Eleventh Hour

by M. J. Trow

  ‘Not that way, Carter.’ Marlowe had stopped running and waited for the man to calm and turn. There was a wheel-lock in the servant’s hand, but he had already fired the shot that had shattered the window and he could never reload before Marlowe’s knife found him. His shoulders sagged.

  ‘How did you know?’ he asked. ‘About Prague, I mean?’

  ‘I am Machiavel,’ Marlowe said, as others, the men of the Rose and the School of Night, came at the double. ‘More than that, I am Belzebub. How could I not know?’

  SIXTEEN

  ‘Gentlemen,’ Marlowe did not turn to face them, intent as he was on watching Carter. ‘I give you the murderer of Sir Francis Walsingham.’

  There was a silence.

  ‘I thought you had us in the snare for that,’ Percy said.

  There were murmurs all round. They were all still reeling from the revelations on stage.

  ‘Cecil will have to be informed,’ Ralegh said. ‘In the meantime, if it’s not too late to knock up Master Topcliffe …’

  Strange gave a bark of laughter. ‘I have never known him sleep,’ he said. ‘I wager we will find him awake and blowing on his fires to keep his pincers hot.’

  ‘Tie him,’ Hariot said. ‘He has beaten the best minds in England for long enough to make me fear he can elude us yet. Let me make the knots; I have studied the art of it.’

  ‘Typical,’ Salazar muttered. ‘It is one thing to have looked in books on knot-making, another to be able to do it. Give me a moment and I can bind him fast by magic.’

  Carter, at bay against the door, smiled. He should have known that he could have relied upon these arrogant fools to fight amongst themselves. His fingers crept, inch by inch, to the latch and, when Marlowe’s attention was taken for a moment by Strange threatening to knock Hariot and Salazar’s heads together, he snatched at it, wrenched the door open and was gone, into the night-held Strand.

  Across the roadway from the gates of Durham House, a tree spread its boughs over the wall of the Convent Garden. Under it, two lovers stood, wrapped up in each other, though not touching. Their heads were bowed, their voices low. Love enveloped them in their own world and, although the man, John Dee, would never see his youth again, his wife could only see the man she loved above all things, wrapped in a pain he had thought had gone.

  ‘I love you, Jane,’ he murmured. ‘You and the children, more than life itself. But … Helene … I had never thought to see her again although, the Heavens know, I tried and tried. For months after her death, I did nothing but try to bring her back. It’s wrong, but …’

  She reached out a hand and stroked his cheek, feeling the old skin parchment under her fingers. ‘I don’t care, John,’ she whispered. ‘I know you love me. And I love you because of your love for her, not despite it. Come here,’ she held out her arms. Then, her head turned as a rout came running out of the gates of the erstwhile Bishop’s Palace. ‘What the …?’

  Dee stepped in front of her to protect her. ‘It’s Marlowe!’ he said over his shoulder, ‘with the entire School of Night at his heels. Whatever did he have those mummers say next that they are all after him?’ He shook his head. He had warned the man, after all.

  ‘No.’ Jane’s younger, sharper eyes had seen the other man, perhaps six paces ahead of Marlowe, but making ground fast as he jumped over the ruts of the road. He was heavier than the playwright, older certainly, and yet he ran with a fixity of purpose which gave his feet wings. ‘No, look. Look, there. It’s … John, it’s Carter! Why are they chasing Carter?’

  Dee felt a white-hot anger rise in his chest until he thought it would choke him. Two men he trusted were running towards him, one in pursuit of the other. There was no question of what to do next. With a power and speed which surprised even him, he launched himself out of the shelter of the tree and tackled Carter around the knees, bringing him down so that his head smacked on to a stone in the roadway and he lay still, stunned.

  ‘John!’ Jane screamed and ran forward.

  By the time the School of Night caught up, many of them puffing and blowing, though Ralegh managed to still look cool and collected, Marlowe was hauling Carter to his feet and Jane was supporting Dee on her shoulder.

  ‘Doctor!’ Marlowe could not hide his surprise. ‘I never knew you had it in you.’

  Dee smiled. ‘Nor did I,’ he said. ‘Although …’ he flexed his leg and winced, ‘this knee might need some tender loving care.’

