The Armor of Light

by Melissa Scott

  “Master Marlowe.”

  The voice came from the far end of the hall. The poet swung around, reaching instinctively for the dagger he hadn’t worn.

  “I believe you’re looking for the English ambassador.” The tall figure moved toward him, passing through the faint bar of light. Marlowe recognized the Earl of Mar, and breathed a sigh of relief.

  “Indeed, my lord, I was.”

  “I’m afraid you’ll look in vain, his lordship’s ill. “ Mar kept walking unhurriedly toward the other man. “Perhaps I can help you.”

  Marlowe schooled his face to an innocence he did not feel. “Thank you, my lord, but I don’t know how you can.” He watched the Scotsman’s approach with some nervousness. Mar was about his own height, dark haired and dark eyed, and moved with the unconscious arrogance of a strong man who had never yet been defeated.

  “Oh, I think I can.” Mar smiled lazily. He was no longer the flashy gallant who had greeted the riders the day before, but something considerably more dangerous. Marlowe kept his face expressionless with an effort.

  “You should have a message for a friend of mine,” Mar continued, lowering his voice slightly. “And if you do not, I think Sir Robert Cecil will be most displeased with you.”

  Marlowe’s shoulders twitched, and the poet damned himself for that self-betrayal. He hesitated for a moment longer, but there was something in the earl’s expression that made him shrug, and reach into his purse for the sealed packet. The letter was in cipher, after all; it was also true that he needed to send word to Cecil, if only to save his own neck. “I would be grateful, my lord, if you would see that Sir Robert receives this.”

  Mar smiled. “Of course. Then I will see you at the banquet tonight, Marlowe?”

  It was a rude dismissal, and the poet’s eyes narrowed. “Until tonight,” he said, deliberately raising his voice a little, and drew a startled glance from a passing servant. Mar flushed, but said nothing, and turned on his heel to stalk away. Marlowe grinned, and started back to his room in a somewhat better frame of mind.

  Chapter Sixteen

  For my part, I have ever believed, and do now know, that there are witches.

  Sir Thomas Browne, Religio Medici

  The great hall was very noisy, men and women alike shouting to be heard over the skirl of the musicians in the galleries at the end of the hall and the laughter and shrieking conversations of their neighbors. Marlowe edged back in his place, subtly disassociating himself from his companions, and thought he saw, at the table opposite, Greville’s acid smile. The poet smiled sweetly back, tilting his head gently toward the buxom young woman at his left, who was leaning away to press her almost naked shoulder against the fair man beside her. An enameled ship was poised in the valley between her breasts, very bright against the powdered skin, and there were more jewels scattered across her bodice and her voluminous skirts: whatever else she might be, she was one of Queen Anne’s ladies-in-waiting, and seated accordingly.

  Marlowe sighed, the smile fading a little. He had been seated at the least of the three high tables more as a courtesy to Sidney than through his own merit or his university degree; the knowledge galled him, even though he was grateful to be seated no lower. He glanced down the length of the hall, toward the hard-worked musicians. There were bodies in the shadowed corners beneath the galleries, men—and perhaps even a woman or two—too drunk to stay on their stools, and dragged aside so as not to impede the servants. He looked toward the king’s table, wondering what Sidney thought of the Scottish court. Sidney’s face, exquisitely framed by a wired whitework collar, was quite impassive, and Marlowe grinned. That was comment enough, from the man whom all Europe acknowledged to be the pattern of a gentleman.

  His right-hand neighbor swayed heavily against him, and Marlowe caught him with shoulder and elbow, automatically fending him away from his own purse and knife.

  It was a movement learned in Southwark taverns, and the poet winced inwardly, hoping the Scotsman didn’t recognize its significance. To his surprise, however, the Scot leaned closer still, blowing stale wine fumes in the younger man’s face. Marlowe swallowed hard, pushing away the memory of Deptford. He had not drunk wine since that day—the taste and the smell still sickened him.

  “Look there,” the Scotsman said, in thickly accented but comprehensible English, and nodded toward the king’s table. “Will you look who’s to serve the toast?”

  Marlowe looked where the Scot was pointing, glad of the excuse to turn away from the other’s reeking breath.

  The remains of the last entry had been cleared from the king’s table; now a little procession was winding its way between the tables, led by a dark-haired young man carrying a huge enameled cup. The poet whistled soundlessly, and the Scotsman laughed.

