made on her wrist and knew that the glass held blood, her blood. I drained it, savoring the odd, bittersweet taste, then cast it aside and our eyes locked again as I took her hand, placed the cut to my lips, and drew the living blood from her as she shivered against me. I took no more than a few swallows before a lethargy overcame me and I slept.
It was late afternoon when I woke, alone, and drew the curtains against the painfully bright sunlight pouring into the room. My wrist bore only a faint bruising where she had bitten me, as did my throat when I had checked the mirror, but my back looked and felt as if I had been flogged. Hissing with the pain, I eased a shirt over the bloody welts, pulled on my hose and slops, and went downstairs. The servants once more brought me meat and drink and told me that my hosts would return at sunset.
I sat in the study and thought about the preceding night. The hashish had released my inhibitions, revealing the darkest side of my nature, a side that I had always suppressed, but that was now rampantly free. When I thought of last night I felt no disgust or revulsion, only a tainted fascination and it was the taint itself, I realized, that was so seductive. I passed the rest of the time until sunset reading and laughing over Rózsa’s brazen and pithy translations of that ribald Roman poet Catullus.
I spent a few days there, and the nights together with Rózsa were a pleasure so intense I thought I’d die of it. Twice more we engaged in our sanguinary rite, leaving me feeling a little weak, but also possessed of vastly heightened senses and an almost hectic excitement. Though I could never tire of the company, I soon wearied of the country life and felt the pull of the city, of London. I left early on the morning of the eighth, but the playhouses had been ordered closed due to plague and I found I had rather too much time on my hands.
One night at the Anchor, Thomas Kyd approached me, his inky fingers working nervously, twisting a pewter mourning ring around and around. We had worked in a shared chamber some time before, but found that our natures were not suited to such close quarters. Thomas was sober and earnest, taking in work as a copyist or scrivener to keep himself fed. Sarcasm and irony were largely lost on him and he read no Latin or Greek, but depended on the translations of others, all of which served to make him the butt of many jokes among the University wits.
I was playing cards with four or five others and waited for Thomas to come to his point, but in vain. He just sat with his calflike eyes fixed on me and sipped the small beer that I paid for, watching the card-play without comment. I was drinking wine liberally laced with aquavitae and was already more than a little drunk. I soon grew bored and impatient—I found his sedate temperance irritating at the best of times, and now every twist of that cheap ring seemed to wind me tighter and tighter.
“Christ’s Cock, Thomas, will you come to the point?” I snarled, my impatience somewhat mitigated by the evident horror my impiety induced in Kyd. “Surely you remember Christ’s cock, Thomas—it could crow three times in a single night!” Drunken laughter rocked the room and almost drowned out Kyd’s reply.
“You’d best take care, Marlowe. What if someone—important— should hear you?” Kyd murmured, with a furtive glance around.
“What do you want, Thomas?” Patiently exasperated.
“I need some money, not much, just a small sum until Friday. I’ll begetting paid then and—what?”
“I said, I’ll buy your hat. A new one, is it not? You have execrable taste in clothing, Tom, and you always had,” I was laughing, almost overcome by my own drunken humor. My companions exchanged glances and several bystanders moved closer, closing in to watch the kill.
“Why would you want it,” Kyd asked sullenly, “if it’s so execrable?”
“Why, it looks just like a piss-pot, Thomas, and I’ll use it so. I need to piss and I’d as lief not leave the table just now,” I said blandly, indicating the cards before me. The room exploded into coarse laughter and his face flamed. “Come now, what d’you say? I’ll give you a shilling for it. That’s a handsome price for a