The Armor of Light

by Melissa Scott

  “Now, Sir Edward,” the priest began, and the black-bearded man held up his hand.

  “No, no more,” he said, and pushed himself out into the aisle. He pointed his finger at the priest. “Say what you have got to say, and then—come and dine with me.” He turned his back on the pulpit and stalked toward the door, the church wardens giving way before him.

  Sidney’s eyebrows rose—there was a practiced air to all this that suggested it had happened more than once—and he turned to follow the bearded man’s departure. In spite of himself, he glanced toward his own household, standing together toward the back of the nave. Young Madox was crossing himself, his thin face shocked and appalled, but Marlowe’s head was down as if in prayer. That I doubt, Sidney thought, and was not surprised to see that the poet’s shoulders were shaking with suppressed laughter. Greville said, almost apologetically, “Sir Edward is a recusant, but he doesn’t like to pay the fines.”

  Sidney nodded. Twelve pence for every missed Sunday mounted up very quickly, had ruined richer men than a mere Warwickshire knight.

  “Dearly beloved.” The priest’s voice was resigned, but also faintly, tolerantly amused, and there was a faint smile on his face. “Our text today is taken from the twelfth chapter of the Gospel according to St. John.”

  It was a good sermon, Sidney thought, expounding intelligently on the mystery of faith without taking the discussion out of the reach of the common folk who were the majority of the congregation. The plain metaphors brought home the essential points in a new and heartfelt way, and he approached the communion table with a renewed sense of gratitude.

  When the service had ended, Greville led the way back down the long aisle, pausing only to exchange greetings with a few of his neighbors. The priest, standing in the doorway to cast a watchful eye over his congregation, smiled benevolently as the two men approached.

  “It’s good to see you home again, Master Fulke. And an honor to have you in my church, Sir Philip.”

  “My very great privilege,” Sidney replied sincerely.

  “Will you dine with us, Father?” Greville asked. There was a schoolboy nervousness about him suddenly, and Sidney gave him a rather startled look.

  “Now, Fulke, you know I’m already invited elsewhere,” the priest answered. “But I thank you nonetheless. It was a kind thought.”

  “So you do dine with this Sir Edward, Father?” Sidney asked, and the priest studied him curiously, but with a light of humor in his eyes. Sidney spread his hands. “It was not the most gracious invitation I’ve heard.”

  “More like an order, yes,” the priest answered. “But say it masks a true desire to learn, to be taught. Then surely there can be no refusing. If I’d thought you were objecting to my dining with a Catholic, I would be forced to reprove a lack of charity.”

  It was a deft rebuke, and Sidney grinned, feeling suddenly like a boy again. “And I think I shall be rebuked for saying I was more concerned with his manners than his religion.”

  “As you see the fault, my son, I see no need to chide. And after all, I have hopes I may amend both someday.”

  “I trust you shall, Father,” Sidney said, with unexpected feeling in his voice.

  “God bless you, my son,” the priest said, and the younger men backed away.

  Marlowe made his way back through the fields to Greville’s house in a better frame of mind than he’d left it, cheered by the recusant Sir Edward’s flamboyant gesture. It was the sort of thing he would have liked to do himself, if he had the position and the influential friends that would let him get away with it, and he enjoyed seeing it in other men. A calculated, glorious rudeness, he thought, and a magnificent statement of unbelief. I wonder which bothered Sir Philip more?

