Tom Sledd was taking his exercise, round and round and round. For a change, he sometimes went widdershins, until he got giddy. Finally, he slumped against the wall, next to the incarcerated poet, who was reading back through his work and making the occasional change, accompanied by a quiet ‘Tut’.
‘How can you bear this?’ Sledd asked his neighbour.
‘Hmm?’ The poet held up a finger for quiet. He was checking his metre. With a nod to himself, he turned to Sledd, marking his place with an inky finger. ‘Bear what?’
Sledd spread his arms and rolled his eyes. ‘This,’ he said. ‘The smell. The noise. The …’ he nodded to a couple across the room, who had been making the beast with two backs, relentlessly, lovelessly, for hours now and showed no sign of stopping. He had no word for what they were doing. ‘That.’
The poet smiled softly and laid a hand on Sledd’s arm. It was the first human contact other than thoughtless blows that he had received since coming to this awful place and he felt a tear crawl down his cheek. ‘I am not given to handing out advice,’ the poet said, ‘except what you need to survive in here. This is something you may not be able to do but, if you can, it will keep you sane, if sane you are.’
Sledd leaned forward. That was just what he needed, something to tell him he was sane, because sometimes, he was beginning to wonder. ‘I’ll do anything,’ he said. ‘Anything I can.’
‘Then, try this,’ the poet said. ‘Close your eyes. Lean your head back on the wall. Feel the wall, hard against your head. Think of nothing but that wall. Then, when you have a mind as empty as it can be, when all the sounds, the smells, the fears have gone away, put back into your mind some happy things.’ The poet’s eyes snapped open and pierced Tom Sledd where he sat. ‘Don’t,’ he said, ‘on any account think of your old life. That will surely send you mad. Think of something else, something of your imagination. Hmm …’ He looked the stage manager up and down. ‘When you were a lad, did you dream of being a knight? A knight in armour?’
Sledd looked at the man kindly. They had clearly had very different childhoods. All Tom could remember dreaming of was where his next meal was coming from and whether they would be tenting or sleeping under the wagon with the dogs. But the poet meant well, so he nodded.
‘Well, there you are then,’ the man said, with his gentle smile. ‘I would put it in verse, because I just can’t help myself. You might want to conjure up pictures. But the main thing is, fill your mind with it and the rest will fade away.’
Sledd looked doubtful. The couple across the way were still keeping to their own rhythm, the woman to his right was picking over a plate of cockroaches which she was keeping for a feast for later. How could anything block this out?
The poet closed his eyes and spoke in a singsong voice to the air. ‘With a host of furious fancies whereof I am commander, with a burning spear and a horse of air, to the wilderness I wander. By a knight of ghosts and shadows I summoned am to tourney. Ten leagues beyond the wide world’s end; methinks it is no journey.’
Sledd felt a tingle go up his spine. He closed his eyes and pressed the back of his head to the wall. He felt the heavy armour wrap itself around his limbs and the crested helm bowed his head with its weight. The warmth of the horse between his thighs was tangible. The smell of herbs and bright, cold water stung his nostrils as he wandered along, waiting for a call from a man of ghosts and shadows. The mad cacophony fell away and he hefted his lance under his arm, looking for battle.
Beside him, the poet smiled and turned again to his manuscript. If he could keep just one man sane in this insanity, his life was not, after all, in vain.
There was no sign of the plague the next morning as Kit Marlowe padded along Knightrider Street. He could see the toppled tower of St Paul’s to his right and the ruins of Baynard’s castle to his left, its curtain wall shored up by the wooden hovels of the dispossessed. If the Pestilence didn’t strike there in a day or so, it would be a miracle.
At the sign of the kettle, Marlowe dashed under an archway and found himself in a maze of passages, each darker and more menacing than the last. The sun never shone here and rats scuttled in and out of the gutters that sloped down towards the river.
‘Mistress Jackman?’ Marlowe had left his Colleyweston at home today and had put on his second-best doublet. If it wasn’t exactly possible to blend with the inhabitants of this abyss, at least he wouldn’t stand out like too much of a sore thumb.
The girl was probably twenty, but years in these alleyways had hardened her features and it was too early in the morning for her to have dressed in her finery, breasts above her stomacher rouged and powdered. ‘Who wants to know?’
