“George was clever, with a vicious tongue and a slashing wit, but as quick to laugh as to quarrel, and much taken with the foreign lady so suddenly in their midst. They were not long out of the merchant class, the Boleyns, and Nicolas, under various names, had been doing business with them for years. As a favor to him I was presented to Anne, and, in her mercurial way, she took a fancy to me though as a rule she much preferred the company of men. George would ever love where his sister did, and soon he and I were lovers. He was my first love, and the thought that he would age and die while I would live on unchanged was unendurable. We made the exchange, and I foolishly thought that our future was secure.
“Nicolas and I left England soon after, intending to return in the fullness of time, but—” her voice broke, and she choked back a sob before continuing. “Anne did not produce the expected son, and Henry was not a man to be thwarted, but rather one to turn upon any whom he felt had misled or betrayed him, however much he may have pretended to care for them. He hated George, as did others: the aging Henry for his youth and beauty, the others for his pride and superior intellect. That was not enough to condemn him, though, so George was accused by his wife, a sour and insanely jealous bitch, of incest, of adultery with his own sister!
“When we returned to England they were dead. Anne, George, Norris, Brereton, all the brilliant youth of Henry’s court, so that he might wed a placid jade with a face like cream and all the wit and sparkle of a farm-house cheese. He had them beheaded, you see. And so I lost my love forever.
“Then so many years later I saw him again, swaggering through the London streets, a poet and a playwright. You, Kit, were so like him as to make one think of miracles, if one did not remember that the Boleyns, like the Marlowes, were a Kentish family. George had at least one bastard, and I know that he provided for the child, arranging for either apprenticeship or dowry, depending upon the child’s sex, which I never knew.”
“I had wondered why you so favored me. My—tastes? habits? — were no secret, and of a nature to repel most women, I would have thought. You were not the kind of woman to try to cure me of my ‘affliction’ at least. I do have one rather uncomfortable memory of having to leave off frequenting the Anchor, because one of the wenches was sure that the right woman could make me change my ways, and she, of course, was that woman.” I stifled a laugh. “On the other hand, depending upon how one looks at it, one might say that the right woman did indeed make me change my ways.” Rózsa looked at me quizzically for a moment, then joined in my laughter. It did not occur to me until later that her laughter seemed somewhat forced.
The following evening I woke before dark. I dressed and made my way downstairs alone, and followed the sounds of soft voices to the little parlor where I was wont to meet Geoffrey and Nicolas. The door was ajar, and the note of anguish in Rózsa’s voice stopped me even as I lifted my hand to push it open.
“But he’s a stranger! A ghost! I think after all, Geoffrey, that I did much harm in making the exchange with him. Better he should have truly died than to live on a cripple, with only half his wits!” I could hear her pacing, and drew back a little into the shadows of the hall.” He is almost like a child, but a child in a man’s body. It is not just the reading—he is diffident where once he was decisive, hesitant where he was hasty. You did not really know him before, the reckless brilliance, the edge of his humor. To see that razor wit become a sickle of leather! And his present state is souring even his few memories of what he was. He cannot think now what he might have thought then, or how.” There was a muffled thump as she threw herself down on a chair.
“Give him time, sweetheart. I took eleven years to regain my full sensibilities—Marlowe has not had