by M. J. Trow
‘Of course.’ He stood up with her and bowed to kiss her hand before seeing them both out.
At the gate she stopped and looked at Johns. ‘Tell Kit I’ll always remember him,’ she said, ‘and especially the last lines of the sonnet he wrote. “And this I leave you; this, a single thought – A love; a fond old age; a silent court.” I know what that means now.’
The watery sun was filtering through the clouds as Kit Marlowe stepped ashore on the flat beaches of Norfolk. The sea beggars didn’t usually bother with fishing boats, but they’d lost the Antelope in the fog and van Haren’s men were determined to have something for their trouble. And van Haren, for all his rough, light-fingered ways had a great respect for the Statholder. He’d willingly signed the Articles of War at William’s insistence and even, in accordance with that, had a minister on board his ship (at least he would once he’d sprung the man from gaol in Altmark) and he allowed, still in accordance with that, no one on board his ship except those of good fame and good name – which is why he’d taken Marlowe on board in the first place.
Van Haren was happy to take Marlowe to England, but not exactly into the port of King’s Lynn, for obvious reasons. The Queen’s writ extended to Dover but nowhere else and van Haren was not a man to take too many chances. The prospect of years in an English prison had almost no appeal for him whatsoever.
On the beach, the North Sea rippling around his boots and wearing the doublet van Haren had graciously returned to him ‘for old time’s sake’, Marlowe took his leave of the beggars of the sea. He handed his former gaoler a purse of coin which van Haren had handed back to him only minutes earlier.
‘That’s for the journey.’ He smiled.
Van Haren smiled too but he wasn’t ready for what happened next. Marlowe’s right arm swung back and his fist crashed into the Dutchman’s mouth. He sprawled on to the wet sand, a large gap where his front teeth used to be.
‘And that’s for bedding my mother.’ Marlowe smiled again, turning away. ‘Look after yourself, sea beggar.’
‘I knew you weren’t mine!’ van Haren called after him, trying to cope without his teeth. ‘Any son of mine would have ducked before the pot struck home.’
‘Well, I’m looking for Master Dee, too!’ Gregory Leslie was not best pleased with the young idiot who had come galloping through his knot garden that morning, spraying plants and clods of earth in all directions.
‘Who are you, sir?’ the young idiot asked him.
Leslie turned a vicious shade of purple and toyed for a moment with dashing to find his sword. But scurrying away at one’s own front door rather than answer a simple question from a whippersnapper dressed as a Dutchman, albeit rather a salt-stained one, seemed rather beneath his dignity.
‘I own this house, sir.’ He spat as his womenfolk and a clutch of servants looked on. ‘My grandfather built it and I shall probably die in it. That is if Master Dee has left one stone safely upon another. What do you want him for?’
‘That’s my business.’ Marlowe caught up the reins again. It was clear that Leslie was not hiding the man anywhere.
‘Who did you say you were, again?’ Leslie demanded.
‘Christopher Marlowe.’ And when that achieved no response at all, he leaned forward in the saddle. ‘I work for Sir Francis Walsingham.’
Leslie paused, but he would not be rattled by a whippersnapper on his own doorstep. It had been his father’s stance at times of trouble and it would be good enough for him and for his sons. Things didn’t change fast in the world of Gregory Leslie. ‘So, you work for Sir Francis, do you?’ The use of the more familiar title should have made the youth blench. Youths used to blench in Gregory Leslie’s young days; what was the world coming to? But there wasn’t the slightest sign that he was at all discomfited. ‘Do you work for Dee too?’
‘No,’ Marlowe said. ‘I work with him.’
‘In that case,’ Leslie drew himself up to his full height, ‘I shall send my bill to Walsingham. Do you know what Dee has done to my Great Hall? Rings of fire damage all over my three-hundred-year-old table. Two tapestries burned beyond repair. And all manner of stuffed creatures hidden all over the house are still giving my wife the vapours. She may never recover.’
‘Do you know where Dr Dee went?’ Marlowe had to ask.
‘If I knew that I’d have sent my bailiffs after him. The man, apart from everything else, owes me three months’ rent. Bailiffs?’ He had just realized what he had said. ‘Damn it, sir, I’d send my hounds!’ And he turned and marched indoors, his family and servants clucking around him.