  ‘I have a poultice which will do the trick,’ Jane said, in such a tone that Marlowe looked away, embarrassed by the naked love on her face.

  Carter was bloodied, but had only been stunned for a moment, so stood, straight and tall, with Marlowe holding his arm up behind his back. He had not meant to run at all. Ever since his plan had come into his mind, he had always told himself that, should exposure come, when exposure came, because he had not presumed to escape scot free, he would take his punishment like a man. And so now, there would be no more struggle, no more flight. Whatever happened to him, would happen. He closed his mouth in a mirthless smile and let his enemies do with him what they would.

  There was an unseemly scramble to take the miscreant back into the house, but this was Ralegh’s house and it was Ralegh’s ropes they lashed around Carter’s wrists, steward Scranton giving orders to his minions left, right and centre. Each of the School of Night decided to take their own carriages to the Tower, Ralegh having care of Carter, leaving Philip Henslowe and his players to de-rig the makeshift set, the play unfinished, Faustus still this side of Hell.

  Bess Throckmorton and her ladies had had time to overcome their panic and they soon found themselves the centre of the attention of not one great actor, but two. Faustus and Mephistophilis were all too grateful to drop their demonic possession and become arrogant peacocks again, the roles they played the best.

  ‘But that’s enough about me,’ Alleyn purred to one of the Queen’s maids of the bedchamber. ‘What did you think about my performance tonight?’

  Outside, back in the shelter of the nuns’ tree, Marlowe and the Dees stood, the magus still leaning heavily on his wife. They stood in silence for a while, all wrapped in their own thoughts.

  ‘I’m sorry about Carter,’ Marlowe said, eventually, for want of anything else that would fit the bill.

  ‘No,’ Dee said. ‘I am sorry about Carter. I gave him to you to watch you and keep you safe. And, all the time …’

  ‘You weren’t to know,’ Marlowe said. ‘You did what you thought was for the best. As did I.’

  Dee’s voice cracked a little. ‘You said you would bring Helene back,’ he said. ‘I didn’t think you meant to taunt me with it.’

  Marlowe stepped forward and put an arm around the old man, holding him tight for just a heartbeat. ‘She walked tonight to taunt you, yes, and I am sorry. But I promise you, she will walk again, and when she does, the whole world will marvel.’ He stepped back again. ‘I promise you. Pactum factum.’

  Dee nodded. ‘A promise fulfilled, indeed.’

  Jane leaned forward and pulled him to her, kissing him on the cheek. ‘We believe you,’ she said. ‘But now,’ and her voice changed, from the soft lover to the efficient housewife, ‘now I need to get my husband home to tend to his wounds. And you,’ she pointed over Marlowe’s shoulder, ‘you need to hail one of these carriages, or they will carry your man off to the Tower and take the credit. There! Go! Hurry!’

  Marlowe looked as the carriages turned out of the gates, their horses’ eyes rolling, hoofs clashing on the stones, drivers flicking their whips. Strange’s carriage slithered to a halt and Marlowe jumped in. As it gathered speed, heading east, he looked behind him and saw the Dees still under the tree, her hand raised in benediction. Jack shall have Jane, naught shall go ill … it needed work, but the playwright was never far beneath the skin and a good line was, after all, a good line. He fell back against the leather of the carriage seat and he and Strange spent the short journey in silence, alone with their thoughts
.

  Striking a set was always an emotional time for Tom Sledd, but he had no real connection with this one. It had, after all, been in existence less than half a day. Even if it had been a run of months, the last few minutes would have rather taken the gloss off in any case; so he set to with pliers and wrench, saws and hammers, dismantling the stage and Faustus’s study with a will. Henslowe himself snatched up the expensive leather-bound volumes and the polished brass tube that doubled for Hariot’s perspective trunk, whatever that was. Around him, actors and walking gentlemen milled around, some still in costume and make-up, some looking like a mad chimera of man and actor. Sledd was quite sad; Kit had been right. Even without the flight of a murderer from among the audience, there was no possibility that this play would ever be put on again. Anywhere. It was a shame.

  The ladies of Bess Throckmorton’s entourage had slowly drifted away, driven by the assault on their ears from the hammering and scream of nails being withdrawn from damp timber. In their absence, Alleyn and Burbage had taken their argument to new levels, as everyone knew they would, and a small crowd was gathering to see who would punch whom first.

