Nathanial nodded again, shyly. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Nurse,” the woman corrected firmly. “Just Nurse. Now, come along, I’m sure you’re hungry, riding all the way from London—riding pillion,” she added, with a disapproving glance at Marlowe. “I’ll see you fed, and then we’ll see what we can do about some clean clothes.” She held out her hand, and the boy came to her willingly.
They paused in the doorway, the nurse glancing over her shoulder. “I beg your pardon, Sir Philip, but I thought you should be told. Mistress Elizabeth took a fall today, riding with Rivers, but she’s not hurt, more than a bruise or two.”
“I saw,” Sidney said, nodding. “But thank you.”
The nurse curtsied again, and left the study, drawing Nathanial after her.
Sidney looked back at the younger man, waiting. After a moment, Marlowe’s full mouth curved briefly into a humorless smile, but he said nothing. Sidney’s answering smile was equally cold.
“You didn’t come here only on the boy’s account.”
“No.”
Marlowe’s expression hardened for a fleeting instant, and Sidney felt a moment’s bitter pleasure. So I was right, he thought, and said aloud, “Sir Robert sent you.”
Marlowe looked up quickly, eyes widening a little as though the words had startled him. Sidney’s smile twisted. You were never an actor, Christopher, he thought, but kept silent.
“He did,” the poet said at last, and spread his hands as though abandoning a position. “He told me her majesty was sending you to Scotland, and suggested—” He gave the simple word a savage turn. “—you might find some use for me.” He paused, and, when Sidney did not reply, added, “As I am an experienced agent.”
There was a note of bravado in his voice, but Sidney ignored it, staring past the younger man toward the books that lined the study’s interior walls. There was more to Cecil’s orders than Marlowe had said, of that he felt certain. The question is, he thought, whether it’s worth forcing him to admit it. He turned his gaze back to the poet, studying the other man dispassionately. Marlowe’s face was set, closed, thoughts veiled behind his truculent stare. I expect, Sidney thought, he’s been told to spy on me—to keep Cecil informed. That would be Robert Cecil’s style, even if it wasn’t Marlowe’s. Or is it? he wondered. There was a cold anger rising in him, and he disciplined it with the control born of long practice. Marlowe had spied on friends before: his first work for the government had been at Rheims, spying on the English Catholics there. Some of those would-be priests would have been classmates of his from the university; all would have been men he’d come to know well during his months of supposed study. Sidney’s mouth tightened fractionally. Walsingham had let slip once that Marlowe had done good work at Rheims.
But that was neither here nor there. Sidney smiled inwardly, still watching the poet. I told Robert that any of your betrayals will be grand ones, he thought. I fear this may be your chance. He allowed the smile to touch his lips, rather enjoying the new wariness in Marlowe’s eyes. “I’m sure you’ll execute your various commissions satisfactorily,” he said, and saw the poet’s mask slip for an instant. I knew I was right, Sidney thought again, but before he could pursue the matter, there was a knock at the door, and one of the maidservants entered.
“I beg your pardon, Sir Philip, but Lady Sidney would like to see you as soon as she may.”
Sidney sighed. It was either Elizabeth’s fall or the boy Nathanial; he had rather hoped that both could be put off until the evening, but one look at the maid’s mild determined face told him otherwise. “Tell Lady Sidney I’ll come to her,” he said. “Is she in her rooms?”
“Yes, Sir Philip.” The maid bobbed a quick curtsey. “I’ll tell her.”
Sidney nodded, dismissing her, and the woman backed hastily from the room. Sidney glanced again at the poet, considering just what he should say. His anger had cooled slightly, enough so that he could recognize and even sympathize with the awkwardness of Marlowe’s position—Robert Cecil was not a man whom one could refuse with impunity—but things had to be clear between them. “Cecil set you to spy on me,” he said flatly. Marlowe blinked, began to stammer some answer or denial, but Sidney held up his hand. “Don’t bother, I know him—and you—better than that. I’m simply asking you if I can rely on you.”
There was a long silence, and then, quite slowly, Marlowe nodded. “Yes,” he said, “you can.”
