Tom found Nashe peering through the arched gate at Gray’s Inn’s front entrance, with one eye on the watchful gatekeeper. The satirist had sent in a note saying they could catch Robert Greene at home if they dawdled and arrived sometime between noon and night. This commission took precedence over fair copies, so he stuck his quill in the holder and went down to change into his hunting clothes, a comfortable brown suit made of tough fabric. The term applied whether his prey was rabbits in the fields behind Gray’s or villains in the suburbs north of the City walls.
“I’m at liberty, more or less, until we catch our man.” He clapped his friend on the shoulder as he strode through the gate.
“I’m always at liberty,” Nashe said. “In poverty, for my sins, but always liberty. And how not? I live in a liberty — the liberty of Norton Folgate.”
They walked up to Clerkenwell Road and headed east past Charterhouse and Garter House, names that delighted Nashe. Tom enjoyed afresh the familiar route through London’s northern sprawl in the company of this witty newcomer. They paused for a while to watch the archers practicing in Finsbury Fields. Tom hadn’t touched a bow since his friend Benjamin Whitt had gone home. Ben’s father, an old-fashioned gentleman, had exhorted him to regular practice, insisting that the long bow might still prove itself to be England’s best defense.
Tom’s father, by way of contrast, had sent him a pair of ornamented wheel-lock pistols that he took from a Spanish grandee along with the rest of his ship. Less strain on the back, if a good deal more costly to keep in working order.
They soon found themselves in a dense pocket of ill-assorted houses that had sprung up like mushrooms in the past decade or two, built without regard for the health or convenience of the inhabitants. Alleys narrow enough for Tom to span with open arms branched off one another like the tangled canes of berry bushes. Jettied upper stories sometimes leaned so close together an agile man could jump from room to room. Housewives had strung lines across the way, where gray linens hung limply, waiting for the five daily minutes when the sun would pass directly overhead. They’d missed it today already. The sky was turning dark.
Trees had thrashed in the freshening wind as they crossed Finsbury Fields, but no such breath entered into this dank precinct. Tom kept his eyes on the street, not to enjoy the rich array of rotting materials strewn thereon, but to avoid getting garbage on his shoes.
“Ugh! I don’t think much of the beadles in this liberty. Or don’t these parishioners believe in sweeping?”
Nashe shrugged. “You get used to it.” He shot Tom a grin. “I’m in London with a roof over my head. What more can a man want? Especially a man who means to find his living with his pen.”
“I wonder that you ever left the university. You seemed at home there.”
“It was my home for many years. But every chick must leave the nest sometime. And it wasn’t any fun after Kit left. God’s bollocks!” He stopped abruptly, turned around, and walked back a few paces. “I miss it every time. Here we are. Welcome to my new abode. I’m sure you’ll be suitably impressed by the amenities.”
“Ooohhrrr! Ain’t you a pretty one!” A feminine howl greeted them from overhead.
They stepped back out from under the overhang and looked up. A full-figured woman in an overstuffed bodice leaned her plump elbows on the windowsill to peer down.
“Now that’s more like it, Nashey!” She ogled Tom, winking and grinning widely enough to show the gaps in her teeth. “You never brought me nothing so lovely as this one before. Wherever did ye find ’im?”
“Shhh!” Nashe held a finger to his lips, although everyone on the little lane must have heard her yowling. “If I tell you, you’ll rush off and get another one for yourself.” Several faces had appeared at windows to gape at Tom. Most of them turned right around again.
He rolled his eyes and took a bow. So much for conducting a quiet investigation. How could a man be strangled among these crowded houses without anyone raising an alarm? They must be used to odd noises during the night and know better than to poke their noses out. And if you didn’t see it, you couldn’t be summoned to testify about it.
“Well, bring ’im in! Bring ’im in!” The woman beckoned vigorously, shaking her bounteous bosom for Tom’s appreciation.
