Witch Hammer (3 page)

‘We are, Sir Francis.’

‘I’m glad, Nicholas. Losing one man would be bad enough, two would be a disaster. Again, do I make myself plain?’

Faunt bowed, swigged the rest of his wine and bowed himself out of the room. He had learned long ago that when Sir Francis Walsingham said jump, only a fool lingered to ask how high.

K
it Marlowe had hidden his anxiety well in front of Sledd and Strange, but the thought of rewriting his
Dido
all over again was almost too much to bear. He had managed to recreate much of the original, lost by Sledd in riots in Cambridge no more than a year before, but some lines were gone for ever, leaving just a ghostly imprint on his soul, but too faint to be grasped and put down on paper. Michael Johns, the fellow of Corpus Christi who had read both versions, and whose opinion Marlowe valued above all others but his own, had told him frankly that the second version had flashes of genius that the first had largely lacked, but Marlowe was not fooled by that. Johns was an honest man, but possibly kinder than honest; he would walk on hot coals rather than hurt another man’s feelings. He would crawl on hot coals, should that other be Kit Marlowe. So the playwright cleared his throat before peering round the corner of the wagon where the actors sat, to make sure his voice wouldn’t give him away.

‘Which way did Thomas go?’

‘Thomas?’ boomed a voice. It held the tragedy of the world in that one word, which seemed to have taken on extra syllables.

‘Yes.’ Marlowe tried not to let his surprise show. It had seemed a rather overblown question, given the subject matter. ‘Thomas. You know him – the lad who plays . . . well, who plays the girls and women.’

‘Aaah.’ The voice rumbled and boomed like weeping thunder over a distant mountain range. ‘Thomas.’ This time the syllable fell like the final beat of the drum that signals the end of the world. ‘He went after that fellow, Alleyn. The tragedian. Hah!’ and the voice broke into a peal of humourless laughter, clearly based on the sound of earth on a coffin lid. As heard from the inside.

Marlowe kept his question short and pithy, to try to avoid more interjections from Job. ‘Which way did he go?’

One of the young actors leapt up and grabbed Marlowe by the elbow, turning him to face the lane. ‘That way,’ he said, pointing. ‘Through that gap and to the right.’ He dropped his voice. ‘Now clear off and find him. But don’t use the A word, or you’ll only start him off again.’

Marlowe raised an eyebrow and mouthed, ‘A word?’

‘Alleyn,’ the actor mouthed back and moved a few paces further from the group. ‘Old Joseph was the tragedy expert in the troupe until Alleyn joined us. The poor old chap is past his best, I’m afraid. Can’t remember his lines and his legs have started to go. Can’t do the really great tragedy roles with dodgy legs, as I’m sure you agree.’

Marlowe nodded, making a private note to look closely at the actors’ legs next time he was watching a play. Clearly, he had been missing all kinds of subtleties he didn’t know were there.

‘Alleyn is an annoying little tit, but he can do a good speech, you have to give him that, at least. He has them in floods of tears every night and that’s just the men. The women throw all manner of things we try to stop young Thomas getting too good a look at; it’s his balls, you know.’

‘So I understand,’ Marlowe said. ‘But, I must be away. Alleyn has my play with him and I . . .’

‘Good?’

‘Not at all – it’s a disaster. I’ve already rewritten it once, thanks to Ned Sledd.’

The actor turned him round and looked him up and down. ‘I remember you,’ he said. ‘Cambridge, wasn’t it? That riot . . . that was a night to remember.’

‘Yes. But my manuscript . . .’

‘I remember. Someone lit a torch with it. Shame – good it was, as I recall. Dido and the . . . something.’

‘
Dido, Queen of Carthage
.’

‘No, that wasn’t it. Anyway, if you don’t hurry there’s no telling where Alleyn and the lad will have got to. I wouldn’t trust either of them an inch.’

‘Thank you,’ Marlowe said.

‘You’re welcome,’ the actor said, with a very theatrical bow. ‘Come back soon and write me something good to say. I’m tired of Ned’s old rubbish, to be frank.’

‘I hope I’ll be back soon with
Dido, Queen of Carthage
,’ Marlowe said.

‘No,’ the actor muttered as he turned his back. ‘That’s not it.’

