One Dagger For Two

by Philip Lindsay

  Frizer whistled softly. “Of course it had to come,” he said. “I told you the sort of things he’s been saying. If they put the screws on to him he’ll howl anything that comes into his mind. He respects nobody.”

  “That’s why we must get him off.”

  “To be caught again? It’ll make him worse than ever, more boastful.”

  “You don’t like Kit, do you?” said Walsingham, turning idly to him.

  “He threw me out of a window once,” said Frizer stolidly.

  Walsingham laughed. “Madame also wants you to arrange to have him leave the country,” he said. “She’ll tell you all details.”

  “Leave the country, eh? Rheims and Rome? Worse and worse. It’d be well if you could make quite sure he’d travel somewhere where he’d never come back from.”

  Walsingham gazed coldly at him, was about to say something, then changed his mind. Let Awdrey arrange it: his conscience would be clear then.

  “Madame is waiting for you in the gallery,” he said coldly. “You’d better hurry.”

  Smiling, Frizer tossed the accounts aside and stood to his feet. “This is the kind of task I like,” he said. “I’ll go into these things later.”

  Walsingham turned away, not wanting to meet his eyes, and gazed along the shelves and shelves of books.

  Books…books… These were the only loves he had now, the only friends who gave him unlimited peace and happiness.

  *

  Awdrey had the note sealed when Frizer appeared. He smiled and gazed into her pale eyes as she explained all he must do.

  “And afterwards?” he said. “Your husband spoke of giving our poet a quittance out of the country.”

  “Yes, I want you to arrange that, too,” she said with a faint smile.

  “You can trust me. I am your slave, sweet Awdrey. And I am discreet. I do not boast in taverns of the weight of a lady’s leg, like merry poets.”

  “You had better be discreet.”

  “And you, too. We are in each other’s power. I did not take the potion to the wench.”

  “And I did not buy it.”

  They spoke quietly and smiled the while, both sure of themselves and of each other. A perfect pair they were, although he was but a yeoman and she a gentlewoman. With Frizer, she could rise high into the world; he was a man who did her bidding no matter what she bid, no matter how high or dangerous the game; he was subtle and discreet.

  “He has a long tongue,” she murmured at last.

  “And you were indiscreet,” he said.

  “I was a fool. When I look back, I cannot understand myself. It was hurt pride, I think. Frizer! Never remind me of that at your peril! But it will be forgotten, that tongue stopped. It must be. You’ll see me yet at Court, a lady with power and the wit to help you; how can I climb when that damned poet’s tongue any moment might lift my farthingale for all the base world to see! I won’t have it!”

  “It is easily stopped.”

  “Then I command you to stop it. Here, take this letter. Get to Cecil before the poet reaches Westminster. We mustn’t have him questioned; they’ll let him out on bail. He wants a licence to go abroad. He wants to take a boy with him. What boy can that be?”

  “No boy at all — a woman. It’s the wench he’s playing with that I told you of. I gave Nick Skeres the money you gave for him. He’s got the cockatrice’s servant-maid well under his chest, she tells him everything. The brach’s been buying man’s clothes.”

  Awdrey laughed softly. “A gallant poet it is!” she scoffed. “We can’t possibly countenance lewdery like that, can we, Frizer?”

  “No, Madame, not for a moment.”

  “We must stop that. But you can arrange everything?”

  “Everything,” smiled Frizer. “Skeres is ready; it will be subtly done. Leave all to me.”

  He took her cold hand, fondling the fingers as he kissed the soft palm. When he let it go, the hand dropped mechanically, lifelessly; it fell with its own weight; and he looked into her face that was smiling dully, the eyes heavy with ambitious dreams of a future of intrigue, of Court life and a world of merry fashion revolving around her.

