A middling boy in a gardener’s straw hat tugged at Tom’s sleeve as he left the hall after dinner on Saturday and handed him a folded letter bearing Trumpet’s seal. He bid the boy follow him to his chamber to wait for a reply.
The note said that Trumpet was sneaking out that afternoon and wanted him to meet her at the Goose and Gall at two o’clock, whence they would go forth to scour up witnesses to the two murders. Tom considered refusing the peremptory command, but in truth, he liked nothing better than prowling London’s streets with his best friend at his side. That the said friend was also the most beautiful woman he had ever known only added spice to their adventures.
Besides, how many more adventures would they have? Their days together were numbered, and that number got smaller every day. He dashed off his agreement and gave the gardener’s boy a ha’penny for his trouble.
He made sure to get to the Goose early and was pleased see the place half-empty. Not even writers could bury themselves in a dim tavern on such a balmy summer day. Tom got a jug of ale and two cups and sat at Nashe’s favorite table, in the same spot as before, where he could watch the street. The serving wench brought him a dish of cobnuts and lingered, trying to stimulate other appetites, but he shook his head and turned back to the window. Trumpet, even in men’s clothes — even with that silly little false moustache — outshone other women as the moon outshone the stars.
In the event, he almost failed to recognize her, striding along behind a group of nobodies. She was alone, for one thing. She’d grown a beard, for another. A short black one with a rounded point. Catalina must have made it from trimmings of her mistress’s hair.
“That beard is an affront to all mankind,” he said before she even got her round arse planted on a stool.
“I like it.”
“You always go one step too far, Trumpet. Both good taste and successful deception require restraint.”
“Easy for you to say. Catalina thinks my face is getting more womanly, so I need more concealment. I can’t wear muddy smudges if I’m dressed like a gentleman.”
Tom studied her face. Or rather, he drank in her features like a camel storing up water for a trek across a sandy waste. “It’s ridiculous. It won’t stay on. And it makes you turn your head stiffly, like you’re afraid to jostle whatever it is that’s keeping it in place.”
“I’ll get used to it. I can’t take it off now.” She fiddled with something behind her ear, pretending to scratch an itch. Then she flashed him that dazzling smile that made his heart stop for a moment. “Enough about my cursed beard. What’s afoot? Has Bacon poked his delicate nose out of his room yet?”
“Briefly.” Tom shared what little Bacon had told him about his visit to Lord Essex, which wasn’t much more than the bare fact that he had entered the house and found the earl in good health. She didn’t seem surprised about the one real piece of news, that Stephen Delabere had succeeded to the earldom of Dorchester.
She merely shrugged. “My Lady Russell must have mentioned it.”
“Easily forgotten with so many noblemen crowding outside your door.” Tom hated the jealousy in his tone, but he couldn’t help it. No matter how hard he studied, how loyally he served, or how bravely he performed each and every difficult task set before him, he could never aspire to Trumpet’s hand. One of these days, very, very soon, another man would take that hand and lead her to his bed. On that day, Tom intended to get very, very drunk.
“A line from here to Dover,” Trumpet said. She didn’t sound very happy about it. Their eyes met and skittered apart.
“Where’s your trusty comrade?” Tom drew his knife from the sheath at the small of his back and used the haft to crack a couple of nuts. He pushed one toward Trumpet and cracked a few more, glad to have something to do.
“Guarding the door to my bedchamber, pretending that I’m ill and need solitude.”
“Will Lady Russell believe that?” Trumpet had the constitution of a Dartmoor pony. She was never sick.
“She spends many days in bed herself. You know how bad her back is. She won’t pry.”
Tom found another fault. “You shouldn’t walk around the city by yourself.”
She gave him a weary look from under arched black eyebrows and took another cracked nut, picking out the meat to nibble. “What else is new? It’s been nearly a week since Mr. Bacon’s attack. Haven’t you learned anything?”
