SIX

Marlowe was anxious to help pack up the camp that morning, if only to work off the effects of the oatmeal, which had formed a lining to his stomach of which any alchemist would have been proud. He felt that he might never be hungry again. But wherever he turned, someone was already doing the work; the yurt was down in a matter of minutes, and folded into the wagon he had slept in the night before, the pole broken down into three sections and stowed along the side in special brackets. The fire had been kicked out and covered with the sods which had been cut and carefully set aside the night before. The horses were in the traces and the dogs tethered behind, the children stowed in neat and relatively silent lines behind Hern, who drove the first wagon. The Wasp had been rubbed down and fed, and she seemed remarkably docile. Hern had obviously had a word in her ear.

Almost before he knew it, they were on the Ely road through the desolation that was Wicken Fen and, looking back, Marlowe could see hardly a sign that seventeen humans and many animals had spent the night there. The flattened grass where the tent had been would soon spring back and the Egyptians would once more have disappeared into the mists. Only the secret visitors of the night before would remember their passage; how kindly they would remember them would depend on how well the potions had worked, how well their futures matched their dreams, whether the charms to foretell the name of their husband to be showed that it was to be handsome Hal, from the inn, with prospects and a winning smile, or gawky Harry, the tanner, who smelt of dog shit all the time and had a stammer and five teeth missing from the front.

They passed one village girl on the road, who was trying, on this icy morning, to collect dew to make her love potion work. Hern turned to Marlowe, riding at his side. ‘If there’s one thing I have learned on the road, Master Marlowe, it is that there is one born every minute.’

Marlowe looked behind him, at the bemused girl standing there with her bottle. ‘She will catch her death of cold if she isn’t careful,’ he said. ‘Isn’t it rather cruel?’

‘Not at all,’ Hern said. ‘In the winter we don’t tell them to go barefoot and sky clad, although the summer charm does tend to bring them a man sooner rather than later. In the winter charm, she may well catch a cold, and the man who brings her hot soup and brandy is probably a better prospect than the one who finds her out at dawn naked on a summer morning.’

‘So . . .’ Marlowe spoke as he thought things through. ‘Your charms are just a way of helping nature along a little.’

‘Smartly said, Master Marlowe.’ Balthasar Gerard had drawn up on his other side, riding a beautiful piebald horse, hung with bells and ribbons on its bridle. ‘We will have you thinking like an Egyptian yet. Although, I must warn you, some of our charms are more than words. And when you can tell them apart, you will truly be one of us.’

A tousled head poked out from behind Hern. ‘Is that Master Marlowe?’ Starshine asked. ‘When can we have another story, Master Marlowe?’

Hern pushed her back, not unkindly. ‘Leave the man alone, Star,’ he said. ‘We’ll have more stories tonight, when we have met Master Dee. He may have wonders for us that will give Master Marlowe even more stories for us. Isn’t that right, Master Marlowe?’

‘Doctor Dee has many wonders to share, it’s true,’ Marlowe conceded. ‘But if they are suitable for children, I doubt.’

‘No children here,’ Hern said. ‘Just very small people. If we don’t let them see wonders, how will we find out which of them has the skill? Think of the many children in great houses who never find that they are musicians, conjurors, magicians or something even more wonderful because they spend their young lives learning Latin and Greek. Everyone should try everything at least once.’

Marlowe thought of the Shelley girls, Jane and little Bessie, children in a great house, he hoped, but not their own. Children whose father was probably dead by now. But Marlowe the scholar put his head over the parapet. ‘I can speak Latin and Greek,’ he said. ‘As well as French, a touch of Italian, some Flemish . . .’

‘You speak Flemish?’ Balthasar asked, reining in his horse.

‘A bit. Mostly childish stuff which I learned at home from the weavers. But I can certainly get by. And where my Flemish won’t serve, there’s always French, or Latin at a pinch.’

Hern looked at him from the corner of his eye. ‘What a very surprising man you are, Master Marlowe,’ he said. ‘Do you have yet more surprises in store for us? Can you, for example, juggle?’

Marlowe laughed. ‘I can juggle with a total of one orange,’ he said.

‘Tumble?’

‘Over, if necessary, after a hard night drinking.’

