The smell of stale beer and tobacco smoke smacked Tom in the face as he swung open the low door of the Goose and Gall tavern on Hog Lane. Thomas Nashe had sent him a note telling him this was the favorite haunt of poets, pamphleteers, and others of the inky company. Tom peered through the murk and spotted his friend at a round table near the front. He asked a wench bearing two fistfuls of empty mugs to bring two full ones when she had the chance and joined him, pushing his feet off the stool so he could sit by the window.
He opened it a couple of inches to provide a breath of — well, not fresh air, but at least air not composed chiefly of smoke. He’d tried tobacco a time or two and didn’t much like it. The reek had clung to his doublet long enough for Trumpet to catch a whiff and treat him to her vividly expressed opinion of the vice.
The grimy window afforded an excellent view of the grimy wall across the lane, which couldn’t be much wider than nine feet. Still, he could see anyone approaching the tavern in time to dash out the back door if he so desired. A good spot for a man with debts, like most of these poor scribblers.
“What’s the word?” he asked Nashe, anticipating a nonsensical reply.
“The word,” Nashe said slowly, screwing up his homely face, “is metaphysical transubstantiation.”
“Ouch.” Tom rubbed his ear. “That’s two words, which fetched me a bruise on the way in. Don’t you have a kinder one?”
“More kind, perhaps, but less germane.” Nashe shook his head. “Kind, kin, germane? No. Too obscure. ” He sighed. “Let’s get straight to business, shall we?”
“By all means. First, tell me why I’m here. Who was murdered, where, how, and when? All you’ve given me so far is the why: because the murderer thought the victims were you or one of your fellow anti-Mart —”
“Hssst! No one knows who we are. Or rather, only a select few know those names. More mimicking monkeys pop up every day. That’s why we need you. It’s supposed to be a great secret, yet someone outside our little circle . . .”
Nashe’s words turned into a leer as the wench arrived. He watched with rapt attention as she leaned forward to set the mugs on their table. She waited, hand on hip, while Tom and Nashe traded glares, silently contending which of them would pay. She tapped her foot and Tom relented. These coins came out of the government’s purse, after all, not his.
After she left, Nashe took a sip as if sampling a sweet wine, then put his elbows on the table, turning toward Tom and pitching his voice low. He could not have looked more like a conspirator if he’d drawn a black hood down to his pug nose. “The first victim’s name was John Little. Did I mention him? He lodged in the same house as Robert Greene. I’m in his room now, though hoping to avoid his fate.”
“You told me that much before.”
“Well, Greene and I are convinced that Little was killed in place of John Lyly, the third of our triad. He’s scuttled off to the country for the nonce. We three — or rather those two, with me brought in by Greene to do the legwork — were hired by our esteemed patron, the Canon of Westminster, Richard Bancroft.”
“Wait.” Tom gave Nashe a warning frown. This was not a subject for jesting. “You don’t mean to tell me that Mar-Martin was hired by the Church of England.”
“Oh, but I do.” Nashe grinned, nodding, eyes twinkling. “Life in London is more filled with wonders than even I could have imagined.”
“The Canon of Westminster — presumably a pious and sober knave — hired you and Robert Greene to write profane, yet jocular, pamphlets in order to quell the profane, yet jocular, pamphlets being written by a Presbyterian rogue.” Tom shook his head, baffled by the absurdity.
“Don’t try to understand it,” Nashe advised. “Just focus on the task at hand. Poor John Little met his end in the alley around the corner from our house, not far from here.”
“How was it done?”
“He was strangled with a leather cord, which we know because the murderer left it tied around poor Little’s neck. That was a week ago Monday — the eighteenth — sometime between ten o’clock, when Greene staggered home drunk, as usual, according to his landlady, and six o’clock the next morning, when the sweepers found him.”
“Aren’t there constables in this ward?”
Nashe shrugged. “It’s a liberty. It’s new to me. I don’t know how it’s governed.”
“I’ll want to visit the house and talk to the landlady. Have any neighbors come forward with anything? They might have had their windows open on these warm nights.”
“Not if they’re afraid of corrupt airs and mischievous spirits. There wouldn’t have been much to hear besides a few soft steps and low gurgle.” Nashe demonstrated the sound.
“If that’s all we’ve got, we’ll never catch him.”
“You’ll have to go the other way round. Find out who knows who we are, we three anointed ones. Who wants to silence us?”
“Who doesn’t?” Tom laughed. “In all seriousness, it’s too vague. I can’t ask that question without spilling the secret. What about the second one?”
