TEN

The fire crackled and spat in the bedroom in the Prinsenhof. Beyond the convent walls, the city of Delft settled down to sleep, the carts rolled to their starting places for the morning, the market stalls silent in the darkness. Candles were lit in the tall houses and the Night Watch prowled the streets, their boots clattering on the cobbles and their pikes heavy on their shoulders.

Charlotte of Bourbon-Montpensier sat by her husband’s bedside, as she had this past month, talking to him, stroking his forehead, now hot, now cold, patting his still hand. The doctors had told her that he would live and yet he looked so still, his eyes shut, his lips just slightly parted as though he might yet speak, although no sound ever emerged except an occasional shuddering sigh which nearly stopped her heart each time; the sighs sounded like the last breath of a dying man, and yet there was always one more breath. Only a pulse, which beat steadily in his neck, seemed to prove the doctors right, that he would recover, that he would live. For his faithful Lottie, it was enough, but watching over him like this, hour by hour, day by day, was taking a heavy toll. A tear ran down her cheek. If only he would wake, open his clear, grey eyes, smile and whisper, ‘Lottie, lieveling, Lottie,’ as he used to every morning when they were together. If only Hans had checked the robes of Jean Jaureguy that cold evening when he’d come calling as a humble petitioner, a devil in disguise. If only there was no war beyond the convent walls, no Duke of Parma, no Philip of Spain.

She pulled herself together sharply, brushing the tear away and she got up, bending to kiss her husband gently on the forehead just below the bandages and she made for the door. Her waiting women closed in on the bed as she left. They operated in shifts, two for the day and two for the night. Only Charlotte stayed for both, nodding asleep for minutes at a time, upright in her chair, before sitting by her husband again and chatting to him. She hadn’t brought the children to see him. Little Emilia would not understand why Papa was sleeping all the time and she would jump on the bed and cause who knew what damage. The others would understand and the sight of their darling Papa so hurt and lying so still would terrify them.

Charlotte reached the bottom of the stairs. She had people to see, documents to sign. No one beyond the walls of the Prinsenhof knew of Jaureguy’s shot, about the fragment of lead that still lay in the brain of the Statholder. Nor must they ever know. The private papers that he signed by hand she read carefully, telling his private secretary to amend here and there. She signed them herself with a flourish approximating to his and trusted that no one would look too closely. The state papers, the edicts and orders that went out to his troops she checked too, but these were appended with the wax seal of Nassau and she had no need of forgery here.

Even so, she knew perfectly well that this subterfuge could not last. It had been four weeks since anyone outside Charlotte, her maids, Hans and the doctors had seen the Statholder and in the streets of Delft and the flat levels of the Netherlands, rumours would be spreading like a mutinous rumbling. The Statholder had gone mad. The Statholder had fled the country, leaving his people to the Spanish Fury they all knew would come. The Statholder was dead; had in fact died years ago and it was an impostor who sat on the throne at the Prinsenhof. William the Silent was silent for ever, while the rumours grew louder, enough to deafen a whole country.

At the turn of the stairs, Dr van der Buick bowed low to the princess of Nassau. ‘Rudi –’ she took him aside into the antechamber which had once been a Catholic chapel – ‘you saw His Highness this afternoon. Is there any change, anything at all you can tell me?’

Van der Buick was a clever man. In the university of Leyden there was no one better known. He had become famous throughout the land in these years of war for his treatment of the wounds war caused. If anyone could save the life of William the Silent, it was Rudi van der Buick. But Rudi van der Buick was a politician too; you didn’t become physician to the Statholder without that. He knew when to be circumspect and he knew when to change the subject.

‘I am concerned for you, Highness,’ he told her. ‘You have not slept . . .’

She held up her hand. ‘Answer my question, Rudi,’ she insisted.

‘I can detect no change, Highness,’ he said. ‘The humours are unbalanced because of the shock to the brain. Only time will tell if His Highness will come back to us.’

‘And there is nothing you can do?’ It was a question she had asked him every day for a month.

‘We have bled him, as you know.’ Van der Buick had already tried every trick in and out of the book. ‘It has had no effect. I can only suggest what I have always suggested. Talk to him, madam, let him hear your voice. Perhaps the children . . .’