Hern and Gerard exchanged glances. ‘You might be hard to hide, then,’ Hern said. ‘But Simon isn’t very good at the physical stuff either. Perhaps we can work out some kind of strong man act between you. He is a head taller than you and muscular. It’s been a waste using Ernesto as his partner; he is a fine tumbler and we can do with him in the show.’

‘Not muscular. Fat,’ said Gerard, waspishly.

‘A little fat, perhaps, but still quite strong. Hmm . . . I think we can work something out.’ Hern fell silent and something in his demeanour told Marlowe he was dismissed. He fell back and rode for a while alongside the women’s wagon, but the only conversation there was giggling. He fell back further still and when he ended up riding behind the dogs, he spent his time wondering how he would find his old friend, Doctor Dee.

As the caravanserai made its slow way to Ely, Marlowe was increasingly glad of his oatmeal breakfast. As a scholar on short commons, he had often gone without the odd meal, but his midday luncheon was the one he tried never to go without. His head was hungry, even though his stomach had only nibbled at the sides of the solid mass inside. He clicked his tongue to the Wasp and went back to the head of the column.

‘Hern?’ he said, ‘are we to stop for luncheon today?’

Hern looked at him askance. ‘Luncheon, Master Marlowe?’ he said, in a mocking, cultured tone. ‘What would Egyptians on the road have to do with luncheon? If your oatmeal is not still satisfying you, go back to the women. They may have an apple or two to share, or a slice of cold oatmeal if you still have an appetite for it. But you’ll have to get used to eating when there is food, not just because of the position of the sun in the sky.’

Marlowe looked up at the unending low grey sky, with not even a faint white glow to tell where the sun might be. ‘It’s my guts which tell me it’s time for luncheon,’ he said plaintively. ‘How do you know where the sun is on such a day?’

‘We all know where the sun is,’ Balthasar said, coming alongside him with his usually unerring timing. How could a horse walk so quietly, Marlowe wondered. He himself was known to be flannel-footed, but his horses made the same noise as anyone else’s. ‘Even the children could tell you the position of the sun, and at night, they can tell the time by the moon, even when there is no moon to see.’

‘How is that possible?’ Marlowe said.

‘No trick,’ Balthasar said. ‘I will tell you one of our secrets if you like.’

Hern looked at him with flinty eyes, as grey as his hair and beard. ‘Be careful, Balthasar,’ he said. ‘We have not known Master Marlowe long.’

‘I know Master Marlowe as well as he knows himself,’ the soothsayer said, ‘but this secret is one that any man could know if he thought for a moment about it.’ He turned to Marlowe. ‘Imagine the moon at the full,’ he said. ‘Come on, now, Master Marlowe. Let me see you imagining. Close your inner eyes and see the sky at night. Choose a good frosty one, so that you can see the stars clearly.’ He watched as Marlowe’s eyes moved from side to side, seeing the picture in his mind’s eye, high above the rickety roofs of Canterbury or the turreted splendour of Cambridge. ‘Can you see the moon?’

Marlowe found his arm lifting involuntarily an inch or two, to point to the imaginary world above his head.

‘You are a good subject, Master Marlowe,’ Hern observed. ‘If I can give you some advice, don’t let Balthasar speak quietly to you in the dark. Before you know it you will be telling him all your secrets and you won’t even know you have done it. Beware!’

Balthasar laughed softly and patted Marlowe’s arm. ‘You have nothing to fear from me, Kit,’ he said. ‘We all have secrets here and which of us would want them shared around? So . . . can you see the moon?’

Marlowe nodded his head. He was ‘Kit’ now or was this all part of the soothsayer’s guile?

‘Now, still looking at the moon, but keeping the stars in view, wipe out the moon’s face. Start from the middle or the edge, it doesn’t matter, but imagine a cloth wiping out the moon.’ He waited a few heartbeats. ‘Is it gone?’

Marlowe nodded again.

‘So,’ Balthasar said, leaning back in his saddle, ‘what is there to see where the moon once was?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Good. Now, let your eyes wander across the sky. Can you see any other patches of nothing of that size? Use your eyes. Don’t just see the twinkling stars, but look and see the stardust too. Can you see another dark patch that size?’

Marlowe’s eyes wandered about again, raking the celestial landscape in his head and eventually he shook his head.