  Chapter XVI

  AGAINST TIME

  Cutting across fields, down right of ways where horsemen were not allowed, Frizer soon passed Marlowe and his guards. He swept by, grinning, waving the note in his hand; Marlowe bowed slightly, but made no other gesture. He was very angry; time was going swifter than Frizer rode his horse, and this damnable Captain Maunder went at a leisurely amble, insisting on stopping for drinks and making Marlowe pay for them. It was the custom for all officers, sergeants, constables, catch-poles and other legal scum to make their prisoners spend whatever they had in their purses before turning them over to the prison-turnkeys who immediately demanded their share, their “garnish,” as they called it. Marlowe knew this, and he had no objection to submitting, but he was in such fear lest he be late for Alice’s dinner that he sweated with rage every time the captain whoaed in his horse under a flapping inn-sign.

  “I must be in London by twelve!” he cried. “Lucky if you ever see London ’cept through iron bars,” said the captain genially. He was a tough old soldier to whom nothing was of any importance, save perhaps drink. He was genial, sang fierce songs in a rumbling voice and told Marlowe long lying tales of his warlike adventures in the Low Lands.

  “Hell damn it!” cried Marlowe after they had stopped at the tenth inn. “I’ll ride ahead and you can meet me at the Star Chamber.”

  “Oh, can we!” said the captain with a trilling laugh. “Saunders, keep one of those dags aimed at him; if he runs, shoot and be damned to him! I don’t want to do it,” he added, turning to Marlowe, “but a man must drink.”

  There was no fighting against a loaded pistol, and Saunders played with his little brass-mounted dag with such obvious relish, that Marlowe knew that he would shoot and enjoy the shooting.

  From inn to inn they went. Captain Maunder appeared to know every landlord intimately and to be on the most affectionate terms with all the maids and kitchen-wenches. When they stopped for dinner, he advised Marlowe what to eat with great solicitude, and disappeared for half an hour into the kitchen whence could be heard the affectionate squeals of lusty maids — courtesy maids. His face gleamed when he returned, it was shiny all over where their greasy lips had be-blubbered him.

  He spoke to everybody they passed on the road, giving a cheery good day to farmers and making obscene suggestions to giggling wenches; Marlowe detested him.

  Already, noon had passed, and it was approaching one o’clock. He settled down into a kind of mental bog; depressed, he refused to answer his companion’s noisy arguments, but sat sullenly astride his jennet and got down obediently at every inn or tavern they came to. He no longer argued, he submitted furiously. The wrong was irreparable now. As well be ten hours late as one. And Alice…how long would she wait for him? The turkey would be getting burnt, she would be looking out of the window, staring hopefully into Watling Street, bending out over the boxes of bright flowers — pansies, marigolds and wallflowers — almost cricking her neck to see if he was coming in the distance.

  At this moment, while he drank his pint of Rhenish, she was waiting for him, fretting, wondering as she gazed at the blank indifferent face of the clock.

  *

  It was going on for two when they entered London, and now there was no more drinking. After they had ambled over the Bridge, Captain Maunder became immediately the important Messenger to Her Majesty’s Chamber, and held his head in air, keeping a wary eye on his prisoner.

  Marlowe learned that he was not, as he had expected, to be taken into the skyey-roofed Star Chamber where the dreadful judges probed into riots, slanders, libels, cozenage, embracery, bribery, and such like equity-cum-criminal offences.

  “You get that later,” said Captain Maunder with a grin. “Ye’re to be questioned first.”

  He would say nothing
more until they had reached Westminster Hall, its tiny spires rising between two square stone towers. As it was Sunday, the court was almost empty, and seemed ominously death-like to Marlowe who, before, had only seen it during its busy session-days, when it was crowded with lawyers, cut-purses, litigants and harlots, with pedlars bellowing their wares, crowds pushing by the booksellers’ stalls against the wall, fingering the cloths in seamstresses’, and examining jewels and pretty gewgaws in the toy-shops. Now all was still, the court ringing back the echo of their own steps, and the clatter of the horses’ iron hoofs. None of the usual bustle roared around the pointed fountain — country gentlemen puffing in their sober dress; gallants and bright-eyed doxies flaunting their peacock-bravery; serjeants-at-law in their white taffeta coifs covered with black skull-caps, their caped and hooded gowns of two bright colours, of blue and green usually, hooked in front with two white labels; judges in furred red velvet cloaks and black skull-caps over the coif; counsel in pleated sombre gowns; hurry and scurry and solemn faces; all was gone. It seemed to Marlowe as he got slowly from his horse and threw the reins to Saunders that all the crowds that usually bustled here were dead now, killed by the Star Chamber and the plague, and that he and this Captain Maunder entering the great Hall were the only two people living in vast London.