Marlowe turned his back on the ragbag crew and walked past the wagon where Strange was still giving Sledd a piece of his mind. Overheads apparently needed to be cut and some of the troupe were being let go. Ham was mentioned. Marlowe wanted to be a playwright. He didn’t want to have anything to do with actors; what would be the point of that? He quickened his pace out on to the lane and looked hopefully back and forth, in case Thomas was hurrying towards him, a manuscript in his hand. Marlowe realized he wouldn’t mind if it were to be mud-stained, in the wrong order or even mildly singed at the edges. Just so long as it was back. He had been a fool to let Sledd have it for even a minute. But look though he might, there was no sign of Thomas and he turned to the right and trudged off down the lane. For a moment he toyed with fetching his horse, but hoped that wouldn’t be necessary. How far could the man have gone in the short while since he had first been missed?

As he walked, his thoughts seemed to get into step with his feet and the desolate boom of the old tragedian’s voice seemed to become the voice in his head. This was no job for an intelligent young man, it seemed to say. Get yourself back off to Cambridge, where you belong. Finish your degree. Get a good job in the College, marry a nice girl while the College rules let you, settle down, stop this stupid nonsense about going to London. And above all, put all thoughts of Francis Walsingham out of your head. These kinds of things aren’t for the likes of you, a humble lad from Canterbury. A pot boy at the Star whose dad makes other people’s boots. Stick with what you know.

Hold on just a minute, another voice chimed in. He recognized it as that of John Dee, magus to the Queen and in one grey and dusty package at once the wisest and the most frightening person he had ever met. And, just now, the saddest, still mourning his beautiful wife. Don’t listen to this idiot, Dee’s voice said. Find your play, if it is to be found. If you can’t find it, write another. Write one with my Helene in it, but don’t let that spotty boy play her. He’ll not be playing women much longer anyway, the magus said. He’ll be playing with them soon and then where will his pretty treble be? Follow your stars, Kit Marlowe, and don’t let anyone stop you. You are fire and air.

Aaah, the tragedian was limbering up in his other ear, don’t let that . . .

‘Ow! Master Marlowe! Look where you’re going!’

Marlowe and his voices were suddenly struck in the chest by an immovable object and before he could refocus his eyes he was flat on his back. Thomas was looking anxiously down at him.

‘Are you all right, Master Marlowe?’ the lad asked. ‘You were . . . well, you were talking to yourself, in all kinds of different voices. Until I came round the corner, I was expecting a crowd. Indeed I was.’ He reached down and helped Marlowe up.

‘Sorry, Thomas. I was just thinking aloud. As one does, you know.’

‘As you do, perhaps,’ Thomas said. ‘I would soon be in trouble if I started doing that kind of thing. People where we go are only too pleased if they can put us away on some trumped-up charge. Talking in tongues, they’d call that. Have us in chains as soon as look at us. Witchcraft, some would say.’

‘Thomas.’ Marlowe was making conversation without thinking of what he was saying, so busy was he looking round behind the boy, for the manuscript he was surely hiding behind his back. ‘Thomas, these are modern times. I’m sure no one would put you in chains for talking to yourself.’

‘Hmmph!’ Thomas turned his eyes to heaven. ‘Master Marlowe, you live in Cambridge, where everyone is enlightened. Me, I live on the road and by my wits. When my voice goes, I’m finished here. I can’t act at all; I just look good in a dress and can carry off a straw wig. Modern times mean nothing to we folk who live in them. It’s only men like you who can manage modern times.’

‘Men like me?’

‘Who live through modern times in a place which takes no notice of them as they pass. The rest of us they chew and spit out as they please.’

‘But I want to join you, Thomas. I want to be one of the players.’

‘If you say so, Master Marlowe,’ Thomas said, with the air of one who seldom wins an argument. ‘Bad news about the play, I’m afraid.’

Marlowe stopped trying to see behind the boy. ‘Burned?’ he said, in a defeated tone.

‘Worse. I can’t find Alleyn anywhere. I’ve tried all the cottages for a mile around and the village inn and no one has seen him. He will be hiding up, for sure, but if he has had five minutes start on some farmer’s wife somewhere, we’ll never winkle him out. You can write it again, surely?’

‘No.’ Marlowe was adamant. ‘No, I cannot. I have already written it twice.’

‘Well, can’t you remember some of it at least?’

‘Of course I can,’ Marlowe said, outraged. ‘Most of it, in fact. But not the best bits. You always forget the best bits.’

‘I can remember some of it,’ Thomas said, diffidently.

‘You can?’ Marlowe grabbed him by the front of his jerkin and shook him till his teeth rattled.

