Voices from the Past Part 115

Raleigh: ...At sea, weeks away from port, alone on the deck, rigging and sails creaking, I've felt it... I've felt it in the smash of waves and moan of beams...felt it in the expanse of sky...that there must be a G.o.d.

Marlowe: Should be a G.o.d! Put it that way.

Raleigh: No...let it go as I've said it. As you ride at the bow, as spray hurls on board, there are certain certainties, rebuffs of personal fancy, declarations of a G.o.dhead.

Jonson: The Greek helmsman felt those same declarations, and his G.o.d was Zeus.

Marlowe: I don't go for such thinking on my part, Sir Walter. It shuts me inside a cage and the cage has a door with four heavy bars: f-e-a-r.

Raleigh: You know that each country has had a G.o.dhead.

Marlowe: Each country has its diseases, debts...despots.

Shakespeare: Are you denying your "School of Night"?

Raleigh: I'm not on trial here. I was speaking con- fidentially, no, intimately...that's a better word. I was trying to share an emotion and I ask you to respect it as an emotion.

Jonson: You ask for respect. G.o.d be at your table.

Everyone's highly respected here-even the waiters.

(Laughter)

Marlowe: Ah, shut up!

Shakespeare: We didn't come here to quarrel.

Raleigh: Maybe we can do better with politics...or is it too hydra-headed tonight? Let's talk about Ess.e.x.

Cautiously.

Marlowe: But why cautiously?

Shakespeare: We'll do better trying something else, not so risky. Supper's ready. Here it comes.

Jonson: Pour the ale, boy.

Marlowe: Hugger-mugger, my cage lost its bars. The bird of fear has flown ...hunger picked the lock.

That's how I remember an evening at the Tavern, Raleigh in his finest, wearing green velvet cloak, red trousers, black boots, black hat, sword; Jonson, Marlowe and me in our snuffbox suits, wearing our swords because of recent street fracases.

The Tower of London...

A cracked stone stairway leads to an open door:

Inside, windowless, Raleigh sits at his prison desk,

with maps, letters, books around him.

He is writing; he coughs:

Frail, he seems to be listening:

An armed guard trudges by and looks in.

Stratford

September 15, 1615

I

n '10, sometime during the autumn I think it was, I stopped outside Raleigh's prison, thinking to visit him: there he was, at his deal table, books, globe, maps and papers piled about him. His door was flung wide: his pen moved: perhaps he was writing his History. Sun lay on the floor of his room. A wren sang. His hand stopped. I stepped forward, then faltered. His hands moved over the table: he leaned on his elbows now, coughing. He had on a grubby red woolen cape, sleeves smudged with wax. He coughed again-his shoulders shaking.

He was the one who had dared the wild and secret lands, who had sweated men and s.h.i.+ps to reach a goal. Winds luned, storms crashed; yet he had kept on. He had wanted to explore the world for himself, for mankind! Books on board his s.h.i.+ps, books in his brain: wind stirred parchment on his table as I stood there and he read. What if he should turn and see me? What if he should get up?

Would he recognize me?