“That newly minted angel is Edgar Stokes, the most inoffensive mortal ever to achieve publication in the City of London. He wrote about earthquakes, Clarady. Earthquakes and big winds and the morals that should be drawn from such notable events. His only sin lay in occupying the garret recently vacated by my humble self.”
“Strangled, I suppose?”
“No cord this time. Just fingers.”
“Ugh.” Tom swigged that image away with beer. “But wait! The name Stokes sounds nothing like Nashe. And besides, you said you hadn’t written any of Mar-Mart —” He cut off the name as Nashe touched a finger to his lips.
“I’m becoming quite a well-known figure in these parts. My future rises to greet me with open arms and a glad cry.”
That future must have representatives in low places because the words no sooner left his mouth when two men ambled up to their table. Both were dressed in gentleman’s attire, but one looked more prosperous than the other. He wore a scarlet doublet with yellow linings and short, round hose well-puffed over yellow stockings. He had a tall hat with a gallant feather and a fashionably pointed beard.
The other one’s potbelly strained the laces holding his rusty green doublet and baggy slops together. Their linings were faded linen, and his buttons were made of wood.
“Nashe!” the potbelly man cried, gripping his target’s shoulder hard enough to draw a wince. His ruddy hair stuck out around his small cloth cap, and his beard looked like he’d cut it himself with a dull knife.
“I’m real enough,” Nashe said, twisting free. “No need to prove my bodily existence.”
The well-dressed man slid onto the stool next to Tom with a flick of his eyebrows for a greeting. “I’m John Dando and my fat friend there is Oliver Oatmeale.”
“Impossible!” Tom gaped at them in delight. “I thought you were products of some printer’s imagination.” These were two of Ben’s favorite pamphleteers.
Oatmeale lifted his chin with mock dignity. “I assure you, my good man, we are both quite as real as your friend here.” He helped himself to a stool.
“I take it you’re familiar with our work,” Dando said, his blue eyes twinkling. “Tell me, which did you find the most compelling? In purely literary terms, I mean. How the Tripe Wife Tricked her Husband or Bank’s Bay Horse in a Trance?”
“The horse, definitely the horse. Though I’ll confess I haven’t kept up with your master works since my chambermate left me to take a wife. He’s the one who bought your pamphlets by the pound.”
“Bless him,” Dando said. “May he never come to regret the exchange.” His merry expression sobered as he turned toward Nashe. “Have you heard any more about your would-be assassin?”
Nashe shot Tom a sidelong glance and answered, “Nothing useful.”
“You’d best tuck yourself into bed behind locked doors well before dark,” Oatmeale said. “Good advice for us all since our strangler can’t tell us apart.”
“You’d think anyone could tell the difference between Thomas Nashe and an actual man,” Dando said. So much for the sober moment!
“All cats are gray in the dark,” Nashe retorted.
“Which would matter if the issue were color, not height,” Oatmeale said. “If your troublesome reports on Martin’s doings are equally confused, our strangler is strangling in vain.”
“Not if he’s strangling for the pleasure of it,” Dando said. “In that case, he’s a rousing success. Or so we assume, having been mercilessly spared the sight of the said rousing.”
The three men bantered on, pouring out words with more alliteration than import. Listening, Tom opened his mouth, then shut it again, twice. At last, he could hold his peace no longer. He pounded his fist on the table to get their attention. “Hold on! Isn’t Pasquill, or Mar-Martin, or whoever he is—isn’t his identity supposed to be a great secret?”
All three fell silent, giving him the round-eyed, blinking stares of men caught in bed with another man’s wife.
Oatmeale spoke first. “Did Nashe tell you that?”
Dando expanded the question. “Did Thomas ‘the babbling brook’ Nashe tell you that?”
The babbler shrugged a weak apology. “My friends, whose number does not include these two clowns, could scarcely fail to notice that writers were falling in my wake — and not in awe of my superior talents.”
That drew a round of spit-spraying lip farts.
Tom regarded them with narrowed eyes, drumming his fingers on the table dramatically, as if considering strangling them himself. Then he relented. “How many know? About Mar-Martin, I mean. I suppose the stranglings are general gossip by now.”
“I’ve written a full account,” Dando bragged. “It’ll be published tomorrow.”
“How much?” Oatmeale demanded. “Mine won’t be out till Thursday.”
“Copies,” Dando admitted. “But a gross of them, and I’m sure to get a penny apiece.”