And I even think I believe you, Sidney thought, with another inward smile, though God alone knows why I should. “You’ll excuse me, then,” he said aloud, and gestured to the books shelved along the walls. “Make free of my library, if you wish. Madox will show you to your room when it’s ready.”
Marlowe bowed to his patron’s departing back, and did not straighten fully until the door had closed behind him.
Only then did he allow himself an almost soundless sigh of relief. At least Sidney had not questioned him further about Cecil’s orders—though he might still, and this had been unpleasant enough. The poet grimaced at the memory, angry at the taint of fear and humiliation it had left behind. He did not like this feeling of being a helpless pawn between two greater forces; he would have to find some way of asserting his own real power. After all, he told himself, he knew enough about Cecil’s ambitions, Sidney had said enough, about Cecil and about others, the trusting man, to let him make his own terms with either side... For some reason, though, the idea of carrying tales to Robert Cecil made him feel like a schoolboy again, caught playing questionable games with the other boys. He shied away from the doubled image, and was angry at himself for flinching. Almost in defiance, he turned to the shelves of books, reaching for the oldest binding.
To his annoyance, it was an edition of Hesiod; he started to return it to its place, but the title page caught his eye. It was an Italian edition—Venetian—and old, but it had been rebound at least once since its printing some fifty years earlier. He turned the pages with automatic caution, grateful at first for the distraction, and then with the scholar’s genuine curiosity. He knew the Works and Days, and the Theogony, but bound with those familiar pieces were a collection of hymns praising the ancients’ gods. He turned through those more slowly, wincing at the condition of the pages—they looked as though the book had been carried in a leaking saddlebag—and pausing now and then to murmur a line or two aloud. Several were, on a hasty reading, quite lovely, deft recountings of familiar myths, and he wondered briefly if it would be worth his while to make a proper translation. He reached for the next page, and it stuck. He swore mildly, prying cautiously at the fragile paper, but it refused to come loose. The next twenty pages seemed to be glued together into a solid mass, as though something viscous had set there. He glanced toward Sidney’s desk, looking for a penknife with which to slit the obstruction, but hesitated. There was too much chance of damaging the pages; he would wait until he could treat it properly. Instead, he turned over the stuck pages together, frowning.
He was no longer in the hymns, that much was obvious at once. Instead, a marginal note in Roman characters identified the writer as Proclus and the work as the Chrestomathy. However, it was the note beneath it that caught his eye. He squinted at the crabbed lettering, a clear if elderly hand, automatically translating the Greek. Then came the Amazon, the daughter of great-soukd Ares, the slayer of men.
He tilted his head to one side, studying the words. The text to the right was a summary of a tale about the Amazon —Penthesileia—who fought at Troy and was killed there by Achilles, who was then mocked by the bitter Thersites for supposedly loving her. Achilles killed Thersites and, after some dispute, was purified of the killing by Odysseus. There was more to the story, but Marlowe did not turn the page, staring unseeing at the faded print. The simple plot had potential—the conflict between passion and duty or, better still, between the passion of love and the passion to kill, twin passions shared by twinned enemies …
It would play. He spoke the Greek line aloud, enjoying the star
k power it conjured for him: “Then came the Amazon, the slayer of men.”
The sound of footsteps outside the door roused him from his reverie and, almost instinctively, he tucked the battered little volume into his purse and turned to face the door. There was a knock, and it opened, to reveal Sidney’s grim-faced steward.
“Your room is ready,” he said. “If you’ll come with me.”
Marlowe nodded, and followed the older man from the library. Madox led the way through the main hall, toward the main staircase, and the poet’s mouth twisted into a quick grin. Clearly Sidney had left orders that he was to be treated as a guest rather than a client; Madox would obey, but his very obedience would be a reminder of the other’s real place. Marlowe glanced around the hall with the deliberate appreciation of an equal, and saw Madox’s lips tighten, biting back an angry comment. The poet hid his smile, and looked up toward the gallery at the far end of the hall.
