FIVE

Kit Marlowe didn’t know exactly where the Egyptian camp was but it wasn’t hard to trace their passage. They were not only conjurors and tumblers, they bought old rags and bones which they traded along their route with paper makers and glue renderers. Picking over the rags for anything wearable was a job for the children while the carts were on the road and many a fluttering ribbon on their clothes had come from an outworn or outgrown lady’s kirtle. Their payment for the rubbish they removed was a bright doll of paper, or a folded windmill for the children which rattled and hummed when it was blown round on its stick. It was almost like a game for Marlowe to track these tawdry leavings; out past Stow cum Quy and Lode’s Mill, through Swaffham and across the Devil’s ditch, dark and foreboding as darkness fell; and to find, at the end of the fluttering trail, the camp.

As he rode, he planned his strategy. He knew he would scarcely be able to simply blend in. Even if he had changed his clothes, he knew so little of their way of life that he could never hope to pass as one of them. He knew this much, that although their travelling nation was spread throughout the world, they were like one large family and to fail to recognize a name, an allusion to a fact known to them all would be to invite immediate exposure. So he decided that his best chance to win his way into the clan would be as a man on the run. If he threw himself on their mercy, they may take him in, if not for the love of their fellow man, for the love of the gold in his purse, for the love of angels.

Lost in thought as he was he nearly rode over the outskirts of the camp before he knew it. The dogs were the first to sense his presence, followed swiftly by the children, who swung on his stirrup leathers and led him into the centre of the camp, whether he and the Wasp wanted to go there or not. He warned them of his horse’s temperament as best he could; he didn’t know if the children could understand him as they seemed to communicate in a complex patois of their own. By the time he was at the campfire and in the presence of Hern, Gerard and the others, he had one child in front of him on his crupper; a girl, he assumed, from her long hair. All of the young of the Egyptians wore the same clothes, a pair of wide pantaloons of patchwork material and a thick coat, in this weather at least, of woollen material, fluttering ribbons at every seam. The shortest hair was to the shoulders, but it seemed that the boys had it cut to keep it at that length and they wore it quite plain. The girls’ hair, as far as he could tell, was left to grow long until it formed itself into fat plaits with ribbons threaded deeply within each ringlet. To have tried to remove the fabric would have been to unravel the hair as well. His question as to whether they ever washed was answered by the proximity of the child in front of him. The smell of wood smoke and exotic oils was almost overwhelming and he hoped that it was only the flickering torchlight that gave the impression of small creatures scurrying through the ringlets.

Five men and four women stood around the fire, the women further back in the shadows, with their faces seemingly deliberately hidden. Three of them had hair in the same style as the children; the fourth was, like himself, dressed quite richly and she shone out with cleanliness. Could it be true that they kidnapped people on their travels? But the woman didn’t seem to be shackled in any way, so he could only assume that she was there of her own free will.

One of the men stepped forward and spoke with a commanding voice in which the playwright could discern more than a touch of the theatrical.

‘My name is Hern. What business do you have here?’

Marlowe decided to go for the charming approach. After all, there were enough women present to possibly swing things in his favour if he needed more help, and he had not met a woman yet he couldn’t charm.

‘Forgive my intrusion, I had not intended to ride into your camp like this, but your lovely children –’ he clasped his passenger under the armpits and handed her down to Hern, resisting with difficulty the impulse to wipe his hands on his doublet afterwards – ‘brought me here. They are impossible to resist, the little dears.’ He looked down at Hern and saw the man’s eyebrow lift in disbelief. Looking beyond the flames, he noticed that the women were not taken in either. That they loved their children was beyond question, but that anyone else would think them anything other than gutter rats was just as certain to them all. He tried another tack.

‘I have had a little . . . altercation with the Constable back in Cambridge,’ he said. ‘It would be quite a good idea for me to leave the city for a while and I heard from a friend that travelling with you might be a good way of covering my tracks.’

Hern stepped forward and grasped the Wasp’s snaffle rein. ‘We know the Constable and he is on our trail too. Hiding with us will get you nowhere but the nearest lock-up, Master . . .’

On the ride, Marlowe had already decided to keep his own name. Only once had he tried to use another and it had brought nothing but grief; he had constantly failed to answer to it and his signature was different every time he tried to use the damned thing. Also, he feared he might bump in to people he knew and it was best to keep the complications of that eventuality to a minimum.