“Not much.” Tom told her about his short-lived suspicion of Peter Hollowell and the supper they’d enjoyed at the Antelope.
“Why wasn’t I invited?”
Tom shrugged, holding up both hands. He couldn’t include her in everything. Besides, her presence often made things more complicated. She knew that. She also knew that he knew that she knew, so why fuss?
To add to his misery, presumably. “I wanted to talk to the man in an informal setting. I had thought about asking him out to supper before I suspected him. He’s Robert Cecil’s principal secretary, you know. And a feodary in the Court of Wards. Also a wifeless man with an exacting taskmaster, not much older than I am. He could be a friend — a useful one.”
“Nice to make new friends.” Her tone dripped acid like a pierced lemon.
“You could make new friends. You should be at court right now, living with the other daughters of lords, making friends with people of importance.”
“I don’t like people of importance.”
“Then don’t marry one.” Tom cracked a few more nuts with more force than necessary, sending shards of shell flying.
She gave him an inscrutable look from beneath lush black lashes. “Maybe I won’t.” She picked the best piece of nut out of the wreckage and studied it before popping it into her mouth. “This useful secretary of yours. You must have suspected him because he knew about our trap. What made you decide he wasn’t the one?”
“I like him.” Tom shrugged. “He was so forthcoming about the whore he was with the night Stokes was murdered.” He pointed his finger at her. “We should visit her today. And he gave us probably the best bit of information we’ve gotten so far, about a village in Northamptonshire called Fawsley. One of the ones Nashe visited.”
“What about it?”
“It turns out to be the seat of a well-known Puritan, the hottest one in Parliament, according to Hollowell. Sir Richard Knightley.” Tom snapped his fingers. “Mr. Bacon will know him. Now that he’s talking to me again, maybe it will make him think of something I can go find out or someone else I can talk to.”
“Maybe he’ll leap up and shout, ‘God’s bollocks! Sir Richard So-and-So is the real Martin Marprelate. How could I fail to see it before!’” Trumpet sounded disdainful, for reasons of her own not worth pursuing.
“He might,” Tom said, “although without the leaping and the cursing. But Sir Richard has all the qualities everyone thinks Martin has. He’s rich, he has influence, he has a big estate. He’s an outspoken leader of the Puritan party in the House of Commons. And Nashe picked up something that pricked his ears.”
“About Knightley?”
“Not the man, but his village. Fawsley.”
“Hmm.”
“It isn’t much, I grant you. But Hollowell offered to sit down with Nashe after we catch the strangler and put together what they both know about Northamptonshire — all the bits and pieces. Would Martin’s minion do that? My gut says no.”
“The gut has spoken.” Trumpet smiled. She trusted his gut too. She turned to survey the low-ceilinged room. “I can’t say I think much of this place. Who would want to spend — What ho! I spy a roundishly pointed beard, borne by a man of average height, coming in from the back.”
Tom looked in the direction of her pointing chin. “Ha. John Dando. Let’s see if we can get him to confess to strangling Mr. Bacon on Tuesday night.”
Trumpet grinned. “I’ll wring it out of him.” She could do it too, with Tom’s help.
Dando walked up to their table, looming over them. “Mr. Clarady, what a pleasant surprise. I assumed you’d gone into hiding with your friend Nashe.”
“No one’s trying to strangle me. Join us. We’ve stolen your favorite table.”
“It is a table,” Dando said, taking a stool and turning to Trumpet with a courteous smile.
Tom made the introductions. “Mr. Trumpet is helping me with my inquiries since Nashe is unavailable.”
“Pleased to meet you, Mr. Snors — er, Dando,” Trumpet said in her man’s voice, a couple of notes lower than normal. “I’m an enormous admirer of your work. I can’t wait to read the next adventure of Bankes’s bay horse.” She tilted her head back and brayed.
Whatever she was up to, she was overplaying it. Dando’s eyes had taken on a hard gleam, and his upper lip quivered as if she’d offered him a ball of fresh horse dung.
