All the Queen's Players

by Jane Feather

  “And out of fashion, judging by that gown.” He frowned across the table at her. “Is that the best you could do?”

  Rosamund swallowed the surge of resentment and declared flatly, “Yes.”

  “Good God, then you’d best do something about it. You can’t be seen looking like a pauper.”

  “I need money for that,” Rosamund informed him, setting her fork aside.

  Thomas groaned and reached for the wine again. “All right. But I’ve little enough to spare. What’s it cost these days to fashion a gown?”

  “I don’t know, Brother. Probably what your doublet cost.”

  “This?” He ran a hand down the rich crimson velvet of his gold-buttoned doublet edged in jet. “Don’t be ridiculous, Rosamund. This cost me twenty crowns. I can’t spare that.”

  “Then how am I to manage?”

  He glowered at her. “I’ll see what I have and we’ll discuss it tomorrow. In the meantime, see if Mistress Riley has one of her syllabubs for us.”

  Contented with her half victory, Rosamund went to the kitchen. When she returned with the bowl of syllabub, Thomas nodded his thanks as she set it on the table. Immediately he dug into the frothy cream with his spoon, gesturing to his guest to do the same. Marlowe shook his head and instead refilled his wine cup.

  Thomas frowned. “If you’re to make your mark on Master Secretary, you’ll need a clear head, Kit. This immoderate drinking will sour your belly, yellow your eyes, and set hammers ringing in your head. I warn you, my cousin is a man of moderation and likes to have about him men who practice the same.”

  Marlowe laughed, leaning back in his chair, lovingly stroking the bowl of his wine cup. “Then mayhap I’m not for his service.” His tone was one of indifference, and Rosamund, dipping her own spoon in the syllabub, could see the clouds gathering behind her brother’s eyes.

  “You’d do well to consider your words,” Thomas stated. “Unless you’re minded to live and die an impoverished curate in some wilderness parish.”

  “Oh, Tom, Tom, ye of little faith.” Marlowe laughed again, then tipped the contents of his cup down his throat. “I’ll mind my tongue and my manners when needs must. Here . . .” He pushed his cup across the table. “Fill it to the brim, friend. Your august relation is not here, unless he’s hiding behind the wainscot.”

  Thomas picked up the empty flask and upended it. “We’ll have no more.” His tone was sullen but definite, and Marlowe’s eyes narrowed, his flush deepened. He stood up, kicking back his chair. “Then I’ll find it for myself.” He grabbed up the flask and then with a flourish bowed at Rosamund. “Mistress Rosamund, direct me, if you please, to the buttery.”

  Rosamund looked at her brother. He was not himself particularly abstemious, and his light eyes were as bloodshot as his friend’s. A telltale muscle twitched in his cheek, and she knew he was close to one of his fearsome explosions of rage, always worst when he’d been drinking. He was staring at Marlowe, who returned the stare with a derisive laugh.

  “Is it a brawl you want, Tom?” Marlowe tossed the pewter flagon into the empty grate, where it bounced and rolled with a clatter. “Come on then, I’ll best you yet.” He put up his fists and Thomas sprang forward. Rosamund fled.

  Safely beyond the closed door, she stopped to listen. There was a thud, another one, a yell that she thought came from Thomas, then suddenly laughter, boisterous, uproarious gales of laughter. Softly she lifted the latch and opened the door a crack. She peered into the room. The two men were holding each other, swaying together. It was impossible to tell whether they were locked in combat or in an embrace of affection. They were laughing, but the laughter had an edge of danger to it, of passion unresolved.

  Whatever this was, she had no place in it. Rosamund closed the door silently and went up to her own room. She felt uncertain, uneasy, lost in some way, as if her understanding of the world was mistaken.

  But then what understanding of the world could she, a sequestered, sheltered girl of seventeen, expect to have?

  Morning brought a renewal of Rosamund’s usual optimism. She remembered first that she was to go to London, and that the journey meant new clothes, or some at least. Only after she’d savored that prospect did the memory of the previous evening’s discomfort start to niggle again. Had Thomas and Kit Marlowe mended their friendship? Despite the laughter and the strange warring embrace she had witnessed, they had definitely been angry with each other. Drunk, of course, both of them, otherwise such a small matter would not have provoked such a scene. But drunken rages in her experience were the most fearsome kind.