Two figures stood there, framed by the carved posts like figures on the upper stage. Sidney and his lady wife, Marlowe thought, and slowed his steps slightly, watching with disguised curiosity. Like every man in London, he had heard the rumors that said there was no love lost between the two. He had read Sidney’s sonnets, too, and knew—along with all of England—that the Stella of the poems was not Frances Sidney. He had also heard, though this was less common knowledge, a matter more to be whispered than to be trumpeted abroad, that the Earl of Essex wasn’t content with the Queen’s somewhat dusty favors, and sought his real amusement elsewhere. Marlowe’s eyes narrowed, staring at the stiff figures above him. He had never quite believed that talk, though he’d never expected to see much evidence of passion in what was, after all, a merely advantageous marriage. Now, however… There was something in the very stillness of the pair, and the set quiet of Sidney’s face, like a man contemplating amputation, that proved it all to be true. I wonder why? Marlowe thought. She’s fourteen years his junior, true, but it’s nothing out of the ordinary—and he seems vigorous enough. The stillborn son? God knows, there was talk enough about it at the time—I still remember the intercessions, and the thanksgiving pamphlets—and there were one or two who criticized her for taking too little care of the Sidney line. Still, Sidney himself would never have blamed her… and maybe that in itself was the problem. How can you be forgiven your guilt, if the other won’t accuse you? His lip curled slightly. If it was forgiveness she wanted, she need only ask.
He glanced again toward the gallery. There was something disconcertingly familiar in the carriage of Frances Sidney’s head and shoulders, something about the quiet, waiting hands that reminded him of someone... Walsingham, of course, and she was Walsingham’s daughter, his namesake. She would respond in bitter kind to what she could only see as silent charity, and Sidney’s courtesy would fail against Walsingham pride. Marlowe shrugged the thought away. Let Sidney sort out his own troubles, he told himself, and followed Madox from the hall.
“So there is a chance that the Earl of Northumberland—the Wizard Earl of Northumberland—will be looking for his boy?” Frances Sidney placed one thin hand on the carved rail that edged the gallery, the gesture a mute declaration of war.
Sidney shook his head, willing himself to ignore the signal. “A remote one, if any at all, and I doubt he’d expect Marlowe would have the sheer nerve to bring him to me. I can’t think that Northumberland would have placed too much value on young Nate. He was a tool, nothing more, and when you’re the Earl of Northumberland, you can always buy another tool.”
“If it means spending, he won’t be happy.”
She looked like a small, fragile doll, Sidney thought, but was not deceived. Fashion dictated the milky skin, half veiled by the sheer lawn parfiet, the fine white hand displayed so carefully against the rich garnet-red velvet of her skirt, the heavy jewels studding her cap and woven through her dusty-brown hair. Her true self showed only in the hand she had laid against the railing, flattening it until the veins showed stark against the pale skin, and in her heavy-lidded eyes.
Frances sighed, aware of his scrutiny, and even more aware of his standards of comparison. Mary Herbert was a much-admired beauty, whatever else she might be…
She pushed the thought aside before it was fully formed, turning her mind to the matter at hand. “I trust you when you say he won’t be looking. But what do you intend the boy should do here? You certainly don’t need a scrying boy.” She spoke the last words with a touch of the dry humor that always caught her husband by surprise, making him catch his breath and look again. He started to smile, but she hurried on, oblivious to his sudden pleasure, prodding at her ancient, unhealed wound. “Or do you simply need a boy around, in general?”
Sidney bit back his first, instinctive answer. Never, by word or thought, had he blamed her for their son’s death. How dare she now take his act of simple charity as a rebuke? “I had thought,” he said, slowly, keeping his voice even with an effort, “that he might provide a companion for Elizabeth. They’re of an age. And he’s clever. He might as well have the benefit of some learning—he could be schooled into a suitable secretary.”
Frances fixed him with a hawk’s stare, the heavy lids lifting slightly. “Elizabeth is young. She’s at a very impressionable age. I’m not at all sure that some farmer’s son from Northumberland—”
“Yorkshire, actually,” Sidney corrected, in his most precise tone.
Frances nodded with deceptive meekness. “Yorkshire, then—is a fit companion. We don’t want to risk a mesalliance.”
