Kit Marlowe was packing his saddlebags for the road before dawn the next morning. The bay was as unused to this hour as he was, but the animal was of a stoic disposition and took it well. It would take the pair of them half a day to reach Hatfield by the North Road and he wanted to be away before the drovers began to clog the lanes.
‘Master Marlowe?’ The voice made him turn, hand near his dagger hilt as it always was at moments like these.
‘Johanna.’ The hand relaxed and he reached out to take her hand and kiss it. ‘Whatever happened to Kit?’
The woman was struggling with her tears. She had left her children with her mother, a sure sign of her desperation as the woman was a meddling harridan who had thought her daughter had married beneath her and never forgot to remind her. She clutched at Marlowe as a drowning man will clutch at straws. ‘Have you any news of Tom, Kit?’ she asked.
With all that had happened in the last few days, Marlowe had completely forgotten about Tom’s better half and how frantic she must be. ‘He’s safe, Johanna,’ he said, smiling. ‘Safe and well.’
‘Where is he?’ she blurted out, all but stamping her foot.
‘That I can’t tell you,’ he said.
The Devil in Johanna Sledd wanted to slap Kit Marlowe, gouge his eyes out and throw his ravaged corpse onto a dung heap. But the angel in her remembered that this was kind Kit, the man her Tom worshipped nearly as much as he had worshipped his old master, Ned Sledd, whose name he had taken. She closed to him and laid a desperate hand on his chest, just above his heart. He was strong and safe and she needed that to calm her. She looked down for a moment, swallowing hard. Some questions, once spoken, could change a life forever, so it paid to take your time. ‘Has he left us, Kit?’ she asked, her voice scarcely audible. ‘Is there another woman?’
Marlowe couldn’t help but smile. In Bedlam there were several, but none to whom Tom Sledd would give the time of day. ‘No,’ he assured her. ‘Nothing like that. You’ve heard him use the phrase “the Queen’s business”?’ he asked.
She blinked. ‘He’s used it about you,’ she said, ‘but never about himself.’
Marlowe tapped the side of his nose. ‘Enough said,’ he murmured. ‘There are more things in Heaven and earth, Johanna …’
In spite of her misgivings, the woman smiled. ‘That’s one of Master Shaxsper’s lines, isn’t it?’ she said.
Marlowe frowned. ‘No,’ he said, ‘it’s one of mine.’ When all this was over, he would have to have words with Master Shaxsper. He dipped into his purse and pressed two gold coins into Johanna’s hand. ‘You’ll see Tom soon enough,’ he said. He held up her chin, still wet with her tears, ‘and I don’t want to see any more of these.’
Simon Forman dressed with his usual care to hear his apprentices’ stories and he went a step further, one he seldom took, and sat in his magnificent carved chair on the dais at the end of his chamber. He lolled there, one arm stretched out and the other bent, an elegant hand supporting a head too full of wisdom to be trusted to a mere neck. The image was somewhat marred by the faint scurryings in his sleeve and the occasional croak or coo, but the three apprentices were used to it now and lined up accordingly, to tell their tales. They were all, including Matthias, a little concerned about what the scrying mirror had told their master, but brazening it out was probably the best plan and they squared their shoulders in their ridiculous gowns and locked their knees to stop them shaking.
Forman looked at them through narrowed eyes. He was having trouble focussing at distance lately, but was far too vain to wear eyeglasses. Besides, being a little short-sighted made it easier to handle some of the more raddled widows in his portfolio, and certainly his wife. ‘Well, gentlemen,’ he said, smiling. ‘I hope you all had productive weeks. Very different, all of them, I am sure. I myself have been extremely busy. After you had all gone, I thought to myself, “My lads have gone into the highways and byways and here am I, in comfort. This cannot be allowed to continue.” So, I packed myself a travelling bag and set off myself, to seek my fortune, as it were.’ He gave a light laugh, to show them that they were allowed to smile.
Gerard, always anxious to please, let out a guffaw, instantly stifled.
‘Yes,’ Forman closed his eyes and raised his face to an imaginary sky, ‘I went out into the highways and byways, alongside you all in spirit. I took nothing but a crust of bread, some herbs for healing and my mask, so that the simple people I encountered on my way would know my calling.’ He fell silent, a beatific smile on his face. After a moment, his eyes flew open and he pierced his apprentices with his special basilisk stare, practised over long hours in front of a mirror. ‘They came to me in their hundreds. I was exhausted.’ He dropped his head into his hand and shook it gently. ‘They had nothing, but I gave freely of myself and of my healing.’ He sat up straight and clasped his hands in front of him, to the particular relief of the dove which had been caught under his elbow. ‘And so now, my boys, my brave boys, tell me of your travels. Matthias, you first, I think, as the senior among you.’