He grinned at her, partly to gain favor for the questioning to come, but also because such frankly willing women ought to be encouraged on general principles, especially now that his guardian made sure he no longer had money to pay for their favors. He preferred fair and willowy damsels with a melancholy air, or he had before he learned Trumpet was a girl. Now his dreams were filled with short, curvy, dark-haired tigresses with glowing green eyes.
Failing that, he’d take what he could get.
The front door opened onto a room that spanned the narrow house and ran about twenty feet back. The air inside was cool, though the windows were shut tight, and redolent with the aroma of fish pottage. The smell rose from a cauldron hanging on a hook in the wide hearth against the far wall. The remains of dinner still lay strewn across the long table standing in the center of the room. The diners had finished their meals and moved on.
Apart from crumbs and dirty dishes, the place was cleaner than Tom expected given the condition of the streets. The well-packed rushes were muddy by the door, but clean enough farther in. The scent of tansy puffed up as he walked across them. The whitewashed walls looked in good repair, as did the long sideboard and the motley collection of chairs, stools, and short benches. A busy lodging house, but a well-kept one.
A woman almost as wide as the stairs descended, holding her skirts up with both hands and huffing in short breaths as she came. “Who’s your new friend, Mr. Nashe?”
“Not new,” Nashe said. “This is Thomas Clarady, an old friend from Cambridge. Mr. Clarady, meet the finest landlady between here and the house next door, Mrs. Emma Ball.”
She offered him a plump hand ornamented with two silver rings. Tom bowed over it and said, “My pleasure, Mrs. Ball.”
“Oooohhhh! What lovely manners! We don’t see such fine gentlemen as you hereabouts. Not often. Although Mr. Greene, my principal lodger, has friends in all stations. He’s a gentleman himself, is Mr. Greene.” She measured Tom from head to toe, her pink tongue poked between her lips. “Are ye in need of lodgings, Mr. Clarady? I could put Nashe in with my other poet. It’s a smallish room on the third floor, but you’ll get three meals a day. Tasty ones too, if I say so myself.”
She licked her lips slowly to show how tasty a meal Tom could find in her house, if he chose to. She was a ripe one, all right. She wore a dark red gown with a bright pink apron. Tom couldn’t tell if she wore an extra-large bum roll to bell out her skirts or if her own lush shape performed that service. The latter, most like, judging by the breasts overflowing her bodice. Her cheeks were pink and smooth, though a fine spray of wrinkles spread from the corner of her pale blue eyes, now twinkling with good humor. Neither young nor old, with plenty of fun left in her.
“The soup smells delicious,” Tom said, “but I’d hate to budge out old Nashe. Besides, I’m well enough fixed for now, thanks.”
Nashe said, “Mr. Clarady’s doing me a favor, seeing what he can find out about John Little’s death. He wanted to ask you a few questions.”
A favor? That wasn’t the agreement. That point would have to be revisited when they left this house.
“Oh, poor, poor Mr. Little!” Mrs. Bell patted her bosom as if to calm the heart which beat deep underneath. “My gentlemen tell me his death may not have been an accident.”
“I fear it was not,” Tom said gravely.
Nashe nodded with equal gravity. “Strangulations seldom are.” Then he grinned and said, “Although that reminds me of a time in —”
Tom gave him a quelling look. “Didn’t your neighbors see or hear anything that night, Mrs. Bell?”
“Most would deny it even if they did. They don’t want the strangler to come after them!” Mrs. Ball crossed her hands over her stomach and leaned toward Tom, lowering her voice. “But Mrs. Aldertwitch across the way, whose bedchamber overhangs the very spot where Little met his untimely end, swears she heard a lurking sound outside, just after the last echo of St. Leonard’s midnight bell died away.”
“A lurking sound.” Tom struggled to maintain his grave expression, even when Nashe unhelpfully took several shuffling steps, scuffing his feet under the rushes and making a soft clop, clop, clop with his tongue.
