A Great Reckoning in a Little Room

A STORY

by GEOFFREY BUSH

To the Most High, Mighty, & Magnificent Elizabeth, by the Grace of God Queen of England, Ireland, & Virginia. Her Most Humble Servant Sir Thomas Walsingham Wishes Peace on Earth and Eternal Peace in Heaven:

May it please your Majesty to know that your will has been accomplished: the one you know of is dead.

At two hours after sundown of this day, the 30th of May, the judgment of Heaven was performed upon him at Deptford in a quarrel over a tavern reckoning. His body lies with friends, and the instrument of judgment has been conveyed to France. My lady, the late danger to true religion is removed, the right and lovely order of the commonwealth is restored: thus does God, the true executioner of divine justice, work the end of his enemies. May Heaven bless your kingdom here and hereafter with an everlasting Peace.

The manner of his taking-off is known to only five; in the generations to come it shall be known to no one. The four with me in this work were these:

Nicholas Kyrse, sometimes Skeres, tall, ragged, twice imprisoned; with him Robert Poley, employed formerly to this as a spy upon Babington and the false Mary.

Ingram Frizer, gentleman, thin of body, whitefaced and red-eyed, to be known by a knife scar on the right cheek and a cough.

Ephraim Cudworth, old, fat, and drunken, without fixed abode.

Skeres and Poley spied out the movements of the one we speak of during these latter two weeks; Frizer struck at the last; and Cudworth has witnessed and testified to the manifest guilt of the one who is dead concerning the doctrines of the only true Religion. At this hour Skeres and Poley are riding under guard toward Scotland, Frizer is in France, mortally wounded, and Cudworth lies drunk in a tavern near Oxford.

There are those whose sight, in those disturbed days, may be blinded by a weak natural affection to the justice of this work, done in obedience to a higher command than human love. By your leave, therefore, I here append the several documents of this undertaking: Cudworth’s witnessed proofs of the dead one’s guilt; Shores’ and Foley’s account of the last three days; a catalogue of the papers found afterward in his rooms, the poor trivial things he shored against eternity; and lastly his own Journal of the final three days until his departure for Deptford. One of his papers I must beg leave to keep, a foolish trifle of no importance but to him and me.

My Lady, your kingdom has been cleansed of the devil of Scepticism, Doubt, and vain Reasoning. An enemy to God and to yourself has taken leave of his mortal life, and he was one who allowed himself few hopes of a life immortal. He has lost it now forever; he died unconfessed, his guilt unacknowledged. May God have mercy on his soul: in God’s name was this work done.

Whether he recognized me, I cannot tell, but his look has been before me these five hours.

6 Proofs of the Vile & Filthy Atheism of C. M., Truly Witnessed Faithfully Set Out by E. Cudworth on this 30th Day of May:

1. While drinking M. said that in his belief Moses was no more than a Juggler and Aaron a Magician at a Carnival.

2. M. said that the latest doings of the Lord Chief Justice were a sore trial of the established faith in a Divine Providence.

3. M. said the first beginning of Religion was only to keep men’s minds in comfort.

4. M. said he could hardly believe God’s love was so infinite as to forgive the guilt of the human race.

5. M. swore 7 times by the name of the Blessed Mary and 2 times by the name of Him who rescued us from Death.

6. M. said that he knew not whether there were a God or no, and the doubt was like a shadow or a bad dream, and never in this life to be resolved.

