Strange Devices of the Sun and Moon (18 page)

She was aware that, once or twice, Walter glanced over in her direction. She thought he might still be worried that this demonstration of witchcraft would prove too much for her. But though the devils on stage frightened her she managed to show Walter nothing of what she felt until the end, Faustus's last terrified speech. The crowd was finally silent; they heard the stately iambics broken now as Faustus stammered out new bargains, tried hopelessly to find a way to escape his coming damnation:

“Adders and serpents, let me breathe awhile.
Ugly hell, gape not, come not, Lucifer!
I'll burn my books—ah, Mephostophilis!”

Then it was over, and she turned to see Walter sitting next to her, looking as pale as she herself must be.

They stood and pushed with the rest of the crowd to the exits. Walter kept up a steady stream of talk on the way home, as if he realized that she had been shaken more than she would like to admit. “The man who wrote the play—I've seen him in the churchyard,” he said. “He comes to talk to Edward Blount. Ned wants to publish a poem of his.”

She had met Marlowe once, and she told him about that, and about his friend Thomas Nashe. It was so easy to be with Walter that she felt herself forgetting her cares, George's strange attack and her missing son. They walked to her house on Paternoster Row and he waited as she opened the door.

“I'd ask you in, if only to make sure I have no familiar,” she said, “but it's been a long day and I'm tired. Thanks for everything.”

“I'll see you tomorrow,” he said.

She sat in the kitchen for a long time after he had gone. Despite what she had told him she felt awake, alert, too excited to go to bed. She went over everything that had happened that day—George's speech and Edward's defense, and Walter's, and the play, the crowds of people, the way Walter had looked after her …

Walter. Why couldn't she get him out of her mind? Was she so lonely, then, so pathetic, that the simplest kindness from a stranger could unbalance her completely? And surely kindness was all that it had been; he hadn't expected anything more. She had made the same mistake before with George; she had taken what she had thought was kindness and turned it into something larger, a friendship that had not been returned. The world was full of traps for lonely old women.

Was she in love with him then? Nay—he was not the sort of man she could care for. She understood why she had fallen in love with John, who had made her laugh, who had had plans which took in more of the world than their tiny community, who had been handsome and strong. When she thought of Walter she could find nothing attractive about him: he was too short, too dark, his eyes too close together and his chin too large. Yet she knew she would think of him all night. She wanted only to be with him, to listen to his light friendly voice as he talked about inconsequential things. She wished she had thought to invite him in.

How could she face him the next day in the churchyard? She could only think that she must not betray to him what she felt, to save them both from embarrassment.

She stood and began to make herself a light supper. Something white on the sideboard caught her attention, a piece of paper. “Come tomorrow,” the note said in Margery's handwriting. “The Fair Folk are moving. They have decided not to wait for your son.”

11

Christopher watched in astonishment as the four men made their way toward the stage. If these people were the conspirators then who were the odd folks he had met in the room that early morning?

“Aye, we had dinner together that afternoon,” one of the men said. “My wife was there as well.”

As he listened to them speak Christopher recognized their voices; they were indeed the men he had overheard rehearsing the play. He had been led astray, had decided that these folks were the same as the lunatics he had visited because a man from one group had belonged to the other as well. The truth had proved to be less fantastic than he had thought; the conspirators were ordinary people and not the madmen he had believed them to be. He had complicated things needlessly, like Robert Poley, or worse, like Tom Nashe with his goblins.

One of the councilors nodded and dismissed the four men, and they stepped off the stage. Their story had been accepted; they would not be asked any further questions. He alone of all the people in the room knew that these men had plotted to bring down the queen, and he could prove nothing against them.

An idea came to him then, a way he could demonstrate their guilt. He studied the conspirators' faces carefully and returned to his room, wondering if Philip Potter could be made to memorize a few lines.