“How is old Nashey?” he asked Tom. “Still breathing, one hopes?”
“I haven’t seen him,” Tom said. “He’s in hiding, you know.”
Dando rolled his eyes. “All of London knows. He was in here Monday afternoon telling anyone who would listen, which wasn’t many, that he had found work sorting papers at some hole in Holborn, where he also met a kindhearted gentleman of Gray’s Inn who offered him a place to lay his head. Scribbling for food is within Nashe’s scope, but that last part is hard to swallow.”
“Nashe has his charms,” Tom said. He signaled to the serving wench to bring another cup and poured a drink for the pamphleteer.
“Charms invisible to the average eye.” Dando accepted the cup with a nod. He wore a large gold ring on his right hand. “An inquiring sort of man, such as myself, might wonder why a person going into hiding would boast so loudly of that secret location. Asking for trouble, an observant man might note.”
“A man such as yourself,” Trumpet said, nodding. “A man of experience, a man who has walked many paths in his life, both high and low.” A mischievous light glimmered in her green eyes, but Tom could not fathom what inspired it.
Dando, however, seemed to follow her drift. His lip twitched in that semi-snarl again. “If you ask me, Nashe has been tempting fate since he arrived in this city. Who is he? Nobody. What has he achieved? Nothing. And yet he’s managed to make himself the center of attention with this supposed plot against his life. He’d best beware. Such plots have a way of misfiring.”
That almost sounded like a threat. Tom cracked another nut with the haft of his knife, noting the way Dando’s eyes shifted toward the blade. Tom used the blade to push the small treat toward the other man. “Are you familiar with Holborn and environs, Mr. Dando?”
“I’ve been there.” Dando picked out a nut meat and chewed it. “Rare good fortune, don’t you think, for Nashe to meet an Inns of Court man at the very hour of his need.”
“What are you suggesting?”
“Not suggesting, Mr. Clarady. Merely observing. I’m the observant sort, remember?”
“He’s the sociable sort, our Nashe. He makes friends everywhere.”
“Even places you wouldn’t think he’d go.” Dando turned his sneering smile toward Trumpet. “Do you have friends at the Inns of Court, Mr. Trumpet?”
“Doesn’t everyone?” Trumpet leaned on one elbow, shifting her glittering gaze from Tom to Dando and back. “Nashe’s problem will be solved in a matter of days. We did learn one thing before he went into hiding. He is certain he crossed paths with Martin’s minion somewhere near Fawsley in Northamptonshire. Do you know anyone in that locality, Mr. Dando?”
Dando’s expression hardened. “Doesn’t everyone?”
* * *
“What was that all about?” Tom demanded as soon as they were out of earshot of the tavern’s open windows. Dando had gotten up and walked away with the feeblest of excuses. Tom had tossed a few coins on the table and herded Trumpet out the door. She’d spoiled what chance they had of learning anything from that source. They might as well move on.
“Just testing the man’s temper,” Trumpet said. “That question about Northamptonshire made him angry. Did you see that?”
“You angered him from the start with that obvious fumble over his name. What did you call him? Mr. Snores? You won’t gain favor with a writer by telling him his work is boring.”
“Snores. That’s funny!” Trumpet giggled. “I never said that.”
“Yes, you did, and you did it on purpose. What’s your game, camarade?”
She gave him that little toss of her head and shoulder that made him want to— He grabbed her arm and pressed her against the plaster wall of whatever house they were passing. He looked down at her, struggling to maintain a stern expression — an impossible feat with that absurd fringe draped around her chin.
“Tell me,” he growled. Then he gave her a half smile that showed his full dimple. She loved the dimple. And the growl.
She bit her lip and sighed deeply, her chest rising and falling. The challenge in her tiger’s eyes helped in nowise to temper his frustration. He had to kiss her to stop that ruby smirk, but he couldn’t risk kissing a bearded man on a public street. People gawked out of windows and burst suddenly around corners.