Balthasar shook his bridle, setting the bells jingling and the ribbons flying. ‘So, on a moonless night, look for the moon, Kit, and you will never be lost, not for place or time.’

Marlowe smiled slowly. ‘That is so obvious, I don’t know why I didn’t know that already,’ he said.

‘You did, once,’ Hern said, as Balthasar rode back down the column again, checking, always checking. ‘We children of the moon remember things we knew at our birth. The rest of the world begins to forget as they draw their first breath. We begin to remember.’ He looked slyly at Marlowe. ‘Has Balthasar’s lesson made you less hungry, Master Marlowe?’

Marlowe listened to his stomach, which said he was full and then to his head, which said it was definitely time for luncheon. ‘Not less hungry, Hern,’ he said, ‘but it may be that I am learning not to be.’

‘Then you must remember today as your first step to being a child of the moon.’ Hern laughed. He reached behind him and foraged in the dark wagon. When he pulled his arm free, there was a child on the end of it. ‘Here,’ he said to Marlowe, ‘take –’ he twisted the child round and looked into its face – ‘Lukas here and tell him some stories. He might tell you some in return; we have hopes of him as a storyteller when he is older.’ He stood the child, who was somewhere around six years old, on the edge of the seat and gave him a push in the small of his back. The child leapt across Marlowe’s saddle and snuggled back against his chest.

‘Tell me a story, Master Marlowe,’ he said, lisping badly.

‘What about?’ Marlowe asked, glad that the boy was facing forward and so only the Wasp was catching the spray. ‘Do you have a favourite animal?’

‘I like to listen to stories of squirrels,’ Lukas said.

As long as he didn’t tell too many on the subject, Marlowe thought, or whole audiences may well drown before he got to the end. ‘Once upon a time,’ he began, ‘there was a squirrel, the bravest squirrel in all Christendom . . .’

Hern smiled as the two fell back in the column. He liked to know where Master Marlowe was at all times. It took a trickster to spot a trickster, and behind the face of that handsome boy was an adversary worthy of the Egyptians. This journey might turn out to be their greatest show yet. He clicked to the horses. They ignored him. Egyptian horses on the move had but one speed and he would have been amazed if there had been any change of pace. But he did it every now and again for the look of the thing.

Slowly, into the gathering dark, the ragged crew made its way along the road from Ely as it led through the Fens, across the watery waste of Soham Mere. Although the dusk and mist prevented anyone seeing far on either side, the feeling of enormous, silent space was unnerving, especially to a man who was used to the closes and alleys of Cambridge and Canterbury. Marlowe could feel the ghosts of the past gathering at his back and he was grateful for the sleeping warmth of Lukas, still astride the pommel of his saddle, finally sated on stories of squirrels in every guise; soldier, lover, swordsman, sailor, explorer and fop. The child, with his musky, unwashed smell and small jumps and twitches of his sleep was a reassuring taste of humanity. When Marlowe had encountered John Dee the last time, his feet were firmly on the ground and still he found the old magus deeply unsettling. Now that a few of his ropes had been untethered and the everyday world had retired behind a veil of the Egyptians’ weaving, he was not sure how Dee and his peculiar ménage might appear.

At the back of the row of wagons and horses, lost in his own thoughts, Marlowe didn’t notice that Hern had taken a right turn with his lead wagon and had disappeared into the tree-hung gloom of a small orchard inside an elegant but slightly tumbledown archway in the wall along which they had been riding for some while. Marlowe did a hasty adjustment to his course and was grateful that whatever Hern had said to her, the Wasp had taken to heart. On another day a rapid about turn such as that would have made her bolt for her life. Ahead, on a small man-made rise, was a manor house, its ancient stones grey and unyielding across the Level winds. It had the ornate roof gables of the Flemish influence that had reached this far west in the days of the Staple when the Lord Chancellor of England first placed his feet on the wool sack.

As they rode in between the two encircling wings, the big door in the centre was flung open and John Dee came flying out, with his cloak swirling and his dark cap seeming to glow with esoteric figures on his head. Behind him came Helene, if anything more beautiful than before, Sam Bowes and the cook, carrying the inevitable smell of toast which lingered about her always. This was a magnet for the children and soon they were clustering around her, trying to understand why a woman so relentlessly homely could smell so nice.

