Marlowe knew better than to hide from Cecil – he knew that it simply couldn’t be done. He had become quite adept at keeping out of the way of Henslowe and all the importuning actors begging for roles, but from Cecil, no one could hide. He was at his breakfast table in Hog Lane that Monday morning, buttering the last crusts of a new loaf, when the hammering at the door alerted him to a more than usually determined visitor. He called through into the kitchen that he would answer the door and did so, still wiping buttery crumbs from his moustache.
‘Master Marlowe?’ Two men stood outside, between them blocking out the light. They were both well known to Marlowe and he to them but, clearly, today things were going to be kept on a formal footing.
‘Yes,’ Marlowe said, smiling slightly. ‘And you are?’
This foxed both of his visitors. They had expected a bit of backchat – they knew him too well for it to be otherwise – but this was a difficult one. Finally, after some thought, the slightly larger of the two spoke. ‘It’s us, Master Marlowe, Sir Robert’s bodyguard. You know us.’ He pointed to the Sero, sed Serio woven into the pleats at his shoulder that was the Cecil motto.
‘Do I?’ he asked. ‘I only ask because Sir Robert’s guard know me well and yet, here you are, asking me my name.’
The two looked at each other in confusion. ‘We were just making conversation, Master Marlowe. Being pleasant, like.’
‘I see. Well, in that case, come in while I finish breaking my fast, if you would be so good. Would you care for a little something? Bread? Ale? I believe there may be some posset from yesterday, if the kitchen maid hasn’t finished it up?’
‘Er, no thank you, Master Marlowe, kind of you to offer. Sir Robert did say that we had to bring you to him with all speed.’
‘Is that what he said?’
‘Not in so many words, Master Marlowe, no. But he did seem to be in a bit of a state, if I’m honest. His old dad’s in a bit of a stew as well. They’re both there, waiting for you.’
Marlowe could hardly suppress a smile to think of Lord Burghley, the Queen’s Secretary of State, being anyone’s old dad, but he supposed that, taken literally, the guard did not misspeak. ‘Lads,’ he said, throwing his cloak over his shoulder, ‘do you know if this is about last Friday?’
‘Friday?’ The shorter guard had a face devoid of expression. ‘Did something happen on Friday, Master Marlowe? I know it was the thirteenth, but I am not superstitious, myself.’
Marlowe nodded. Right – well, that was something. Henslowe might be safe after all. ‘Something else, then,’ he murmured, half to himself. ‘Expect me when you see me,’ he called over his shoulder into the kitchen, and was rewarded by a vague yell. ‘I don’t know why I even say that,’ he said to the guards. ‘They hardly seem to notice I’m here anyway. Sometimes, I wonder who employs who.’
In the kitchen, the cook looked at the kitchen maid and they both suppressed a giggle. They knew right enough who was in charge in the house in Hog Lane – and it certainly wasn’t one Master Marlowe, the Muse’s darling and ex-scholar of Corpus Christi.
Robert Cecil knew that he didn’t measure up physically to most men, so he had learned at his nursemaid’s knee to make his presence felt in other ways. He had never bothered trying to be louder either; the bigger children could always just shout him down. So what he did was make stillness into an art form and he was practising that art when Marlowe was shown in by Cecil’s new secretary.
Marlowe sat in his usual chair in the rabbit warren that was the Palace of Whitehall and waited for the Spymaster to take notice of him. The little man sat behind his desk like a spider on a web, still but watching, feeling every twitch of the silk, no matter how delicate and slight the movement. After a moment, he looked up.
‘Do sit down, Master Marlowe,’ he said, with a wintry smile.
‘Thank you,’ Marlowe nodded and settled back against the cushion. ‘I don’t mind if I do.’
Cecil bent to his papers again but this morning his heart was not in his usual mind games.
‘I have called you in to see me, Master Marlowe, because I need someone of your … shall we say, special talents?’
