The Reckoning

by M. J. Trow

  ‘Oh, Kit,’ she purred in his ear. ‘Audrey, surely?’

  ‘No,’ he said, decisively, turning over to face her, still holding her hand out of harm’s way. ‘I think it is definitely Mistress Walsingham, don’t you?’ Pressing her hand into the mattress, he hauled himself up on the pillows, making sure that his nightshirt didn’t move with him. He wrapped his legs in its linen fastness and drew up his knees. Only then did he risk letting go of her hand. By the light of the hazy moon, he looked at her. Her hair was loose and hanging down her back. Her silk nightgown was cut low over her breasts and her skin glowed in the moonlight as her breath came fast and uneven.

  ‘Master Marlowe,’ she said, with much emphasis, ‘I don’t really mind what you call me. All I want is that you satisfy me. Thomas is … Thomas is a disappointment, shall we say? A well-turned calf is all very well, but the rest of him does not live up to his legs.’ She made another lunge, but Marlowe was too quick for her. He had outmanoeuvred some of the best swordsmen in Europe – a love-crazed hostess stood no chance.

  ‘And what makes you think that the rest of me lives up to my legs, Mistress Walsingham?’ he asked.

  He saw her teeth gleam in the moonlight. ‘Let’s just say, Master Marlowe,’ she said, leaning forward so that her breasts swung free in her gown, ‘that you didn’t wake up quite as soon as you may think you did. My soldiers,’ she walked her fingers up his chest and twisted them in his hair, ‘had reconnoitred far and wide before you opened your eyes.’ She knelt up with one movement and had her hands on his shoulders before he could stop her. ‘What they found convinced me that you and I could become the best of friends before you leave my house.’

  With a sudden twist, Marlowe pushed her back into the pillows and straddled her, holding her down. He leaned down, pinning her flat with the weight of his body. He felt her shudder and he put his mouth to her ear. ‘Mistress Walsingham,’ he said, soft and low, ‘I would as soon lie with you as lie with Padraig. At least if I lay with him, the worst I would get up with would be fleas. So please, leave my bed, leave my room, leave me be. And as long as you do, I will say nothing to Thomas.’

  ‘And what makes you think that I will say nothing to Thomas,’ she said, pulling her head back so that she could look into his eyes.

  He laughed down at her. ‘And say what?’ he asked. ‘That I dragged you bodily into my bed?’

  ‘I will say you burst into my room,’ she said, defiantly. ‘I will rend my gown. I will cry. He will believe me.’

  ‘Will he?’ Marlowe said. ‘If I should shout now, who will believe that any of that happened. Your gown is unrent. I see no tears. What I see is a woman wearing a gown many would blush to wear for a husband. A woman who has brushed her hair, has rouged her cheek and … unless I miss my guess … other parts to take advantage of a poor Kentish boy unused to the wiles of the aristocracy.’

  She laughed in his face. ‘A poor Kentish boy? Would anyone believe that? You are Christopher Marlowe, to whom no sin is unknown, from what I hear.’

  ‘You hear strange things, Mistress Walsingham,’ he said, jumping off the bed and bringing her with him in a feat of athleticism that took her completely unawares. ‘Now, do you want me to shout for help now, or do you want to go back to your chamber and hope that I am too much of a gentleman to tell a soul that this ever happened?’

  She tried one more time to reach in for a kiss, but he still had her by the wrists and he held her at arm’s length. She stared at him in the faint light through the casement and seemed to come to a decision. ‘If you don’t want what I have to offer,’ she said, ‘you are more stupid than I was ever led to believe, Christopher Marlowe. I just hope you don’t live to regret it.’

  ‘I hope to live, Mistress Walsingham,’ he said, with a smile, releasing her wrists. ‘And I doubt that I will regret anything. I never have so far.’

  ‘Then may that continue,’ she said, holding her left wrist with her right hand. ‘I hope there will be no bruises tomorrow. Thomas will be worried if there are, I know.’

  ‘There will be no bruises, as well you know,’ Marlowe told her. ‘Or perhaps you could visit Thomas now and have him hold you as I have.’

  He heard her laugh softly as she slid out of the door. ‘Oh, no, Master Marlowe; Thomas would never hold me as you have.’ And with a click of the latch, she was gone.

  The dark was useful for many things. Love. Secrets. Venom and spite. It was one of Audrey Walsingham’s favourite things. It was dark now, as she met with her husband’s chaplain later that night.

