TWELVE

‘Are you the one they call Hern?’ Hans Neudecker was at his most imperious when talking to the Egyptians.

Hern would have liked to have answered him with a flash of lightning and a rattle of thunder, but he settled for a low flourish and a gust of plumes in the breeze of the courtyard.

‘His Highness the Prince of Nassau requests your company,’ Hans looked with disgust at the rag-tail camp that had turned the Prinsenhof into a common stews. ‘All of you,’ he said.

Hern nodded to Simon, Frederico, Ernesto and Balthasar and the five of them followed Hans up the stone stairs that led under the archway, the others following in their wake. No one quite knew what this summons meant. They had performed for the Statholder’s court several times since their arrival, with fire-eating and juggling and columns of blue smoke. But they had never performed for the Statholder because he had been lying close to death in his private apartments. Only Starshine carried her tambourine; only Brackett had the snake coiling around him.

Hans led them to a landing they had not seen before, with marble floors and blue and white painted tile walls. They reached a pair of huge doors, gilded with the Nassau arms of the lion rampant and were told to wait. Hans slipped in by a side door and moments later the huge double doors swung back and the Nassau family sat in state like a court portrait, looking at them.

William the Silent himself still had his head bandaged, but it was carefully covered by a broad plumed hat and he wore silk sashes with orders glittering on his chest. Beside him, Princess Charlotte looked old and ill and pale, but she managed a smile for the Egyptian children. The Nassau girls, in order of age and height, stood on the dais around their parents, dressed like their mother, looking like them both. Little Katharina saw Brackett’s snake and her eyes lit up. But she was six and her father was the Statholder of the United Provinces; she knew how to behave and she didn’t move an inch. Emilia was less demure. At half her sister’s age, she didn’t have her decorum and her dress was heavy with brocade and itchy. She saw Starshine, a girl not much older than she was and she saw the tambourine.

In a second she had struggled free from her mother’s restraining hand and was standing in front of Starshine, pointing at the tambourine and jabbering away in Dutch. Lily gently took the instrument out of Starshine’s grubby hands and gave it to the littlest princess, who gurgled with delight and shook it, at first gently, then with all the power she possessed.

Hern had not taken his eyes off the man who stood on the dais to the Statholder’s right, a little behind the throne. Kit Marlowe was no longer in the ribboned rags of the Egyptians but wore a pair of Venetian breeches and a doublet and cloak of the Dutch court, a swept-hilt rapier gleaming at his hip.

‘Come forward, Master Hern,’ William said in his clearest English. Hern obeyed and repeated the flourish he had given to Hans in the courtyard.

‘Which is the girl, Lily?’ William the Silent wanted to know.

Hern clicked his fingers and she crept forward, not wanting to look at the Statholder nor at Marlowe beside him. She curtseyed low and when she tried to rise again, Hern held her still so that she ended up kneeling, bareheaded in her sack dress, like a ragged saint in the old pictures of William’s youth.

‘My child,’ he said and beckoned her to him. She knelt in front of him on the dais and stared at his gilded shoes. He beckoned Hans who was carrying a cushion and he took from it a gold chain with the enamelled lion of Nassau and heavy pearls hanging from it. The Statholder laid it around Lily’s neck and she gasped with the cold on her bare skin and the weight of it. ‘That,’ said William softly, ‘is for saving the life of the Statholder. For saving the life of the Netherlands.’

He glanced up at Hern who had not moved, except for his jaw hanging a little further open. ‘It would buy me a warship,’ the Statholder told him, ‘or a regiment of pikemen. It will keep you and your band for life.’ The Egyptians looked at each other, amazed and then their disbelief turned to an excited jabbering that the Nassaus could not understand. Only Hern remained silent; only Emilia was still tinkling her tambourine.

Suddenly, Hern clapped his hands and all was still. He unhooked the chain of office from Lily’s neck. ‘We cannot accept this, sir,’ he said. There was an inrush of air from almost everybody. Protocol had floated out of the window into the courtyard below. Only the Spaniards treated William the Silent with such contempt. Hans was appalled and spun on his heel, leaving the chamber.