‘I was a friend of Robert Greene,’ Marlowe told her.
‘Robyn?’ She raised an eyebrow. ‘Nah, he didn’t have no friends.’
Perspicacious one, this, Marlowe thought. ‘Plenty of enemies, though,’ he said.
She tilted her head. She’d never seen this man before, with his dark eyes that burned into whatever passed for a soul in her. ‘Some,’ she agreed. ‘What do you want?’
‘I want to know who killed him,’ Marlowe said, watching her face for any sign at all. He saw nothing.
‘That’s not the sort of question you ask around here, pizzle.’ A rough voice made him turn. A huge man stood there with a pickadil hat perched on the back of his head.
Marlowe smiled. ‘You must be Billy Jackman,’ he said, ‘this good lady’s brother.’
‘Good lady?’ Jackman grunted, grinning at the girl. ‘Somebody’s been saying nice things about you, Fan.’
‘Stow it, Billy,’ she growled, looking under her eyelashes at him. ‘I’ll have you know—’
But Jackman wasn’t interested in Fanny’s pride. He was staring at Marlowe. ‘Who are you?’ he growled. ‘What do you want?’
‘My name is Marlowe,’ he said, ‘and I want the truth.’
‘What about?’
‘The murder of Robert Greene.’
Brother and sister looked at each other. ‘What makes you think he was murdered?’ Jackman asked.
‘A lot of things,’ Marlowe said, ‘none of which need concern you, friend.’
‘I ain’t your friend, pizzle,’ Jackman hissed, his lips curling. ‘Now, bugger off to wherever you’ve come from and leave honest folk alone.’
‘If there were some honest folk here, I’d be delighted,’ Marlowe said.
Jackman checked himself, frowning. ‘Are you saying we ain’t honest?’
‘Is the Pope a Catholic?’ Marlowe asked.
‘The Pope?’ Jackman was finding the constantly changing subject a little hard to follow. Usually, his vocabulary was based around violence, sex and money, heavy on the violence. ‘What are you? A bloody Papist?’
‘My religion is my own business,’ Marlowe said. ‘Did you know Dominus Greene?’
‘Dominus Greene? Dominus Greene?’ Jackman mimicked Marlowe, then spat onto the cobbles. ‘Stuck up, he was. Always spouting poetry …’
‘Somebody else’s, I’ll be bound,’ Marlowe smiled.
‘I wouldn’t know about that. It’s all bollocks, that stuff. This theatre rubbish. What did Greene call himself, Fan? A University wit? What a load of bollocks!’
‘Oh, leave him alone, Billy,’ Fanny whined. ‘He was all right, was Robyn. All right, he had a bit of a smell under his nose, but he did right by me. And I tell you what, Billy, he taught me some stuff, some stuff to bring me up in the world, save me having to work for a living at Mrs Isam’s, that’s for sure. De mort you is nigh hill nice I bone um, he’d say right now, wouldn’t he, Master Marlowe? Don’t speak ill of the dead.’
Marlowe had heard ‘de mortuis nihil nisi bonum’ pronounced better, but never with so much feeling and his opinion of the girl rose.
Billy Jackman spat again. ‘Did right by you? What, you mean he didn’t knock you up? Couldn’t get it up, more like. Stuck up …’
‘Do I take it you weren’t overfond of Dominus Greene, Master Jackman?’
‘Overfond, my arse!’ Jackman looked at Marlowe with his piggy eyes hard with hatred. ‘Look, are you going, or what?’
Marlowe spread his arms. ‘What,’ he said. ‘At least until I have some answers.’
There was the ring of steel as Jackman whipped his dagger from the sheath at his back. Marlowe stepped back, his own knife in his hand.
‘Come on, boys!’ Fanny Jackman tried to appeal to the men’s better natures. But, glancing at their faces, she knew that they didn’t have any.
‘This is not worth dying for, Master Jackman,’ Marlowe warned.
‘I was just going to say the same thing to you.’ Jackman lunged, but Marlowe was faster. He caught the wrist and swung it upwards, driving the blade into the man’s jerkin and arm. Blood spurted over the leather and linen and Marlowe swung the man round to force him to the ground.