‘I do write a mighty line,’ Marlowe conceded. ‘It’s not like you to sponsor a play, though, is it?’ His smile would not have disgraced a choirboy.
‘Not that special talent,’ Cecil said. Marlowe pricked up his ears. That Cecil did not take him up on this sally said far more than any words. ‘I need your skills in discovering a murderer.’
It wasn’t often Marlowe was surprised, but he was now. ‘Surely, Sir Robert, you have men at your disposal more worthy than I …’
‘No false modesty, Marlowe, please. And this is not a murder which threatens the safety of the Queen, or at least, my father and I don’t think it is, so … you would seem to be the better choice.’
‘Your men did say your father was … upset.’
‘My men said too much.’
‘He is here, though.’
‘He is.’
Marlowe was getting testy. He could tell when something was being withheld from him and it wasn’t fair for Cecil to ask him to solve a mystery when he didn’t even know what the mystery was. ‘Is he to join us?’
‘I think not. He is, as my men told you, upset. And there are also, as always, affairs of state.’
Marlowe cast his mind quickly over the Burghley family. Cecil’s mother was dead, he knew, his grandparents long gone to their reward. Of Burghley’s sisters he knew nothing. It could only be one person and he blenched at the thought of investigating that particular murder. ‘Is it … Thomas?’
Cecil gave a shout of laughter. ‘I’m not sure whether my brother’s murder would upset anyone very much, Master Marlowe,’ he said. ‘No, it is someone much more important than that. It is his nursemaid. And mine. Eunice – Noo-Noo, we all called her. She was found dead in her bed yesterday morning.’
Marlowe blinked. The thought of Burghley in hanging sleeves going for walks with his Noo-Noo was something that even his vivid imagination baulked at. He tried to come to the point. ‘She must have been a considerable age,’ he said.
‘She was elderly, yes. She came to the family when she was twelve, so she is … was …’ Cecil did some quick calculations, ‘eighty-three, -four, something like that.’
‘And so,’ Marlowe was uncertain how to put this delicate question to a man clearly grieving. ‘Could she not have simply … died?’
A door hidden in the panelling burst open and the Queen’s Secretary of State burst in, the hair unruly without the ubiquitous cap and the beard stained and yellow. ‘Don’t you think we have thought of that, Marlowe?’ he yelled. ‘We’re not idiots! Noo-Noo – I mean, Mistress Brown – was found dead in her bed with clear signs of foul play.’ The old man’s eyes filled with tears. ‘She had never hurt a soul, in all her life. She was devout, she was loyal … Master Marlowe, she was a woman who made the world better by being in it. And yet, someone …’ He pressed a kerchief to his mouth and signalled Cecil to continue, flopping into a chair.
Cecil cleared his throat. ‘Mistress Brown was found by one of the maids. Since she had ceased to be a nursemaid, she had been a pensioner of the house, with a bedroom on the nursery floor, where she had spent so much of her life. She kept to her room of recent years, reading devout tracts, doing some mending, embroidery, that kind of thing. My father visited when he could, as did I when visiting Hatfield. She … she was happy, I hope, in her retirement.’
Marlowe was touched by the devotion of the men who, between them, ran the nation. ‘What did the maid find, that makes you think of murder?’
Burghley was in control of himself again and took up the tale. ‘I was in Hatfield myself. I try to get there when I can and it was politic that I was not in London on Friday.’
A glance went between father and son that Marlowe didn’t miss.
‘The maid was hysterical. She ran out of Noo-Noo’s bedchamber and woke the whole house with her screams. I was next on the scene and it was truly dreadful. The look on her face … I have seen some sights, Master Marlowe, but she looked as if she had seen the Devil himself.’
Marlowe had also seen some sights. He had seen people who died peacefully in their beds who looked terrified; he had seen people chased and hunted down and killed who looked as peaceful as a saint. ‘That alone is no proof of murder,’ he told them.