  Down through the empty courts, like huge stables they seemed, their own footsteps padding sullenly behind them, echoing on the roof, up rickety stairs they went, then suddenly Captain Maunder whirled Marlowe into a room so tiny that in it there was no space to move; under the barred window was a huge table and at this table before paper and standish sat a little man grinning with green teeth, his hood drawn over his skull-like head, for it was cold and he had no fire.

  He jerked his pen at the captain, and the captain went out, drawing the curtains after him, and leaving Marlowe alone with the little green-toothed clerk in the hood.

  So small was the room, so large was the table, that Marlowe was scarcely a foot away from the clerk who gazed grinning up at him.

  “Christopher Marley, I believe?” said the clerk.

  “That is so,” said Marlowe, “at your service.”

  “A little matter of a few questions,” said the clerk, leaning forward to peep at the papers in front of him. “You are a poet?”

  “Ay.”

  “Do you make a living at poetry?”

  “I make no decent living; I make enough to stop me from starving.”

  “Yet you dress well? You live quite well?”

  “I am helped by patrons.”

  “Ah-ha, and what patrons, may I ask?”

  “What the devil’s that got to do with it!”

  “Oh, nothing,” said the clerk, shrugging, “nothing whatever! You refuse to answer; that is all I want to know.”

  “But I don’t refuse to answer.”

  “No? Then who are your patrons?”

  “Master Thomas Walsingham,” said Marlowe; “he’s patron to many poets, to George Chapman as well as to me.”

  “No other patron?”

  “No,” said Marlowe. He would not mention Ralegh’s name, even innocently.

  “You have heard, I presume,” said the clerk, leaning back on the stool and biting the feathers of his pen, “that a certain Thomas Kyd has been apprehended on suspicion of writing certain libels against the strangers in our midst?”

  “I know that Kyd never wrote them.”

  “Oh, then you know who did write them?”

  “Nay! but I know that Kyd’s too loyal a man to write such things!”

  The clerk smiled, scribbled on the paper, then said as if trying to remember something, “Marley? Marley? Poet? I know that name. Did you ever write a drama called Tamburlaine? And was it acted at my Inn, at Gray’s Inn?”

  “Yes, it was acted there by Lord Strange’s company.”

  “Lord Strange!” And the manner in which the clerk gazed up at him, sent a sudden coldness along Marlowe’s spine. He remembered now, and cursed himself for a fool. Chomley had told him that Lord Strange was mixed up in some Catholic plot. “Another patron?” asked the clerk, with ill-concealed glee.

  “Nay, no patron of mine! We quarrelled badly. Long ago. I was mixed up with his company but a short time, when they merged with the Lord Admiral’s. They separated later, and I remained with the Lord Admiral’s.”

  While he spoke, the clerk grinned and watched him with a knowingly contemptuous look.

  “Well, well,” said he, “one cannot help having patrons, can one?”

  *

  Suddenly some one knocked behind the curtains, and Captain Maunder poked in his head. He whispered to the clerk who made a wry face and scurried out; in a few minutes he returned with a paper in his hand, and Marlowe caught a glimpse of Cecil’s seal on it. He was smiling now, very amiably, almost apologetically.

  “I won’t keep you another minute, Master Marley,” he said. “You can run off now. As a mere formality, you know. You must keep in touch with us, call in every morning, just in case we need you. Later, you will have to appear in the Star Chamber before the Council, but don’t trouble yourself until then, except to drop in every morning. You may go.”

  Marlowe breathed deeply with relief, and, almost giddied by his escape, strode out through the curtains.

  Captain Maunder was in the passage, talking to Frizer.

  “Never seen a man come out so quick,” said the captain. “You must have a drink, you know, on the strength of that.”

  “Ay, Kit,” said Frizer, “let’s to a tavern?”

  Marlowe was surprised to find that he no longer felt any rage against Frizer. He even smiled, he was so pleased at being released.