He stepped back and held up both hands in surrender. “Just tell me what you’re up to, Trumplekin. We’re partners, aren’t we?”
“For today, anyway.” She drew in a long breath and let out another sigh with a different meaning. “It’s nothing. Just having fun.”
They locked eyes, understanding and not understanding each other in equal, maddening measure. Tom broke first. “Let’s go see Edgar Stokes’s landlady. She won’t know anything, but it has to be done.”
They started walking again, not bothering to talk, which made a restful change. Tom focused on finding the right house in this maze of closely packed tenements. He’d gotten directions from Nashe but still had to ask for help several times. One of the gossips standing in a doorway cackling at another across the alley scanned Tom from head to toe, smacking her lips. “That room’s bad luck, sweetikins. Why’n’t ye come in and try what I’ve got to offer?” Her cackle followed them around the next corner.
Mrs. Darby was not one of that breed. She was a thin, pinch-faced woman in a patched kirtle and dirty apron. She let them up to see a pocket-sized room at the top of her house, empty but for the flea-jumping rushes on the floor, a sagging cot pushed against the wall, and a cracked chamber pot in the corner.
“I can’t get another lodger,” she said fretfully. “Folks think my house is cursed. Why me and not the other, I don’t know. How’m I supposed to get by? Catch that man, good sirs, if it was a man and not a devil.”
“It was a man,” Tom said, “and he’ll hang, I promise. Did you see or hear anything that night?”
“No, nor any of the neighbors. People around here don’t stick their heads out their windows every time they hear a bit of noise at night.”
Tom nodded. He’d expected no more.
“But you know, remembering back, I think I saw a man skulking around just before nightfall. A gentleman, by his clothes.” She looked from Tom to Trumpet and back again. “Not so tall as you, sir, nor yet so small as you, sir, if you’ll forgive me. He wore a beard too. Not so long as to call it a long beard, good sirs, nor yet so short as yours, sir.” Another nod at Tom.
“I see,” Tom said, edging toward the front door.
She clutched his sleeve. “He had brownish hair, I should say. Not as dark as this gentleman here, sir, but nothing like as fair as yours, sir.” She folded her hands across her belly and beamed at them. “Look for that one, good sirs. You can’t mistake him.”
Tom muttered vague courtesies until the door closed behind them. He avoided Trumpet’s eyes until they were well away, then they both collapsed in howling laughter, holding on to a wall for support. As the laughter spent itself, Tom wiped his eyes with a knuckle. “I hope I can remember all that for my report to Mr. Bacon.”
Trumpet grinned at him. “At least we can be certain we didn’t do it. We have a witness.”
Tom turned around twice, not sure which way they’d come. “God’s breath! I forgot to ask her where Moll Tiploft lives. It’s around here somewhere.”
“We’ll find her.” She looked up the street and pointed at a man hanging out a window, smoking a long pipe.
“Everyone knows Moll Tiploft,” the man said with a broad wink. He gave them directions to a house one street over, opposite an alehouse. A slate-faced woman opened that door and pointed them up the stairs. “First floor.”
Upstairs, they found the door wide open, so they walked in and found a redheaded woman with a lush figure displayed by a loosely laced bodice and low-cut shirt. She sat on a rumpled bed with a jug and a single cup on the floor by her bare foot. Several wooden crates stood about the floor, half-filled with jumbled garments.
“No business today,” she said, clearly more than a little drunk. “I don’t do threesomes anyway.”
“We’re not here for that,” Tom said. He walked in to stand near the stone hearth that looked too clean ever to have held a fire.
She looked him up and down with a crooked smile. “Send the little one away and I might change my mind.”
“We want to ask you two questions,” Trumpet said, standing halfway between Tom and the harlot with her hands on her hips. “Do you know a man named Peter Hollowell?”
“Long Pete? He’s my best customer.”
“Was he here on Friday night, two weeks ago? There was a half-moon?”