  She dressed, thrust her bare feet into a pair of woven sandals, and went downstairs in search of breakfast. The door to the dining parlor was ajar and she smelled spilt wine as she passed. She paused and looked in. No one had been in since the previous evening judging by the dishes still on the table and the wine cups lying carelessly on their sides. A bottle of brandy, only a quarter full, was on the sideboard. It hadn’t been in the room when she’d left, so presumably Thomas and Master Marlowe had made up their quarrel over the brandy bottle.

  How had they met, those two? she wondered as she made her way to the kitchen in search of breakfast. On the surface they seemed completely unalike. Thomas was an elegant courtier, Kit Marlowe an impoverished student with aspirations to be a playmaker.

  In the kitchen she dodged cats and two of the dogs, who should have been in the yard, but were snapping at each other over a bone in the corner. She cut herself a slice of wheaten bread, buttered it liberally from the crock in the pantry, and went out into the kitchen garden.

  Mistress Riley’s son, Jem, was flying around the garden in pursuit of two hysterical chickens, who, somehow aware of the fate that awaited them, managed to fly up onto the henhouse roof, where they sat, cackling and squawking as they ruffled their feathers.

  “They keep goin’ up there,” Jem wailed, tugging at his jerkin. “How can I catch ’em up there, mistress?”

  “Obviously with difficulty,” a voice declared from behind Rosamund. She turned around. Master Marlowe, his doublet hanging open over a wine-stained shirt, stood bleary-eyed by the sundial. “Fetch a ladder, boy.” He rolled up the sleeves of his fine lawn shirt, now much the worse for wear.

  Jem brought a ladder and set it up against the henhouse and Marlowe climbed up. He swore a series of oaths as the chickens danced back from his grasping hand. He hauled himself farther up onto the roof and lunged, catching one of the birds with both hands. Still standing on the ladder, he wrung its neck with a viciously efficient twist of his hands and dropped it to the ground before lunging for its squawking sister, who met the same speedy fate.

  He climbed down, wiping his hands on his britches, while Jem gathered up the birds and scampered to the kitchen with them.

  “I get the impression you’ve done that before,” Rosamund said with some awe.

  “Many times,” he agreed with a short laugh. “A family of nine children consumes chickens aplenty, and a cobbler’s wages can afford little of anything else for the pot.”

  “Where are you from?”

  “Canterbury.” He wiped the back of his hand over his eyes as if to clear his vision. “I’ve an urgent need of ale, Mistress Rosamund.”

  “I’ll fetch it for you.” She turned back to the house. He followed her into the scullery, where she drew a foaming tankard from the keg. He drank it down in one and asked for a refill. She drew him another. “The hair of the dog they call it, I believe.”

  “Aye,” he agreed. “And if ever a dog needed another hair, it’s this one.”

  “You drank deep with my brother last night.”

  “Aye. My besetting sin, but when the wine’s on my tongue, I’m in present paradise and future hell holds no sway.”

  “Will you break your fast?” She made a move back to the kitchen.

  “I’ve no appetite.” He followed her through the kitchen and into the main house. “Is there a quiet room where I can work undisturbed?”<
br />
  “The study.” She showed him to the room where he’d been sitting with Thomas. “No one will disturb you here.”

  “And there’s my satchel.” He set down his tankard and picked up the leather satchel that he’d brought with him the previous day and left on the window seat. He unbuckled it and drew out a sheaf of parchment. “Is there quill and ink?”

  Rosamund gestured to the oak desk against the far wall. “I filled the inkwell myself only yesterday.” She perched on the window seat, watching curiously as he set out his parchments and drew a stool over with his foot.

  “Is it a play?” she ventured. “May I see a little?”

  For answer, he held out a sheet of parchment. She hurried to take it from him and stood beside him silently reading. After a minute she looked up, puzzled. “But it doesn’t rhyme.

  Forsake thy king and do but join with me

  And we will triumph over all the world.

  “How can you have a play that doesn’t rhyme? There is no poetry.”

