Free The Marlowe Papers by Ros Barber

an errand, running joints of pork?’
A grin splits through his pimples, cracking sore.
‘I wouldn’t miss a murder for the world.’
‘Murder? There’ll be no murder here.’
                                                                         ‘That’s what
    you think,’ says Bradley, charging like a bull
that has broken tether. Instantly, the cuff
of our weapons clashing, and his heavier blade
has snapped mine seven inches in.
                                                                 ‘Oh dear,’
    says Orrell. ‘Now look what you’ve done. You’ve snapped
the boy’s toy sword.’ A laugh bristles the crowd.
I’m hard against the brute, our wrists are locked
until I push, release and slip aside
like a sudden opened door, so that his force
throws him on my behalf.
                                               ‘You little shit,’
    he growls, brushing the dust off as he stands.
My breath, from the exertion of his weight,
is rasping a little, and my rapier
is blunt as a whore’s remark. Bradley, now sore,
is more determined. Slow, perhaps, but slow
in the manner of a seasoned torturer
delighting in his work, delaying pain
until the expectation’s made it worse.
He calls for a swig of ale, as if to savour
his victory before dispatching me.
It appears from the audience. ‘I’ll have you now,’
he says, with a cellared voice, ‘you worthless tick.’
     
    ‘Go on, Bill, finish him off!’ a woman squeals.
I turn round, shocked to notice ‘Mrs Peat?’
‘I meant him, dear,’ she reverses. ‘Finish him off.’
And no hard feelings, offers me her gums.
Bradley’s delight reveals two broken teeth
inflicted in another brawl; he comes
like Judgment Day towards me. As he swings
the unwieldy blade, I snatch from a crooked man
his walking stick, rush ‘Sorry,’ as he falls
and his crutch, braced in my hands, prevents an act
of unfair decapitation, then is dropped
as I duck beneath those ape arms. Bradley turns
but trips on the crippled man whose stick I stole.
‘You whore’s son with your la-di-dah brocade.’
Several assistants help them to their feet,
the old man winded, Bradley in a stew
now boiling over. ‘Fight, you poncy turd!’
     
    ‘I believe you’re a little drunk. There are children here.’
     
    It’s Watson, breathing sharply at my side,
with Nashe not far behind. He claps his arm
around my shoulder, saying, ‘Honestly.
Gentlemen duel at dawn. It’s almost three.
You’re keeping good people from their work. I’d guess
that your opponent’s not a gentleman.’
     
    ‘So you’ve come now?’ says Bradley. ‘Very good.
I’ll have a bout with you, then finish off
your wheezy friend.’
     
                                       There goes his fish-stock rage,
    bubbling over his lip as if a fire
were stoked beneath him. Watson keeps his calm,
and his hand on the hilt of an unfamiliar weapon.
‘That’s not your sword.’ ‘No, it’s Cornwallis’s.
I borrowed it just in case,’ he whispers back.
    Having emptied his verbal armoury,
the brute has another swig of someone’s ale,
a pat on the back. A breeze whips up the air
like a hand up a lady’s petticoat. A thrill.
     
    My mind cooks up the shiver; brings it here
with a flavour of its aftertaste, the bite
of unalterable history. But then, what felt
like theatre was real: not choreographed,
the lines to come unwritten and unknown.
     
    ‘Kit, hold my jacket,’ says Watson, stripping quick
to his undershirt. ‘It cost me two months’ pay.’
And he’s in the fray, and fencing.
     
                                                                   I’ve seen cocks
    go for each other’s eyes more cautiously;
Watson, perhaps pumped up from running there,
is bright,