‘No.’ She shook her head vehemently. ‘I will not allow that.’

The doctor nodded. ‘Then, Highness, the best service you can do for your husband is to go to sleep. You will do him no service by becoming ill yourself.’ He led her gently by the arm, ‘I will prepare a draught for you.’

‘You will not,’ she said, still patient, still strong. ‘I will sleep when William sleeps and not the sleep he is in now. What if . . . ?’ and her voice tailed away, full of unspoken fears.

‘Highness?’ Van der Buick waited.

Charlotte cleared her throat to compose herself again. ‘What if my husband is locked in his silence for ever? What if he can hear and see what is going on around him but he has no way of responding to it, to show us he is still here, in his body? Could there be a worse fate for a man?’

Or a worse fate for the Netherlands, van der Buick wondered to himself. It was not the kind of thing a doctor of medicine said out loud, so he went further than he should and took the liberty of patting Her Highness’s hand.

They held an ice fair that year on the Crow’s Nest, shortly before Christmas, while the great and the good of South Holland tried to carry on as usual and forget there was a war on. Marlowe had toyed with saddling the Wasp and riding north to Delft while he still could, bearing in mind the constantly shifting front lines of the Duke of Parma, but an Englishman riding alone in the Low Countries would attract too much attention. Minshull had told him that the area was swarming with spies, intelligencers and projectors who listened at keyholes and whispered in corners, men like him and Marlowe but who served a different sovereign and spoke a different creed. The man with the halting Flemish would turn too many heads, pose too many questions. Better to stay in the exotic anonymity of the Egyptians. Simon thought that too.

Marlowe was surprised that Simon the Jesuit stayed with them at all; after all, this was Calvinist country and he would find few needing his particular comforts here. That day at the fair with the frost sparkling at the lake’s edge and the locals skating with ease over the ice, he saw the priest hawking ribbons around the area in front of the stage where Hern and his people went through their paces, swallowing swords and eating fire to the gasps of the crowd and the rattle of their gelders. Why hadn’t Simon gone south to Parma’s lines where he could have thrown off the bright ribbons of his disguise and become Father Belasius again, all black and velvet and incense? Something was holding Simon the Jesuit here, on the cold flat fens of the north, and it wasn’t the quality of the cheese or the ale.

‘A gelder for them, Master Marlowe.’ Hern sat down on the blanket next to the scholar who was scratching with his quill on parchment, his fingers numb with cold. ‘Another story?’

‘A poem,’ Marlowe told him. ‘A sonnet.’

‘What’s that?’

‘A poem.’ Marlowe smiled.

Hern laughed that deep bass laugh of his. ‘Why weren’t you born an Egyptian?’ he said, slapping his man on the shoulder. ‘Is this one for tonight?’

‘I thought I’d try it out,’ Marlowe said. ‘Looking at this lot, the locals of South Holland could use some culture.’

‘Ah.’ Hern smiled. ‘Creatures of the clay, Master Marlowe, creatures of the clay. They’ve been holding fairs like this since Jesus was a carpenter’s apprentice. They don’t look like rebels, do they?’

Marlowe had to agree that they didn’t. Knots of portly men, blue-nosed and pot-bellied, stood around braziers at the water’s edge nattering away in Flemish and northern Dutch. Vats of boiling oil balanced on the grids above the flames disgorged baskets of crisp bitterbollen on to their waiting plates while a child offered up pots of the mild mustard for dipping. Women in their wide white hats were admiring the silks and satins that fluttered from the stalls all round. Blonde, grey-eyed children pushed each other on to the ice or dragged little sledges up and down while dogs yelped and ran in all directions. There wasn’t a gun or a sword or a soldier in sight. Only Kit Marlowe felt the dagger nestling in his back under the bright reds and yellows of his Egyptian costume. He wondered if Hern felt iron too but he couldn’t see any bulge in his doublet.

Hern whistled an Egyptian lad to him and whispered in the boy’s ear. Marlowe had seen him do this before at many of their stops since the Hook and he knew what was going to happen. Like a ghost, the boy slid into the crowd at the edge of the Egyptian stage. High in the air, the streamers flew and twirled, spiralling in myriad colours to the boards, then flashing skywards again. And all eyes were on them, hypnotized by the sway and curl of the ribbons, their senses marching to the thud and rattle of the drums and tambourines, though their feet seemed glued to the grass. The boy moved through the fair, silent, like a will-o’-the-wisp that haunted the Stour in Marlowe’s Canterbury.