The apprentices all showed signs of relaxation. Just a crust of bread, some herbs and a mask – no mention of the dreaded mirror. All three racked their brains for a better story than the truth; the world was their oyster as long as they could remember what they said later and keep their stories straight. Gerard and Timothy glanced at each other, pleased that Matthias had to go first. The fact that he constantly flaunted his seniority usually annoyed them, when he had the washing water first, the softest pillow, the cleanest under-linen but, sometimes, the pendulum swung in their favour. They turned to him and made their expressions show their interest in his tale of derring-do and healing out on the road.
Mistress Forman’s maidservant stumbled into the kitchen laughing like a banshee. She often did that, being a little soft in the head, but her mistress, being usually devoid of other amusement, never failed to ask her what was amusing her.
The girl wiped her eyes on a grubby apron and her nose on the back of her hand. ‘Oh, Mistress,’ she gulped, ‘you would have laughed if you could have heard it.’
‘Listening at doors again, Tab?’ Sometimes, the lady of the house wished she could be stricter with her servants, but that would leave just her husband for company and, frankly, that would never do. He had a way with him, she had to give him that, but when he wasn’t giving some poor deluded woman his usual flannel, or whatever he chose to call it, his conversation was less than sparkling.
‘Not listening, Mistress, no. The master’s voice carries, as you know. I was just stopped outside the door.’
Mistress Forman decided to say nothing. She had found out some very useful information this way before now.
‘Well, the reason I laughed is that he was spinning such a yarn to those boys, ’bout how he was out and about sleeping under a hedge and whatnot all last week.’
The magus’s wife raised her eyebrows. ‘I don’t think he even left his bed on Friday, did he?’ she asked.
‘No.’ The maid shook out her duster determinedly. ‘Unlucky, he said.’
‘Superstitious rubbish,’ her mistress remarked. ‘He was out on Saturday, I suppose, but when I saw him next he didn’t look like a man who had slept under a hedge to me. What time was that?’
‘Cock-shut time,’ the girl said, after a think. She was a country girl at heart and though woodcock were not exactly common in Westminster, old habits died hard.
‘Or thereabouts,’ her mistress agreed with a sigh. ‘Sunday, I know that.’
The maid primmed up her lips. How the mistress put up with the master’s filthy ways she would never know. Coming back all hours, reeking of Attar of Roses or worse. And the linen; she tried not to think of the linen, because it turned her stomach, it really did.
‘Never mind about it, Tab,’ Mistress Forman gave her a kindly pat to send her on her way. ‘He’ll just be trying to impress the boys, you know how he is. Have you put those sheets out, yet? We’ll have rain before long and we need to get the worst of the wet out of them before then. The master does hate wet washing about the house, you know that.’
‘Never mind,’ the maid said, acidly, ‘I suppose he could always go and sleep under a hedge somewhere.’
‘One day,’ his wife said, ‘he may have to. Even a worm turns in the end, or so I have heard tell.’
The maid shuddered. Worms. Newts. Dead pigeons. This house would drive her to Bedlam before it was done, of that she was sure.
Tom Sledd had always been an early riser, but in Bedlam that way madness lay. As long as he could stay asleep, or at least feign sleep, he could pretend he was elsewhere. The knight on horseback story was wearing a little thin, but it was still something he could call on when the noise and smell got too bad. At the moment, though, his mind was like a nest of vipers and he couldn’t forget how many people had denied him over the last few days. Will Kemp he would expect it of; the man was a total shit. Hal Dignam was better, but completely under Kemp’s thumb. Shaxsper, though; Shaxsper was supposed to be a friend, but he had let him down as well. But none was as sharp as the viper’s bite of Kit’s exit last night, swarming up the walls and disappearing into the night, leaving him there, in the cold and dark, for what might be the rest of his life. He put his head down in his arms and curled up with his sorrow.
The poet stirred beside him and looked at him covertly through lowered lashes. He could tell that his best efforts were beginning to fail and he didn’t want this innocent man to end up as mad as everyone else in this Godforsaken Hell. As mad as all but one, perhaps he should say. He lifted his eyes and looked around the room with a carefully contrived blank stare. As mad as all but two. He put out his hand and laid it gently on Sledd’s shoulder, patting it absently. He knew what it was like to be lost, though fear had not been part of his life for many a long year now.
‘Well, Tom,’ he whispered, so low that only his own soul could hear it. ‘Perhaps it’s time I brought this madness to a close.’
‘What was that?’ A rough boot kicked his foot.
The poet crossed his eyes and raised his voice. ‘The moon’s my constant mistress,’ he intoned. ‘And the lowly owl my marrow.’
‘Do what?’ Nat was leaning forward, listening.
The poet spread his arms and shrugged, wagging his head from side to side. ‘The flaming drake and the night crow make me music to my sorrow.’ He smiled at the gaoler and dropped his head again.