‘Marlowe,’ he said. ‘Christopher Marlowe. But you can call me Kit.’

‘I don’t think we will be getting to the stage of calling you anything, Master Marlowe,’ Hern said, evenly. ‘We don’t take in waifs and strays.’ And here he stared at one of the other men for a heartbeat or two, but he got the stare back, measure for measure. ‘We are called in our language a caravanserai, but that does not mean that anyone can join us as they will. If you are indeed running from the Constable, your best course would be to go wherever we are not.’

Marlowe had not expected this to be so difficult. ‘I write poetry,’ he said. ‘Plays and stories. With a little preparation, perhaps you can learn some and add it to the shows you give.’

‘Shows? We give no shows,’ Hern said. ‘Surely you know that that kind of thing is forbidden.’

Marlowe heaved a sigh and played his last card. Reaching into one of his saddlebags he extracted a purse, not his heaviest, but quite tempting, nevertheless. ‘I have gold,’ he said, jingling the sovereigns, ‘and it will be yours if I can travel with you to the coast and maybe beyond.’

A glance flicked between the men and a tacit agreement was reached. Hern stepped forward and reached for the bag of money. ‘Welcome to our band, Master Marlowe,’ he said. ‘Is the horse yours?’

‘To all intents and purposes.’

‘An answer I understand and applaud,’ Hern said. ‘Come with me and I will introduce you.’ The children lined up in a ragged queue, laughing and nudging. ‘Not you scarecrows,’ Hern said, giving the nearest of them a flick round the back of the head. ‘Even your mothers can hardly remember your given names and I’m sure I can’t. Keep your hands out of Master Marlowe’s bags, now, or you’ll answer to me. Now, Master Marlowe, this is Balthasar Gerard, our soothsayer. A precious man in our band; if you want to know your future, speak to him. He will tell you what you want to know.’ A gale of laughter from the soothsayer greeted the remark and Marlowe’s hand was clasped in both of his. He felt the man’s fingers stray to his wrist, where the blood pulsed near the surface. Other fingers felt his fingertips and his palm, all as quick and as light as a butterfly’s kiss.

‘Hello, Dominus Marlowe,’ Gerard said, and passed him ceremoniously to the man on his right. ‘This is Simon. As I remember, he is Greek, is that right, Simon?’

‘Portuguese,’ the man replied, in a heavy accent. ‘As you know only too well, Balthasar. But, for giving me an opportunity to lie, obrigado. May I introduce you, Master Marlowe, to my friend Frederico, from Italy.’

‘Austria,’ the man protested, laughing, and so Marlowe was passed round the band, where no one was quite who they seemed. The women soon melted away and the smell of spices swept over the camp as the evening meal got under way. Marlowe could see how a man could disappear in the company of these people; he had only been there half an hour and he was already none too sure who he was himself. The only question was; were any of them Egyptians at all? They might all be spies like him and no one would be any the wiser.

He decided to put aside the cares of espionage for the evening and eat their food and drink their wine and try not to lose too much at cards. He was usually on the winning side when he played with Colwell and Parker, but these men cheated for a living; he would have to keep the bets small and his wits about him, he could see. Although they were so dirty that the original colour of their hair and clothes were anybody’s guess, although they were so far on the other side of the law that it was out of sight over the horizon, although they could not tell the truth if their lives depended on it, Kit Marlowe felt oddly at home with this motley crew and ate his supper with relish – but being careful not to ask what the meat might be, for fear of the answer. If it was chicken, he didn’t want to know whose; if it wasn’t chicken . . .

Balthasar Gerard nudged him in the ribs and gestured with a greasy hand. ‘Don’t worry, Master Marlowe,’ he said. ‘It is chicken.’

Marlowe looked at him in surprise. He had been eating heartily enough; surely the question in his head had not been written quite so clearly on his face?

‘Or, shall we say, mostly chicken.’ The man laughed. ‘Don’t mind me, Master Marlowe. I like to keep my hand in; like this stew, most of what I do is what you would expect. But you must learn when living with us to expect the unexpected.’

‘Where are we off to next?’ Marlowe asked. ‘I need to be out of the country sooner, rather than later.’

