The market was immediately on the other side of Newgate. Even at this early hour, it was a riot compared to the tranquillity of the palace and its grounds – butchers for the most part, but also fishmongers, grocers and flower-sellers, all hawking their produce in voices to split the ears. Now they were inside the city walls the air was warm and close, and everything smelt of meat and vegetables just on the cusp of rotting.
They had barely gone as far as the first row of stalls when somebody grabbed Alyce’s arm and spun her around. She didn’t even have time to look at her assailant’s face before she was being smothered in plush velvet. Pearls or jewels of some kind pressed into her gums and her cheekbones.
For a moment she thought it was Doctor Dee, but the doublet her face was crushed against didn’t seem the sort of thing he wore. Then she thought it was the men from Bedlam. But she heard laughter. And she smelt perfume so strong and sickly sweet she wanted to throw up.
‘Alyce!’ said a voice, the pronunciation and stress on each syllable completely wrong. ‘You are here! You are alive!’
She extricated herself from the embrace, and looked up to see Signor Vitali’s painted face beaming back at her.
‘You came back!’ he exclaimed in a voice that was far too loud. ‘To help your friend!’
Alyce felt her heart race. ‘Um. No, that’s not actually why—’
‘You kept your promise!’
‘I didn’t—’
‘My child, you are as faithful as you are beautiful.’
‘Thank you . . .’
Vitali looked at her askance.
‘Although, today, you are not as comely as I remember. What is this apparel you wear? You dress so strangely!’
Solomon, who had been standing a little to one side watching the whole bizarre exchange unfold, snorted. The mountebank himself was wearing a gold doublet, gold hose, gold shoes (smeared with dung), and a delicate ruff so broad that it almost covered his shoulders completely. His fingers and wrists were covered with jewelled rings and bracelets, and he clinked whenever he moved.
Alyce saw Vitali register Solomon’s laugh, without actually acknowledging his presence.
‘I am afraid today I cannot be Alyce,’ she said. ‘Today I must be somebody else. That’s why I’m dressed like this. Please don’t ask why, it’s . . .’
‘Yes.’
‘Very well. I shall ask no more. I fear we already know too many of each other’s secrets. Wouldn’t you say?’ He gave her a knowing smile, and then suddenly affected an expression of comically exaggerated disappointment. ‘But I am sad! You did not say farewell to your Vitali yesterday. I was so worried. I thought maybe I would never see you again – that this Doctor Dee had snatched you away from me!’
Alyce didn’t reply.
‘Was he able to help you with the meaning of your letter?’
‘Not as such,’ she said, glancing at Solomon, who looked away.
Vitali tutted. ‘I confess, I looked for you all day yesterday, after you disappeared. I paid a visit to Mrs Thomson in the evening, she did not know where you were either.’ His face softened, as much as it could under the layers of make-up. ‘She looked very worried. Very worried indeed. She even looked thin, and I never thought I could say such a thing.’
Alyce wondered whether she would ever go back to The Swan again. She had assumed that Mrs Thomson was glad to see the back of her, but apparently not.
‘You need not tell me your secrets,’ the mountebank continued, ‘but maybe you should tell her? She is nearly ill with worry.’
‘I shall, signor. But not yet.’
He nodded. ‘And who is this?’ he said, turning at last to Solomon. ‘A friend? A rival for my affections?’ He obviously meant this as a joke, but there was a coldness in his voice.
‘Just that,’ said Solomon. ‘A friend. Alyce is staying with me and the company while she is out from under Mrs Thomson’s roof.’
Vitali eyed him suspiciously. ‘The company?’
‘Sussex’s Men. Are you a player yourself? That’s quite a spectacle you’re constructing.’ He pointed over Vitali’s shoulder. ‘I’ve never seen such a marvel of stagecraft.’
Propped up against Newgate itself, Vitali had erected a complex timber scaffold that looked more suited to siege warfare than to the selling of potions and lotions. It had three separate stages on different levels, all as rickety as each other, the highest tottering eight or nine feet above the ground. The whole structure was draped with heavy sailcloth, dyed purple and blue, and hung above it was a backdrop of the same colour, decorated with stars and crescent moons.
Vitali kept smiling, but spoke through slightly gritted teeth. ‘I am not a player, no. I am a doctor. A physician.’
‘Oh, I see,’ said Solomon in a mock-apologetic tone. ‘I’ve just never seen a physician dressed like this.’
‘I am not any normal physician.’
‘Yes. I can see that.’
‘Ah, a cynic. Perhaps I can prove the efficacy of my wares when the spectacle is over?’
His words had taken on a hard edge. Alyce remembered Vitali’s sideline in poisons, and quickly tried to change the subject.
‘Forgive us, signor – I’m afraid we won’t be able to stay and watch the show. We have errands to run.’
He looked at her for a moment, like she was speaking a different language. ‘I do not understand. My dear, you are the spectacle. That is why you are here, is it not?’
Alyce was disconcerted by the fact that his usual fixed smile had not returned to his face. She started to feel hot and agitated under her borrowed clothes.
‘I am sorry –’ she lightly touched his arm – ‘but this is coincidence. We’re here for the market.’
‘We had a deal, child. You swore an oath. I took you to the tavern, I introduced you to a very important man. The kind of man you never would have found without my help.’