  “Nay, I’ve no time,” he said, “I’m in a great hurry. By the way, Frizer, did Mrs. Walsingham speak to you about my travelling licence?”

  “She told me to get it for you,” said Frizer, smiling, “but I won’t be able to arrange things for about a week.”

  “Don’t forget!”

  And Marlowe went off, running down the stairs.

  “Well,” said the captain, sighing, “I suppose you’ll have to buy the drinks, Master Frizer!”

  “I am completely penniless!” said Frizer in the most innocent manner, and swiftly followed Marlowe, leaving the captain to suck dolefully at his own whiskers.

  *

  Up from Westminster rode Marlowe. Luckily, the streets were wellnigh deserted, because of the plague; besides, this was Sunday, and most people were at home or in church. He raced past the Queen’s Stables — called the Mews because in Henry VIII’s day the falcons had been kept there to mew, or moult — by Charing Cross, up the Strand, Fleet Street, Ludgate Hill, St. Paul’s, until in Watling Street he reined in his horse, jumped nimbly to the cobbles and rapped on the door.

  When nobody answered, he rapped again, angrily, and at last he heard footsteps — a woman’s light steps — and he braced himself to meet Alice’s reproachful glance.

  But it was not Alice who opened the door; it was her maid, and the wench had evidently been drinking, for she glared impudently at Marlowe, her dress all disarranged, her breasts naked.

  “Master Marlowe,” she said, sucking her upper-lip, “I’ve a note fer yer.”

  Marlowe grabbed it from her. “And your mistress?” he cried. “Where is she?”

  “I don’t know,” said the girl and hitched up her stays, scratching at her stomach. “Gorn,” she said, “p’raps the note’ll tell ye, I don’t know nothink, ‘cept she’s gorn.”

  “Alone?”

  “Lord love me, what ye think? Ye are a one! With old spider-faced Job riding with her trunks and things. She’s gorn on a hoss, she ought to have gorn in a coach, her being sich a lydy, but she went on a hoss. She won’t be back, she says, for a week or two. Excuse the hiccups; cowcumber allus comes back on me like a dorg to his vomit.”

  Marlowe turned angrily from the drunken creature who tried to read the note ove
r his shoulder so that she could tell it her lover, Nick Skeres — that very moment lounging with a bottle in Alice’s best bed. She needn’t have bothered; Skeres had already read it while she was in the kitchen, for he was very clever at opening seals without breaking the wax.

  It was a very short note, and curiously pathetic.

  “Deare Cit,” it read, “Good-bye. Yo hav broken yore promis and my hart. Doe not seeke mee, onely am I glad to know truth even tho it hurts. I am to farre to seeke. I will thynke of yo allways. Onse yor Alis. Goode-bye, my luv Goode-bye.”

  Again and again Marlowe read that note as he ambled his horse through the empty streets. It brought tears to his eyes. Now that he had lost Alice he loved her more than ever. This second loss was greater than the first. He knew now that, without doubt, she was more important to him than Awdrey was. Awdrey! He hated her. She was so changed, so hard suddenly. Poor Alice. He must find her, he must.

  Where could she have gone? She had left with her old man-servant, Job, and had said she would be away some weeks… She had few friends, as Marlowe knew; the only possible refuge for her was her people, at Lavenham. She had become friends with them again a few years ago, and they had forgiven her her sinfulness, seeing that she had so many gifts for them, so big a purse.

  Where was that? Lavenham. In Suffolk. Where the devil was Lavenham? He must go there at once. If only Nashe was not away; he had been born somewhere in Suffolk.

  Glancing up, he noticed ahead of him the sign on the Cheapside Mitre swinging in the faint wind, twined with ivy-wreaths — for ivy, it was said, being the symbol of a wench who died drunk on Olympus in the arms of Bacchus, almost all taverns draped their walls with her noble emblem — that was how one knew a tavern, by the ivy, and by the shutters usually being painted red, and sometimes green; the signs meant nothing, for all shops had them.

  Marlowe sat his horse, gazing up at the episcopal hat limned with bright colours, then slowly he got down from his horse, tied the reins to one of the wooden posts outside, and entered the tavern — one of the most popular in London.