Eleventh Hour

by M. J. Trow

  Marlowe listened, aware of the touch of his friend on his right hand, the harsh stone beneath the palm of his left, where he pressed down. Salazar was shrieking now, in a voice higher than any human should be able to reach. It was the sound of a knife on a whetstone, of a wet finger down glass, of a nail on a slate. It pierced the ear and went straight to the hairs on the back of the neck. There was no breath in it, just a cry to the Heavens and what they had shielded behind the stars.

  At the point where the cry became all but unbearable, it stopped. With a sob, Salazar bent down and sucked up the globe of blood into his mouth and, raising his head, blew a red mist into the air. Marlowe and Dee stepped back a pace in unison, not breaking their grip. On his stair, Carter poised to strike.

  In the air, a face that Marlowe and Dee knew well hung, looking sadly at them. The eyes opened, looked beyond them into nothing and then the whole thing faded away. Salazar cried out once more and slumped to the tomb’s top in a swoon. The silence after the screaming was palpable, broken after a few seconds by Carter’s thundering feet on the stair.

  ‘What was that, Master?’ he asked, uncertain of his voice.

  ‘That?’ Dee said, in a voice not quite his own. ‘Magic, Elias. Just a bit of magic.’

  And, leaving Salazar slumped where he had fallen, they felt their way up the stairs.

  FIFTEEN

  Christopher Marlowe had been more tired than this, many times in his short life. He could think back to when he was singing in the Good Friday vigil, when all the choristers felt ready to drop by the time the altar cloth was stripped and they all scattered in silence, in honour of the Last Supper. Hokum and claptrap he now would call it, but at the time, almost overwhelming for a small boy who was bone tired and emotional. He had been exhausted many a night climbing over the wall at Corpus Christi, hardly able to put one drunken foot before another as he dodged the proctors on the prowl. He had been tired, cold and in fear of his life often when on his dark work for Walsingham. But now, he closed his eyes and swayed as the sleep almost took him; now he felt that if he slept, he would surely die.

  A door slammed somewhere on the edge of oblivion and he opened his eyes and squared his shoulders. He was Kit Marlowe, the Muses’ darling. He did not sleep. Not in Philip Henslowe’s office, anyway, and not when he needed to beg a favour.

  Henslowe slid into his chair on the other side of his counting table. ‘Master Marlowe,’ he said, rubbing his hands together. He had left the takings for the week in the safekeeping of his Lombard friends and he was feeling in a mood to love all of his fellow men, even actors and especially playwrights. ‘How may I help you?’ His face suddenly froze as a thought occurred to him. ‘Although I am not at the moment in a position to advance …’

  ‘I am not here for money,’ Marlowe said. ‘Do you take me for an actor?’

  Henslowe laughed a little too loudly with relief. ‘Then …?’ He spread his arms in query.

  ‘I do need a favour and it may cost a little … only a little … money. But it will greatly enhance your standing and may even result in …’ Marlowe dropped his voice, ‘… enhancement.’

  Henslowe looked dubious.

  ‘Personal enhancement, if you understand me.’

  Henslowe’s eyebrows reached his hairline, a more difficult trick these days than heretofore. ‘You mean …’ he dropped his voice to below even a whisper, ‘… a title?’

  Marlowe nodded, a finger alongside his nose.

  Henslowe sat back, careful not to crush the invisible ermine or knock his coronet askew. ‘So, this favour,’ he said, lacing his fingers across a paunch grown suddenly a touch more baronial.

  ‘It’s not anything hard,’ Marlowe said, speaking fast so that Henslowe wouldn’t see the catch until it was too late. ‘I have been writing a play in my spare moments …’

  ‘You have spare moments?’ Henslowe was already wondering where this was going to go. It was a well-known fact that Marlowe never slept and even so he took on more than most sets of twins.

  Marlowe’s tone was airy. ‘A few. I have written … let us call it the bare bones … of a new play, but I doubt that Sir Edmund Tilney would let it pass. It contains some … well,’ he leaned forward, as one man of the world to another, ‘some material that might cause a stir. But you know how that goes – once it has been performed somewhere, the people cause a stink, they want to see it too, pressure is brought to bear. I needn’t draw you a picture, I’m sure.’

  ‘What material?’ The coronet was feeling a little less secure.

  ‘Oh, you know the kind of thing. Devils, a few devils …’

  ‘Devils? We’ve done devils before. Tom—’

  ‘I was going to ask you about Tom. How is he?’