“You’re quick,” Nashe said admiringly. “I hadn’t even thought about writing it up.”
“You have to be quick to get ahead of the pack,” Dando said with a wink at his friend. “And you have to add a moral to give it weight or the printer won’t even read it. Sensation sells to the churl on the street, but printers like to pretend they have loftier aims.”
Tom soaked up the information. Plain prose must be easier to write than love poetry, which had to rhyme. After his months with the Cambridge Puritans, he could moralize in his sleep. How likely was that penny apiece for one hundred and forty-four copies? It sounded like a lot. How long would it take to sell them?
That could wait. He asked his question again. “How many know about Mar-Martin and Nashe’s poking around the countryside?”
“Not many,” Dando answered. “The three conspirators, of course. Me and Oatmeale, maybe two or three others. We discussed it here for some time on Saturday after poor Stokes was found.”
“We’re all in danger,” Oatmeale said. “This killer doesn’t seem to care if he gets Mar-Martin or not. Most of us do a bit of roving around, sniffing out stories. Accounts of crimes and secret conspiracies sell like hotcakes at Lent, but there’s a lot of competition.”
“We don’t all have special patrons,” Dando said, cutting a sour glance at Nashe. Then he turned his cool blue eyes to Tom. “Tell us, Clarady. How do you know our friend Mr. Nashe?”
“From Cambridge.” Tom noted the envious tone, but left it unremarked. “I had a hand in solving a similar problem there, which is why he asked me to poke around and see what I can find out. It might be best to start at the beginning. Do you men have any idea who Martin is?”
“Buy us another jug and we’ll fill your ears,” Oatmeale said. “Ideas are our stock in trade.”
Tom waved at the serving wench and surrendered another tuppence. He filled all the cups and leaned back against the window frame with his own. “Let’s hear it.”
Dando smiled like the cat with the cream. “My favorite candidate is the ghost of the Earl of Leicester.”
Tom groaned.
“No, hear me out,” Dando said. “Everyone knows Leicester was the main protector of the most radical nonconformists. The queen’s favorite. Who could stop him? I don’t mean to say his ghost sat down on a tomb and wrote Martin’s Epistle by moonlight, but His Lordship could have written those tracts anytime, or had them written to his specifications. He might have set the whole process in train before his unfortunate demise.”
“That didn’t end up quite as stupidly as it started,” Tom said. “I don’t think it was Leicester or his ghost, but you might be pointing in the right general direction. Martin doesn’t seem to fear punishment. And he must have money to hire printers and move that press around the country. He must dish out bribes from time to time as well.”
“Not necessarily,” Nashe said. “At least not the bribes. These zealots know each other, don’t forget. They gladly pass their banned books and barred preachers from house to house.”
“Have to be a good-sized house,” Oatmeale said, “to have room for a printing press and two or three men to run it.”
“Which brings us back to a man with money,” Tom said. “We’ll add a good-sized house for good measure.”
“But that’s Martin,” Dando said. “None of us think Martin Marprelate the Great is stalking scribblers through the streets. We’re looking for Martin’s minion, who could be anyone.”
“Minion,” Tom said, savoring the word. “I like it. But who is he?”
“Someone whose wits have been curdled from too much Bible study,” Nashe said. His father was a vicar of the loyal variety, though a very poor one. Nashe had a special loathing for Presbyterians, Calvinists, and all other Puritanical sorts. He was a traditionalist at heart.
Dando said, “My first idea could still be right. Martin’s minion might be the living servant of Leicester’s ghost. Ghosts are bound to a single location, after all, like Leicester House on the Strand. He’d need a minion to mangle his manuscripts and murder —”
“Not the Strand,” Oatmeale said. “Too much traffic. What ghost could rest there? He’ll be in Kenilworth Castle, where’s there plenty of room to stretch out.”
They began to bicker again about the relative merits of a castle they had surely never seen and an equally unknown palace on the Strand. Tom rolled his eyes and turned his nose to the window for a smokeless breath of air. Lengthening shadows had darkened the narrow lane. A man wearing a dated doublet and knee-length galligaskins came into view, walking toward the tavern. He cast a furtive glance behind him, then hawked and spat as he approached the door. He paused on the threshold to give himself a little shake and square his shoulders, the way actors did before they strode onto the stage.
“No, no, no!” Oatmeale shouted, pulling Tom’s attention back to the table. “You’ve got it all wrong! The strangler isn’t Martin’s minion. He wouldn’t give a fart for Martin or his heresies. The motive is far baser — mere profit — and the strangler is none other than Thomas Nashe.” He raised his arm to stab an accusatory finger at his candidate.