  Greville and his better-born guests dined apart from the household in a new fashioned dining parlor, attended only by a few servants. Marlowe, whose university degree was considered to make him a gentleman of sorts, sat quietly through most of the meal, watching Sidney. To his annoyance, however, the older man made no mention of the disturbance—he seemed, in fact, strangely tranquil—and Greville deftly steered the conversation onto other matters. Mildly disappointed, Marlowe excused himself as soon as it was decent, pausing only in the outer hall to steal half a partridge and a nearly-full pitcher of ale from among the broken meats set there for the kitchen servants. The room he had been given was recently remade, the smell of paint and new wood lingering in the air beneath the scent of the herbs mixed into the straw spread across the floorboards. Marlowe set the dented plate on the table, and took a long swallow of the ale before putting it aside as well. He loosened the strings of his ruff, and set it on the end of the bed, then undid the first eight buttons of his doublet, wrenching open the neck of his shirt as well. His saddlebags lay on the floor just inside the door, and he crossed to them, rummaging in the first until he’d found his writing case. He pulled it out, frowning at the cracked leather. Shrugging a little—he would buy a new one when he could afford it—he carried it across to the table, and opened it, shoving the half-eaten partridge out of the way. He settled himself on the low stool and took out paper and quill and the tightly stoppered inkwell, then sat for a moment, smiling thoughtfully at the painted figures of Susanna and the Elders capering on the plastered wall.

  He had intended to draft the first of his required letters to Robert Cecil, but instead he found his mind turning to other things. The line from the Chrestomathy echoed in his thoughts: Then came the Amazon, slayer of men. It would make a magnificent play, he thought, brushing the tip of his quill back and forth across his lips. And what a marvelous pair of matched entrances it could be: first Penthesilea enters with her train of Amazons, and is greeted by the Trojan court mourning for Hector. Priam explains what has happened—that should set things up for the groundlings—and then end with a dignified set piece for Penthesilea, telling of her grief, and promising revenge on the Greek who so mutilated noble Hector. And then... Marlowe’s smile widened. Then we shift to the Greek camp. Enter Achilles carrying a pair of severed heads, which he adds to the great heap of skulls filling Patroclus’s shrine. That would be within, of course—perhaps a pair of pages to discover it formally, to add that touch of perversity to the scene?

  Almost without volition, his pen began to move across the paper, sketching the opening. Priam and Hecuba, strophe and antistrophe, remembering their lost son—and then trumpets above, and the Amazon enters. He paused then, looking for the right words, the tip of the quill tapping nervously against his lips. Grief and vengeance and a sort of doomed boyish brilliance, that was what was needed here—but the voice he heard was the voice of his Ganymede, polite and deliberately uninvolved. He cursed, scratching out the last few lines, and shoved the paper aside.

  He did owe Cecil some notice of their progress, if only to keep his own skin whole, and there was a certain perverse pleasure in dating the note from Greville’s house. He paused for a moment, considering, then quickly scribbled a few lines in his own abbreviated Latin. He had little to say, after all, just that they had reached Warwickshire successfully, and that Sidney had not yet taken him into his confidence regarding his plans for Scotland. He compressed the first note into two epigrammatic sentences, then sat for a moment, studying the scrawled words. Can I abbreviate it any further? he wondered, then shook his head. No, that would look as though I were trying to confuse him, while this is just ambiguous enough.

  Smiling to himself, he reached for the thin chain he wore beneath his clothes, drawing out the two objects that dangled from it. His fingers touched first the thin lead disk, marked with the signs and sigils of Scorpio, sovereign against vermin and good as a protection against attack. For no good reason, the familiar touch evoked the memory of the man who’d made it for him: Thomas Watson, poet, sometime playwright, dabbler in magic … Marlowe’s mouth twisted. My good friend Tom, dead of the plague these past two years. At least my medal seems to have done more good than all your spells and potions. He ran his thumb lightl
y across the engraved surfaces, remembering the night it was made. Watson’s little chamber had been filled with the choking reek of the twin braziers, incense and the smell of sulphur mixing with melted metal and the stink of the cheap candles, all the shutters latched tight to keep out the noxious night air, and to keep in their secrets. Watson’s wife had cowered above stairs, hiding the children’s heads in her skirts and praying for an end to her husband’s unhallowed rituals. Well, Marlowe thought, she had gotten her wish, though, like all the devil’s gifts, it had not taken quite the form she’d intended …

  He pulled his mind away from that despairing theme, running his fingers again across the crudely engraved scorpion in its circle of symbols. Kit’s holy medal, Watson had called it, laughing. Marlowe sighed, remembering his own answer. I expect it to be more use than most of that kind. At least it had kept him freer of vermin than most men, and he’d not died yet in any fight, fair or otherwise—though the latter, he had to admit, was due more to Sidney’s intervention than to the powers of the sigil. Unless, of course, the seal had somehow caused that rescue? Even as the thought took shape, Marlowe rejected it. The powers Watson had wielded had no dominion over Sir Philip.