  ‘Marlowe,’ she said, leaning closer to Richard Baines. ‘What do you know about him?’

  ‘Cambridge man,’ Baines said, ‘Corpus Christi, I believe. Destined for the church, like most of us.’

  ‘And before that?’ she asked.

  ‘Not much,’ the priest said. ‘He was born in Canterbury. Father was a shoemaker or tanner or somesuch. Went to the King’s School – Marlowe, not the father. Choral scholar.’

  ‘So, he’s riff-raff?’ Audrey checked.

  Though it was dark, Baines knew his mistress well enough to be able to picture the smile that was playing on her lips. ‘’Fraid so,’ Baines nodded.

  ‘That doesn’t surprise me,’ she sneered.

  ‘Became the blue-eyed boy of Archbishop Parker – hence the scholarship to Corpus.’

  ‘So he didn’t actually earn his place?’

  ‘Oh, he’s bright,’ Baines said. ‘No doubt about that. He’s probably our finest playwright, at least until somebody else came along. It seems unlikely, but Nicholas Udall used to bear that laurel.’

  ‘Who?’ Audrey Walsingham had little time for the arts.

  ‘Ralph Roister Doister?’

  He heard her draw in a breath, thinking. ‘No. That means nothing.’

  ‘Never mind,’ he said. No one had ever accused Audrey Walsingham of having a sly sense of humour, or indeed any other kind. ‘Long story short, he has a fine mind and is an excellent poet.’

  ‘All that’s on the surface,’ Audrey said. ‘What’s underneath?’ In the last of the moonlight before it went down beyond the stand of trees that marked the eastern extent of the lands of Scadbury her teeth and eyes shone as she turned to face the chaplain.

  ‘Why do you want to know?’ he asked. He knew there was no gainsaying her when she was in this mood, but he thought that he would at least ask.

  ‘Let’s just say I don’t entirely trust Master Marlowe. Tom, of course, thinks the sun shines out of his venetians, but we all know what a soft touch Tom is.’

  ‘Well,’ Baines checked the coast was clear but leaned in closer just to make sure he wasn’t overheard. She could feel his breath on her cheek. ‘There are rumours, of course.’

  ‘Ah.’ She smiled like a viper. ‘Now we’re getting somewhere.’

  ‘They say he’s overfond of tobacco.’

  ‘Baines!’ Her slap rang around the room. Audrey Walsingham never stinted when it came to letting underlings know how she felt.

  ‘All right, all right,’ he gabbled. ‘Not a hanging offence, I know. I’m just trying to remember all that I’ve heard. Boys. He likes boys.’

  ‘Does he now?’ Audrey was smiling like a basilisk now. Only the dark saved Baines from a petrified future.

  ‘I was with him in an inn once,’ Baines told her. ‘The Eagle and Child, it was, in Cambridge; not that the great and mighty Kit Marlowe remembers me at all. But I distinctly heard him say that people who don’t like tobacco and boys are fools. But there’s more. Much more.’

  ‘That alone could hang him,’ Audrey said.

  ‘What I know could burn him,’ Baines said. ‘He’d go to the fire.’

  ‘Say on.’

  ‘He believes that Moses was just a conjuror,’ the priest half-whispered. Audrey raised an eyebrow. This was getting altogether more interesting.

  ‘That … that Jesus Christ and John the Baptist were bedfellows.’

  Audrey Walsingham had no leanings
to the Puritan persuasion and she crossed herself openly.

  ‘The man is a damned atheist, Audrey,’ Baines hissed. ‘He, like the stage-fiend Tamburlaine he created, would dare God out of his Heaven. If he believed God existed, that is.’

  ‘Audrey?’ The mistress of Scadbury and all within its walls bridled. ‘You would call me Audrey out loud? We need to keep to the proprieties, Richard.’

  ‘Proprieties,’ he said, sliding his arm from around her waist and running his hand down her thigh. ‘Are any left to us, Mistress Walsingham?’

  ‘Perhaps not,’ she murmured, matching her action to his, with rather more attack. He gasped, then leaned into her; she was certainly not shrinking when it came to the arts of love and sometimes, when he was alone in his narrow bed, he cursed the other men she blessed with her body. He suddenly realized why she was asking so much about Marlowe and his face contorted with hatred and evil.

  ‘All this is just a rumour,’ he said, throwing his head back as her fingers did their work. ‘Except … oh, God, Audrey … except the tobacco and boys bit. I heard that myself.’