Nat stood looking at the poet and the theatre manager for a moment longer, then spat neatly into the straw. He had got the feeling from time to time that the poet could tell a hawk from a handsaw, but this morning removed those doubts. The man was as mad as any man here, madder than most. His wife had seen the back of him forever, that was certain. He smiled at the memory. A pretty little piece she was as well. Too pretty to be tied to an old fool like this one. He gave the poet another kick for good measure and moved on. That was one thing about working in Bedlam – every day was different and every day was fun.
Matthias had missed his calling when he took up his apprenticeship with Simon Forman – the stage had lost a tragedian of some talent. He took a step forward and looked slowly around his little audience. Two of them would know he was lying. He knew there was a risk that the third man there would as well, but it was a risk he was prepared to take.
He addressed himself to Forman. ‘As Timothy and Gerard both know,’ he began, ‘the mounts provided for us were not of the best quality.’
Timothy snorted and got an indignant glance from his colleague. Timothy made a rueful face and raised a hand in apology.
‘Mine was slow and had a tendency to go lame. At the end of ten miles or so, I could hardly bear its halting gait and so I stopped under a sheltering tree – it had come on to rain – and felt its legs, one by one. When I got to the stifle of its left rear, I knew I had found the trouble. It was hot and felt hard and bruised; a kick from another horse, most likely.’
Gerard laced his fingers together in distress. Any animal with an injury hurt him to the quick, even when it was entirely imaginary.
‘I had no horse liniment with me or any other physick, so I laid my hands on the sore part and willed the pain into me. It was like a lightning bolt, straight through my body. I felt it leave the top of my head, blowing my hair about as it did so and making a crack like that of doom.’
Forman nodded. Having a horse doctor in his household might well pay dividends. Men had always been hard to attract and keep as clients, but everyone knew a man would pay good money to physick his horses that he wouldn’t spend on his wife.
‘My mount was grateful, you could tell. He nuzzled my shoulder as I walked back round to pick up his reins and, as I did so, a woman appeared from where she had been secreted in the hedge. She was of somewhat wild appearance and I must say I was dubious; I feared she had a rough companion who might do me harm.’
Timothy almost gave another snort, but managed to withhold it. Firstly, the whole tale was a tarradiddle. Matthias couldn’t care less about another creature in the world except himself and, secondly, he was built like a brick privy, so any rough trade would come off the worst.
Gerard hardly dare breathe. His own adventures were as nothing compared to these. He forgot that he already knew that Matthias had spent the best part of a week being fed and pampered by his mother and sundry local ladies and allowed himself to be lost in the story.
‘She was alone, however, and said that her mistress was ill in their house just over the hill. They had fallen on hard times and they could pay me but little, but she could see I had the healing in me and she begged me to visit her mistress, if only to bring her comfort.’
Forman nodded magisterially. He had had his doubts when he took on Matthias, but his trust was being repaid. This was how you got a foothold in new territory, grew a business. Timothy wiped the smirk off his face. He was rather impressed how Matthias wove small facts into the fiction, giving it an air of verisimilitude.
‘A bit of the old special massage, I suppose,’ he muttered out of the corner of his mouth and got a kick on the shin for his pains.
Matthias dropped his head modestly. ‘I do not need to tell you, Master, how I proceeded. I remembered everything you have ever taught us about the administration of herbs and I am happy to relate that they worked to perfection. Within the hour, the mistress of the house was up and about and I was given lodgings for the night. By morning, the hall was full of the importunate sick of the countryside and – as you know from the modest purse I gave to you – they had little but they gave it gladly.’
Forman hoped that the importunate sick had not given their last groat. It did no good to bleed any area dry. ‘And where was this place?’ he asked.
‘Umm …’ Matthias looked at Timothy and Gerard, who were no help. ‘We had decided to let our mounts lead the way. So I suppose …’ he looked round again but they were still not meeting his eye, ‘it would be north. Northish, in any case.’
Forman looked annoyed for the first time. ‘You mean you don’t know where this place is?’ he asked, incredulously. ‘Whatever is the point of going out into the world if you don’t know where in the world you have been?’ He tapped his hand on the arm of his chair, irritated with the great oaf. ‘Would you know it again if you saw it?’
Matthias nodded enthusiastically. ‘I’m sure I would, Master,’ he said. He had been having some rather vivid dreams of the French governess, to the distress of the others who shared his bed and another week off would be very welcome. ‘Shall I go and—’
Forman flapped a hand. ‘No, no. Your work here is behindhand. Perhaps in a week or so, depending on this dreaded Pestilence. I think now we will hear from Gerard. You brought us no gold, Gerard, but some food. Not what I was expecting, but roots tasting of oyster – now, that is surely a story?’