“Me!” Nashe recoiled from the finger as if from a hot poker. “I didn’t even know those poor piddlers. I’m new here, in case you’ve forgotten.”
“Precisely,” Oatmeale said. “Here you are, new to London, supposedly fresh from university, but you haven’t any proof apart from an unusual ability to filch from the classics. You’re unknown, undistinguished, untested, and to be candid, difficult to spot given your diminutive stature.”
Dando wagged his finger, nodding sagely. “Yes, I can see it. I can see it all too well. Nashe could be Martin’s minion as well as Robert Greene’s new puppet. Playing both sides of the coin for double fees.”
Nashe tried for a shrewd look as he took a swig from his cup but lost the whole mouthful when Oatmeale clapped him on the back with a great guffaw. He righted himself, coughing and wiping his mouth with his hand while Dando and Oatmeale roared with laughter. Tom chuckled along, though he was losing patience with their foolery.
The man he’d seen outside sauntered up to their table and the laughter vanished like the light from a snuffed candle. The man smiled thinly, as if he’d attained his desired result.
“Munday,” Dando said, his tone unwelcoming.
Munday greeted the other pamphleteers with a curled lip. Not a friendly sort of churl. On the short side of average with a rounded brown beard well streaked with gray, though Tom guessed he was a year or two shy of thirty. Hard years, or unhappy ones, judging by the lines already etched into his forehead.
The newcomer must be a debt collector. But Nashe patted the table in front of Tom and said, “Meet Anthony Munday, a writer acclaimed for reminding everyone that their weekly holiday is over.”
“Thomas Clarady,” Tom said, tilting up his chin.
Munday returned the gesture, then walked around Dando to lean against the window, blocking Tom’s view. It didn’t matter; he didn’t need to look out. He only let his gaze wander when his nose ached for relief from the reek. But the sidelong glance Munday shot him as he settled his shoulder against the jamb said the move had been deliberate.
A challenge. Small, but unwarranted. Tom’s gut twinged a warning. He always heeded signals from that reliable source.
“Any news about the murders?” Munday asked.
The others shrugged. A pause developed, then Oatmeale said, “The authorities don’t seem to be pursuing the matter.”
“Maybe you should,” Dando said. “You’re a pursuivant, aren’t you?”
Munday smirked at the recognition. Most pursuivants were just official messengers, but this rough semi-gentleman didn’t seem that type. Another kind was sent out by Privy Councilors and court officials to track down criminals and serve warrants for their arrest. Others — the ones no one liked — roved around searching out violators of religious laws, both minor and major. Crypto-Catholics, mostly, although Martin Marprelate also qualified.
“I’ve done my part to serve my queen. It pays better than the drivel you wastrel lackwits piss out like stale beer.” He made a sour face at the spattered tabletop. “Lucky for me, there’s always some rat needs catching.” Munday turned his glittering black eyes directly at Nashe, curling his lip in a knowing sneer.
Nashe blinked, his nose twitching, speechless for once.
Oatmeale broke the tense moment by raising his cup. “Here’s hoping our rat gets caught before another of our brethren meets his doom. If all the pamphleteers are murdered, who’ll be left to tell the tale?”
“There’s always another scribbler coming out of the woodwork to scrabble at our heels,” Dando said, his eyes on Tom. “Keep your heads on, brothers, and remember — crime pays, if you can hotfoot it to your publisher.”
“Crime pays!” The foursome at the table cried, hoisting their cups in the air.
Munday watched them, not joining in, pointedly waiting until they’d drunk their toasts before draining his own cup. “Be careful what you wish for,” he said darkly, then wandered off to kill the laughter at another table.
“Dreary sort of a knave, isn’t he?” Tom poured another round. “Nobody seems to like him.”
“Not seems,” Dando said. He held up a finger for a moment of silence, then intoned the words, “His seams may be straight, but his aims are crooked.”
Tom chuckled at the witty phrasing, but the others didn’t even bother to smile. Tough audience.
He enjoyed this company, feeling at home among these clever lads. While listening to them bandy words, he considered the possibility of joining them on an occasional basis. Not leaving Gray’s — that would be stupid — but gentlemen of the lesser sort, like him, often wrote for publication, pamphlets especially. He had a university degree, like Nashe, Marlowe, and Greene. He was as qualified as anyone else.
He had no idea what he might write about and he wasn’t ready to face these sharp critics, but it was something to keep in mind.
