Hell and Earth pa-4

by Elizabeth Bear

  Kit gave him a sidelong look. “She married him to inform on him to her father, Will. Shortly after Sir Francis faked his death. There was rather a lot of suspicion in our group that it was Essex behind the … ‘poisoning’ attempt. Much as he was behind the hideous death of the Oueen’s physician, poor Doctor Lopez.”

  “She married the man she thought tried to kill her father?” Will felt a chill that had nothing to do with the wind or the half‑frozen earth underfoot settle into his belly.

  Kit shrugged. “She’s a Walsingham, Will.” Will stared at him, and Kit folded his arms and continued, “Tom’s no different when you scratch him deep enough. All for Queen and country, and not even honor for themselves. Perhaps thou shouldst see what she wants, thinkst thou not?” And Kit clapped him on the arm and moved away, leaving Will leaning on his cane and awaiting the attentions of the Countess of Essex.

  She came before him bare of face and with her luxuriant dark brown hair coiled in demure spirals below a stolidly middle‑class headdress. The style reinforced the prominence of the Walsingham nose: a convincing portrait of a housewife, but she didn’t remember to curtsey. “Master Shakespeare.”

  “Mistress Sidney,” he answered, and was rewarded by a sparkle of a smile. He stepped closer and bent his head down beside her bonnet, leaning propped on his cane. “If your purpose is to warn me off the misguided performance upon which I am about to embark, by all means, Madam, consider that I am as forewarned as a man might be. And as entrapped–”

  She took his elbow lightly and walked with him toward the playhouse. Will was conscious of Kit a few steps behind and several yards off to the side, seemingly out of earshot and varying his distance to look unassociated. “My father thought highly of you. And I have been unable to speak to my cousin–”

  Tom, of course.Will nodded, brushing beads of sweat from his forehead with his gloved left hand. “You know something the Queen needs to hear?”

  “Aye,” she said. “The Earl of Essex plans a rebellion tomorrow. He means to ride through London in a grand procession, if you can credit it, and exhort the people to rise and make him King. Your play, of course, will make them ready to accept his glorious reign–”

  Will snorted laughter, and regained himself only with effort. “And he thinks this will work?”

  “He thinks it will work. Southampton, Richard Baines, and Robert Catesby convinced him it would work. That their– magic”–as if the word filthied her mouth– “would ensure it.”

  “Christ on the cross,” Will swore. “That’s insanity. He’ll be beheaded.”

  “I know,” she said. “And you will be imprisoned at the least, and very likely hanged, unless you have resources of which I am not aware.”

  “I have Tom,” Will said, and turned his head to cough thickly.

  The Countess of Essex squeezed his arm. “Tom might suffice. And you might have Cecil as well, and perhaps the Lord Chamberlain. I’d say you have me, but as I am shortly to be widowed a second time”–there was no regret in her voice when she said it, only a kind of military firmness, and Will remembered her iron control as she bent over her father’s deathbed– “I believe mine energies will be quite well spent in keeping mine own head.”

  “See that you do,” Will answered, feeling a sudden rush of affection for this woman. “Do you know what Baines and so forth are about?”

  She shook her head, already moving away. “My husband’s downfall is a blind for something; he’s a stalking horse, as well as a peacock. Where, and what, I have no better information than I have given you. And now, Master Shakespeare, I have three children and one unborn who very much need not be in London when the sun rises.”

  “Godspeed,” he said, because there was nothing else to say. She turned and walked away, and stopped a few short strides up the verge.

  “Master Shakespeare?”

  “Yes, Mistress Sidney?”

  “Did you really see the Devil by my father’s deathbed?”

  He sorted and discarded answers long enough that her eyebrow rose. He gave it up for a bad business and spread flat the hand that did not hold his cane. “Yes, madam.”

  She tilted her head charmingly. Her eyes were large and dark, dewy and doelike: the eyes of a young and beautiful girl. “Hmm,” she said, turned her back on him, and walked away without another glance.

  Will sighed on a long ragged breath, and turned to Kit as he came up. “Is that what Tom Walsingham does to you?”

  Kit grinned and shook his head, very slightly. “Hedoes it without trying, damn his eyes. Come on–” He tugged Will’s sleeve, very slightly.