‘Never, ever,’ Marlowe held his blade to Jackman’s throat, gripping his hair with the other. The pickadil had gone. ‘Never, ever try that move with a man who knows what he is doing,’ he hissed. ‘It can get you killed.’ He hauled the man to his feet by his hair and shoved him forward, his knee in his back. The cutpurse turned, clutching his ripped arm, but still looking for a fight.
‘Oh, go and get yourself cleaned up, Billy,’ Fanny said. ‘Master Marlowe and I are going to have a little chat.’
Simon Forman was in a quandary. He had advised against closing the theatres and he couldn’t in all conscience believe it was wrong to do so. But he had noticed a falling off of calls for his expertise lately and he couldn’t help but wonder whether preventative advice was really the way to make a living. Perhaps letting everyone mix hugger-mugger might be the better option. He, of course, and so by extension, his apprentices, would never succumb to the Pestilence. He wore his mask – copied now by every charlatan in London – stuffed with his special herbal mixture. He cast runes and sat in a pentangle every night, divining by the position of the stars the best amulets to wear the following day to keep him safe. He washed in water of the Nile and the Jordan – some may have considered he was hedging his bets, but his answer was always simple. He was alive. Many others were not. Ergo, whatever he was doing, he was going to keep right on doing it.
His wife was a thorn in his side and he was working on that. Whatever herbs he used for himself, Timothy, Matthias and Gerard, not to mention his more deep-pocketed clients, he gave to his wife as well. Indeed, she insisted upon it. But he made certain special changes to her mixture; for instance, he never gave her asafoetida and always added a nice dose of ransons instead. And yet, the harridan was still alive. It was a puzzle, but not one he had time for this morning.
Decked out in his best robes, newts, frogs and doves stowed safely in his sleeves, Forman burst through the door of his laboratory like an avenging angel. One day, he knew, he would catch his apprentices in some misdeed or other, but today was not that day. As always, they were standing to attention at their trestles, work well in hand, their hated robes clean and neat and a newly herb-stuffed mask slung across each shoulder. Forman hadn’t prepared anything to say, so he made do with walking around, hands clasped behind his back, examining minutely everything on each table. He had to take care that none of the boys ever discovered that, actually, he knew far less than they did. For all he knew, they could be making soup, yet he trusted them to be working hard to find whatever it was they sought. Gerard, he knew, only used natural things; things that grew in wayside and hedgerow. Although he had tried to persuade the lad to forage in darker places, graveyards, under gibbets, he had never succeeded. Wholesomeness was Gerard’s middle name. Matthias and Timothy were different – he knew that they each had a dark side. Eventually, one would eclipse the other and then it would probably be a fight to the death. If it were to be physical, Matthias would win hands down. Cerebral – it was too close to be able to predict, even with all the crystal balls and scrying glasses in the world. The trick would be to not be standing too close when it happened.
His examination finished, Forman turned to his apprentices and gestured for them to form their usual line, as they waited for instructions.
‘As you all know,’ he began, ‘the theatres are closed and people are staying indoors as much as they can. This means, of course, that the spread of the Pestilence is slowing …’
Gerard raised an arm and cried, ‘Huzzah!’
‘… which is not, of course, unalloyed joy for us, welcome though the news must be to the populace at large.’
Gerard lowered his arm as slowly as possible, wishing that his cheer was not still ringing in the rafters.
‘We are welcome in many houses, of course, with our healing and comforting words, but my request to you today is that you all pack a bag – a modest bag, because the universe will provide, as you all know – and go into the highways and byways, bringing succour and comfort where you may. Today is …’ he looked up vaguely. He knew perfectly well what day it was, but it was better to be the vague magus than the whip-smart man of business, especially when sending his boys out on a wild-goose chase.
‘Wednesday, Master,’ three voices chorused.
‘Thank you.’ He beamed at them and rubbed his hands together. ‘Don’t let me keep you. I would like to see you back here at noon on Tuesday next.’
‘But … where shall we go, Master?’ Matthias liked his home comforts. Sleeping under a hedge wasn’t really his style.
Forman waved an airy hand. ‘Where’er you will,’ he said. ‘Let the air and spirits of the air guide you. Take a horse each from the usual livery – tell the ostler to put it on the account.’ He beamed at them again and then grew serious. ‘But if I find any of you have beetled off home to mother, auntie, be they who they may, it will go worse with you, I promise.’ He clapped his hands and a newt fell gratefully to the floor and scuttled off. ‘Now – off you go. Until Tuesday next.’