  ‘What was that supposed to be in Act Two, Alleyn?’

  ‘That was acting, dear boy,’ the great tragedian bridled. ‘You really should try it sometime.’

  Sides were drawn up, with money changing hands, but everyone with money on Burbage as the aggressor was feeling confident. They noticed that he had managed to obtain not one, but two ladies’ favours a few moments ago and was clearly at the top of his form. The two dramatic lions circled each other, their mannerisms becoming more and more arcane, their declamations more stentorian. After a while it became a moot point whether one would strike the other, or that they might explode in a flash of fire that not even Tom Sledd could produce.

  Into the chaos limped a small, dejected figure, leaning on two crutches. It had a large bandage around its head and two whalebone struts were taped fore and aft, to protect and straighten its back. Of the face, one eye and the mouth were the only parts visible.

  ‘Excuse me,’ it croaked, to no avail. ‘Excuse me.’ But no one heard. By dint of hopping round carefully – it clearly could not turn its head – the poor beleaguered thing found a friendly face. Tom Sledd had stopped his de-carpentering and had eased himself to his feet. He came nearer.

  ‘Can I help you?’ He was doubtful; it looked as though aid had long ceased to be an option.

  ‘Tom?’ The creature’s cracked lips could hardly form the word. ‘Tom? I went to the theatre but the caretaker said you were here. Sorry I’m so late. It’s a long way when you can only hop.’ The man – for it seemed almost certain that this had once been a man – lifted a heavily bandaged foot and would have fallen over, had Sledd not steadied him.

  It seemed unkind to add to his woes, but Sledd had to ask. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, leaning close to the bandaged ear. ‘Do I know you?’

  The single eye turned to him, filled more with sorrow than with anger. ‘Tom?’ he whispered. ‘Do you really not know me? I’m Jenkins. I just got out of the Tower, just this afternoon. I came …’

  But Tom Sledd was not listening. ‘Jenkins?’ he asked. ‘Jenkins the actor? My Jenkins?’

  It may have been a nod, it may not; it was so hard to tell. But the eye looked brighter and the dry lips tried to smile.

  ‘But …’ Tom looked at the back of the stage, where costumes had begun to pile up. On its own, draped across the back of a chair, was a red costume, clearly a tight fit for even the slimmest, its tail trailing disconsolately across the floor. ‘But … who played Lucifer?’

  No one took any notice. They were still all watching Alleyn and Burbage.

  Sledd clapped his hands. ‘No, people, stop.’ He put his fingers in his mouth and whistled; everyone spun round. ‘Stop a minute. You can punch him later, Dick. Here’s … Jenkins.’ He extended an arm to where the man hung between his crutches.

  The actors immediately gathered round.

  ‘What happened to you?’ Burbage asked, almost accusingly.

  This was followed by a silence as the same thought dawned in a dozen heads.

  ‘But more pertinently,’ intoned Alleyn, ‘when did it happen to you?’

  Jenkins cleared his throat, sounding like two coffins grinding together in a charnel house. The damp in Master Topcliffe’s second level had played merry Hell with his chest. ‘I don’t remember. What day is this? I’ve been in the Tower since …’ and he was racked with a cough which made everyone wince, ‘since the first performance of The Jew. How long is that?’ His eye looked out pleadingly.

  Burbage leaned in, condescendingly. ‘Quite a long time,’ he said slowly. ‘Will someone get this man a seat? A drink?’ Then, having captured the moral high ground of being the most caring actor in the place, he beckoned everyone together and he whispered, ‘So … who played Lucifer? Come on. No one will be cross.’ He looked Skeres in the eye, as the one most likely to be messing about. ‘It was you, wasn’t it?’

  ‘No, it was not!’ Skeres automatically denied everything, but this at least had the virtue of being the truth.

  Sledd made his way into the centre of the circle. ‘We’ll settle this the old way,’ he said. ‘Everyone close their eyes. Go on, do it.’ He waited until everyone’s lids were squeezed tight. ‘Now, the one who did it, the one who played Lucifer, open your eyes and look at me. I won’t tell. Dick is quite right. No one will be cross.’ But no one looked him in the eye. No one was admitting to playing Lucifer.

  ‘Can we open our eyes now?’ Alleyn asked, petulantly. He was a great actor, for God’s sake, not a child.