Marlowe took the reins more firmly in his hands. Then he noticed a servant in Leslie’s livery hovering by the hedgerow that led to the stables. The man was winking at him, beckoning him as subtly as he could. He turned the bay into the shadow of the east wing and leaned low in the saddle.
‘I know where’s gone, sir,’ the man hissed.
‘Where?’ Marlowe asked.
The footman dithered, hopping from foot to foot with the cold and the hope of his time not being wasted. Marlowe threw him a groat from his purse. For all van Haren had returned it to him intact, it was considerably emptier than when he had left Cambridge.
‘He was going back to his Alma Mater, sir.’ The man nodded wisely. ‘Perhaps you know where Master Dee’s mother lives, sir, but I can’t help you any further, because I don’t. I was just surprised to hear the old besom was still alive, but there you are . . .’
Marlowe snatched at the snaffle and the bay wheeled round.
‘There’s been another man here today,’ the servant said, still hissing in case his master heard. Marlowe reined in.
‘Who?’ he asked.
‘An Egyptian,’ the servant said. ‘One of them as was here while Master Dee was here. You was here as well, sir.’
Leslie had not left his staff to run the house in his absence. Dee would not pay the going rate plus a perfectly reasonable fifty per cent for out of pocket expenses and other considerations, so he had housed them in the lodge and halved their wages. They were now having to pay the price of having allowed Dee to play havoc inside a house they were no longer living in. Leslie was a hard master and a hard man. The footman was only sorry that his information was not to his master’s detriment; he had heard that the country was lousy with spies anxious to find out all they could about nobs who were no better than they should be. But never mind, he would know a spy when he saw one, and then old skinflint Leslie had better watch out.
‘Yes, I was,’ Marlowe said. ‘So tell me, man, which one of the others was here? Who was it?’ He was leaning down so far that he was eyeball to eyeball with the man. ‘Who?’
‘I dunno their names, sir,’ the man said. ‘’Cept Lily. I learned her name all right. Got lovely healing hands, ain’t she, that Lily?’
‘Indeed she has.’ Marlowe nodded. The man’s information had been helpful, but how he could not tell the difference between the men of the Egyptian band, Marlowe could not imagine. Balthasar with his crop of blond curls was as different from the saturnine Frederico as it was possible to be. And, taking the eldest to the youngest, there must be forty years between them. But, forewarned was forearmed, even if he didn’t know who the warning was about and he spurred away into the morning.
FOURTEEN
He took the road south across the fens that marked the Bedford Level, his cloak flying out behind him and his face low over the bay’s neck. The animal was not as fast as the Wasp, left behind in Delft, but she was steadier and by cock-shut time Kit Marlowe was clattering over Magdalene Bridge past the twinkling lights of the colleges and the skiffs bobbing on the river.
Leslie’s man had told Marlowe where John Dee had gone. And he was under no illusion that he would not have also told the Egyptian. Any man’s coin was the same as far as the footman was concerned. Marlowe’s only hope was that the Egyptian would not know Cambridge like he did. Despite the tides in the North Sea, despite the false start with the sea beggars, de
spite the Mass, he might yet make it in time.
He clattered into the gateway of St John’s College where the Yales of Beaufort battled for the king’s shield in the gilded stone over the arch.
‘Whoa!’ A startled Proctor Boddington scuttled out of his lodge door and grabbed his bridle. ‘What brings you so late to college, sir?’
‘Dr Dee . . .’ Marlowe was as out of breath as his horse. ‘Where is he?’
‘Who’s asking?’ Boddington refused to be impressed by good horses and flashy clothes. This was St John’s College, the finest place of learning in all the fens and probably beyond.
‘Christopher Marlowe,’ the rider told him, springing out of the saddle.
The proctor was even less impressed now that the man stood at his eye level. ‘Christopher Marlowe of Corpus Christi?’ Boddington’s words dripped with contempt.
‘The same.’ Marlowe nodded.
‘The one they call Machiavel?’ Boddington said slowly, images of Hell creeping into his mind.
‘It doesn’t matter what they call me, Master Proctor,’ Marlowe said. ‘Now, do I have to smash down every door in your God-forsaken college to find Dr Dee or are you going to tell me?’
‘Kit?’ a voice made him turn.