They made for the door, grabbing their bags from the hooks on the wall.
‘At noon.’
And they were gone.
Marlowe and the girl swung into step with each other; to anyone passing, they would have looked like old friends. She kept her hands demurely at her waist and her eyes downcast. He waited patiently for her to begin her tale.
They were almost out of the abyss where she lived and into some streets with light, air and life before she spoke. ‘He wasn’t so bad, you know, Master Marlowe.’
‘Dominus Greene?’ Marlowe just needed to be sure she wasn’t talking about her oaf of a brother.
‘Who else?’ she chuckled. ‘I will never be heard to say that Billy is not so bad. Billy is about as bad as a person can be, but he didn’t kill Robyn, that I know. Mrs Isam would never let Billy through the door. He scared the other gentlemen and none of the girls would let him near them. So …’ She shrugged a grubby shoulder and then pulled modestly at her slipping bodice. All very well to allow everything to pop out pertly for money, but she didn’t flaunt her wares for free.
‘So, you are one of Mrs Isam’s girls?’ Marlowe needed to be sure.
‘Was. Was one of her girls. She threw me out when Robyn died. Bad luck, she said.’
‘Bad luck for Dominus Greene, to be sure.’ Marlowe spoke mildly, but she was immediately up in arms.
‘I never hurt him,’ she said. ‘I … I won’t say I loved Robyn – he wasn’t easy to love, poor man. But he was never cruel to me and, to be honest, he didn’t bother me much in that way, if you understand me.’
Marlowe did.
‘He said he liked to have me near him, to stop Death from talking to him. And he taught me some things. Some Latin, like I done before. And he was teaching me to read. But his books were hard, so … I can read a bit, though.’
Marlowe thought to himself how like Greene that was. Take a girl from the street, not use her for what she was made and then make her unsuited for her profession. But he could also see something in the girl – some spark, some deep, secret place – and that made him understand, just a little. ‘Well done,’ he said. ‘Though I expect you keep that to yourself, do you?’
She laughed. ‘You are very wise, Master Marlowe.’
‘Tell me about Mistress Isam’s house.’
‘There is but little to tell,’ the girl said. ‘We are usually five or six girls, usually with regular visitors. Mrs Isam deals with anyone with …’ she looked up under her lashes, ‘… special tastes. She feeds us well. We have some brandy wine at bedtime, though when that is can be anybody’s guess, sometimes. That’s why being Robyn’s special girl was so nice. He kept very regular hours, bed with the sun, and wanted me to sleep beside him every night. So, you can imagine, Master Marlowe, it’s hard to be back on the street again. I would never have harmed him. It would be like harming myself.’
Marlowe mulled it over. Mrs Isam was notorious, of course, but he would be interested to know who her special visitors were, nonetheless. He could get that list later. For now, he needed to know more about Greene’s milieu before he died. ‘I assume, therefore,’ he said, ‘that if you were otherwise busy, Dominus Greene did not avail himself of …’
She turned around, hands on hips, careless now of her slipping bodice, to the joy of passing apprentices. ‘Robyn wasn’t like that, I told you. He just wanted company. Yes, I was sometimes otherwise busy, as you put it. A girl has to live and he wasn’t rich. But then, someone else from the house would sit with him. Mrs Isam, sometimes. Or her nephew, if he was there. She has a sister as well, a comfortable body and I would be willing to bet that had she been willing, Robyn would have preferred her company to mine. He was still in love with his wife, you know, Doll, though she treated him like dirt.’ She looked pensive. ‘Robyn rather liked being treated badly. Mrs Isam offered to treat him really badly, once, but he threw her down the stairs for her trouble. She almost broke her neck.’
Marlowe looked at the girl and smiled. Sometimes, he wondered what was the more extraordinary, fact or fiction. If he put that scene in one of his plays, it would be laughed off the stage as unrealistic.
‘So, I think, Master Marlowe, that, miss the strange creature though I do, there is nothing to be gained in digging up Robyn’s past.’