In minutes he was back, beaming, and he quietly dropped six fat purses in Hern’s lap. The lord of the dance swept them up and they were gone. He winked at Marlowe and ruffled the boy’s matted hair. ‘Try the ice, Tomaso,’ he said, ‘but stay near the edge. The Devil’s in those depths. Don’t let him catch you.’ And the boy was gone.

‘I saw him take four for certain,’ Marlowe said, ‘and I think I know where he took the fifth. But I didn’t see him take the sixth.’

‘Nor the seventh,’ Hern said and threw Marlowe’s own purse back to him.

The would-be Egyptian laughed.

‘Take my advice, Master Marlowe,’ Hern said. ‘Carry that near your codpiece. You’ll feel it if it shifts from there.’ He swiftly stood upright. ‘Ah, if I’d had you in my camp fifteen years ago, what I could have made of you. Good luck with your scribbling.’

And Marlowe checked his purse once more as the man disappeared like smoke into the crowd.

They came from the south on the road that ran straight and true through the vennen, the heather criss-crossed with dykes. The sky was leaden over the church spires of Delft and smoke drifted lazily from the ragged pauper hovels that ringed the town walls.

The Town Watch circled those walls, armed to the teeth and watching the roads intently, especially the roads to the south. That was the way the Spaniards would come, with their flags and their cannon, the oxen clashing on the road and the giant crucifixes black against the sky. Marlowe, bouncing on the lead wagon beside Hern, chuckled to himself at the thought of Joe Fludd and his lads facing this situation and not knowing one end of an arquebus from another. Different times. Different crimes. Perhaps an army just over the far horizon made learning happen quickly; learn quickly, or die.

The Egyptians began to beat their drums and blasted their trumpets, Hern standing up and waving his banner in both hands, feet planted firmly on the board of the wagon. The children dropped silently from the rumbling carts and grabbed the ribboned manes and tails of the piebald horses, springing up on to their backs and hauling the littlest ones up behind them, their shrill voices breaking into song to the drum’s rhythm. Marlowe added his voice to theirs, the cadences and harmonies of church music chiming oddly but sweetly with their innocent melodies.

They entered Delft by the southern gate and passed unchecked through the narrow streets to the square in the centre where the Nieu Kirke loomed over everything, grey and squat like the burghers who had built it. A crowd of people and dogs began to coalesce around the caravanserai as it spread out ever more thinly to accommodate the narrow twists and turns of the lanes. In places, the houses met overhead and from every window an apple-cheeked head seemed to pop out, maidservants interrupted in their bed-making by the sound of the drums and singing, housewives and nursing mothers hanging out of the upper storeys, babies on their arms, waving and singing back at the children. Marlowe, still more used to the welcome they got in England, with rotten apples thrown by day and creeping figures needing potions and portents by night, felt his heart lift at the welcome, and almost forgot that he was here for another purpose than to entertain the crowd. The spy sank down lower as the poet, singer and temporary tumbler rose to the occasion.

Soon, Tomaso was about his sneaky business in the crowd and Hern was swallowing swords and fire, regurgitating lines of flags in the Statholder’s colours. Balthasar’s tent had gone up in double quick time at the edge of the square and a shifty line had formed at its door, each person in it trying to pretend that they were just standing there, there was no particular reason why they should be there rather than here, they were just resting there out of the bitter northern wind off the vennen. One by one, they disappeared into Balthasar’s particular kind of darkness and, mostly, they emerged with a complacent smile on their lips. Balthasar was feeling kind today; he would not be dispensing death and destruction to the good burghers of Delft. They had enough of that a horizon away.

Marlowe crept away, skirting the edge of the crowd and disappearing neatly down a narrow alley. The Prinsenhof, which had stood out so boldly at a distance from the town, was not easy to find in these towering tunnels of houses. Whenever he got to where two alleys crossed he got a better view of the sky and so, by turning left and right and sometimes even going back on himself, he reached the wall of the Prinsenhof itself.