It was Robert Greene, swallowing carefully because Kit Marlowe’s dagger point was already poking a new hole in his ruff.
‘Er . . . hello, Kit. What a surprise.’ Greene managed with his head seriously at an angle.
‘Still writing bad poetry, Robyn?’ Marlowe asked.
‘Well, we try, you know. Do I understand that you’re looking for Dr Dee?’
‘Robyn.’ Marlowe shipped the dagger away. ‘You and I both know that you’ve been listening to this conversation ever since I arrived, so let’s drop the all-innocence bit, shall we? What do you know?’
Robert Greene knew – or thought he did – that Kit Marlowe had sold his soul to the Devil and he knew a good deal more besides, but he realized that that was not what Marlowe meant.
‘You’re looking for the Queen’s magus?’ he checked.
Marlowe nodded. ‘And unless you want his blood on your conscience and Master Topcliffe’s rack under your arse cheeks, I suggest you tell me where I can find him.’
‘Topcliffe?’ Boddington repeated. He didn’t get out much.
‘The Queen’s rackmaster,’ Greene explained. ‘Well, if you must know, he’s in the rooms that should rightfully be mine. Off the court, in the north-west corner. You can’t miss it – there’ll be goose shit on the staircase. Dr Dee has brought his own Christmas dinner with him.’
‘Dominus Greene . . .’ The proctor was outraged at betrayal on this scale.
‘Go hang yourself, Master Proctor,’ Greene snapped and ran off into the Cambridge night to find Gabriel Harvey.
Two or three sizars were crossing the Court behind a college professor, struggling under the weight of his books. There were candles burning at some windows as Marlowe reached the far corner. A solitary torch guttered on the turn of the stairs and he trod as soundlessly as a cat until he reached the landing. If Dee had brought a goose, he had also brought his cook and that meant Sam Bowes too. Three rooms – two at a pinch. Unless, of course, Dee had insisted on one for the goose. He paused by the first door and pressed his ear to the black and knotted oak. Nothing. Nothing either from the second. But at the third, he heard voices – or was it one? – muffled and secret, gabbling fast and low.
The next thing he knew his head was yanked backwards by the hair and rammed forward so that the bruise raised by van Haren’s man’s thrown pot was purpled again and he was kicked forward into the room. When he scrabbled to his feet, the door had been slammed shut and he found himself staring down the bores of two wheel-lock pistols, wound and ready, one in each of the hands of Hern, the lord of the Egyptians, father of the children of the moon.
‘You will unhook your pickle stabber, Master Marlowe.’ Hern indicated the rapier. Marlowe looked across at John Dee. The man was crouching near the bed, already in his night cap and he had quill and parchment in his hand.
‘Good evening, Christopher,’ he said quietly.
‘Dr Dee.’ Marlowe nodded.
‘Now!’ Hern snapped and Marlowe unhooked the sword from its hanger and threw it on the bed.
‘And now the dagger,’ Hern said.
Marlowe held out both arms and shrugged.
‘Don’t play games with me, Christopher,’ Hern snarled. ‘I’ve forgotten more than you’ll ever know. And I’ve known all about you since I looked at your papers from Sir Francis Walsingham. I should have disposed of you much earlier. But the women liked you and you kept the children amused, so I let you live. But now, with your left hand and slowly.’ He raised his own left hand. ‘Do it, or the first ball goes through Dee’s left eye. And I’m no Jean Jaureguy; I won’t miss.’
Marlowe reached round behind him, his right hand still in the air. He caught the hilt and just for a moment toyed with sending the blade hissing through the air, as he had back in Delft what seemed like an eternity ago. But now was not the time to test which was faster – the pistol ball or the steel; not with John Dee’s life in the balance. He threw it, sheath and all, to join the sword on the bed.
‘Where is she?’ Hern asked.
‘Who?’ asked Dee.
‘More games, magus?’ Hern chuckled. ‘After tonight, the Queen will be looking for a new fortune teller. Strange, isn’t it? Your skills and those of my people are so alike, yet you are fêted and lauded wherever you go, sitting at the Queen’s right hand and whispering in her ear. While the children of the moon are shunned and spat at and hounded out of the civilization of men. Now –’ he held the pistol level again – ‘for the last time, Dr Dee, where is your wife?’