Tom didn’t bother trying to quell him again. Nothing short of a cuff on the head would serve that turn. He nodded at Mrs. Ball to thank her for that vital piece of evidence. “Perhaps we should look at this the other way around. We’re supposing the strangler meant to attack John Lyly, but somehow got the wrong name and thus the wrong man. How could that have come about?”
“Oh my, aren’t you the crafty one? Let me give it a think.” Mrs. Ball clasped her hands under her bosom and screwed up her round face, lips pressed together with the effort. Finally, she said, “Well, if you were to visit one of the taverns where these poetical gentlemen go to refresh themselves after their solitary labors and ask for a knave named John Lyly, and if you said it a little bit off, perhaps not quite as clearly as you ought . . .”
Nashe offered a few variations on the name Lyly, mimicking different dialects and ending with a babbling, “Lit-ly, lit-ly, lee lee lee.”
“But would it be unusual for a man to ask for someone like Lyly in such a place?”
“Not at all,” Nashe said in his normal voice. “It’s the usual way to find us, if I may be so bold as to add myself to that illustrious company.”
“You’re the wittiest lodger I’ve ever had,” Mrs. Ball said kindly, “if not the prettiest. I love to hear you read your latest here by my fire. There’s nothing I like better than an educated gentleman.” She batted her pale lashes at Tom. “Unless it’s a gentleman who’s both educated and comely.”
He smiled. “How would the strangler know where to ask? There must be a hundred taverns in the city and twice that many alehouses.”
“He knows us,” Nashe said. “He knows the places we frequent, like the Goose and Gall on Ivy Lane. Or he might’ve asked one of Lyly’s printers. They know where to find us — or avoid us — when it’s time to pay up.”
“It wouldn’t be difficult,” Mrs. Ball said. “Writers don’t want their names kept secret; more the other way around. And once that dastard had Mr. Little’s name, it wouldn’t take much to learn he lived in Norton Folgate. He might guess that much on his own; so many writers and actors and suchlike favor this quarter. Close to the theaters, you understand, which pays your poetical gentlemen better than most anything else.”
“A play’s the thing,” Nashe agreed, “if you can pester someone in a company to give you a chance.”
“Once you’re in the liberty,” Mrs. Ball said, “it’s nothing to find out he lived in Emma Ball’s house. That’d be anyone’s first guess. I only have poetical gentlemen in my house. Poets, playwrights, pamphleteers. It’s my specialty.”
“How many lodgers do you have?” Tom asked, wondering if they were all at risk.
“Four at present, with Mr. Nashe now instead of Mr. Little. Another pamphleteer and a playwright — six months and four. Mr. Greene’s the longest.” She caught the word and tipped Tom a saucy wink. “Though not in all parts.”
Nashe giggled. Tom grinned through clenched teeth.
Mrs. Ball gave a little shrug. “Can’t read a word, you see, but I love the beauty of a fine-turned phrase. I just can’t help myself, though I know it’s a weakness.”
“Ale! Bring me ale, you swag-bellied strumpet!” a deep voice roared from over their heads.
“I’ve got company, you tottering mouldwarp!” Mrs. Ball screeched at the ceiling. Then she turned to Tom and batted her lashes.
Nashe laughed. “Sounds like Greene’s awake. You should talk to him as long as you’re here. He had an accident last night at the White Hart that may not have been an accident.”
“I want breakfast! Do you mean to starve me, you heartless quean?” the voice upstairs shouted.
“Get your own poxy breakfast, you great lolling pumpion!” Mrs. Ball shouted back. But she found a tray and began loading it with the best of what was left on the table.
Tom followed Nashe up the stairs to a bare landing with two doors. The one at the back was firmly shut, but the other one stood wide open. They entered a room that looked like a whirlwind had blown through it, with clothes and papers and other oddments strewn from one end to the other.
