Strange Devices of the Sun and Moon by Lisa Goldstein

idea of Tom’s running like a pattern through his plays, justice for those wronged, revenge carried out against evildoers. Earthly retribution. Who would have guessed that beneath Tom’s habitually dour expression he held such strange beliefs?
    And yet he had once held similar irrational ideas. He could not help but feel that a pattern ran through his own life, that someone or something looked out for his welfare. Just as he was contemplating with despair the idea of living out the rest of his days in Canterbury, of becoming a shoemaker like his father, he had gotten away to Cambridge. As soon as he’d realized his scholarship would not support him he’d met up with Robert Poley, the queen’s agent. Three years ago Tamburlaine, his first play, had been performed to as much acclaim as he had dared to dream about, and he’d been only twenty-three. “I hold the Fates bound fast in iron chains,” he had written in Tamburlaine, a wildly ambitious student who’d known precious little about fate.
    As he grew older, though, he somehow lost his belief in higher powers. Everything he had accomplished had been through his own efforts; there was no need to postulate spirits either benign or malign. Anyone with enough talent and wit could have left Canterbury. If, as he’d said to Tom, he would never be called up before the Privy Council, it was only because he’d begun to cultivate those in power, like Poley and the men who had sent the letter to Cambridge.
    He appreciated the irony of it at the very moment that his play Dr. Faustus was being performed on the London stage he had lost his belief in devils, and in God as well. Yet the feeling was not terrifying, as he had thought it would be; instead he felt liberated, free to create what he wanted of his life.
    â€œNow you sound like Robin,” he said to Tom.
    â€œI sound like any man who believes in God’s justice—”
    A loud voice interrupted him. “Who sounds like me?” Christopher looked up to see Robert Greene and Thomas Nashe coming toward them.
    â€œâ€”that is to say anyone in England,” Tom said, finishing his thought.
    â€œListen to this man,” Christopher said to the two newcomers. “He counts Nemesis as one of the nine muses.”
    The others laughed. Tom Kyd turned to him quickly, looking angry and a little hurt. Was he so thin-skinned, then, to resent any small jest at his expense? He should have grown up in Christopher’s large contentious family, where arguments begun over dinner frequently carried over for days, the winner being the person who could outshout and outlast everyone else. His father had won most of the quarrels, but when he’d come home from the university for visits he’d surprised the old man a time or two.
    â€œI said only that those who do evil are punished,” Tom Kyd said.
    â€œAye, that’s true enough,” Robert said as he and Tom Nashe took seats at the table. They carried beer and plates of hot chicken and bacon, and as he smelled the food Christopher realized how hungry he was. He looked around for the host or one of the serving-women but they were all busy, carrying out trays of beer or lighting candles.
    One of the serving-women dropped a large stack of pewter plates, silencing all conversation for a moment. Then everyone laughed and the talk resumed. A man called loudly to Tom Nashe from across the room; Tom always boasted that he knew everyone in London. He ignored the man and turned to answer Robert.
    â€œIs it?” Tom said, tearing off a chicken wing and wiping his hand on his breeches. “Then the devil’s reserved the hottest corner of hell for you, Robin. You’ve kept none of the vows you made a month ago. You gamble, you dandle the wenches on Holywell Street—”
    â€œCan you tell me you do none of those things?”
    â€œCertainly I do, but I never repented of them.”
    â€œWell, what of it?