There was no gate or door along the whole length of the wall as far as he could see. The place had all the hallmarks of a nunnery, sealed and secret from the world. He swaggered nonchalantly along, turning each corner as he came to it as if there could be no danger around it, though he knew this was probably far from the case. The crowd the Egyptians had drawn was a two-edged sword for Marlowe. It had enabled him to slip away, but on the other hand it had almost emptied the streets and this made him all the more noticeable. Finally, he turned a corner and could see a gate ahead of him.

He approached it at a purposeful walk, trying to look as though he was on an errand of mild importance. This had worked often enough for it to be worth a try. The halberd heads clashed across his face as he stepped over the threshold. A guard snarled something at him and Marlowe summoned up his Flemish. He passed his papers across, the ones given to him by Faunt who in turn had got them from Walsingham. The guard didn’t recognize the seal and couldn’t read the language. He muttered to a third man who was pointing his arquebus at Marlowe and the scholar gypsy was pleased to see that the Statholder’s security had clearly improved.

There were shouts and heel-clicking and an officer arrived in a plumed helmet, clanking down the stairs in hobnailed boots. He looked at Marlowe in his Egyptian coat of many colours and looked at the papers. He snapped at one of the halberdiers who threw his weapon to his comrade and patted Marlowe’s clothing, his body, his arms, his legs. Then he stood back.

‘This way,’ the officer growled, but Marlowe stopped him, sliding the dagger from the small of his back where the guard had missed it.

‘To show my good faith.’ He smiled.

The officer rapped out a string of oaths that Marlowe didn’t understand to the guards who looked suitably chastened. By way of explanation, he muttered, as far as Marlowe’s Flemish could tell, ‘You can’t get the staff,’ and he snatched the dagger’s hilt. ‘Pick this up on your way out.’

He led Marlowe through a tangle of passageways, the walls lime-washed like the Puritan churches back home and up a broad staircase. He was shown, beyond the huge double doors, into a lofty antechamber, where glittering-eyed burghers sat waiting to press whatever suit burghers the length and breadth of Europe waited to press. It would be about market stalls and grazing rights and trading concessions. Didn’t they know there was a war on?

The officer had unbuckled and removed his helmet and was in earnest conversation with a court official, a tall, refined-looking man with a neatly trimmed goatee above his impeccably starched ruff. The man looked Marlowe up and down and immediately disapproved. The visitor looked like a wandering lunatic and they had enough of those in Delft already. He nodded at whatever the officer said to him and crossed to Marlowe, beckoning him into a side room.

There was a stir among the burghers. ‘I’ve been waiting for nearly three hours.’ ‘That man’s a tramp, what’s he doing here?’ ‘I demand to see the Statholder.’ The rumble of outraged citizenry throughout time. Beyond another set of doors, which closed behind him with a thud, Marlowe found himself alone with the tall man.

‘Who are you?’ he asked in the clipped dialect of the court.

‘Christopher Marlowe.’

‘Where are you from?’

‘Cambridge University.’

‘You are a scholar?’

‘I am.’

The tall man sat quietly in a covered chair, poring over Walsingham’s papers and proceeded to ask Marlowe questions in Latin, then in Greek. He answered them fluently. Then there was a silence.

‘But personally,’ Marlowe went on, still in Greek, ‘I’ve always found Aristotle a little laboured on that point. Ramus says . . .’

The tall man held up his hand, smiling, and lapsed into surprisingly good English. ‘All right, Dominus Marlowe. I have no doubt that you are a scholar. But what else can you do?’

Marlowe smiled in turn. ‘I am learning new things all the time,’ he said, ‘but speaking for this moment, I can write a play, cut a reasonable rhyme, sing tolerably well. More recently, I have learned to turn a somersault, as long as somebody gives me a hand with the first bit, but I am improving. But most importantly and also, I hope, with a little help from you, I will keep your Statholder out of the clutches of Spain.’

The tall man stood up. ‘I am Hans Neudecker, Chamberlain to His Highness the Prince of Nassau. You will wait here.’

Marlowe did, a large clock on the far wall the only soul for company as it chimed the hour. When the doors opened again, a lady glided into the room, followed by two others. Her dress spoke of finery and wealth, but she wore no jewellery and her face was sallow and drawn. Instinctively, Marlowe bowed.