“When that man was murdered, you mean. I heard about that.” She picked up her cup and took a deep drink, coughing a little as she set it back down. “Yes, Peter was here. I remember the night well. He’s my best in more ways than one.” She winked at Tom. “And we had the full moon shining in the window, adding to the pleasure. White skin under silver light is any gentleman’s delight.” Her words were enticing, but her tone and her eyes were flat.
“Did he stay all night?” Tom asked.
“He spends the night when he likes, though he’s out and gone at the crack of dawn.”
That wasn’t exactly an answer. “Did you hear or see anything in the street that night?”
“I was working, I told you. They don’t pay me to look out the window.” She bent to refill her cup, making sure Tom got a good look at her breasts. But when she sat back up, she said, “Don’t bother to come back. I’m moving to Rye, where I’m from. I’ve got enough to buy my own house now, and I’m tired of London.”
Tom followed Trumpet down the stairs. The slate-faced woman rose from a chair near the window, where she’d been mending stockings. Tom asked if she had seen or heard anything on the night the man had been murdered nearby.
“I’m deaf after dark,” she said, opening the door to let them out and closing it on their heels.
“Where now?” Trumpet asked. “We aren’t getting very far.”
“We’re getting nowhere. Let’s go to the White Hart and find out if anyone saw Robert Greene being pushed down the stairs last Saturday night.”
They pressed on eastward toward the inn on Bishopsgate and asked the barman if he remembered the night Robert Greene took a tumble down the stairs.
“I remember it. That drunken whoreson owes me for two cracked bannisters.” He glared at them. “Unless you can prove someone really did push him and make that whoreson pay me the cost of repairs.”
“I’ll do my best,” Tom promised.
They walked over to examine the grand oak staircase in the center of the large room, which was divided into sections by massy oak beams. They found the bannisters in question on the landing. Sure enough, two had long cracks running up from the base. That must have hurt.
Tom gave one of the uncracked bannisters a tentative tug. It didn’t budge. He’d have to put his back into it even to loosen one of these well-made supports. These stairs had been built by a master carpenter out of quality materials and then aged in place for a hundred years.
Tom continued on up while Trumpet lingered on the landing, looking up and down to assess the distance. As he reached the top, Anthony Munday loomed out of nowhere, going down. They stopped and glared at one another. Tom scrambled for something to say, but before a word could escape his lips, Munday pushed past him with a loud grunt.
“Nice fellow,” Trumpet said, climbing up to join him. “A new friend?”
Tom murmured, “That was Anthony Munday.”
“Him?” Trumpet craned her neck to catch a glimpse as the man reached the bottom of the stairs and crossed toward the front door. “What did he say to you?”
“Nothing. He just grunted at me like a hog with a burr up its arse.” He shook his head at Trumpet as they ambled into the public room. “You know, I don’t believe that man likes me.”
“That must be a novel sensation for you, Tomkin,” a familiar voice sounded nearby.
Tom whirled around. “Kit!”
Christopher Marlowe sat at a table by the fireplace, leaning against the wall, balancing his chair on two legs. He tilted forward and rose to his feet in a well-practiced movement, walking over to clasp Tom in a hearty hug.
Tom clapped his old friend’s shoulders, then stood back to see how time had treated him. They’d come through a period of mutual suspicion during Tom’s months as a spy in Cambridge, but a night together in a small cell and the discovery of some mutual enemies had created a lasting bond.
Still the same old Marlowe, mostly. He still wore his brown hair cut bluntly above his ruff. His brown eyes still had that gleam in their depths — part mockery, part secret knowledge. He’d grown a short beard, slightly rounded under the chin. Still lean, still rangy, but somehow looking better fed. Certainly better dressed than the shabby robes he’d worn at Cambridge.
“You haven’t changed,” Tom said.
“Nor you.” Kit turned toward Trumpet and pointed his finger, a curious smile playing on his lips. “But you . . . you’re different, unless you’re not who I think you are.”