  “The Master of Ruthven,” he said. “And a few things else besides.” Ostentatiously he turned, and spat on the rushes behind his bench.

  Marlowe lifted an eyebrow, wondering if the dark boy had seen. Ruthven’s attractive, insolent face did not seem to change, but the poet thought he saw the very red lips thin briefly. Not an easy position, in more ways than one, to be the king’s favorite, Marlowe thought, and ventured a small, approving smile. Ruthven gave no indication that he had seen, stepping up onto the dais to kneel before the king. The movement showed his long-limbed body to advantage, and the poet’s eyebrows rose even higher. Ruthven was dressed in the height of French fashion, short, heavily padded and bejeweled round hose worn over skintight canions. Canions and garters and hose were all the same jet black, emphasizing—advertising—the perfect leg and the not-quite-hidden roundness of the buttocks.

  “Shameless,” the Scotsman said, and, strangely, laughed again.

  Drunk, Marlowe decided, and kept watching the king. Another young man, this one fair, and almost as well-dressed as Ruthven, poured wine from a Venetian-glass pitcher that glittered in the shifting torchlight. His job done, the fair youth backed away, and Ruthven, still kneeling, leaned forward to offer the cup to the king. James took it, smiling slightly, and then, with a theatrical gesture, drained the cup. He returned it to Ruthven, saying, “Carry the cup to our most honored guest.”

  Ruthven bowed, and turned to the fair youth, who refilled the cup to the brim. Ruthven knelt then before Sidney, who rose to his feet, bowing gravely to the king.

  “Your Majesty honors me,” he said, and the hall quieted suddenly, listening for the foreign wizard’s response. Sidney gestured gracefully to the kneeling youth, somehow managing, with the simple movement, to reduce him to a mere court functionary. “Not merely by this great compliment but with the freedom of your court. In return, I can only ask God to grant your Majesty long life, a peaceful and prosperous realm, and all the pleasures that should attend upon a king.” On the last words, he bowed slightly toward the queen, whose bovine face colored beneath the layers of paint. With a faint smile, Sidney took the cup from Ruthven, and drank. He returned it—empty, Marlowe saw, for all his vaunted temperance, and knew the others saw it, too—and bowed to the king a final time before taking his seat again.

  Ruthven recovered himself gracefully, and knelt again before the king. James smiled down on him benevolently, and accepted the filled cup. He drained it—in two swallows, Marlowe noted, and grinned to himself—and handed the cup back to Ruthven. “To Master Marlowe, with our compliments.” The fair boy moved instantly to refill it.

  Marlowe sat very still, the grin frozen on his face. He had not anticipated—had not desired—any such show of royal favor, but knew only too well what was expected of him. Some pretty compliment—preferably in verse, Master Marlowe, are you not a poet?—and then to swill down that grotesque cupful of wine... He shook himself hard, forcing his mind to work. Already Ruthven was advancing on him, the cup balanced easily in his hands. He was smiling slightly, almost contemptuously, and Marlowe’s lip curled in answer. I know your kind, the poet thought, and I’ve already written lines for you. Hastily, he recalled them, recast them slightly t
o turn the lines on Jove into an at least superficially flattering reference to James. He rose as Ruthven bowed—he did not kneel, not to a mere university gentleman—and took the cup in both hands. Ruthven’s hands were unexpectedly ugly, broad of palm and short of finger; the incongruity of the defect was strangely reassuring. Marlowe took a deep breath, trying to ignore the thick smell of the wine rising between his hands, and bowed to the throne.

  “Sweet Jupiter, if e’er he pleased thine eye,

  Or seemed fair, wall’d in with eagle’s wings,

  Assure his immortal beauty by this boon:

  Hold poets in thy heart, and in our turn

  We’ll add his name when we thy conquests sing.”

  There was a moment’s silence when he had done, as though the entire court was holding its breath, and then, quite loudly, James began to laugh. “Well put, Master Marlowe, neatly said.” He gestured to the cup. “Drink up, man. You’ve earned it.”

  “Yes, drink up, Master Marlowe,” Ruthven hissed, under the relieved laughter of the courtiers.