She held out her hand to him. ‘I am Charlotte of Bourbon-Montpensier,’ she said in French, ‘Princess of Nassau. You are Monsieur Marlowe?’

‘I am, Highness,’ Marlowe replied in the same language.

‘We will speak in English,’ Charlotte said. ‘Even here, walls have ears.’

He nodded, grateful at least for that. She took a seat and ushered him in to one next to her while the ladies-in-waiting waited. ‘I fear,’ she said softly, ‘you may have come too late. The doctors advise that my husband cannot recover.’

‘Forgive me, madam,’ Marlowe said, ‘but time is of the essence. I heard at the Hook that the Statholder was ill. Do you rule in his place?’

‘Rule?’ Charlotte laughed bitterly. ‘One town and miles of marshland, hemmed in on one side by the sea beggars and on the other by the might of Spain? Oh, yes, Master Marlowe, my kingdom knows no bounds.’

‘Forgive me, lady.’ Marlowe was still trying to find a way to reach this woman. ‘Your husband’s doctors will of course be the finest in the land?’

‘I have no reason to doubt them.’ Charlotte sat upright, suddenly on her dignity. The letters that Hans had shown her a moment ago bore the seal of the Privy Council of England and the lion and dragon of Elizabeth, the Queen. Yet the man before her wore the rags of a pedlar and a mad one at that. And here he was, questioning the ability of the royal doctors.

‘Nor I,’ Marlowe said. ‘But I have people with me who may yet be able to help.’

‘People?’ Charlotte frowned. ‘What sort of people?’

‘Egyptians,’ he said. ‘Is that what you call them in this country?’

Hern looked at Marlowe sternly and put his hands on his hips. ‘That is not how we work, Master Marlowe, and you know it. We never offer our services to people. They have to come to us, it is part of the cure. You know that.’

‘But, Hern, this could do us a lot of good. Think how much the Statholder would pay the person who cured him. Soft beds and soft living for the rest of the winter, if that’s what you want. I know the women would welcome it, especially Maria. Her time must be nearly here.’

‘How did you know that Maria was with child?’ Hern snapped. ‘It is not the way with our women to let the child show. Her clothes should hide it from all eyes except the father’s.’

‘I have not been travelling with you all these weeks without learning some tricks,’ Marlowe said. ‘So, you have just told me for certain that you are the father. Thank you, I didn’t know that for sure. Maria stands with her hands in the small of her back when she straightens from her tasks. I remember seeing other women do that; our women are not so shy about letting the child show. Also, she is given treats to eat by the other women, fruit when there is any, the inside of the bread, rather than the hard crust.’

‘Clever watching, Master Marlowe, but that doesn’t tell anyone when a woman is with child, just that she has kind friends.’

‘Also, I happened to come upon you and Maria behind the wagon the other day. You were kissing her and stroking her belly. That was what gave me my biggest clue.’ Marlowe waited to see if he had gone too far, but Hern threw back his head and laughed.

‘At last, Kit Marlowe, you are a true Egyptian,’ he roared. ‘Yes, you are right, the child could come at any time. Maria is not young any more and this child may give her trouble. She would be glad of a safe home for a while. But if we fail to recover the Statholder’s health, what then? If he dies, we will be held responsible. We could all dance on the end of a rope, men, women, children. You.’

Marlowe took this without a flicker. This was true, except that it was doubtful that he would ever dance on a rope. ‘I have seen Lily heal the sick,’ he said. ‘In the house of John Dee, just weeks ago. I’m sure she can do this.’

‘It will be Lily’s choice,’ Hern said. ‘I will put no pressure on her. But, and I must ask this, Master Marlowe, how were you in a position to offer our help to the Princess of Nassau? The royal family of any country are not usually to be found at our shows. Simon missed you in the tumbling. He had to content the crowd with some shows of strength.’ Hern pictured the debacle in his mind silently and shook his head. ‘It was not a success, I must tell you. The vegetables are frozen hard in these parts in December. He is nursing his bruises.’ He smiled in spite of himself. ‘So that’s where you were, was it? At the Prinsenhof?’