But it wasn’t. Gerard was no liar and his story was more or less exactly what had happened. Yes, he added a couple of dozen grateful clients. Yes, he exaggerated where he had been; as he saw it, it wouldn’t help if he told Forman that he had gone to the next bend in the Thames and stayed there a week, surviving on the tag-end of berries in the hedgerow and trout from the stream. Like Matthias, but for a completely different reason, he couldn’t say precisely where he had gone, but he thought it, too, was north. North-east, perhaps. Or thereabouts.
Forman was disappointed. He had had high hopes of Gerard. He had never expected him to be a big earner, but there was something about his country-boy looks and his innocent demeanour that should have brought the rich widows swarming like wasps to the honeypot. Too honest, that was his trouble. Too straightforward. He made himself a note to teach him the massage – it would be a difficult conversation with one so unworldly, but with it under his belt, so to speak, he would be unbeatable.
‘Timothy?’ Forman gestured his third apprentice forward. ‘What of you and your adventures?’ He held up a hand as the lad drew a deep breath. ‘Not the foal. We know about the foal. Tell us what happened before that.’
‘I went south,’ Timothy told them. ‘South-west, I suppose, to be more accurate. I do confess I called in at my aunt’s first, but,’ and he glanced at Matthias, ‘I didn’t stay there. You had told us not to rely on friends or family, so all I did was tell her I was not going to be in London and then I set off. I didn’t reach the coast, though. I came into a village – a small town, maybe – clustered around a big house. A few of the hovels were boarded up and the Pestilence was obviously in the place. I had no luck knocking on doors until I thought of my mask. I went round a corner and tied it on and then I was welcome everywhere. Most people are still well there, but they bought my preventative herbs with any pence they had and were grateful.’
‘Did you get into the big house, though?’ Forman leaned forward. Follow the money, that was his motto.
‘After a day or so, I did,’ Timothy confirmed. ‘The cook there was not feeling well. It turned out that having a waist measurement two yards round was not helping her and her liver was engorged.’ He looked up to check on Forman’s expression. He did not want to overreach himself. ‘In my opinion. I could be wrong.’
Forman bestowed a gentle smile of condescension. ‘If your tinctures did the trick, you may well be right,’ he said.
Timothy basked a little. ‘The cook rules that household. The master is often away – they didn’t tell me what he did, but he has other houses, they said.’
Forman almost rubbed his hands together. He could all but feel the weight of gold in his lap. ‘And where was this place?’ he asked.
Timothy smiled. ‘I’m sorry. Did I not say? The big house was called Barn Elms. I could take you there, if you want. But if I may be a little boastful for a moment, Master, I don’t believe there is a person in the house or town who will need physick for a while. I was busy day and night when I was there.’
Forman sat back and beamed at his boys. ‘I am very proud of you all,’ he said. ‘I had considered using my scrying glass but I said to my wife, “No, Mistress Forman,” I said to her, “no. I can trust my boys. I know they will do their best.” You had misfortunes, yes, of course you did. Gerard, you happened upon a poor place, but you were made welcome and that is the main thing. You, Timothy, lost your money when your mare foaled – Matthias!’ A train of thought interrupted him. ‘Make a note to speak to the livery stable about that; they must owe us money for the safe delivery of a healthy foal.’
Matthias went to his desk and made a note in the ledger.
‘Where was I?’
‘Me,’ Matthias said, smugly.
‘Yes,’ Forman said, looking him straight in the eye. ‘Well, clearly, your story is a lot of hogwash. Well told, but ultimately too ridiculous for words. Learn from your fellows and always tell the truth. But the purse was useful, so we will let that go for now. Also, a messenger has brought you a letter.’
Matthias blushed scarlet. ‘A … letter?’
‘In French. I don’t read it myself, but it was easy to tell it was of a smutty nature. I will not have smut!’ He beat both hands on the arms of his chair.
‘May I … have it?’ Matthias said.
‘Mistress Forman put it on the scullery fire,’ Forman told him. ‘There is no room for smut in my house. I will not have it!’
The three apprentices stood in front of him. Even Timothy and Gerard felt admonished and they had done nothing wrong. Forman was like that – he could make you feel like a lark or a worm with a turn of a phrase.
‘But on with the work. Umm … Gerard. Would you like to come through into my sanctum? I need to have a word …’
The tower of St Ethedreda’s stood tall and square in the noonday sun. October was proving a tricky month and the almanacs were wrong again. It wasn’t exactly warm, but Marlowe’s bay was sweating by the time he took the rise to Hatfield’s gates. The arms of Burghley, quartered and requartered, fluttered above the red stonework, and ancient carts creaked and rattled their way between the house and the town, laden with every conceivable provision that a great household would need.