“I’m the same,” Trumpet said in her normal woman’s voice. Nobody sat close enough to hear them or seemed to care about them in the least. She tilted up her chin. “I have a new beard.”
“So I see.” Marlowe shot a droll glance at Tom. “It’s different, Lady, er . . .”
“Mr. Trumpet,” Tom informed him.
Marlowe chuckled and waved at his table. “Join me.”
They sat around the table. Tom pushed the remains of a meal — a plate with a heel of bread and a heap of small bones — into the center and pointed at the book lying open, facedown. “Same old Kit, sitting next to the fire, even when it’s not lit, and reading while you eat. And still on college time. I thought famous playwrights supped at a later hour, in the company of ardent admirers.”
“My admirers don’t know I’m back yet.”
“Back from where?” Tom asked, not expecting a straight answer.
He didn’t get one. “Here and there. Doing this and that. I’m off again in a day or two.”
“I loved both Tamburlaines.” Trumpet put her elbows on the table and grinned at Kit with sparkling eyes. Tom would be eaten with jealousy by her expression if Kit were a man who liked women. “I must have seen them three times each.”
She and Kit had discovered themselves to be kindred spirits when they’d met in Cambridge. She picked up his small jug and peered into it. “Ale? That’s not good enough for this reunion.” She hopped up to bellow down the stairs, “A bottle of sack and three cups! Best in the house!”
“It’s good to see you both,” Kit said. “And still together, against all odds. I’m surprised we haven’t bumped into one another more often if you’ve been haunting this tavern.”
“We don’t get out much,” Tom said. “Neither of us.” He told Kit about the events of last autumn and the scandal that had tarnished both their reputations. And about his father’s death.
“I am truly sorry, Tom. That’s a grievous loss.”
A wench came up with their wine, setting the bottle and cups on the table, collecting the bread crusts and greasy plate. Tom asked her if she’d been here the night Greene had fallen down the stairs. She was here, but hadn’t seen anything other than a crowd of hard-drinking gentlemen and an unruly lot of poets.
After she left, Kit said, “I’ve heard about Nashe’s stalker.”
“I thought you’d only been back for one day,” Tom said.
Kit shrugged. “I hear things. And Old Nashey has a way of making himself known. How did this come to be your concern?”
Tom told him about that as well, skipping over anything touching on Bacon’s undiscussed worries.
Kit laughed. “More Puritans! That’s becoming a specialty for you, Tomkin.” He raised a cup. “May you rid us of that troublesome breed altogether!”
“Hear, hear!” Trumpet raised hers in enthusiastic reply. Tom joined them but felt compelled to add, “They’re not all equally bad.”
“Yes, they are,” Kit said. “Although Nashe does have a knack for making enemies. People either love him or hate him. I’m one of the former. I miss the old ragabash. I should walk down to Holborn this evening and leap out at him as he’s walking home.”
“I beg you not to,” Tom said. “He’s staying in my room, remember. He thrashes around and snorts in his sleep. It’s like living with a pig who has nightmares. The sooner we hang Martin’s minion, the sooner Nashe can go home.”
Kit said, “I’m putting my money on Leicester’s ghost. But you undoubtedly have a list of plausible suspects and are slowly but inexorably drawing the noose around the best one’s neck.”
“Not yet,” Tom said. “Maybe you can help. You know these writers better than I do.”
“Try me,” Kit said. “Though Robert Greene’s no friend of mine.”
“He’s a victim, not a villain,” Trumpet said. “Although I wish I could meet him before —” She shot Tom an inscrutable look. “Before this is all over. Do you know a pamphleteer who goes by the name of John Dando?”
Kit laughed out loud. “The prop and mainstay of the Goose and Gall? He lives upstairs. He may own a share in the place, come to think of it. He can’t be supporting himself by publishing the idle farts of a wayward mule or whatever’s his latest fancy.” He shook his head. “You don’t think Dando has anything to do with any of this? I’ve heard the man can carry a grudge, but he’s too idle to try again after missing his man the first time, and he’s no more a Puritan than I am.”