‘Alone, no, I agree,’ the Secretary of State said. ‘But her face and throat were a mass of bruises.’
‘That’s different.’ Marlowe knew that evil stalked the world in every place, but when it struck at an old and defenceless woman, it was evil indeed.
‘I do not have your expertise,’ Burghley told the playwright, with unaccustomed modesty, ‘but it seemed to me that someone had gripped her face hard, like this.’ He moved towards his son. ‘May I, Robyn?’ Cecil lifted his face up to the only man in the world he trusted. Burghley pinched the Spymaster’s nose between finger and thumb, at the same time pressing up under his chin with the heel of his hand. With the other, he gripped around his throat.
‘I have seen that done,’ Marlowe nodded.
‘Sadly, haven’t we all,’ Cecil agreed, quietly grateful that the old man had let go of him. ‘But the odd thing, Marlowe, was that this had happened not once, but several times. The bruising showed it clearly.’
‘Especially around the throat,’ the Secretary of State agreed. ‘The thumb marks were particularly clear.’
‘I assume that Mistress Brown was not unusually strong.’ Marlowe could not somehow conjure up an old lady known as Noo-Noo being built like a wrestler.
‘If anything, rather frail,’ Cecil confirmed.
‘So, there was unlikely to have been a struggle.’
‘Very unlikely. Also, she was in her bed, so she was taken as she slept.’ Burghley’s voice was thick with sorrow. ‘I daresay you think me a maudlin old man, Master Marlowe, but my nursemaid is the last person who had known me all my life. It was into her arms I was put on the day I was born. Her mother was my wet nurse. Now, there is no one to remember me as a child.’ He smiled wanly. ‘I did not know how lonely that would be.’
Cecil looked at Marlowe, a question in his eyes, and Marlowe answered it.
‘If you would permit me, my Lord,’ he said, ‘I could go up to Hatfield and ask questions. The servants. The tenants. If, as you say, your old nurse was beloved by all, it shouldn’t take long to run the murderer to ground. Someone will know who he is and won’t stay quiet for long. No one would shield a man who could do that to a defenceless old lady.’
Burghley nodded and blew his nose again. ‘I will send to my man of business to make sure no one interferes with your questions, Master Marlowe. In the meantime, please excuse me, I need to go and pray for Noo-Noo’s soul.’ He turned and opened the door in the panelling, turning as he did so. ‘No candles or any popish idolatry, of course.’
Marlowe inclined his head. ‘Of course.’
‘Just a simple prayer.’ Burghley cleared his throat again. ‘A simple prayer, for a simple soul.’ And the door closed softly behind him.
There seemed to be nothing else to say. Marlowe got up and was almost out of the room when Cecil called him back.
‘Just because you are helping with our little family trouble, Master Marlowe, I do still want to remind you that I have not forgotten Master Henslowe’s involvement on Friday last. It isn’t over. Perhaps you would be good enough to tell him as much.’
Marlowe bowed but this time didn’t speak. Sometimes, the least said was the soonest mended.
‘How are things at the Rose, then, Will?’ Hal Dignam was wringing out his pickadil now that October was here and a driving rain had added to London’s woes.
‘Hello, Hal.’ Shaxsper was as close to the fire as his feet could bear, a pint of ale in front of him. ‘As bad as the Curtain, I’ll wager.’
‘At least,’ Dignam waved to his host, miming the downing of a cup of his best, ‘we haven’t driven our stage manager mad.’
‘How do you mean?’
Dignam looked at the Warwickshire man. ‘Well, Tom Sledd. He is still at the Rose, isn’t he?’
‘As much as any of us are,’ Shaxsper muttered. ‘I’m seriously thinking of going home.’
‘Where’s that, then?’
‘Stratford.’
‘I always thought you was from the north.’
‘Stratford is in the Midlands, Hal.’ This was not the first time that Shaxsper had had this conversation with a Londoner. ‘Bradford is in the north.’
‘Where?’
‘Never mind.’
