CHAPTER FIVE : MURDERING SHAKESPEARE

{"It is a sin to believe evil of others, but it is seldom a mistake."
- H. L. Mencken}

I recognized the face above the luger pointed at me.

He was dressed in a black, high-collar Elizabethan outfit of leather, hose, and sword.

His haunted face seemed to have seen too many of life’s bitter ironies.

His eyes probed me from under his brown, thinning hair. I judged him to be about thirty, and his manner whispered he was an adept at trickery, both verbal and physical.

But then, my knowing him was hardly the feat you might think. I recognized him from his drawing made in front of The Globe Theater in London when good Queen Bess was neither good nor regal.

Shakespeare.

Marlene grunted, "Shouldn’t you have a dagger in your eye?"

His face went hard, his eyes cold. "You have the advantage of me, dear lady."

"And of everyone else I meet, Christopher."

His eyes became a wolf’s. "I go by the name William now."

"As you did when I persuaded you to let me play the lead in your new play, The Taming of the Shrew."

Mark Twain chuckled, "Obviously, he was a believer in type casting."

She shot him a look a lesser man would have fainted from. "Cute."

"A living legend actually," Mark smiled wide.

"And humble, too."

Shakespeare/Marlowe snorted, "You should read your history better, Twain. Boys played women roles at The Globe Theater."

I turned to Marlene. "But that was before you were born."

She winked at me. "Time does not exist for ghosts as it does for you, Liebling. I go where there are challenging roles."

Mark muttered, "Hardly a challenge for the Valkyrie to play a shrew."

Marlene raised her saber towards my friend, but Shakespeare gestured with his luger. "No, no, dear lady. Another inch, and I will kill Roland."

Mark Twain growled, "If you don't lower that weapon, I will knock you so far into next week that it will take a team of surgeons to extract Thursday from your posterior."

Shakespeare half-covered a mock yawn. "I have not cheated death all these centuries to be threatened by a ghost who cannot even touch me."

I pulled up straight. Cheated Death? Death who had shaken me like a cheap blender, who had given me ... a box filled with darkness? I suddenly knew who the box was for. But could I give it to him, knowing what it held?

Marlene's ice-blue eyes narrowed. "You would hurt my Liebchen?"

So fast it was a blur, her right boot toe slammed into Shakespeare's groin. He squealed and bent double, clutching himself. He weaved unsteadily on his feet, the luger slipping from his fingers.

"L-Low blow, Milady."

Marlene snatched up the luger, shoving it into her own golden waist sash. "All blows are low, Marlowe."

She sneered down at him. "And were you as clever as you believe, you would have known that in Meilori's, ghosts become solid."

"You keep calling him Marlowe," I frowned. "But Marlowe died from a dagger in the eye."

Christopher smiled a thing of pure, gleeful evil. "I gave it to that young upstart named Shakespeare. He stole my lines. I stole his identity. Seemed fair to me."

Mark Twain frowned, "And how did it seem to young Shakespeare?"

Christopher’s face grew cold. "Quick."

And just like that are lives decided. The wrong word at the right time. A proud crowing when silence would have saved.

I have a weakness : bullies. They had made my life hell when I was a young boy, moving from city to city, school to school. Whenever I met one, I always went a little crazy ... as I did at that moment.

Clenching my teeth against the pain of the dry-ice agony to it, I pulled the rune-covered box from my jeans and shoved it into his right hand. "Here. This is for you. From a devoted follower."

The lid of the box snapped open. A billowing cloud of darkness swallowed Marlowe. It howled hungrily, the speed of it frightening the hell out of me.

Marlowe screamed wet and shrill like a little girl. I suddenly felt sharp regret for what I had just done. Then, in my mind, I saw a young, struggling playwright with a dagger in his bleeding, blank eye.

The regret ebbed back a bit. As quick as the turning off of a light switch, the cloud and Marlowe were gone.

Gone. But the memory and my regret stayed.

I forced my throat to work. "Say Hello to Faust for me."
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And to hear the theory that Marlowe stole Shakespeare's life :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTM0wW2SNlU&feature=related