A small pillow flew past Tom’s nose and he understood how the disaster had occurred. A man was struggling out of a bed that was the source and center of the chaos, with sheets and blankets moiled and tossed, like froth beaten up on the waves of a stormy sea. At first, Tom thought the man had tangled himself in his own bedclothes, but as more of him emerged, he realized the figure was bandaged from head to toe. Or rather, one leg was thickly wrapped and one shoulder likewise shrouded and further suspended in a sling. His head had a vast handkerchief tied around it from chin to crown, causing his long, pointed red beard to jut forward like a hairy spear point. A crosswise bandage held a thick patch of something yellowish on his brow.
“What do you mean trying to get up, you feeble-minded old fool?” Mrs. Ball thrust her tray at Nashe and pushed the bandaged man back into his bed just as he’d managed to get one foot on the ground.
He howled in pain and a florid exchange of curses erupted between the two. The bandages did nothing to inhibit the man’s capacity for speech.
“Robert Greene,” Nashe said, walking around to balance the tray on the other side of the bed. He seemed unaffected by their battle of words, which held little real heat. He lifted a piece of cheese from the tray and nibbled on it while he ambled back to Tom’s side.
Greene cast a last scowl at his landlady, hoisted himself into better position with many grunts and groans, then grabbed at the cup on the tray and gulped down half its contents. At last, he looked at Tom and said, “A man could die of thirst,” as if that was the message Tom had come to collect. “Who are you, then?” Greene asked when Tom failed to comment.
“The one I told you about,” Nashe said. “Thomas Clarady, my friend from Cambridge.”
“Also a friend of Christopher Marlowe’s,” Tom said, hoping that would help. He was a great admirer of Greene’s work, especially his romances, which were guaranteed to make young women swoon if you read them in a dusky voice by candlelight. Now his wits were boggling under the strain of connecting those eloquent passages with this shipwreck of a man.
“Marlowe!” Greene roared. “That charlatan? That mammering, clay-brained coxcomb?”
Nashe whispered loudly at Tom, “Not one of his favorites. Kit earns twice as much from the Admiral’s Men, who’ll drop whatever they had in hand for a chance at his next play.”
“I scarcely know the man,” Tom said to Greene. “And I don’t trust him.” Which was true enough, in some situations.
Greene grunted and glugged more of whatever was in his cup.
Tom took that for acceptance. “What happened to you, Mr. Greene?”
“I took a tumble down the stairs last night at the tavern. Three men had to carry me home.”
“Which floor were you on?” Mrs. Ball asked, setting her hands on her hips. “I didn’t get to hear that part. The surgeon kept me running up and down the stairs as if I were a serving girl, wanting this and that and then some more. As if you deserved it! Should’ve rolled you back into the street and left you there.”
Mrs. Ball busied herself shaking out clothes and draping them over a drying rack that stood near the windows. Greene’s eyes followed her as she bent over, displaying a fine expanse of backside. He tipped Tom a wink and said, “I went upstairs to look at a cat. Marvel of the world, that cat. He sits in a chair and plays primero, day and night.”
“I’ve heard of him,” Nashe said. “He always wins too. He’s set down the canniest players everywhere from Bishopsgate Within to Bishopsgate Without.” He shot Tom a wink. “Alas, I hear the pussy cheats.”
Tom shook his head. Getting information out of these comedians was harder than teaching a cat to play cards. “Who was there besides the cat?”
“There were men playing cards,” Greene said. His eyes slid toward Mrs. Ball. “There may have been women watching.”
Nashe supplied the rest. “The stairs open straight into another big room with tables where people like to play cards or stand around watching other people play cards. There’s as much betting on the betting as there is on the cards.”
Tom nodded. “It was crowded, then. Do you remember anyone in particular?”
“Munday was there,” Greene said. “Nashe said you’ve met him. He’d push me down the stairs just to take my place with my publishers, as if they’d have him. I have more talent in my little finger.” He held up the finger on the unbandaged hand. “I remember a couple of gentlemen in fine clothes — Inns of Court men, perhaps. They come to rub shoulders with actors. Other that than, I couldn’t say exactly who was where, being somewhat under —”
“Being drunk as a drowned mouse, he means,” Mrs. Ball said.