  ‘Rumours hang men, Richard,’ Audrey said, pulling him towards her. ‘And they burn them too. Will you write all this down? It might come in handy.’

  ‘Now?’ he hissed between clenched teeth.

  ‘Perhaps later,’ the mistress of Scadbury said.

  Marlowe stood on Scadbury’s battlements and watched the Lord Chamberlain’s Men rattling out of the morning mist. At the head, jolting on the lead wagon, sat Tom Sledd, wrapped in a cloak against the cold. Assorted flats and timbers lay behind him, trailing coloured cloth, part costume, part bunting. The showman in Sledd couldn’t help himself. Whenever an acting troupe was on the road, they pulled out all the stops, with shawms and viols, lutes and drums, dragons breathing fire and arquebusiers barking through the streets. Local children ran with them, dogs yapping and snapping at their heels, jinking in and out of the horses’ hooves as the actors flaunted their wares.

  The walking gentlemen walked; Frizer and Skeres and the rest in rich brocade, tossing skittles into the air and swallowing swords. None of it was real, but none of it was supposed to be. It was theatre. It was free. And the crowds that gathered at the roadside loved it.

  Ned Alleyn never walked. He lounged on velvet on the second wagon, a girl on each arm and a flagon of ale between his feet. Every now and then, he threw a fake rose at a pretty girl watching from the roadside, but otherwise he was fully engaged with his own girls, neither of whom bore a strong family resemblance to any of the Alleyns.

  Marlowe smiled to himself. He didn’t think it would be long before the mistress of Scadbury got her claws into his leading man and he couldn’t see Ned Alleyn being as resistant as he had been. Shaxsper with his new-found status as second on the playbills, rode in the third wagon. He was already wearing a natty little number he had chosen from costume for his role as Piers Gaveston, the ingle of Edward the Second. Every time he thought of it, he gave himself a shake. He was a happily married man – well, married, anyway – and a real actor had to cope with difficult parts sometimes. He’d get over it.

  One by one, the troupe rattled under the archway that led to Scadbury’s courtyard. Sledd, Alleyn, Shaxsper, the new assistant stage manager, Finch, various people Marlowe barely recognized, Nicholas Faunt … Faunt?

  ‘I don’t know what analogy to use,’ Marlowe said. ‘Bad penny?’

  ‘Less than kind, Kit,’ Faunt smiled and nodded, speaking out of the side of his mouth. ‘Less than kind.’

  ‘It’s just that I hate to use clichés such as “What are you doing here?”’

  Faunt glanced from left to right and twirled under the archway that led to the knot garden and the butts. He pulled Marlowe with him. ‘Tom Walsingham,’ Faunt hissed. The man had once been the secretary of Francis Walsingham, the late Spymaster. There was no one better versed in the arcane arts of espionage than Nicholas Faunt.

  Marlowe was unimpressed. ‘What about him?’

  Faunt glanced back to the courtyard of the great house where the wagons were being unloaded and Lewknor, Walsingham’s steward, was barking orders. ‘Let’s just say,’ he said in the low, level growl he used in the passageways of Whitehall, ‘that there are certain … irregularities, shall we say?’

  ‘Nicholas,’ Marlowe said at the same pitch, ‘It’s me – Kit. You’re going to have to do better than that.’

  ‘So, of course, I leapt at the chance to join the Lord Chamberlain’s Men. Who wouldn’t?’

  One of Walsingham’s lackeys walked past with a pair of his dogs on leashes.

  ‘Quite, quite,’ Marlowe smiled. ‘What part had you in mind?’

  Faunt was whispering again. ‘The part that keeps us all safe in our beds,’ he said.

  ‘Sorry,’ Marlowe shook his head, ‘that still doesn’t cut the mustard.’

  Faunt waited until the dog-handler was a diminishing speck among the reeds that edged the moat. ‘The Queen is old,’ he said. ‘Her friends are dying around her. There are whispers of the succession.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘Well, we all know about Anjou, Alençon, Dudley, all the others. Ralegh was the flavour for a while, more recently Essex. It was fun once. Now, between you and me, it’s a little nauseating.’

  ‘How does any of this involve Thomas Walsingham?’ Marlowe asked.

  ‘First,’ Faunt said, ‘Let me ask you what you nearly asked me – what are you doing here?’

  ‘Performing my new play,’ Marlowe shrugged. ‘Edward the Second.’

  ‘No, I mean, why here? Why Scadbury? Why not the Rose? I can’t see Philip Henslowe objecting to a new play by Christopher Marlowe.’