‘You see,’ Dignam became confidential, leaning over the table and dripping rainwater into Shaxsper’s ale, ‘and I’ll come clean about this – I always thought Stratford was east London.’
‘That’s at Bow, Hal,’ Shaxsper sighed. No wonder this man was a clown. ‘I’m talking about “on Avon”. Different thing altogether.’
‘Ah, right.’ Dignam was still waving at various serving wenches, seeing as how his host was ignoring him altogether. ‘So what’s this with Tom Sledd, then?’
‘What?’ Like a large number of people, Will Shaxsper was easily confused by the circles of Hal Dignam’s conversation.
‘He’s in Bedlam. But then, I s’pose you know that.’
‘In Bedlam?’ Shaxsper’s mind was racing. The last time he had seen Tom Sledd, the stage manager had become a trifle green at the resurrection of a dead man and had gone off to watch for the Watch. ‘Are you sure?’
‘Will Kemp and I saw him, clear as day. He was as close to us as we are at this very moment.’
‘What did he say?’
‘Asked us to get him out.’
‘And … did you?’ Shaxsper needed to know. Closed theatres or not, men like Tom Sledd didn’t grow on trees. They were the lifeblood of the theatre, men who made the wooden O, O. In fact, so many metaphors were whirling in Shaxsper’s head, he felt he ought to lie down.
‘Nah,’ Dignam shrugged. ‘Well, let sleeping dogs lie, ain’t it?’
Shaxsper grabbed the man’s shoulder. ‘But, he’s one of us, Hal!’ he bellowed. ‘Well,’ he dropped his voice because people were starting to stare, ‘not one of you, exactly, but when a man’s chained to a wall, surely we can forget little theatrical rivalries.’
‘Oh, he wasn’t chained,’ Dignam was at pains to explain, ‘and to be fair, I wanted to help him, but you know what a double-dyed shithouse Will Kemp is. Wanted to see the Queen of Sheba instead.’
‘Don’t we all,’ Shaxsper muttered, but his mind was elsewhere.
‘Well, there we are then. What’s a bloke got to do to get a drink around here?’ he shouted. Still nobody was listening. He looked at his fellow actor. ‘So, how are things at the Rose, then, Will?’
Gerard was the first of Forman’s apprentices to reappear at the house under the walls of the abbey. Mistress Forman was the first person he saw as he pushed open the door.
‘Oh, you’re back,’ she grunted. ‘Hungry, I suppose.’
‘Not especially,’ Gerard said, politely. ‘I ate quite well while I was away. Largely fish, but very tasty. In fact,’ he rummaged in his pack, ‘I have some for you. Fresh caught this morning.’
She took them and sniffed them. ‘These don’t smell of fish,’ she said. ‘Is it some trick?’ Being married to Simon Forman tended to make a person suspicious.
‘They don’t smell because they are fresh,’ Gerard told her. ‘I have some vegetables here as well.’ He had another rummage and brought out some roots the woman couldn’t immediately identify.
‘Black sticks. Thank you.’ She sounded dubious.
‘It’s salsify,’ Gerard told her. ‘It tastes of oyster. Just in season now. And some carrots.’ He handed them over. Carrots, she could recognize and she smiled for once.
‘Did you have a good holiday?’ she asked him, just to be polite.
‘It wasn’t a holiday, Mistress Forman,’ he said. ‘I was working.’
‘And how did that go?’ she asked, with no interest evident in her voice.
‘I pitched a tent in a clearing by the river. It took a day or two, but finally, a few people found their way to me and I think I …’
But the woman had wandered away.
‘… made a difference.’ Gerard sighed. Perhaps making a difference was putting it rather strong, but one ingrowing toenail less in the world could only be a good thing, surely.
If truth were told, Will Shaxsper missed Warwickshire, the green fields, the shaded forests, the babbling brooklets. One day, he had promised himself, he would write a play set there. It would be about fairies, nothing heavy, nothing too serious; one for the ladies, essentially. So here he was, that wet, chilly afternoon, slushing through the mud of Moor Field, making his way to Bedlam.