“A man takes a sip or two, just to be polite, and she calls it drunk.” Greene growled at her. “I have a memory, but not a clear one, of Munday coming up behind me. I couldn’t swear to it. I wish I could. I was standing near the stairs, deciding whether to go back down or join the game or go up —” He shot a glance at his landlady. “I think I felt a hand on my back, but I couldn’t swear to that either. Maybe one of the men watching the game took a step back, making me take a step back . . .” He shook his head, then groaned at the motion. “I went down with enough force to crack my head on the bannister and roll right on down to the bottom.”
“Didn’t you recognize anyone else?” Tom could go back to the tavern and ask the servers if they remembered anything, but it would help to have another name or two.
“Dando was there,” Greene said. “At the table, facing the stairs. Ask him.” He slapped at Mrs. Ball’s hand as she tried to straighten his nightshirt. Then he narrowed his eyes at Tom. “I’ll bet Nashe promised to pay you.”
“He did.”
“He won’t. But I will. I can’t live cooped up in this room for the rest of my life. You’ll have to play clerk, Nashey. I’ve got to get The Spanish Masquerado to the printers by the end of the week or I’ll lose my fee.”
Mrs. Ball pulled a pillow out from under him, plumped it roughly, and stuffed it back into place. “If you miss your deadline, don’t think I’ll forgive your rent, you old pinchpenny. You’re no good to me like this. You can barely lift yourself up enough to piss in the chamber pot. If you can’t pay in kind, you’ll have to pay in coin, same as the others.”
She gave Tom another measuring look, this time performing for Greene. “Or perhaps you could borrow the rent from your friend here.”
Nashe’s eyes flashed. “I have plenty of that particular coin, Mistress.” She beamed at him in a way that told Tom he’d already filled Greene’s role in that establishment at least once.
Tom had been tempted earlier, a little. His guardian kept him on very short rations, not understanding a young man’s needs. But Mrs. Ball shared her favors a bit too generously for his taste. One thing Lady Russell couldn’t possibly know — and he could never tell her — was that it was better to pay more for your lightskirts than less. Your higher-priced whores held themselves in higher regard and thus were fussier about their clients. Free was not always the better bargain.
“I’ll give you your rent,” Greene shouted, “you dizzy-eyed Jezebel!” She roared back at him and their battle began anew.
Nashe cocked his head toward the stairs, and Tom followed him down. They barely reached the bottom before the ropes of the bed upstairs began to creak in a familiar rhythm.
“Ah, love!” Nashe said with a grin that swiftly disappeared. “Whatever Greene says, I think he was pushed. The villain’s getting bolder.”
“Or more desperate. What do you know? What did you learn out there on your hunt for Martin’s minions?”
“I can’t remember. I learned a hundred details about all manner of things.” Nashe looked miserable. “Now I’m afraid to go back to the Goose even when it’s full of people.”
“Don’t give up yet. Martin’s minion doesn’t know about me, and it’s a safe bet he doesn’t know Francis Bacon is on his trail. We’ll catch him.” Tom scratched his beard, staring out the window at the parlor across the street, where three women sat sewing and talking at a seemingly breathless pace, while casting frequent glances at the two men across the way.
“We’ve got to get you out of here,” he said. “That much seems clear. Today, for a preference.”
“I don’t have any money. I lied about that fee. Or rather, I figured someone else would come up with it.”
“I know. And someone has.” Tom studied him for a moment, then heaved a sigh. “All right, then. You’re coming home with me.”
Nashe clapped his hands together. “Clarady, you are a true friend. Let me grab my notebooks and my other shirts.”
He left Tom to run back upstairs. Tom planted himself before the window, folded his arms, and stared at the women in the opposite house. They set down their sewing and stared back at him, mouths working in a barrage of chatter he mercifully couldn’t hear. Nashe jogged back down with a canvas sack over his shoulders and Tom waved at the women across the street as they walked past.