A Report of the Actions of C. M. from the 28th to the 30th Day of May, Observed & Attested by N. Skeres and R, Poley:

May 28. — M. rose at noon, having the night before caroused with the witness Ephraim Cudworth and the Queen’s agent Sir Thomas Walsingham. Walked north from his rooms and drank 2 pts. of ale. Swore several times and said he would be damned if he drank again. Returned to his rooms and in the afternoon wrote for 2 hrs. in his Journal.
At nightfall M. studied for 3 hrs. by candlelight. At 10 o’clock as appointed he met the witness and the Queen’s agent at the Red Boar, Cheapside. He caught sight of Skeres by lamplight but seemed to take no note of it. At the Red Boar Skeres and Poley sat in a far corner. M. in high spirits argued blasphemously the existence of Our Lord. The witness Cudworth noted all that was said. The Queen’s agent Sir Thomas Walsingham spoke seldom, but looked at his hands where they lay on the table.
In appearance the condemned is middling tall, slender, and fair-haired; he dresses fashionably, walks nobly, sings well, laughs often, and as often retreats within himself while others talk around him. He speaks first soft and then loud, and alters suddenly from one mood to its opposite. He shows no sign that he recognizes his guilt.

May 29.—The Queen’s agent instructed Poley to discover the witness, who had disappeared during the night following the assignation at the Red Boar. The witness was found at 11 o’clock, in a room above the Crown & Thistle by the river, lying in bed sweating and thrashing and regarding a picture of the Virgin Mary. He was in a fever and was attended by the woman of the house. Poley asked the witness to tell what it was that troubled him. Cudworth said in reply that he refused to bear witness. He then looked at the ceiling and asserted several times in a loud voice that he saw the Archangel Michael with a flaming sword. Poley sent away the woman of the house and said to Cudworth that there was no one in the room but himself, Poley, and Skeres. Cudworth laughed violently and said that the room was his own conscience, that someone had put out the light and he heard nothing but confused noise. Thereupon he began to cry weakly and said he was betraying the sweetest young gentleman in London, and what did it matter whether there were a God or no, there remained love among men.
Poley and Skeres restored the witness, who promised to be at Deptford at the appointed hour on May the 30th.

May 30. — On the day of execution the condemned rose early and walked through the City, seeming listless and depressed. Once or twice he looked behind him. In the afternoon he wrote in his Journal and began a letter to a Lady which he did not finish. At 9 o’clock he descended to the street. He wore a sword and appeared excited and elated. He took a water ferry to Deptford and went to the Bull & Baby as appointed. There were already at the Bull & Baby the Queen’s agent, Cudworth, and another, with a white face and a cough. M. spoke jokingly to Cudworth and drank 2 pts. of ale. At 20 minutes past 10 o’clock the execution was accomplished, a difference having arisen over the reckoning. M. died at once of two knife wounds.
The costs of this surveillance are £2, 4s., and 11d.

A Catalogue of Papers Found in the Rooms of C. M. Following His Accidental Death at Deptford:

1. A demonstration, derived from the miserable estate of the world and the natural guilt of man, that there can be no God.

2. A copy of your Majesty’s letter to the University of Cambridge six years previous, when M. was engaged secretly in state affairs, to the effect that he had done your Majesty good service, and that it was not your Majesty’s pleasure that anyone employed as he had been in matters touching the benefit of his country should be defamed or refused his degree by those ignorant of the business he went about.

3. Manuscripts of plays, entitled Edward II, The Jew of Malta, Tamburlaine, and Doctor Faustus.

4. A long poem, unfinished, entitled Hero and Leander.

5. A letter begun to a Lady, and broken off.

And lastly, your Majesty, there was a paper that for these ten years I had altogether forgot, but that he had remembered and preserved, and that I must sue to preserve also. It is a slight youthful thing I wrote myself, when we were both lads at Cambridge, that means nothing to anyone except one or two foolish people:

6. A Masque of Love, Written in Celebration of the Nineteenth Birthday of Christopher Marlowe, by Thomas Walsingham.

CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE TO MARY L.

