Witch Hammer (24 page)

Scot looked at the poet. ‘I may, gentlemen,’ he said, ‘but I should warn you first that come midnight you may see sights you’d wish you never had. If you are of nervous dispositions . . .’

Marlowe clapped Scot on the back. ‘There’s no chance of that,’ he said. ‘The deal I promised Hayward is that if the witches didn’t ride I’d let him hang you as a horse thief. Either way, his day is made.’

‘I don’t mind telling you, Martin,’ Will Shaxsper said, ‘I don’t like this. What exactly did Marlowe say?’

The actor looked out from the tower of the church of Mary Magdalene, his eyes fixed on the camp of Greville’s men that still clustered on the far side of the river. ‘I told you,’ Martin said. ‘He and the gentlemen had urgent business, viz and to wit, to catch Reginald Scot, the murderer.’

‘Yes.’ Shaxsper gnawed his lip. ‘Murder’s out of tune and sweet revenge grows harsh.’

‘Marlowe?’ Martin thought it sounded familiar.

‘Do you mind?’ Shaxsper rounded on him. ‘That’s a small thing, but it
is
mine own!’

‘Sorry,’ Martin said, shrugging. He clicked his tongue with impatience. ‘What are they waiting for?’ he hissed, watching Greville’s men, the distance making them look like ants, but ants who had lost their work ethic as they sat dicing and playing cards on the river bank. Every now and then a little lawyer with his arm in a sling waddled back and forth, looking at Woodstock through the summer’s haze.

A new gloom had descended on Shaxsper. ‘They’re waiting to realize that we’ve lost our best people,’ he said. ‘Oh, no offence to you, Martin, and I fancy I can wield a reasonable sword myself, but Marlowe, Scot, Cawdray, Hayward, Lady Joyce and Boscastle have gone. Even Thomas has nipped on ahead to Oxford. Where
is
everybody?’

‘Don’t worry,’ Martin said with a smile. ‘You get used to this taking a show on the road. I’ve played to smaller houses scores of times. If you’re going to be an actor, Will, it’s just something you have to live with.’

‘I don’t care about the size of the
house
!’ Shaxsper yelled. ‘I care about escaping with my skin.’

‘You have that worry when you take a show on the road as well,’ Martin said, fingering his head reminiscently. ‘Feel there.’ He lowered his head to Shaxsper. ‘Go on.’

The poet reached out a tentative finger. ‘A bump.’

‘Fire irons. Flung from the crowd in Highgate, summer of . . . oh, when was it? 1581, I think it was. I was out cold for nearly three days. Now, that
was
a tough crowd.’

A silence fell between them with only the distant sounds from the Greville camp to break it. Shaxsper dropped his chin on to his hands, folded on to the warm stones of Mary Magdalene. He missed his children, he even missed his wife. His nice little cottage, even if it was currently full of his father and various cousins and aunts. An actor’s life was not for him, he decided. At this point he didn’t really mind what life he had, as long as there was quite a lot more of it still to come.

K
it Marlowe had always had enough thoughts in his head to kill the slowest time and he had a facility for closing his ears to the babble around him without taking on a vacant look which would give the game away. Hayward had never had such an appreciative audience for his hunting sagas and even if the poet didn’t wince quite enough at the disembowelling episode, then Hayward was still content. Cawdray and Scot hatched a complex plan to watch the coming Sabbat, involving all kinds of arcane lighting devices. It wasn’t really important that Marlowe wasn’t listening, because they didn’t stand a hope in Hell of working. Scot realized this as soon as Cawdray started talking about walrus blubber, which apparently burnt with a particularly clear light. Witches had very sensitive noses, or so they claimed; they would be sure to smell it and besides, where would they get a walrus at this time of night? Marlowe was repeating the lines over and over in his head; he knew this poem was a keeper and had no means of writing it down in that he had a pencil but no paper. And anyway, what was the point of writing things down if actors could just walk off with it when they chose? As the evening wore on, the conversation grew more desultory until it ceased altogether.

Scot suddenly spoke in a harsh whisper. ‘Kit!’

‘Come, live with me and be my love,’ Marlowe said, startled out of his internal poem.

If Scot was surprised he didn’t show it. ‘I’d have to check with Mistress Scot, of course, but I’m sure we would get on famously,’ he said. ‘But there are more important things afoot, Kit.’

Marlowe shook his head and smiled sleepily. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Miles away. Has something begun?’

‘By no means,’ Scot said. ‘The Sabbat itself won’t start until just before midnight. They like to come to the climax of the ceremony then. No, I thought we should perhaps think of getting into position. We won’t be able to if it gets any darker. If we start blundering about in the dark we’ll give the game away, I’m afraid. We don’t want to be seen.’