  “What?”

  “I contrived to eavesdrop, and make sure no one else was doing so. You have a play to perform. And we have an appointment with history, my love.”

  The performance, to neither poet’s reassurance, went off without a bobble. When the body of the players retired to the Mermaid Tavern, Will–coughing–pled pain and exhaustion and Kit excused himself with an invention about a long ride home to Canterbury on the morrow. Later that evening they presented themselves to Sir Thomas Walsingham with news that all three men deemed of interest to the Queen.

  “Thank you, my dears,” Tom said, and seated himself right before them in order to pen a hasty message to Cecil.

  Accounts varied as to whether three hundred men rode through London with Essex or only one hundred, but Robert Catesby and the Baron Monteagle were indubitably among them. Will himself could not attest. Kit had returned to Faerie via the mirror in Tom Walsingham’s study, and Tom–over Will’s feeble protests–had put the playmaker to bed in a spare room. Will’s brother Edmund came to help nurse him in the morning, for there Will remained, sick with a fever and a heavy cough.

  Act IV, scene xx

  View but his picture, in this tragic glass,

  And then applaud his fortunes as you please

  Christopher Marlowe, Tamburlaine the Great,Part I, lines 7‑8

  Kit had come to think of the Darkling Glass as a sort of convenience, reliable as a faithful hound, and it annoyed him to no end to find the thing suddenly misbehaving. He’d long ago ascertained that it couldn’t be used to spy over the shoulders of Richard Baines or Robert Poley, who must have warded themselves from its power somehow. Nor was it useful in the Presence of Elizabeth herself, or in any of her palaces–a wise precaution, he thought, and one he wished to apply himself to solving when he found a quiet moment.

  He was accustomed to its vagaries, and resigned to them. But today, when he needed it most, the thing’s damnable unwillingness to hold a single steady image frustrated him to swearing, and he had to restrain himself when he would have driven his fist against the glass. He hit the wall instead, which was less satisfying and hurt more, but had the advantage of not putting a priceless magical artifact at risk.

  A priceless magical artifact which gave him nothing,except the useless information that Will was still abed in a darkened room, and Edmund and Jonson and Tom talking quietly in the withdrawing room hard by it. He looked for Baines, Catesby, Poley–and got only flickering darkness and useless pictures. A flock of ravens circling the Tower of London–a cold chill touched him at the image so reminiscent of his dreams–the sound of chanting men, and a swirling flicker that resolved into the streets of London strangely silent, every ear tuned to the ringing hoofbeats of some hundred or hundred and fifty horse. Essex, all in white, was unmistakable at their head.

  They vanished as they headed for the palace and the Queen, and Kit’s vision resolved on the old monastery, later playhouse, currently vacant hall of Blackfriars on the west end of London, just inside the city walls. Men filed into it, men in monk’s robes, as they should not have been in Protestant London. As they should not have been in the second playhouse owned by the sharers of the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, which those Men had never been able to use as a theatre because of the opposition of its neighbors, although Ben Jonson’s plays were performed regularly by the boy players at Paul’s.

/>   And isn’t that a little odd?Kit asked himself. That there was no such opposition to another such establishment almost across the street?Kit pressed both hands against the glass as the image swam again. He pushed it back toward Blackfriars, but it slid through his control like the reins of a fractious horse, leaving him grasping after nothing.

  Baines must be there. This is whatever Essex’s stupidity is intended to conceal. It is a juggler’s flourish: while all eyes are on the Earl, Richard Baines sweeps a treasure into his pocket. And odd that Will should come down hard sick this day of all days.

  And anything at Blackfriars, which should be closed tight and all but abandoned, is another chain linking the Lord Chamberlain’s Men to Essex. Layers and layers deep, this: better than anything Poley could have managed on his best day.

  God in Hell, I wish I knew what wad going on. Who does any of this benefit? Not Essex, not Southampton. Baines?

  There had been eight or ten robed men, he thought, although he’d only had a glimpse of them. There was no way one lone Elf‑knight and sometime poet could manage so many, but Walsingham’s London residence wasn’t far from Blackfriars, and there were Tom, and Ben, and Edmund too– if Edmund can be trusted. If Ben is not a member of two conspiracies at once.