May 30, at Sundown
MY ONCE DEAREST MARY:
The reason why I should write to you, after so many months, I know not, and the reason why I should hope that you may read what is written, I know less. I could go on with more false antitheses, but I have no heart for them. I fear there is something amiss, but whether in the world or in my mind, I cannot tell. Mary, I am heartsick. I have not spent these seven months with women, but with philosophers, reading and writing and pondering till my head reeled. The voices of philosophers are more shrill, jealous, and various than women’s ever were; the winds of doctrine have swept through my mind till it is blown to tatters. I know not whether there be Reason in Heaven, Reason in the world, or any Reason at all in this poor life of mine. I know only that at this shadowy hour of sundown I have a sudden foolish longing for the regard of another human heart. This same silly presentiment in my mind, like a child’s fear, bids me tell you that there is a thing I would have you know: though I betrayed the certain simplicity of your affection for the doubts and perplexities of reasoning, I loved you, Mary, and I love you still.
I have been watched these two weeks by a pair of curious eager villains, the one short and the other tall, who rush forward, fall back, scratch their heads, frown and whisper, and pretend an intense interest in objects invisible to others. The shorter now awaits me in the street below my window, disguised as a paving stone. In forty minutes I must keep a rendezvous at Deptford. There is a plot forward: by someone I am deemed guilty of I know not what. The powers of the state are in motion — from my simple service six years ago I am familiar with the gait of their approaches: but I shall meet them like old friends, and so, Mary, shall I condemn their judgment and redden their hands with their own guilt. There is one notion I have found in my philosophy, that redeems all: had I time to speak further —

THE JOURNAL OF CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE

May 28. — Rose late this morning, having caroused till two o’clock with Tom. The talk was of the ways of God, but though we gave the matter our full attention for the space of two hours, we reached no conclusion. There was a third with us, an odd friend of Tom’s, entitled Cuthbert or Cudwart or some similar cowlike name, a fat fellow with white hair and a pious watery bovine eye who spoke no more than to ejaculate “Ah!" or “Oh! or “Do you so?” or “Is not the green grass, in respect not only of its greenness, but of its grassiness, a marvelous proof of God’s wonderful workmanship of the world?" While he uttered these religious sentences with a profound piety he drank seven pints of ale in halt an hour.
I fear I offended Tom with some silly joke of Moses and Aaron. He turned pale, looked at Cudwart, and back to me as if be wished I had not said it for all the world. In the six years since we left the University, Tom has become a respectable man, a husband, a father, and a servant of the Queen; he has no longer this childish undergraduate trick of joking and arguing of mysteries, but knows the Prayer Book and the Articles and where he hung his socks; says “Yes, quite,”and “An interesting position,” and smiles not once. I have not seen Tom smile for a fortnight. He is so weighted down with affairs of state and Heaven that he speaks like a man of sixty. But I would cut off my right hand rather than offend him; I must hold my tongue firmer; for this Cudwart, he can break his neck on his religious grass and drown in his religious beer, but if Tom will be respectable, let him be respectable, and I will love his respectability.
Now I am twenty-nine; next year I shall be thirty; and so the great world decays, every year a year older. This philosophy will unhinge me wholly. I can moralize on the natural guilt of my left foot, with classical examples from Achilles to King Oedipus. I am afflicted today with the spectacle of Time and Age, and the desire to consider my life. What have I accomplished in this marvelous long life? I have played with boats and cried to go to bed; I have been to University though my father has not; I have made love to a girl whose lower lip would break your heart, who loved me with the awe of a daughter, came when I called, talked when I talked, laughed when I laughed, was silent when I was silent, and I sent her home; I have written a handful of verses so light they would fly upward had I not chained them in a desk drawer, a bushel of treatises on Heaven and Hell so foolish they would make the most inferior devil laugh in his torments, and half a dozen plays of so little volume they would not fill the grave of a field mouse — no, nor my grave either.
The fault cannot be my nurture; my father is an honest man. He has made shoes for thirty years, an honest man in an honest trade, thanking Heaven for an honest wife, giving thanks in the morning for breakfast and in the evening for supper, praising God for good fortune that he may feed his family, and for adversity that he may educate his soul. He speaks little and that roughly, thinks less, and reads nothing, He sent his son to University, and when that same son returned for Christmas, filled with fashion and Aristotle, he looked at his son with amazement and pride while the son sat sullenly in a corner of the kitchen in a new doublet. “A long journey?” said the father presently. “Middling long,” said the son out of his discontented silence. “Cold?” said the father. “Reasonable cold,” said the son.
My father has worked long and hard to one end, and that end is to work hard. Here am I, all beginning and no end whatever, that change color with every breeze, not laboring from poverty to prosperity, but launched at full sail. I can go where I please and think what I will; I have a chart of the whole world, but I wander confused in the middle of the sea. For a week I can be a pair of pagan lovers; for two weeks I can be an Asiatic conqueror scorning heaven; for two weeks more I can be a learned doctor in terror of damnation. I have doubts that unseat the stars, and I resolve nothing. I have served the Queen, as Tom does now, but it was no more than a plaything with which to busy the hands while the mind wandered still. I can advocate a case today and its opposite tomorrow, with equal fervor. This tree of knowledge will damn me always: under this curse of thinking I can here spend an hour of God’s sunlight in a small dark room recollecting a short and aimless life while Cuthbert improves the day with drinking. I must soon say that this searching intellect, this divine lamp of reason that includes within itself the thousand judgments and betrayals that men have ever conceived, is a light to lead us to drowning. Is a man who thinks a thing of nothing? 1 shall meet Tom tonight and discuss the proposition, and Tom will say, “Yes, indeed, yes, an interesting opinion.”