There was another flag over the chapel. This one was plain black and hung at half-mast, drifting with the Hertfordshire breeze. A flunkey took Marlowe’s horse under the arch of the gate and he was taken, saddlebags and all, into a vast library, of the type he had not seen since his Corpus Christi days. Huge maps hung on the panelled walls, worlds of faerie where sea monsters snorted in the oceans and anthropophagi watched him warily, their eyes in their chests. The coastlines were guesswork and Marlowe knew that men like Hawkins, Drake, Ralegh and Frobisher, who had actually seen those coastlines, would have something unpleasant to say about them. While he waited, he perused the leather-bound tomes, recognizing most of them and in awe of some. These were not the front of a parvenu, bought by the yard for the look of the thing. It was obvious from the worn spines and the faded gilding that Burghley actually read them, and more than once. Marlowe was impressed.
‘Master Marlowe?’ Another voice. Another place. But the hand hovered near the dagger all the same. A tall, courtly-looking man stood there, in Burghley’s livery with a staff of office in his hand. ‘Welcome, sir. I am James Cruikshank, His Lordship’s steward.’
Marlowe bowed and Cruikshank did likewise. ‘His Lordship has asked me to assist you in any way that I can. Would you care to take refreshment first?’
‘Thank you, but I would like to see Mistress Eunice before I do.’
Cruikshank nodded and took Marlowe’s saddlebags, passing them to a lackey who had appeared from nowhere. As the playwright surmised, Hatfield was riddled with secret passages that made a murderer’s job easy and an investigator’s a nightmare. He followed Cruikshank through a winding passageway almost devoid of light, until they came to an oak door set into solid stone. ‘This was the Lady Chapel in the old days,’ Cruikshank told him, ‘named for St Etheldreda. You’ll find Mistress Eunice in there.’
‘You’re not coming with me?’ Marlowe asked.
Cruikshank blinked. He had been told by Burghley’s messenger that this man had no fear of anything on earth, except perhaps the Pestilence. Did he baulk, then, at the presence of a corpse?
‘I have servants to muster, sir,’ the steward explained, ‘and Lord Burghley’s mule to walk. The animal gets tetchy when His Lordship is not here.’ He bowed and left.
As it turned out, Mistress Eunice was not alone. The sun was flitting through the stained glass of the window where the saint herself glowed in reds and blues, throwing strange colours onto the already discoloured face of the Cecils’ old nurse. Another woman sat beside her, in the weeds of mourning, a rosary in her hands which she quickly hid under her apron. She got up as Marlowe went in and bobbed a curtsey.
‘Madam,’ Marlowe said, ‘I am—’
‘I know who you are, sir,’ she said, ‘and your business. I was the Second Finder, if the law recognizes such a thing.’
It didn’t. According to him, Burghley had been the Second Finder after the maid, and it was the maid that Marlowe needed to speak to next. This was awkward. ‘Madame,’ he said. ‘You’ll forgive me, but I need to examine Mistress Eunice. Her body.’
The woman was horrified and clutched at her coif. ‘That would be most unseemly,’ she said.
‘Perhaps,’ Marlowe agreed, ‘but if it will tell us how she died …?’
The woman reflected for a moment. ‘Do what you must,’ she said, through pursed lips. ‘I shall wait outside.’
Noo-Noo looked as old as the stone on which she lay. What had once been an altar was her resting place now, before the funeral of the next day would take her to a better place altogether. Marlowe carefully untied the cloth around her head. The woman had been dead for three days now; the stiffness of death had left her limbs and the skin was mottled, especially around the throat. Burghley had been right. There was severe bruising here where someone had held her roughly, and a scratch on her cheek below the right eye. Three thumbprints were clearly delineated amongst the yellowing bruises on the right-hand side of her face and, on the same side of her neck, the indentation of one fingernail, left too long, was repeated, like a line of punctuation down her throat. Someone – or several someones, but Marlowe doubted that – had held her face and her neck not once but many times until she had died. He checked her fingernails. They were clean and unbroken with nothing under them to say that she had fought with her killer. Noo-Noo was small and old. A child could have silenced her. And she was silent still; Marlowe could learn nothing more from her.
Lettys was the First Finder and Marlowe found her waiting for him in the Great Hall, the reliable, solid frame of Cruikshank standing behind her.
‘If I may talk to Lettys alone, Master Cruikshank?’
Everything about that idea, the steward disliked. These were his people; more, they lived under the roof of the most powerful man in England. But Burghley had spoken – Marlowe must be given his head, so there it was. He bowed curtly and withdrew.
Marlowe sat down on a settle and patted the seat alongside him to encourage her to sit too. She perched on the edge and looked at him anxiously. She was probably twenty and had been born on the Hatfield estate. She was still in shock, twisting her fingers together in dread of this strange, dark man and the questions he was going to ask. She had seen great men coming and going to Burghley’s household all her life, but this one was different.