‘Don’t be a bother, children!’ Hern called. ‘My apologies for the behaviour of my brood, madam. They are tired and hungry from hours on the road.’

The cook got all flustered. Egyptians they may be, but children were children wherever they came from and the man who led them was certainly rather attractive, in a half-magical sort of way; and the cook was used to half-magical. Whatever she had been expecting, it wasn’t this. She sketched a curtsey, taking everyone, including herself by surprise. ‘May I take them into the kitchen, sir?’ she asked. ‘I could give them something to eat.’

‘By all means,’ Dee said, flapping his hand at her. Kitchens and children were far from his mind just now. He was the only one in the courtyard who did not seem to realize that the cook had been addressing Hern.

The cook went back into the house, looking like a galleon in full sail surrounded by tiny pinnaces. The total noise in the echoing space was immediately reduced and everyone could hear themselves speak. Marlowe kept himself to the back of the line and watched as the others were introduced to Dee. Looking beyond Helene’s beautiful head, he thought he could see someone else lurking in the candlelight from the porch. It was difficult to focus on, now here, now gone and it was even difficult to identify its size, age or gender. No sooner did he have it in his sights but with one blink it was gone. Balthasar’s voice sounded in his ear.

‘I see that you have spotted Master Kelly,’ he said.

‘To be honest with you, Balthasar,’ he said, ‘I’m not sure who or what I have spotted.’

‘No,’ Balthasar said. ‘It is not an illusion. It is Edward Kelly as I live and breathe. Our paths have crossed now and then, but I would be happy if I never saw that particular gentleman again, and certainly not here. He used to be Dee’s partner, in business if not in crime, and when the good doctor dispensed with his services, it was a happy day for him, I’m sure. But let’s not let him skulk back in the shadows.’ Raising his voice, he called across the courtyard, ‘Master Kelly. Come out and meet my friends, new since we met last. Come forward, come forward.’

Out of the dark corners of the porch stepped an ill-favoured man with cropped dark hair and the clipped ears of a rogue. Marlowe had heard of Kelly, but only in passing in Dee’s house, as one might speak of an invasion of mice or fleas, now departed. He seemed to sidle rather than walk and the general impression was of someone walking down a corridor lit fitfully by tallow candles; neither definitely there, nor definitely not. Marlowe found that his features were not easy to remember when he was not actually looking at his face and knew that here was a man who, like himself, made a living on the edge. But, unlike him, this man had taken the road of disappearance and disguise, rather than Marlowe’s trick of hiding in plain sight.

‘Balthasar,’ he called, as though greeting a long-lost brother.

‘Edward,’ Balthasar said, reaching forward and pulling him towards Marlowe, ‘please don’t fear that I am going by another name these days. Balthasar Gerard is and always has been good enough for me. May I introduce you to a new friend of mine, Kit. Kit, Edward Kelly, who is . . .’ he paused and turned his penetrating smile on Kelly. ‘Edward, I fear I don’t know what you are these days.’

Kelly waved an insouciant hand in the air. ‘I do some of this, Balthasar, some of that. As ever.’

‘So there you are, Kit,’ Balthasar said, thwacking Kelly heartily on the back, ‘Master Kelly is a some of this and some of that, so now we know. But, Edward, please enlighten me. Is the beautiful woman yonder the reason for your return to Dr Dee’s fireside?’

Kelly spoke sulkily, but Marlowe could tell that when he wanted to, the crust could be covered with honey. ‘She is Dee’s wife,’ he said to Balthasar, ‘and for some reason loyal to him. But I see you have a beauty of your own, albeit a little . . .’ he swept his finger in a circle round one eye.

Balthasar dropped his voice to a growl. ‘Rose is also not for you, Kelly,’ he said. ‘The eye will heal and when it, and her heart and her head have healed as well, possibly then . . .’ he turned his head to watch as Rose stood with the women, trying to blend in and yet standing out like a diamond in oatmeal, like a petal in a box of coal.

‘Another of your rescues, eh, Balthasar?’ Kelly said, but his eyes were hungry as they looked in Rose’s direction. Then, with a blink, he turned his attention on Marlowe. The poet felt as if he was being examined with a lens. ‘And what do you do, young Kit?’ Kelly asked. ‘And do you have another name, to go with Kit?’