May 29.—Supped and talked with Tom, and ever with us was the zealous Cudwart. I shall inquire of Tom who this rascal is. I fear he is one of the twelve apostles disguised as a drunken old man, for he will bear witness to the handiwork of the Lord ten times in five minutes, and a falser witness he never had. “Witness the hand of God,” Cuthbert cries in his religious chant, “in the delicate decorum of nature, angels before men, men before beasts, locusts before pismires.” Yet I begin to have a strange fondness for this Cuthbert, a kind of amiable fascination, despite myself, in this pious monster, though he has looked me in the face not once.
The talk was once more of Heaven and Providence: there are those, and one of them is I, who will vex themselves into their graves with notions, loudly arguing with philosophers two thousand years dead, arming resolutely against shadows, expounding mists, and tilting with reflections. The wretched Codberry drank all in and cast up holy examples with the regularity of a Roman Emperor. Tom, thank Heaven, is grown sensible; he and I have talked from a late dusk to an early dawn at Cambridge, but these vain philosophies trouble him no longer. What lies within the reach of his arm, he discovers and orders; what lies beyond, he cares not for. I have a melancholy voice in my head that says we shall grow still farther apart; we are on different roads, he and I, and obey different commands. This is a sad thought, that boys are warm and pliable, and soon friends, but men harden into themselves.
At Cambridge Tom was as reckless as anyone in mind and hand, He is so no longer; and I might have seen the signs before, when once or twice he held back from an enterprise. He has hardened into a man of property: he speaks with the gravity of his grandfather; he jokes no more; he keeps accounts; he owns lands; he maintains a wife; he is a model to his son. When he walks into the air after supper he says, “A fine night, Christopher; a lovely night. Kit,” as one says to a wife, “ A fine gown, my dear, an excellent choice” — speaking with the quiet kindly pride of one who knows that although God made the night, yet he, Tom, must admire it, and though his wife chose the gown, yet he, Tom, paid for it. Then he pulls on his fur gloves and turns up the collar of his cloak and observes with satisfaction that the stars are exactly where he placed them the night before.
And still there is something in Tom which I cannot name, and which I fear in its anonymity, something almost ruthless in that sweet and reasonable friend. I think beyond all things Tom prizes Peace: the established doctrines of religion, the established order of the kingdom, and the due propriety of the family. The necessity is so strong in him for peace and order that sometimes I fear he would betray his own conscience and condemn his own heart. There is a strange irrational violence confined within that respectable Tom, from some terrible dread of disorder; I would give the rest of my life to let it loose harmlessly.
Its marks are on his face. While I and Codfish rattled on with the ways of God, Tom said “Oh” and “Ah” and looked at his hands, betraying nothing. His face was as strained and gray as the Tower of London in a mist from the river. I caught his eye but once in three hours, and in that one look there was a pleading beyond description. If he could only utter what is in his heart, I think he should be saved. I could argue no further; there was that in his look which killed my words.
These are uneasy times. There is a Catholic in every chimney; if a girl drop a handkerchief there is a popish plot. All that a man may talk of in safety is the price of hay, and that only of English hay. Spanish lace is a sly reference to a second Armada; seven old ladies reading aloud the Psalms are disguised Cardinals plotting to overthrow the government and establish all in common. We hunt out priests and atheists, with fine impartiality, as we hunt witches. In courts and street corners, public houses and court balls, there is fear of war. Ministers are condemned; friends are suspected; families are quarrelsome. At our most glorious hour, when we hold in our hand the peace of the world, we condemn ourselves, and in the name of God: in sixteen hundred years what things have been done by the unhappy human race in their betrayal of that name.
This minute I caught a glimpse from my window of the fellow who walked behind me in the morning. There must soon come an end to this. I am as uneasy as the times. When Tom looked at me imploring, I had a fancy there was one word I might speak to redeem all and save us both: if I knew that word —