  Marlowe lifted the cup, first to James, and then, ironically, to Ruthven. Then he could delay no longer, and put the cup to his lips. It was the same French claret. That was his first thought, even though he knew it could not be true, the same thin, blood-warm claret Frizer had ordered for them that day in Deptford. He gagged on the first mouthful, tasting remembered terror, forced himself to swallow, to drain the cup to its last sickening drop. Smiling slightly, Ruthven took the cup from the poet’s nerveless fingers. Marlowe made himself bow again toward the king, and sank back into his place.

  “That’s plain speaking,” the Scotsman said, with new approval. His voice changed. “Are you all right, master poet?”

  “Yes,” Marlowe said, through clenched teeth, and willed it to be true. The wine lay heavy in his stomach, the stale, sour taste of it filling his mouth. The emptied dishes and broken meats spread out across the table seemed to swim before him, became the luncheon dishes piled to one end of the short table in Eleanor Bull’s private room…

  “You’re drunk, Kit,” Frizer said, his own voice slurred from the wine they’d been drinking since mid-morning. “Why don’t you lie down for a while?”

  The voice was not unkindly, but Marlowe hesitated, feeling the wine wash over him like a wave. “Baines—?”

  Little Skeres shrugged. Poley looked up from the counters he was rearranging on the trick-track board, a thin smile on his bearded face. Of all of them, he seemed the least affected by the amount of liquor he’d drunk. “He’ll be here. Have patience.”

  Marlowe grimaced, but did not answer, toying with the buckle of his sword belt. He could not lie down comfortably with the heavy rapier at his side—and there was nothing in his purse to steal, since Frizer was paying his share of the bill. He unfastened the buckle and slid the belt out from under the skirts of the doublet, leaning the rapier in its case against the post of the bed. He loosened the strings of his ruff as well—it was a hot day, the first really hot day of June—and tossed it aside, then unbuttoned his doublet and stretched out on the musty coverlet. The bed curtains were threadbare, hastily darned in places: Mistress Bull had not done more than was absolutely necessary to repair them. A thrifty housewife, Marlowe thought, his lip curling slightly. The room swam, sunlight and shadow shifting in his sight. He closed his eyes, throwing an arm across his face to shut out light and the click of Poley’s counters.

  How long he had lain there he was never sure, nor did he know precisely what woke him. He thought, when he was able to think soberly about it months later, that perhaps it was the touch of Frizer’s knee against the mattress that jarred him out of sleep. He opened one eye, the movement hidden in the curve of his elbow, and saw Frizer looming above him, cheap dagger already drawn. Had it been Poley, or even Skeres, he might have hesitated, but he had never liked or trusted Frizer. Almost without thinking, he rolled off the bed, landing on his hands and knees at Frizer’s feet. The steward swore, falling forward himself, the knife slicing into the mattress to release a shower of dirty feathers. Marlowe swung round, still on his knees, scrabbling for the weapons he’d left at the foot of the bed. Skeres, thin face suddenly pale, snatched them up, backing away toward the wall. Poley, his own blades drawn, set his back against the door that led into the main part of the tavern. Marlowe froze for an instant, then lunged for one of the eating knives discarded on the table. The dishes fell, clattering, but the horn-handled knife eluded him.

  Then Frizer caught him by the collar of the doublet and threw him bodily onto the bed. Marlowe tried to roll away, but Frizer hauled him back, planting his knee in the poet’s belly. Marlowe retched, body trying to double up in pain, but Frizer leaned his full weight against the younger man, flattening him into the mattress. Then the steward’s big hands closed around Marlowe’s throat. Marlowe fought back in panic, breath gone, reaching first for Frizer’s throat and face. The steward leaned back a little, but did not relax his hold, smiling down at him like a lover. Marlowe clawed at the other man’s wrists, fighting for air, wondering vaguely which of his sins had come home to roost. He felt Frizer’s thumbs caress his throat, feeling for the bone. Frizer’s smile widened, savoring the moment; Marlowe could feel his own hands loosening., struggles slackening. Over the roaring in his ears, he heard Poley say, in his honey drawl, “Finish it, in God’s name.”

  Frizer’s hands tightened further. Marlowe closed his eyes, surrendering to the darkness that scalded him, swept away on a wave of pain and terror and strange black ecstasy.