The next day he spoke to the queen's guards and then went to dinner with Potter in the Great Hall. The conspirators' standing at court was slightly higher than Potter's, and so in the usual course of things Sir Philip would not have found seats next to them. But he and Christopher had followed the men closely into the hall and then sat at their table before anyone else could. Christopher ignored the men's hostile looks, and Potter did not seem to notice them at all.

When the men turned away Christopher studied them carefully. Nicholas Russell, John Stafford, Richard Dyer, Edward White: he had paid enough attention when they testified to know which was which. And their leader, who had said his name was John Bridges.

Drums and trumpets sounded, and then the nobility and Knights of the Garter came into the room, followed by Queen Elizabeth and her maids-of-honor. In all the time Christopher had been at the palace he had never seen the queen at dinner; she had the habit of dining privately. He had heard, though, that she wanted to show herself to the court; rumor had it that she was dead, with an impostor on the throne.

The queen sat at a raised dais at the far end of the room, her councilors to either side of her. More trumpets played, and the Yeomen of the Guard, each dressed in scarlet with a gold rose on his back, brought in her dinner. A woman Christopher knew to be a countess served one of the guards a portion of every dish, and after the guard had tasted the food the queen began to eat. Only then did servants pass through the hall with dishes of pork, capon, beef, and venison pie. A consort played a galliard in another room.

Nearly a week after the masque the subject of conversation at every table was the same: the assassination attempt and the capture of the man who had tried to shoot the queen. “I hear,” someone at another table said, “that the assassin has died. Succumbed to torture, no doubt.”

The comment had been loud enough for the conspirators to overhear. But none of them seemed particularly sad that one of their number had died, or relieved that the man had not lived to betray them. For the first time Christopher wondered if he had made a mistake. But these men were consummate actors, he had seen that. Doubtless they were well schooled in hiding what they felt.

“I wonder if the assassin spoke at all before he died,” he said.

The men paid no attention to him. Clearly they, like Will, could tell that he was no gentleman, but unlike Will they seemed to want to keep their distance from one so lowborn. Or could there be another reason for their silence?

“If he said nothing his friends will go unpunished,” Sir Philip said. “Who are they, I wonder? They could be anyone, anyone in this room.”

Christopher felt a vast relief. Sir Philip had not forgotten his lines. He watched with amusement as Potter added a touch of his own to the drama Christopher had constructed: he turned and surveyed the room, frowning at the thought that such evil might be present.

Well, Sir Philip was not stupid, though there seemed to be a great many things no one had ever told him. He had understood the masque, after all.

“Nay, I think the men will be discovered soon,” Christopher said. “Do you remember the note that was delivered to my room by accident?”

“Aye,” Sir Philip said, as naturally as if there had truly been such a note.

The other men at the table continued to eat, but Christopher thought he saw a few of them tense, listening for his next words. John Bridges turned slightly to be able to hear him.

“I think the note had something to do with the conspiracy,” Christopher said. “I didn't understand it at all when I read it—something about an imaginary dinner in April, and one or two lines about the need for secrecy. The last sentence mentioned a new king, that much I do remember.”

“For God's sake, man, who was it from?” Sir Philip asked eagerly. Christopher thought he might be overdoing it a little. “Who was it addressed to?”

“All the names were in cipher. But I'm certain that the queen's men could decipher it, if I took it to them.”

“Aye, you should do that, by all means,” Sir Philip said.

The plotters had abandoned all pretense of eating. One or two of them stared frankly at Christopher as if trying to memorize his features. “I will,” Christopher said, biting into the venison pie. It was very good. “I'll do it this afternoon.”

After dinner he and Potter went up the stairs to Potter's room. Christopher sat at the writing table but Sir Philip paced the room anxiously, opening and closing the door again and again to see if the queen's guards had come. “Where are they?” he said. “What if they didn't believe you?”

“They'll be here,” Christopher said, sounding more certain than he felt. They had certainly seemed to believe his story that morning. He found himself more worried about where the conspirators were; he had expected them to confront him almost immediately. “Stop opening the door.”