“I don’t believe he’s Martin’s minion,” Tom said. “But he’s plainly envious of Nashe and Greene for being chosen to play Mar-Martin when he wasn’t. That rankles.”
“Rankles,” Kit said. “A faint motive for strangling two men.”
“He has a secret to protect,” Trumpet said. She gave Tom a lip-biting look that made him want to — that made him bury his face in his cup for a long draught of surprisingly good wine.
Kit chuckled softly. “I don’t wonder your minders are trying to keep you two apart. What’s the secret, Mr. Trumpet?”
“Tom told us that Mr. Bacon wanted him to look up printers in the Stationers’ Registry. So I went and looked.”
Tom nearly choked on his drink. Once again, she’d caught him completely off guard. Where would he ever find another such surprising, infuriating, intoxicating rarity?
“I went to the Stationers’ Hall,” she said pertly. “I told them Francis Bacon sent me and just like you said, they let me in and left me to it. I spent half an hour in their records room, which was every bit as stuffy as you thought it would be. I was looking for — not anything in particular, starting with this year and hoping something would jump out and something did. John Dando’s real name.” She stopped and beamed at them, waggling her eyebrows.
“And the name is . . . ?” Tom obliged.
“Barnaby Snorscombe, gentleman of Northamptonshire.”
“Snorscombe?” Tom and Kit echoed, trading amused looks.
“Do you mean Barnaby Snorscombe?” Tom repeated, his horse’s voice winning a delicious giggle. He stored that up in his camel’s hump too.
Even Kit chuckled. “I’ll grant that’s worth killing for, though you’d think the poor churl would go after his parents first.”
“On the other hand,” Tom said, “if that name is in the Stationers’ book, other people must know it. It could be one of those not-so-secret secrets, if you follow me.”
Kit nodded. “Ask Greene if he knew. He loves to root around in other writers’ dirty laundry. I can say that it fits the little I know of Mr. Snorscombe.” He imitated Tom’s horse voice and got a round of chuckles. “I’m not surprised to learn that he’s the black sheep of a good family. He talks like a gent.”
“The question is, how black is he?” Trumpet asked. “Black enough to strangle Thomas Nashe?”
“It’s still not enough for me,” Kit said. “While I admire your initiative, I must give Dando the thumbs-down. Who’s next?”
“What do you think about Anthony Munday?” Tom asked.
“Munday? He was just here.”
“I saw him. He’s another one who’s jealous of Greene and Nashe.”
“Oh, that goes back a while,” Kit said. “Not Nashe. He couldn’t care less about him. But Greene’s the most prolific writer in England today. I think he’s the only one of us who actually makes a living at it. The rest need something else to keep the wolf from the door. If you’re the competitive type, he’s the one you’ll want to beat.”
“That’s only an added motivation for Munday,” Tom said. “He’s also working for Canon Bancroft as an intelligencer, searching the counties for Martin Marprelate.”
“Not an intelligencer,” Kit said. “That’s what I am. I know you guessed it, but it’s all you’ll ever know, so it doesn’t matter. But no one would hire Munday for that work. You have to have courteous manners, a pleasant appearance, and an ability to mingle with people, get them to talk to you.”
“Like Nashe has been doing,” Trumpet said.
“More or less, although he’s not much good at melting into the background and not presentable enough for every occasion.”
Tom had a vision of Marlowe, handsome and well-groomed in his best doublet, standing at the back of some nobleman’s audience chamber, conversing articulately about poetry and art in Latin, listening more than he spoke. Nashe would be a disaster in that role, but Tom would be good at it. Better than Marlowe, maybe. He could tease secrets from the ladies, who had teased them from their lords.