‘A sister of mine is married to the brother of one of the maids in waiting to the princess,’ Marlowe extemporized. ‘I went to see if I could say hello. On my brother-in-law’s behalf.’

‘How kind. What a close family you must have,’ Hern said, straight faced. ‘And did you?’

‘Did I what?’

‘Say hello on your brother-in-law’s behalf?’

‘No, sadly. She was off duty today. But I did happen to bump into the princess. She was on her way from her husband’s bedside and we got . . . chatting.’

Hern looked hard at the ragged thing in front of him, a sartorial shadow of his former self. And yet there was something in the soulful dark eyes and the angel’s mouth which said that it was possible, just possible, that he could end up chatting to a princess he met in a corridor. Hern decided to believe him, just this once. ‘And so, she mentioned . . . ?’

‘Yes, she mentioned her husband was gravely ill, had been in a deep unwakening sleep for weeks and none could help him. She looks close to death herself, in fact. Very sallow and ill-looking. She perhaps needs some attention too. But if her husband could be woken, that would be a comfort to her, at least.’

‘But again I say, what if he dies?’

‘Why should he? Was Lily’s performance a trick?’

Hern smiled. Lily’s powers of healing was one of the Egyptian skills which was not a trick. But it wasn’t foolproof, either. Sometimes, it didn’t work and in this case it would not be a simple matter of being chased out of town in a rain of rotten fruit and imprecations.

‘It was no trick, Master Marlowe. Lily is with the children in the middle wagon. Go and ask her if she will help. But no coercion, mind. And that means no fluttering those eyelashes either. Just ask her straight, and take her first answer, whatever it may be. And don’t forget, I’ll find out if you lie.’

‘I promise, Hern.’ Marlowe said. ‘I’ll just put it to her that there is a man out there in the town who has been the victim of terrible plots to kill him and he is lying close to death, wearing out his wife, breaking the hearts of his children and putting his entire country at risk of being overrun by Spanish troops intent on pillage, rape and driven by religious mania. Then she can make up her own mind whether to help him or not. Is that fair?’

Hern cast up his eyes and flapped his hand at the man to go and do as he pleased. Whatever else he had learned about Kit Marlowe, he knew that he would at least always do that.

John Dee always did as he pleased too, but at that moment, back over the lumbering, bouncing sea to Ely, he was incapable of conscious choice. Sam Bowes and the cook were worried about him, a more or less permanent state of affairs for any members of his household. That the man was peculiar, fractious, as demanding as any child was an undoubted fact, but Bowes and the cook loved him like a father; which was odd, as Sam Bowes could have given him ten years and kept the change. But even when he was so distracted that he forgot to eat, or speak and went about in sulphur-stained robes with half his hair burned off, he was still the Master in the house and no one made a move without it being the move he had told them to make. So, Sam and the cook were like kites with broken strings and no wind to speak of. They just bounced aimlessly around, never going far, never doing much, just watching their Master and trying to get him to eat and perhaps be interested in something.

The cook, the gossip of the party, had the women of Ely in for ale and cakes every afternoon. The women enjoyed it, as a chance to wear their best caps and sit in front of someone else’s fire for a change. The cook, of course, was in search of an interesting conundrum to make her Master sit up and take notice. But humdrum not conundrum was what the women delivered and Sam Bowes was glad that Dee took no notice of the household accounts. The amount of butter, sugar and eggs that the cook was getting through was something amazing and yet still there was not a hint of a puzzle for their Master to solve. This was mainly because the murder of Helene Dee had been the most stupendous thing that had happened in the area for centuries and that was all they wanted to talk about. The cook decided to give up the afternoon meetings as a bad job and was looking for Bowes to tell him so when she bumped into her Master as he came round a corner at more than his usual speed.

‘Where’s Sam?’ he asked, with no preamble.

‘I’m looking for him myself, sir,’ the cook said.

‘Well, find him quickly, quickly. We’re going back to Cambridge. I have decided that I am going to live at my old college, St John’s, for a while. Perhaps I can forget . . .’ he waved a hand over the Hall and the staircase. He seemed to conjure up the rest of the house in a cloud of memories streaming from his finger ends, as well as all the other houses they had lived in, finding Helene that first time, telling fortunes on a village green, seeing her in the smoke of his fire the night before, his lonely life before she was in it and since.