  Kit shrugged at his own suspicions, and pushed through the Darkling Glass.

  It wasn’t as bad as he’d feared. Edmund–obviously already nervous in the presence of a knight–stood blinking by the window as Kit appeared in the center of the room, and Jonson broke off midsentence, glowering, reaching across a belly grown as mountainous as his self‑importance to grasp his swordhilt. But Tom turned away from the two of them and smiled. “Welcome back,” he said.

  Jonson grudgingly released the handle of his weapon as Edmund found his voice. “T‑tom Marlowe? What sorcery–”

  “No time to explain,” Kit said, his eyes on Tom Walsingham. “Does it seem strange to you that Will should be taken so ill yesterday, immediately afterhe gave the performance he had to give to suit the Promethean’s plans?”

  “God,” Tom said. “Yes. Essex rides–”

  “I know–”

  “–What must we do?”

  Kit swallowed and glanced from Ben to Edmund. Edmund looked at Jonson, who nodded. “Baines is at Blackfriars,” Kit said. “With eight or ten magicians. Whatever happens, happens now–”

  “And thou mean’st to interrupt?”

  “Aye, Sir Thomas. If I can request a few able‑bodied men.”

  “There’s that in this room,” Jonson said. “All this keeping secrets is hard on the use of hirelings.”

  “That it is.”

  “I’ve a few sturdy souls about the house who would suffice. Kit–”

  Edmund glanced over his shoulder once, at the door into Will’s sickroom. His head snapped back at the name Tom used, and his eyes widened. Kit bowed, his arms spread wide under his cloak. “At your service, Master Shakespeare. There’s still no time to explain. What seems to be the problem, Sir Thomas?”

  “The sturdiest of those souls is one Ingrim Frazier.”

  Kit’s stomach clenched. From loose readiness for action to seasick horror in a second, but he gritted his teeth and kept his voice level. “As he’s earned your forgiveness, Tom, I’ll live with it. But–” But I want to talk to him first.Except there was no time for recriminations now, was there? Not with Will’s life and Elizabeth’s crown on the line. “I’ll endure,” he said, and ended whatever comment Tom might have made next with an abrupt flip of his hand.

  Edmund seemed still at a loss. He tapped his fingers on the window ledge, his voice level and calm. “Will’s told me a bit of these poet‑wars, and that they have been quiet of late. His sickness is related?”

  “To these sorcerous doings? Aye.”

  “Then I will come.” He paused. “If I may consider your presence an invitation.”

  Kit laughed and turned to follow Tom as Tom moved toward the door. “Stuff your Warwickshire politeness, Ted. It’s time to go to war.”

  It wasn’t any easier to turn his back on Ingrim than he’d thought it would be. And Ingrim was keeping a weary weather eye on Kit as well, and Tom’s broad shoulders between them. Kit thought, if Frazier could manage it, he might have turned invisible, or hidden himself behind Ben Jonson’s bulk completely.

  Ben, bless him for a foul‑tempered young mule, was having none of it. He walked alongside Kit, an outward show of alliance that left Kit puzzled and looking for the trap, but the possibility existed that Jonson saw in Kit a more likely ally than Walsingham. Or possibly he just didn’t care to run shoulder to shoulder with the servants, and wanted the buffer of Kit’s velvet doublet and hooded cloak.

  Kit sighed and turned away from another sidelong glance of Frazier’s. And the whole world knows Kit Marley lived. Thou couldst just have hired a herald to cry it through the streets, Kit.

  Seven men, including two servants whose names Kit had failed to overhear, walked swiftly west on Cheapside, which had begun to bustle again in the wake of Essex’s dramatic ride. It didn’t matter, to Kit’s way of thinking; it wouldn’t be long before Essex was riding back again. He overheard talk in the crowd: witnesses reported that Essex, due to a delay over choosing his outfit for the revolution, failed to prevent Sir Robert Cecil from publicly proclaiming the insurgents traitors, and that the people of London likewise failed to rise and make Essex their King.

  The crowds made way for the seven afoot; Tom’s height and Ben’s sheer bulk were impressive, and Kit expected they all had the look of men with intention.