Nashe said quietly, “If we want a good candidate for Martin’s minion, we need look no further.” He tilted his head in the direction Munday had gone.
Tom expected that idea to be ridiculed, but the others took it seriously. “I can’t believe you all agree on something,” he said. “What makes you think he has anything to do with this?”
“You saw the way he looked at me,” Nashe said. “He knows I’m the one that’s been bringing tidbits to Mar-Martin.”
“He doesn’t like you, that’s certain,” Dando said. “Whereas most people find you irritating and endearing in equal measure.”
Tom nodded at the justice in that assessment.
“Munday’s a nasty one,” Oatmeale told him. “He’s a writer, like the rest of us, more prolific than anyone but Greene, but with not a thimble’s worth of Greene’s talent. He’ll write anything for anyone, steal anything from anyone, and lay credit to things he never wrote, nor ever could.”
“But why would he care?” Tom asked. “Even a mistrustful whoreson like that Munday would need a strong reason to strangle two men.”
“Maybe he’s Martin’s minion,” Nashe said. “He hates Catholics and nobody hates Catholics more than the Puritans. I believe Martin’s in London somewhere or near. Munday could be the one delivering manuscripts to the printers.”
Tom frowned, thinking that through. Then Dando said, “Envy, that’s what it is. He thinks he’s the new Robert Greene. Why wouldn’t he try to get rid of the old one?”
“But he seems to be after Nashe and John Lyly,” Tom pointed out.
“To start with,” Dando said. “He must be furious that he wasn’t chosen to be one of the elite anti-Martinists. Maybe he thinks if he removes the current crew, he’ll be next on the canon’s list.”
“That’s not bad,” Tom said. “Not bad at all.” He hefted the jug and found it empty. He waved it at the wench near the counter. They’d need more drink to wash down the ugly thought of a writer strangling his rivals.
After the wench came and went, Dando said, “Let’s go back to Martin. Martin proper, not his minion. We don’t have to look as high as the Earl of Leicester, alive or dead. He could be any gentleman of leisure and education with a safe hiding place and powerful friends. He might, for example, be a member of an Inn of Court. Someone like Francis Bacon. Have any of you simpletons ever heard of him?”
Oatmeale shook his head. Tom could sense Nashe holding his breath, waiting for him to answer first. Tom hummed and looked up at the ceiling as if searching his memory, pondering which would be worse: to reveal himself now and spoil the camaraderie or let them discover the truth later, as they inevitably would because such secrets were the devil to keep, and these two made a living sniffing out such things. They’d hate him for the deception, but in the meantime, they might share something to help him do his job.
Besides, if they learned he was a member of Gray’s Inn, they’d be after him to loan them money.
He dug himself a deep hole and jumped into it. “Never heard of him.”
Nashe emitted a high-pitched yap of laughter. “Inns of Court man, you say? Then he must be a wily sort of crook to hold so honorable an office.”
“He’s officious, that much is certain.” Dando’s lip curled. “He’s a member of Parliament. I’ve heard him speak. He can argue with the best, though he doesn’t spend much time in court, by all accounts. He keeps to himself, hiding in his chambers writing ‘advice letters,’ as he calls them. Advice to whom? The archbishop, perhaps?”
“What do you have against this gentleman?” Tom asked. He knew Bacon was innocent, but the idea of an Inns of Court man was not unreasonable. They were ostensibly supervised by the benchers — the governing board — but in practice, members’ chambers were nearly inviolable. They all spent most of their time reading and writing. Nobody had the time or the inclination to oversee anyone else’s work. Bacon said he was writing an advisement to cool the controversy, but he could be the one throwing faggots on the fire, for all Tom knew.
“I have nothing against him myself,” Dando said. A touch of bitterness in his tone belied the mild words. “I merely present him as a plausible candidate. We say Martin has powerful friends and family. Bacon’s father was the late Lord Keeper. What’s more, it’s widely known that his mother is one of the leading Calvinists in England.”
Tom nodded. “And all those feathery fops have money to burn and leisure besides.”
“And fathers and brothers and mothers and others with houses in the country with room for a press,” Oatmeale said.
“And horses,” Nashe added, “with stables at their inns and a ready excuse to ride out on legal business anytime they please with a satchel full of documents. They could pretend to be visiting Old Lady Clankpurse to add a codicil to her will.”
That image sold the idea better than all the rest of the argument. Perhaps they should be seeking closer to home. But how could he suggest that Mr. Bacon look for someone exactly like himself?