‘You can’t be in a hurry if you travel with Egyptians,’ Balthasar told him. ‘I have been with this crew of Hern’s for some years and have learned that they are strangers to the straight line. Watling Street is straight for many a mile but Hern won’t tread an inch of it; superstition, long bred in him, I fancy. The rolling English road is more his line; a strange choice for an Egyptian.’

‘Does any in this band come from Egypt?’ Marlowe asked. He had a fancy for writing a play on Cleopatra and Mark Antony and a little local colour never hurt in these undertakings. He always thought of himself as a playwright who did a bit of spying on the side, never the reverse.

Balthasar Gerard laughed and clapped the scholar on the shoulder. ‘Bless the man,’ he said and turned his head to the others. ‘Which of you comes from Egypt, Master Marlowe wants to know.’

There were shaken heads and offers of various countries, some far flung, but none it seemed hailed from anywhere near the Nile.

‘Once upon a time,’ Gerard told him, ‘I’m sure that a band came out of Egypt, bringing magic and colour to the more desolate areas of the world. Here and there there would be a dreamer, a poet, a singer of songs, a man such as you and he would tag on to the end of the caravanserai as it left town and so the bands grew, broke up, reformed, but were always called Egyptians, the children of the moon.’

‘And are they all soothsayers?’ Marlowe couldn’t help but be reminded of his old friend John Dee, who could raise the dead, at least to his own satisfaction.

‘No, by no means. Many use the cards or bones to pretend to tell the future. Not all have an adept such as myself.’ In the firelight, Balthasar’s eye teeth gleamed. ‘I am famous even with other bands. They leave messages on the road to meet with us, so I can tell them what to expect in the time ahead.’

Secretly, Marlowe thought this would be quite an easy task; hunger, cold, dirt and, if they met the wrong kind of Constable, death.

‘I see that you have worked out our futures for yourself, Master Marlowe,’ Balthasar said, with his usual uncanny prescience. ‘But, as you can see –’ he waved his arm over the camp – ‘we are not hungry, not cold and, though we may be dirty, we have evaded the Constable who, I imagine, has gone ahead of us to the coast.’

‘How can you possibly know that?’ Marlowe said. ‘He could be on our tail as you speak.’

‘You are riding the horse he hired from the stables,’ Balthasar said. ‘That he couldn’t manage it is the talk of Cambridge. He left again on a quieter mount, but that was a while ago. Unless he is carrying his horse, which is unlikely, even for him, he is ahead of us. Unless he doubles back – and why should he? – he will ride until he reaches the coast. There he will wait a while, or he will ride back towards Cambridge. But since we will not be on that road, he will miss us again. And unless we are very unlucky, we will be long gone before he knows what has happened.’

‘Why won’t we be on that road?’ Marlowe asked. ‘Surely, we are heading straight to King’s Lynn. Don’t you want to be in Holland for the holiday fairs and such? Isn’t there money to be made there?’

Balthasar gave Marlowe a long look. ‘Either you have been planning to join us for a long while, Master Marlowe, or someone has told you much about us Egyptians. I won’t ask why you want to leave the country, but I think it is more that you want to reach Holland than that you need to leave England.’ He laughed again and slapped Marlowe on the shoulder. It was beginning to get rather painful and the scholar wished he would stop doing it.

‘Not at all,’ he said, and even to his own ears it sounded unconvincing. ‘Had you been heading for France, or Spain, I would have still come with you.’

Balthasar Gerard looked for a long while at Kit Marlowe without speaking. There was something about the man which he couldn’t read, couldn’t penetrate. Most people had two layers in his experience, the one they showed to the world and the one that lay beneath. The one Kit Marlowe showed to the world, the flash horse, the gaudy clothes and the money was not the real one, or even close to it. That he was a scholar was obvious from the callus on his finger from the quill and the softness of his hand. But then there was the rest. His speech had cadences in it that suggested a singer, yet when Balthasar had mentioned singers there had not even been a flicker of an eyelid. Whatever the man was hiding, he had built his walls thick and high. But Balthasar was good at what he did, and persistent. He would find out before they embarked at King’s Lynn what this man was all about.

‘As you say,’ he said, turning back to the group around the fire. ‘Is it time for tales, Hern?’ he asked. ‘If so, I fancy Master Marlowe has more than one to tell.’

The troupe took up the cry and Marlowe shifted round until he was facing them squarely. ‘What kind of tale do you want?’ he asked.

‘Love,’ cried one of the women.

