suffered enough. There is enough trouble here with
the frogs and frogesses. The little froglings would grow up into
proper Kent citizens if