  Marlowe laughed. ‘There are plays and plays, Nicholas,’ he said. ‘Henslowe likes the cash a play brings in, but he doesn’t like adverse publicity. Kyd’s play would have brought in a fine crop of not-so-fresh vegetables. My play, possibly something worse.’

  ‘I had heard that The Spanish Tragedy is perhaps not the easiest play to sit through.’

  ‘I’m interested to hear you say that,’ Marlowe said. ‘Has anyone ever sat through it? Because if so, I would love to know the plot.’

  ‘Are you telling me your play is worse?’ Faunt raised a doubting eyebrow.

  ‘I’m telling you it’s dangerous – or potentially so, anyway. And you’re getting off the point, as you so often do.’

  ‘No, I’m not,’ Faunt insisted. ‘You haven’t told me why Scadbury.’

  ‘The Lord Chamberlain believes – and he’s probably right – that his Puritan friends won’t approve of his having an acting troupe, so he’s trying them out outside of London. Knowing Tom Walsingham as I do, I thought of Scadbury.’

  ‘How long have you been here?’

  ‘A day,’ Marlowe said. Then, remembering the night before, added, ‘but it seems longer.’

  ‘You’ve spoken to Walsingham?’

  ‘A chat, yes,’ Marlowe said. ‘And I dined with him and his wife last night.’

  ‘Hmm,’ Faunt was wandering down the lawn that sloped to the butts. ‘But she’s not his wife yet, is she?’

  ‘It appears not.’

  ‘Well, all’s well there,’ Faunt said. ‘She’s just a little more brazen than most.’

  ‘Tell me about it.’ Marlowe suppressed a shudder.

  ‘I couldn’t,’ Faunt said. ‘Now, you tell me, did the conversation at dinner take on a Northern perspective?’

  Marlowe blinked. ‘You’ve lost me there.’

  Faunt sighed and came to a decision. ‘I can see I’ll have to be plain,’ he said. ‘I see that you working for the Queen’s new Spymaster has dimmed your brain a little. In the event of the Queen, God preserve her, dying without issue …’

  ‘… As she must,’ Marlowe cut in.

  ‘Indeed,’ Faunt nodded. ‘In that eventuality, who is Her Majesty’s most likely successor? Her closest relative?’

  Light dawned. ‘You mean …?’

&
nbsp; Faunt checked the coast for clarity one more time. ‘Precisely,’ he said. ‘That sad pederast whose tongue is too big for his mouth, His Majesty the King of Scots.’

  ‘So, when you said, “Northern perspective” …?’

  ‘The day is coming, Kit,’ Faunt murmured, ‘when men will have a stark choice. The Queen of England or the King of Scots. But for now, any talk of the latter is strictly banned. And anyone who openly touts for James risks his head, literally.’

  ‘And you suspect Walsingham?’ Marlowe was incredulous.

  ‘I suspect everybody,’ Faunt said.

  ‘A more loyal man never drew breath,’ the playwright went on.

  ‘I hope you’re right,’ Faunt muttered.

  ‘Nicholas, you worked for the man’s cousin, as did I. Tell me, as one projectioner to another, can you seriously doubt Thomas?’

  ‘Kit,’ Faunt looked the man in the eyes, ‘these are dangerous days. The Privy Council is trying to hold the damned country together, but the Queen is becoming a liability. If only she’d listened to Burghley’s advice – well, everybody’s advice, really – and married, we’d have heirs to the throne coming out of our arseholes by now and they’d have heirs too. As it is, well, any Johannes Factotum is likely to cast in his lot if he has even the remotest claim to the throne. Heresy though it is to say so, that’s exactly how the bloody Tudors got it in the first place.’

  There was a long silence.

  ‘Now, I know Tom Walsingham is a friend of yours. And I could be wrong – it’s rare, but it has happened. All I’m doing is keeping an eye while I’m here. When’s the play going on?’

  ‘A week today, we’d hoped,’ Marlowe said.

  ‘If I haven’t learned all I need to by then, I promise you I’ll move on to my next port of call. It’s not just Walsingham we’re interested in.’

  ‘When you say “we” …?’ Marlowe raised an eyebrow.

  ‘Burghley,’ Faunt said. ‘I’m working for Burghley.’

  ‘Master Sledd,’ Amyntas Finch said, his hands on his hips. ‘May I ask why, if I was not needed in the role of walking gentleman, that that gentleman,’ he inclined his head towards Faunt, ‘is now a walking gentleman?’