‘But sad,’ another said, ‘like life is.’

‘No,’ Frederico said. ‘Let’s have war and plenty of it.’

‘Can there be a cat in it?’ the little girl from his pommel said, snuggling in to his side. ‘A kitten, a ginger one with white paws?’

Marlowe looked around the faces in the firelight and the spy dropped away, leaving the poet and playwright in full command. ‘I’ll tell you a tale,’ he said, ‘with all of those things. A tale of Dido, Queen of Carthage –’ he looked down at the grubby, earnest little face under his encircling arm – ‘and her cat.’

Christopher Marlowe had been in some sticky situations, from the College proctors to the silent men in Walsingham’s employ, but he had always endured those situations in the comfort, if only relative, of rooms in Corpus Christi or a palatial home with the Shelleys. The Tower was an option that he knew was always on the table; Walsingham reminded him of it whenever he thought fit and he had heard enough of life in that cold, dank place to want to avoid it, although death in the Tower was probably worse than the life. But nothing had prepared him for a night spent with the Egyptians.

As a paying guest, in a manner of speaking, he was given the back of a wagon to sleep in for privacy, rather than share a space in the tent, as some of the others did. He was given a couple of dogs to share his bed, for the warmth. He was offered a woman as well, for the same purpose or any other he cared to name, but he politely refused the latter and the former were soon looking for other lodgings when the scratching and the passing of wind got too much. He hadn’t the heart to eject the monkey, the parrot and the snake, as he had obviously usurped their usual bed.

The parrot he could come to terms with, as it was as sleepy as he was and he could also foresee some amusement to be gained from teaching it some words that the Egyptians might not expect. The snake kept itself to itself, by and large, and once he had got used to the occasional dry rustle as it moved around in its basket, he didn’t mind it. At least it didn’t smell as much as the monkey. While the dogs were still in residence he had hardly noticed it, but once they were gone to seek new lodgings, he became aware of the smell of a piss-soaked carpet, warming in front of the fire. Every time the animal moved, a new waft reached Marlowe’s nostrils and he was soon wishing for the old aromas of his shared room with the Parker scholars, which had been known to make strong men weep, to improve the general atmosphere. But soon he stopped noticing even that, and slept deeply.

In the morning, he felt as though he had slept on a sack of stones and when he looked he found that in fact it had been brightly coloured balls, obviously for the use of the troupe when juggling. But although they were much more colourful than stones would be, the general effect was the same and he ached at every joint. It was still dark when the rough curtain at the back of the wagon was pulled back and his little passenger poked her head round it and poked him in the ribs.

‘Master Marlowe,’ she said, ‘it’s time to get up. We must be on the road, Hern says.’

‘What time is it?’ Marlowe asked.

The girl looked at him in confusion. ‘Time to get up,’ she said. ‘Time to be on the road, Hern says.’

Marlowe realized that she had no idea of time as clocks dictated it; the sound of the ever-present bells from tower and steeple which drove everyone else’s world had no place here. He rolled off his sack and nodded to show that he was ready when they were. The women had stoked up the fire and were using a twig to stir something in a pot slung over it on a makeshift-looking tripod.

‘What’s in the pot?’ he asked the girl, hoping it wasn’t breakfast.

‘Breakfast,’ she told him. ‘We all have to have some, because we never know when we will get another chance.’ She spoke the sentence in the sing-song way that children will who have learned something by rote. ‘It’s oatmeal.’

Marlowe knew oatmeal. They served it in the Buttery for the sizars and he even had eaten it sometimes. It wasn’t his favourite way to start the day, but the child was right, it did keep you going until something better came along, preferably something sweet and tasty in the Copper Kettle around ten of the clock. It was the twig that worried him a little. But if he was going to be part of this band, he would have to learn their ways.

‘Mind out of my way, then, young Starshine. Let me get at that oatmeal. I have some honey in my saddlebags somewhere. Perhaps it will make it slip down a bit easier.’

‘I hope you’ve brought enough for everyone.’ Hern’s voice came from round the side of the wagon. ‘We don’t have treats for one and not the other here.’

Despite the setting, Marlowe was transported back immediately to his days at the King’s School in Canterbury. Old Master Greshop had eyes like a hawk and woe betide the boy who tried to smuggle in a tasty treat for mid-morning. Greshop would winkle it out and its owner would have to stand at the front while the schoolmaster sliced whatever it might be into minute portions so that everyone could have a taste. Although oddly, it never divided up into quite enough portions to give one to its original owner. Greshop’s Law, the school called it.

