A Dead Man in Deptford Read Free

is a time and place for kneeling.
Kett of a sudden boiled and cried aloud:
    - Kneel kneel kneel damn you kneel. You are to be blasted,
sir. I know of your sins. And he trembled, a struggling cat in
his arms.
    Did he know of his sins? Was that a sin that the Greeks
approved, that was practised by holy Socrates? Kit said now
to his fellow students:

    - Clearly out of his wits. No longer as he had been, intermittently in his senses. Religion can do this to a man, nay to a
whole nation can it. See, look, there is sport outside.
    And indeed through their bottle-glass window they could see
a sort of riot beginning to proceed outside the tavern opposite,
the Eagle. Undergraduates, their gowns aswing, were kicking a
man into the mud. There was much mud after long summer rain.
Wonder of wonders, the Vice-Chancellor of the University stood
afar looking, ordering no quelling of the riot.
    - We’ll Join, Kit said. It has happened at last.
    - What has?
    - You’re deaf to all except God’s doubtful Word. This has
been coming. Walter Raleigh got the farm of wines. That means
the right to license whatever vintners he chooses and collect one
pound a year from each one in the country. The Queen gave him
this right, but the Queen’s writ does not run here. That is why
there is no interference. The fists of the students are doing the
Vice-Chancellor’s work.
    - It is not godly to stick a man’s face in the mud.
    - Ah come.
    Down there in the street the man enmudded was permitted
to rise from his cursing misery only to be thudded down again.
His wife at the tavern door howled. A man called from an upper
window of the tavern:
    - Sir Walter shall know of this. I am Sir Walter’s agent.
You hear? There shall be writs. This is rampant breaking of
the law.
    Kit saw flushed glee on raw student faces. They had done
with the tavern-keeper, they would now have at his wife. But she
slammed the door, giving her dripping dirty husband no chance
to enter. He ran dripping down the street. He would turn at its
end and make his way in by a rear door. It was all over, save for
the crying of the man at the window. An official call of Arrest
him from afar was translated into student stone-throwing. The
man withdrew and fastened the casement. A gentleman by Kit,
finely dressed and in a red cloak, whined:
    - See, there is mud over me. This is filth.

    - You take your chance, sir, Kit said. But the mud will
scrape off. Though it must dry first.
    - I cannot ride on to Newmarket like this.
    - You had done better not to dismount, sir.
    - It is on my face too. I must wash. Where can I wash?
As for my horse, it is at the farrier’s, a matter of a loose
shoe.
    - If you would deign to honour the humble lodging of a
student, I can bring water in a bowl and find a tough brush
for the brushing.
    - I must be in Newmarket by nightfall.
    - Night falls late this season. This way.
    The bedchamber Kit shared with young Ridley, at that time
lovesick and gathering flowers by the Cam, was very bare. His
visitor, cloakless now and displaying a slit doublet, black velvet
over, gold silk under, also a collar of cobweb lawn, nodded at
what he saw, saving:
    - Very bare. It was the same at Bologna. I took my degree
there. I.V.
    - Ivy?
    - I.V. Iuris Vtriumque. Proficient in either law, civil, canon.
Thomas Watsonus I.V. studiosus. And you?
    - Christopher. The other name is unsure. Marlin, Merlin,
Marley, Morley. Marlowe will do. Wait. Thomas Watson. They
were showing around Sophocles done into Latin. The Antigone.
Are you the same Thomas Watson?
    - My Antigone was a mere boast. I prefer to be known
for my Passionate Century of Love.
    - An honour, Kit said, though he did not know the work.
I would send out for wine if I had money. A poor student of
divinity, no more.
    Watson dug a shilling from his purse. Kit yelled for Tom.
Watson started. But Tom was no uncommon name. The Tom
that entered was a boy, tousled and with an incisor missing,