  Marlowe regarded her for a moment. “So they will say, I’m sure. But that is how I hear the lines. They have a rhythm of their own and the rhyme is of no importance. It is still verse to my ears.”

  Rosamund took the sheets and returned to the window seat. She read under her breath so that she could hear the rhythm, and after a few lines realized that indeed they read like poetry. “It’s true.” She sat with the parchment in her lap. “After a while you don’t notice the lack of rhyme. Has Thomas read this?”

  “Thomas, my dear Thomas, is pleased to approve,” Marlowe said with a sardonic twitch of his lips. “And where is he on this fine morning?”

  “Still abed, I expect. If you sat late drinking.”

  “I detect a note of sharpness, Mistress Rosamund.” He dipped his quill in ink and added something to the paper. “You do not approve of the gift of Bacchus?”

  “It’s not for me to approve or disapprove.”

  “No, that is probably true.” He continued with his writing.

  “What is the play about?”

  “The only thing men wish for, the thing they strive for, the thing they will die for.” He looked at her then, half smiling. “Can you tell me what that is?”

  Rosamund could think of only one thing, the obvious one, the one thing that everyone was taught was all that mattered in the world. “The love of God.” But even as she said it, she knew it was wrong and was not surprised when he shook his head impatiently.

  “That is all very well, and in the name of that love men will commit atrocities the world over, so you could be excused for thinking that, but, no, Mistress Rosamund, that is not what my play is about. It is about power. The love of power. The fight for power. Men will increase their power in God’s name, they will torture heretics in God’s name, but the things that they do in that name make them frightful and thus terrible in their power. And it is that that they love.”

  Rosamund nodded, although she was uncertain that she fully understood. She gave him back the papers. “I won’t disturb you further.”

  “So here you are, Kit.” Thomas came in just as she was moving to the door. He was in a dressing robe, loosely tied so that she could see the white flash of his belly when he moved. She averted her eyes instinctively and ducked from the room. Thomas didn’t seem to have noticed her, his eyes were only for Kit. He went over to him and bent to kiss him, the last thing Rosamund saw before she hurried away.

  Chapter Three

  THEY JOURNEYED TO London, the three of them, a week later. Rosamund was by this time so accustomed to Kit Marlowe that she barely noticed the occasional exchange of complicit smiles, the murmured words, the brushing touches between him and her brother. Her thoughts were concentrated on the pleasures of her two new gowns and the rather alarming prospect of the coming presentation to Sir Francis Walsingham.

  Although it was but a three-hour ride to London, they set off on horseback soon after sunrise. Rosamund was surprised to find a lump in her throat as they rode down the driveway. She had never left her home before, and even Mistress Riley had in her gruff fashion shown some emotion, pressing upon her a package of her favorite spice cakes. She nibbled one now, savoring the taste of the childhood she was leaving behind.

  Jethro kept up the rear of the little party, riding a pack mule whose leather panniers contained Rosamund’s necessities as well as the new gowns and two new pairs of slippers. Thomas had bidden her pack for a fortnight’s stay in case Master Secretary could not see her immediately, and the prospect of two whole weeks in London filled her with anticipation.

  Despite the early hour the roads were crowded with carts heading for market. Once in a while a herd of cows milled across the narrow lanes as they were driven from meadow to milking shed, and for nearly a mile a flock of sheep slowed traffic to barely a walk. Thomas and Kit seemed oblivious of the delay, deeply engaged in theatre talk, and Rosamund listened avidly, noting the names of Burbage and Ned Alleyn and a man called Watson, another Thomas it appeared. They were all men of the theatre, actors and managers and playmakers, apparently well-known to her brother.

  “We shall go to the play, maybe this afternoon, if these godforsaken sheep ever leave the path,” Thomas announced. “You shall meet Watson, and Tom Kyd too, if he’s about. His plays have a following, but without a patron he must needs live on the charity and friendship of others.”

  “A fate that will befall more than Kyd,” Marlowe said, reaching sideways to pluck a hawthorn blossom from the hedgerow so close beside him the branches snagged his horse’s flank.

  “The service pays if you’ve a mind to it and Master Secretary is minded to employ you,” Thomas said.