‘No.’ Helene Dee was suddenly at Marlowe’s side, squeezing his elbow. ‘No one has names here, Ned, not for you. You have just one night here, don’t forget. And now that dear Kit is here, there will be no bed for you. You can sleep in the kitchen, with the dogs. You’ll be nice and warm there, and in good company.’

Still holding his elbow in a vice-like grip, she led him away from the two men, towards the house. ‘Kit,’ she said in his ear, ‘excuse me for my familiarity, but you should not let Kelly know what your other name is; he finds things out, uses them against people. What are you doing with these ragamuffins, anyway? I understood you had returned to your studies.’

‘My studies and I are occasionally in correspondence,’ Marlowe told her, ‘but just now I have a fancy to a roving life with the Egyptians.’

‘Well,’ she said, looking him up and down and fingering the leather of his jacket appreciatively, ‘whatever you are doing seems to suit you well. Here we are, our home for now. What do you think?’

‘Nothing will ever be like Mortlake,’ Marlowe said, looking round at the towering Hall with its Gothic beams and Flemish tapestries. They depicted the Trojan War, if he knew his Homer. And Kit Marlowe did know his Homer. ‘I dream of it still.’

‘So do I, Kit.’ She sighed. ‘So do I. You will see that John has put in a few touches which I doubt the Leslies would like. They are of the Puritan persuasion, John says, and not at one with nature. I fear they will think we are ruining their home.’ She gestured to the lizards hanging from various curtain tops and the owl who turned its head to watch them go. Of Bibles and plain clothing there was no sign.

‘I see the doctor has tamed another owl,’ he said, pointing to it.

She glanced in its direction. ‘No,’ she said. ‘That takes years. That one is stuffed. How he makes its head do that is a mystery.’ Then she squeezed his arm again. ‘Come on, Kit, there is no sign of Sam, as ever. I will take you up to your bedchamber myself.’ She led him across the Hall. ‘Mind that flagstone just at the foot of the stairs. It is still wet.’

‘Wet?’ Marlowe said, skipping sideways to avoid it. ‘What with?’

‘Blood,’ she said, then, seeing his expression, ‘from the meat for dinner. But John is going to say it is the wet blood spilled hundreds of years ago by the ghost which walks this house; the ghost of Lennox Leslie. Oh, Kit,’ she said, ‘he has a host of wonders planned for this evening. I hope your Egyptians are as good as I hear, or he will leave them gasping.’

‘I think there will be gasps in both camps.’ Marlowe laughed. He looked into her eyes as they prepared to go up the stairs. ‘But what are you frightened of, Helene?’ he said. Her blood was fluttering in her fingers like a trapped butterfly.

‘Why, Master Marlowe,’ she whispered in his ear, ‘nothing at all. What would I be frightened of?’ But the eyes which looked over his shoulder were big and her lip wobbled just a little. He looked behind him and saw the Egyptians outlined by the edge of the great door, with Edward Kelly lurking behind Rose, like a thief in the night.

The cook had made a special effort with the food that night and toast scarcely featured at all, unless it was sitting under a freshly roasted bird to soak up the juices. The great table had been laid along its length with plates for all of the Egyptians; no one was forgotten. Rose made an extra mouth, as did Marlowe, but they were easily accommodated by shunting everyone a few inches and with Helene at its foot and Dee at its head and village women from nearby Prickwillow serving, the feast was perfection. On Dee’s insistence Sam Bowes and the cook had joined them for the meal and the woman’s eagle eye watched the serving women above her increasingly greasy mouth; she was not a cook who only cooked to please others, as the width of her hips bore witness.

The children were along one side, flanked by Rose and Lily on one side and Maria and the shy Eloise on the other. Opposite sat Hern and Balthasar, whose glares kept the behaviour in check and the cutlery on the table and not in pockets. The littlest two, scarcely more than babies, sat on their mother’s knees and watched with round eyes the food being passed up and down. They listened with ears almost overwhelmed to the chatter and occasional bursts of song that filled the room. Their mouths seemed constantly full of some special titbit, rammed in without favour from all along the table. The cook had taken a shine to Lukas and was passing him all the best bits of the roast capon in front of Bowes, who was never quite quick enough to stab her in the back of her hand when she was thieving.