‘Why not?’ Hayward asked sharply. ‘I thought the idea was that we should unmask these fiends of Hell? As they take to the air of their evil steeds, we will leap out and drag them down to the earth that had . . .’

A strange light had come into Simon Hayward’s eye and he was releasing rather too much spit. Scot stopped him by placing his hand gently on his arm. He had seen this kind of zealot before and it usually resulted in some poor old soul being trotted around a room until she dropped dead.

‘Master Hayward,’ he said. ‘We are not here to unmask anyone. Don’t forget that these are deluded women – and men, often – who think that the Devil is their God. They don’t fly, except in their imaginations. They can’t conjure storms or kill people. What I want is to see a Sabbat so I can write it up in my next edition. You do understand that, don’t you? All of you?’ He looked around their small circle. The men nodded, but Hayward looked unsure. Scot decided that he would keep him by him, so that he could make sure he didn’t ruin everything.

Marlowe reached across and slapped Scot on the back. ‘We understand, Reginald,’ he said. ‘And just to show you how much I want to help, I would like to give you this.’ He held out his loaned pencil.

‘How kind,’ said Scot, dubiously. ‘A small piece of wood, wound with string. Some kind of personal talisman, is it, Kit? You should know that I don’t really believe in such things.’

Hayward eyed it superstitiously and Cawdray leaned forward and took it. ‘Is this a pencil?’ he asked Marlowe, who nodded. ‘I have heard of them.’ He turned to the others. ‘It is graphite, from the north, Northumberland, I think. It is very soft and leaves a mark on paper, a little like charcoal but less messy. An expensive trinket for a wandering playwright.’ He looked at Marlowe appraisingly.

‘A gift,’ Marlowe said. ‘No, I should be more accurate, a loan, from Lord Ferdinando Strange. I am just a little tired of being splattered with ink when I am near Master Scot. Just look at my boots.’ He thrust out one leg for them to see the fine spatter of black on the soft tan leather, but it had become too dark to see much more than shapes. ‘It is dark, suddenly,’ he said. ‘Reginald is right, we should be in position. Where would you like us?’ he asked the witch expert.

‘I think we should stay in pairs,’ Scot said, looking meaningfully at Hayward. ‘Because you and I have discussed this at length over the last few days, Kit, I suggest that we split up and each one takes either Master Cawdray or Master Hayward. Which do you prefer?’ But before Marlowe could express any kind of preference, he said, ‘I’ll take Master Hayward. As for position, anywhere out of sight but from where you can see the stones. If I were to advise you, I would say make sure there is something at your back.’

‘Why?’ Cawdray said. ‘In case a witch creeps up on us unawares?’

‘No,’ Scot said, ‘unless you have some kind of trouble with old ladies coming up behind you. No, I merely suggest that so your cover is more complete. Don’t forget –’ and again he glared at Hayward, who seemed immune to hints and suggestion – ‘our aim is to watch and learn and remain undetected.’

‘We understand,’ Hayward said, testily. ‘I’ll go with Scot, then. We’ll see you at the foot of the hill, when we have seen what there is to see.’

‘That’s the spirit,’ Cawdray said. ‘If you go first and conceal yourselves, we’ll follow and choose our place.’

Scot and Hayward crept around the side of the hill and soon they could be seen as silhouettes against the darkening sky.

‘How will we see where they have gone?’ Marlowe said, suddenly seeing a flaw in the plan.

‘If it doesn’t get too dark before they are in position, this will help us,’ Cawdray said, and took a tube from within his jerkin and handed it to Marlowe. ‘Have you seen one of these? It is an array of lenses which can make distant things seem nearer.’

‘I have heard of such things,’ Marlowe said, ‘but not seen one.’ It seemed to him the kind of invention that Nicholas Faunt would be keeping more than a weather eye on. It seemed made for people like him and his dark doings. ‘How does it work?’

Hayward took it from him and held it up to his eye. ‘It isn’t always easy to use,’ he said. ‘You need to focus your eye through the tube on the distant object. This suits my eyes very well, but some with shorter or longer sight than mine can see less well. I think that there will be improvements, but for now it serves.’ He was quiet for a moment then said, ‘I see them. They are at the far end of the stone circle from here and have concealed themselves in a bush, a tangle more than a bush. We should try and find our hiding place on the other side.’

‘May I try it?’ Marlowe asked, holding out his hand.

‘By all means,’ Cawdray said. ‘Look over there at the horizon. It will be easier for you to see than the dark side of the hill.’

Marlowe screwed up one eye and put the tube to the other. He scanned the horizon from east to west and then swung back a little, peering intently.

