Witch Hammer (26 page)

The Master leaned forward now and hissed at his minions. ‘Bring me a Maiden. Nothing is complete without I spill my seed into a Maiden’s womb.’ The women all looked at the ground. ‘Is none of you a Maiden?’ he screamed. ‘I will increase my flock! One of you will bear the Devil’s child inside her before tonight is out or all will die.’ Suddenly, the blonde witch approached him, her glorious hair now matted with filth. He reached towards her, eyes glittering. ‘You?’ he purred. ‘You, a Maiden? I had hardly thought . . .’

She took a deep and shuddering breath. ‘No, Master,’ she said. ‘I am no Maiden and have not been since I was scarcely more than a child, but there is one on this hill tonight who is.’

‘Who?’ the voice sounded like the deepest bell and rang around the hills.

‘Listen, Master,’ the woman said. ‘In the silence you will hear her voice. She is calling to you. She wants you, though she would deny it.’

Everyone strained their ears and there was, at the very edge of hearing, the sound of a woman sobbing. The beast raised its head and the eyes flashed with new fire. He nodded at the woman and dismissed her with a wave of a taloned glove. ‘Fetch her,’ he hissed. ‘Fetch the Maiden to me.’

Four witches scrambled to their feet and hurried off out of the circle towards the Whispering Knights. They came out of the three-sided hut made by the leaning stones with a struggling figure between them. As they got inside the circle, they tore the cloak from her and she stood there naked, with her head raised defiantly. Shaking off the women, she stepped into the circle and walked towards the beast.

Marlowe drew in a sharp breath. Alone of the watchers he had seen the woman’s proud nakedness before. ‘Joyce,’ he breathed. ‘Joyce Clopton. I think now is the time to act, Master Cawdray, don’t you?’

Cawdray nodded, but whispered. ‘My legs are in a cramp, Master Marlowe. I shall fall if I try to run now. Can we wait just a minute, while I massage some life into them?’

‘A minute?’ Marlowe was aghast. ‘You have seen what he can do! Joyce doesn’t have a minute. With or without you, Master Cawdray, I am going to kill that evil thing.’

Marlowe was in the centre of the clearing by the time Joyce Clopton was forced, struggling, to her knees. The hags who held her forced her head back by the hair and pulled her hard to make her lie spreadeagled on the churned ground.

The witches saw only their Master, the blade of the athame flaring in both hands as he knelt astride the wriggling girl. Would it be his manhood or the blade tip that entered Joyce Clopton first? The cold of the Master’s seed or the searing heat of his steel? Marlowe saw only a man in a mask and he leapt at him, catching the horned god off balance and they rolled in the dirt. The shriek from the witches was unearthly and they swarmed together like writhing rats with their tails in a knot, naked under the moon, screaming and clawing.

Hayward was still in his frozen position, his eyes glazed, his mouth open as in a silent scream. From the other side of the circle, Cawdray hobbled into the open, but his numb leg gave way and he fell beside a stone. It was Scot who found his voice first and he burst into the clearing where the bodies writhed over the struggling men. He had a dagger in one hand and the pencil in the other and he made the sign of the cross in the night sky. ‘In the name of God,’ he thundered, and the screaming stopped.

The naked women shrank back and Joyce Clopton rolled free of them, as mud-spattered as they were and gasping for breath. Two men stood upright in what had been their circle, one naked with a goat’s head; the other, Kit Marlowe.

‘Ever fought the Devil before?’ the goat’s head rasped, his right arm extended with the athame in his fist as he circled the poet.

‘Every day,’ Marlowe said. ‘Reginald –’ he didn’t take his eyes off his opponent – ‘get Lady Joyce out of here. I have business with this gentleman which won’t keep.’

The witches swayed now, their heads jerking from side to side, their teeth bared and their nostrils flaring. Guttural grunts and sibilant hisses burst from their throats and their eyes seemed to flash as the daggers met under the moon. At each pass, Joyce and Scot winced. The horned one was more vulnerable but he was bigger than Marlowe and seemed to possess superhuman strength. Hayward was swaying like the witches against the stones and Cawdray was still nursing his useless leg.

The pair circled, parrying with their short, deadly blades, now closing, now separating. The women behind Marlowe reached up, clawing at his legs, gripping his breeches as he turned, trying to unbalance him. He lashed out with his boot and kicked his way free, but the horned one saw his chance and lunged. There was a rip of velvet and linen as the blade sliced through Marlowe’s sleeve, cutting his forearm almost to the bone. He dropped back, the pain shooting through his body like cold fire as he parried for his life.