A solitary donkey, with ears like errant wings, looked at him, taking a moment off from chewing the grass. Sheep moved to one side, not caring for the man’s determined stride at all. The rain had done little for the sewer that ran under the old Roman walls, except to make it overflow and smell even worse. Rats played on its banks, so somebody in London was happy.
‘You on your own?’ the gaoler challenged him.
Shaxsper looked to each side. He hadn’t realized that the keepers had to be mad to work here as well. ‘Yes,’ was the best the playwright could manage. All the way here he had kept telling himself that Dignam had been joking. The man was a clown, after all, famous for talking in riddles and tipping over non-existent stumbling blocks for the amusement of the crowd. Every year, on Twelfth Night, handbills would appear announcing the sale of the Rose and every year a furious Philip Henslowe would tell would-be buyers where they could stick their paltry offers. Such playbills were written by Hal Dignam; everybody but Philip Henslowe knew it for a fact. But Tom Sledd was Tom Sledd and Shaxsper counted him a friend. He couldn’t let it – or Tom – lie. So, here he was.
‘Anything special?’ Jack asked the actor. ‘Queen of Sheba? Dick Three-in-One?’
‘Just browsing,’ Shaxsper said cheerily.
‘Right you are.’
The noise in the Hell-hole was deafening. A woman was banging a tray against a wall to a rhythm known only to her.
‘For the love of God,’ a sallow-faced man intoned, ‘alms, alms, good sir.’
Shaxsper was the son of a glover and he had inherited his father’s lack of giving ways. He carefully removed the man’s bony fingers from his sleeve and swept on.
‘Wanna see what I got?’ an old crone asked him coyly, swaying her hips and fluttering what passed for eyelashes.
‘Nobody wants to see what you’ve got, Bessie,’ Jack was at Shaxsper’s elbow. ‘Oh … unless the gentleman …?’
But the gentleman had already turned a corner and there he was; Tom Sledd, as large as life, if a little sallow.
‘Will!’ Sledd shrieked, leaping on him and wrapping his arms around his neck. ‘Will, thank the Lord!’
Jack was like a leech, if only because he sensed in Shaxsper someone who was looking for something specific and might be prepared to pay for it. ‘Do you know this gentleman, sir?’ he asked.
Again, Shaxsper’s mind whirled. Nobody was committed to Bedlam for no reason. Whatever had happened to poor old Tom, Shaxsper wanted no part of it. ‘No,’ he said, a shade too quickly, perhaps. ‘No, I don’t.’
Sledd was gripping Shaxsper hard, his knuckles white as he clawed at his doublet. For a moment, the visitor stood rooted to the spot, at a loss as to what to do. Jack, as usual, read it wrongly. ‘Would sir like a little time with this madman?’ he asked. ‘Get acquainted, like?’ Jack didn’t judge. He had a family to feed and clothe and, without his little extras, they would be on the streets.
Shaxsper’s mouth hung open. He’d seen enough for one day. If ever he wrote a play for real, he vowed then and there, there wouldn’t be a madman in it.
Matthias was some hours behind Gerard and managed to get into the house without encountering Mistress Forman, who was busy in the kitchen trying to work out how to cook salsify, which still didn’t strike her as looking very edible. Carrots she was at home with, but they weren’t the makings of a meal. And now, these gannetting boys were back – she could hear the great clodhopping one trying to creep up the stairs.