  They were almost in sight of Newgate (‑where Kit had once spent an unpleasant two weeks, detained on charge of murder) when their route turned south; in a matter of minutes they drew up under an overhang a few hundred yards from the playhouse. Kit stripped his glove off his right hand carefully, lest it interfere with his grip on his rapier.

  “Well,” Jonson said in his incongruous tenor, “time’s a‑wasting – ”

  “Aye,” Kit answered. “Shall we be clever about it?”

  “You’re too clever by half, if you ask me – ”

  “Which no one did.”

  “Gentlemen.” Tom didn’t bother to glare, but Kit subsided like a chastised schoolboy and Jonson fell silent too. They both had cause to know that tone. “The time for subtlety is past,” Tom continued, and drew a snaphaunce pistol from his belt. I wish we had Will or Dick here. It would give a little more credence to the story that we shot ten men for looting if one of us had somewhat to do with the property.”

  Kit shrugged. “Forgiveness is cheaper than permission. And we’re unlikely to shoot more than one or two at the most unless you’re handing out petards, Tom.”

  “Aye,” Tom answered. “Sadly, I’ve but the one. Come on then; let’s bloody our hands.”

  It wasn’t exactly a charge: more a concerted rush. Jonson reached the door first and–to Kit’s surprise–merely tried the handle. Tom, nervy as a colt, jumped when the hinges creaked, and Ben stopped with the portal open no more than a quarter inch. “Dammit, Ben – ”

  “We’ll be silhouetted against the street when we open the door,” Jonson said with a soldier’s calm. He braced the door with his toe to hold it in place while he drew, cocked, and primed his own pistol. “We have to enter quickly, divided to each side, and fan out in case they have firearms within.”

  Edmund shot him a glance with a question behind it, and Ben shook his head. “Fought in the Low Countries,” he murmured. “Ready, lad?”

  “Aye.”

  “Good. Stay at my shoulder. Keep moving. Master Marlowe? Sir Thomas?”

  Kit nodded tightly, not sad to see Jonson take control. As much as he bragged on his brains, Kit thought, drawing his sword, Jonson was very much in his element as a man of action.

  “Go, Ben,” Tom said over the hammering of Kit’s heart, and Jonson shoved the door open and went in, head down and shoulders hunched like a charging bull. The rest rushed through behind,
slipping aside like court dancers into the dimly lit interior. Somehow, Kit wound up pressed against the wall beside Frazier, shoulder to shoulder, but neither had a glance for the other now as their eyes strained into uncandled dimness, searching for a flicker of movement that might reveal the shift of a pistol or a blade. To Kit’s otherwisesight, the figures of any conjuring sorcerers should have stood out plainly, but he saw nothing in that breathless moment but a few dust motes hung on a crack of light.

  And then Jonson cursed, moving forward, and bent over some dark shapes outlined on the floor. Kit moved away from Frazier and the wall, deciding there was no need for quiet and that he was damned if he’d let Ingrim rattle him badly enough that Kit wouldn’t turn a shoulder on him with five other men there to ward his back. Kit crossed to where Ben crouched. “Master Jonson?”

  “Too late,” Jonson said, and used the blade of his rapier to prod a pile of sad‑colored cloth. “Monk’s habits. Theatre costumes, I think, and quite abandoned. Are those your robed men, Master Marlowe?”

  “Fuck me for a whore,” Kit said, turning his head to spit on the floor. “I just played right into his god‑be‑damned hands. Again.”

  Tom turned to search his face, and Kit forced himself to meet the expressionless gaze. “What meanst thou, Kit?”

  “I mean this was a feint as well, a trap laid for any that might have followed Baines or sought to scry after him. And while we were here, and the Oueen’s troops distracted by Essex, and Will struck down sick in his bed, Baines and his fellows have been about whatsoe’er they wished to be about, utterly undisturbed.”

  “Ah.” Tom braced his hands before himself and settled back against the wall. “So what do we do now?”

  Jonson, strangely, clapped a hand on Kit’s shoulder–and drew it back again, quickly, as if scorched. “We go back to your house, Sir Thomas. And we fight like cats to save our Will, and pray we make more of a success of it than we did with saving Spenser.”