  “I doubt I have a turn for spying.” Kit inhaled the scent of the blossom before letting it fall to the ground.

  “Oh, the skills are not hard to develop, my friend, particularly when necessity rules.”

  “We shall see.”

  Rosamund was all ears as she rode just behind the men. What was this service Thomas talked of? And what did it have to do with spying? She gathered it had everything to do with the queen’s secretary of state and presumably Thomas’s work for his cousin. She wanted to ask her questions, but there was something excluding about the way the men rode side by side, heads together, that she felt awkward drawing attention to herself and instead turned her meandering thoughts to the possibility of going to the theatre with them. She decided not to broach that subject either until they had reached London. Thomas would be more approachable with a tankard to hand and a good pasty in his belly.

  Meanwhile it was lovely to be riding on such a beautiful morning. She settled into the easy rhythm of her palfrey, a neat roan mare who was her pride and joy. Jenny had been born and bred in the Scadbury stables, which were well-known for miles around for the quality of their horseflesh. Rosamund had appropriated her as a colt and had broken her to bridle herself. Cleverly she had ensured that whenever a buyer for a Scadbury horse came to the stables, the roan mare was never there. Neither of her brothers had seemed to notice her gradual acquisition of the animal, and now it was generally accepted that Jenny was Rosamund’s saddle horse without anyone really questioning how it had happened.

  It was a soft May morning, the air balmy, the sun warm but far from fierce. The scents of hawthorn filled the air and the hedgerows were massed with primroses, harebells, ragged robin, and the delicate, lacy flowers of cow parsley. A knife grinder had set up the tools of his trade on the village green of a hamlet they rode through. He called out his services to the women pouring out of cottages with pots that needed soldering and knives for the grindstone. Close by a man sat in the stocks, a troop of children dancing around him, jeering as they threw rotten eggs and last year’s maggoty windfalls at him. He cursed them vigorously but it only made them laugh and throw harder.

  “At least we don’t see the stakes in every town,” Thomas observed soberly, watching the man’s misery with a degree of compassion. “I heard tell that when Bloody Ma
ry was queen, there was a stake in every hamlet. Heretics must have been in abundance,” he added with a cynical twist of his lip.

  “There’s burnings aplenty even so,” Kit responded.

  “They burned a woman for a witch in Chiselhurst some weeks ago,” Rosamund put in. “She claimed she had holy marks upon her. They said she was a heretical witch and burned her in the town square.”

  Kit glanced back at her. “Do you remember what I said about power, Mistress Rosamund? Men burn the flesh of others in the name of God, and by so doing enhance their own earthly powers.”

  “Have a care how you speak, Kit,” Thomas warned, his eyes flashing. “And don’t teach my sister your atheistical heresies. I’ll not have it.”

  Kit Marlowe merely shrugged and urged his horse forward, singing a bawdy song in a low but clear voice. Thomas scowled but let him go. Rosamund held her peace.

  They rode through Greenwich, past the palace where the royal standard fluttered to indicate that the queen was in residence. Rosamund hung back for a more lingering look at the gleaming building set in its lush green parkland, the river, packed with craft, flowing at its edge. The royal barge was moored at the pier and strains of music rose in the air from a company of musicians playing in the prow.

  “Her majesty must be intending to take to the river,” Thomas observed. “They would not otherwise be playing.”

  “Can we stay awhile to see her?” Rosamund asked.

  “No, there’s no time. Doubtless you’ll see her in London. She is often abroad,” he responded carelessly.

  Rosamund swallowed her disappointment. A mile farther on they drew rein at a ferry crossing. “We’ll cross the river here,” Thomas said. “It’s less crowded than the crossings closer to the city and the horses will be calmer.” He dismounted, leading his horse to the bank. Rosamund and Marlowe followed suit, watching as the ferry was poled from the opposite side of the river.

  Farmers’ wives, ragged children, peddlers with their baskets, crowded onto the ferry as it nudged the bank. Thomas used his whip with abandon, slashing right and left to clear a path for himself and his companions with their mounts. For the most part people gave way with relative good nature, with only the occasional curse and gobbet of spit at his feet to indicate resentment of his lofty assumption of priority.