‘Lettys,’ he spoke softly, sensing her unease, ‘it was you who first found Eunice?
‘Yes, sir.’ He could barely hear her.
‘Tell me, and I don’t want to distress you, was she peaceful? Lying on her bed?’
Lettys blinked back the tears. Bad enough that she had seen it once. Now, because of this strange man, she had to see it twice. ‘No, sir. She looked … she looked like she had seen the Devil. Or so I imagine. I’ve never seen him myself.’ And she crossed herself, for all this was Burghley’s household and the Queen they all served was head of the Protestant church.
‘You’re lucky, Lettys,’ Marlowe murmured. ‘Did it seem to you that anyone had been in her room, recently, I mean, before you found her?’
‘I don’t rightly know, sir,’ she muttered, eyes flicking from side to side. ‘Old Eunice didn’t have no visitors as a rule, ’cept me and Betty. The master would go in when he could and of course, Master Robert – Robyn, Eunice called him – would visit. But mainly, it was me and Betty.’
‘Betty?’
‘The other maid who does for her. I have the days. Betty has the nights. We cross over at dawn. There was one thing, though.’
‘Oh?’ Marlowe was all ears. ‘What was that?’
‘Well … and I haven’t told no one this, sir, but … well, I should have, but I thought I’d be laughed at. I thought I might tell Dr Parry, but I didn’t.’
‘Who’s Dr Parry?’
‘He’s the vicar of Hatfield, sir. He holds services in the chapel sometimes. I thought he might be able to explain it, as he’s a clever man and all.’
‘Explain what, Lettys?’
‘Well, old Eunice, she was a good woman. Worshipped the Lord all her life. If anyone should go to Heaven, it’s her, sir, don’t you think?’
‘I’m sure she has, Lettys,’ Marlowe said, soothingly.
‘Well … if that’s the case …’ Lettys was feeling her way, searching for the words in a situation she found alien and terrifying, all at once, ‘why was her face so stricken? If the Angel of the Lord came for her, why that? And then … then …’ the girl was clearly wrestling with something inside her, ‘what about this?’ She pulled something out from a pocket of her apron, held fast in a closed fist.
Marlowe frowned. They were both staring at Lettys’s hand, but the girl seemed loath to open it. Gently, Marlowe prised her fingers upwards and looked at her palm. A small gemstone twinkled there, like a frozen tear. ‘Where did you find this, Lettys?’ he asked.
‘It was on her forehead, sir, like a star it was, shining in the early morning light. Now, I don’t believe the Devil would leave that, sir; indeed I don’t. It was an angel left that. So why was old Eunice so mortal feared? Angels are good things, ain’t they?’
Marlowe forbore to remind her that Lucifer was once the morning star, son of the dawn, most beloved of all angels in Heaven. She didn’t need to know that if the alternative gave her comfort. ‘They are, Lettys,’ Marlowe nodded. ‘Do you mind if I keep this?’
The maid Betty was of little help. Older than Lettys and more a no-nonsense woman of the world, she had seen and heard nothing after cock-shut when she’d bedded old Eunice down and heard her say her prayers and had gone to bed herself. It was windy that night and that bloody dog of Harry Hawkins’s hadn’t shut up until way gone midnight and Betty was going to have words with him about it; but other matters intervened, what with the old girl dying and all. The master, he was very cut up about it and she, Betty, had had to slap that stupid girl Lettys around the head a few times to calm her down. But Betty slept along the passage from old Eunice and she’d have heard anybody going past her door; she was sure of that. When Marlowe thanked her, walked away and turned to whisper her name, Betty was oblivious, however, so Marlowe was unconvinced. As far as he knew, a whole legion of devils could have tramped past Betty’s door and she’d have been none the wiser.
Yes, Harry Hawkins had a dog. In fact, he had forty of them. They actually belonged to His Lordship, of course, and, not being a keen huntsman himself, he kept the pack for visiting nobs, one of whom, the Earl of Rutland, had turned up only the other day, mighty put out by the fact that Burghley wasn’t there. Not to be too put out, he had borrowed His Lordship’s pack and gone hunting anyway. None of His Lordship’s dogs ever barked after midnight and if that old besom Betty Horsemonger said they did, she was lying. Master Marlowe might want to have a word with Jem Layton, though. He formed a sort of unofficial night Watch at Hatfield. After all, His Lordship was the most powerful man in England, some said in the world. And you couldn’t be too careful.