May 30. — I write now at sundown. This morning the City was radiant in a white mist: such a mist, no doubt, as surrounds the city of Heaven. Why I think of that second city, and see it so simply and sweetly in my mind’s eye, like a child, I know not. I must cheer myself; for a letter pushed beneath my door summons me to meet with Tom in two hours’ time at Deptford.
I could bear thinking were it not for the one thought which returns to me daily: that there is no tenant in Heaven, but an empty void, a deserted room, that would mock us to our deaths were it anything more than a great Nothing. In these troubled years I dare say this to none but friends; yet the thought is with me ever, and it stops my heart: that there is no God; that my father labors and thanks Heaven and when he dies will receive Nothing; that the articles of Tom’s respectability rest securely on Nothing; that Cudworth shall on the last day march triumphantly into an abyss of Nothing; and that my father’s son has spent twenty-nine years thinking of Nothing, to no purpose. These are wild and foolish words; I am shamed to set them down; I would I might go to Church on Sunday and sleep at night the other six days without dreaming. I would I were my father, and an honest man.

I have finished walking in the garden ten minutes and have cooled off somewhat. I think I see my way: if reason is my only instrument, if I have not the honest skill to cut leather nor the true simplicity to worship, I must employ that instrument as well as I may. I shall study further in these matters and resolve myself. If at length there seem indeed to be a Divine Providence, I shall fall down and weep for joy; if there seem to be none, no Reason in the world and no Reason in our short unhappy lives, why, men have looked that emptiness in the face before this, and stared it down and lived honorably. Philosophy is almost as honest a trade as any other; I shall follow it, and not despair.

And yet I have a weariness that stings my eyes. Perhaps before the highest court I am guilty indeed. The streets are darkening, as if this night were the last night of all, and there is no one come to light the lamps. I pray God there is One to light a lamp on that last night; for I cannot find my way alone.

In my folly I tried to write a letter to Mary, and could not finish it. I see no particular cause why she should go so far as to remember my name. It was a silly weakness moved me, but I confess I am calmer to find that natural affection has not altogether died within me. It may happen I shall be forgiven, for having loved truly.

I must set off for Deptford. My watcher awaits me below. I might not go: there is a kind of unease in my mind, such as would trouble a woman. Yet I am ready. Whoever they are that come toward me, I can do no less in politeness than go to meet them halfway.

I put on my sword this instant, that has not slapped my leg in two years. I think that doubts shall end this night.