  ‘You know Tom,’ Henslowe clicked his tongue. ‘Can’t keep a young dog down, eh? He’ll mend.’

  ‘There you are, then,’ Marlowe beamed, keeping to himself the thoughts that Meg might have more to do with the time of Tom’s return than Tom. ‘Nothing to worry about. So, my plan was to get it put on in a private house. You know how these titled lot go on, always having revels and such; Ralegh, he’s always ripe for a revel. House on the Strand. Nice and central.’

  ‘I don’t know him, though.’

  ‘You know Strange.’

  ‘Everyone knows Ferdinando Stanley.’

  ‘Well, there you are, then. Speak to him. Tell him you have a new play … oh, and another thing. Can you tell him Shaxsper wrote it?’

  Now Henslowe’s eyebrows all but disappeared. ‘Now, Kit, that is too much! No one could take your work for Shaxsper’s.’ He dropped his voice again. ‘Have you seen any of Henry the whatever?’

  ‘Sixth, I think.’

  ‘Is it? He keeps changing it.’

  ‘Some of it is all right.’ Marlowe tried to keep the doubt out of his voice.

  ‘But Shaxsper? Why?’

  ‘I want to hide my light under his bushel. To see if my line is mighty enough for recognition if the playgoers don’t know it’s me.’ Marlowe dropped his eyes in mock modesty.

  Henslowe was silent for a long moment, looking at his cash cow from under heavy brows. Then he sat forward, suddenly, bringing both palms down on the table with a crack. ‘Let’s do it!’ he cried. ‘Do you have the pages with you?’

  Marlowe smiled, the smile of a spider who has only to wrap up the fly before sucking it dry. ‘Not with me. But you shall have them tomorrow. After the performance. I want them in rehearsal as soon as possible after that. This play … it is topical, it won’t keep.’

  Henslowe wagged his head. ‘Hmm … I think that could work. How many in the cast?’

  ‘Not many. You’ll need Alleyn, of course. Burbage. Some walking gentlemen. Jenkins … Shaxsper, I suppose … and I thought I might take a small part myself, nothing major, just for fun.’

  Henslowe was already taken up with the thrill of it all and forgot for a moment Marlowe’s nominal acting skills. It would undoubtedly be all right on the night.

  Marlowe stood. ‘So, Master Henslowe … can I leave it with you?’ He hoped the answer was yes. He desperately needed to get home to Hog Lane and have a lie down. He wasn’t even sure whether he would be able to make the stairs.

  ‘Yes, yes,’ Henslowe’s head was still full of coronets. ‘Oh, Kit, before you go. I found this on my chair this morning.’ He paused for a moment as a thought struck him. The parcel he was now holding out to the playwright had not been there when he had locked up the night before. And yet, there it had been when he unlocked that morning. He shook his head, deciding that sometimes the least said, the soonest mended. ‘It’s addressed to you. By hand.’

  Marlowe took it with a sigh. ‘It’s probably some would-be playwright, showing me his work. Although …’ he weighed it in his hand, ‘it is a heavy piece of work, if that is so. May I open it here, Master Henslowe? Then I can leave it here for kindling, if I am right.’

  ‘Of course.’ Henslowe cleared a space.

  Mar
lowe undid the knots and folded out the waxed cloth that wrapped the contents, secure against the elements. A pile of parchment and papers were inside, not looking like any play Marlowe had ever seen. On top was a folded note, sealed with a blank spatter of wax. He opened it and read silently, glancing up at Henslowe as he did so, but the theatre owner was already jotting down some figures on the corner of an old playbill and had lost interest already in Marlowe and his parcel.

  ‘Kit,’ the note said, in scrawled, uneven letters, ‘I write in haste. Cecil’s men are on the way to search my rooms. They have already been to everywhere I lodge and these papers are not safe with me any more. Take them. Read them. Hide them somewhere secure. They will come for you, next. Believe me. Faunt.’ He turned the paper over and saw another line, in faint graphite, on the back. ‘I am on his trail. I will have him soon.’ Cryptic, so cryptic, it was unclear whether it was meant for him or was just a note on the other side of an old piece of paper.

  Marlowe folded the parcel up and tucked it under his arm. He had a feeling that Faunt’s warning had come too late for Tom Sledd. Suddenly, the assault on the Mermaid made some sense. Henslowe looked up. ‘Is it any good?’ he asked, pointing at the bundle.

  Marlowe shrugged. ‘Too soon to tell. I’ll look at it at home.’ He hitched the parcel tighter under his arm. ‘Well, goodbye, Master Henslowe. I will deliver those pages tomorrow.’ And with that, he was gone, clattering down the stairs.