‘My Lord,’ Hern said to the Statholder, ‘your fires have warmed us for these past weeks. Your kitchens have fed us. We are not used to company like this. In England –’ he grinned at Marlowe – ‘for a prince to entertain an Egyptian is unheard of. Descended as we are from the Ptolemies of old, there is no precedence for this. Lily did what she did because she can. Let that be enough.’ And he clapped his hands again, laying down the gold chain on the dark blue carpet as he did so. Instantly, the Egyptians all bowed or curtsied and filed out, Starshine seizing the moment, as little girls will, to snatch back her tambourine.

Lily had not moved. Heaven had been offered to her with that chain and Hern had snatched it away. Balthasar read her thoughts and hung back to lift her to her feet. The royal family had not moved.

‘Gunpowder!’ It was Balthasar’s voice echoing through the vast hall, bouncing off the vaulted ceiling and bringing armed guards at the double. The soothsayer darted across to the corner where a bright line of sparks was hissing across the floor, making for the dais. Marlowe was only a second behind him and the two men threw themselves on the crackling black line, billowing puffs of smoke now as it neared the throne.

The Statholder had the presence of mind to gather his family to him, but little Emilia was still standing in the line of fire, bereft of her tambourine, scarlet-faced and wailing. Marlowe dashed forwards and lifted the girl up under one arm and shepherded the others to the far corner.

Balthasar stood up, his face and clothes singed and blackened. Hans clattered into the chamber with yet more guards and the halberds clashed together against all exits, penning the Egyptians and the royal family in. Marlowe checked there was no more danger. No cocked pistols, no murderous flashing knives. Then he followed the line of powder that nobody had noticed, on past the dais to a recess in a wall. Here the unburned fuse dangled from a wooden tinderbox, half hidden by a carpet. Balthasar was with him.

‘Wat heb je daar?’ William asked, in Dutch because he was so shaken.

‘What is it?’ Hans asked in English, only now venturing a little nearer.

‘A bomb,’ Marlowe told him, ‘and a clever one. Balthasar, have you ever seen anything like this?’

The soothsayer shook his head. ‘Never,’ he said. ‘My tricks are of the less earthly kind. I leave the flashes and bangs to others.’

Marlowe looked across at the Egyptians, cowering silently in the corner. Only Hern stood upright, defiant, proud, unmoved by the near miss of the last few seconds. Simon stood blinking with the speed and terror of it all, crossing himself repeatedly in minuscule movements which Marlowe only noticed because he knew who he was and what he would need at this moment. Simon the Jesuit. The man in the room who would most want the Statholder dead.

‘Why wasn’t the thing hidden here?’ Hans asked, peering into the box full of black powder, ‘under the throne? Assuming as we must that His Highness was the intended victim.’

‘Because I checked there,’ Marlowe told him, ‘every inch of the dais, the throne, the carpet.’ He looked up at the stone column against which the makeshift bomb lay. ‘And this –’ he patted the cold stone – ‘would have been just as effective.’ He pointed to the Gothic ribs of stone that radiated to the boss in the centre. ‘One explosion here and the entire roof would have caved in.’ He looked solemnly at the Statholder. ‘Your entire family would have gone, Highness,’ he said.

Hern crossed to Balthasar and Marlowe. ‘You have left us, Master Marlowe,’ he said, gesturing to the man’s clothes.

‘Nothing is forever,’ Marlowe said. ‘What do you know about this?’

‘Saltpetre, sulphur and charcoal.’ Hern shrugged. ‘Black powder; deadly if you know how to use it.’

‘And you do,’ Marlowe told him. ‘You use it in your act all the time.’

‘Tut, tut, Master Marlowe.’ Hern smiled. ‘And here was I thinking you believed in our magic.’

‘There’s nothing magic about murder,’ Marlowe said, staring the man down. ‘Balthasar, have you been in this room before?’

‘Never.’ The man shook his head.

‘Hern?’

The leader of the Egyptians shook his.

‘Which leaves . . .’ Marlowe looked at the others across the hall, huddled together, Simon comforting the children and looking anxious, Frederico not understanding any of it.

‘. . . Hans,’ he said softly.