Marlowe’s heart skipped a beat then steadied – her innocent words were close enough to the truth, in all conscience.
‘Leave him to lie in peace. To rot, as he always said he would, and be food for the worms.’ She looked up at him and, to the playwright’s surprise, her eyes were bright with unshed tears. ‘And please, just once, for me, call him Robyn. There is so much hatred in everyone’s voice when they call him Dominus Greene. It’s hard to hate someone called Robyn, don’t you think?’
Marlowe smiled down at her and brushed a tear from her cheek with a gentle thumb. ‘For you, Mistress Jackman,’ he said, ‘for you and you alone, I will let Robyn rest in peace.’
‘Ress kwi ass ket in par chay.’
‘I couldn’t have put it better myself,’ he said, and pressed a coin into her hand. ‘Thank you for your company.’ And he turned and was gone.
The three sorcerer’s apprentices found themselves out on the street in a state of some confusion. They knew that times had become a little harder with real Pestilence stalking the land, but they didn’t think they would be sent out into the land in question in quite so peremptory a fashion. Forman had always made it clear that he was training them for the day when they could go and spread his words among those not fortunate enough to live in London. They just didn’t know that day would be today.
‘So, where are you planning to go?’ Timothy asked the others. ‘Don’t forget, we are not to go to family or friends.’
Matthias snorted. ‘I don’t see how he would know. I’m planning to go home for a day or two, perhaps talk one of my mother’s friends into writing me a testimonial of some kind, then go back.’ He looked at the other two. ‘You?’
Gerard was shocked. ‘He will know, Matthias. He will see you in the glass.’
Matthias raised an eyebrow. What an innocent country boy Gerard was. ‘I don’t think the glass is real, Gerard, do you?’ he said, condescendingly. ‘How can a piece of crystal tell him anything?’ He gave a derisive snort.
‘I think you should take all this more seriously, Matthias, I really do.’ Gerard was getting quite upset. ‘You know the master knows things that ordinary mortals can’t know. He can speak to spirits, you know he can. We’ve all seen him do it.’
‘I’ve seen him talking to himself, yes.’ Timothy noted with an inward smile that, although Matthias was keen to show his disdain, he was still making sure that his voice was low and they were moving away from the door. ‘It doesn’t prove there were spirits though, does it? And what about all those poor creatures he puts up his sleeves every morning?’
‘I asked him that,’ Gerard said. ‘I don’t think that a sleeve is a healthy place for any of God’s creatures. He said that he put them there in case someone unworthy expected a miracle. Then, he would use one of the animals. In case … in case a believer was nearby and …’ Gerard was running out of excuses. They had sounded so convincing in Forman’s mouth.
‘Yes, well, if you say so,’ Matthias said, clapping the lad on the back in friendly fashion. As a man with family money, a scholar of a University, he didn’t really need Forman’s apprenticeship. But for now, it suited his purpose. It was really a matter of waiting until he had the secret of the massage and he would be out of there, like a rat up a pipe. ‘You, Tim? Where are you off to?’
Timothy looked thoughtful. ‘I am going into the world, as the master asked. It will be a challenge I shall enjoy, I think. What I will be seeking is somewhere that the Pestilence has not yet reached. I will teach them about herbs, how to stop the sickness in its tracks. I will go from house to house; I think that gathering folk together is not a good idea. That’s why they have closed the theatres and I won’t go against that. I am not sure which way I will ride. I will let the horse decide.’
Matthias laughed. He had hired horses from Forman’s livery before. ‘In that case, you will be spending the week in a stall in a stable. None of those horses has the strength to go far or fast and they have even less will.’
‘I don’t think I will ride,’ Gerard said. ‘I just intend to walk until I find a meadow and a stream. There, I will put up a tent and wait for folk to come to me for healing.’
‘That happens, does it?’ Timothy didn’t speak unkindly. He just wanted to know.
‘I have never seen it done,’ Gerard said, seriously. ‘But if I saw a tent pitched in a meadow by a stream, I think I would want to know who was in it. And if I was sick … or knew someone who was sick … I might …’ The light of enthusiasm died in his eyes. ‘But in any case,’ he said, giving himself a shake, ‘if I don’t try, I’ll never know.’
‘And anyway,’ Matthias chimed in, ‘the master might be watching.’