Matthias was anxious not to make too much of an entrance until he had changed his clothes. His mother had insisted that he had a complete wardrobe as a gift and before he could leave the house she had decked him out in every latest fashion. He had a feeling that he looked a bit of an ass, but as he was built like a privy, most people had laughed behind their hands and behind his back. He also needed to choose which of the testimonials to show to Forman. He had earned them all – especially the one from Mistress Flambeaux, the French governess at the big house in the next village. She had not needed Forman’s special massage, but she had taught Matthias a thing or two which he would never forget, especially in damp weather. In the end, he chose three, two from grateful widows, and one from a lady who expected to be brought to bed of a healthy child thanks to Matthias’s good services. The date of the confinement was something she had fortunately left out. Matthias folded the testimonials neatly and put them with the allowance from his father in a pouch. Master Forman would be impressed, Matthias had no doubt. Even if his scrying glass worked, he wouldn’t turn his nose up at gold coins, Matthias knew well.
‘It was him, Kit. As God is my witness, it was Tom Sledd.’
The Angel was crowded that evening; in fact, it was so full that the muttered conversation between the two men went unnoticed. Shaxsper was still trying to calm his nerves after Bedlam earlier in the day. He had been propositioned by an old crone and leapt upon by a mad stage manager; someone had ripped off his codpiece as he left and was last seen wearing it on his head. Jack had found it all very amusing.
‘What did he say?’ Marlowe asked. Nobody had mentioned Tom Sledd for days and Marlowe’s days had been full recently, one way or another. He would be leaving for Hatfield in the morning and another iron in the fire was something he could really do without.
‘Asked me to get him out … well, not in so many words. He just seemed so glad to see me.’
Marlowe nodded, frowning. If Tom Sledd was glad to see Will Shaxsper, things were very bad indeed. ‘You left him there?’
Shaxsper knew Marlowe all too well. The man could fill you with guilt one moment, even without resorting to his mighty line. The next, he’d have you shouting from the rooftops at the joy of his company. Kit Marlowe could drive men mad as surely as Bedlam did. ‘It must have been Greene,’ the Warwickshire man said. ‘Well, you know, the exhumation. It’s unhinged him.’
‘Don’t talk bollocks, Will,’ Marlowe growled. ‘Bedlam. How do I get in?’
Timothy was the last of the apprentices to get home. It was pitch dark and late as his key scraped in the lock and Forman whisked the door open before he had had time to turn it.
‘And what time do you call this?’ Forman hissed. ‘Where have you been?’
Timothy was in no mood for this. If it cost him his apprenticeship, he would speak his mind. ‘Firstly,’ he said, not bothering to whisper, ‘I am not late. I am still in fact a day early, as midnight has not yet struck to bring in Tuesday, which I believe was the day we were to return. Secondly, my horse decided to give birth yesterday.’
Forman’s eyebrows shot up, disbelievingly.
‘Yes, that’s right. Your damned scrying glass didn’t see that, did it? In the middle of the highway, there we were, ambling along, when suddenly, a wave went through the creature as though she had been shot and she lay down, right there in the road, screaming and kicking. We were in some Godforsaken village in the middle of nowhere but, believe it or not, within minutes we were surrounded by yokels all scratching their heads and mumbling at each other. And all the while, the mare was screaming and she looked fit to explode.’
‘Nasty for you,’ Forman muttered.
‘Nasty for you,’ Timothy spat. ‘Because, in the middle of all this, some old bat appears out of a cottage and everybody falls back. T’was old Gammer Gummy or some-such name and she was the local wise woman, or so they said. She walked up to the mare, put a hand over her eye and then, when the creature was still, walked to the other end, put her arm up … well, up there and pulled the damned foal out, just like that. And in a minute, the foal was suckling, all the village maidens were going “aw” and that was that.’
‘Why nasty for me?’ Forman had got a little wrapped up with the story and didn’t remember to be angry.
‘Because old Gammer Gummy had to be paid, didn’t she? I offered her the foal, but she didn’t want it. What she wanted was my purse and there were too many of her sons, grandsons and, for all I know, great-grandsons there for me to refuse. You may not have noticed, but I am not a fighting man. So,’ and he pushed his way past Forman, ‘if you’ll excuse me, I have been a long way, I have had a trying day and I want my bed. Good night, Master.’