‘Yes. You have to be a quick study when you play in Lord Strange’s Men and with Ned Sledd’s troupe before them. Ned is too penny pinching to get copies made, so we have to pass just the one copy around. I can scan and learn a page at one sitting. I have a lot of
Dido, Queen of Carthage
in my head. Martin has a lot as well. Different bits, of course, seeing as I was going to be Dido and Martin was to be Aeneas. But we might be able to remember quite long pages if we can sit somewhere quiet.’

Marlowe had stopped shaking the boy now and was bouncing him up and down, ruffling his hair and otherwise scaring him out of his wits. ‘Let’s get back to the camp, then. Is there paper and ink?’ Thomas tried to nod but wasn’t sure if the playwright noticed the gesture. ‘Which one’s Martin?’

‘Dark. Tall.’

‘Does he talk like this?’ Marlowe asked in the tragedian’s dark brown voice.

‘Lord love you, no,’ Thomas said. ‘That’s old Joseph. You must be grateful we’re not relying on him. He often gets the play completely wrong and as for the costume . . . well.’

Marlowe sensed a story in the wings and despite being in a hurry knew it was best out in the open, so asked politely, ‘Costume?’

‘Let’s just say things go all right as long as he remembers to wear one,’ Thomas said. His head was spinning but at least Marlowe had stopped bouncing him now. ‘Shall we go and look for Alleyn again? He can’t be far.’

‘No, no,’ Marlowe said, starting to drag him back to the camp. ‘We’ve got a play to remember.’

As they entered the field again through the gap in the hedge, Strange had stopped haranguing Sledd, for the simple reason that the actor-manager had stormed away across the field and was even now standing in the furthest corner, yelling at a rather bemused cow. Strange was sitting where Marlowe had left him, trying to look as though people ignored him all the time. He brightened up when he saw Marlowe and Thomas.

‘Master Marlowe! What luck in finding your play?’ Thomas he ignored.

‘No luck, My Lord,’ Marlowe said, ‘but Thomas and Martin can remember quite a lot of it, and so we are off now to find somewhere quiet where we can write it down.’

Ferdinando Stanley looked at Thomas as if he had just arrived from falling from the sky. ‘Remember it? That is a useful skill.’

‘We all learn to be quick studies,’ Thomas said. ‘We don’t have extra copies in Lord Strange’s Men.’

‘Really.’ Strange reached into a bag beside him and brought out a small book. He opened it and ran his finger down a page and his eyes popped. ‘
How much
to copies of
The Devil and Mistress Maguire
?’ he read and looked up with a quizzical expression.

‘That can’t be right,’ Thomas said, without thinking. ‘We’ve only ever had one copy of
Mistress Maguire
and I don’t think we even have that these days.’

‘Hmm.’ Ferdinando Strange looked back at the page and ran his finger down it, nodding his head from time to time.

‘Oh.’ Thomas suddenly realized what he had done. He knew that Sledd had problems making both ends meet in the middle sometimes and a few copies which were never made had probably made the difference between food and starvation on more than one occasion.

‘Oh, indeed, lad,’ Strange said, ominously. ‘I think that these books will take another look.’

‘I need to copy out my play,’ Marlowe said. ‘May we . . .?’

‘Leave the boy here,’ Strange said, in a peremptory tone. ‘He seems to know how this troupe works better than most. Not just a pretty face, eh?’

Thomas smiled a mirthless smile at this witticism. He thought it best at least to pretend that he had never heard it before, given the present company. He turned to Marlowe. ‘I’m sorry, Master Marlowe,’ he said. ‘There is parchment and ink in the main wagon, and I think the quills are sharp.’

‘Here, Master Marlowe,’ Strange said, delving into his doublet. ‘Take one of these. Newly brought from Borrowdale.’ He offered the playwright a piece of wood, smoothly planed, thinner than a finger and tight-corded with string.

Marlowe had been brought up to accept gifts politely and so he did this now. ‘Thank you, Lord Strange,’ he said, trying to keep any emphasis from the last word. ‘A very kind gift.’

‘From your reaction, Master Marlowe,’ Strange replied, ‘I can only assume that you have never seen a pencil before.’

None the wiser, Marlowe agreed. He had never seen a pencil before and now he had he still was wondering why the man had given it to him.

Smiling, Strange took it from his hand and motioned him to come round to his side. Holding the small accounts book in one hand, with the other he drew the end of the cylinder along the page, underlining the spurious copies of
Mistress Maguire
. A black line followed the path of the pencil and Marlowe finally understood.