Hern was too old a hand to turn to stare at the chamberlain but Balthasar could not resist it. Hans was in earnest conversation with the Statholder as each man took stock of what had just happened.

‘No,’ Balthasar said. ‘That’s impossible.’

Marlowe stood in front of him. ‘Who’s talking now?’ he asked. ‘The country bumpkin who just happened to know Edward Kelly or the seer of souls who prophecies men’s deaths?’

Balthasar blinked. He’d come to like Kit Marlowe over their weeks together, but there was something about him that was dangerous. ‘He’s the Statholder’s right-hand man,’ he said. ‘We’ve all seen that.’

‘And you’ve seen more of it than the rest of us,’ Hern reminded Marlowe. ‘You tell us, Judas.’

Before Marlowe could answer, Hans had thudded the floor with his staff of office and the guards began to shepherd the Egyptians, Hern and Balthasar with them, out of the doors and along the corridor. The chamberlain bowed low to the Statholder before taking his leave and followed them out, just to make sure they’d really gone. He’d double the guard on their courtyard camp tonight; you couldn’t take chances with the children of the moon. On his way, he noticed a piece of parchment flutter to the ground and swept it up in one fluid movement.

William the Statholder stroked his wife’s pale cheek and kissed her, nodding to the remaining guards to take his family to their quarters. ‘Check every room,’ he barked at them. ‘Under the beds, in the cupboards, everywhere. I’ll personally see to it that any man failing in his duty has his tongue cut out.’

They saluted with heels and halberds and led the family away, the children babbling excitedly and little Emilia still lamenting the loss of the tambourine.

‘Can you tell me why?’ the Statholder said to Marlowe as he picked up the golden chain from where Hern had placed it. ‘Why people to whom this represents a lifetime’s wages would turn it down.’

Marlowe shook his head. ‘I long ago gave up trying to understand the Egyptians,’ he said, ‘but we have more pressing problems, Highness . . .’

The Statholder held up his hand. ‘My life has been saved twice,’ he said, ‘and by an Egyptian each time. But I thank you for your speed and quick thinking, Master Marlowe. Sir Francis Walsingham has chosen wisely.’

‘It’s not about the Egyptians we need to talk, Highness,’ Marlowe said.

In the low-vaulted chamber below the courtyard, beyond a door through which only one person walked, the chamberlain to the House of Nassau kissed the crucifix on the altar and knelt in silent prayer. Then he opened the piece of paper he had just picked up from the floor in the passageway above and read the two words, ‘Marlowe knows.’

He crossed himself and made for the light.

The Statholder was sitting at his dining table as darkness fell on that short winter’s day. Around him servants drew the heavy velvet curtains and lit the candles. The logs crackled and spat in the huge ornate fireplace, cursing the world as they died in the flames. Kit Marlowe looked up from a chair next to the Statholder as Hans swept in. For an instant, he faltered in his stride, then stood at the far end of the great table, bowing low before his master.

‘Hans . . .’ the Statholder’s voice tailed away, ‘Master Marlowe has something to say to you.’

The chamberlain raised an eyebrow and barely acknowledged the Johannes-come-lately at his master’s elbow. For all his bravado and his devil-deep eyes, the man was no better than a common thug and here was the most powerful man in the Low Countries giving him house room.

‘How long have you served the Statholder, Hans?’ Marlowe asked.

The man blinked. ‘All my adult life,’ he said. ‘As my father served his father.’

‘And when did you break with Rome?’

‘I don’t understand,’ Hans said.

‘It’s simple enough.’ Marlowe got to his feet and switched to Flemish to make it easier for the man. ‘When did you forsake his Holiness the Pope, whom we in England call the Bishop of Rome? When did you take the sacrament of the Calvinist church?’

Hans blinked again. ‘Some years ago,’ he said.

‘Precisely when?’ Marlowe badgered him.

‘Highness . . .’ Hans began, but Marlowe interrupted.

‘Look at me, sir,’ he growled. ‘I am your worst nightmare. When did you convert to the Protestant faith?’

‘I cannot remember,’ Hans shouted back, ‘precisely.’