Your Majesty, he reached Deptford at half-past nine o’clock. The stars were clear and the moon was rising. There was a summer wind from the river and water lapped the barges.

In the tavern Cudworth and Frizer sat together. I waited in an alcove behind a curtain. A dozen laboring men were drinking and singing. The room was thick with tobacco smoke and the smell of ale — the place of judgment, dark, confined, and Confused with voices. Your Majesty, it was the small perplexed room of a man’s conscience.

He entered armed, looked about him in the smoke and noise, saw Cudworth, and sat down beside him. Cudworth told him I would come before long. Christopher clapped him on the back and laughed — I had not seen him laugh so happily in a month — and said, “Inform me of the condition of your soul tonight, Cudbelly; for Cudbelly, I love you, and I joy to see you, and I delight in your soul, and I can think of no other reason but that I wish to see you saved on the last night.” Cudworth wiped his mouth, looked at Christopher, but not full in the face, and said, “These are grave matters, Master Marlowe.” “None graver, Master Cuthbert, none graver,” Christopher said, and all the while Frizer regarded him carefully and coldly, inspecting the white hollow of his neck as a lover studies a woman.

“Will you buy me an ale, Master Cuthbert?” Christopher said. He drank it in three swallows and turned suddenly to Frizer. “Do I know this gentleman, Codberry? ” Christopher said, addressing Cudworth but his eye not leaving Frizer, who returned that look but so blankly there was no more expression in it than in a knife blade. “Master Marlowe, Master Frizer,” Cudworth said. “God save you, Master Frizer,” Christopher said, and looked at him long and hard, as though he recognized his opponent.

Then Christopher turned as suddenly back to Cudworth and said, “Buy me a second ale, Master Codfish, I think we shall have a carousal this night to put a stop to all our healths.” He drank it and laughed and said, “What think you of the works of men, Cudworth?” Cudworth answered, “They shall vanish from the face of the earth.”Christopher laughed again, from pure pleasure, and said, “No, not all, Cudworth, not all, there are one or two shall remain.” “What are they?” Cudworth said. “Shall I tell you?” Christopher said; and leaned forward as if to whisper, but instead said loudly, “I say that the work of Master Frizer shall be remembered for generations.”

Frizer half rose, his hand over his dagger; but Christopher moved not a hair, smiling sweetly at him, and the laborers sang still. “Shall I resolve you upon the question of Providence?" Christopher said to Cudworth, “Do so,” said Cudworth. “There shall be a God,” Christopher said, “so long as men believe in him.” “Ah,” said Cudworth, wiping his mouth once more, “you say that God is a mere imagining of mankind. “I say that they imagined him for love,” Christopher said softly, “and that that love shall redeem us all.”

At this moment the host of the tavern came to them saying there were two ales yet to be paid for. Christopher looked up at him and said, “Master Cudworth has paid for these two.” But Cudworth shook his head. I saw Frizer move his hand toward his knife, draw his chair slowly backward, and gather his feet beneath him. “Shall we quarrel over a reckoning?” Christopher said. “We do all await a greater reckoning than this.

“Friend,” he began, and there was something in that single human word that moved me more than religion. I stepped out, but I could go no further. “If I am guilty, though I know not how,” Christopher said, “I shall pay my account.” Frizer was up, his chair fallen backward and his knife shining. “And Heaven permitting I shall pay yours also,” Christopher cried. Frizer leapt upon him, stabbing twice. Frizer stumbled back, and we saw that Christopher’s sword was through his stomach. There was no sound in that small room but the two of them separating from that sudden embrace, Christopher turning and falling, and Frizer stumbling back into a table and coughing. The lights were put out and the room was filled with a confused grappling and shouting. He died without a word; but as he fell his head was bowed, like one who sinks to pray on a summer Sunday.

I can write to the Queen no longer. He lies tonight with angels. When he turned he looked full upon me: whether he saw me, I cannot tell, but I shall see that look forever. We are all guilty. I loved him. God have mercy on us all.