Dee blinked, then frowned, then looked at Marlowe. Had this mad Egyptian come back from God-knew-where to pose imponderables; to debate philosophy? And what did Hern expect to hear? That Helene was with the angels, or wandering in purgatory or stoking the fires of Hell? And why should it matter to him?
‘You see,’ Hern went on, ‘Master Marlowe here tells me you can raise the dead. All I saw at Ely was smoke and mirrors, the sort of gimcrackery my people do at fairs up and down any country you’d like to name.’
‘But you couldn’t risk it, could you?’ Marlowe asked him. ‘Just in case my story was right and Dr Dee does indeed have powers . . .’
‘Powers!’ Hern spat on to the straw-strewn boards at his feet. ‘A pox on those. You are a bigger fraud than any of us,’ he growled at Dee. ‘You on the other hand –’ he pointed his other pistol at Marlowe’s head – ‘can indeed turn a tale. Your death will deprive the world of that and I am truly sorry to be the instrument of such a loss. The world needs stories, Master Marlowe.’
‘I thought you didn’t believe in Dee’s powers,’ Marlowe said.
‘Oh, I don’t,’ Hern assured them both. ‘But my own are limited too. What if Dr Dee didn’t have to bring his wife back from the dead because she wasn’t dead? Because my poison hadn’t worked? People have woken up from worse sleeps than hers; look at the Statholder, for example. Lily roused him and all had thought him dead to all intents and purposes. So . . . it might have been so with Helene. So, I came back to finish the job.’
‘Why?’ Dee croaked. ‘Why did you have to kill my Helene, the reason for my existence, half of my soul . . . ?’
‘Spare us the platitudes, old man,’ Hern sneered. ‘The reason for my existence is this.’ He used his elbow to jingle the coins in his purse. ‘We children of the moon put our heads in a noose every day of our lives because of your narrow laws and Puritan small-mindedness. All that makes it worth the risk is cold cash – the only God I need.’
‘I still don’t see . . .’ Marlowe began.
‘Helene Dee may have been this old fool’s reason for living, but she was actually a nosy busybody. I caught her listening at the foot of her stairs to our casual chat. She overheard a secret Mass being planne
d by that religious maniac Simon. She had identified him from the first; she was looking at him all night. She had the look of a hedge witch, I knew it from the start and when Rose told Balthasar she knew her in her old life, I knew for certain. She had a lot to lose. She’d have told you, Dee. And you would have told the world, if only so that no one could accuse you of being a secret Catholic yourself. I make my living secreting Catholic priests around this country and the Church pays me well for it. I wasn’t going to have all that jeopardized by a careless word. Helene Dee isn’t the first I’ve had to silence and I doubt she’ll be the last. Rose, for example, will probably end her days shivering with gaol fever in some stinking cell.’
‘Is that it?’ Dee blinked in disbelief. ‘You would snuff out a life to save your purse?’
‘Life is cheap, Dr Dee,’ Hern reminded him. ‘But a good paying proposition – how many of those come along in the average lifetime? Not many, I can tell you. I have had too many years of starvation and privation to want to have them again. A well-lined purse can keep you very warm at night.’
‘What about Maria?’ Marlowe asked. ‘She is having your child any day now. I was sure when you ran that it was any one of the Egyptians but you. You seemed to love her. I couldn’t believe you would go.’
Hern shrugged. ‘What’s love got to do with it?’ he asked. ‘Maria and I have been together a long time. She has borne me a lot of children, some dead because of the lean years, some left us, some still with the troupe. She will understand.’
Marlowe, remembering the woman, struggling with her aching back, wondering what this last child bed might bring, wasn’t so sure.
Hern levelled the wheel lock at Dee and took aim. ‘I really don’t give so much as a flying fart for anyone but myself, please believe this. I will kill anyone who gets in my way. The nights are too cold as my bones get older, Master Marlowe, and if you have no wish to find out how old bones feel, then please, step in front of me and we will see how a young man dies.’
Dee looked up at Marlowe. ‘Christopher,’ he said. ‘My life is a burden to me without Helene. Let him kill me. He can’t kill us both at one moment. Use my death to get away. Find the proctor. Get the constables. Don’t let Helene be unavenged.’