‘Very well.’ Marlowe was calmer now and turned to the only window still undraped. The servants had gone and William liked to leave one light at a window and to see the darkening world beyond it. ‘You know the Prinsenhof well?’

‘Of course,’ Hans said, relaxing a little. ‘I have been with His Highness since we moved from Antwerp.’

‘You know all its little corridors and recesses? Its secrets, if you will?’

‘The place was a convent once,’ Hans told him. ‘I imagine it has many secrets. If we believe half of what we’re told about these nuns . . .’ Hans suddenly remembered Princess Charlotte’s former calling and apologized at once. ‘Oh, forgive me, Highness.’

The Statholder waved it aside. He was long past caring about slips of the tongue. ‘Get to the point, Master Marlowe.’ He sighed.

‘The point.’ Marlowe folded his arms, staring at his bobbing reflection in the window panes, the scholar gypsy framed by six haloes of candlelight. ‘When did you renounce the Protestant faith?’ His voice was only a little above a whisper now. ‘When did you rejoin the Church of Rome and kiss the arses of the Duke of Parma and King Philip of Spain?’

Hans stood speechless.

‘You see, Master Chamberlain, only you could have known where to place that powder box so that the roof would cave in. Only you had access to that amount of gunpowder. You left the room in outrage because poor frightened Lily, the Egyptian girl, was told to turn down the Statholder’s gold. In reality, you went to light the fuse in the corridor outside. Because you didn’t give a damn, did you? Statholder, wives, children, Egyptians, it didn’t matter to you. In fact, it was a bonus – Nassau and the heirs of Nassau under one collapsed, bloody roof. King Philip would give you one of his New World colonies in his sheer delight.’

The silence was almost audible. Even the logs in the grate were listening.

‘Hans,’ the Statholder whispered. ‘How could you?’

The chamberlain leapt forward, his rapier in his hand, overturning the table with a powerful kick and lungeing at the Statholder’s head. The blade bit deep into the wood as William ducked aside and Marlowe turned like a spinning top and threw his dagger which thudded into Hans’ back. He staggered, the sword gone from his grasp, trying weakly to pull the Englishman’s blade out. Marlowe caught him as he fell, blood trickling from his nose and mouth.

‘May your soul rot in Hell, Englishman,’ Hans hissed and shuddered to a convulsing heap on the floor.

The Statholder stood up and tugged the sword free as guards, alarmed by the crash of overturning furniture, clattered into the room with servants behind them. ‘I had hoped,’ he muttered to Marlowe, ‘it was merely the man’s incompetence. Now I see it all.’ He looked along the length of the chamberlain’s blade, the one that had so nearly bisected his head. ‘Three or four inches to the right,’ he said, ‘and it would have gone through my eye socket. Master Marlowe, I owe you my life or I owe it to the Egyptians. Can I ever repay that debt?’

‘This man,’ Marlowe said, ‘was he once your faithful servant?’

William looked at the chamberlain’s body as Marlowe pulled out his knife blade. ‘I believed so,’ he nodded sadly. ‘I will always believe so.’

‘Then send for the Egyptian they call Simon,’ Marlowe said.

‘Why?’ the Statholder was curious.

‘He has his own ways of comforting the dead,’ he said.

The flames guttered that night in the Egyptian camp. All around the walls of the Prinsenhof rose sheer and black, the guards patrolling the walks grunting to each other in the cold routine of their march, cloaks wrapped around their leather jacks and gleaming steel.

Kit Marlowe sat by the fire with the others, but his eyes never strayed far from the windows of the prince’s private apartments across the courtyard. Now that Hans Neudecker was dead, perhaps . . .

‘I was wrong.’ Hern’s voice was strong and commanding in the firelight. ‘You weren’t running away from anything, Master Marlowe, were you? You were running towards it. To the court of William the Silent. To a date with destiny. That was your mission.’