“The girl is ten. She may be impressionable, but she’s still very young, and she isn’t ignorant of her station. Besides, a girl is older than a boy of that age. If anything, she’ll twist Nate around her finger, and turn him into her faithful esquire. She has a gift for it.”
Frances shook her head, rejecting the tentative olive branch. “I cannot like it, Philip. Doesn’t this boy have parents he can be returned to? Perhaps he’d even be happier with his own family. Most children would be.”
“Happier on some miserable farm in Yorkshire, in such proximity to his grace of Northumberland?” Sidney’s voice was sharper than he had intended. “I wouldn’t return him to the family that could sell him into such service.”
Frances studied her husband’s face for a long moment, then, with a movement that was not in the least submissive, bowed her head. “Very well, my lord.”
Sidney took a deep breath, his anger frustrated by her outward docility. “Very well, then.” He paused, wanting to stalk away, but forced himself to stop, to continue the conversation. “You will mind Penshurst in my absence? You know where all the papers are. “ He smiled faintly, unable to keep a hint of malice from his next words. “Madox is usually much happier with you in charge. I wish you the joy of him.”
For a brief second, Frances’s eyes betrayed her anger, but then the heavy lids veiled their gleam. She dropped a shallow curtsey. “As ever, the soul of consideration, my lord.”
Sidney winced at the twist she gave the simple words, though he kept his face impassive. Surely she was just referring to the occasionally heavy household responsibilities he placed on her, not taunting him outright with giving Essex the entry to her company while he was away. For a brief, murderous moment, the words he’d never yet spoken, blame and bitter accusation, trembled on his lips, but he bit them back. He would not brawl with her: they both deserved better.
“For dinner this evening,” Frances said, “your Master Marlowe, Sir Robert, and Lady Mary?”
“You’re forgetting Henry again,” Sidney said.
Frances looked honestly startled. “My lord of Pembroke? Did he accompany your sister this time?”
The words were meant to sting—though how she dared to hint at Mary’s unchaste behaviour was beyond his comprehension —but there was so much truth in Frances’s surprise that Sidney could not stop himself from smiling. It was Pembroke’s own fault that he was so often overlooked. A scholarly, bookish man, he was like some kind of nocturn
al animal, rarely viewed outside his native habitat of the library—until he returned to London and his beloved theaters. “Yes, he did.”
Frances nodded, sighing softly. “My lord of Pembroke, then, and, of course, Fulke Greville. I don’t suppose you can promise that your playwright and your sister won’t be too outrageous?”
“I’ll do my best,” Sidney said, and knew he would do nothing of the kind. Frances dropped him another curtsey, this one so deep he could not help but suspect her of irony, and swept away down the gallery, her skirts hissing behind her. Sidney stared after her, and swallowed a curse. He would not allow himself to be provoked, not now, when there was so much still to be done. He took a deep breath, running a hand through his close-cropped hair. At the moment, his chief responsibility was to his guests, and to Pembroke in particular; he straightened his back, wincing at the dull ache that had settled again in his scarred thigh, and went in search of his brother-in-law.
To his surprise, Pembroke had not hidden himself in the library, but instead had been persuaded to join his wife and Fulke Greville in the bowling alley that ran alongside the formal garden. Mary’s laughter echoed clearly along the shady walk, and Sidney paused just outside the trellised entrance to the alley, suddenly uncertain of himself. He could see Mary quite clearly from where he stood, the sunlight spangling her coppery hair with lights like jewels. She was laughing still, her overskirt caught up in one be-ringed hand, her half-bared breasts heaving against the stiff edge of her bodice. Pembroke watched her with something like adoration, a faint, sweet smile touching his lips; Greville was smiling, too, though his gaze was less besotted. Even Sidney’s own Elizabeth, her riding clothes exchanged for a more decorous dress of sanguine wool, was looking at her aunt with an expression of worship. And that, Sidney thought, I must put a stop to. If my sister—and perhaps my wife—are wantons, I can’t let my only daughter follow their example. Oh, Mary, why must you do this to me?
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