Marlowe smiled at Hern as he appeared around the sacking. ‘I have almost a whole pot,’ he said. ‘I would be happy to share with you all. I’ll just get it for you.’ And he delved into the saddlebags which had shared his bed, and more pleasantly than the dogs. He found the honey, next to the letters of introduction to the court of William the Silent. He pushed them further down as he extracted the pot. He handed it to Starshine. ‘Give this to . . .’ he was stuck then, as he had no idea whose child she was.

‘Your mother,’ Hern finished the sentence for him. ‘All the women are called mother here and none of the men are called father.’ He laughed. ‘It’s simpler that way.’

Marlowe looked over to the fire, where one woman stood to one side, wrapped in a thin cloak and scarf which were much cleaner and of better quality than those worn by the other wives. ‘Who’s she?’ he asked. ‘She looks a bit lost.’

Hern snorted. ‘She’s Balthasar’s latest fancy,’ he said. ‘He picked her up last night when she came to have her future foretold. She’ll not last. She can’t cook, for a start and as far as I could tell she didn’t keep Balthasar very warm last night either. So unless she changes her ways, she won’t be coming far with us.’

‘That’s a good black eye she has,’ Marlowe said, peering into the dawn gloom. ‘I noticed it last night, so it’s not from Balthasar, I assume.’

‘She came with that.’ Hern laughed. ‘And that’s about all. But Balthasar is a good draw at fairs and he does his share of the work. None of the children are his, so I suppose we owe him a little leeway, but I will be watching Rose to see how she manages. Any trouble and she’s out.’ He gave Marlowe a long look. ‘That goes for anyone, Master Marlowe, you know that I’m sure. No matter how much money they bring, they work for their living, or they’re out.’

‘I understand,’ Marlowe said, jumping down off the wagon. ‘Why are we off so early?’

‘Early? This isn’t early, man. There’s light in the sky already. We have an appointment to keep today. That isn’t like us, we like to stay free if we can but this day has been arranged since we were in London last and I don’t like to upset a friend. Well, perhaps not a friend, but someone who will put us in the way of good food, some warm lodgings and perhaps a bath for the children, at least. I am beginning to have trouble telling some of them apart.’

‘Who are we going to see?’ Marlowe was intrigued as to who might have the power to keep Hern to a time.

‘Balthasar is the reason, Balthasar and his soothsaying. Although I can say modestly –’ Hern looked down momentarily and a less modest man it would have been hard to find in a day’s march – ‘that I have skills of my own which interest this man.’

‘Won’t you tell me his name?’ Marlowe asked.

‘You may know of him,’ Hern said. ‘He is in the Queen’s household, although that means nothing to us. She is not the Queen of the Egyptians. But he is a great magus . . .’

‘John Dee?’ Marlowe said. ‘Are we going to Mortlake then?’

‘Yes, it is Dr Dee,’ Hern said. ‘Do you have powers of divination too? But we are going to Ely, not Mortlake. He has taken a house there and we are to meet him this afternoon.’

Marlowe was glad he had decided to keep his own name. The thought of Dee crying out ‘Kit!’ and rushing out to greet him, grey cloak flying with his strange household at his heels would have made any subterfuge very short-lived indeed. ‘I know Dr Dee well,’ he said. ‘We have . . . worked together in the past. It will be good to see him again.’

The noise around the oatmeal cauldron had been rising as they spoke and Marlowe saw his honey pot going round the fire not once but several times. If he wanted to make his breakfast edible at all, he knew he should get over there as soon as possible. He pushed the problem of Dee to the back of his mind; the man was after all a magus of the most elevated kind. Surely he would foresee that he must be circumspect when they met. He could only hope so. He concentrated on the image of the man from when they had met last and tried to send him messages in the spirit. It was hard to keep his concentration in the hubbub of the camp and hoped that anything that got through was clear enough; he was sure he had sent a jumble of honey, children and smoke rather than a subtle message of intrigue and plots. But it would have to do for now. Air and fire. Fire and air.