She turned to Solomon for reassurance, but he looked as guilty as she did. As much as she wanted to get away from Vitali, he had a point. She did have her end of the bargain to uphold.
‘I am sorry, signor – but I would rather nobody saw me. Not like this.’ She waved her hands around. ‘Not in public.’
‘You promised, Alyce,’ he said, not moving an inch.
‘But—’
‘It would mean very much to me, if you kept your promise.’
‘I—’
‘It would mean very much to you, if you kept your promise.’
Was that a threat? Alyce thought. Then Vitali’s broad smile returned, unannounced.
‘Besides, why do you worry about being seen?’ he said. ‘You do not even look like Alyce. This is a perfect disguise.’
That was true too. Her nerve failed her, just as she’d known it would from the moment she had seen him. She nodded.
‘Very well,’ she said, sick with anxiety the moment the words left her lips. ‘Only, I don’t know what it is you would like me to do.’
‘Ottimo!’ Vitali exclaimed, and clapped his hands. ‘It is nothing. You are a talented girl. You learn quickly. Come!’
Alyce followed, but spoke to the baffled Solomon before she did. ‘Just wait here,’ she said. ‘Keep your eyes open for anything unusual.’
The crowds were beginning to swell now. Passers-by were already stopping to stare at the construction, at Vitali, at Alyce.
Around the back of the stage, Vitali beckoned Alyce over to an enormous strongbox resting on the ground. The inside was mostly piled with the glass bottles, bowls and phials that Alyce had seen in Vitali’s lodgings, but it also contained other, stranger things: a ram’s skull; a sword in an ornate scabbard; a dead, stuffed dove in a cage; several coloured leather bags of something that looked suspiciously like gunpowder; and a lute. Alyce looked warily at this last item and hoped that she was not expected to give some form of musical accompaniment.
‘All of these, they must go up there.’ He pointed to the stage. ‘Then we begin.’
She watched him arranging the items across the stages of the scaffold, and followed his lead. The last things to be unpacked were the coloured bags of powder.
‘What are these?’ said Alyce, poking her finger into one of them.
‘Careful, child!’ said Vitali, gently pulling her away and sealing the bag. ‘This is a little sorcery of my own. You shall see. Perhaps, with a real witch here, we will not need it in future?’
He winked, and Alyce felt her blood boil beneath her cheeks. How could he mention it so openly? She turned her head away, pretending she had seen something in the crowd, and she hadn’t heard what he’d said.
With everything set out, the mountebank stood back a few paces and surveyed his stage. He humphed with satisfaction. ‘Good. Very good. Alyce, let us show these men and women something they have never seen before!’
‘Us?’ She turned back to him, aghast. She had hoped, vainly, that Vitali had simply wanted an extra pair of hands to unload his wares. ‘What else do you want me for?’
‘Do not worry yourself! Simply watch the spectacle with everybody else, and when I call upon you, you do as I say, yes?’
He didn’t wait for an answer, but just patted her patronizingly on the head and disappeared around the back of the scaffold.
Alyce scanned the crowd for Solomon, and found him besieged on all sides by dirty, sickly, gormless townsfolk, all jostling for the best view of the platform. Even in his shabby apparel, he looked almost regal by comparison. He had gathered his slender limbs into the sides of his body, trying not to make contact with the men and women around him, and his face showed a look of such distaste Alyce wanted to burst out laughing. She weaved in between the bodies, took his hand, and pulled him to safety at the side of the stage.
‘Can we call it even now?’ she said as he dusted himself down.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Saved your life.’
Before he could reply, she turned back to the scaffold and waited for the show to start.
‘I don’t see her,’ said Hopkins, loitering by the edge of one of the market stalls.
The crowd had cleared around him, which was really the opposite of what he wanted. Even the stall’s owner had abandoned her table of root vegetables and was having an urgent conversation with the shopkeeper opposite. The only company Hopkins kept in that strange, empty circle of fear was Caxton and the girl, whose shoulders he clutched like an over-protective father.
‘But,’ said Martha, ‘she should be here. She was sent to work with him. She was going to deliver his ingredients, and then help him with his spectacle.’ Her voice was quiet and scared now. All of her usual cockiness had left her the previous night, after they’d arrived at London Bridge, and found Vitali’s home dark and abandoned.
‘I am an honest man, Martha, so I shall speak honestly – things are not looking good for you at this moment in time. First you show us an empty set of lodgings in the middle of the river; then you drag us to this lice-ridden pit, first thing in the morning. And no sign of her all night. Where next? Back to Bedlam? If I didn’t know better, child, I’d say you had us chasing our own tails in the hope of making a couple of quick sovereigns. Or maybe you’re in league with Mrs Thomson after all, and you’re giving the girl time to escape?’
‘I’m not! I promise!’ He could see she was deliberately trying not to look at Caxton, her neck twisted unnaturally. ‘Signor Vitali is there, that’s him. That’s his stage.’
‘But no Alyce.’
‘Please, I was trying to help. Just wait a moment. Maybe she’s late . . . or . . .’
Hopkins could feel her shoulders were now shaking with sobs. He watched the mountebank fussing around the scaffold and exchanging words with his manservant, and gripped a little harder.