  Then, miraculously, the pressure vanished. He drew an agonizing breath, both hands going to his bruised and burning throat, and heard a cold voice—a schoolmaster’s voice, thin and chill and painfully precise—from the doorway leading into the garden.

  “I believe your instructions were to finish him discreetly. I suggest that this is no longer possible.”

  Frizer was no longer holding him, Marlowe realized belatedly. He rolled away, sliding off the bed, Frizer’s dagger falling with him. He reached for it instinctively, and no one tried to stop him. He hauled himself to his feet, clinging to the rotten curtains, the knife wavering in his hand. He set his back to the bedpost, not daring to look round, and saw the other three staring toward the garden door. Frizer’s bearded face was set in a snarl of frustration, and Skeres was pale as chalk, still clutching Marlowe’s weapons. Only Poley seemed unmoved, standing against the other door, face impassive behind the neat beard.

  “Sir Robert will hear of this,” he said, with silky menace.

  “I have spoken to him myself,” the schoolmaster’s voice said. There was a note of contempt in his tone that made even Poley flush. “Master Marlowe, if you would come with me?”

  Marlowe managed to nod, but pointed toward Skeres. His hand was shaking badly, and there was blood on his cuff, and more on his hand. Somehow in the struggle, he had cut himself, could feel the smarting gouge across the base of his palm. On the table’s corner, perhaps, he thought, or when I was struggling with Frizer, but he could not bring himself to care. “Skeres—” he began, but the word tore his aching throat, and he stopped, wincing.

  “Give him back his things,” the schoolmaster ordered.

  After an infinitesimal pause, Poley nodded. Skeres moved forward warily, holding out the belt with its dangling weapons. Marlowe took it from him, and slung it across his shoulder, unable to do more.

  “Now, Master Marlowe,” the schoolmaster’s voice continued, and for an instant, Marlowe could have sworn there was a note of laughter in it. “I think we should be leaving.”

  Marlowe backed toward the garden door, knowing with a sick certainty that he moved like a beaten dog, and knowing equally well that he would not dare turn his back on those men again. At the door, a firm hand caught his arm just above the elbow. The poet flinched in spite of himself, and knew that Poley saw.

  “Come along,” the schoolmaster said. “My people are waiting at the gate.”

  Marlowe
managed a nod, though he knew those words were as much for Poley as for himself, and lurched through the door out into the blinding afternoon sun. The thick scent of the herbs, coupled with all the wine he’d drunk, sickened him further; he stumbled somehow along the garden path, to vomit his heart out at the base of the garden wall. When he had finished, his throat hurt even worse than before, but he felt perversely better. He looked up then, into the face of the man who’d rescued him. There wasn’t a man in England who wouldn’t recognize that long-chinned face, not after all the thanksgiving sermons, printed with their matching portraits of the recovered hero and the preacher who praised him, but Marlowe stared blearily at him, unable to believe his eyes. Why in God’s name would Sir Philip Sidney, of all men, bother to save him? He knew he shouldn’t care, should simply be glad to have his life, but the mystery nagged at him.

  “Why—?” he began, his voice a ragged croak, and Sidney held up his hand, wincing in sympathy.

  “Don’t talk,” he said, and pushed open the garden gate. As he had promised, there were men in the lane beyond, big, competent countrymen mounted on expensive horses. “Can you ride?”

  Marlowe nodded, not quite certain if he could, and Sidney smiled at him. In that moment, the poet thought, he would have done anything for the older man. A groom stepped forward, offering a hand, and Marlowe pulled himself awkwardly into the saddle, fumbling for the reins. The same groom gave Sidney a leg up—an awkward movement, the stiffened leg dragging, but Sir Philip hardly seemed conscious of it—and turned away to his own horse. Sidney collected his reins, and glanced back at the poet, still smiling.

  “I dislike wasted talent, Master Marlowe,” he said. “That’s all.”

  Marlowe shook his head, staring at the emptied dishes. He still did not fully believe in Sidney’s explanation—the older man’s views on the theater, his preference for the classical forms, was only too well known, and most of the published poetry was hardly to his taste, either—but in the two years since, Marlowe had discovered no other motives, no possible self-interest that could be served. He disliked—distrusted—that sort of benevolence, even while he knew he should simply be grateful to be alive. And I am, he thought, with another, inward shiver, feeling ghostly hands on his throat again. But I don’t understand.