John Dee was getting quite excited now that the day of the Egyptians was here. Helene was more circumspect; in her life before she had met Dee she had worked with groups of travellers, on and off, and was not under any illusions about their timekeeping qualities. Nevertheless, she followed her husband around as he flitted about their rented home, adding touches here and there to persuade their visitors that here lived a magus of the first order. Although he had proved his skills time and again, he still had a touchingly naïve belief in appearances. When he raised the dead, for example, he used so many elements that he would never know which was the one that actually summoned the demon or spirit. Would it, for example, work just as well without the sprinkled blood, or was that a vital ingredient? He never dared to try it; an annoyed demon was the last thing you wanted in your house. Getting rid of the damned thing could take years. So, he hung stuffed lizards from the portraits of someone else’s ancestors, he opened doors in the cellars to create just the right amount of dank draughtiness and he gave instructions to the cook that at least one dish should be a rather disquieting colour; blue food always looked a little magical, no matter how well it tasted. Then he settled down to wait.

From a distant door, a thumping shook the building and Dee started up from his chair. ‘They’re here,’ he cried, all excitement.

‘That’s the front door,’ Helene said, all disapproval. These travellers had better know their place or she would know the reason why. Her marriage was unconventional enough, God knew, but she was still the mistress here. ‘Call Bowes and have him send them round the back, John. We can’t have their sort at the front door.’

Dee looked at her reprovingly. ‘They are my guests, Nell,’ he said gently. ‘Guests come to the front door.’ He scurried through from their snug boudoir and into the Great Hall, soaring up three flights, heading for the door.

Helene Dee sat back in her chair, eyes closed. Although many decades separated their ages, she sometimes wondered in which direction. Still, it was good to see him excited about something. The fire at their house in Mortlake had taken a heavy toll and she had thought that he would never be like this again, ready to delve into the unknown and see what he might find. She got up and went to the door, pulling it open just a crack. When she had been working in the travellers’ way, she had found a little prior knowledge could go a long way, and listening at doors was only the start.

What she heard was unexpected. Her husband was speaking to one person only, and he was keeping him strictly on the other side of the door.

‘No,’ she heard him say. ‘You can not come in here. You left me and I was glad to see you go. It has taken me a good while to undo the damage that you did and you will not come in and start it all again. I will not have it!’

From the other side of the door, kept open just a crack to keep the frosty morning out, she heard a voice in protest, but she couldn’t hear what it was saying. It was angry, and that was all she could discern. Then, the door started to shake, pushed inwards by whoever – or, in this household, perfectly likely whatever – was outside. Dee was not as frail as he looked, but even so he was having trouble with the power on the other side of the thick oak planks. Calling for Bowes to come from his kitchen fastness, she hurried forward to help her husband. As she got nearer, she recognized the voice, which was now hurling imprecations and ill-remembered incantations at Dee. In her surprise, she spoke aloud.

‘Ned?’ she said, and Dee stepped back at the sound of her voice.

Edward Kelly, clipped ears blue with cold, stepped suddenly into the Hall, with the pressure from within removed and stumbled on the uneven flagged floor. He looked older than she remembered him, meaner and tight of lip.

‘Nell!’ he said, and moved to hug her, but she stepped back, behind her husband. ‘Oh, so that’s the way of it, is it?’ he said, with a sneer. ‘She did marry you after all.’ Contempt oozed from every pore.

‘In church, before God and the priest,’ she said. ‘Not some jump over the stick or any of your nonsense. I am Mistress Dee all right and as such I don’t want you in my house.’

Dee was proud of her in that moment. He had never been quite sure how much of a wife she thought herself. Theirs was not a conventional coupling in any sense of the word and even after all these years she could have the marriage annulled for reasons of non-consummation, but he loved her all the same and realized in that moment that she loved him too. It was as if a fire had been lit in his heart and he reached behind him and fumbled for her hand. She grabbed his and squeezed it tight. They were in this together, the Dees, for better or worse.

Edward Kelly looked at them and nodded. ‘Well, I can’t argue with that, then, Nell. But it is cold outside and I am newly come from Holland. I have ridden for days to find you and if I could just come in for a warm by your fire and a sup at your table, I’ll be on my way.’

‘If you have come lately from Holland,’ Dee said, ‘how did you know to find us here? We have been moving around since the fire.’

Kelly narrowed his eyes and said, ‘The spirits told me, John.’