  ‘Alleyn?’ Richard Burbage could roar for England when the need arose and it always arose at the mention of his rival’s name.

  ‘Of course, Alleyn.’ Philip Henslowe stood his ground while flapping his hands for quiet at the same time. ‘He always plays the leads in Kit’s plays; you know that.’

  ‘Why?’

  Henslowe looked at the boy. What was he? Twenty-two? Twenty-three? Towering ambition in one so young was downright embarrassing, but Henslowe had been here before – with Ned Alleyn only three years ago. The theatre was a young man’s world, but God give him strength, he could kill for a little maturity. And he didn’t have all day to explain the secrets of the theatrical universe to a boy who hadn’t finished shitting yellow. ‘You’ve got Mephistophilis, Richard,’ Henslowe wheedled. ‘It’s a plum part. Head Devil.’

  ‘I thought Lucifer was head Devil.’ Burbage had petulance written all over him this morning.

  ‘Technically, yes, but not the way Kit’s written it. I’ll tell you how unimportant Lucifer is – I’ve cast Jenkins.’

  Burbage’s expression changed. ‘Oh, I see. Well, put like that …’

  ‘Burbage?’ Alleyn thundered a little later and in another part of the theatre. ‘You’ve given Burbage a role?’

  Henslowe’s hands were flapping again. ‘I had to, Ned; you know how it is.’

  ‘No, Henslowe,’ Alleyn looked at him from under his best leading man scowl. ‘Suppose you tell me.’

  Henslowe looked at the actor. Ned Alleyn, it was true, was everybody’s leading man – tall, handsome, assured. Winchester geese flocked to him (no payment required); titled ladies sent their manservants with offers of trysts in romantic places, often accompanied by a diamond clip or two. Alleyn wasn’t choosy – no sensible offer was refused. But Henslowe didn’t have all day and had no idea of how to even start to give Alleyn a sense of his own perspective.

  ‘Faustus, Ned,’ he murmured in his ear, like the good angel that Marlowe had conjured up. ‘A magus with power to raise the Devil himself. Kit based the character on you.’

  ‘On me?’ Even Alleyn was surprised by that.

  ‘Only someone of your gravitas,’ Henslowe grinned, hoping that some of Marlowe’s Muses would rub off on him, ‘your raw sensual power, could carry a part like that. It’ll be something they’ll talk about for years, trust me – “I saw the great Ned Alleyn play Faustus”. Can’t you hear it?’

  ‘Edward,’ Alleyn said. He thought of posterity often. ‘The great Edward Alleyn. Has more of a ring.’

  ‘Absolutely.’ Henslowe knew he had got him.

  ‘So, it’s a comedy, then?’

  Henslowe frowned. Perhaps he hadn’t got him after all. ‘Er … no, Ned. It’s a tragedy – The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus.’ The impresario closed to his leading man. ‘It’s a true story.’

  For a moment, Henslowe believed he saw the colour drain from Alleyn’s cheek, but it may have been a trick of the light. The actor fumbled in his purse and hauled out a large crucifix on a chain, which he hung around his neck. He caught Henslowe’s glance.

  ‘Can’t be too careful,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll remember to take it off when I play The Jew tomorrow.’

  ‘Lots of thunder, Tom,’ Henslowe beamed at his stage manager; but, if truth were told, he didn’t like the look of him. He was still carrying all the signs of his stay with Master Topcliffe, but it was almost time to stop making allowances, in Henslowe’s opinion. Allowances cost money. ‘Lightning, a dragon, apparently. Is that going to be all right?’

  Sledd tried to shrug, but gave it up as too damned painful. This was a Kit Marlowe production; miracles took longer. ‘I suppose I should be grateful it isn’t the whole thing,’ he said. ‘Have you seen the stage directions he has in mind for the full play?’

  Henslowe shook his head.

  ‘If you take my advice, don’t. Dragons and thunder are only the beginning. But …’ a sudden thought had struck him. ‘We aren’t doing it here, are we?’ It would be an absolute nightmare if they were. It was already bad enough, with the cast corpsing in their lines on stage in The Jew because they had got confused with their lines from Faustus. If he had to have two lots of scenery stored backstage as well, he might as well throw a lighted taper in first as last and hope that Henslowe would embrace an early retirement.