Balthasar sat opposite Rose and drank in her beauty while she ate. Marlowe, two along from him on his right, so favoured with a good view of them both, was struck again as he had often been before that a man in love was truly blind, because although Rose was as lovely as the day, she ate like a swineherd or even one of his swine. She didn’t look to right or left, just into Balthasar’s face, but filled her mouth and cheeks constantly, barely stopping to chew. She was either brought up in a barn, Marlowe thought, or had known long periods of hunger. Or, alternatively, she just had the manners of a pig. To get away from the view of half-chewed food flying all over the place, he looked down the table to where Helene Dee sat, pale and cool as ice. She had not taken much on her plate, just a few slices of the breast meat of the capon and a little sallet. She toyed with her knife, balancing it on the point and twirling it round in her fingers as the blade bit into the wood. He hoped that the Leslies were charging John Dee a sensible rent; it would take a while to remove the traces of the Dee company, what with the stuffed lizards leaking everywhere and the holes in the furniture. Lennox Leslie must already be spinning in his grave.

He felt rather than saw Edward Kelly’s eyes on his back, but did not give the charlatan the pleasure of seeing him turn round. Instead, he bent back to his dinner and, catching the eye of the cook, raised his goblet to her. She simpered and looked away but when she met the eye of Kelly, sitting opposite, she looked the other way in confusion and stuffed almost a whole roast apple into Lukas’ mouth, so that she had something to do.

Just when everyone thought they couldn’t eat another thing, Dee clapped his hands and a huge bowl of frumenty was carried in, all ablaze with the brandy poured over it in the kitchen. The two Prickwillow maids carrying it held it out to their sides, so that they didn’t lose their eyebrows or even their hair. The flames were showing no signs of dying down as it was placed in front of Dr Dee, the Queen’s magus.

‘Good, thank you,’ he said to the wenches. ‘Who has the cloth?’

One of them, the one on his left and standing nearest the wall, unfolded it from across her arm. As she had practised all afternoon she flipped it with a flourish and offered the top corner to her friend standing on Dee’s right. They pulled the cloth taut across the table, masking Dee and the pudding from view, although the tall blue flames were still visible above the top of the cloth. All eyes were on the white screen, through which trembling images were visible. Those further down the table could also just make out the top of Dee’s head. Those close to him could see his elbow or feel the pressure of a foot under the table. Suddenly, there was a bright flash which printed itself on every eye down the table and when they could see clearly again the cloth, the two girls, Dee and the pudding had all disappeared.

But not for long. Balthasar and Hern each had a girl on their knee and, from the kitchen, two new maids carried a flaming dish of frumenty and leading the way was a triumphant John Dee. The girls put the dish in front of his place again, the flames still rising feet into the air.

The applause was deafening, as was the laughter, as Balthasar and Hern both got up from their seats with the maids in their arms and danced them up the table in a wild jig until they were level with the flames.

‘Blow, my pretties,’ Hern said to them.

The one who had been on his lap, a pretty little blonde with an angelic face, turned to him. ‘That’s brandy, sir,’ she said. ‘There’ll be no putting it out until it’s ready.’

‘Blow,’ Hern said, ‘and see who is more powerful, you or the brandy.’

Laughing, both girls bent down to blow and the flames immediately went out. Their faces were a picture of confusion, and more so when Dee waved his hand over the dish and they sprang up again.

‘Blow,’ Hern said again and the girls and Dee were off in a whirl of flames and no flames until eventually the cook intervened.

‘Now then,’ she said. ‘I didn’t slave all afternoon to make this frumenty for you to play with it all night. Bring the ladle and let’s eat.’

‘Well said, cook,’ said Dee. ‘Enough playing with our food – let’s eat it.’ And everyone’s plate was in the air for a spoonful of the rich treat. Only Helene declined a portion and Balthasar and Hern; they knew what went into anything which would not be extinguished and eating it was not sensible. Dee caught Hern’s eye.

‘I think I have fooled you, Master Hern,’ he said. ‘This is not the everlasting frumenty. It is the perfectly edible one from under the table. As long as no one has trodden in it, I think you will find it quite palatable. Will you pass your plate?’

‘That was clever, Doctor Dee,’ Hern said. ‘You have given us something to live up to tonight.’