That night the fog mauled us after we left the theatre, Ellen and I. I thought of throwing my cloak around both of us, as we walked along: dark blue cloak in white fog. Instead of covering both of us I covered her...
The play had been well played, Alleyn up to form, Marlowe’s lines appreciated by a better than usual audience, some of them royalty. Tambourlaine usually appeals to royalty. This was Crown night, Christ’s crown, hell’s crown, fog on every thorn, thorns sticking through our laughter, to be remembered, in that cloak, bastard thorns.
Like dogs they followed us as we left the theatre, late, our arms around each other, the cloak flapping, fog leaving us inconspicuous. I saw her carriage approaching, inching the fog, fog through the spokes of her wheels. And then outcries, and Ellen beside me, falling, and as she fell I turned and saw my cloak slide with her, lantern and dagger on the road, misericord.
Here it is now: yes, here it is: I have it, pricking thing for future pricking, if need be: long, needle-pointed: Toledo steel: the right length to kill her—or me.
Laughter and fog, spines and theatre, the royalty of crime in a London gutter; time doesn’t remove them, can not remove them.
When we could we located guards—trustworthy men—and with a constable informed her servants and posted guards. Later, Jonson and I sat with her doctors and learned a little more about pain. I went for Ellen’s brother and he came, a cold young man who resembled Ellen, a slight fellow in handsome black. Hand on sword, he drew himself up, face ashen, mouth trembling...
“I’ll comb London for them...get them...”
Jonson often visited her, his words and thoughts the stuff for those days, my brain run dry, bats coasting out, Enobarbus memories:
Why, sir, give the gods a thankful sacrifice. When it pleases their deities to take a man’s woman from him, it shows the tailors of the earth; comforting therein, that when old robes are worn out, there are members to make new...so grief is crowned with consolation.