Free The Marlowe Papers by Ros Barber Page A

ferocious; Bradley swinging wild
like a blinded man who doesn’t know which way
the blows will come. The gathered crowd step back
to accommodate raw spleen. A boy left stood
in the way of danger, awed by spectacle,
is collared to greater safety.
                                                           ‘Ha! Take that!’
    crows Watson, scratching blood from Bradley’s chest.
‘I’ve taken worse,’ his gruff opponent says,
and turns as ugly as a thunderstorm,
thwacking his heavy sword again, again,
across the spaces Watson occupied
split seconds earlier. Tom leaps back and back
to make some space for the depth of Bradley’s rage
as the bull man presses forward. The heavy sword,
now lightened by fury, flashes there, then there,
slices at arm and thigh.
                                               I watch the blood
    that feeds that friendly heart spread like a plague
across the cambric of Tom Watson’s shirt.
Bradley is grinning. Now the crowd grows quiet,
and the steel on steel that follows cuts a hush
as still as the full-stop of a funeral hymn.
As tremors in my legs, those staggered steps
of Watson, backwards – backed now to a ditch
where his breath comes shallow, sharp as that bare inch
between him and his end – a sudden end,
rearing up black from the afternoon’s bad joke.
And who would leap into that deep unknown
we’re told leads to the gods, but comes up void –
is always walked alone – without a stab
at another’s heart?
     
                                     I hear the blade go in
    with a crack of bone, a squeak along the rib;
Watson’s eyes widen, close. The heavy groan
is Bradley’s. He slides – as easily as snow
laid thick on a sloping roof, but thawed beneath –
clean from the blade, and crumples to the ground.
     
    No one moves, though the wind tugs at their cuffs,
their hats, their hems. And then a wail begins
on a note like a rising flood in someone’s gullet:
a dusty woman pushing through the throng,
knocking aside the goggling passer-by,
the death-dumb neighbour. ‘Bill,’ she’s sobbing, ‘Bill,’
and it’s Bill that’s drowning. Blood bursts from his mouth
in eager blossoms as his love winds through
to cradle him in her lap, ‘Oh, Bill, oh, Bill,
oh, William’ – so intently locked with him
that she’s blind to us, his murderers, until
she finds on her blood-soaked dress a heavy corpse;
and no one in that flesh.
                                                 ‘What have you done?’
    Her hate disintegrates to disbelief,
then melts to loss as she returns to Bill,
what used to be her Bill, what kissed her neck
to wake her up, and twirled her in a dress
when he promised her a future, always good
for the rent no matter what. And now, no Bill.
And she’s sobbing no, and no, and no, and no,
her hair stuck to her tears, her hopeless cheek
stamped with her lover’s blood. The bud of her lips
murmuring prayers.
                                   ‘I’ll get the constable,’
    says Nashe. ‘Don’t worry. The both of you stay put.’
He’s sprinting down the street. I steer Tom’s arm
to sit him gently down, remove what’s left
of his shirt and tear it into strips. There’s not
one protest, joke. With frightened care, I wrap
his wounds until the cloth stops soaking red,
then drape his jacket gently on his shoulders
as though he were a general. He shudders,
grips round his knees, and dimly stares away.
Someone offers a flask: ‘Good liquor, sir.’
I put it in his hand. He swigs it, gulps
and winces, gives it back, still gazing straight.
I don’t partake myself; return it to
the glove of a quiet man I recognise,
a friend of Richard Field.
                                                   Tom’s skin is cold,
    so I put my arm around him,