‘I thought perhaps if I could go somewhere where she had never been, I might be able to forget her for a while.’

The cook understood that. She had had a family once, husband, children. But when they died of the sweating sickness she had shaken the dirt from her feet, left her cottage door open for whoever needed it and joined the mad household of Doctor John Dee. Edward Kelly had been with him then, and he had eased her heart for a while, until he had broken it all over again. She heaved a sigh. She had loved Nell like a daughter and missed her very much, in the evenings, over her endless slices of toast.

‘A change of scene will do us all good, Master,’ she said. ‘Shall I pack?’

Dee waved his hand again. ‘No,’ he said. ‘We’re going now, as soon as you can find Sam. I want to be in my rooms by Christmas.’

‘Where will we be?’ the cook asked, panic seizing her by the throat. She was too old now to start again and the toast had taken its toll on her once girlish figure. There would be no Edward Kelly to warm her bed this time, she was sure.

‘You can have rooms too, I’m sure,’ Dee said. ‘I am after all one of St John’s most revered alumni. There will be no problem in finding room for us all. Quickly, quickly, fetch Sam and put on your cloak.’ He looked at her, as if for the first time. ‘You have grown portly, cook. Can you ride a horse?’

‘If someone helps me up on one,’ cook said. She had ridden bareback over the South Downs when she was a girl. She heard that riding a horse was something you never forgot how to do; she hoped that that particular old wives’ tale was more accurate than most of the others.

Dee looked her up and down again. Twenty stones if she was a grain, he was sure. But that was what Bowes was here for. And sure enough, here was Bowes, running down the corridor on his bandy legs. Cook would make three of him on a good day, but he was probably stronger than he looked. Those wiry types often were.

‘There you are, Samuel,’ Dee cried, with something of his old animation. ‘We’re off to Cambridge, so fetch a coat for yourself, there’s a good chap. It’s freezing out.’

‘What do I need a coat for?’ Bowes was confused. It had taken two months to pack for this move. Surely, the Master couldn’t mean that they were going to Cambridge today? For a start, there was a goose fattening in the barn, for the Christmas dinner and all sorts of gentry invited for the season. The Leslies would have expected as much.

‘Because,’ Dee said, enunciating clearly, ‘we are off to Cambridge and it is freezing out.’ Ye Gods and Demons! First the cook balloons up to a hundred times her original size and now Bowes has gone simple. He felt as if he was waking from a dream, some of it sweeter than sugar, much of it bitterer than gall. ‘So, get your coats, cloaks and whatever you need. I am just going to pack a satchel with my essentials and off we go.’ He turned and went back into the room he had been using as his snug, rubbing his hands together. ‘It will be just like old times.’

Bowes looked at the cook. ‘This is your fault,’ he said severely. ‘You would do it!’

‘All I did was ask that Egyptian for a charm,’ she said, her voice wobbling with emotion. ‘It seemed polite, after they did all those tricks. It only cost me a groat.’

‘And did you use it?’

The cook looked down at where she was pretty sure her feet were. ‘Yes,’ she said, sullenly.

‘And what did you wish for?’

The cook mumbled, but Bowes could not hear what she said.

‘Humph,’ he said. ‘All I can say is that you should have listened to what Nell always said. Be careful what you wish for. It might come true.’ He looked at her as she stood there, head down, wringing her hands in distress. ‘Now, then. Go and get your cloak and I’ll get the horses round. How are you at catching geese?’

She looked up, alarmed.

‘No, I thought not. I’ll catch it, then. At this rate, it will be so tame none of us will want to eat the damned thing. Tell the Master the horses will be round the front. And bring a chair out with you. There is no power on Earth, in Heaven or Hell that will help me get you up on a horse’s back. You’ll have to climb up yourself. Quick now, shift yourself, woman.’ He gave her a slap on the rump as he went round behind her and she stood quivering with indecision in the middle of the Leslies’ Great Hall.

Bowes went muttering round to the stables and saddled up two horses. The third horse, because he was not an unkind man, he put in the harness of an old dog cart that was collecting cobwebs in the corner. If she asked, or went all coy on him, he could always say it was for the comfort of the goose.