  ‘No, no, don’t you worry.’ Henslowe patted his shoulder, forgetting that it had been dislocated by various and cunning means not so long before. ‘Sorry. No, it’s a private performance. At Durham House. That’s Sir Walter Ralegh’s place, you know, along the Strand. There’ll be a few fat purses there or I’m a friar’s codpiece.’ He swept away and clapped his hands, ignoring the scowls that Alleyn and Burbage gave each other. ‘Places, everyone. Where’s the bloody Chorus?’

  ‘Our Puritan friends wouldn’t approve,’ Walter Ralegh murmured in Ferdinando Stanley’s ear. ‘If this gets out, they’ll want Durham House closed down.’

  Strange laughed. ‘I’m looking forward to this. Good of you to lend your place, Walter, and good of Henslowe to find me a new playwright after … well, you know, the whole Marlowe business.’

  ‘Yes.’ Ralegh’s face was dark for a moment. ‘Who is it?’

  ‘Well, that’s just it. I may have met the man. I can’t remember. Shakespeare. William Shakespeare.’

  ‘What a ludicrous name!’ Ralegh laughed.

  ‘Warwickshire, apparently. County’s thick with them.’

  ‘Do you know this story, Walter?’ Thomas Hariot leaned across from his makeshift box.

  ‘No. It’s all about raising the Devil, apparently. And a scholar who signs a pact with him.’

  ‘The Great Lucifer?’ Henry Percy leaned across from his box, next to Strange. ‘Are you not taking a part, Walter?’

  ‘No, no,’ Ralegh chuckled, flashing his fondest smile to where Bess Throckmorton sat with a bevy of her ladies and Jane Dee, all in their finest velvet. ‘You know how I detest being the centre of attention.’ He pretended not to see Percy’s and Strange’s eyes roll upward.

  For a whole day, Tom Sledd and his people had been sawing, hammering, gluing, creating the Rose’s O in Ralegh’s Great Hall overlooking the river. The stage manager was annoyed with himself. Ever the perfectionist, Sledd knew he could never do justice to Marlowe’s new work in somebody’s house. On the road, with the strolling players of Lord Strange’s Men, it was difficult and everybody allowed a little latitude. True, this was not the finished Faustus, Marlowe had told him. It was a work in progress, but the
stage manager was to give it his all – the more terrifying the better – and Marlowe had insisted the performance be at night rather than the usual afternoon.

  Now, all was ready. A thousand candles, it seemed – reflected in Ralegh’s window that looked out over the darkling river – shone in the eyes of Bess Throckmorton and her friends, who fluttered their fans and made those eyes at the gentlemen sitting in their boxes across the stage from them. Bess, of course, only had eyes for Ralegh, now that they had kissed and made up, as he had told Marlowe they would. The others sighed at the elfin locks of Henry Percy, the strange, lovelorn young man who, even now, had his nose in a book. There was the dashing Lord Strange, the friend of actors and mountebanks and to some extent rather a dark horse. The ladies of Court had certainly heard of Derbyshire where he spent much of his time, but had no intention of actually going there. There was the downright peculiar mathematician, Hariot, who had numbers for brains, and the odd little foreigner Salazar, who was watching the stage so intently. In the centre of them all, one of them yet apart, the Queen’s magus, Dr Dee, with his snow-white beard and glittering eyes. Could any company on the stage match the one that sat in the audience?

  In Sledd’s temporary green room, more usually Ralegh’s armoury, the players prowled the space. Will Shaxsper, as surprised as the next man to find his name on the bills as author, was gowned as a scholar playing Cornelius, Faustus’s friend. His high forehead was covered in a shapeless Piccadill and his ruff was giving him gyp. Richard Burbage stood on tiptoe, his face and hands a vivid scarlet and horns protruding from his hair, Mephistophilis to the life. Tom Sledd had seen it all in his time with Lord Strange’s Men and at the Rose. Even some of the rough plays he had put on – when the only audience were some passing shepherds and their sheep, their only scenery a sheet with some bushes scrawled across it in charcoal – had had some scary moments, for anyone willing to let mummery carry them away, but he felt his hair crawl when he looked at Faustus’s Devil. He had to glance at the Good Angel, old Ben Kent, complete with wings and a halo, to keep his feet firmly on the ground. Ned Alleyn was increasingly edgy. The more he read Marlowe’s words, the less he liked this part. He was as blasphemous as the next man, in his cups and in the Mermaid, but this was on stage, within feet of the great and good. There were two earls in the audience, the Queen’s favourite and the Queen’s magus. And he was playing a man rejecting God and supping with the Devil. It’s only a story, he kept telling himself, only a story. Such things can’t happen. Even so, he fingered the crucifix, bright at his throat.