‘What can you see?’ Cawdray asked, looking in the same direction.

‘I thought I saw . . . but no, it was nothing.’ He handed the tube back and Cawdray stowed it away again inside his doublet. ‘That thing is a great invention to trick the eye. I thought I saw a horseman on the road, but when I looked again he was gone.’

‘It can mislead, you’re right,’ Cawdray admitted, ‘especially when you first use it. But –’ and he patted his chest – ‘I find it useful every now and then. The hunt. That kind of thing. But, Kit, I think we should be on the move. The moon is up and if we wait longer we will stand out like a white hart in a dark wood.’

‘Very poetic image, Master Cawdray,’ Marlowe said. ‘Do you dabble?’

‘I wouldn’t presume,’ Cawdray said. ‘I have no skill at any of the creative arts. I merely observe. Shall I go first?’

Marlowe extended a hand and fell into step behind Cawdray, who, if he wasn’t creative, was certainly very good at keeping to the shadows and at picking his way over rough ground. They were soon at the top of the hill and at once discovered that Scot and Hayward had already collared the only comfortable cover. Marlowe and Cawdray would have to lie under the lee of a hedge, one arm around the bole of a tree and their legs braced against the bank.

‘Do you suffer from cramp, Master Marlowe?’ Cawdray asked. ‘But perhaps not – your bones are younger than mine.’

‘I have not found cramp to be a problem, no,’ Marlowe said, squeezing himself closer to the ground and tucking his collar into his doublet so that the moon would not pick out the white. ‘I hope tonight does not prove to be my first experience of it.’

‘Unfortunately,’ Cawdray said, ‘I suffer sometimes with a nervous twitch in my legs. My late wife often complained of it. She said other men did not kick in the night.’ There was a silence, then he said, ‘I would tease her, saying that she ought not to know such things. How we would laugh.’ He sighed. ‘I miss her so much, Kit. She has been gone nearly a year and I miss her so much.’

‘She is not gone if you think of her,’ Marlowe said. ‘The dead don’t leave us if their names are still spoken.’ He felt the man’s hand on his shoulder for a brief second.

‘A lovely thought, Master Poet,’ Cawdray muttered. ‘Thank you.’

There was no movement from the clump of stunted trees opposite and the moon was temporarily behind a cloud. There was nothing to do but wait. Marlowe let himself doze lightly but with one eye metaphorically open. Having to hang on with one hand made it impossible to sleep properly without jumping awake with every slight relaxation. The feeling of falling off a log that comes so often on the point of sleep was quite literally a fact in his precarious position. Then Cawdray tapped him on the shoulder with the fingers of his gripping hand.

‘What in the name of all Heaven is that stench?’ he asked. The words were scarcely out of his mouth before a shrill voice took over the silence of the night. ‘Buy venny dollies mere piss kays,’ it sang, over and over. The tune was a parody of a chant from the psaltery; the choirboy still buried deep in Marlowe recognized it as the setting of the Twenty-Third Psalm. But the words eluded him, though they sounded vaguely familiar. But that smell! He could hardly breathe for it and he opened his mouth to try and minimize the horror. ‘Breathe through your mouth,’ he whispered to Cawdray. ‘You can’t risk being sick.’

The moon came out as though on a cue and into the circle danced a young girl, naked as the day she was born. It was her voice they had heard and in her upraised hands she carried a wooden platter. As she whirled round in a mad galliard the platter spun in the moon’s beams. It was heaped with fish and Marlowe realized that it was the source of the smell. He could see them, piled up and slithering across one another. He wondered why they didn’t fall off as she spun and sang her way around the circle. Then he saw that what he had taken for movement was in fact the seethe of maggots over their rotting scales. These fish had not swum for many a long day and were stinking with putrefaction. The words suddenly made sense too. ‘Buy
veni dulcis me pisces
,’ the girl was singing. ‘Come buy my fresh fish.’

Marlowe and Cawdray looked like fish themselves, lying caught in the toils of the hedge, mouths gaping. They rolled their eyes at one another, unable to do more. The girl’s song and dance came to an end and she took up a place nearest the biggest stone, with her back to Hayward and Scot. Marlowe could almost imagine he could hear Scot’s pencil skittering like a mouse across his parchment. Either they were getting used to the smell or the wind had shifted, because it seemed less overpowering. The girl was standing unabashed in her nakedness, her face turned up to the moon, her hands caressing her breasts and thighs but almost absent-mindedly, as though the body she stroked belonged to someone else. Marlowe heard Cawdray catch his breath and when he looked he had turned his face away and had let go of the sapling for long enough to cross himself.