Marlowe looked up at him under his brows. Is that what it was? Destiny? There had already been two attempts on the life of the Statholder – Jean Jaureguy, Hans Neudecker. But there would be others. As long as William of Nassau was there, as long as he was the Netherlands, there had to be others. And would this be Marlowe’s life, then? A permanent exile from his own land, like Minshull at the Hook, with his Dutch pantaloons and Dutch clogs and Dutch cheese? Marlowe had missed Canterbury from time to time while he was at Cambridge. Now, in that strange, bitter night, he missed Cambridge too. The kind voice of Michael Johns, the prattling of Matty Parker and the good friendship of Tom Colwell; the cockroaches crawling in the Buttery; even the endless sniping of Gabriel Harvey; he missed all that. And he didn’t answer Hern.

‘Time for a story, Kit,’ Frederico said, crossing his legs over a saddle and draping an arm around Lily. Perhaps their child would have a brother or sister again one day, after all.

There was a babble of excitement from the children, who left whatever they were doing and formed a half circle around the teller of takes.

‘Give us the one about the piper and the rats,’ Brackett shouted.

‘No, no,’ Lukas sprayed. ‘The fox and the grapes.’

‘A love story,’ Lily said, looking hard at Frederico. ‘Something to warm us up on a cold night.’

‘No, no,’ Marlowe said, shaking his head. He was looking directly at Balthasar. ‘I have a new tale tonight.’

There was a chorus of oohs and aahs, real from the children, ironic from Hern and Balthasar, worried from Simon.

Marlowe waited until their noise had died down and then looked at all of them in turn, with their grubby faces and bright eyes in the flicker of the flames. ‘You may scoff –’ he smiled – ‘but I think you will enjoy it. It is a love story, a story of a journey and a cautionary tale, all rolled into one. So, lie back, my best beloved, curl up somewhere warm and soft where you can close your eyes and listen to my tale.’

He waited in the firelight until the rustling had stopped. Everyone had found their best positions and were comfortable after a good meal from the Statholder’s kitchen. The guards stepped more quietly as they passed, to catch a little of the story. Mothers clasped children in their laps, lovers clasped each other. Maria was tenderly propped on some sacks until her poor, tired back was relieved of the burden of Hern’s child in her belly, just for a while, just while she listened to the story.

‘My story begins,’ Marlowe said, in low tones which nevertheless could be heard in every corner of the courtyard, ‘both many years ago and yesterday. My story was old when Adam first walked in Eden and is as new as a new-laid egg still warm from the hen. My story is of a man who loved a woman, so much that he hardly dare look at her, let alone touch her.’

There was a sigh and a snuggling noise as Lily nestled closer under Frederico’s arm.

‘This woman was as beautiful as the day. Her hair was like the sun and her eyes were like two pools of molten sky. Her ears were like shells, pink and convoluted and when she stood in the window of the great house the man had given her to live in, the light shone through, just a little, at the tips and made them into lambent gold. Her form was as a fallow deer, spring was in her step and where she walked, flowers bloomed.’

‘There was never a woman like that,’ a voice called from the darkness. It sounded like Simon, and Marlowe thought it amusing that he alone knew; of all present, Simon was the one who should know that the least. But perhaps even priests were men, underneath.

‘No, there was not,’ Marlowe said. ‘The woman, to everyone else, had yellow hair, bluish eyes, sticking out ears and she was a bit heavy in the beam, a bit lacking up top here.’ And he sketched a shape with his hands. The men guffawed and the women sniffed their disapproval. The children, knowing a joke had been made, but not really understanding it, laughed as well.

‘But to the man who loved her, there was never one such in the world. He feared that another man would see her and win her away from him, so he kept her shut away in his great house, where she was quite tolerably happy. She had had a life before which had not been so comfortable and so she liked the feather beds, the big fires lit and tended by someone else and the food at regular times, with not too many burned bits and nothing that still had the fur on it.’

There was a dutiful chorus of various sounds of disgust and he let it settle down before continuing.

‘The woman had never thought herself beautiful, but when she saw herself reflected in the man’s eyes, she could see what he saw and this made her happy. They spent many hours gazing at each other, he drinking in her loveliness, she seeing a self that she had not known existed. Because what the man could see was the beauty within.’

Marlowe sought out where Lily lay in the darkness and knew she was looking at him from the reflected firelight in her eyes.