He eyed the sack, which wasn’t large, although it probably contained the man’s entire estate. He had to credit Nashe’s courage, leaving the safe harbor of the university and moving to London with nothing but a quick tongue and a ready eye. He was following Marlowe’s trail, but Kit had already sold a play before he made the leap, and he had his intelligencing to keep him in funds when the theaters were closed.
They walked back the way they’d come without loitering this time, going west until they were well past Gray’s Inn so they could cut across the fields and come in the back. Tom slipped his knife into the jamb to flip up the latch and swung the window open. It was an easy hop over the sill for him, but a bit of a climb for his guest. He stood in the center of the room, holding out both hands. “It isn’t much, but it’s home.”
The room was half the size of the bedchamber he’d shared with Ben last year, but he had it to himself, and he didn’t spend many of his waking hours here. His lute and rapier hung on one wall and his rarely used bow and quiver of arrows on another. A cloak hung on a peg near the door. The rest of his things were kept in chests pushed against the walls. He had a desk in one corner with a stool tucked under it, but he preferred to read on the bed, which was narrow but warmly curtained and well furnished with pillows and blankets.
“A cupboard at an Inn of Court is worth a house in Norton Folgate.” Nashe flung his sack into a corner and leapt onto Tom’s bed, stretching out full length and folding his arms behind his head.
“Oh, no you don’t!” Tom yanked the pillow away and rolled him off, letting him thump into the rushes. “You sleep on the floor. Don’t worry, there’s plenty of blankets. And here.” He dug into a large chest and pulled out a set of old black student robes. “You can wear these coming and going. They’re torn at the hem, but that won’t matter. Take them off the minute you’re out of sight of Gray’s. Only go through the window, never the door, and duck down by the wall until you’re well past. Don’t make any noise. Don’t touch any of my belongings. And do not piss out the window or we’ll have to smell your stink all night. And don’t go back to Greene’s house or St. Paul’s or any taverns where you might be recognized. In fact, don’t go into the City at all.”
Nashe sat up to lean against the bed, grinning while he listened to the lecture, his delight at his good fortune undimmed by the list of constraints. Tom had thought this small, low chamber a mark of lost status after his father’s death. He’d spent many a disgruntled evening plucking laments on his lute and grousing about his lot. The glow in Nashe’s eyes now gave him a twinge of guilt for despising his good fortune. That twinge made him all the more irritated with his unwanted guest.
“I eat in the hall. You don’t. Do not go out this door or into the yard for any reason. I have to appear for supper tonight or my absence will be noted. But afterward we’ll slip down to Holborn to the Antelope Inn. Mrs. Sprye, the proprietress, is a friend.”
Nashe’s face lit up. “Innkeepers adore me.”
“She’s nothing like Emma Ball, so mind your manners. She’ll give you your meals, but don’t be greedy. In fact, it might be better —”
Two raps sounded on the door. “Tom?”
“Hssst! It’s Mr. Bacon!” Tom pointed under the bed and Nashe rolled underneath.
Bacon half opened the door and was peering around before Nashe got his left leg out of sight. Tom stepped in front of the bed, trying to act like he’d jumped up from taking a nap. He stretched and yawned. “Do you need me for something, Mr. Bacon?”
“No, no. Not now. I just wanted to let you know I’ll be dining with you at my aunt’s house tomorrow. I invited myself and just received her reply.”
“Good,” Tom said. “Good.”
“Since you have Sunday mornings free, I wanted you to know before you left the house. We’ll want to leave in plenty of time, what with the traffic on the river these days.”
“Good thought,” Tom said. “I’ll wait for you here.”
“Good.” Bacon glanced around the room as if reminding himself of its proportions. He nodded as if satisfied and turned to go. Then he paused and looked over Tom’s shoulder the way he did when lost in thought or feeling awkward. “Ah, Tom. A word of advice. Don’t talk to yourself, even when you’re alone. You’ll fall into the habit and start doing it everywhere. People don’t like it, I’ve found. They’ll think you’re a little odd.”