  Sledd made a decision. ‘Yes. Yes, open your eyes. And,’ he wagged a general finger, ‘don’t do anything so stupid again.’

  ‘Who was it? Skeres asked.

  ‘I promised not to tell and I won’t. Everyone back to whatever you were doing, unless it was fighting, in which case, stop. Here, you,’ he clicked his fingers at Frizer. ‘Pass me that costume, will you? That red one, there, on the chair.’

  Frizer looked at him penetratingly. No one can con a conner, but he did it all the same.

  Sledd went out into the gallery and stood in a window embrasure, finding the last of the dying light, and examined Lucifer’s costume. It was made, as all the Rose costumes were, of cheap stuff dyed to suit, with stitches inches long and wishful thinking as to sizing. The inside seams hung ragged with frayed threads. The tail of this one was stuffed with straw. The horns … were not there. Instead, there were two jagged holes, burned around the edges. The whole thing smelled of sulphur. Sledd screwed it up and tucked it under his arm.

  ‘Just popping out for a moment,’ he called to a heedless room. He ran out of the back door of Durham House and down the garden to the river’s edge, the costume clutched to his chest. Looking frantically around, he found a large stone and, spreading the costume on the ground, placed the rock in the middle. Using methods he had seen Meg use in diapering little Zenocrate, as he tended to think of her still, he wrapped the stone up and tied it with the tail. And threw it into the water. And watched it sink. The bubbles exploded upwards for a moment, then, with one, large, noxious pop, the surface was still again, old Father Thames going about his business. Sledd heaved a sigh and walked quickly back up across the sheep-cropped grass, trying, not always successfully, not to look back.

  It wasn’t often that the Queen’s rack-master had two noble earls in his outer sanctum. Men like Percy, Strange and Ralegh often came to the Tower, but they came with the Privy Council on matters of state, not in their finery of a night out and never as late as this. Dogs barked and torches erupted into flame, the shafts of lanterns darting that way and this. Topcliffe’s men, with their master at their head, bowed in recognition of their honoured guests and took Carter into custody, barrelling him along passageways that glistened with the slime of the centuries.

  ‘Henry, Ferdinando.’ Ralegh, for all his inferiority of rank, took command. ‘Send
your fellows to Whitehall. Be sure they’re there when Cecil wakes. The imp will no doubt be delighted. As for you, Marlowe …’

  In a body they turned to face the playwright, still painted black as he was from the stage. The lightning flash had blurred a little, but he was still an arresting sight. Belzebub held up his hand. ‘Lords,’ he said, ‘gentlemen. I crave your pardons, all of you. I believed, wrongly now as I see, that any one of the School of Night could have carried out a crime like the murder of Walsingham. The craftiest man in England could only have been despatched by those whose crafts are … dare I say, diabolical?’

  ‘That’s outrageous!’ Ralegh said, looking hard into the dark eyes of the man who had nearly killed him just days ago.

  ‘It may be,’ Marlowe said, ‘but ask yourselves, gentlemen; are you not out of joint with the times? There may come a day when every man has his own laboratory or your arcane science is taught to little boys in our schools. God help us, Master Hariot, but that, one day, girls will love numbers as you do. Perhaps, Lord Strange, we will all take physic from the hedgerow and there will be no such thing as witchcraft, black, white or what colour you will.’

  He had stunned them all to silence.

  ‘But, until that day, we have an order of things, don’t we? The planets float around the earth. God created the world in six days and on the seventh, he rested. He made man in his own image and we have spent the last four thousand years trying to live up to that. And if some of us can’t accept that … if we doubt Scripture … if we believe,’ he looked at Ralegh, ‘that Moses was but a conjuror, they will continue to hound us, to give us to Master Topcliffe, to burn us in a town square.’

  The School of Night shifted uncomfortably. ‘Isn’t that why you hide your perspective trunk, Master Hariot? Why you fear your shadow, Lord Strange? Why you trust your arcane library only to good, honest men like Michael Johns, my lord of Northumberland? Why you harm your animals and yourself, Master Salazar? Why I …’ he dropped his eyes, ‘hide behind the greasepaint and the written word, letting other men speak my lines for me? We are all members of the School of Night,’ he said, ‘and we are all afraid of the dark.’