Forman stood just inside the doorway, watching his apprentice go up the stairs and disappear into the gloom beyond the candle’s glow. The week’s experiment had not been a complete washout. He had had a nice meal of trout and salsify, though one of the ingredients had given him appalling wind. He had a nice little purse of coin. And he had, if he played his cards right, a foal to offset against his credit at the livery. He smiled to himself. It could have been much, much worse.
Most men would have walked across the Moor Field or down Bishopsgate Street. But Kit Marlowe was not most men. Bedlam was locked until eight o’clock the next day, but Tom Sledd must have been in the seventh circle of Hell for days now, and time was of the essence. It may be that his mind had gone already – after all, he had been glad to see Shaxsper.
There was no rapier tonight, no plumed cap, ruff and Colleyweston cloak. Marlowe wore black with a plain Puritan collar. Only his dagger hilt shone silver under the fitful moon. He knew this part of London well. His home in Hog Lane was not far away, with a second home at the Curtain closer still. He passed the gate of the New Churchyard where he had resurrected Robert Greene what already seemed a lifetime ago, and turned the corner, tight to the Wall. He heard the thud of the Watch on the cobbles and saw their lantern beams darting like fireflies in the night. He flattened himself against the wall and waited.
Bedlam’s gates may have been locked, but Bedlam’s roof was not. It was open to the sky as it had been for months now and the rain of the previous day had brought down more tiles to lie sodden with the straw of the chamber below. Marlowe edged his way across the roof, feeling the guttering fragile and fragmenting under his buskins. Years of bird shit had encrusted the tiles and no amount of rain would soften that again. He felt it scrape against his back through doublet and shirt. Then he caught an upright and swung himself across so he was face to the roof now, looking down into a pit.
There were one or two candles down there, too high on the rain-dribbled walls for the inmates to reach. He could make out bodies lying on the straw; men, women? Who could tell? From somewhere, there was a rattle of chains, snoring and crying in the half-light. The drop was … what? Fifteen feet? Twenty? But there was nothing to break his fall and no other way into the hospital that had become a gaol. He had to risk it. And he, who never prayed at all, prayed that the ground was soft.
He hit the straw hard and rolled upright. Three or four faces peered at him, eyes wide, mouths open.
‘Are you an angel?’ he heard a voice croak. ‘Are you from God?’
‘If it pleases you,’ Marlowe said and backed into the shadows.
Most of the inmates still slept, including one who lay against a wall with his mouth open, snoring with the best of them. Marlowe knelt beside him and clapped a hand over his mouth. ‘Hello, Tom’ he said.
Sledd jerked awake and swivelled his eyes. Before Marlowe lowered his hand, he was crying. He threw his arms around the playwright. ‘I knew it would be you, Kit,’ he sobbed. ‘I knew it.’
‘I don’t see why not,’ Marlowe smiled, as if he were having a casual conversation in the street with a passer-by. ‘Are you all right?’
‘How long have you got?’ Sledd hissed. ‘First that arsehole Kemp, then that bastard Shaxsper. They both saw me and looked right through me. I … Kit?’
But Marlowe was standing up, staring at a man half hidden in the shadows.
‘Oh, Kit,’ Sledd struggled to his feet, but the beating that Jack had given him had taken its toll and he staggered a little. ‘Kit, this is …’
‘We don’t have names here,’ the man said. His hair was straggly and his beard was alive with creatures.
‘This is the poet,’ Sledd was unfazed. ‘He’s a bloody good one, too. He—’
‘I must be going, Tom,’ Marlowe said. ‘I’ll be back.’
‘Kit? Kit? No, you mustn’t go. I can climb.’ Sledd watched Marlowe clawing his way up the rough stones of the wall. ‘I can make it … Kit. Kit?’
But the poet had Sledd firmly in his grip and the playwright had gone, back the way he had come, the wailing of Bedlam ringing in his ears.