It turned out that Jem Layton couldn’t be careful at all. Much of his time as commander of the Hatfield night Watch was spent dressing up in burgonet, breast and back. The four men who served as his company couldn’t hit a barn door with their matchlocks and His Lordship only paid them because he was too nice not to and their presence had made the late Lady Burghley feel secure, even though she was a better shot than they were. No, there’d been nothing untoward going on at Hatfield the night old Eunice had breathed her last. It was her time, wasn’t it? Jem Layton had no time himself for all this hysteria, with lions whelping in the streets. The sanctimonious old trout should have gone years ago. Jem had never liked her. He didn’t like the vicar, either, so maybe Master Marlowe might want to talk to him.
He did, but not before he had talked to everybody else. The staff were utterly loyal to the Cecils; there could be no question of that. To each other now, that was a different matter. Even so, Marlowe could discern nothing murderous in any of them. It was just the usual griping of any group of people forced to work together by circumstance. You can choose your friends but you can’t choose your fellow-servants.
What concerned Marlowe more was the steady stream of visitors and hangers-on who were constantly in and out of Hatfield. The Muse’s darling was horrified that none of them was a playwright or a poet or even a musician. And he remembered that, almost uniquely among the Privy Council, Lord Burghley did not have his own theatrical troupe to entertain Her Majesty. What Burghley went for were scholars, men like himself who spoke Latin, Greek and Hebrew and who read Cicero for laughs. The Earl of Rutland had arrived on the day that Burghley had left for London, distraught over the loss of his old nurse. The earl had brought ten or twenty hangers-on with him, all ambitious as the Devil and no doubt strangers to scruple. Days earlier, a team of acrobats had arrived but Cruikshank had given them their marching orders. There were lawyers, physicians, supplicants, merchants, knights of the shire, all traipsing over Hatfield as if they owned the place. There was simply no way to account for all of them.
So it was an exhausted projectioner-playwright who pushed open the vestry door of St Etheldreda as night fell.
‘Dr Parry?’
‘That’s me.’ A large, florid, almost cherubic man was folding away his chasuble. ‘Ah, aren’t you Christopher Marlowe?’
‘I am.’ Marlowe was impressed and suspicious, all at once. It was not for the first time.
‘And I’m not him, by the way.’
‘Him?’ The vicar had lost him already.
‘The Doctor Parry who is chaplain to Her Majesty. That’s my cousin, somewhere down the line.’
‘How do you know me?’ Marlowe asked.
‘The Muse’s darling? Come, come, Master Marlowe, no false modesty. You are the greatest playwright in England.’
‘Have you seen anything of mine?’ Marlowe had long ago stopped blushing at flattery like that.
‘Dido,’ Parry began counting on his fingers. ‘Tamburlaine. The Jew, of course. And, if memory serves, there was more than a little of you in Henry VI, Shakespeare’s effort.’
‘I couldn’t possibly comment,’ Marlowe smiled.
‘Faustus, now,’ Parry closed to him, ‘I’ve heard that is something special. If you dared God out of his Heaven with Tamburlaine, what have you done with Faustus? I’ve yet to see it.’
‘No one has seen it,’ Marlowe told him, ‘except for a select few.’
‘Then there’s hope?’ The vicar’s eyes shone.
‘Not while Master Tilney is Master of the Revels and there is a “y” in the day.’
‘Shame,’ the vicar frowned, ‘a great shame. May I say what an honour it is to have you at St Ethedreda’s?’
‘Gracious, Dr Parry,’ Marlowe bowed. ‘Thank you.’ He took in the heavy brass crucifix on the vestry wall, in marked contrast to the whitewashed simplicity of the nave. ‘You have a beautiful church.’
‘Thank you,’ Parry smiled. ‘It has stood here, holding the poor parishioners of Hatfield in its hand, since the thirteenth century.’
‘When the Pope ruled.’
The smile froze on the vicar’s face. ‘Indeed,’ he said. ‘But I’ll wager you didn’t come to talk about ecclesiastical architecture – or ancient history.’ He offered Marlowe a seat.
‘Eunice Brown,’ the playwright said.
‘Ah yes, poor Eunice. Tragic. Tragic.’
‘You know she was murdered, Dr Parry?’
‘Surely not!’ The vicar looked askance.
‘You visited the body?’
‘I was called in, yes. Administered the last rites.’
‘In Latin?’
‘No.’ Parry grew frosty. ‘In the Queen’s broad English. Why do you ask?’
Marlowe chuckled. ‘St Etheldreda,’ he said, leaning back and cradling one knee, ‘your patron saint. She was a princess of East Anglia who wanted to be a nun. Unfortunately, her father had other ideas and she was forced into marriage. When her husband died three years later she fled to a convent in Ely. Her father was the persistent type, however, and he insisted she marry again – Ecgfrith this time, Prince of Northumbria.’
‘I really don’t see—’
‘She ran away again. Etheldreda was clearly as determined as her dear papa. This time she put on a hair shirt next to her skin and spent the rest of her life praying every night, all night.’