Since his father’s death, he often thought about packing a bag and going — where? Marlowe had a master, whose name he never even hinted at. If Tom ever decided to leave Gray’s, perhaps he’d ask him for a reference.
“Munday’s a pursuivant,” Kit said. “That’s a horse of a different color. He has a warrant from the archbishop or some kind of writ. He goes around visiting local justices, sheriffs, other authorities. He shows them his writ and tells them what he wants. They don’t have to like him to share what they know; they just have to fear the wrath of the writ-writer. Part of his job is to make them feel that fear. If they have something, or someone, they’ll give it up. He’s not a nice man, is Munday. He’s disagreeable, not trustworthy. Retainers playing dice while waiting for their lords and the like aren’t going to tell him anything.”
“That’s an interesting distinction,” Tom said, “of which I was not aware, but it doesn’t disprove my conjecture. He’s playing some kind of game.” He told Kit about seeing him waiting on the bench at Burghley House.
Kit burst into laughter. “Let me get this straight. You think Anthony Munday is Canon Bancroft’s pursuivant” — he held up one finger —“Martin’s minion”— he held up another —“and an agent of Robert Cecil?” He laughed some more, shaking his head and refilling all their cups. “Tom, Tom. You’ve missed your calling! Add a jilted mistress and you’ve got the makings of a passable play.”
“You have to admit his presence on that bench was suspicious.”
“No, I don’t. He was undoubtedly bringing a message from the canon to Mr. Cecil.”
“Then why did he glare at me?”
“He glares at everybody. He has neither gift, craft, nor wit, but for some reason, he’s decided he wants to be Robert Greene. And no, I don’t believe he’d strangle Nashe to make that dream come true. It wouldn’t help, for one thing. You can’t squeeze a man’s talent out of his throat.”
Tom glowered into his cup, but had to admit the truth of that last observation. Kit hadn’t finished demolishing his ideas. “Here’s another count against Martin’s minion as the strangler. Religious extremists don’t murder to keep from being discovered. They might assassinate the opposition’s leaders, I suppose, but ultimately they want to be discovered. They long to be recognized by the other zealots as courageous defenders of the faith.”
“There is a hidden press somewhere,” Tom insisted. “Which means there are men hiding along with it. They’ll probably hang when they’re caught. I should think they’d do whatever they could to postpone that eventuality.”
“They could pack up and run,” Kit said. “I have one more count against both Dando and Munday. They knew those two victims, Stokes and Little. Neither Dando nor Munday would mistake them for anyone else, not even at night. They have voices as well as beards, you know.”
Tom growled under his breath. He’d forgotten about voices. “Assuming they had a chance to cry out.”
Kit smiled like a patient tutor. “Any others?”
Trumpet said, “Only one — Peter Hollowell, Mr. Cecil’s secretary. He claims to have been with a whore on the night Stokes was murdered. She backed him up, but I don’t believe her.”
“She’s come into a sum of money recently,” Tom said, nodding. “Where’d she get it?”
Trumpet added, “I saw yellow marks along her cheek, under her straggling hair. Like old bruises.”
Kit’s eyes flicked from one to the other as they spoke, a weary expression on his face. “Robert Cecil’s secretary. The Lord Treasurer’s son. The one who asked your Mr. Bacon — who happens to be his cousin, as I recall — to look into these murders in the first place.”
“That’s right,” Tom said. “But I don’t believe it was Hollowell. It’s the same problem as Munday, isn’t it? He’d have to be working for both Martin and the people who are trying to put Martin in prison. Still, someone gave that whore enough money to buy a house in Rye.”
Kit laughed heartily, pressing a hand to his breast. “Perhaps she’s a thrifty soul and skilled at her profession. Let’s wish her a rousing success among the smugglers in her new establishment!” He raised his cup and kept it raised until they joined him. “Come on now, Tom. I know you. You’ve been saving the best for last, haven’t you?”
Tom traded defeated frowns with Trumpet. “Well, there has been talk about the Earl of Leicester’s ghost.”