Gerard looked at him sternly. ‘Will be watching, Matthias,’ he said. ‘Will be watching!’
They had arrived at the livery stable, perhaps not the best in town, but certainly the cheapest. And it did have commanding views of the abbey. Matthias stuck his head round the door and called for the stable boy, who shambled out, carrying a tangle of harness over his arm. He looked at them unenthusiastically. He had been told not to give Forman or his boys any more credit, but if he didn’t send a few horses out soon, they would be out of hay. He would rather the beasts dropped with starvation on someone else’s watch, not his.
‘Three, no, two horses, lad, and make it quick,’ Matthias said.
‘Oh, sir,’ the stable boy said, ‘I can’t let two of you gentlemen share a horse. T’ain’t natural. It’s like them Templars of olden days. Two on a horse, t’ain’t—’
‘No, I do know,’ Matthias said, looming over the lad. ‘My friend here is on foot. He has just walked with us to be friendly.’
‘Oh. Ar. Two it is, then, sir. I got a nice grey here, if you’d like it. And a roan.’
‘Is that the same grey I had last time?’ Timothy asked. ‘The one with one leg shorter than the others?’
‘I wouldn’t say shorter …’ the lad looked shifty.
‘What would you say, then?’ Timothy had taken a nasty tumble and wasn’t keen to repeat the experience.
‘More … later. That’s it, later.’
‘I see,’ Matthias said. ‘One leg is slower than the others. Is that it?’
The stable boy smiled. ‘Yes, that’s it, sir. Easily fixed if you just give him a bit of time. Patient, that’s what you’ve got to be with horses.’
‘No.’ Timothy was adamant. ‘I don’t want the grey. What else have you got?’
‘Umm …’ the lad didn’t want to give them anything decent, not with the thick bundle of unpaid notes in the tack room. ‘I’ve got a nice black. White blaze on the nose. Handsome beast.’
‘Temper like the Devil,’ Matthias said. ‘What else?’
‘This chestnut’s a nice well-tempered mare. In foal, so a bit slow, but you will fit her nicely, sir,’ the lad said to Timothy. ‘You’re nice and light. She’ll give you no trouble.’
The mare looked huge. It would be like riding a barrel. ‘When is she due to foal?’ Gerard, the country boy, couldn’t help but be concerned.
‘When are you due back?’
‘Next Tuesday.’
‘Make it Monday and all will be well,’ the stable boy assured them. ‘I would imagine. Anyway, gents, I can’t stand here all day. The roan and the chestnut?’
Matthias and Timothy shrugged and nodded. It was pointless standing here arguing when there was obviously nothing better on offer. The lad tacked the horses up and soon the three apprentices were off on their travels, to who knew where.
‘So … what we gonna do, then?’ Hal Dignam was wiping the grease from his fingers all over the curtain at the Curtain.
‘You mean now,’ Will Kemp asked him, ‘or for the rest of our lives?’
‘See, that’s your trouble, Will,’ Dignam prodded the man in the shoulder. ‘For a comedian, you’re the gloomiest bastard I know. Always looking on the dark side.’ He nudged the man hard. ‘It might never happen, you know.’
‘It has,’ Kemp all but shouted at him. ‘They’ve closed the bloody theatres.’
‘Yes, yes,’ Dignam reached for his goatskin wine sack and took a swig, ‘but that’s just one of life’s little ups and downs. Tilney will see sense shortly and it’ll all be on again. You’ll see.’
‘Sense and Master of the Revels don’t belong in the same sentence, Hal. I know; I’ve talked to him.’
‘So, what we gonna do, then?’
Kemp sighed. He slipped a groat out of his purse. ‘Call it,’ he said, tossing the coin into the air.
‘Heads,’ Dignam said, as his partner in rhyme caught the coin.
‘It’s tails,’ Kemp said. It was the story of both their lives.
‘So, what are we gonna do, then?’
‘Bedlam.’ Kemp got up and tugged his jerkin down. ‘Poke some lunatics.’
‘Oh, right.’ Dignam got up too and slung the sack over his shoulder. ‘What would it have been if it had been heads?’
Kemp looked at him, stone-faced. ‘We’d have gone to the Tower and asked that nice Master Topcliffe to pull our teeth out one by one.’