Sir Philip closed the door and paced the length of the room again. “Will this be dangerous?”

“Not for you,” Christopher said, hoping to reassure him. “I'm the one who has the note, after all. I've told you—you don't have to stay.”

“And I've told you that I want to be here,” Potter said. “I have to prove myself to the queen.”

Christopher realized that he had misunderstood the man. Potter did not fear danger but looked forward to it, hoping to demonstrate his loyalty and cleverness to the queen. Suddenly Christopher felt very old, older than Sir Philip though the man was at least forty. What would it be like to be so innocent?

Someone knocked on the door. Christopher stood. Sir Philip turned, flustered, and ran his hands over his trunk hose. The men entered without waiting for permission. “Give us the note,” Nicholas Russell said.

“The note?” Christopher said. What had happened to the queen's guard?

“Aye. Don't play the fool. The note you talked about at dinner. Where is it?”

“I—I gave it to one of the queen's councilors.”

“Nay,” John Bridges said. “No tricks. You didn't have time for that. Where is it? Is it in this room?”

“Why do you want it?”

Sir Philip edged toward the door, moving surprisingly softly for all his plumpness.

“And no questions, either. You!” he said, calling to Sir Philip. Potter stopped halfway to the door. “Stay here. We'll have to pry the answer out of you, then, the way we might pry an oyster from its shell. And the tool for both tasks is the same—the knife.”

He motioned to Richard Dyer. Dyer slipped his dagger from its sheath. “We'll start with you, Sir Philip, since you tried to be so clever,” Bridges said. Stafford twisted Potter's arms behind his back. “Didn't you learn anything from your stay at court? You're not good at cleverness, Sir Philip—leave it to other people.”

Richard Dyer brought his dagger up to Sir Philip's face. Philip's eyes opened almost comically wide. “Cut one of his cheeks, to begin with,” Bridges said.

Philip tried to jerk his head away. Stafford held him tightly. But before Dyer could bring his dagger closer something odd began to happen to the tapestry between the windows; it bulged outward for a fraction of a second and then tore to shreds. An explosive noise echoed back and forth through the room, and then Dyer fell, holding his side.

Two men dressed in the livery of the queen's guard stepped out from behind the tapestry. One of them held a gun. “We arrest you, in the queen's name,” he said.

The other guard tore Stafford away from Potter. The first threw down the gun and took out his sword, and began motioning to the remaining conspirators, Bridges, Russell, and White. Bridges and White raised their arms away from their weapons, but Russell ran for the door. Before anyone could stop him he had slipped outside and was gone.

Christopher ran after him. They hurried down the main staircase and into the Great Hall, and then Russell opened a door Christopher had never noticed before.

Suddenly Christopher found himself inside a huge kitchen. The strong heat hit him like a fist. A group of men at the hearth were turning a goat on a spit. Russell shoved past them. Christopher followed, his elbow jostling the goat's stiff outstretched legs. “What—” the cooks shouted after them. “Stop!”

Russell ran through another door and down a dimly lit stone corridor. He opened one final door and they stepped outside. Ahead of them was the hedge maze. Russell ran through the ornamental entrance.

Christopher followed. Russell turned a corner ahead of him, then another. Christopher took both corners after him and looked around quickly, seeing nothing before him but head-high walls of leafy green. Russell had vanished. He stood still a moment, listening for the other man.

A noise came from the right. He followed it and heard the same noise, coming from his left this time. Was that Russell or someone else? But who else would be in the maze? He hurried on.

After a few turns he realized he was lost. Russell was long gone. He looked around him, trying desperately to remember the way out.

Left here, or was it right? It had all looked different from the window in his room, more orderly somehow. He passed a stone bench, a statue. Where was he? He began to turn corners at random—was that the same bench, the same statue? He couldn't remember.