‘Fascinating, Master Marlowe.’ Parry was smiling again. ‘And largely accurate. But I assure you, I didn’t choose the name of the church. Neither do I espouse the miracles with which she is associated.’
‘Don’t you?’ Marlowe asked. ‘Then why … this?’ He lunged for the little altar to his left and hauled off the cloth.
‘Sacrilege!’ Parry screamed, but Marlowe hadn’t started yet. He drove his right boot into the wooden panel between the carved ogee arches and a box fell out. Before Parry could leave his seat, screaming as he was, Marlowe had wrenched open the lid and held up the desiccated hand lying there.
‘Tell me,’ he said levelly, looking Parry straight in the eye, ‘am I shaking the hand of a saint?’
‘I …’ Parry’s shoulders slumped. Denials now seemed pointless, but he tried anyway. ‘I didn’t know that was there,’ he said. ‘Churches all over the country must be full of them, foul relics of superstitious Papist claptrap.’
‘I’m sure you’re right,’ Marlowe told him, ‘and well done to be able to recite the mantra by the way – “Foul relics. Papist claptrap” – excellent Puritan rhetoric, isn’t it? And I’d be prepared to believe you, were it not for the polished appearance of this reliquary,’ he kicked it with his foot, ‘and the ease with which the lid opened. This has been handled regularly, recently and – I am prepared to wager – by you.’
It was all over for Parry. He could feel the flames licking around his feet already. And him, the parish priest of Hatfield. ‘What … what are you going to do?’ he asked. ‘And please … put that back.’ He was talking about the saint’s relic. Marlowe tossed the hand into the box and sat down again.
‘Tell me about Eunice,’ he said.
Parry sighed. ‘Eunice was one of my parishioners,’ he said. ‘My real parishioners, that is.’ His voice had dropped to a whisper. ‘The old religion, Marlowe. The real religion. I administered the last rites in Latin, as Eunice would have wished.’
Marlowe nodded. ‘Does Burghley know?’ he asked. ‘Cecil?’
‘God, no!’ Parry was horrified. ‘A stauncher pair of Puritans I’ve yet to meet. And before you ask, my cousin, the Queen’s chaplain, knows nothing of this either. Perish the thought.’
Marlowe looked at the man. For much of his adult life, at least since he had met Francis Walsingham, the Queen’s estimable former Spymaster, he had been hunting Papists – and finding them, too, very often in the most unlikely places. It came easily to him. But today, he was hunting a murderer. ‘Is that why you killed her, Dr Parry?’ he asked. ‘Eunice? Everybody I’ve spoken to called her a good woman, devout, Christian to her fingertips. Were you afraid she’d finger you, inadvertently, at her end? That she’d send someone to find her Catholic Father as she faced her Doom? That nice, accommodating Father Parry, who had always been there for her, at secret Masses without number?’
‘Of course not,’ Parry said, shaking his head. There were tears in his eyes. ‘Oh, I won’t pretend I’ve never considered her doing that. She wouldn’t have meant any harm, of course, but when a soul’s time comes, who knows what truths spill from the mouth?’
‘Who indeed?’ Marlowe nodded. Then he stood, his mind made up, his questions answered. ‘Oh, by the way,’ he rummaged in his purse, ‘have you seen this before?’ He held up the little gem that Lettys had given him, left on a good woman’s forehead by an angel.
Parry looked at it closely. He took it and held it up to the dying light of the vestry window. ‘A gemstone,’ he said. ‘No value, I wouldn’t think, but as you can imagine, I am no expert. What is it?’
Marlowe took it back. ‘It’s a relic, Dr Parry,’ he said, ‘but not the type you believe in.’ And he turned to go.
‘Marlowe,’ Parry was on his feet too. ‘Are you going to tell anyone?’
Marlowe looked at him. ‘About the hand of a dead woman some ancient, misguided priest of the old religion secreted away years or even centuries ago? No, Doctor, I don’t think so. Oh …’ he opened the door, ‘I’d have offered you tickets to my next work, The Massacre at Paris, but there’s no theatre to put it on in at the moment. And besides,’ he winked at the man, ‘it’s about a clique of rather nasty Catholics – and I don’t think you’d like that at all.’
Marlowe rested that night at Hatfield, under the eaves near Burghley’s library, soaking up the culture even through the oak panelling. He went over his little chat with the vicar of Hatfield in his mind. The man, he knew, had been a Cambridge scholar, of St John’s, no less, which Robert Greene had attended. He had once run a parish in the Vintry, not a stone’s throw from Dowgate, where Robert Greene had died. And here he was again, a secret Papist, in at the death of Eunice Brown. But it didn’t fit. Nothing fitted. But he made a mental note not to overlook the vicar of Hatfield and he slept with his dagger under his pillow.