  The admission annoyed him, and he released the leaden circle as though it had burned him, fumbling instead for the thin metal cylinder that hung next to it. Anyone seeing it would have assumed that it was some other charm of dubious origin, and let it alone—or so the poet intended. Still frowning to himself, he unscrewed the main cylinder, leaving the cap attached by its ring to the chain itself, and pulled out the tightly rolled slip of paper that held the key to his cipher. He unrolled the stained and fraying paper, flattening it with his left hand, then quickly and carefully copied out his message a final time, switching letters according to the key. When he had finished, he returned the key to its case, tucking it and the sigil back into the front of his shirt, then crossed to the fireplace to uncover the last embers of the morning’s fire. As he’d hoped, a few coals still glowed red. He filled his pipe, then twisted the sheet of paper that held the rough draft of his letter into a spill and used it to light the tobacco. Even after the pipe had caught, he did not shake out the fire, but let the paper burn until the flames had almost reached his fingers. Then he set it gently on the hearth, and, when it was ash, crumbled it into nothing. He glanced around automatically, making sure he had left nothing else incriminating, then folded the coded letter into a tiny packet, sealed it, and tucked that into his purse. He would find someone—a carter, or any likely traveler—in the next day or so to take it into London.

  That business finished, he leaned thoughtfully against the windowframewindow frame, pushing open the shutter to let in the cooling air. The breeze had died down as the sun crept toward the horizon, but there was a distinct scent of rain, and Marlowe made an angry face. That’s what comes of piety, he thought, a day’s ride in the rain. We’ll cover half the ground we could’ve made today—if we’re lucky. He scowled out into the evening, unmoved by Greville’s carefully arranged lawns, thinking of the heavy cart. A muddy road would slow it unbearably; better in some ways to have left it behind.

  He sighed then, putting the thought aside. It was amazing enough that a gentleman of Sidney’s status was travelling with only the one cart, and no coach; that as much as anything pointed up the importance of the mission. Whatever that mission may be, he added to himself. Or, rather, whichever mission we end up fulfilling. Sidney has his commission from the Queen, and I have mine from Cecil—and God only knows who else among us is committed to some other plan. For a moment, he toyed with the fantastic thought that every member of the party might be an agent of some party—van der Droeghe, of course, would serve the United Provinces; Greville perhaps could be the French king’s man; young Madox was fastidious enough to be a Spanish agent, while Ralph Haywood would make an excellent Italian—but rejected it almost at once as unbearably frivolous.

  I wish to hell I did know precisely what Sidney intends, he thought, and pushed himself away from the window. However, I doubt he’d tell me for just the asking. Of course—his eyes strayed to the sheets of paper left on the table—there was another way of finding out.

  He hesitated for a moment, remembering the creature that had lurked in Chapman’s mirror, then reached for the pen before he could change his mind. The ritual Watson had taught him was of an entirely different nature, its power far more restricted, than the one Northumberland had invoked. Slowly, he inscribed the question, What is the intended mission of Sir Philip Sidney in Scotland?, keeping it to a single line, then drew a box around the words. Focusing all his will on the question, he inscribed the paired symbols that compelled an answer, first above and below, and then to either side, reinforcing them with a circle made of the signs of Solomon. When he had finished it he sat for a moment, studying what he had written, then crossed to the fireplace, bringing the paper with him.

  The coal that he had used to light his pipe still glowed faintly. He blew on it, and the glow pulsed gently, like a heartbeat. Quickly, he laid the sheet of paper across it, murmuring the words Watson had made him memorize. A thin curl of smoke rose from beneath the paper, and then, with startling suddenness, the entire sheet blazed into flame, and was completely consumed. Although he had been expecting it, Marlowe flinched back, suppressing a curse. The flame died as quickly as it had bloomed, leaving behind a fragile skin of ash. An instant later, a sudden breeze whirled through the open window, breaking that skin into fragments and scattering them across the hearth. Marlowe sat back on his heels chewing on the stem of his pipe, to study the pattern of fallen ash.