‘It looks as though there will be two sacrifices tonight,’ the voice boomed in the goat’s head. ‘
Bagali laca Bachabé
,’ he said and lunged at Marlowe again.

This time, the poet was ready. He caught the athame on his own blade, sliding along it to the quillons and the blade snapped like a crash of thunder. He swung sideways, ramming his dagger to the hilt in the naked body, feeling it thud under the ribcage and burst a lung as the goat’s head roared and crashed to the left, bringing both of them down into the fetid mud.

Now the only sound was of Kit Marlowe fighting for breath. The women were kneeling in their circle, the show over, the Devil dead. Now, long before the cock crowed or God’s light frightened away the shadows, they were ordinary women again, sad, deluded and very afraid.

Marlowe wrenched out his dagger to leave a gaping gash, pouring blood bubbling with the last air escaping from the beast’s lungs. He gripped the black hair and with an effort that made his gashed arm flare with pain, tore off the goat’s head.

A
fter the events of the night, the little party rode in silence, padding along the old road south to Woodstock. When conversation began, it was in snatches and an attempt to make sense of the senseless and to ward off the dark shadows that still seemed to cling like wraiths to their backs and in dark places on the road.

Joyce rode with Marlowe, wrapped in an old cloak to cover her modesty. ‘I don’t know how it happened,’ she said. ‘One minute Boscastle and I were saying a prayer for Ned Sledd, the service for the dead, and the next . . . he burst into the chapel, this . . . creature in a cloak and cowl. Like some mad monk he smashed a crucifix over Boscastle’s head and grabbed me. I don’t remember any more . . .’

‘You were in a faint, as like as not,’ Marlowe said. ‘After all you’ve been through, even before last night, it’s not surprising.’

‘No.’ Joyce was adamant in her dignity. ‘I am a Clopton. We don’t faint.’

Marlowe smiled and shifted his bridle arm which was stiffening like the blood over his sleeve and doublet. He went to a good school; he would never call a lady a liar.

‘It was the damnedest thing,’ Richard Cawdray was telling Simon Hayward. ‘I was rooted to the spot. Even when I tried to help Marlowe, my legs just wouldn’t work. The damnedest thing.’

‘All I remember,’ Hayward said, still shaking his head every now and then to clear it, ‘is those appalling women. The smell. And the black shapes they flew on. All kinds of beasts, some I can’t describe, with wings and jaws and . . . well, you know all about the theatre, Cawdray. How did they do that, do you think?’

It was Cawdray’s turn to shake his head. ‘I have no idea,’ he said. ‘But I’d wager a fat purse that Lord Strange’s Men would kill to know the answer.’

Scot had reached his horse tethered at the foot of the hill to find a filthy Merriweather waiting for him, clothed just about in whatever she had been able to grab for herself as the witches had run for their lives, out of the circle of stones, away to Meon Hill. She had looked out for Dorothy, out of habit, but she had disappeared before the rest, disgraced by the Master in front of her sisters. Merriweather was surprised he had not seen through the girl from the start. She was notorious the length of the county for her wanton ways, always behind some hedge or wall, whoever asked her, and sometimes even when they hadn’t asked. Merriweather’s legs were old and her head was screwed on the right way and she had seen Scot at Clopton and been struck by his aura of common sense. She had come to the Sabbat because she had been summoned and it wasn’t as if she didn’t like a bit of witchery now and then. But this had soon got out of hand and she hadn’t got the guts for all the filth and stink these days. Old bones were more comfortable in front of a nice warm fire and with a little luck she could find a nice corner back at Clopton, or anywhere Lady Joyce found to lay her head.

‘Hello,’ he said, looking her in the eye. ‘Are you waiting for me, mother?’

‘Don’t you mother me,’ she said. ‘I am waiting for you, if you will give me a ride to where My Lady is going.’

‘And in exchange?’

She looked at him and suddenly tipped a wink. ‘In exchange, you can ask me all you want to know. Although I can’t promise I know all the answers. Tonight took a turn I wasn’t ready for, so I think my style might be out of joint. But I will tell you the truth as I know it.’

Scot climbed on to his horse and reached down to put his arm around her. ‘Come up here, then, on my saddle bow, and we can talk as we ride,’ he said. ‘But before I lift you up, don’t try any clever tricks, because I know them all.’

