Day of Deliverance by Johnny O'Brien Page B

gazing across at the melee in the hall. Monk had compensated for weeks of starvation rations by satiating himself with food and wine. Then, somehow, he had managed to suspend himself from the chandelier that hung from the centre of the vaulted ceiling. He now swung gently to and fro, slurping from a bottle.
    The artist finally packed up his things and marched towards them in a furious temper, the unfinished canvas under one arm.
    “I will send you the bill,” he announced as he flounced past. Jack caught a glimpse of the unfinished painting as it swished before them, and saw a preliminary outline of Fanshawe, Trinculo, Monk, Angus and himself.
    Marlowe groaned. “No chance of rehearsals now. In fact, there will be beatings at the buttery hatch for this mess, for sure.” A sudden look of concern washed over his face. “But come, we have more pressing business. We should retire to my rooms.”
    Marlowe had acquired two adjoining rooms in the college and the embers of a log fire still smouldered in the grate. Despite this, the room remained icily cold. Fanshawe stoked up the fire and added a couple of logs, which sparked to life. The room was a mess – papers and clothes were strewn everywhere. As Marlowe sobered up, it became increasingly apparent that he was nervous about something. When they had met that afternoon, he had been blind drunk and seemed not to have a care in the world. But now he was different. On entering his rooms he had carefully locked the door behind them and peered furtively from the window down to the quad below. Next, he had reached for a large bottle of brandy, which sat in front of them on a small wooden table. Having only just recovered from one drinking bout, he nevertheless poured some brandy into a glass tumbler and drank the whole lot in one go before refilling his glass. He then reached for four more tumblers and filled them all to the brim. Jack remembered Beattie’s translation of the words beneath Marlowe’s portrait in her book: What feeds me destroys me.
    In fact, the playwright looked a bit like his portrait. He had intelligent eyes, wavy brown hair, a round, somewhat pallid face and a thin moustache and beard. Jack felt he should be in awe of the man who had so influenced the theatre. But instead Jack found himself surprised by his youth. Marlowe was only twenty-three – scarcely eight years older than Jack. It was hard to think of him as a great literary figure. Jack remembered that in only four years Marlowe would be dead – killed by a dagger stabbed just above his right eye in a brawl. As Miss Beattie had said, manythought it was murder – or even an assassination – brought about by Marlowe’s love of risk-taking, or perhaps the rumour that he was a spy or double agent caught up in the dark world of Elizabethan espionage. Jack wondered whether he should inform the great man exactly how and when he would die and whether, in fact, this would accelerate or slow his creative output.
    Promptly, Marlowe emptied his glass for a second time, leaned back into his chair and stared at the ceiling with an expression of deep concern, then his face suddenly changed and he let out a strange, manic giggle. Clearly, the great Christopher Marlowe was slightly unhinged.
    “… and this is another of my favourites – a play about Scotland – it’s called MacGregor .” Fanshawe tried to puncture Marlowe’s pensive mood by presenting some of his own work. He had brought his chest of papers up to the room to show Marlowe, hoping that he might generate sufficient enthusiasm to close a sale. Marlowe leafed through the papers, but he was too distracted.
    “I am sure it is good work, Harry, but as you know, more work is the last thing I need, at the moment…” Again he giggled, and the noise sounded strangely out of place.
    Fanshawe looked crestfallen.
    But Marlowe remained untouched. “I am so busy with my own material… and we are just starting Tamburlaine …” He thought for a moment.