Witch Hammer (13 page)

‘You’ve come a long way from Maidstone to watch a masque,’ Marlowe commented after a while.

There was another pause and then Scot gave a low chuckle. ‘I had heard that there were good fishermen in Canterbury,’ he said. Marlowe turned from the window with a smile, and a cocked and questioning eyebrow. Scot could see that he was going to have to tell the man a few more facts. ‘No, you’ve guessed aright. The masque would have been an hour’s relaxation, nothing more. I’m a hop grower, seeking to introduce the plant into this leafy county.’

Marlowe leaned back on the sill, his back resting on the window transom and looked out again on to the dark court. ‘And I’m the Pope’s arse wiper,’ he said to the night. He turned his head to Scot. ‘Try again.’

Scot gave him a look of surprised innocence which fooled nobody. He hauled a leather-bound book from his knapsack. ‘Here’s proof,’ he said. ‘
My Hoppe Platform
. Not bad, though I do say it myself.’

Marlowe looked at it and thumbed the pages. ‘What about the other book you carry?’ he asked.

‘How did you . . .?’ Scot didn’t like to be surprised by any man, especially one from Canterbury and Cambridge. But he complied anyway and pulled out a much older volume, the leather scarred and worn. It was in Latin.

‘
Malleus Maleficarum
,’ Marlowe said, reading the title aloud. ‘The hammer of the witches.’

‘Do you know it?’ Scot asked.

‘I know
of
it,’ Marlowe told him. ‘Rather like Ovid, it’s not exactly on the reading list at Corpus Christi.’

‘It should be,’ Scot told him. ‘If only to remind us all of the vicious nonsense spouted by the Papist church.’

Marlowe frowned. ‘I didn’t have you down for a Puritan, Reginald.’

‘Oh, I’m not. Until I see what wicked rubbish leads to in Christ’s kingdom. The tortures. The murders. I’ve seen things in Germany, Kit . . .’ His voice trailed away. He cleared his throat. ‘I am in Warwickshire researching for the next edition of my latest book.
A Discovery of Witchcraft
, it’s called. It came out last year, but it wasn’t really ready, to my mind. The publishers have promised to put in my new material, when they print more.’

‘It’s a good title.’ Marlowe nodded, although, good title or not, he doubted the next printing would ever happen. He had dealt with publishers himself and knew them for a tricky bunch. ‘But why Warwickshire?’

‘Place is riddled with it. Or rather, the fear of it.’

‘You don’t believe it, then?’

‘Of course not.’ Scot snorted. ‘Will Shaxsper does.’

Marlowe chuckled. ‘He has small children,’ he said. ‘Probably frightens them to sleep with tales of things that go bump in the night and got a bit carried away by his own imagination.’

‘Oh, there are witches, all right.’ Scot was warming to his theme. ‘Poor, deluded souls who seek an explanation for the great cruelty of this world with the supernatural. None of it’s real. And all of it’s condoned by the church of Rome.’

‘And the Church of Elizabeth, as I understand it. Chelmsford?’

‘What do you know of Chelmsford?’ Scot asked. ‘You couldn’t have been much more than a tot in your hanging sleeves.’

‘It was still the talk of the Cambridge taverns when I was there.’

‘Yes,’ growled Scot, ‘Mother Waterhouse and her talking cat. You couldn’t make it up.’

Marlowe turned to face the man. ‘The doll is real,’ he said and snatched it up. ‘In the likeness of Lord Strange. The velvet doublet, the square-cut collar, the mole on his forehead.’

‘So?’

‘What does Will Shaxsper believe?’

Scot sat on the settle and crossed his legs. ‘He believes that the poppet
is
Lord Strange. That the doll was made by
malefica
, a black witch.’ He looked at the image in Marlowe’s hand. ‘It is ripped across the belly. Is that where Lord Strange’s trouble is?’

Marlowe nodded. ‘He complained of pains there, yes, as we carried him to his bed.’

‘Because he is a believer, too.’ Scot shrugged. ‘Such nonsense can only work if you believe in it. Ovid’s Greek witches could pull down the moon. Ours can kill Lord Strange.’

‘And in the real world?’

‘Not my department,’ Scot said, getting up and collecting both his books. He paused. ‘But I’ve got a feeling it’s yours.’ He tucked the books away and extended a hand. ‘It has been an education, Kit,’ he said.

‘Likewise, Reginald.’ Marlowe shook it. ‘Are you for the road?’

‘Yes, I’m making for Meon Hill.’

‘Meon Hill?’