‘Then, one day, into their great house there came a pestilence that had no name and although it touched all there with a cold, cold finger, only the woman was really chilled by it. She fell into a deep sleep and nothing that could be done would warm or wake her. The man was by way of being a bit of a wizard, which perhaps I should have told you before. But he had not used his magic since he had met the woman, because she didn’t like it. The servants begged him to use it now, to bring their mistress back to life.’

There was a sob from far back in the courtyard and Marlowe could just see the dull shine of a guard’s helmet, bobbing as he wiped his nose on his sleeve.

‘For a long time he refused, but when it was clear that she would not wake up, he promised that he would do his best to work his magic, as he had so often for so many people before. So he told his servants to keep their mistress safe, to keep her warm and to wet her lips every hour with honey, so that she should not starve, and every half an hour with clear spring water, so that she should not die through thirst.’

‘Did they do it?’ Starshine leaned forward and touched him on the knee. ‘She didn’t die, did she, Kit?’

Hern leaned forward and cuffed her lightly round the head. ‘Master Marlowe to you, miss,’ he said.

‘She didn’t die, did she, Master Marlowe?’ she repeated.

‘Wait and see,’ he whispered and opened his arms for her to sit on his lap. He didn’t ever see himself as a father, but any father could do far worse than Starshine. She jumped up and turned sideways in his lap, her ear against his heart, sucking her fingers for comfort.

‘Every day, the servants did as he told them and every day the beautiful woman lay as the dead, except that she was just slightly warmer than the air in the room and she breathed slowly, so slowly that it could hardly be seen. A flutter at the side of her neck told them that the blood was still in her body, but she was as pale as ice, and so still. While she lay there, the man travelled the world. He needed certain things and they were not to be found in the grounds of his great house.’

‘What did he need?’ Maria said, completely ravelled up in the story, her back forgotten.

‘He needed ten things,’ Marlowe said. ‘He needed a kiss from a girl with flaxen hair, given freely as the moon turned blue. He needed a thread from the robe which Christ had worn when he took his last supper. He needed an eyelash from a frog, a feather from the wing of a wandering albatross, the last breath of a man who had never spoken a blasphemy, the spittle of an albino bat.’ He looked at Brackett, still wound round by his snake, both of them basking in the heat of the fire. ‘How many is that?’

‘Six,’ Brackett said. ‘You need four more.’

‘Not I,’ Marlowe said. ‘This man, the wizard needs four more. He needed a stone from the head of a toad, he needed the first catkin of spring and the last leaf of autumn from the hazel tree that grows out of the wall of the innermost temple in the Hagia Sofia in Constantinople. And finally, he needed the blessing of his mother, in her grave the last forty years.’

‘Impossible,’ grunted Ernesto in the dark.

‘Impossible you say and you would be right. He knew that only one of these things was the magic one, but he didn’t know which one. So he travelled the world and time to get them all and after many adventures was back at the bedside of his beloved, his beautiful wife.’

He paused to listen to the clicking silence of the courtyard and felt the thrill of having an audience in the very palm of his hand. Eventually, as he had intended, someone could no longer bear it.

‘And did she come back to life?’ Eloise said.

‘Oh, yes,’ Marlowe said, with a cold smile. ‘She came back to life and told him all he ever needed to know, about how the dead live and what it was that sent them to the dead place where she had been. She knew everything and told it to the magician, the wizard, her husband.’ He finished with a flourish and said, ‘There. Did you enjoy that story?’

‘It has an odd ending,’ Maria said. ‘Does it have a moral?’

‘Oh, yes,’ Marlowe said. ‘It has several. One is that you shouldn’t believe the opinion of your own eyes. Just because it looks like a duck and sounds like a duck it still might not be a duck when the wizard gets to work on it. And the other is . . . it’s late and we should all be in bed.’ He stood up, with Starshine in his arms. ‘Whose is she, exactly?’ he asked, holding her out to the assembled Egyptians.

‘I’ll take her,’ Lily said. ‘Thank you for the story, Master Marlowe.’

‘You’re welcome, Lily,’ he said. ‘Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. But you don’t need to know that – you are beautiful right through.’ He touched her cheek and Frederico pulled her to him, jealously. If there was one thing Christopher Marlowe was good at, it was making men jealous.