Merriweather chuckled quietly to herself. She doubted that he knew them
all
, but it would be nice to ride on his saddle. He wasn’t young, but nor was she and it was a while since she had had a man’s arm round her. So she sprang up, light as thistledown and settled her back against his chest.

‘Now, Master Scholar,’ she said. ‘What would you like to know?’

The warden of Woodstock had already raised the hue and cry and the town constable had marshalled the people at his disposal and sent them over the River Ray to the crooked little houses of Islip; south to the thatched village of Bladon; north-west to the tree ridge at Charlbury. Nothing. No sign of the Lady of Clopton or whoever had abducted her.

And so Marlowe had some rapid explaining to do when the warden’s men came upon the horsemen on the road, with the kidnapped woman riding behind Marlowe on his bay. All was well, all had ended and Joyce, shaken and pale after the night’s events, fell into Boscastle’s arms, sobbing quietly. The steward’s head was bandaged and he could barely see out of one eye, but he held Joyce close to him for all he was merely a retainer and a tear trickled down from beneath his unbruised lid.

‘Kit,’ she said softly, as the time came for her departure with the warden’s men. ‘I can’t find the words.’

‘Don’t try,’ he said, ‘your father can rest in his grave now. Will you go home, to Clopton?’

‘Yes,’ she said, breathing fiercely to stop herself crying all over again. ‘There is work to be done. Bridges to be built. I can bring myself to attend their nasty little church in Stratford, at least for one day of the year.’

He smiled, while Boscastle arranged a horse for her and sent riders to stand down the hue and cry. They all turned to the thudding of hoofs on the road to the south and shouts from a rider, tousle-haired and standing in the stirrups.

‘Kit! Kit!’

It was Thomas, as lathered and sweating as his horse. He reined in hard and the animal blew and snorted, glad the mad race with the wind was over.

‘Devil on your tail, boy?’ Scot asked.

‘Martin said I’d find you here,’ the boy said breathlessly, sliding gratefully out of the saddle. ‘He didn’t know what to do and said I should ask you. Master Shaxsper had some ideas, but Martin said we should still ask you. So here I am.’

‘One damned riddle after another,’ Hayward grunted, adjusting his girth by the roadside.

‘Ask me what?’ Marlowe asked when he could get a word in edgewise.

‘Wait . . . got to get my breath back,’ Thomas said, bending over with his hands on his knees and breathing in deeply through his nose. He paused and stood upright, sniffing more delicately then his nose wrinkled. ‘What is that terrible smell?’

‘Better for you that you don’t know,’ Marlowe told him.

‘No, but, honestly . . . I don’t believe I have ever smelt anything worse.’

‘Breathe through your mouth,’ Cawdray advised. ‘But you do get used to it after a while, I promise you.’

Thomas looked dubious and stepped a few paces back from the men. ‘I’ve just come from Oxford,’ Thomas said, wincing at the stitch which still gripped him in the side. He felt he had galloped the whole journey, not the horse. ‘We can perform on Christ Church Meadow. Nice place. Views of the Isis, Merton College, Corpus Christi.’

‘Yes.’ Marlowe nodded. ‘I’d heard they’d pinched that one from us. Rumour has it there’s an Eagle and Child Inn, too.’ He shook his head, tutting. ‘Is nothing sacred?’

‘Usual deal,’ Thomas said. ‘Quarter of the gate to the Town Guilds. No fornication. No blasphemy. If God’s in it, we can’t be allowed to see His face.’

‘Forgive me, Thomas,’ Marlowe said. ‘I have had rather an unusual night, to tell you the absolute truth for once in my life. So if I sound a little stupid, you really mustn’t judge. But it seems to me that news of a possible performance in a meadow, even an Oxford meadow, is not so important that you would ride Hell for leather and almost kill a horse under you to tell me. And why doesn’t Martin know what to do? He’s been in this business for much longer than I; surely he can decide whether to go ahead or not. He must have done this scores of times, with Ned and others.’

‘No, no, Kit.’ Thomas was shaking his head and accepting a welcome swig of water from Cawdray’s bottle. ‘You don’t understand. The Earl of Worcester’s Men are in town.’

‘Is that a problem?’ Scot asked.

‘Oxford is big enough for both of you, surely?’ Hayward said.

‘Oh, yes,’ Thomas agreed. ‘Worcester’s boys are performing in Brasenose College – on account of it’s got its own brewery.’ There were chuckles all round, but Thomas was deadly serious. He had not yet told his news. ‘No, gentlemen, don’t scoff. There is more to this.’