Scot tapped the side of his nose. ‘There are more witches under Meon Hill than trees in a forest, so I’m told.’ He paused in the doorway. ‘And you know, Kit, rather like Master Shaxsper, I believe everything I’m told.’

N
o one. Absolutely no one was to come to Lord Strange that night, and the two armed men on his door were there to see that Sir William Clopton’s orders were carried out. If Marlowe had been Kit with the Canstick, he would have drifted like candle smoke through the keyhole. If he’d been Boneless, he’d have shifted his shape and slid under the door. As it was, he was Kit Marlowe and he dropped heavy coins into the men’s purses while they studiously looked the other way.

Ferdinando Stanley lay like a corpse on the high tester bed, bedecked with the brocaded Clopton arms. He who travelled with no servants desperately needed one now. Ned Sledd and Nat Sawyer had stripped the man of his day clothes and wrapped him in a nightshirt tied to the neck. But no one, not even Ned and certainly not Nat had the nerve to spend the night in that pain-wracked room. After all, they were troupers and both of them had a stage to de-rig and musicians to pay off. Gate money had to be returned and the gunpowder carefully moved out of harm’s way.

Joyce Clopton had offered to stay with the shivering, rambling lord, but her father wouldn’t hear of it and she was shooed away. The casement had been locked, the door bolted on the outside and the guards placed. Marlowe checked the window, its sill sickly smelling with fennel. He checked the fireplace, black and empty. On the table alongside the bed lay a goblet of water, which he sniffed and tasted briefly on the tip of his tongue and a Bible, black and comforting in Latin and Greek.

The candle was burnt down to a stub and there was a winding sheet of wax pinning it to the table. The room was full of the small noises that a man makes even when he is unconscious, tiny clickings of tongue on palate, a sibilance of air in the nose. These noises were always present, but there was something about a death chamber which made them louder, echoing in the silence between each laboured breath. Picking up the candle, Marlowe dressed its wick to make it burn more brightly in its last minutes and peeled back the coverlet to see what a dying man could tell him, though he had no powers of speech.

Strange’s breathing was laboured and his colour ghastly. His eyes were half open but he seemed to see nothing. He had clearly not moved since he had been put to bed and Marlowe felt the man’s wrist to find a pulse. It was there, but barely and the playwright covered the man up again and sat in a corner, waiting for the dawn to bring the room to life with its dove-light.

The crowing of the cock made Lord Strange stir. He opened his eyes wide and Marlowe was sitting on the bed beside him, holding his outstretched hand and cradling the patient’s head.

‘Marlowe,’ Strange mumbled, trying to make his tongue work. ‘Marlowe, is that you?’

‘It is, My Lord,’ Marlowe said, standing up and releasing the man’s hand. ‘Welcome back.’

Strange frowned up at him and struggled into a sitting position. ‘Oh, Kit,’ he whispered, his voice rasping and harsh, ‘I have spent such a night.’ He gasped in memory of it. ‘I saw her, Kit.’ He clawed at the playwright’s sleeve. ‘The woman with no eyes. I saw her again. Here at the Hall.’

‘When was this?’ Marlowe asked.

Strange seemed nonplussed by the question. ‘I can’t remember,’ he said. ‘Was it . . . before . . . or . . . was it a dream?’ Suddenly, he sat bolt upright, his arms rigid in front of him, his fists tightly balling up the coverlet, his knuckles white. ‘The poppet,’ he hissed, through clenched teeth. ‘The poppet with my face.’

‘A doll, My Lord,’ Marlowe said softly, patting the man’s hand. ‘A child’s toy, nothing more.’

Strange looked at him. ‘It was a Devil’s doll,’ he said as though the weight of the world lay on him. ‘Put there by a witch. And a thorn was through my heart. Help me up, Kit. I must go home, while I still can.’

‘Sir –’ Marlowe studied the struggling lord – ‘You are not well enough . . .’

‘Help me or not, as you will,’ Strange barked and coughed with the effort of raising his voice. ‘But with or without you, I’m going home. If I’m to die, I’ll do it in my own bed.’

The camp that had been building over the last few days broke up the next morning. The canvas and the ropes came down and the braziers were stashed away.

‘Well, that’s it,’ Sledd said, hands on hips. ‘The party’s well and truly over. Oxford it is.’

‘What about His Lordship?’ Thomas asked. He wasn’t sure Sledd was still talking him to him now that his balls had dropped and he was staring Other Employment in the face.

There was a commotion at the west door and Lord Strange was helped down the steps by Marlowe.

‘Here he comes,’ said Sledd, ‘but I don’t like the look of him.’