  At first, the scraps and smears made little sense, but then, slowly, he began to pick out letters, first an ‘m,’ and then an ‘e,’ until he could just make out the shadow of the words to meet. To meet what? he thought. At the right side of the hearth, the fall of ash had been much lighter, as though the power that had directed the formation of the letters had weakened before it could finish. He frowned at the faint marks, first leaning closer, then pushing himself away again, but could not make the shapes take on a coherent form.

  Behind him, a floorboard creaked. Greville, come to spy on me, he thought, and in the same moment could feel the other man’s presence in the doorway. The poet swung round, his brief panic changing to anger, but there was nothing there. He froze, the anger curdling within him, and felt the same presence watching from the curtained bed. He thought he heard the ropes that held the mattress sigh softly against the wood of the frame, and made himself turn again. The curtains were open, the bed apparently empty—but he knew with a sudden sick certainty that something was there. He pushed himself to his feet, a curse dying on his tongue, and tried to control his fear. He didn’t have many options—the door was a good four paces away, even if he chose to flee, and, in any case, either flight or a shout for help would only bring Greville’s household down on him. That was still something to be avoided, if possible.

  “Who are you?” he said aloud, and was surprised at how calm he sounded.

  There was no answer from the presence, though he somehow knew that it was aware of him, watching him.

  Experimentally, he lifted his hand, began one of the testing gestures every university student knew. Nothing seemed to happen at first, but then the room’s air thickened. A wave of negation, colder than the air, washed over the poet, implacable in its austere hostility. Marlowe lifted his hands quickly, spreading them wide in a gesture of surrender and apology. After a moment, the pressure lessened, and the room returned to normal. Now what? Marlowe thought, and, after an instant’s struggle, managed to speak the words aloud.

  The presence did not answer, but slowly, almost imperceptibly, it began to change. The hostility seeped away, draining out of the little room, and in its place came a strange sense of almost dignified appeal. It was almost as if the presence were beckoning to him, Marlowe thought, and knew that the simile was completely inadequate. By degrees, the presence became an invitation. An awarene
ss of its own power, its own immense wealth of knowledge, radiated from it, but beneath that serene surface the poet could feel a sort of passion, a dark intensity that matched and could master his own deepest desires. He shivered, repelled and fascinated, but did not look away. Very slowly, the presence began to take shape before him, a man fair and long-limbed as Ganymede.

  Marlowe wrenched his eyes away, remembering the demon he had seen before, but knew the shape was still there. He could almost hear its gentle laughter, not yet—not quite—mocking, could too easily imagine its caress.

  He choked on a despairing curse, and made himself lift a nerveless hand to sketch the sign of the cross between the shape and his averted eyes.

  “In nomine patri, filii, et spiritu sancti,” he whispered, the familiar, hated words bitter on his tongue. “Abiri!” The last word was almost a sob, but he could feel the presence lessening, dissolving into nothingness. Even after he was certain it was gone, he stood waiting, afraid either of its return, or that it had vanished forever. At last, he forced himself to move, to cross to the window and close and latch the shutter as though it were the end of any normal day. Then he leaned against the wall, his cheek against the ordinary rough plaster as though that were somehow a link with everyday things. At least today I’ve proved the papist doctrine that the virtue is in the words rather than in the speaker, he thought, but the words rang hollow. Unaccountably, his eyes filled with tears.

  The next day dawned cloudy, and before the party had been on the road for an hour, the rains closed in. Sidney watched the clouds approach across the rolling land, curtains of mist falling to hide the low hills, draping themselves across the narrow road. He shivered, and drew up his cloak, pulling the hood well forward to protect his face. All along the line of riders, men muttered curses, adjusting cloaks and hats against the damp. Marlowe’s voice rose above the rest, blasphemously ingenious, but Sidney did not look back.