Dee laughed. ‘Edward, don’t forget who you are speaking to, now. I taught you the tricks of that particular trade and I know you can no more raise a spirit than you can fly. Or is the flying coming on better these days?’

Kelly gave a bark of laughter, but there was no humour in it. ‘I don’t bother with the flying lately, John, thank you. And you are right. On this occasion, it was not the spirits, but a contact of mine in Holland. He had heard from a contact of his at court that you were wintering in Ely. I admit I have been to two other houses this morning; this was my last possibility, so I claim no special powers. In this case only, of course.’ Even though he was speaking to people who knew his limitations only too well, he still couldn’t help but keep his options open.

‘Wheels within wheels, Ned, as ever,’ Dee said. He had still not moved back any further and Kelly was still more or less on the doorstep. ‘Have you ever been honest?’

Kelly looked upwards, thinking hard. ‘No, not as I remember,’ he said. ‘But let me change all that and be honest with you now, John. I am destitute as I have never been before. The Dutch are a pragmatic people, damn their eyes, and a poor seeker after the truth has slim pickings in the court of William the Silent. The Spanish are worse – I was threatened with the Inquisition whenever I strayed south into their lands. At least the Dutch just mocked me; they didn’t seem to want to set me on fire.’

‘Another of your best tricks, as I recall,’ Helene said, still standing behind Dee and holding his hand. This man had nearly ruined her husband before and she mistrusted him, with his big innocent eyes and his honeyed voice. She raised her voice again and called over her shoulder, ‘Bowes! Come here, now!’

Down in the kitchen, the cook kicked Samuel Bowes on the ankle as he dozed before the fire. ‘Nell is calling you,’ she said, as he opened one lazy eye. ‘There’s somebody at the door.’

‘Can’t she open it, then?’ he asked, closing the eye again. ‘Got legs, hasn’t she?’

The cook gave him another kick and turned over her piece of toast. ‘Go and see what she wants. It might be them Egyptians, here to give trouble.’

‘They’d come round the back, surely,’ he said, but grumbled himself to his feet and climbed the stone steps out of the kitchen and opened the door, which he slammed to again immediately.

‘What’s the matter?’ the cook said, turning round in alarm and dropping her toast in the ashes. ‘Who is it?’ The woman could turn milk on the best of occasions, but when she was frightened, her blubbery lips hung loose and her chins wobbled. Not a pretty sight, except that Sam Bowes was used to it.

‘It’s only that Kelly,’ Bowes whispered. ‘Standing in the doorway and trying to talk round the Master.’

‘Is Nell there?’ the cook said, in alarm, wobbling more than ever.

‘She is. Standing behind the Master and holding his hand fast. I’m not going out there, not for a ransom.’

The cook stood up, her ruined toast forgotten. ‘Go out there, you craven bastard. We nearly lost our positions last time that Kelly was in the household. If we all stand together against him, we can get rid of him. I’d rather have a dozen Egyptians than him.’

Together, they climbed the stairs, the cook wiping her hands anxiously down her apron and tucking her elf locks up under her cap. She had memories of Edward Kelly that she wasn’t prepared to share with anyone and although she didn’t want him back in her Master’s house, a woman wanted to look her best. Just to show him she hadn’t let herself go.

In the Hall, little had changed, at first glance. But Balthasar Gerard would have immediately seen the difference. Kelly was now further into the room and the Dees, though still hand in hand, had less of the tiger-at-bay look about them; their bodies were more relaxed, they now seemed to think that the danger had passed. But Kelly had been waiting for just this change and he took his chance. Before Bowes and the cook were in earshot, he leaned forward and whispered something in Dee’s ear.

The magus drew back and dropped his wife’s hand. He turned to Bowes. ‘Make up a bed for Master Kelly, would you, Sam?’ he said, in his best host’s tone. ‘He is staying the night. Just one night,’ he repeated, almost a statement, almost a question, almost a plea.

‘One night is ample,’ Kelly said, with a smile. ‘Just for old time’s sake.’ He stepped in, closing the door behind him with a finality that sounded like a coffin lid being closed. ‘Just to warm my old bones at the fire.’ He looked round and caught the cook’s eye. ‘Or something warmer, if you have it.’ She hoped no one saw her blush.

‘Hell fire,’ Dee said, crisply. ‘You can warm yourself in Hell fire whenever you want to Ned, but just until tomorrow at first light, you may use my hearth instead.’