‘And he’s our meal ticket,’ Thomas muttered. ‘Lose him and we lose all that sponsorship.’

‘Heart as big as the great outdoors, Thomas, that’s you. Anyway, I’m not talking to you, as I’m sure you recall. I’ve got to find another female lead now because of you answering the call of nature. And it’s precisely because of our imminent loss of sponsorship as you put it that we’ll have to hit Oxford. Got to make some money somewhere until we can find a new lord as stage-struck as this one. Know anything about the Earl of Northumberland?’

Thomas just shrugged.

‘Well, there’s a surprise,’ Sledd muttered. ‘When we reach Oxford, you’re on the thunder box. Although why I should give you a second chance, I don’t know. My Lord!’ And he trotted off to where Strange was being helped into a carriage. William Clopton was fussing around, as was Joyce, but, in the event, it was Marlowe who took charge.

‘My Lord, I believe you met this gentleman briefly last night,’ he said quietly as Nicholas Faunt bounded into the carriage.

Strange recoiled. ‘Liar!’ he shouted, disoriented. He plucked at his cloak, trying to hide his face.

‘A mere subterfuge, My Lord,’ Faunt calmed the man. ‘You are right; we have met before, in London. I work for Sir Francis Walsingham.’

Strange frowned and blinked. ‘Walsingham?’ he repeated.

Faunt nodded. Strange, bewildered and half delirious though he was, assessed the situation. Faunt was armed to the teeth, with a rapier, dagger and the butt of a wheel lock under his cloak. If he worked for Walsingham, he worked for the Queen and that was good enough for Strange. He was finding focusing difficult, but by closing one eye and looking across the bridge of his nose, he could see the man clearly enough and he did seem familiar.

‘Master York will accompany you, My Lord,’ Marlowe said loudly, stepping down from the carriage. ‘Driver,’ he called up to the man, ‘Her Majesty’s palace of Nonsuch and don’t spare the horses.’

‘Wait,’ Strange gasped, sticking his deathly pale face out of the window.

Faunt had gripped his sleeve and brought his mouth close to the sick man’s ear. ‘Another subterfuge, My Lord,’ he breathed. ‘We are going north to your estates. The driver knows that. Whatever actually happened last night, we must accept that someone here means you harm. The less they know about your
actual
destination, the better.’

Strange turned panic-stricken eyes to him, but didn’t move his head. Faunt’s hot breath was still cooling in Strange’s ear when he heard another voice calling his name. The voices were bothering him this morning and it was all a bit too much. He wrapped himself closer in his cloak and closed his eyes.

‘My Lord Strange!’ Sledd was still trying to barge his way through the Cloptons and Marlowe.

‘Not now, Ned.’ Marlowe turned to face him. ‘His Lordship is not well.’

‘The Devil,’ Sledd grunted.

‘Yes.’ Marlowe nodded. ‘Very likely.’

And the carriage rolled back a little before the driver hauled on his reins and whipped his horses on.

‘That this should happen in my house.’ William Clopton shook his head as he watched the coach rattle under the archway and out of sight.

‘Master Marlowe.’ Joyce left the old man at the door and crossed to the playwright. ‘They tell me you spent the night in Lord Strange’s room.’

He closed down his face and looked at her, giving away nothing.

She smiled and led him away, out of her father’s earshot. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘A guard that can be bought by a poet’s purse can also be bought by the lady of the house. That was brave.’

‘No more, My Lady, than you intended to do, or so I hear.’

She paused in her walk, then burst out laughing. ‘I’m afraid we are both guilty of over-bribery,’ she said. ‘I shall have to dock Ogden’s wages; the man is earning far too much.’ Then, her smile faded and she looked anxiously over Marlowe’s shoulder to where her father still stood, watching through the archway as if he could still keep an eye on the departing coach, long out of sight. ‘What did you discover?’

‘About the black arts?’ Marlowe asked her.

She shrugged. ‘About any arts,’ she said.

He looked around him. Cawdray and Haywood were standing by their saddled horses, talking to Sledd. Lord Strange’s Men – and women – were hauling canvases and timbers on to wagons to be ready for the road. ‘Before I went to Strange’s chamber,’ he told her, ‘I went to the Great Hall.’

‘What for?’ she asked.

‘To see if I could find Lord Strange’s cup.’

Her eyes narrowed. ‘You suspect poison,’ she said, nodding.

‘Let’s just say I believe it more likely than the power of an evil charm.’

‘The pastry cook is prostrated. His model in sugar had taken him days to make and to have it reduced to the pillow for a poppet has quite unhinged him for the moment.’